by Rebecca Lang
With burning cheeks, wishing she could deal with this in a cool, sophisticated way, Deirdre moistened her dry lips with her tongue. Her emotions were moving her this way and that, so that she felt like an animal in a cage, pacing up and down. Yet it was a confinement that she wanted because it would be with the man she loved. Yes, she had to admit it fully now. It thrilled and frightened her at the same time, and she knew she could not tell him of her love, not yet, because it left her totally vulnerable and she was not sure that she wanted him to know that now.
‘I…I’m not a very sophisticated person when it comes to being propositioned by a man,’ she said, trying to make light of it, when her heart was pounding with an unfamiliar excitement and a fear that she might blow it. ‘It’s not something that happens every day.’
When he grinned down at her, she felt herself going weak at the knees again. ‘I like you just the way you are,’ he said. ‘I don’t want a hard, calculating, cynical woman.’
‘But you’re a cynic,’ she said. ‘You said it yourself.’
‘Two cynics don’t go well together, I think,’ he said. ‘I have a strong suspicion that you could soften me, Deirdre, if you wanted to.’
The attraction between them was so strong that she knew she could not refuse…it was unthinkable. Yet it was so much more than a pure physical attraction for her. Very slowly she drew on her thin leather driving gloves over hands that were trembling, stalling for time.
She took in a deep, tremulous breath and let it out on a sigh. Her throat felt tight with emotion, so that she was not sure she could even speak. Glad of the dim, soft light in the hall, so that her hectic colour was not so apparent, she cleared her throat. ‘The answer’s yes,’ she said, feeling her cheeks flush an even darker colour and hearing her own voice high-pitched with nervousness. ‘But… not yet. I need to get used to the idea. You understand?’
‘Yes.’ He whispered the word, as his eyes seemed to burn into hers and he caressed her cheek with his warm hand. ‘Darling…sweetheart.’
‘Did you…did you call your wife that?’ The words came out as of their own volition. ‘I think I’m jealous of her.’
‘No, I didn’t call her either of those words. I called her “honey”, mostly, a word that has long since lost its appeal,’ he said softly. ‘All that is over. I’m a different person now. Things were dead between us long before we decided to part. We kept up a home for Mark. You don’t have to be jealous, believe me, although I’m flattered. You’re a very lovely woman, Deirdre, in all respects. You don’t have any idea, do you?’
She shook her head. ‘You can tell me as often as you like,’ she said.
‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said. Then he kissed her again, while the kids shouted and laughed outside, as though they thought it was perfectly all right for the older generation to be taking such a long time to say goodnight, if they thought about it at all.
‘I…don’t know whether being your lover adds to my dilemmas or detracts from them,’ she said, daring to utter her thoughts, with a deprecating laugh.
‘We’ll work to make it the latter, shall we?’ he said, his mouth quirking in the slight smile that she found so attractive, his eyes warm.
‘You want to be honest, Shay. So do I. Will it make my life more complex?’
‘I expect it will. In a good way, I hope,’ he said. ‘I want to be good to you and good for you, Deirdre. If you want to talk, I’ll be there to listen.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘I never cease to marvel and be glad that you literally crossed my path,’ he said.
As she, Mungo and Fleur got into her car, after Shay had brushed off the snow from all windows with a garden broom, Mark said, ‘Be careful going down the mountain. It’s what the newscasters call treacherous.’
‘This is not exactly a mountain,’ Mungo said, having wound down his window about six inches.
‘I know,’ Mark said, ‘but it sounds better than calling it a big hill, and, as you know, the road winds round and round, like on a mountain.’
At that remark, Mungo began to sing—or rather, bawl—the old song, ‘She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes’. The other two kids joined in.
‘She’ll be riding on a float plane when she comes…’ Mark yelled unmusically. Deirdre and Shay grinned at each other as she sat in the driver’s seat, and he stood near her, hunched up in a light jacket that he had thrown on hastily against the cold.
‘That’s the result of expensive music lessons,’ he said to her, bending down to her level and the partially open car window.
‘Not quite the end result, I hope. Anyway, that’s life,’ she said. ‘And you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. There are two clichés for you that are very useful when raising children, so I’ve found.’
‘Indeed,’ he said, his breath coming out in small white clouds. ‘You take care, now. Remember what I said about first gear and black ice.’
‘I will. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight. Come on, Mark. Time to go in.’
The raucous song came to an end as she turned on the engine and put the car into first gear.
As she steered her old car away from the house, Deirdre revelled in an exhilarating mood of happiness. Could she trust it? For now, she wasn’t going to think about that. Sufficient unto the day…
‘I really enjoyed being there,’ Fleur said. ‘It was great. I like Mark a lot.’
‘Yeah, it was really great,’ Mungo agreed.
Deirdre smiled.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A WEEK AFTER the new year, Deirdre received a telephone call early in the morning from the head nurse of the operating suite. It was a Monday.
‘Deirdre,’ she said, ‘I’m calling to see if you could work the night shift tonight instead of the day shift. I hate to ask you, seeing that you’ve been here for such a short time and the nights can be hectic, but I’ve had two of the night nurses call in sick with this flu that’s going around. You haven’t got any symptoms yourself, I hope?’
‘No…no, I haven’t,’ Deirdre managed to say, feeling dazed. She had been up for about ten minutes and was rushing around, getting ready to go to the hospital.
‘There will be two other nurses on the night shift with you,’ the head nurse went on. ‘We often get emergencies, some trauma. A lot of the more serious trauma goes to University Hospital, as you know. When the nurses called in sick, I thought of you because you’ve had trauma experience at University Hospital. I don’t know how I’m going to staff this place. A lot of the day nurses have called in sick as well.’
‘I…well…I could do the night shift,’ Deirdre said, mindful of the short time that she had been in the department, ‘if you think I could cope with it.’
‘The other two RNs are old hands,’ the head nurse went on, ‘so you would have to scrub for cases, while they do the organizing and circulating. You’ll be all right doing that. I may have to ask you to do that shift until the others are back.’
‘All right,’ Deirdre agreed, her mind working quickly to organize in a few seconds how she would juggle where Mungo and Fleur would sleep and how their grandmother would cope with looking after them. After all, they could cook and do a lot for themselves, and their grandmother as well. She didn’t want to put everything onto Fiona when she herself was being paid to look after them. It would be a compromise between them, she decided then and there.
‘If you’re wondering why I’m here so early,’ the head nurse went on grimly, ‘I thought I would get here to try to organize my skeleton staff. If this epidemic gets much worse, we’ll have to shut down the department to elective cases. Thank you very much, Deirdre. We’ll see you at about eleven-fifteen tonight. God willing, I don’t expect be here myself, but you never can tell.’
Deirdre put down the receiver. She was in her parents’ home and the whistling kettle she had plugged in for coffee was shrilling. What now? She could go back to bed and try to sleep some more, or
she could carry on and have breakfast, then try to sleep a bit in the afternoon in preparation for having to be up all night. Right now she felt wide awake and didn’t think she could sleep, having psyched herself up to go to work.
After dithering for a few seconds she decided to make the coffee and get something to eat. There were things she could do at home. Later on she would telephone Fiona and tell her of the change of plan. Mungo and Fleur were at Fiona’s house. What she could do was drive over there and take them to school. They seemed to be adapting well to her schedule of work and rather liked having three homes. Deirdre herself would check Jerry’s house to make sure all was well there, as he was still away. She was glad that she was not being paid by him.
The cat brushed against her legs as she sat at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee, contemplating what she might have to cope with during the night shift. As well as dealing with any emergencies that came in, the nurses had to prepare the operating rooms for the elective cases the next day, which was a very time-consuming job.
The one regret that she had about not working the day shift was that she would not be seeing Shay. Then it dawned on her that he would be one of the senior surgeons on call at night for emergencies, as Monday was his operating day. If there was anything that the senior surgical resident could not deal with, he would be there. With that in mind, she decided that she didn’t mind at all.
Quickly she finished her breakfast, got dressed and then put a call through to Fiona.
* * *
The kids hugged her when she walked into Fiona’s kitchen. ‘Dee!’ Fleur exclaimed when she saw her. ‘I’m missing you. Are you driving us to school? When are we going to get together with Mark again?’
‘One question at a time, please.’ Deirdre laughed. ‘Yes, I’m driving you. As for seeing Mark, we have to pick a good day then see if it’s good for him, too, and invite him for supper, or whatever.’
‘Let’s do it soon, Mungo said.
* * *
Much later, Deirdre was in the OR nurses’ locker room at the Stanton Memorial Hospital. It was ten minutes to eleven that evening and she had already changed into a pale blue two-piece scrub suit when the two other nurses burst into the room. They were both in early middle age, looked tough and what the head nurse had called old hands. She had not met either of them before.
‘Hi!’ one said cheerfully to her. ‘You must be Deirdre. Good of you to come in at such short notice. The other two who usually work with us are in bed coughing their guts out right now.’ She chuckled. ‘I’m Myra and this is Marge.’
The other nurse shook hands with Deirdre. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘People usually call us the two Ms, because we usually get to work together on night duty. You stick close to us, kid, and you’ll be all right. What we haven’t seen and done in this game isn’t worth knowing.’
Deirdre laughed. ‘I’ll do that,’ she said. ‘Very pleased to meet you.’
As the two other nurses quickly changed from their outdoor gear into scrub suits and white slip-on clogs, they kept up a running commentary about what she should expect.
‘When we get in there,’ Myra said, ‘the first thing we do is check the drugs with the senior nurse on the evening shift, then she gives us the drug keys. Our routine work is that we have to restock all the operating rooms, then we check the operating list for tomorrow and get each room ready for all the elective cases.’
‘We get on with the restocking right away, we don’t hang about, and we work as quickly as we possibly can, because if we get emergencies, the routine work gets put aside,’ Marge added. ‘You and I will get on with that. Myra’s in charge, so the first thing she will do is make sure that two rooms are absolutely ready for emergencies—one is a general surgery room and the other is a gynae room, as we get a lot of obstetrics and gynaecological emergency cases here.’
‘I see.’ Deirdre nodded, glad that she had these two nurses to work with on her first night.
‘Since we usually have four nurses on nights,’ Myra said, ‘we’ve got our work cut out for us. The trick is to be absolutely ready for anything first of all, then work like hell to get the routine stuff done. You just watch what we do.’
‘OK.’
‘And I forgot to say, if there are cases going on from the evening shift, we have to take over there before we can get on with our own work. When we come on, we pray that there won’t be any ongoing cases. If there are, two of us usually deal with those, while the others get on with the routine work, if we can. Sometimes all four of us just have to deal with the ongoing cases.’
When they got into the main part of the operating suite they were relieved to find the senior nurse on the evening shift sitting in the small office that was occupied by the head nurse during the day. ‘All quiet,’ she said cheerfully, before they could ask the question.
‘Thank God for that,’ Myra said. ‘I feel like having a bit of respite tonight.’
‘Amen to that,’ Marge said.
‘But it’s an eerie silence,’ the evening nurse said ruminatively, ‘I can feel in my bones that something will happen.’
‘Oh, shut up!’ Marge said. ‘You’re going to jinx us, or something.’
‘She’s usually right,’ Myra said, giving Deirdre a conspiratorial wink. ‘She’s got psychic powers.’
‘You’re freaking me out,’ Marge said. ‘Come on, let’s check those drugs.’
‘You phone Emergency, Marge,’ Myra said, ‘to see what they’ve got in there that could come our way. I’ll show Deirdre how we check the drugs.’
‘Okey-dokey,’ Marge said.
Deirdre followed Myra and the evening nurse, feeling as though she wanted to roar with laughter, again realizing how lucky she was to have landed up with these two. She could have found herself with a couple of irritable, unhelpful individuals. These two women had missed their vocation, she thought. They should have been stand-up comics. On second thoughts, they must be two of the best nurses in the whole operating suite, she estimated shrewdly, having met many. Probably two of the best in the whole hospital. If she could evolve to be like them, she would be contented with herself professionally.
‘Did you get any sleep today, Deirdre?’ Myra asked.
‘Not a wink,’ Deirdre admitted. ‘I tried, but just couldn’t sleep. I’m feeling a bit punch-drunk right now.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ Myra said, as the evening-shift nurse unlocked the drug cupboard, which was in a prominent position in the main OR corridor. ‘In no time at all you’ll have so much adrenaline surging through your body that you’ll feel that sleep will elude you for the rest of your life.’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she said.
‘The anaesthetist on call tonight is Dr Burns…good old Chuck,’ the evening nurse informed them.
‘Oh, super!’ Myra said. ‘He’s such a darling. You’ve met him, Deirdre?’
‘Yes. And I agree with you that he’s a darling.’
‘And the general surgeons are Shay Melburne and Boris Barovsky, plus the usual auxiliary bods.’
‘Right you are,’ Myra said nonchalantly, while Deirdre’s heart quickened at the sound of Shay’s name. She had mixed feelings about seeing him, because it could mean that they would be working non-stop all night, with no time for even a cup of tea or coffee.
‘This cupboard here,’ Myra informed Deirdre, pointing to a glass-fronted cupboard next to the main drug cupboard, ‘houses the sterile emergency tracheostomy set. Everything you could possibly want for a tracheostomy is there, including the local anaesthetic drugs. This here…’ she indicated a compact box with a handle ‘…is what we call the stab tracheostomy set. When you get a patient in with a blocked airway, turning blue—usually a kid with acute epiglottitis—and you don’t want to mess about trying to do a cut-down tracheostomy with a scalpel, you stab the trocar here into the trachea. Of course, not many people can do that with any accuracy—it’s best to get an ENT surgeon. Some anaesthetists are pretty g
ood at it. This saves the lives of a lot of kids.’
Deirdre nodded. ‘I’ll remember,’ she said.
* * *
As it turned out, Deirdre was not to be disappointed in the two nurses. Her respect for them rose as time went by. A nurse like either of them could save the professional life of many a quaking, dithering junior doctor who came within their orbit. They knew what to do for anything and everything that came in.
At a near running pace, she and Marge began to stock the rooms, putting out everything from latex surgical gloves to plastic endotracheal tubes to replenish stock used during the day.
It was at two o’clock in the morning when the telephone shrilled, causing the three nurses to emerge from various rooms into the corridor like rabbits out of a warren, while Myra headed for the nearest inter-departmental phone.
‘Hello? OR here,’ she said in a loud voice, while the other two waited for the news. ‘Yep…Yep…Yep. We can be ready in five minutes. Give me the name of the patient, Shay. And he’s still in Emergency? Right… Right. Do you want me to contact Chuck Burns, or will you do it? Oh, good…thanks. See you shortly.’
‘What’s up?’ Marge said to Myra, as she stood by the door of a room from which she had emerged.
‘Ruptured appendix for Shay,’ Myra said. ‘We’ll do it in room one. He’s going to do a standard laparotomy incision, seeing as the thing is ruptured. He’s going to contact Chuck. One less thing for us to do, and the senior surgical resident is in Emergency already, and the intern is coming up. Would you like to scrub, Deirdre?’
It wasn’t really a question, more like an order. ‘Er…yes,’ Deirdre said, knowing that she could cope quite well with a standard laparotomy, a central incision into the abdominal cavity. Often, if the appendix had not ruptured, they would make an appendix incision, just a small incision in the right lower part of the abdomen, called McBurney’s point. But since it had ruptured, and the contents of the gut would be leaking out into the abdominal cavity, they needed a much bigger incision in order to have a good look around inside and suction out all the material that had leaked out. In the old days, and sometimes in modern times, peritonitis could result from a ruptured appendix. Death had often resulted in the days before antibiotics. It was something that had to be dealt with immediately.
