‘For Christ’s sake, Lizzie,’ Emma said to her reflection. ‘You’d better be okay.’ Emma rubbed the crucifix she wore around her neck. ‘Please be okay.’ They were so close to their R&R — only days to do before they could get some respite. For something to happen to Lizzie so close to the mid-tour break would be an absolute disaster.
Emma pressed the button on the tap and leaned forward, cupping her hands underneath the running water. As she splashed water over her face, she silently prayed, even though this had never worked in the past. Drying her hands on the paper towels, she took a deep breath and walked back out into the corridor.
‘Trauma call, ten minutes,’ Emma heard the Lieutenant’s voice echo around the corridor as the Tannoy went out. Within seconds, people started filling the corridor and heading towards the Emergency Room. By the time she got back to the Emergency Room, it was a hive of activity. Three of the four trauma bays were being prepared for use as personnel checked equipment and machines. Emma walked across to where Squadron Leader Webb was standing by the desk at the far end of the room.
‘Any news?’ she asked him.
‘No, nothing,’ he replied with a sigh. ‘We’ll find out soon enough, though.’ Emma watched as he looked around the room, making sure that everything was in place to receive the casualties. He walked across to a small group of personnel standing by the door, and after a few quiet words from him, they left the Emergency Room.
The medics in the Emergency Room all quietened down as they heard the distinctive sound of a Chinook helicopter overhead.
Emma stood outside the back door to the Emergency Room, biting her nails. She watched as the Chinook disappeared behind the accommodation tents where the hospital’s helicopter landing site was located.
She turned to see Major Clarke standing next to her.
‘Hello, sir,’ Emma said.
‘Corporal Wardle,’ Major Clarke replied. ‘You look a bit nervous,’ he paused. ‘I take it you’ve heard the rumours?’ Emma nodded her head in reply.
‘I’m really worried,’ she said.
‘I know, Squadron Leader Webb told me.’
‘What if it is one of ours?’ Emma felt her voice trembling. ‘What if it’s Lizzie that’s hurt?’
‘There’s nothing we can do about it, Emma.’
‘Yes, but if it is one of the medics who’s been shot, I don’t know if I could handle it.’
‘I think you need to give yourself more credit,’ Major Clarke said. ‘If it is one of ours, it doesn’t make any difference to what we do.’
She thought about what Major Clarke had said. He was right, but it didn’t make her any less scared. They stood in silence for a few minutes, listening for the sound of the ambulances on the gravel. After what seemed to Emma like ages, two dark green battlefield ambulances came around the corner from behind the accommodation. Both of the ambulances had small blue lights on top, which were on but barely visible in the sunlight.
As they got closer to the hospital the rear ambulance veered off and drove towards the rear end of the facility, to where the mortuary was located. The remaining ambulance turned and started reversing towards the door of the Emergency Room. When it got to within a few feet of the tent, Major Clarke slapped his hand twice on the glass window in the back door. The ambulance came to an abrupt stop and the door was flung open from the inside.
Emma leaned around and tried to see inside the vehicle, but the difference between the bright sunlight outside and the dark interior meant that she couldn’t see anything.
The other door to the ambulance opened, and Emma saw Adams jump down onto the gravel. Emma grabbed his arm hard.
‘Where’s Lizzie?’ she said. Adams just looked at her, the sweat streaming down his face. ‘Where is she? Is she okay?’
‘She’s fine,’ Adams said with a curious look at her. ‘She’s back at the helicopter.’
‘Oh, thank fuck for that,’ Emma said under her breath.
As Emma and Major Clarke each grabbed a handle of the stretcher and prepared to slide it out of the ambulance, Major Clarke said, ‘Corporal Wardle, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear.’ Emma looked at him, her face reddening.
‘Sorry, sir,’
‘Don’t be,’ he replied.
Lizzie sat in the back of the helicopter, listening as the rotors wound down. She undid the buckle of her helmet, took it off, and placed it on the seat next to her. Her scalp was itching like mad from the sweat and sand, and she felt absolutely disgusting. Opposite her, Ronald did the same thing with his helmet, and sat there looking at her. When the noise from the engine had died down, he said to her, ‘Are you okay?’
Lizzie looked at him and around the empty helicopter. She was glad that the Force Protection Team and Kinkers had got off at the hospital, and that it was just the two of them left. The loadmaster hadn’t wanted to get off, but Davies had been insistent as he’d had a bang to the head. Tears sprang to her eyes as she looked at Ronald.
‘Apart from being shot at, pushed into a ditch, jumped on by Adams, and then watching him shoot someone, you mean?’ Ronald stood and crossed the helicopter, sitting down next to her. ‘So no,’ she continued. ‘I’m not okay, not by a long stretch.’ Her voice broke as she finished the sentence, and when Ronald wrapped his arm around her, she started crying in earnest.
After a couple of minutes, Lizzie looked up to see Davies looking back at her from the front of the helicopter. He looked away when he saw her looking at him, and Lizzie reached into her pockets for a tissue. It was time for her to man the fuck up, she thought, otherwise they’d be here all day. She pulled a sodden mass of tissue from her pocket and examined it. It must have got soaked in the bottom of the ditch. Lizzie looked at Ronald, who was offering her a clean white handkerchief that looked as if it had been ironed. Knowing Ronald as she did, it probably had.
‘If I use that, Ronald,’ she said to him, ‘it’ll never be the same again.’ Ronald smiled at her.
‘If you use that,’ he looked at the handkerchief, ‘I never want it back anyway.’ Lizzie smiled through her tears and took the handkerchief from him. She wiped it across her face, and when she had finished, she looked at the damp stains that the mud, sweat, tears, and snot had left on it.
‘Sorry,’ she said as Ronald laughed. ‘I did warn you, though.’
Davies climbed through the gap between the front and the back of the helicopter, closely followed by Taff. Lizzie looked at the two officers and gave them what she hoped was a stoic smile.
‘Did I hear that right?’ Davies asked Lizzie. ‘Did you say that Adams shot somebody?’
‘Yes,’ Lizzie nodded. ‘There was a Taliban with an RPG pointed straight at us. Adams shot him.’
Davies arched his eyebrows and looked at his co-pilot.
‘I wonder if that was the Terry who nearly hit us?’ Davies said to Taff.
‘Fair play to Adams if it was,’ Taff replied.
Thirty minutes later, the initial chaos caused by the arrival of the casualty had died down. Emma enjoyed the air of quiet urgency in the Emergency Room as everyone got ready to take the casualty to the operating theatre. People were busy, but everything was controlled. Many of the personnel who had been there for the initial treatment of the casualty had disappeared back to their own departments, some of them because they would be playing a part in the next stages of his treatment. Emma heard Major Clarke on the phone arguing with someone, probably from the operating theatre, as he was trying to find out if they were ready for the casualty.
She watched as the anaesthetist at the head of the trolley that Private Mitchell was laying on checked through all his equipment. He picked up the laryngoscope, opened it to make sure the light was working, and tightened the bulb in the device to make sure that it didn’t fall out. Emma knew that the equipment was all good to go as she’d done exactly the same checks on the kit when she’d come onto shift but at the end of the day, it wouldn’t be her actually using it. The anaesthetist looked up a
nd saw Emma watching him.
‘I’m going to tube him, are you happy to help?’
‘Er, okay, thanks,’ she said, surprised but pleased. It was normally one of the nurses from the Intensive Care Unit who helped out with intubation unless it had to be done in a real hurry. ‘I’ll just check with Major Clarke, though.’ The anaesthetist smiled at her, the edges of his eyes crinkling in a way that Emma thought was really sweet. Lizzie would no doubt think something else completely, Emma thought as she walked across to the desk.
‘Well when you find him, bloody well tell him that the rest of the hospital is waiting for him, would you?’ she heard him say just before slamming down the phone. He turned and glared in her direction. ‘Bloody doctors. The orthopaedic surgeon’s just “nipped out” apparently. God knows where. It’s not as if he can pop to Sainsbury’s, is it? They’ve had to send someone to find him.’ His face softened as he took a deep breath. ‘Everything okay, Corporal Wardle?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Emma replied. She nodded her head towards the anaesthetist, who was checking the dials on the front of the ventilator. ‘Are you happy for me to help him tube Private Mitchell? He’s asked me to assist.’
‘Are you happy?’ he replied. ‘You’ve assisted with one before, haven’t you?’
‘Er…’ Emma paused. She’d seen plenty being done, but never assisted with an intubation. Major Clarke looked at her and smiled.
‘Go for it, you’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Just give me a shout if you need a hand. You’ve obviously impressed the gas man,’ he looked at the anaesthetist before continuing, ‘if he’s happy with you instead of one of the “special ones” from ICU.’
‘Okay, great stuff.’ Emma smiled. ‘Can I have the keys, then?’ Major Clarke reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys to the drug cabinet.
‘Fill your boots,’ he said.
Emma took the keys and walked over to the drug cupboard, holding them up for the anaesthetist to see as she did so. He walked across to join her as she opened the cupboard. Emma reached for the book while he got vials and ampoules out of the cupboard, lining them up on the counter.
‘I just need some sux,’ he said. Emma bent down and opened the fridge to get the ampoules of suxamethonium, a powerful muscle relaxant. She put them on the counter, and the anaesthetist lined them up with the other ampoules before laughing. ‘Sorry, a touch of the obsessive compulsive.’
‘I noticed,’ Emma replied. ‘But I bet your CD collection’s in alphabetical order.’ As soon as she’d said it, she realised how tacky it sounded, but it was too late.
‘It might be,’ he said, before pausing and looking at her. Here we go, she thought. This is where he asks me if I want to see it at some point. Why did she say that, for God’s sake? ‘But my wife keeps changing it around just to piss me off.’
Emma breathed a sigh of relief, and began to write down the names of the drugs that the anaesthetist had assembled.
‘Can you get some saline flushes ready, please?’ he asked Emma.
‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘I’ll just finish this first.’ When she had finished writing in the drug book, Emma looked around for the tray of flushes that she had seen on the counter earlier on. Somebody had moved it down to the end of the counter, so she retrieved it and grabbed a handful of syringes on her way back to the anaesthetist. Working in silence, they both drew up the syringes and labelled them with the name of the contents.
Emma and the anaesthetist walked back across to Private Mitchell, who was still out for the count. Emma rubbed his shoulder so that she could let him know what was going on, but other than a grunt he was unresponsive. She pressed a button on the monitor to recheck his blood pressure, as the anaesthetist stood at the head of the trolley. When the monitor bleeped with the new figures, Emma wrote them down on the back of her hand.
‘All set then?’ the anaesthetist said. She nodded in reply as he laid the trolley flat. The anaesthetist flipped the small plastic on the cannula and injected the first of the anaesthetic drugs. ‘Flush, please,’ he said to Emma, who injected one of the saline ampoules into the cannula to flush the drug into Private Mitchell’s system. When he had finished giving the casualty the anaesthetic cocktail, each drug followed by a saline flush, the anaesthetist picked up the endotracheal tube and laryngoscope. Tilting Private Mitchell’s head back, he used the laryngoscope to push his tongue out of the way. ‘Cricoid pressure on, please.’
Emma reached forward and pressed on the front of Private Mitchell’s Adam’s apple with her thumb and first two fingers to try to give the anaesthetist a better chance of seeing the vocal chords, and also to reduce the risk of any stomach contents getting into the patient’s lungs.
‘That’s better,’ the anaesthetist said, ‘I can see the chords.’ He slid the endotracheal tube into the correct position and used an empty syringe to fill the balloon at the end with air, securing the airway. Emma took her hand off the patient’s throat and glanced across at the monitor.
‘Shit,’ she whispered when she saw the flat line on the screen. She quickly checked the leads connecting Private Mitchell to the monitor, but they were all where they should be. ‘Shit,’ she repeated. ‘I think he’s arrested.’
29
He leaned against the door of the Emergency Room with his arms folded, trying to keep a wry smile off his face. He’d been stood there, absolutely invisible to everyone, for the last few minutes watching the intubation and waiting for his magic bullet to hit home. The look of horror on the nurse’s face when she realised that her patient had arrested was an absolute picture. She looked stunning when she was scared, and he wondered what her face would look like if she found out that she had administered the lethal concoction herself. Oh boy, would that be a picture worth taking.
He didn’t care who it was who dealt the fatal blow, although he did admit to himself that he was disappointed that he’d not got to watch the last one die. He’d heard about it, though. It sounded like it went perfectly. From his perspective, at least.
‘Can we have a hand over here?’ he heard a female voice shout to the other medics in the room. The few personnel left in the room looked up and hurried over to help. He watched as the pretty little nurse ran to get a stool from the other side of the room so that she had something to stand on to do cardiac compressions. He knew that he should at least do something, as opposed to just stand and watch, so he made his way over to the trolley to see if any of his adapted ampoules were still there. He could get rid of them while everyone else was concentrating on the casualty.
As he walked past the nurse, who was by now on her stool with her hands clasped in front of her on the casualty’s chest, he made sure that he brushed against her backside as he did so. He knew that she wouldn’t notice, and he was right.
‘One, two, three, four, five,’ he heard her count out loud, each number punctuated with a compression. He wondered what she would look like if she was doing the compressions naked. He knew that her breasts would be pushed together by her arms as there was no other way to do the compressions, and he felt himself hardening as he imagined her astride him, with her arms pushed together in the same way.
He saw the tray with the ampoules sitting on top of the trolley. Some of them hadn’t been used, so he definitely needed to get rid of them in one of the sharps bins. As he grabbed the tray, one of the medics turned around with a syringe full of blood, and barged into him, scattering the ampoules everywhere and covering him in blood from the syringe.
‘For fuck’s sake, be careful,’ he said. The medic looked at him, horrified.
‘Oh crap, sorry,’ he muttered.
He looked at the front of his uniform, and then at the ampoules which were all over the floor. He couldn’t exactly go scrabbling round to retrieve them all, and he wasn’t even sure how many of them there were. Especially not now that he was covered in blood. He would have to go and get changed and leave the ampoules where they were. He gave the medic a withering look and turned on his heel to wa
lk towards the door.
30
Adams swore as he burned his lip when he took a sip of the hot soup in his insulated mug. He was sitting next to Lizzie, both of them in green camping chairs a couple of hundred yards away from the bright lights of the hospital. Both chairs were tilted back so that they were pointed at the sky. The night was completely cloudless, and they could both see hundreds if not thousands of stars.
‘You all packed for R&R, then?’ Adams asked Lizzie.
‘Bloody right I am,’ she replied. ‘Been packed for weeks. How about you? You all sorted?’
‘I think so,’ he said. Adams had spent about thirty minutes sorting out his stuff earlier that day before they’d gone out on the shout, but it wasn’t as if he had a great deal to take home with him. ‘What are your plans, then?’
‘Well, first I’m going to get absolutely wasted,’ Lizzie said.
‘That’ll be one glass of wine then.’ She laughed at Adam’s reply.
‘Then I’m going to spend my time sunbathing, eating good food, and just relaxing.’
‘Going on the prowl for some poor innocent Cypriot lad, more like.’
‘Shut up, Adams,’ Lizzie said. Adams glanced across at her and saw a sad expression on her face. ‘Maybe if Emma was with me like we’d planned, we might go out of an evening, but I’m not doing that on my own. She can’t not go home, though.’
‘It’s a shame she can’t come with you,’ Adams replied. ‘Any news on her mother?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Lizzie said. ’She’s not said anything. Still waiting for test results, apparently.’
‘That’s a bit shit.’
‘Wow, did you see that?’ Lizzie pointed her finger at the sky where a shooting star had just shot past. ‘That was impressive, wasn’t it?’
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