“Carrie!” Chris hissed. “Stop.”
“I’ll be reporting this behavior,” the police officer said, moving toward the door. “To your superiors.”
“And so will I, to yours,” I said. I felt dangerously good.
“Plenty of eyewitnesses, too,” the policeman noted, leaving.
That’s when Johan became more than just a good-looking man on the sidelines. He was standing just outside the door as I took off my apron and gloves.
“We had no business being here,” he told the policeman. “The doctor clearly asked you to leave, twice, and you ignored her.”
The officer shook his head, red-faced, smiling condescendingly as he walked away from all of us.
Chris called to me from Deniz’s bedside. “Carrie. What’s got into you?”
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. My hands were shaking.
“She had every right to be angry,” Johan said. “The policeman was being an asshole. She shouted for help and nobody came, this woman seemed to be dying, and she saved her life, all on her own. I think anyone would need a moment after that.”
Chris nodded briefly, gave me another searching look, and then got back to work.
I looked straight at Johan.An artwork of a man will always be either vacant or untrustworthy, Mum had told me.Never be so stupid as to be seduced by someone like that.
I called in Joel and Faisel from Resus 2 and then went down the corridor, followed by Johan, to find the police officer. He was scribbling angrily in his notebook.
“Follow me, please,” I said, directing him out of resus. This time he shifted without comment. Sweat was beading between his eyebrows and for a moment I felt sorry for him. A manual chest clearance is a brutal procedure to witness, especially when followed by a verbal ambush.
Once through the doors he stalked off, arms held slightly out from his sides to display the batons on his belt.
“Are you OK?”
I turned to see that the beautiful man hadn’t left. There was a slight smile on his face. “You were quite something in there,” he added.
“I’m fine. Thank you. And apologies. I’m not sure what I…”
He shrugged, as if it were nothing that I’d just yelled at a police officer while blood dripped from my hands. “The guy was an asshole. And you were under a lot of stress.”
“We’re trained for that, though. I don’t know what happened.”
He watched me until I looked away, bringing myself back to the present moment, to reality. I was at work in a busy trauma center. It was January; darkness had already fallen outside. There would be snow tonight, they’d said. I would need to get up even earlier tomorrow and I had several hours’ study tonight. And now the possibility of a disciplinary.
I had never been in trouble in my life. Aged twenty-six and not one black mark.
“Do you think she’ll be OK? I keep thinking about the sound she made when the bike hit her. The guy must have been doing at least fifty. It was a twenty limit.”
He had a slight accent, I realized now—something European. Maybe Dutch? Weren’t they tall and almost universally good-looking? His eyes were polar blue, startlingly pale and bright, but his skin was deeply tanned, as if he worked outside all year. He looked incongruously healthy, and I didn’t see a great many healthy bodies in my line of work. There was a gentle smear of white paint on the back of his wrist. Myeyes kept returning to it, as if to find an anchor in the depths I’d nearly drowned in a few minutes ago.
What had been going on back there?
I think you’re carrying a lot of repressed rage, my sister liked to say.Don’t forget, Carrie, we had the same childhood. It’s got to come out someday.
I resolved not to mention this outburst to her. It was just a release of pressure after weeks of exam revision and on-call shifts. Nothing more sinister.
“Deniz has suffered very serious injuries,” I said. “Beyond that, I can’t really say anything, I’m afraid. The police officer said you were a random witness, is that right? You’re not related to her?”
He shook his head, which meant there really wasn’t a thing I could say to him.She’s in good hands, I could have offered, but I didn’t. He didn’t seem like someone who would appreciate platitudes.
I asked him a few questions about the collision, about how Deniz had been thrown several feet into the air before landing on the cold road. He flinched as he described it.
