Page 69 of Prognosis Bad Timing

‘Who is just leaving,’ Carrie said, her legs shaking as she made a quick escape.

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At Friday lunchtimeCarrie was sitting at the table, trying to concentrate on a bunch of exceedingly boring, exceedingly depressing figures. Damn it.

The hospital board was going to have a field day.

The centre wasn’t viable. The previous year’s figures were a mess. She knew she would have to make a recommendation to the board that would destroy Charlie and his beloved centre.

And their so-called friendship. And most definitely their snogging.

After she delivered her verdict she was pretty sure he’d never want to see her again — never mind kiss her.

It was developing into a true conflict of interest for her and she was torn. Torn between what the figures told her - the black and white. And what she knew about Charlie and his goals and aims for the centre — the grey.

A few weeks ago she’d been nothing but a bottom-line girl. A black and white girl. But the longer she spent at the centre and witnessed the difference Charlie and the centre made, she knew she couldn’t be objective.

She had gone to the grey side.

She threw down her pen and glared at the stack of paperwork in front of her. The jukebox thumped away in the background and somewhere outside a car backfired.

How the hell was she going to tell him?

Maybe this was an easy out for her? This crazy passion-fuelled friendship they had now, couldn’t go on. Their issues hadn’t changed. Her time here was almost up. If she left, putting the final nail in the centre’s coffin, it would achieve what they’d so far not managed to achieve.

The end of their impossible, never-going-to-happen relationship.

Carrie was still musing over the problem a couple of minutes later when Angela burst through the door. ‘I need you. Now. I have a GSW outside.’

Carrie startled at the receptionist’s abrupt entry and rapid-fire demand. A gunshot wound? Oh, no! She stood on shaky legs. ‘Get Charlie.’

Angela glared at her impatiently. ‘Do you think I’d be here, asking you, if Charlie was around?’

Good point. She watched Angela’s brisk retreat.

‘Stat,’ Angela bellowed from down the hallway.

Carrie jumped, her heart leaping in her chest. Her legs responded to the brisk command, her thoughts jumbled as the familiar edge of panic poked at her hard.

She entered the treatment room, nausea slamming into her gut at the bloodied victim.

‘Shotgun blast to the abdomen,’ Angela said, thrusting a pair of gloves at her. ‘That car backfiring earlier was not a car backfiring. The ambulance is eight minutes out.’

The patient could have been no more than fifteen. He had an oxygen mask on and was writhing around the examination bed, holding his abdomen. Blood was oozing out all over his hands, and its metallic aroma wafted towards her, fuelling even more nausea.

It was all over his clothes and the clean white sheets. Oh, God, why wasn’t Charlie here? Where the hell was he?

Another teenager was pacing in the corner. He had blood all over his clothes, too.

‘Help him. Don’t just stand there. Help him,’ he yelled at Carrie, running his bloodied hands through his hair.

Angela looked at her sternly. They were it. She was it. She was what stood between this boy and death. Did she want another boy to bleed and die before her eyes?

Her thoughts crystallised. Her thinking became ordered.

D.R.A.B.C.H.

The first four letters checked out already. There was no danger, the boy was obviously responsive and, at a quick glance, his airway and breathing weren’t compromised. She noticed a blood-pressure cuff wrapped around his arm and a pulse oximeter attached to his finger.

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