Girl Descending (Irish Girl, Hospital Romance 2)

by Jenny O'Brien

  On entering the heaving department she was accosted by the receptionist to deal with a little girl who’d fallen off her climbing frame. The howling girl clutching her arm to her chest was easy; it was the howling mum that took all her patience and skill. With a glass of juice in one hand and an X-Ray request form in the other she finally managed to settle them both in front of the TV while she arranged for an orthopaedic referral and subsequent plastering by their resident plaster technician. All this time she was well aware of the two overdoses that had arrived back on back in screaming ambulances while Sorcha, along with the rest of the medical team arranged for stomach pumps and antidote administration.

  It was nearly two o’clock by the time Aiden got round to sending her for a belated lunchbreak. She was well past hunger but still welcomed a few minutes to herself - the afternoon rush would soon be on them with a vengeance.

  Entering the bright and airy canteen was nerve wracking at best. She didn’t know anybody and, was it her imagination or did the conversation drop a notch as all heads swivelled to stare at the newbie? Nope, she could feel them pinning her with their gaze: Assessing, analysing, evaluating and probably discarding.

  Eyes focused straight ahead she avoided looking at anything other than the figure standing at the end of the queue. She couldn’t very well look past him being as he was bigger than your average mountain. Not Irish obviously - they didn’t make Irish men in extra-large, or at least not the one’s she’d dated! Simon had only been a couple of inches taller than her, and she was all of five foot four. No he probably came from somewhere like Holland. Wasn’t Holland where the tallest men hailed from? Probably something to do with all that cheese.

  Her mind took the opportunity to pursue this line of thought, being as it was a much happier one than dwelling on short little squirts like Simon. Thinking about the past only caused unhappy memories to flourish and blossom within her head. Many more memories like that and she’d be able to open a florist.

  Studying his enormous feet, clad in what looked like hand stitched Italian loafers she mulled over who he might be. He was probably some hot shot consultant; he’d have to be to afford leather like that. He could even be that Ruari bloke Sorcha had been boring her to tears with, but probably not. And if he was there was no way she’d ever go out with someone that big.

  Dismissing him from her mind she shifted slightly in order to start gazing around at the blond wood tables and chairs scattered across the room. The queue for some reason seemed to have come to a halt much to the obvious annoyance of the man in front. But instead of dwelling on the fact that her lunch break would most likely be over by the time she’d reached the food she grabbed a glass of water from the shelf and restarted on her guessing game.

  She couldn’t see any A&E doctor wearing posh shoes like that, so if it wasn’t the mountain in front which one was he then? Her eyes scanned the pale yellow room awash with bright splodges of colour. It reminded her more of an upmarket café than it did a hospital canteen. Even the crockery was an eclectic mix of primary colours instead of the boring industrial brand cups and saucers at her last place, while the addition of glass vases would have been enough to send the infection control team at St Maud’s into hyperspace. Her gaze moved on to examine the motley array of staff sitting shoulder to shoulder in the densely packed tables. Some would be future colleagues and one might even be the erstwhile Ruari. God, if she wasn’t careful she’d be sounding as transfixed as Sorcha, and that before she’d even met him.

  Was it the lanky blond with the even lankier hair flopping across his forehead puzzling over the crossword? He looked cute enough, that is if you ignored the sticky out ears and even stickier out teeth - he also looked about twelve. Why was it the older she got the younger the doctors looked, or was it that she was just getting old?

  She shifted on to the next table where a ginger haired rugby type was staring intently at his phone? He was a much more likely possibility with his pale green scrubs and mandatory stethoscope poking out of his pocket. She lifted up a hand briefly to her own ginger bun with a grin. In a way she hoped it was him – it would make it all so easy. She’d promised herself a very long time ago she’d never go out with another ginger nut and she’d always managed to resist the temptation.

  She smiled before moving on to the next table where a George Clooney lookalike sat engrossed in a large blue book popped up against the salt seller. Squinting, she could just about read the title ‘Caravanning in Italy.’

  ‘Can you move on please?’

  ‘What?’ Grainne, still struggling with the concept of George Clooney caravanning anywhere looked back at the giant only to discover he was miles ahead, even now fuelling his gargantuan proportions with a plate full of – was that salad?

  ‘I asked you to move – some of us have jobs to go to even if you don’t.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, I wasn’t concentrating.’ She turned to apologise only to snag her hand against her glass causing the whole lot to tip over the tray.

  ‘What the hell!’

  Grainne, busily mopping up water suddenly noticed the scale of the damage. Not only had water splattered all over the tray, it had splattered all over Mr Grump’s trousers.

  Mortified as she was, she still found it hard not to laugh as; eyes trained on his groin she noticed the stain had spread to resemble a map of Australia. Dragging her eyes away was difficult but she managed eventually before righting the glass with one hand and thrusting a pile of napkins at him with the other. Still managing to avoid his face she tried for another apology.

  ‘I’m really sorry, it was an accident. I’m new here and and….’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’ He interrupted. ‘I’ve got to work all afternoon looking as if I I…’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Perhaps you could make the effort to concentrate. You’re pretty scatty aren’t you? Good job you’re not on my team.’

  Grainne stilled for a moment, her gaze squarely fixed on the display of yogurts in front of her. All thoughts of George Clooney left her. The memory of the giant still picking over his greens was just that, a memory. If there’d been a hole she’d have thrown herself down it. If she’d been a different person altogether she’d have turned and stared him out with a laugh on her face, but she wasn’t. She was shy little Grainne Maguire stuck in a strange city with less choices than the range of apricot yogurts piled up in front of her. She had no choice other than to stay in Dublin just as she had no choice other than to make the best of it. She could feel her eyes burn just as she could feel the eyes of the whole canteen glued to the scene unfolding in front of them – it must be better than watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

  But that didn’t mean she had to take a telling off from the man behind her. How dare he speak to her like that - and all over a little bit of water that would soon dry.

  ‘And you must be one of the rudest.’

  As soon as the words were spoken she wanted to retract them, but it was too late: far too late to exert caution. She felt her face glow bright red with a mixture of anger and embarrassment as she waited for some sharp retort from the man behind. He was obviously the type to have a vocabulary full of witty put me downs. She felt tears of annoyance press beneath her eyelids as she waited, but to her mortification the only response she got was a deep resonant chuckle. Somehow the sound of his laugh ringing out across the suddenly quiet room was worse than any of the million wise crack comments he could have come up with. He’d just made her a laughing stock and now he’d ruined her day.

  She reached for the nearest sandwich and, with head held high hurried to the now empty till. She had intended to find a table in an effort to makes some friends but she’d blown that one well and truly. Picking up her sandwich and now empty glass she made herself stroll out of the canteen, determined above all else not to meet anyone’s eyes. If they hadn’t been looking at her before they certainly were now.

  But as soon as the door to the canteen swung closed the implications of her actions bore down on her
and she knew what she had to do, even though it might prove one of the hardest things. She’d have to apologise. She’d have to apologise to someone she wouldn’t recognise, that is apart from his laugh and his groin. The first wasn’t fool proof and neither was the second come to think of it, but she’d have a bloody good shot of it. A reluctant smile pulled at her lips, that is until she happened to glance down at her sandwich - corned beef and bloody tomato, God how she detested corned beef.

  On her return she was assigned to take over the care of a Mr McDade by the triage nurse.

  ‘He was found by the bus stop with an injury to his forehead, not too serious.’

  She grabbed his notes and made her way across the blue linoleum floor and into bay two.

  ‘Hello Mr McDade, my name is Grainne, one of the nurses here and I’m just going to check you over so I’ll be able to let the doctor know what the problem is.’ She said, clipping his admission sheet onto the end of his trolley. The man remained silent. Kneeling down, the cold lino digging into her knees she took hold of his free hand, noting the thin papery skin and swollen gnarled knuckles.

  ‘It’s all right sir. We’ll get you sorted and out of here in no time.’

  ‘I need to get home.’ He whispered. ‘I can’t be out for long.’

  ‘Why not?’ She urged, shining a pen torch into his eyes. She knew instinctively there was more here than just an old man falling. But all she had time for, all they ever seemed to have time for was a sympathetic ear before patching them up and sending them on their way.

  ‘The flat, I can’t leave it for long. They’ve already had me TV.’

  Grainne, moving her hand over his wrist to check his pulse struggled to keep her face expressionless and her voice level.

  ‘Do you live alone then?’

  ‘Yes, ever since Mairead died. She died here she did. Came in with pneumonia and never came out again.’

  ‘What about children.’ She queried, already trying to remember whether any next of kin had been mentioned. What were they thinking leaving their dad living in such conditions?

  ‘I don’t have any. Mairead couldn’t, it wasn’t to be.’ He glanced up from tired blood shot eyes. ‘It’s alright lass, don’t worry about me. Just put a sticking plaster on and I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘You’ll need to see a doctor. Your injury here may need stitches.’ She pointed to the cut on his forehead. ‘I’ll be back in a minute; you just stay there and rest.’

  The nurses’ station was empty for once with all the staff busy behind privacy curtains. She paused, uncertain as to what to do. Shifting from one foot to the other in search of inspiration she saw the curtain to bay seven flick back to reveal Juliette, one of the student nurses.

  ‘Juliette. Thank goodness. Do you know if any of the doctors are free?’ She asked quickly.

  ‘Well, Archie and Ahmad are in cubicle one. Chest pain,’ she added in a loud whisper. ‘Have you tried the office?’

  With a brief smile of thanks she headed to the half open door at the end of the corridor where she saw the outline of a blue clad figure sitting behind the desk.’

  ‘Er sorry for interrupting you Doctor but I have a man in bay two that I need you to look at please.’ She said, looking with more than idle curiosity at the large quiet man engrossed in writing quickly and probably illegibly in the brown medical record in front of him. She just had time to notice his brow furrowed in concentration before he answered.

  ‘Okay I’m nearly done here. I’ll be there in a sec. What do we know about him?’ He said, continuing to write but now at an even faster pace.

  Good job I don’t have to try and decipher that lot, she thought wryly even as she started to speak.

  ‘It’s an eighty three year old man found on the pavement by the bus terminus.’ She answered from memory. ‘There was a wallet, no money but a bus-pass in the name of a Norman McDade. No history as to how he got there - brought in by a taxi driver who didn’t want to stop. We don’t know if there was a loss of consciousness. No signs of injury apart from a large laceration across his forehead. Observations stable although his SAT’s are a bit low at 91 %.’

  ‘Mm… probably shock, have you..?’ He answered, the absentminded look still evident as he continued scribbling across the notes in front of him, but Grainne wasn’t deceived. After working with A&E doctors for five years she knew that he would remember everything she’d said word for word.

  ‘Yes.’ She interrupted anticipating his train of thought. ‘Oxygen 24 percent at 2 litres per minute via nasal cannula.’

  He didn’t reply for some seconds.

  ‘Good girl, I’ll need a full blood count and urea and electrolytes to start with. What’s his Glasgow Coma Scale? If it’s not above 13 book a skull X-Ray please. Oh and have you done a blood glucose to rule out hypoglycaemia?’ He replied, throwing questions out faster than bullets as he riffled one hand through his already unruly dark brown hair.

  So this must be Ruari then.

  She’d met all the other doctors on the team - there was no one else it could be. Sorcha had been wrong to label him a heart throb hunk, He was more than just perfect, even down to the serious looking spectacles that he kept shifting up his nose every couple of seconds. She could never resist a man in specs – in fact that’s where she’d probably gone wrong with Simon: Simon and his twenty/twenty vision (in contacts) and perfect smile to boot.

  This man wouldn’t consider contacts an asset just as he wouldn’t spend thousands on perfecting his teeth - and he certainly wouldn’t misinterpret a No for a Yes! Here was a man who’d look more at home on a rugby field covered in mud than in some swish restaurant. He’d look perfect in jeans and an old t-shirt. Simon didn’t even own a t-shirt, or a pair of jeans for that matter. His trousers were made-to-measure cavalry twill, his shirts bespoke silk.

  She blinked and, shifting her gaze slightly stared at the posters decorating the otherwise bare clinical white walls above his head. It wouldn’t do to be found staring at what was in truth the handsomest man she’d seen away from the TV screen.

  But in looking at a poster to prevent tooth decay she didn’t see the photo of the angelic toddler with a mop of blond curls. Instead all she was the short nut brown hair, barely brushed by the looks of things. She couldn’t see his eyes, only baby blue ones, but she knew whatever the colour they’d be surrounded by more than their fair share of laughter lines. She focused in on the little boy’s pearly white teeth, but all she saw was a firm set of smooth lips and a jaw that was in urgent need of an appointment with a razor. She forced her eyes to continue staring at the poster even as some invisible arm kept trying to force her head to turn, to turn and stare. God: he was gorgeous, gorgeous and flawed.

  He was flawed just as all men were flawed, not that she’d found his particular defect yet. But any man as delicious as he was had to be flawed. He probably had the breath of a skunk, or armpits that could be rung out like a flannel – not that any of these things were insurmountable of course. It was his integrity that interested her. What was he like as a man? She’d find out what he was like as a doctor and that would give her some idea.

  As she continued to stare straight ahead she remembered the pallor and lines of tiredness and for the first time wondered if he’d been travelling through the night. And then she stopped and put a halt to all her silly shenanigans. She’d only just managed to escape from one bastard, she certainly wasn’t in the business of shopping for another, even if it was only window shopping! She shifted from one leg to the other, willing him to hurry up and finish his writing. She had to get back to Mr McDade, who she’d probably left for too long already and she certainly had to stop her thoughts from wittering on about the man ahead.

  She didn’t know what was happening to her. She wasn’t normally like this, and about what was at the end of the day only some average looking burly ‘speccy four eyes.’

  Perhaps she was on the rebound from Simon? After all they’d been a couple for two years and en
gaged the last six months of those. Walking away from someone after two years was the most difficult thing she’d ever done, even if staying hadn’t been an option. What woman would choose to stay when they’d found their fiancé in bed with their so called best friend?

  ‘Staff?’ He closed the notes before adding them to the pile in the corner, no doubt awaiting the cryptologists from Medical Records to interpret.

  Grainne dragged her eyes away from the poster even as she managed to conjure up the right answer, more by accident than skill – it wasn’t her fault she’d forgotten what the question was.

  Sorry, glucose 5.3 millimoles per litre and GCS was okay at 15.’ She answered, struggling to keep her mind on the job and not on the sight of him unfolding his long body from the desk, his well-defined taut muscles scarcely concealed beneath faded blue scrubs.

  She tried to remember if she’d ever felt like this about Simon but for some reason she was having difficulty in remembering what he looked like. Averting her gaze back to the poster, which she could now recite by heart was a sudden necessity - a man as observant as he was would surely notice the blush coursing up her cheeks.

  ‘We also ran an ECG but it didn’t show anything unusual.’ She added, moving away from the door in order to leave plenty of room for him to pass. She couldn’t risk being within touching distance, even being in the same room was proving dangerous.

  Chapter Three

  Ruari stilled, his eyes trained on the unfamiliar nurse standing well out of his way, presumably to let him go through first. He drew in his breath, recognising her as the girl from the canteen, the girl that had thrown the contents of her glass all over him. So this was the girl that, after freezing his wot-nots in sub-zero water had the temerity to call him rude? Well she bloody well deserved it in his book! He’d been up half the night trying to get back from Cork, only to be greeted by an ice cold shower.