Red-Hot Desert Docs. Carol Marinelli

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СКАЧАТЬ I’m sorry we had to call you in.’

      ‘You were right to call me in,’ he said. Phillip was in no way fit to see patients and, as well as that, the staff deserved to be treated at times like this by the most senior staff.

      He could see that Adele was sitting in a chair with her arms folded over her stomach. Her eye and cheek were swollen and she looked angry.

      ‘Where’s Phillip?’ Zahir asked.

      ‘He’s in his office. Tony’s already in a cubicle.’

      ‘I want Adele and Phillip both in gowns and in cubicles.’

      Zahir would do everything to keep this completely professional. As Janet was taking Adele to get changed, Bella chose her moment to speak.

      ‘How long do you think you’ll be?’ she asked, and Zahir turned impatiently.

      ‘Why don’t you get a taxi home? I might be a while.’

      ‘I’m happy to wait in your office.’

      Adele heard the brief exchange as she made her way to the cubicle.

      Janet had been wrong, it would seem. Bella hadn’t been gone by morning and never had Adele felt more drab in her baggy scrubs and showing the beginnings of a lovely black eye.

      She could hear the sounds of the police radios and tried not to think back to the last time she had been in a cubicle, waiting for a doctor to arrive.

      As he waited for Phillip and Adele to get changed, the receptionist, as was protocol, brought up Adele’s old Accident and Emergency notes. He flicked through them and tried to be objective. He read about an eighteen-year-old nursing student with minor injuries who had been the driver in a high-impact motor vehicle accident.

      Phillip had wanted to admit her to the observation ward but the patient had refused and said she wanted to go and wait near Theatre.

      There was a self-discharge form attached to the notes that Adele had signed.

      Everything was there, even her muted reaction when Phillip had broken the news that her mother was critically ill, was noted.

      It just didn’t seem enough, Zahir thought.

      Yes, the notes were detailed but there was a brevity to them, to all patient notes here, that Zahir could not logically explain to his colleagues.

      First he checked in on Phillip. He now had spare glasses on but there was a small cut over his eye and a nasty bruise on his back. He checked Phillip’s abdomen. ‘Any tenderness?’ he asked.

      ‘A bit,’ Phillip admitted.

      ‘I would like his urine checked for blood,’ he said to Janet, and then spoke with Phillip. ‘I would like you to stay in overnight.’

      ‘It might be better,’ Phillip agreed. ‘Meredith will get a fright if I come home in the middle of the night.’

      Tony, the security guard, was next and he wanted to get back to work but, having examined him, Zahir said that he should go home.

      ‘Adele.’ He came in to see her with Janet. ‘I’m so sorry that this happened.’

      She didn’t respond.

      ‘How are you feeling?’

      ‘Fantastic!’ Adele knew her sarcastic response was perhaps a bit harsh but what hurt more than the bruise was that, after a year of being ignored, now that she was a patient he was finally being nice to her.

      He went through everything and asked if she’d been knocked out.

      ‘No.’

      He went through all the allergies and her medical history and Adele answered him in a monotone.

      ‘Are you on any medication?’

      ‘No,’ Adele said. ‘Just the Pill.’

      She didn’t add it was the pill of perpetual hope, hope that one day she would be doing what seemingly every other twenty-four-year-old had already done.

      It really wasn’t the best of nights.

      He picked up the torch and checked her pupils’ responses. He tried not to notice unshed tears, but he could see her pain. Oh, his findings were not evidence based, but he could see that there were years of agony there.

      ‘I need to look at the back of your eye.’

      He picked up ophthalmoscope and Adele stared ahead as he moved in close. She managed not to blink and then thankfully it was over.

      She felt as if he had just stared into the murky depths of her soul.

      His fingers gently probed the swelling around her eye.

      ‘It’s a soft-tissue injury,’ Zahir said.

      ‘I know.’

      ‘It needs to be iced but you are going to have a black eye. Is it painful?’

      ‘No.’

      It was the truth. It didn’t really hurt, as such. What pained her more was the shock of what had happened and the indignity of Zahir now being kind to her.

      ‘I need now to look at your stomach,’ Zahir said.

      ‘I was just winded.’

      ‘Adele,’ Zahir said, ‘this will probably go to court and my notes need to be thorough. Lie down, please.’

      She did so and Janet covered her neatly with the blanket before lifting her gown. He examined her abdomen and she answered the question before he asked it.

      ‘There’s no tenderness,’ she said as he probed her stomach. And then she gave a wry laugh.

      She hadn’t just been talking about her abdomen—there had never been any tenderness from him.

      ‘Did I miss the joke?’ Zahir asked, and he gave her a smile as he covered her with the blanket.

      And maybe because she was hurting so badly she was allowed to be a little bit mean too.

      ‘I don’t need your small talk and your pleasant bedside manner, Zahir,’ she told him. ‘We don’t get on, let’s just keep it that.’

      She glanced to Janet, who gave her a small smile as if to say, You get to say what you want to tonight.

      Janet had seen for herself the way that Zahir was with her, though she knew it had nothing to do with them not getting on!

      ‘I would like you to stay in the observation ward tonight,’ Zahir said.

      ‘Well, I’d prefer to go home.’

      ‘Who is there to look out for you?’

      Adele thought СКАЧАТЬ