Page 60 of Dr. Off Limits

They both stood but stayed silent.

“Brittni, tell me your teacher’s name,” I said as I uncovered her leg and began to clean the area.

She closed her eyes. I needed to go ahead and inject her. She was deteriorating fast.

I jabbed the needle into her muscle and she barely moved. I pushed the adrenaline and withdrew the needle.

One of the nurses came up with a sharps box and I discarded the needle, then placed the used vial and my gloves into the bin at the bottom of Brittni’s bed.

“I’ll talk to the nurses about getting her head shaved,” I said.

Her mother gasped.

“I thought you just gave her medicine. Won’t she be fine now?”

She couldn’t be worried about her daughter’s hair when her life was at stake, could she? “The medicine has stopped her falling into a coma, but the dye is still on her scalp. It wasn’t washed off properly,” I said. “It’s had a chance to seep into the skin. It needs to be shaved and her scalp thoroughly washed.”

“She’s going to have to stay overnight,” Jacob said. “We’re going to have to monitor her.”

“Mummy,” Brittni said. It was the first word I’d heard her speak. The adrenaline was doing its job. Shame her parents couldn’t say the same thing.

Her mother looked at me. “Thank you,” she said.

I nodded. I wanted to tell her not to be so ridiculous next time and not dye a six-year-old’s hair. Or at least do a patch test and use a home dye kit rather than salon products at home. I didn’t. Nothing I said would change her mind if the near-death of her daughter hadn’t already.

“I’m going to leave you to write that up,” Jacob said as we moved away from the bay.

“Absolutely,” I said, my hands shaking as if I’d had the syringe of adrenaline.

“Good work.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it. It was a very good catch,” he said. “If we’d been waiting for scans and bloods, it might have been much more serious. Your background and life experience are things you can draw on. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Believe in yourself.”

He wasn’t touching me but it felt like he was wrapping me in his arms and holding me close.

I gave him a small smile of gratitude for his encouragement.

Jacob headed back to the lifts and I grabbed one of the free chairs behind the nurses’ station to write up what had just happened.

Suddenly, I was exhausted. It had all happened so fast and it could have so easily gone another way. But whatever way you looked at it, I’d had a hand in saving a child’s life today. I wasn’t sure the job got much better.

Maybe Jacob was right. Maybe my convoluted journey to medicine was an asset, rather than something to hide from. Not that hairdressing incidents were likely to crop up regularly in A&E, but maybe the way I approached things could help me. Maybe I didn’t need to have gone to Oxford to gain an advantage. Maybe my advantage was my street smarts and life experience.

If Jacob Cove believed in me, maybe I needed to start believing in myself.

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