Splintered Memory (3 page)

“’k,
” she mumbled sleepily as she leant up to kiss him, her eyes barely open, and he knew that there was every chance that she was asleep again before her head even returned to the pillow.

Matt smiled at his wife
, and sat there for an extra second just looking at her. He was so lucky he knew. She’d always been the girl of his dreams, and he sometimes found it hard to believe that it’d been fifteen years since he’d first built up the courage to kiss her. Yet thank god he had he thought to himself, because here they were; together and still unbelievably happy.

He left their bedroom
, and quietly closed the door behind him. He walked down the stairs, and into the kitchen where he picked up his thermo flask. He put the kettle on and put four oversized spoonfuls of coffee into the flask, and when the kettle had boiled he poured the water in. He sealed the flask, shook it, and then unlocked the back door and walked out of it.

He enjoyed
his short walk to work, and he loved the fact that he was less than ten minutes from the hospital. His hours at Selly Oak A&E were long, and he knew that Charlie had searched high and low to find somewhere near to the hospital for their first none university home together.

When she’d shown it to him, he’d loved it instantly for the location alone. From their house, if he used the back door – which he always did, he could cut through their garden and be at the hospital in minutes. Added to this their house was on Lottie road, which Charlie had taken as a sign th
at it was meant to be. Although this had made him smile from the moment that she’d told him, because he honestly didn’t know anyone that had ever called Charlie Lottie once in her life.

Charlie worked for a law firm in the city
, and she equally worked some horribly long hours. She was also often called upon to go to London, Bristol, or Cardiff at short notice. Yet over the years they’d learned to live with the fact that there were some weeks, and occasionally some months, where they hardly ever saw each other.

Many of
his friends at work were in relationships with other doctors. They said that they found it easier as both people in the relationship understood the demands of the job, but he knew that Charlie understood the demands of his job. He also knew that she more so than anyone else knew how much he loved being a doctor.

He
walked into the hospital and stopped musing about his life with Charlie. He instead looked over at his friend and colleague Dr James Thompson, who was stood at the nurses’ station.

“Morning
,” James said rather grumpily.

“I
t is isn’t it?” Matt responded brightly.

James looked at him suspiciously
, and then with a knowing smile and an approving nod asked; “good night with the missus was it?”

“It’s a
lways a good night with my missus,” Matt said.

“I bet it is!” James said
smirking slightly.

“What’s t
hat supposed to mean?” Matt asked with a raised eyebrow, although he was smiling at the same time.

“
Your missus is über hot, but I’ll say no more,” James said grinning. “Aside to say, that most men would probably look as happy as you at half five in the morning if they went to bed with her.”

Matt
laughed. He was used to comments like this from James and his other friends about Charlie, and they didn’t bother him. If anything he saw it as a compliment that other men thought that his wife was so attractive, not that he wasn’t already well aware of this fact.

“Although speaking of hotties, have you seen that new doctor
?” James asked.

“Doctors
,” Matt said correcting James but smiling again at the same time. “But I’ll assume that you’re referring to the young Dr Emily Peters?”

“Is that her name
?” James asked clearly making a mental note. “I wonder if she needs the guidance of an experienced doctor to show her the ropes,” he said winking at Matt.

“Yes
she and Dr Ryan both will. But I’m afraid the experienced doctor in charge of showing them the ropes is me,” Matt said smiling and then laughing when he heard James mutter; “waste!”

Matt was about to reply when his pager started buzzing. He reached for the phone which was next to James
, but as he did he noticed James smirking again and he looked at him curiously.

“I’ve got a feeling that you’re going to have a
long
day, any chance that you’re already starting to regret having had late night sex with your missus now?” James asked.

Matt held the phone between his ear and shoulder and replied; “not a chance! Would you regret having late night sex with my wife?”
But he instantly wished that he’d kept his mouth shut.

“
Not even for a second. In fact,” James said laughing and walking away; “thanks for the visual!”

Matt shook his head, knowing that he
only had himself to blame for that comment.

It
was the end of another long and busy shift at Selly Oak A&E. The majority of the doctors on duty were all looking forward to going home to bed, and Emily was feeling just as tired as any of them as she looked around for Dr Grayson.

Sh
e found him, as usual, leaning wearily against the nurses’ station. He was enjoying what Emily assumed by his relatively enthusiastic and light tone, was the first non emergent or patient related conversation that he’d had since he’d arrived on duty some fifteen hours earlier. He was also busily tucking into what looked like homemade cottage pie.

Emily had heard
in her third shift, that Nurse Willis – the scariest Nurse in the whole of the A&E department, favoured Dr Grayson. Yet she’d soon learnt that this was useful information to have found out. As she’d discovered that if Dr Grayson had been on shift for more than ten hours, and he couldn’t be found in the A&E, then nine times out of ten he’d be at the nurses’ station talking to Nurse Willis. He’d also usually be eating something that always smelt very nice and looked homemade, and was – she’d been told, brought in especially for him by Nurse Willis.

Nurse
Willis terrified Emily. She was from a past generation of medicine where fear and reverence to the matron of the ward applied, and all of the doctors knew that she could either be a great help or a great hindrance. It was known throughout Selly Oak A&E, that the worst mistake you could make as a Junior Doctor was to get on the wrong side of Nurse Willis.

Nurse Willis
kept all of the nurses under her control in order, and she ruled with an iron fist and stern demeanour that terrified everyone including most of the doctors. Dr Grayson though seemed to be the exception, and Emily had heard that Nurse Willis had taken pity on him and had become –according to the gossipy nurses on staff, a surrogate mother to him and his wife.

Emily watched him take
another large forkful of food before he reached for his pager that had started to buzz next to his plate. He put down his fork and reached for the phone, which Emily passed to him. He looked at her curiously, and she handed him the x-ray that she’d been carrying around with her whilst she’d been looking for him and that she wanted him to look at.

“Thanks
,” he said as he took the phone from her. He then wedged it into its usual position between his shoulder and ear whilst at the same time taking the x-ray and looking at it.

H
e held it up into the light, and as he looked at it Emily looked at him and tried to gage what he was thinking. She’d come to be able to read his face better than anyone else in the hospital, and she could sometimes tell from his expression alone what orders he would give for a patient before he even spoke.

Dr Grayson was not only her teacher
, and an extraordinarily good doctor, but outside of the hospital he and his wife were her friends. Yet as she continued to watch him she stifled a yawn. She was tired, but then they were all tired. It’d been a long day, and she hadn’t even been in for as long as Dr Grayson had. She also knew from a conversation that she’d had with Charlie earlier in the week that Dr Grayson had virtually been living at the hospital for the past few weeks, and it was showing. He looked dead on his feet, and she wondered how he was still standing.

“It
’s fine,” he said handing the x-ray back to her; “but we’ve got a couple of ambulances on the way in. There’s been an accident on the Bristol road, two men from one car with minor injuries, and one female in a bad condition from another. It sounds like she’s gonna be DOA though.”

Emily lo
oked at him and saw her own tiredness reflected back in his. At that moment her pager also began to buzz and she followed Dr Grayson towards the ambulance bay, and as she walked she tried to shake off the tiredness that was descending upon her with increasing urgency.

***

Her whole life had been dedicated to becoming a doctor. So when she’d found herself ready to quit within the first two weeks, she’d been confounded as to why. She’d had no idea why she’d been struggling so much with the demands of a life as a doctor, and she’d been devastated.

Emily
had known that a career in medicine would be hard. She’d known that unlike many other professions, it wasn’t a job where you worked a standard forty hour week. It wasn’t a job where you clocked in and out at the same time every day. Yet what she hadn’t realised was that none of her preparations, nor her desire to be a doctor, would actually help her cope with the continual tiredness that she’d felt on a day to day basis.

The
twelve hour shifts were gruelling, and always ran longer than twelve hours. Working in the A&E meant that you never really had slow days. You never had the same patients. You were constantly challenged with different situations, and your medical knowledge and ability to react quickly was always being tested to breaking point. She’d also had to learn that being tired wasn’t an excuse for errors or delays. There simply couldn’t be any delays when your decisions resulted in a patient living or dying.

I
f it hadn’t been for Charlie, Emily felt sure that she wouldn’t have completed her first month at the hospital. Every shift had become overwhelming, and the sleep deprivation had begun to feel like it was killing her. She knew that if she hadn’t stumbled across the infamous Mrs Grayson when she’d been sat outside the A&E crying, then she would have walked away from medicine.

***

“Dr Peters isn’t it?” A young woman asked sitting down next to Emily.

“Y
es,” Emily said slightly bemusedly not knowing who this woman was.

“I’m Charlotte Grayson. Don’t worry,
” she said smiling kindly; “I’m not a patient, or an angry patient’s next of kin that wants to yell at you. I’m just here to see if I can find my husband.”

“You mean Dr Grayson
?” Emily asked, and then she smiled and added; “well obviously you do, you just said that your surname was Grayson.”

They both laughed, and
Emily looked at Charlie and could instantly see what all the chatter amongst the nurses and male doctors was about. Charlotte Grayson was strikingly beautiful. No wonder the nurses spent so much time bitching about her she thought, and making up stories about how much of a bad wife she must be if Nurse Willis had to come in on her days off to bring Dr Grayson food.

“Are you ok
?” Charlie asked. “It’s just, if you don’t mind me saying, you look a little frazzled.”

“Frazzled
,” Emily said; “that’s exactly how I feel.” She then looked away from Charlie and said; “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this,” and much to her own embarrassment she began to cry.

Charlie looked at her sympathetically
, and then she gently put her arm around Emily’s shoulders. “I think you’re supposed to feel like this,” Charlie said reassuringly. “When Matt first started he used to get home, sit down, and swear that he was quitting the next day. It’s hard what you do. I think they make it intentionally hard. Without Nurse Willis looking after him, and feeding him when he forgot to eat, I think Matt might have quit as well.”

Emily wiped her eyes a
nd looked straight into Charlie’s big brown kind eyes, trying to asses if she was being truthful or just trying to make her feel better.

She noticed that
Charlie’s eyes were an incredibly rich brown colour, and she saw that they were perfectly round. She thought that they looked almost deer like, innocent and honest, and she felt sure that if Charlie was just trying to make her feel better she would never be able to tell. That must be so frustrating for Dr Grayson she mused absent-mindedly, before returning to the moment and her conversation with Charlie.

“Dr Grayson thought about quitting
?” Emily asked sounding and feeling surprised by this. He was so good at his job, how could he have ever thought about quitting she’d thought.

Charli
e laughed. “Yep, and he’ll probably be mad with me for telling you that. You doctors are all hierarchical aren’t you, and you’re not supposed to see any chinks in each other’s armour are you? Look I know that this will sound clichéd, but you’re probably just way past the point of tiredness,” Charlie said giving Emily’s shoulders a squeeze; “and that makes everyone emotional. I once cried when I missed my train station by one stop. Pathetic, but hopefully caused entirely by the fact that I hadn’t slept for nearly three days.”