Page 17 of Prognosis Bad Timing

Joe stifled a grin. ‘Pinstripes, huh?’

Charlie didn’t reply, just groaned and dropped his head down onto the table, banging his forehead a few times.

‘She’s a doctor?’

Glancing up from his desk, Charlie said, ‘Apparently.’

‘Hmm, intriguing, as well.’

‘Pain in the butt,’ Charlie muttered as he sat up, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back against the headrest, Joe’s laughter all around him. He opened his eyes and looked at his clearly amused friend. ‘Shut the door on your way out.’

Joe laughed again and departed.

––––––––

Hours later Carriewas deep in figures when the door opened and a group of noisy, grungy-looking teenagers trooped through the room, eyed her suspiciously and continued to the back door and out to the basketball court.

Joe was right behind them and smiled at her on his way past. ‘Wanna shoot some hoops?’

Carrie could see the team limbering up through the open door. Two of the kids looked of Sudanese heritage and were well over six feet. The others, apart from a freckly red-head and a wiry kid of Asian heritage weren’t exactly short either. She knew Joe was only teasing but she kicked out her foot and said, ‘I’m not really wearing the right shoes.”

He grinned and continued on out. Charlie came through moments later. He acknowledged her with a quick nod of his head. ‘How are we looking?’

Carrie took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. ‘Too early to tell,’ she said. ‘It’ll take me a fortnight at least to wade through everything.’

Two weeks? Hell! He had to put up with her pinstriped suits for a fortnight? As Joe kept reminding him, he only had fourteen days to go on his enforced celibacy — and she was going to be here for every one of them? ‘That long?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve been allocated a month.’

A month? Jesus.

‘It’ll be faster if I get that paperwork sooner rather than later.’

‘I’ll have it on your desk by the morning.’ Even if he had to stay all night.

***

Carrie switched her laptop off at five o’clock. She should make it home by five-thirty, in time to get Dana’s dinner. She felt her usual pang of regret that she couldn’t be home more for her little girl. But, like it or not, she was a single mother with no support from Dana’s father.

Susie, her live-in nanny, was a godsend. Dana adored her and Carrie had no idea what she’d do without her.

The ebb and flow ofhuman traffic that had swirled around all day seemed to have diminished. The jukebox was now silent she realised as she quietly hummed a song that had been played so often it had worked its way into her subconscious.

‘I’m off,’ she said, stopping at Charlie’s open door out of courtesy.

‘Good for you. I’ll be here all night, getting that paperwork together.’

Did he want her to feel sorry for him? A job he’d had a week to do? ‘That would be most helpful. Thank you.’

‘Doc!’

The voice was so loud, so unexpected that Carrie visibly startled. She turned to the source of the noise and watched a young man stride into the clinic, carrying another man like a sack of potatoes over one shoulder and a bawling toddler on the opposite hip.

Charlie was up and out of his chair and brushing past a still startled Carrie in a matter of seconds. ‘What is it, Donny?’ he asked, opening the door of the treatment room as Donny followed behind. ‘Do you know him?’

Donny nodded. ‘His name’s Rick. He uses smack. He had a needle hanging out of his arm when I found him.’ Donny laid the unconscious man on the examination table.

‘Carrie, take the baby,’ Charlie said, raising his voice to be heard over the distressed child as he pulled on some gloves and placed an oxygen saturation probe on Rick’s finger.

---