Page 40 of The Night Shift
He turned her towards him, placed his hands firmly on her shoulders, feeling the thin fragility of her clavicles beneath the scrub fabric. ‘I don’t know, Violet,’ he said, keeping his voice steady, searching her face until she focussed on him again. ‘But the surgical team are very happy with him. They’ll be on the lookout for any post-op complications but he’s remained stable throughout, there were no lung injuries and his breathing is back to normal despite the cracked ribs. He’s starting to wake up and chat, so that’s a really good sign.’
He didn’t tell her that when he’d introduced himself, Marvin, still very groggy and disinhibited from the anaesthetic had been positively ecstatic, ‘Gushh?’ he’d slurred. ‘Yoush Gusssh! She looooves you. She does. Be nishe, be careful.’ He’d then said something about ashpeshial ice queen,or maybe,ice-cream, which made no sense and went on to tell every member of staff in the immediate vicinity that he loved them and Dev loved them and Violet loved them too, so Gus had wisely chosen not to read too much into his comments.
‘You need to sleep,’ he told Violet firmly now. ‘And I can’t in all conscience let you get back on your bike and cycle home. It just wouldn’t be safe. You’re coming to mine.’
She raised her eyebrows and went to speak but he interrupted her, worrying that she was going to turn him down.
‘I am literally a two-minute walk away,’ he said, ‘along a safe pavement that even you can’t fall off. I’ve got a spare room, there’s nobody else at home and you’ll be able to sleep properly. I expect at your house Dev will need to come back and get his stuff, the phone will be ringing once Marvin’s family know what ‘s happened, it’ll be chaos. Mine’s quiet and it’s nearby and I’m not taking no for an answer.’
‘I wasn’t really saying no,’ she laughed feebly. ‘You had me at “two-minute walk away”.’
He smiled into a deep exhalation, relieved that he didn’t have to push any harder. He also needed to sleep, and he knew he’d be unable to even close his eyes if he was worrying about Violet wobbling home on her bike in this state.
They retrieved their coats from the mess and made their way out into the stark white light of the wintery morning, their breath emerging in plumes of steam as they crossed the busy road and reached Gus’s apartment block.
‘Snazzy,’ Violet said as she eyed up the lift, the doors sliding back noiselessly to reveal a polished chrome and glass interior.
‘Hmmm,’ he said. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been in the lift before, but Violet was practically wilting in front of him. There was no guarantee she’d make it up four flights of stairs, however determined.
In fact, ‘snazzy’ was the last thing Violet said that morning. By the time they reached his apartment she seemed to have lost the power of speech and nodded mutely when he gestured for her to take the master bedroom.
‘I’ll be in the spare room, just through here,’ he said, indicating the side door off the corridor. ‘If you need anything just shout. I’ll set my alarm for four and I’ll call the ward as soon as I wake up, so don’t worry about updates, you won’t miss anything.’ He turned to leave the main bedroom. ‘Oh, and there’s T-shirts and stuff in the drawers if you want to borrow anything to sleep in…’
But she had already crawled into bed and pulled the king-sized duvet up to her ears, mumbling something that sounded grateful despite being incoherent nonsense. Gus crossed to the window and drew the heavy blackout curtains across, shutting out the pale grey sky and the view over the rooftops. For a brief moment he caught his own reflection staring back at him, the thin pleats of cloud in the distance superimposed on his face, the bed behind him with the once familiar shape of another person huddled under the covers. He felt a low thud in his chest, an emotion he couldn’t identify, but he was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to simply climb into bed alongside Violet and put his arms around her.
He shook his head and saw his reflection do the same. He was too tired to think straight. He’d invited this woman into his home to keep her safe, to stop her cycling back to her own house exhausted, and to allow her to sleep undisturbed. Any thoughts of what else he might like to do now that she was in his bed were completely inappropriate and a violation of her space, even if all he really wanted at the moment was to cuddle up next to her and fall asleep. He wasn’t the predatory type and Violet was both exhausted and desperately worried about her friend. That made her vulnerable. He smiled to himself as he closed the curtain fully and the reflection of her shape in the bed disappeared from view– she would probably hate to be thought of as anything other than hard as nails.
Violet
Friday night
28th December
Violet woke up in an unfamiliar bed enveloped by darkness and silence, but the pillow that her nose was currently burrowed into smelled of something reassuring. As her senses acclimatised to her surroundings the events of the previous twenty-four hours trickled into her consciousness. Marvin, A&E, surgery, Dev, Gus. She was in Gus’s flat. In Gus’s bed. The thought jolted her properly awake and she reached out her hand to explore the area beneath the duvet, checking for the presence of another body or the heat that might indicate a recently vacated place of sleep. The cooler pocket of air convinced her that she was alone and had been for the duration of her slumbers– and of course, she remembered now, Gus was in the room along the corridor. It hadn’t made much sense at the time, she’d had a fleeting moment of concern about taking the master bedroom, clearly his bedroom, but he’d been insistent, said he slept in the spare room during nights, force of habit. And certainly, although the bedding smelled faintly of Gus’s laundry powder it did not hold the scent of having been recently slept in by anyone other than her. Maybe he really did sleep in the spare room during weeks of nights, even while the bigger bed lay empty. Who was she to judge– she had some pretty odd habits herself.
She stretched her arms out from under the covers and reached over to turn on the bedside lamp. The curtains were drawn but she could tell that it was already dark again outside, the only light visible filtering between the ceiling and the curtain rail was a phosphorescent glow of street lamps and car headlights. She imagined the busy street beyond, the shop fronts lit up with their Christmas displays, the clubs and restaurants gearing up for another evening of festivities. And further down the road of course was the hospital, the place she would again be required in a few hours, and also the place where Marvin was currently an inpatient. Thoughts of Marv propelled her out of bed in search of her phone where she was instantly reassured to see a string of messages from Dev on the home screen. She’d sent him a text as she walked back to Gus’s earlier that day– knowing that if he did make it home and found the place empty he’d end up in a blind panic. She couldn’t do that to him on top of everything else. His replies made her smile.
12.05
All fine, M in lot of pain but awake, nurses say he’s perfectly stable– news to me.
12.30
M asleep again
12.31
Is conscious though– checked breathing
15.32
Assuming ur asleep x
15.35
Hoping actually ur getting down and dirty with Dr Jovic xx
15.41
