By My Side

by Wendy Lou Jones

  “What’s happened?” she asked, pausing just inside the door. “You look awful. Are you all right?”

  “My car,” Sophie said. “It’s been stolen.”

  Kate walked over and peered through the living room window to the spot where Sophie’s car was usually parked. “When did it happen?”

  “A couple of hours ago. I didn’t hear a thing.”

  Kate sat down and put an arm around her. “Are you okay?”

  “Just in shock, I think.”

  Kate gave her a hug. “You’re shaking,” she said and she got up. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.

  A few minutes later she reappeared carrying a hot cup of tea and a packet of chocolate biscuits. “Go on, get that down you. Have you rung the police yet?”

  Sophie sipped her tea. “Yeah. Straight away. They’ve already been and gone.”

  “You’ve given them the details?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I guess there’s not a lot more you can do. Have you rung your insurance company?”

  “No. I thought I’d walk into town and tell them in a bit. When I’m more in control of my bodily functions.” The mug shuddered to a stop as she placed it back down in the tray on the table.

  “I’ll come with you,” Kate said.

  “No. I’ll be okay. I’d rather have a bit of time on my own to get my head together,” she said. “Is that all right?”

  “Of course,” Kate said. “Whatever you want.”

  While Sophie was out, Kate spent an hour or two tidying the house, doing the laundry and pondering on the conversations of the day. Her heart reached out to Mr Elliott and she thought about her granddad. His death had been horrendous at the time, but in retrospect, it was only a matter of a few days for him, not weeks and months of suffering. And Mr Elliott had no family around to support him? The poor guy.

  Sophie got home far later than expected. In fact, Kate was starting to worry, thinking she should never have let her go off on her own as shaken up as she was. But when she finally returned, Sophie was grinning from ear to ear.

  “You’re looking better,” Kate said. “Everything sorted out?”

  Sophie beamed.

  “What is it? You look like you’ve just won the lottery, not lost your beloved car.”

  Sophie said nothing.

  “Sit down there and tell me what’s happened.”

  Sophie sat down and started from the beginning. “I wandered about for a while, just trying to get my head around it all and then, when I was on a bit more of an even keel, I walked into the insurance place and this guy stood up from behind a desk and asked me to sit down and Kate, he was gorgeous. I mean, my mind was a little fuzzy before I saw him, but after… He had to virtually walk me through the whole thing; I was so out of it. And then he had a word with his colleague and took me out for a drink to settle my nerves. And he’s just - arghhh! He’s funny and sexy and easy going and we just sort of… clicked.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Sophie Turner, only you could manage to make such a crap day turn out so well.” She shook her head, amazed. “So I take it you’re over the disappointment of losing your car then?”

  Sophie beamed.

  “Good, because I’m starving.”

  “Oh. Rich is picking me up in an hour to take me out to dinner. Sorry.”

  “Wow. He doesn’t hang around, does he? Rich, eh? Okay, just me for tea then, is it?”

  “Would you like me to show you where the kitchen is?” Sophie teased.

  “You’re all right,” Kate said. “I clean the thing often enough. I think I can find it.”

  The following afternoon Kate started a long haul of shifts. She had swapped a couple to help a friend get to a wedding, so it was a bigger set than it should have been and she was very aware of the amount of work she had to get through before her next day off.

  For days the department ran like clockwork. Patients came and went, each leaving their mark on her life to a greater or lesser extent, but the following week a call came in for the A&E department to expect casualties from a big car wreck just outside of town. Kate was on duty in Resus One. It was almost nine o’clock at night and her shift was nearly over, but the night staff were not yet in.

  Gloria put out the call for the trauma team to come to A&E and informed the rest of the staff to prepare and so Kate rang coronary care to see if they could take her patient as quickly as possible and the two of them began to ready the bays.

  Chapter 3

  It wasn’t long before the casualties began to arrive. The first ambulance brought in a woman with cuts and bruises and a child with what seemed little more than a broken arm, but the mother was hysterical. Kate took control, whisking them through to a cubicle within A&E and found a free nurse to get them checked in and taken care of before hurrying back to Resus. As it turned out they were also expecting the other daughter of this woman, the girl who had been worst hit by the car, so she quickly ran back around and promised to let them know the moment the girl came in, but insisted they get seen to while they waited.

  Doctors came hurrying down the corridor and entered Resus just as the second ambulance was arriving. They pulled on gloves and hovered about, trying to glean what information they could about the casualty expected.

  Mr Cobham appeared and began to take control. An elderly man strapped to a back board arrived. He was handed over and assessed by the team. They got to work and soon X-ray were there too. It was Kate’s job to fly around making sure everything was being done and chasing up anything that seemed to be taking too long.

  Another ambulance arrived and all but the few staff needed to deal with the gentleman in bed one moved over to bed two along with the paediatrician, who had been waiting in the background for the girl to arrive.

  Mr Elliott left his registrar to handle the man and came over to see the girl. The child was in the process of coming round and appeared to be very distressed. They had been told that she was nine years old and called Sasha. She had been hit by the car when the elderly man appeared to have collapsed at the wheel. Kate moved around to the head of the bed and started talking to the girl very calmly while Fiona, the paediatrician, got a needle in the back of her hand and then Mr Elliott stepped up to take a look.

  Kate tried her best to comfort the girl as Mr Elliott began assessing her limbs and asking her questions, but the child was too scared and began to cry again. Her legs were hurting and Kate leant in closer still to talk softly into her ear. The girl grabbed her, her pleading gaze searching Kate’s, and then her face just crumpled.

  “Sasha,” she soothed. “I’m Kate and I’m going to stay with you until you’re safely on the ward. Your mum and your little sister are already here waiting to see you, but they have injuries of their own and they need to get those seen to before we can get you all back together. Now these nice men and women here are just trying to find out what’s hurt and what’s not and then we’ll get you comfortable and we can bring them in, okay?” Sasha sniffled and looked up at her. “I promise I’ll stay with you.”

  Kate looked across and caught Elliott’s eye. He held her gaze for a moment and then nodded. “See that handsome doctor down the end there?” she said. Mr Elliott smiled uncomfortably. “Well he needs to ask you a few more questions and when he’s done, this nice lady here is going to get you something else for the pain.”

  Mr Elliott called down instructions, asking Sasha to wriggle her toes and if she could feel him touching her legs and Kate did her best to keep the girl calm. After he was satisfied with her legs, he moved up to her arms and went through the whole process again, with Kate trying hard to comfort the girl as they went.

  Fiona drew up the pain relief and injected it through the line in the back of the girl’s hand and Kate checked that she was more comfortable as the doctors and nurses began to disperse to their various tasks.

  With her hand firmly by Sasha’s side, Kate called across to one of the other nurses. “Pam, you wouldn’t fetch Sasha’s mother a
nd sister for me, would you? I think they’re in Cubicle Six. They’ll probably have just about enough time to see her before X-ray are ready.”

  Mr Elliott nodded his thanks and wandered over to the side to write in the notes. Suddenly the little girl started fitting and Kate called across to Fiona, who was back by her side in an instant.

  The final ambulance arrived with the wife of the old man. She had been trapped in the car and had just been released. Reluctantly Kate had to leave Fiona and a junior nurse to deal with the little girl and hurried to the main door to receive the last casualty.

  The lady was lifted onto the third bed where Mr Cobham appeared at Kate’s side. His registrar, who had been dealing with the gentleman in the same bay, finished writing and moved over to help. Orders were called out and staff began to materialise around the trolley.

  Kate picked up the scissors and started to cut away the clothes so that the doctors could better examine the lady and a shout went out from behind the curtain next door: Cardiac arrest.

  Looking over, Kate realised they were running short of staff, so she shouted for the medical student to carry on cutting and dashed over to pitch in.

  Staff flew everywhere chasing equipment and drugs needed for all the casualties, like ants in a burrow, each one a part of something greater.

  Sasha’s mother appeared around the corner with the smaller child at her side and Kate shouted at the nearest nurse, “Get them out of here!”

  Kate was still busy with Mr Cobham, doing chest compressions on the man in Resus One, when the anaesthetist peered round the curtain to see if he was needed. Fiona was managing Sasha and Mr Elliott was working on the old lady.

  They lost the old man.

  Kate pulled the curtains around the trolley and checked round the other casualties. They were all in hand.

  The Anaesthetist stayed to help out with the elderly lady, whose injuries seemed to be mainly to do with her right leg. Mr Elliott checked around the other casualties too, deciding which ones were a priority for Theatre, and then he returned to Mr Cobham, who was arranging a plan for each one.

  Mr Cobham turned round and put his hand on Kate’s shoulder. He looked at his watch. “Kate, it’s nearly ten. Go home. The cavalry’s here and they’re stuck in. We’ll be fine. Thanks for staying on.”

  “I’ll just check in on Sasha,” she said.

  “She’s intubated now and Fiona’s with her,” Mr Elliott said, coming to stand beside them. “She won’t know.”

  “What about her mother? Has anyone gone to talk to her?”

  “I think Sue’s with them right now,” Mr Cobham assured her. “Go home, Kate.”

  “Thank you,” Mr Elliott said. “With the girl.”

  Kate looked at his furrowed brow, aware that he had a long night’s work ahead of him. “No problem,” she said and as she made her way out to her car and drove home, she wondered, had she really described Mr Elliott as ‘handsome’?

  Letting herself back into the house, Kate called out a hello to Sophie and was reassured by a reply. He had thanked her for her help, spontaneously. That in itself was a surprise. Maybe the man was feeling guilty? Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all? Whatever the workings of his mind, Kate knew she would be back again tomorrow and Mr Elliott would still be there, but for the rest of that night she had a date with a glass of wine and a pillow, and nothing and no-one was going to get in the way of that.

  A few days later Mr Elliott stopped by in A&E and asked to speak to her. Kate was in a cubicle when she heard his voice. Her body froze as she wondered what he could want with her this time and she excused herself from her patient for a moment to step outside and speak to him.

  “Kate, I thought you might want to know that the girl from the other night is going to be all right.”

  “What, Sasha? Oh good,” she said. “Is she still here? I wondered if she’d end up on a neurosurgical unit.”

  “No. Her CT didn’t show any bleeding, just a bit of swelling which we can handle here. She’s off ITU and recovering up on the children’s ward if you’d like to go and see her. She’s been asking after you. She thought you were an angel.”

  Kate laughed. “Not quite. But thanks for letting me know. I’ll pop up in my break.”

  “Good. Well…”

  Kate looked down at the floor, uncomfortable at being the focus of his attention once again, even though it was in a good way this time.

  “You worked like a Trojan the other night. You must have been exhausted by the time you got home,” he said.

  “A little. But you had to carry on after I left. And your bit was far more important than mine.”

  “Not in the eyes of that little girl,” he said.

  Kate shifted her feet uncomfortably and blushed. “Well, let’s not disillusion her too quickly, eh?” She smiled, and for a moment she could swear she saw a trace of a smile on his lips too. A cough came through the curtains from her patient within and Kate excused herself politely and returned to her work.

  Seeing Sasha so much better at lunch time put a spring in Kate’s step, despite the mountains of bandaging and tubes surrounding her. She was comfortable now and her mother was with her.

  “Thank you so much for what you did the other day,” her mum had said, after Kate had been introduced to Sasha again.

  “Not at all. I was just doing my job. I’m just sorry I ended up having to yell at you,” she said. “I felt awful doing that, but it had just gone a bit mad at the time.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I quite understand. Sasha’s in one piece, that’s what’s important.”

  The father walked in just then.

  “Mark, this is Kate, the nurse from casualty Sasha was telling us about,” the mother said.

  The gentleman shook Kate’s hand firmly. “Thank you for everything you did,” he said.

  “But I was just saying, I didn’t really do much,” she told him. “It was Fiona Phillips, the paediatrician, who saved the day. She’s great, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s lovely, but the surgeon who saw her in A&E came up this morning too and he was very complimentary about you. He told us you were amazing, getting Sasha to stay calm and quiet so that they could deal with her as quickly as possible. And you stayed with her, reassuring her when all the other doctors and nurses were scaring her to death with their questions. She thought you were an angel.”

  From the bed, Sasha groaned with embarrassment and Kate smiled at her and winked. “Not quite, but I’m very flattered.” Then she whispered a loud aside to the girl, “Blame the strong pain killers, I would,” and Sasha giggled. “Anyway, I’d better be getting back to work. I’m glad you’re on the mend, though.”

  It was always nice to get good news and for the rest of the day, Kate breezed along with a contented smile on her lips.

  On the last day before her long awaited days off, Kate came across Mr Elliott in the corridor. He was talking with another consultant. She caught his eye as he walked past.

  “Kate,” he called out. He put a hand out to stop her and excused himself from the other consultant. “You went to see Sasha then?” he asked.

  “Yes. She’s looking much happier. Thank you.”

  “You know she’s determined to be a nurse like you when she’s older now.”

  Kate smiled. “I’ll have to have a long talk with her, then, won’t I?” she said. She wrestled with the idea of apologising for her behaviour the other week, or should she just leave it to blow over? Their gazes held, as words, waiting to be spoken, lost their moment and went unsaid and then he nodded slightly, turned away and continued to talk to the other consultant.

  Kate walked back down to A&E. “What are you looking so happy about?” Gloria asked her. Gloria always seemed to know when something was bothering them. It was like having your own mother around. Kate smiled to herself but quickly straightened her face. A few minutes later Gloria walked past again, carrying a suture pack and dressings.

  “Well?” she asked.


  “Nothing," Kate replied, her cheeks flushing with the fib.

  “Hmmm, looks like it,” and she walked on, calling back over her shoulder. “I’ll get it out of you, Katy Heath, don’t you worry.”

  Kate rolled her eyes and picked up the next card in the box, calling out the name to a sea of expectant faces sitting in the waiting room.

  Returning home that night, Kate collapsed into the armchair. Sophie was on a day off and was already in the party mood. “You’re home. Come on, Mr Crickland from orthopaedics is having a house warming and we’re all invited,” she said.

  “But I’ve just worked twelve days straight,” Kate said. “I’m exhausted. Besides, I barely know him.”

  “But I do and I’m allowed to bring a friend and I’ve been waiting for you to get home to go.”

  “Oh, Soph. Don’t make me go, please. I’m done in.”

  Sophie gave her a stern look and then sighed in resignation. “Go on then. I’ve put some lasagne in the fridge. You can bung it in the microwave when you’re ready. Don’t wait up.”

  Kate looked around the room. Two whole days off. She really wanted to get out of her uniform, but she just didn’t have the energy to move.

  Sophie sauntered down the stairs around ten o’clock the following morning and found Kate sitting in the front room, cuddled up under a blanket, watching some of the TV she’d missed out on across the previous two weeks. Sophie yawned and Kate looked round. “Morning, you dirty stop out. Sleep well?”

  “Eventually,” Sophie croaked.

  Kate studied the smug expression on Sophie’s face. “Go on, give us the dirt, then,” she said. “You know you want to.”

  Sophie grinned. “It was good. You would have liked it. Great house. It was one of those refurbished barns outside town. The carpets are going down today, so they decided to have the party last night in case anybody spilled their drink. And they did. Jenny tipped a whole glass of wine down some poor guy. He was very good about it. Probably one of her stupid stunts to get attention.”