Page 2 of The Night Shift
* * *
Ten minutes later the patient had a passable heart rhythm but was still not breathing for himself. The anaesthetics registrar Dr Stringer had agreed to admit him to the high dependency unit and the resuscitation was being written up in the patient’s notes. Violet loitered near the nurses’ station feeling useless. Not only had she been unable to gain venous access, literally the only task she’d been assigned, she’d nearly got herself electrocuted in the process of failing at it. She scrolled through her list ofinterminable and fairly pointless things to do on the wards(not that she’d labelled it thus on screen) searching for any jobs that needing doing on ward seven, given that she was here already.
‘Sorry about that,’ said a friendly voice behind her. She turned and met the dark caramel eyes of the doctor who’d led the arrest. Gus.
‘Sorry about what?’ Her tone was more brusque than she’d intended but she was still feeling harassed and couldn’t imagine what this Adonis might have to apologise for, other than being so outrageously handsome and medically competent, in sharp contrast to herself. Perhaps that was what he was about to say?Sorry for being so devastatingly good-looking and making you feel like an inferior human being simply by being in the presence of my physical magnificence and clinical expertise.It was possible.
‘Sorry for forgetting your name when I shouted at you to get out of the way,’ he said. ‘You know– when you were…’
‘About to receive five hundred volts through my trouser leg?’ Violet said seriously. ‘I don’t think you need to apologise for that. In fact, I’m rather glad you saved my life.’
‘It probably wouldn’t have actually killed you,’ he said.
‘The embarrassment might have though.’ Her face was impassive. ‘Anyway, a paper in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine concluded that accidental caregiver shock from defibrillator use during resuscitation is likely to be grossly underreported.’
Gus raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that so?’
‘Far more common than we realise apparently.’
‘O-kay,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the heads up.’
She glanced at him, checking he wasn’t making fun of her. ‘You’re very welcome.’
‘Well, anyway,’ Gus said. ‘Sorry about the generic, “Oi, you, get out of the way” earlier. I’m usually good with names, but halfway through a midnight cardiac arrest I’m probably not on my best form.’
‘You seemed on perfectly good form to me,’ said Violet, cross with herself for the unexpected flush in her cheeks and hoping it could be attributed to the decidedly unseasonal temperature of the ward. ‘After all, you saved him– the patient.’ She was reluctant to be too cavalier with her compliments, after all, this Gus was probably used to receiving praise for simply existing, but she also wanted to give credit where it was due. ‘It was a successful resuscitation at least. I haven’t been to many of those.’
Gus grimaced, ‘I’m not sure as I’d call it wildly successful,’ he said. ‘That guy’s got at least four fractured ribs, no respiratory effort and likely no brain function left. He might have a heartbeat but that’s about all we managed to save.’
‘Do you think weshouldn’thave resuscitated him then?’ As she said the words she wondered whether this was what her friend Dev would have called a classic Violet question–blunt as a thumb in your eyewas how he usually described it– but how else were you supposed to discover what people meant when they gave you a load of subtext?
‘I don’t know.’ Gus gave a little shrug while Violet tried to concentrate on his words and not become too distracted by the neck and shoulders actively involved in the shrugging. ‘There was no mention of a Do Not Resuscitate in his notes. Anyway, it’s too late now, you can’t make those sorts of decisions retrospectively. But I do wonder what would’ve happened if the nurses hadn’t been checking his observations at that moment. You know, what if an eighty-nine-year-old man with multiple medical problems had just slipped away peacefully in his sleep? Would that have been the end of the world?’
He sighed and tapped his fingers against the desk for a moment while Violet tried and failed to think of the right thing to say. Usually it was just the first thing that popped into her head; a surprising fact, a statistical anomaly or a reference to a recent randomised controlled study, but she knew that sometimes other people didn’t find that kind of response as interesting or appropriate as she did. There was, it seemed, a fine line between funny ha-ha and funny peculiar that she occasionally fell on the wrong side of, and for some reason the opinion of the Adonis mattered to her; this was clearly one of the concomitant benefits of having a handsome face– people wanted to impress you. She was still mulling over a few phrases that might sound clever and insightful, something about death and the human condition, when Gus spoke again.
‘Ignore me,’ he said, smiles restored. ‘I always have an existential crisis on my first night shift of the week. I’ll go and give them a hand getting him up to HDU now, who knows, he might make a miraculous recovery and be sprinting out of the door in a few days’ time.’
‘Hmm… I’ll keep an eye out for him vaulting over the bollards in the ambulance bay.’
‘That’s just a warm-up for his four laps of the outpatients’ car park,’ he said.
‘Followed by a quick jog down to the docks.’
‘Would he be taking in a short tour of the SSGreat Britainwhile he’s there?’ Gus’s eyebrow was raised.
‘Of course he would– crazy not to. And then he’d probably want to check out the—’ She stopped abruptly. Gus’s bleep had gone off and she was also slightly shocked at herself for this burst of conversational enthusiasm.
Gus looked down and checked the number flashing on his pager. ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘No rest for the wicked. Still, I’ll keep you posted as to whether our patient makes it out of here in time to sign up for the next Marathon des Sable. I’m sure I’ll see you around.’ The smile he flashed in her direction was wide and warm. He seemed to have a lot of teeth, thought Violet, which was ridiculous because clearly he’d have the same number as anybody else– maybe he just showed more of them off at any given time?
‘Oh, and Happy Christmas,’ he said as he sauntered off, taking his easy manner, multiple teeth and perfectly chiselled face with him.
Violet
Anjali arrived at the nurses’ station just in time to catch the end of Violet’s long lingering stare, her eyes following Gus as he made his way down the corridor.
‘Don’t even think about it, Violet,’ she said.
‘What?’ Violet dragged her gaze back to the face of her senior colleague. ‘I wasn’t thinking about anything…’
