Page 22 of The Night Shift
Bleary-eyed, he shuffled to the single bed. The blinds remained down and the air was dark and still as he shrugged off his scrubs and slid under the crumpled duvet but after twenty minutes of staring at the wall he sat up and reached for his phone. He couldn’t sleep. His mind was whirring with the events of his on-call shift, the patients he had clerked in, those he had sat with in theatre, those who were in recovery and needed close monitoring. He had handed over to the Boxing Day on-call team and knew that his patients were in safe hands, in fact many of them would have been discharged by the time he returned this evening, but he still went through each patient in his head, scrolling through the list on his phone until he was convinced that every job had been completed and nothing had been left for the day team to pick up. He didn’t want to be one of those doctors who dumped work on their colleagues, even if it was accidental. So much of what made practising medicine bearable was a good working relationship with the rest of the team and he was careful never to intentionally jeopardise that.
Once he was satisfied that all tasks had been completed and he definitely hadn’t missed anything, he tried to close his eyes again, clearing his mind of all extraneous detail, whether it related to work or his personal life. But sleep still wouldn’t come. Instead he kept returning to his conversation with Violet and wondering whether she was still at the lido or would she have reached home yet, wherever that may be. She’d said something about a housemate as opposed to living with a partner so maybe that implied she wasn’t in a long-term relationship? Not that it mattered either way, obviously.
He wondered whether what she said about cold-water swimming helping her sleep was really true. She certainly didn’t seem the type to fabricate something like that, she was brutally honest about everything else. He smiled as he remembered their shared conversation in the small hours of the morning when she’d described her frankness as a bit of a curse. It was an unusual trait and he could see how it might rub people up the wrong way but he found it surprisingly refreshing. Speaking of refreshing– the warm, stuffy atmosphere in the bedroom suddenly felt a little oppressive and he returned to the image of Violet gliding through the cool water of the lido, her long limbs made graceful by the action, her cropped hair sleek against her neck until it began to dry and curl behind her ears… Maybe she was right. Maybe he should give it a try. After all, it wasn’t as if he was having much luck sleeping at the moment, and if he was honest, the thought of spending more time with Violet was definitely appealing, even if he had to risk hypothermia to do so.
He paused scrolling through his messages, most were from family and friends wishing him a Happy Christmas but halfway down his inbox was one from Naz, a surgeon he often worked with. Naz was a keen surfer. He often talked about his various trips down to the Devon and Cornwall coast to catch the elusive waves and the seemingly less elusive surf-chicks, most of whom were irresistibly drawn to the muscular surgeon with his shaggy dreadlocks and laid-back attitude.
‘If you weren’t with Amelia I’d suggest you came with me, mate,’ he’d said to Gus on numerous occasions. ‘They’d bloody love you.’
Naz was about the same height and build as Gus, they were both tall, both broad-shouldered, and he knew from being in the theatre changing rooms that they had similar sized feet because he’d had to find Naz a new set of surgical clogs only a few weeks ago when the first pair had become so splattered by the bodily fluids of the patient on the operating table that they were unwearable for the rest of the day. If anyone was likely to have wetsuit accessories in his size it was Naz, and Gus knew he’d be working tomorrow. The twenty-seventh of December meant a return to normal scheduling for the majority of the hospital, until the New Year bank holiday at least. He opened up the message thread and began to type.
Random Boxing Day question but do you have any surf boots & gloves I could borrow?
He paused for a moment, imagining the realities of the colder water, and then resumed typing.
And maybe short wetsuit?
He watched the screen for a moment as the dots flickered with their promise of a response.
Sure. When?
Tomorrow? I’m on nights. Could collect before I head home.
Naz replied with a thumbs up and a surfboard emoji and Gus smiled to himself as he turned the phone off and settled himself back down into bed. He wasn’t committing to anything, he could easily decide against a swim if he didn’t fancy it tomorrow morning and could likely slope off before Violet even realised, perhaps claim he’d forgotten her offer without causing any offence or upset. But he’d pack his trunks and a towel anyway. Give himself the option. Who knew– it might be exactly what he needed.
Violet
Wednesday night
26th December– Boxing Day
‘Give us a smile, gorgeous,’ said the porter, winking jauntily as he passed her in the corridor. ‘Shame to spoil that pretty face.’
Violet scowled at him. ‘I’ll smile when something pleases me,’ she muttered, ‘and not before.’ As an afterthought she added, ‘And it’s Dr Gorgeous, thank you very much.’ But the porter was out of earshot and completely oblivious.
She was running a little late having driven to her gran’s care home in south Gloucestershire early evening and then been stuck in traffic on the way back into Bristol, making the turnaround time needed to park at home, wrestle her bike out of the corridor and cycle to work, tighter than she would have wanted. Was it any wonder she had a face like a smacked arse? And was it any business of the winking porter’s if that was how she wanted her face to look anyway?
She jogged onto the medical admissions unit and into the small office, slinking down into a chair with a breathless apology. Anjali looked up. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We haven’t even started on the list yet, John’s just filling us in on the granny-dumping numbers.’
‘Granny-dumping?’ Violet pulled a confused face.
‘Oh yes, of course, it’s your first Christmas,’ said Anjali. ‘You won’t have experienced the joys of festive granny-dumping yet, especially being on nights.’ She leaned back in her chair and sighed. ‘It’s basically families who want to get rid of the grandparents over the holiday period. There’s always a flurry of admissions just before Christmas Day. That’s for the families who have elderly relatives living with them for the rest of the year and don’t want them spoiling the festivities by taking up space, wetting themselves on the best dining chairs or, you know, dribbling over the turkey during Christmas dinner, whatever. And then there’s another flurry on Boxing Day for those who don’t usually have Granny to stay and who after forty-eight hours of generally being around an old person, find themselves unable to cope anymore.’
Violet was surprised to hear the normally mild-mannered Anjali sound quite so scathing. She screwed up her nose in consternation.
‘But surely it’s not just that they’re an inconvenience around the house,’ she said. ‘You can’t be admitted to hospital for that? These people must be medically unwell?’
John, from the dayshift shook his head. ‘It’s all the usual bollocks excuses,’ he said, looking down at his list. ‘“Off legs”,“Not quite herself”,“A bit confused”, etcetera. And then you clerk them in and they’re not confused at all, just slightly baffled as to why they’ve been turfed out of the family home for Christmas.’ He burst into a spontaneous round of ‘It’s the most wonderful time– of the yearrrr…’ and then broke off as the door opened and Gus walked in.
‘Alright, medics,’ Gus said, addressing the group collectively, although Violet felt for one moment that he seemed to be looking directly at her and she flushed accordingly.
‘Alright, Gus,’ John said. ‘You here to see that bloke vomiting blood? I take it from your presence that the surgeons have agreed to take him to theatre?’
‘It really is a thing, Violet,’ said Anjali gently, seeing that her house officer was looking a little flustered and assuming it was because she remained unconvinced about the recent revelations. ‘Gus, you’ll back me up, won’t you? Granny-dumping. Violet doesn’t believe in it.’
‘Oh yeah. Granny-dumping– believe it Violet, that shit is real.’ He smiled at her. ‘No festive miracles at work here. I don’t get to see the phenomenon so much now I’m in anaesthetics but I definitely remember it from foundation year.’
‘See,’ said Anjali emphatically, as if Gus’s opinion was worth the combined weight of John’s and her own experiences. ‘The numbers speak for themselves. Up and down the country, a big old spike in admissions for non-specific vague symptoms in the elderly. If it wasn’t so universal, we wouldn’t have a name for it.’
