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“Fucking ridiculous. I’ve been waiting for over an hour.” The disembodied slurred complaint floats through the curtain from the next-door cubicle.
“Please, Mr Morrison, calm down,” a female voice entreats. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”
“Nope, not waiting…one…second…longer,” snarls the obviously irritated patient. A tear rents the air and the curtain separating our cubicles sags open, exposing the figure of a man who has clearly already been in the wars this evening. His dinner suit is torn, his dress shirt covered in blood, and the cut on the bridge of his nose suggests that it has been impacted upon by a significantly hard object. Perhaps a lamppost. Or someone’s fist. He’s towering over the tiny figure of the nurse who is trying her best to placate him.
Anger boils in my chest. My hands ball into fists.
A hand squeezes my arm gently.
Nurse Jones murmurs in my ear. “I’ve got this.” She steps forward and addresses the man. “Now then, Mr Morrison. I don’t think you mean to be so incredibly rude. I know you’d be horrified if you realised what you were saying under the influence of one too many eggnogs and a difficult evening. Now, please apologise to my colleague, and then to this patient, whose privacy you are infringing, and who is currently requiring my attention, then close over that curtain and wait for the doctor to come to you. And we’ll have no more frightening my colleague, thank you very much. Is that understood?”
The man’s head bows, and he shuffles from foot to foot. “Yes, Nurse. Sorry Nurse. Sorry, mate, and I’m sorry, Nurse.”
“Good. Apology accepted. Now if you’ll excuse us.”
“Of course,” he mumbles and retreats backwards through the curtain, pulling it back into place much more gently and carefully than he opened it.
“Wow, strict,” I whistle.
She raises an eyebrow. A smile plays at the corner of her lips as she looks at me, but it dies too quickly.
“Yes, one has to be. Now, if you are feeling up to it, it is time for you to go. Are you content to be released? You don’t want to be in here after midnight. It really gets wild then.”
I wonder how much wilder it can get, and the thought prickles my brain. The thought of this woman having to take on idiots as she attempts to care for them sends a low growl rumbling through my chest. I rub my chest absently and hiss out a quiet breath.
“Ali? Are you ok?” she asks, her voice gentle.
Something in my mind stirs, but I can’t for the life of me think why. I meet her warm brown eyes.
“Yes, yes, thank you. I’m fine. Absolutely fine.”
She blinks and snaps the lid onto her pen.
“Great. Well then, let’s get you discharged. I’m sure you’ll want to be getting home to your family and all the Christmas festivities.”
“Yes, of course.”
Not really. Dinner with my parents, and a snooze on the couch after the King’s speech are about the sum total of my plans for tomorrow.
Perhaps, maybe in another time, in my younger years, I might have chanced my arm and asked this quiet, serious nurse for a drink. I’d have enjoyed trying to make her laugh brightening her day after a long shift in the hospital. But not today. I must be getting old. My head hurts and I just want to go home.
She nods. “Okay then, just a couple of quick questions first. What day is it?”
“Friday.”
She looks at me.
“Christmas Eve,” I revise.
“Right,” she says, marking something in my notes. “Have we met before?”
Hmm, that’s a curveball. I pause for a second. I look at her. Her brown eyes hold mine for a fraction of a second. Have I met her before? It’s hard to tell. I’ve had a few wild nights in my life, some of which are little more than alcohol-soaked blurs in my memory. But if I’d met this stern eyed woman before, I’m sure I would remember.
“No,” I say with as much confidence as I can muster.
She blinks and looks down at my chart. She ticks a box on my paperwork, then looks up at me with a beaming smile.
“Congratulations, Mr Whyte, you are free to leave.”
