A Wedding In December. Sarah Morgan

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СКАЧАТЬ a conveyor belt of trauma. She dealt with what came through the doors, and then she moved on. There was no long-term management here.

      “You’ve been very kind. Your parents must be proud.”

       “Dr. White!”

      Katie ground her teeth. The reality was that compassion had to be squashed into the shortest time possible. They were two doctors down and she had a queue of patients waiting for her attention, so she smiled at Sally again and left the room.

      Would her parents be proud if they’d witnessed her life over the last few weeks? She didn’t think so.

      She was probably letting them down. She knew she was letting herself down.

      She looked at the nurse who was hovering in the corridor. “Problem?”

      “The guy coughing up blood—”

      “Mr. Harris.”

      “Yes. Harris. How do you do that? How do you know everyone’s name even though you only spoke to him for less than a minute?”

      “I like to make an inhuman experience as human as possible. What about him?”

      “His tests are back. Dr. Mitford saw him and says he needs to be admitted, but there is a bed crisis.”

      When wasn’t there a bed crisis? You stood more chance of finding a unicorn in your Christmas stocking than you did a hospital bed. Demand exceeded supply. A patient she’d seen at the beginning of her shift was still waiting for a bed six hours later. Because there was always a risk of hospital-acquired infection, Katie sent people home whenever she was able to do so. “Did you manage to contact his daughter? Is she on her way?”

      “Yes, and yes.”

      “Call me when she arrives. I’ll talk to her. He might be better off at home if there is someone there to take care of him.” And better for his dignity. She’d seen on the notes that he was a retired CEO. Once, he’d probably commanded a room. Now he was the victim of human frailty. No matter how busy she was, she tried to remember that landing in the emergency department was one of the most stressful moments of a person’s life. What was routine to her was often terrifying for the patient.

      She never forgot what it had been like for her mother being in the hospital with Rosie.

      Katie saw three more patients in quick succession and was then hit by a wave of dizziness.

      It had happened a few times over the past few weeks and she was starting to panic. She needed to bring her A game to work, and lately that wasn’t happening.

      “I’m going to grab a quick coffee before I keel over.” She turned and bumped straight into her colleague.

      “Hey, Katie.” Mike Bannister had been in her year at med school and they’d remained friends.

      “How was the honeymoon?”

      “Let’s put it this way, two weeks in the Caribbean wasn’t enough. What are you doing at work? After what happened I thought—are you sure you should be here?”

      “I’m fine.”

      “Did you take any time off?”

      “I don’t need time off.” She forced herself to breathe slowly, hoping Mike would move on.

      He glanced over his shoulder to check no one was listening. “You’re stressed out and on the edge. I’m worried about you.”

      “You’re imagining things.” She was totally stressed out. “I probably have low blood sugar. I’m cranky when I’m hungry and I haven’t had a break since I walked into this place seven hours ago. I’m about to fix that.”

      “You’re allowed to be human, Katie.” Mike’s gaze settled on her face. “What happened was nasty. Scary. No one would blame you if—”

      “Worry about the patients, not me. There are more than enough of them.” Katie tried to ignore the pain in her shoulder and the rapid beating of her heart. She didn’t want to think about it and she certainly didn’t want to talk about it.

      She’d once overheard her mother saying to someone, Katie is solid as a rock.

      Up until a month ago she wouldn’t have disagreed.

      Now she felt anything but solid. She was falling apart, and it was becoming harder and harder to hide it from her colleagues. Even the thought of going to work brought her to the edge of a panic attack, and she’d never suffered from panic attacks.

      Her mother kept calling suggesting lunch and she kept stalling because she was afraid she might break down.

      “Sorry.” A nurse bumped into her as he sprinted from one end of the department to another and the wail of an ambulance siren told her the workload wasn’t going to ease any time soon.

      “The paramedics are bringing in a nasty head injury. And that film crew are driving me insane,” Mike said.

      Katie had forgotten the film crew. They were filming a “f ly on the wall” documentary. She suspected they were beginning to wish they’d chosen a different wall.

      The cameraman had passed out on day one after witnessing the aftermath of a particularly nasty road accident. He’d hit his head on a trolley and she’d had to put eight stitches in his head. His colleagues had thought it hilarious that he’d ended up on the other side of the camera, but she could have done without the extra business.

      “It’s like a war zone,” one of the journalists had observed earlier in the evening and given that he’d worked in an actual war zone at one point, no one was about to argue with him. “No wonder you’re short-staffed. Aren’t you ever tempted to ditch the whole thing and retrain in dermatology?”

      Katie hadn’t answered. She was tempted by a whole lot of things, and it was starting to unsettle her.

      Medicine was her life. She’d decided to be a doctor the night Rosie had her first asthma attack. Their father had been away. Katie had been too young to be left alone, so she’d gone to the hospital, too.

      She’d been fascinated by the beeping machines, the soft hiss of the oxygen and the skilled hands of the doctor whose ministrations had helped her little sister breathe again.

      At eighteen she’d gone to medical school. More than a decade later, she was still working her way up the ladder as a doctor. She liked her colleagues, she loved the feeling that she was doing good, but lately that feeling didn’t come as often as it once had. She wanted to do more for her patients, but time and resources were in short supply. She was becoming increasingly frustrated by the limitations of the job, and starting to question whether it was right for her.

      The time to ask herself that question would have been twelve years ago, not now.

      She turned away from Mike.

      A junior doctor was hovering, waiting to discuss a case with her but before she could open her mouth the drunken head injury arrived. The man was covered in blood and bellowing like a wounded animal.

      It СКАЧАТЬ