Water and Fire (3 page)

"Blue cheese and eggplant," the
intern's voice murmured as his lasagne-topped plate landed on the
table across from mine.

I looked up in time to see him
sit down.

"I asked the server at the
counter," he admitted with a grin. "Is it good?"

Slowly, I nodded.

"Then I get a double bonus at
lunch today. Good food and good company." He shovelled a large bite
of lasagne into his mouth.

If he classed me as good
company, I felt sorry for the man, but not enough to tell him so. I
was certain he'd soon work out there were other staff who'd be far
better company than I could ever be. Silence, sadness and all.

My fork clinked against the
plate as I cut another slice with more force that necessary,
shoving it into my mouth before I said something.

My mouth safely full, I dared
to look up at his face again, meeting expectant eyes with surprise.
Had he said something that I'd missed?

Evidently so.

His smile seemed to forgive my
rudeness, as he said, "I just asked if you liked fishing, because I
seem to have found a really great fishing spot and it'd be a shame
not to share it. Down near my house, on the inlet, I caught a big,
fat bream, fishing from the shore a few days ago. I thought maybe
if you were free on the weekend, you might like to come fishing
with me..." He trailed off.

I swallowed with difficulty,
forcing myself not to choke. "No, thank you," I managed to say. "I
don't fish."

"Ah, that's a pity," he
replied. "I could show you, if you like. I have all the gear. All
you'd have to bring is yourself. I'd even offer to scale and clean
your catch..."

I shook my head strongly. "No.
I'm busy studying this weekend."

I hurried to finish my meal,
yet I wasn't fast enough to head off his reply. "Fair enough." He
sounded sad. "If you ever change your mind, just say the word."

I shot up from my seat, my
mouth full. I gave him a curt nod as I passed him, taking my plate
to the dish racks in the kitchen.

Longing rose up in me. I wanted
to go fishing more than I could say, the taste of fresh fish
haunting my tongue, but I wouldn't until I headed home. I had to
finish my term as a student midwife and complete my exams before I
could fish in the warm waters of home for wahoo and tuna, Spanish
mackerel and mahi-mahi. Big fish for which a bream was nothing but
undersized bait.

As I left the cafeteria, I
noticed the intern speaking to the server and both sharing a smile.
I ardently hoped this meant he'd found a new focus for his
friendship. Perhaps another girl might find the burden of his
kindness easier to bear.

"We're short in ED. The agency
has no nurses left and we've just had to admit one as a patient,
when her fever ran too high and she fainted." The harried-looking
Helen bit her lip. "Please, if either of you can be spared from
your ward for a few hours to fill in for the ED..." She looked
desperately at me.

I exchanged a glance with Jill.
We weren't busy, but if a patient presented, wanting a midwife,
that could quickly change.

"Tell Dr Henderson he can call
on us in an emergency if ED absolutely needs another staff member,"
Jill said finally.

Helen's face crumpled. "It's
not Dr Henderson. He's home sick, too. The only doctor we have is
that new intern..."

Jill's eyes widened. "Did you
ask the other wards? Aren't there some nursing students in the
general surgery ward?"

"We have nursing students, too.
What we need is an experienced RN."

I owed Helen a favour for
taking care of my car as I cared for Miranda. Perhaps this was an
appropriate way to both thank and repay her. "I'll do it. I'll work
the full shift in ED instead of here."

Jill opened her mouth to
protest.

"If we get any deliveries, I'll
be the first to know and I'll bring them back to the birthing
suite," I promised.

Jill's mouth closed as she
nodded once.

I marched back with Helen to
the Emergency Department. I hadn't worked in one since my days as a
student nurse, but even then I'd enjoyed the challenge of triage
and the sheer variety of cases that came through. We got all sorts
in ED.

A country ED was no different,
though the lack of staffing made this one more chaotic than usual.
I heard the screaming as I approached, quickening my step to a trot
to reach my destination faster.

The screaming baby in the
waiting room had a broken arm and he'd been waiting for too long,
judging by his mother's panicked expression. The man with the
bloodied broken nose was drunk and would pass out soon, negating
the need for pain relief if he waited much longer.

The poor student nurse on the
front desk had noticed neither of these as she was busy arguing
with a woman whose young son was sneezing and sniffling as she
screamed hysterically that he had meningococcal and he'd die unless
they admitted him, though he had no fever.

Through the curtains of a
cubicle, I saw Aidan tending to another patient, but he'd taken to
running his hands through his hair until it stood out in crazy,
escaping tufts. His wide eyes were starting to show panic, too,
though his voice remained calm.

All in all, the ED was ready to
explode.

I took charge.

The student nurse arranged the
tests for the toddler with the paranoid mother. "Better safe than
sorry," I told her with a grim smile.

I sent another student to man
the desk and check that the drunk was okay to wait until the more
urgent patients were seen to, while I ushered the mother and her
broken-armed baby into the children's cubicle. "He climbed out of
his high chair and I couldn't stop him. I only turned my back for a
second – but he was strapped in!" she wailed.

I said
soothing things as I tried to examine the baby's arm. This one I
needed a doctor for.
Aidan, time to
demonstrate your skills,
I
thought.

As if I'd said his name aloud,
the intern appeared at my side. The mother thrust her baby at him
and he backed up as if the child was a live bomb.

"You should hold him," I told
the woman instantly, taking her attention from the intern. "He'll
be more comfortable in his mother's arms and the doctor will have
both hands free to conduct a thorough examination..."

Aidan's change of expression
from fearful to professional took barely a moment, so that I was
the only one to see the change. "How did it happen?" Aidan asked
easily as he examined the child, keeping his voice calmer than his
panicked eyes until the panic faded.

The mother's voice gradually
calmed to match his as she repeated her story. He nodded as he kept
his eyes on the baby, whose noisy crying had quietened to dry
sobs.

I heard something clatter to
the floor off to my right. "Oh shit," a female voice said clearly.
The clattering continued.

"If you'll excuse me, Doctor,"
I said smoothly to the intern, who turned startled eyes on me.
"Just sing out if you need any further assistance, Doctor, but it
looks like you have this well under control without any need for
me." I forced a professional smile for him and his patients.

After a few moments, the intern
responded with a grave nod. "Of course, Nurse." He carefully
avoided meeting my eyes.

I turned away, before he could
change his mind, and crossed to the reception desk. The startled
nursing student stood transfixed behind the desk, staring at a
ragged hole in the ceiling and the furry creature scrabbling at the
edge of the hole to regain its spot in the ceiling cavity. The
bushy tail waved around aimlessly as the creature's claws dug into
the ceiling foam, bringing down another shower of plaster,
insulation and other debris that clattered noisily to the
vinyl.

The girl turned to me. "What's
that song you're humming?"

I hadn't realised I'd been
making any noise, but I stopped the moment she mentioned it.

"Go get Tony, the maintenance
man. Tell him another possum's punched a new hole in the ceiling in
the ED," I instructed. I paused. "Do you know where Tony's workshop
is?"

She nodded vigorously, her
ponytail bobbing, and trotted off down the corridor. I stepped up
to her place at the desk. The possum managed to find a clawhold to
lift itself into the ceiling without widening the hole further. I
caught a glimpse of a tiny hand in her pouch as the mother possum
retreated into the roof space. We were spared a possum patient
today.

The drunk had slumped to sleep
across the waiting room bench, his snores telling me that his
broken nose wasn't impeding his breathing any.

Behind me, the other nursing
student marched off to Pathology with the samples from the
sniffling toddler.

For a moment, I breathed a sigh
of relief. From chaos to calm, the Emergency Department was now
under my control.

The student who'd gone to
Pathology returned with a smile for her patient and a promise to
call his mother when the results came back.

As if on cue, the intern chose
the same moment to release his patients, too, as the baby with the
bandaged arm smiled a teary smile at his mother. Aidan stood beside
me at the desk, watching them leave the ED.

When they were safely out of
earshot he turned to me. "What in hell did that?" He nodded at the
gaping hole in the ceiling.

"A surprised possum," I
responded. I frowned. "I sent one of the students for Maintenance,
but neither of them's back yet. I'll see if I can find them." I
picked up the phone.

Tessa, the secretary in
Engineering, answered after one ring. I asked after either the
student or Tony and was told Tony was fixing a tap in a patient's
room. The nursing student had ventured into Engineering and spoken
to Tessa. Tessa had given her the room number, which she repeated
for me as I carefully wrote it on a notepad.

Tessa promised to page Tony for
me a second time, but I decided to go looking for the missing
student and maintenance man.

"I'll be right back," I told
the intern and remaining nursing student, who were both staring at
the snoring drunk in the waiting room, their only remaining
patient. Both nodded, but I wasn't sure if they'd heard.

I shrugged and strode off. I'd
barely be gone five minutes, which was hardly enough time for chaos
to reinvade my ED.

Clutching the paper in my hand,
I kept looking at the room number. It was one of the isolation
rooms, for contagious patients or those who needed to be kept apart
from other patients for whatever reason.

As I approached the door, I
heard a quiet whimpering on the edge of hearing, as if someone
inside the room was in pain. The absence of signs or even a name on
the door told me there was no patient in there, so my first thought
was that the noise came from an injured staff member.

I pushed the door open, but
most of the room was obscured by the curtain around the bed. The
sound was louder now and definitely coming from behind the curtain.
Worried, I edged around it, holding my breath as I followed the
sound of the pitiful moans.

I saw the student's bored face
first, her chin resting on the bed. The moaning came from her
mouth, but she didn't look like she was experiencing the slightest
discomfort, let alone pain. Behind her, Tony the elderly
maintenance man had his eyes closed and a blissful expression on
his face.

I looked more closely, not
making a sound. The student's skirt was hiked up to her waist and
Tony's pants garnished his ankles as he banged her from behind,
oblivious to my presence.

She saw me.

Silently, I raised my
eyebrows.

She held out
one of the hands she'd clenched around the bed frame and I saw the
fifty dollar notes she held.
Ah
. This was her way of
supplementing her meagre student income. I touched my finger to my
watch as a reminder that she had limited time for this sort of
thing.

She gave a tiny nod of
acknowledgement. "C'mon, Tony, baby," she murmured in a little-girl
voice. "Come for me before our time's up in two more minutes and
I'll give you a discount tomorrow. You can have me for my whole
lunch hour for the same price as today."

He went into a frenzy of
thrusting. "Fuck yeah! A whole hour for only three hundred bucks?
Here I blow, baby!"

I retreated as quickly as I
could before the rutting man saw me, but I heard his triumphant
finale as I left the room.

I wanted to feel sorry for the
girl, feeling she had to sell her body to finish her studies, but
she was making a handsome profit on the sale. I wondered if I'd do
the same, under similar circumstances.

I shrugged and dismissed the
thought. A more important consideration was whether to report her
to her supervisor. After a moment, I decided I wouldn't bother.
After all, she wasn't one of my staff, nor my responsibility.

And while she was working in
the ED, Emergency would be on top of the list for maintenance
work.

"Did you find Tony or Lin?"
Aidan asked as I returned to ED.

I nodded. "He's coming. Right
away, I believe." I maintained my composure and looked at the bench
where the drunk had been when I'd left. "Where'd he go?"

The door to the public toilets
flew open and the man staggered out, answering my question. "I want
to go home," he slurred, touching a hand to his bandaged nose.

The taxi pulled up behind him
and beeped before anyone else could say anything. He stumbled
outside to the waiting car.

Tony turned up, a big grin on
his face, as he repaired the roof and every tap he could get his
hands on. With a wink to Lin, he whistled as he left. Lin kept her
eyes on the floor.