Page 39 of The Night Shift
Dev began to sob as he sank into the chair beside her. ‘Fucking bastards,’ he said. ‘Absolute fucking bastards.’ He leaned forward so that his head was in his hands, incapable of further speech.
Violet looked up at Gus, her eyes pleading for further information.
He gestured her out of the cubicle and she stood for a moment, torn. ‘We’ll just be here,’ he said gently, pointing to the other side of the curtain. ‘Marvin’s stable. I’ll fill you in on what I know.’
Nodding silently, she followed him a couple of paces to the sinks at the far end of the bay. ‘Sit down,’ he said, pulling out another of the ubiquitous rigid plastic chairs. She sank into it gratefully and listened as Gus told her what had happened. He’d been in A&E assessing a cardiology patient who was being transferred to HDU when he’d heard someone talking about Violet Winters.
‘It was Dev,’ he said. ‘He was– well, he wasn’t making much sense to be honest– but he kept saying, “Violet, get Violet, she’ll know what to do”, and, I don’t know, I guess I heard him give his details to the triage nurse and it clicked, he was your Dev, your housemate.’
Violet nodded mutely as Gus crouched down to her level, searching her face until her gaze was focussed on him.
‘So,’ he continued quietly, ‘I went over. I’d finished with my patient, I said I knew you, and could I help at all. That’s when I called you.’
‘But what, what happened to Marv?’ Violet’s voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘How could anyone– he wouldn’t hurt a fly– he’s– well– he’s just the kindest, gentlest…’ She ran out of words and Gus reached over and took her hand in his, resting them both in her lap. The warmth of his skin against hers was comforting and she squeezed his fingers as he carried on.
‘So– it seems he was on his way back from the club?’ Gus checked in with her to see if this made sense. ‘He hadn’t been able to get a taxi for some reason, Dev wasn’t sure why, and had decided to walk back on his own– didn’t make it any further than Brighton Street, that’s where he was found, collapsed by the wheelie bins. Luckily a couple of mates had left the club at a similar time, taken a similar route, otherwise no telling how long he might have been there, they called the ambulance and then, obviously it’s only a short trip here. Paramedics got Dev’s number from the friends who found him, called him at home, he got here straight away, I think he’s still in his dressing gown.’
‘So was he robbed– Marv?’
‘Not sure. Don’t think so. The police will want to take a statement but they seem to think it was probably a random attack.’
‘A random attack on a man in full drag,’ said Violet bitterly. ‘Seems unlikely. Especially if nothing was stolen.’ She leaned forward, her shoulders hunched, staring at the floor as if the lino might give her some answers.
Gus remained silent but his grip on her hand tightened and she got the impression that he thought the same thing. That maybe he was almost as furious as she was. ‘Is he going to be okay?’ she asked. ‘Tell me the truth, Dev can’t hear us.’
‘You’ll have to speak to Veena for the detail,’ Gus said gently. ‘She’s the one who clerked him in and took the history from the paramedics. I’m pretty much going on what I’ve been able to piece together from Dev and Melissa, the nurse who’s looking after him. But it sounds as though we’re looking at a few fractured ribs, possibly a punctured lung and at least one stab wound to the abdomen.’ Violet let out a choked sob and Gus drew his arms around her, pulling her into an awkward half-crouched hug. She was vaguely aware of the smell of his skin, the rough fabric of his top absorbing her tears. He held her like that for a few moments until the rise and fall of her breath had steadied and then he pulled back, looked her in the eye with his steady reassuring gaze. She clung to the connection, feeling somehow that to break eye contact, to have allowed herself to become distracted by any other part of his face, his body, this horrible little corner of A&E, would have left her in a whirling vortex of fear. Gus’s voice, Gus’s caramel eyes, they were her lifeline, her absolute focus.
‘The important thing, Violet, is that he’s stable, his obs have all settled down. He’s probably lost some blood into his abdominal cavity and he’ll likely need an examination under anaesthetic to assess the internal damage but he’s going for a scan in a few moments– we’ll know more then.’ Gus’s arm was still around her shoulders, warm and comforting. She concentrated on the details of what he'd just told her, the likely sequence of events. How like Gus to know instinctively that this was exactly what she needed: methodical steps to follow, a plan of action. She nodded, absorbing the information, processing it, working it out.
Gus seemed to realise that the logical part of her brain was kicking in. ‘Do you want me to see if Veena’s free to come and chat to you? She’s dealing with a motorcycle accident at the moment but I can pop my head around the curtain and see how long she’ll be?’
Violet put her hands on her knees to steady herself and rose to stand. ‘Thanks, yes,’ she said. ‘I need to be with Dev, I…’ Her bleep started to go off and she looked at it for a moment as if completely mystified as to its function or purpose. Gus reached out and unclipped the offending item from her pocket, his hand brushing against the waistband of her scrubs and resting briefly on her hip as if reluctant to leave her.
‘I’ll answer this,’ he said. ‘You go and sit with Dev.’ He picked up the chair from the corner where she’d been sat and carried it with one hand over to a position next to Marvin’s trolley while tucking her bleep in a pocket next to his. Dev remained in the same position as when they’d left him a moment ago, motionless, his face blank. He was holding Marvin’s hand so tightly Violet could see white indentations around the knuckles.
‘Dev,’ she whispered as she sat beside him. ‘I’m here. I’m so sorry.’
He shook his head miserably, unable to speak, and she put her arms around him, drawing him to her just as Gus had done, cradling his head against her shoulder as she told him it would all be alright, not entirely sure that she believed her own words.
Gus
‘He’s out of theatre,’ Gus said a few hours later as he pulled out a canteen chair and took a seat next to Violet and Dev. The pair of them looked pale and drawn; Dev’s face was an ashy brown, Violet’s grey eyes had lost their green sparkle and were sunken and circled with red. They both clutched their mugs like survivors clinging onto wreckage and looked up at Gus in unison, eager for any snippet of news.
‘He’ll be in recovery for a little while and then they’ll move him to the surgical ward,’ Gus said, speaking primarily to Dev now. ‘It’s ward twenty, up on the second floor. I can walk you up now, then you’ll be there when he wakes up properly.’
Dev shot out of his seat, knocking the rest of his coffee over the table. ‘Can I see him now?’ he said.
Gus put his hand on Dev’s shoulder. ‘Not while he’s in recovery,’ he said. But I could look in there for you on our way up to the ward, just to get another update if you like?’
He turned his attention to Violet. ‘You’ve got to get some sleep,’ he said. ‘It’s two hours since your shift finished. Marvin’s going to be fine and Dev will be with him anyway. You need to rest.’
‘God, yeah, I…’ She looked at him, bewildered. ‘But your shift must have finished the same time?’ she said, only now registering this fact. ‘And you’ve been holding my bleep the whole time. You should be at home sleeping too.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. Both of us need to be back here this evening and firing on all cylinders so you’re right, I need sleep as much as you do.’ He turned to Dev. ‘Let’s head up to twenty, get you sorted. And then’—he looked at Violet—'we’ll head off.’
Once they’d seen Dev to the side room on ward twenty, Gus, as promised, stuck his head into the recovery room to see how Marvin was doing. ‘Sounds like he had a liver laceration,’ he told Violet as the doors thudded shut behind him. She was sat on the floor of the corridor, overcome with exhaustion. He held out a hand to pull her to her feet, steadying her with the other. ‘But he’s been lucky, the blade missed everything else, and you know, the liver’s pretty good at repairing itself.’
‘Did they have to ligate any of the hepatic arteries?’ she asked. Her voice sounded distant, as if she was functioning purely on autopilot. ‘Because that would increase his clotting risk and up to forty-one per cent of patient with clots go on to develop necrosis– and then there’s the chance of bile leak in nineteen per cent of liver lacerations, was the injury near the bile ducts or…’ Her eyes were unfocussed, roving from one side of the corridor to another and yet he noticed she could still come up with facts and figures pertinent to the situation. She used data as a comfort blanket, he knew that. Unfortunately, in this situation the stats weren’t particularly comforting, and she was in danger of exactly the type of irrational overthinking and scenario-building that he usually succumbed to.
