Page 49 of Prognosis Bad Timing

‘And that’s another result?’ Carrie nodded at the envelope.

‘The last one,’ Charlie confirmed.

‘So if that’s negative, you’re done and dusted?’

‘Yup.” He tapped the corner of the envelope on the table feeling simultaneously hopeful and doomed. ‘I know that the chances of it being positive after two negatives are slim but I feel like I’m holding my whole life in my hands right now and I just can’t bring myself to open it.’

Carrie felt his torment. Four years ago she’d had a similar letter that had held her whole future in it, too. She’d been unable to open it for fear of what it held.

His uncertainty appealed to her, her insides melting at his hesitancy. She was used to seeing him in command, in control. From the car accident the night they’d first met, to the OD, to her car being vandalised, to Dana’s sutures, to Roberta and his expansion plans. He was a take-charge kind of guy.

She felt strangely compelled to share her own experience. Let him know that sometimes life railroaded you and all you could do was hang on. That you couldn’t take charge of everything — sometimes circumstances took charge instead.

Anything to put that teasing sparkle back in his worried grey gaze.

‘I know how you feel.’

Charlie glanced at her. ‘Oh, yeah?’

‘I had an official-looking letter like that four years ago, just after Dana was born. It held the results of the Medical Registration Board’s review into an incident I was involved in where a child died.’

Carrie held her breath. She’d never talked about the horrible incident to anyone other than her family. In fact, she hadn’t talked about it in a long time at all, just buried it and the churning emotions that usually overwhelmed her beneath mounds of paper.

Charlie noted the rigid way Carrie was holding her cup, the way her gaze didn’t quite meet his. This was obviously difficult for her to talk to about. It also explained a lot. He’d suspected all along something serious had occurred in her career.

‘What happened?’ he asked gently.

Carrie’s hand shook. Rehashing that awful night didn’t seem quite so easy now.

‘It’s OK,’ he said, and reached out a hand to cover hers. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

She saw the compassion in his eyes, the softening, his reassuring smile. Suddenly she wanted to tell him more than anything. To talk to someone who knew how crazy it could be at the coalface. Who could relate.

Empathiseeven.

Family understood because they loved you. Colleagues understood because they’d lived it.

She stared into the murky depths of her coffee. ‘I was an intern working in Accident and Emergency. It was one of those crazy Saturday nights where half of Brisbane seemed to either have food poisoning or flu. And it was full of the usual bloodied drunks and we had a major car accident that had just come in, along with a fractured neck of femur from a nursing home. It was mad.’ She looked up from her coffee. ‘Bit like here, really.’

Charlie chuckled and it was such a lovely warm noise it gave her the courage to continue.

‘A man bought in a friend’s child who he was minding for a few hours, complaining that the child had bad breath and he’d rung the mother and she’d told him to bring the boy into us.’

Charlie cringed — halitosis in a busy emergency department. That must have gone down like a lead balloon. ‘I gather the child wasn’t assessed as a priority.’

Carrie gave a small smile and shook her head. ‘So after an hour of waiting he starts to get annoyed and there was a bit of a lull amidst all the chaos so the nurses asked if I would see the little boy next.’

‘And you did?’

Carrie nodded. ‘Kind of. The chart was handed to me, I called the boy’s name — his name was Harry, Harry Pengelly...’

As long as she lived she would never, ever forget the boy’s name or his face.

Charlie heard her voice go husky as she mentioned the patient’s name. No wonder she hadn’t been able to function properly at the accident scene. This obviously still affected her very badly.

‘I didn’t open the chart. I asked what the problem was. He said, “The kid’s mouth stinks like an animal’s died back there.”

And he was right, it had smelled very offensive.

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