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‘Here she is.’ Melanie beamed. ‘Ready for a workout?’
‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ Annie said, rolling her eyes.
‘Thanks so much, Doctor!’ The grubby two-year- old’s mother blushed a little as she arrived to retrieve her son. ‘It was really nice of you to hold him while I rang my husband.’
‘No problem!’ Iosef gave her a very nice smile.
‘Have a good night, guys!’ Melanie waved as they headed off.
‘You too, Melanie,’ Iosef answered.
As they headed out to the car park and off to the gym, it wasn’t the prospect of a workout that had Annie’s stomach sinking.
It was the lack of a goodbye from Iosef that had unsettled her.
Topped off by the smile he’d given Melanie as she’d waved back at him, that really irked.
The same smile she’d seen given to patients and colleagues.
The same smile that was noticeably absent around her.
Chapter 2
Itwasnice to be in Resus.
Annie loved the unpredictability and the rush of adrenaline that came from having to be constantly alert when nursing seriously ill patients—and there were certainly plenty of them this morning.
Both Beth and Melanie had been pulled from the cubicles to assist, and Cheryl, the charge nurse, was constantly popping in and out as no sooner had one patient been moved up to the ward than the paramedics wheeled in another, or a patient in the cubicles was deemed ill enough to transfer.
‘Are you busy?’ Iosef popped his head round the door and frowned at the activity.
‘A bit.’ Annie smiled, slightly taken aback that he’d actually deigned to talk to her. ‘Do you need a hand with anything?’
Silly question, she thought as he shook his head. ‘I have an eighteen-month-old with an inhaled foreign body—it’s a partial blockage.’
‘Bring him over,’ Annie said, ready to make room even if they didn’t have any. A partial blockage to the airway could change in a matter of seconds but, despite the urgency of the situation, Iosef shook his head.
‘I have rung the thoracic surgeons. They are in theatre, operating, but are going to send someone down. I think moving him over to Resus will only distress the child and that’s the last thing I want.’ With good reason, too, Annie thought as he placed the chest X-ray on the viewfinder and frowned at the precarious position of the foreign body. The object could move and the situation become potentially life threatening—everything possible needed to be done to keep the baby still and calm until the object could safely be removed by the surgeons. ‘Get everything ready in case he fully obstructs. If he does, we’ll bring him straight over...’ Iosef continued picking up the telephone and barking his orders to the switchboard operator, peering at the X-ray again through narrowed eyes as he spoke at length to the thoracic surgeon while Annie quickly set up an emergency tray and pulled in a trolley ready for the toddler should they need it. ‘I am going to take him straight up to Theatre— they’re expecting him now. He can sit on Mum’s knee on a wheelchair. But I want a porter to push the trolley and resus equipment should I need it on the way. I’ll also need a nurse to come.’
‘Fine.’ Annie nodded, pressing an intercom button and summoning the porter then loading up the trolley with the equipment she had gathered. ‘I’ll just let Cheryl know that I’m—’
‘Beth... ’ Ignoring Annie, Iosef called out to her colleague as she raced past. ‘I want you to come up to Theatre with me.’
Surplus to requirements again.
Though it made sense. After all, yesterday when Beth had been in charge of Resus it had been she herself racing around the hospital, and Beth had no doubt already had contact with the child out in the cubicles, but it was the way Iosef again dismissed her that irked Annie.
Not that there was time to dwell on it.
Space needed to be cleared in Resus and after a rather terse conversation with ICU, Annie dispatched Melanie to take up a patient-with a severe head injury who had commandeered most of the morning and now that her chest-pain patient was more settled, a semblance of order was finally taking shape.
For about ten seconds.
‘Fifty-seven-year-old male....’ Geoff, the paramedic, gave a running handover as they rolled the stretcher along the polished floor. ‘Liver cancer with secondary mets. Started seizing at home, private nurse present, she’s just giving details at Reception. The wife’s following in a car. He was given diazepam but...’ He didn’t need to elaborate as the frail body on the stretcher started convulsing again, the grey tinge to his face becoming more deeply cyanosed as the paramedic wrestled with the straps and the patient was lifted over.
Annie transferred the portable oxygen to the wall outlet and was attaching monitors as Jackie, seeing what was going on, kicked over the drug trolley and started pulling up drugs. ‘Thanks, guys,’ Jackie said as the paramedics, always happy to help out, held a jerking arm still while she administered anti-seizure medication.
They continued to relay the story. ‘He’s supposed to have been transferred to a palliative care ward of a private hospital, but the wife wants him at home. He’s been having prolonged seizures but they normally respond to the diazepam. This one went on for ages and the wife wanted him brought in.’
