Sarah's Gift. Caroline Anderson

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      ‘There’s a lot to remember all at once,’ Sarah consoled her, and then they were off again.

      Now, however, she was erring on the side of caution, ordering tests that would bleed patients dry and clog up the labs and X-Ray for weeks. Sarah, once again taking over, edited the requests a little, except in cases where she herself felt out of her depth, and then they called on Jack or Ryan.

      When Ryan came, Matt came too, and so she got to see him. At one point he paused beside her and, under cover of a screaming child, he glanced at Jo Bailey and raised an expressive brow. ‘Is she safe?’

      Sarah nearly laughed. ‘I have no idea. I suspect not. It may just be nerves, but I think she needs to be attached to someone medical who can stop her using up the region’s financial resources single-handed.’

      ‘That bad, huh?’

      ‘Easily. Either that or she forgets to X-ray necks.’

      ‘Holy-moly. She’s a liability.’

      ‘Tell me about it. Talk to Ryan—if she works with him she won’t come to any trouble.’

      ‘He doesn’t need us both.’

      Sarah laughed. ‘I can nursemaid you—you just use the wrong words.’

      He mock-bristled. ‘They are not wrong!’

      ‘Just not English. See what he says.’

      ‘I will.’ He tapped her on the nose. ‘You’re prettier than he is.’

      She blushed a little but he’d gone, whisked away by another call, and she was left alone with the screaming child and Jo.

      Within half an hour they’d swapped, under the pretext of Ryan wanting Jo to see some action in Resus, and Matt was with Sarah. After that last remark she wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but after a few minutes she decided it had just been another joke.

      She felt perversely disappointed, not that there was much time for flirting. They were rushed off their feet, and she was only too glad to be working alongside someone who knew what they were doing.

      She soon got used to him saying ‘CBC’, ‘EKG’ and so on and, as on the day before, she found they worked together almost without the need for words.

      At one point they were working in Resus alongside Ryan and Jo Bailey, and Sarah was hugely relieved to have Matt opposite her and not Jo. A woman was admitted with severe head injuries, including a massive scalping injury, due to her hair being caught in machinery. Her face had been torn apart, her skull compressed on one side, and there was no chance for her.

      ‘Ouch—bad hair day,’ Matt winced, and whistled under his breath. ‘Right, let’s see if we can stop this bleeding and assess her consciousness level. Do we have a GCS score yet?’

      The Glasgow Coma Scale was an international scale used to evaluate the degree of consciousness of a patient, and there was no language barrier. There was no score, either, because the ambulance that had brought her in had had more important things to worry about—like keeping her alive.

      Sarah wasn’t sure if they would succeed for much longer. They tried, anyway, because she was young and fit and it just seemed a lousy way to go, but it was hopeless.

      They shocked her, they injected her with a cocktail of drugs to prompt her heart, but to no avail.

      ‘This is hopeless,’ Matt said, shaking his head.

      ‘Want to stop?’

      ‘No, but there’s no point going on. She’s a corpse, basically. What the hell are we trying to achieve?’

      Sarah shut her eyes and sighed. ‘You’re right. Let’s give up. We might even get time for tea if we stop now.’

      ‘Her husband’s here,’ someone said around the door, and Matt rolled his eyes.

      ‘Wow. I’ll go get him, shall I? I expect he’d like to see her—one last fond look.’

      They glanced down at the torn and devastated features despairingly. ‘Give me ten minutes,’ Sarah said.

      ‘You are kidding.’

      ‘No. Do it. Go and talk to him, and get someone to check with me.’

      ‘Goody. This is my first chance to ruin an English family’s lives, you realise.’

      There was a gasp from the other end of the room, and Sarah looked up to see Jo, staring at Matt in horror.

      ‘Lighten up, kid, it happens all the time,’ Matt told her.

      ‘But to joke about it! Don’t you have any idea?’

      Matt ignored her. ‘I guess I’d better wash up.’

      ‘Might be good,’ Sarah told him, not even bothering to look at him. She knew just how blood-splattered he must be. She turned her attention, instead, to the wreckage in front of her.

      ’I’m sorry, there was nothing we could do to save her. Her hair was caught in a machine—she had severe head injuries. There was no way she could have survived.’

      The man, about Matt’s age, seemed to shrivel. For ages he said nothing, then he looked up, his eyes shocked and far-away. ‘Can I see her?’

      Matt crossed his fingers discreetly. ‘In a while. I’ll get someone to come and sit with you and give you some tea—let it sink in a little.’

      He slipped back into Resus and did a mild double-take. ‘Wow.’

      Sarah stood back and looked at her handiwork. ‘Will that do?’

      She’d obviously washed the woman’s face and head, dried the skin and then carefully rearranged the facial features. They looked battered, but the transparent micropore tape holding the skin together was hardly visible, and with the scalp area swathed in drapes the damage was hardly detectable.

      Matt was touched. ‘That’s wonderful. At least he won’t have to torture himself for ever with what she might have looked like.’

      ‘Does he want to see her?’

      ‘Oh, yes—don’t they always?’

      ‘It does help,’ she said softly. ‘It makes it real—sometimes too real.’

      She turned away, clearing up the mess, swabbing the floor, changing her gown. Jo and Ryan had gone, their patient stabilised and transferred to the ward, and they were alone.

      Matt watched her, wondering what to say, how to raise the subject of her loss. ‘Do you ever talk about it?’

      She stiffened. ‘Not often. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t bring them back. On the other hand it doesn’t make it any worse.’

      ‘Hard to see how it could.’

      ‘No. Well, I think we’re ready.’

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