Page 49 of Beg, Borrow or Steal
‘Sit forward.’
‘Really, I’m okay. You don’t have to – ’
‘Sit. Forward.’ Libby sighed and did as she was asked. Dr Morrison listened to her chest, then crouched down in front of her.
‘Youaresick,’ she told her, frowning up as though it was entirely her fault.
‘I’m fine. It’s nothing. I –’
‘You have asthma, yes?’
Libby nodded.
‘Where is your inhaler?’
Libby shook her head, concentrating on exhaling through what felt like a tight straw.
‘There’s wheeze all over your chest. You have a right lower lobe pneumonia. Your pulse rate is over one hundred. Your temperature is thirty-nine. You’re septic.’
Libby pulled off the sats probe and the blood pressure cuff and fought off the dizziness in order to stand up without swaying. ‘I’ve got to get Rosie. I’ll sort it out after I get her. I can’t – ’
‘You are septic. You are sick. You need to listen to me. You – ’
‘No,’ Libby shouted, her arm slashing through the air. ‘You listen to me. Don’t you understand – Ican’tbe sick. I can’t …’ She trailed off as the edges of her vision started darkening and another cold sweat and wave of dizziness assaulted her. She swayed and Dr Morrison caught her before she went down, plonking her back on the chair.
‘We’ll get you to resus, and I need to call Dr Grantham,’ Dr Morrison muttered, causing Libby’s head to come up and her hand to shoot out to land on Dr Morrison’s forearm.
‘No,’ she croaked, trying to put as much force behind the word as possible. ‘No. He’s … we’re not … justno.’
Dr Morrison pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. ‘Okay. What about your loud scary friend? Can I call her?’
‘You mean Kira? I – ’ Before Libby could say any more Dr Morrison had extracted her mobile from the pocket of her scrubs. Libby gave her the code when asked, now beyond arguing. In fact she was fast becoming beyond anything at all; her breathing had become more laboured and the sweat was pouring down her back. A few minutes later Kira came bursting into the office, swearing violently when she saw Libby hunched over in the chair.
‘Badgering hell,’ she muttered as she put her arm around Libby and a hand to her forehead. ‘What have you done to yourself, you daft sod? Come on let’s get you to A&E.’
‘Ki-Ki, I can’t,’ groaned Libby as she was forced upright and was shuffled towards the door. ‘What about Rosie?’
‘Your mum and dad?’
‘They’re over an hour away. I need to – ’
‘I will go and get the child,’ Dr Morrison put in, and both women turned their shocked faces to her. ‘I can look after her. She knows me.’
‘She does?’ asked Kira, her eyebrows in her hairline. Libby started another round of coughing and her vision darkened again, but this time, with Kira holding her up, she couldn’t fight away the loss of consciousness, and everything faded to black.
*****
‘Jamie!’ Rosie launched herself out of Dr Morrison’s lap across the room, colliding with his legs and wrapping her arms around them. She proceeded to shimmy up his trousers and tug on his shirt until he bent down to pick her up and the standard face-smushing commenced.
‘Hey, sweetheart,’ he said through his smushed lips, his confused eyes flicking between the little girl and the woman sitting in the office chair with half her hair down and the other half shoved into a bizarre pink scrunchy arrangement. He’d come down to find the on-call radiologist, and heard noises coming from Dr Morrison’s office. ‘What are you doing here, Little Louse?’
‘Mummy’s sick so Millie’s looking after me,’ Rosie told him before her voice dropped to a whisper and she leaned forward to cup his ear. ‘Millie says I’ve got to be very brave whilst they make Mummy all better and good as new. They gonna takes away her coughin’. I might have cwied … a bit. But Millie says that’s okay, and she let me do her hair.’ Dr Morrison was frantically pulling out the scrunchy and trying to right her light brown hair into its usual order. ‘She won’t let me smush her face though. And Granny and Bumpa is coming soon. Hurrah!’
‘That’s great, honey. Why don’t you count up my money a sec whilst I talk to … Millie.’
‘’Kay,’ said Rosie, grabbing his wallet out of his pocket and sliding down him to sit happily on the floor. Dr Morrison stood up from the chair, still smoothing down rogue hairs.
‘What the hell is going on?’ he snapped in a low voice, immediately regretting it when she took a small step back.
