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‘November...wait, December.’ He tried to push himself upright as Kat and Gemma hastily pressed him back down and told him not to move his head. ‘No. November.’
The confusion was evident, but it was impossible to tell whether it was injury related or as a result of the alcohol. Kat could smell it on him from where she was standing, and she doubted it had just been the one drink.
‘I want to go home,’ he growled, lifting his hand suddenly and flailing his arm again.
Immediately, Kat twisted over, avoiding the fist, to hold his head down.
‘All right, Adam.’ It was a necessary skill to be able to keep your voice amiable yet firm enough that the patient would listen, but not so firm that it provoked them. ‘Try not to move, mate, we don’t want you to injure your neck.’
‘I think we might need to sedate him or we’ll never get him into CT,’ Elizabeth commented.
Not ideal, given the nature of the head injury, but without sedation it was likely that he would cause himself more damage if he kept trying to free himself and they weren’t there to restrain him.
For the next twenty minutes they completed the rest of his obs, worked to temporarily remove the blocks and the collar to enable them to sedate him. Then Elizabeth took him to CT with a smaller contingent, freeing Kat up.
As Kat headed back to the nurses’ station to pick up a new case, she certainly wasn’t expecting to be greeted with a pterodactyl toy. It sat behind the counter, its toy bead eyes seeming to lock with hers.
Kat’s heart pounded hard and fast.
‘Where did that come from?’
Another nurse lifted her head from where she was making notes.
‘Someone brought it in. They found it in the park and dropped it off here. Apparently it has “Doc Terens” scrawled on it so they thought it might belong here.’
‘Doc Terrence,’ Kat managed, the beat of her heart so loud now that it was almost deafening her.
It was hard to believe the rest of the ER couldn’t hear it.
‘You know who it belongs to?’
‘Pretty sure,’ Kat muttered, telling herself it was coincidence, plain and simple. Not some sign.
Not fate.
So why was she keeping the toy owner’s identity to herself? And why was something suspiciously like excitement rolling through her like a train gathering speed down a hill?
‘Do you mind if I take it and clean it up so that I can return it to its owner?’
Of course, she could just wait for Logan to start his first shift here and hand it over then. Better still, she could tell the ward manager, who would no doubt keep it safe and hand it over herself once Logan started work.
But surely she owed it to him to warn him that he was hot gossip around here. Not just because of the VIPs who were still in the hospital, but because everyone already knew Logan was going to be starting as the new ER doc.
Then she conjured up Jamie’s distraught face, and told herself that taking the toy round to Logan’s home as soon as her shift ended was being a good Samaritan. Returning Doc Terrence as quickly as possible was about sparing the child unnecessary additional distress. It wasn’t about leaping at the first opportunity to go and see some man she barely knew.
Of course it wasn’t.
‘Sure, go ahead.’ The nurse barely glanced up again. ‘You’ve got a new admission in Room Four. A male in his sixties, presenting with chest tightness.’
‘Right.’ Kat nodded. ‘I’ll get to him now.’
She headed straight over to the room, pushing thoughts of Jamie—and ultimately of Logan—out of her head as she concentrated on her new patient.
Within minutes she had discovered that her patient had recently undergone ablation surgery for a cardiac arrythmia, but that he also had a history of asthma. That meant that his chest tightness and shortness of breath could be anything from atrial fibrillation to an asthma attack.
An echocardiogram and a chest X-ray would confirm which of those diagnoses were correct, but for now her first priority was to assess him, draw labs and carry out an EKG.
It was going to be a busy shift, and for that Kat was very grateful.
