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Ash commented: Less than 500 people live in Ballydoon and you want a Kmart *eye roll emoji*
Graham commented: Not another bloody café!
Nathan commented: I wish the new owners good luck.
It was two in the morning and I was patrolling the house like I was on night shift on a hospital ward.
For the last three days, I’d been hugging Liam, Mum and Dad at random intervals during the day and following Liam around like a prison guard.
Liam was okay. Everyone was okay.
I wasnotokay.
Stacey’s words kept playing on repeat in my head:‘you don’t even remember me from your med studies’. Andy had remembered Stacey from university with one look at her photos.
I was still mystified why my memories were blank.
I sifted through boxes of my stuff and eventually found my old laptop and a portable hard drive along with lecture notes and old textbooks. Despite my botched attempt with using the new software at George’s medical practice, I’d backed up my uni assignments and assessment files regularly and kept them organised in a file management system.
I should throw out my now outdated course notes and textbooks. But I knew I kept it all because it was one of the few tangible connections I still had with Simon.
I found the course code for the burns clinic on my hard drive. I scrolled through the document folder and found a video file.
And then I remembered. That semester had been a blur. Dad had fallen from a scaffold and had been laid up for weeks. I’d stepped in to finish his painting jobs, and Mel, Steve, Andy and Simon had all covered for me in lectures, tutorials, anything where I didn’t need to show my face on campus.
Except for one thing. Simon had signed into the burns ward of the teaching hospital as me with my student card and filmed the patient who was our case study.
I clicked play.
Simon’s face filled the screen and anguish cramped my gut.
“G’day Doctor Tradie,” he grinned. “Hopefully the patient will agree to being filmed or else I’m going to have to describe her injuries with charades.”
The video faded to black and then it was a young woman facing away from the camera, her hospital gown pulled from her back and blonde hair pulled out of the way of her scarring.
My breath hitched. Fuck, it was Stacey. I knew her hair, even how she held herself sitting on the edge of the hospital bed.
Her scars were more pronounced in this image than the boudoir photo.
An angry red line was pronounced. It was the incision site where surgeons had removed her burnt rib. Grafts had been done across parts of her back. Surgeons would have had to remove her burnt clothing from her epidermis as well. No doubt she’d had infections, too.
I scrubbed my face, my stomach churning at the horror of what Stacey had gone through, the pain, and how close she’d come to dying.
“Patient AT has agreed to be filmed for this assessment piece. As you can see, her burns were extensive, covering most of her back.”
Simon’s tone was business-like, repeating the patient’s details as fast as he could. Probably thought he’d get caught filming, which technically we were not allowed to do.
As he described the muscle groups that had been damaged, Stacey accepted a phone call, and I increased the volume to hear her.
“Not likely I’ll race again … experimental trials … don’t have the money … wants me to do nursing … I don’t know …”
She was silent for a long time as she listened to the caller. Simon rattled off three surgeons’ names, saying I should look them up as they were proposing a controversial skin graft procedure.
Stacey’s shoulders visibly rose. She hadn’t heard Simon. She was reacting to something said on her phone call.
Simon then filmed her chart, repeating her last blood pressure reading, blood tests and other stats. Stacey spoke again in a low voice on her phone.
“I just … I don’t know …” Her voice cracked, her pain and inner turmoil so obvious with those simple words.
