At twenty past seven he jolted awake and the room that had last night looked so sensual, such a haven, was just a rather chaotic jumble now and a riot of colour that made him want to close his eyes again, except when he did he could smell the musk and the sex and a scent he couldn’t quite decipher. He opened his eyes and saw what must be a joint lying on her bedside table and he picked it up and smelt it and wondered if that was what had possessed him, if somehow it had permeated his brain and made him act as he had last night?
‘It’s a smudge stick.’ Ruby walked in, determinedly all smiles but absolutely unable to meet his eyes. ‘It’s just sage.’
‘Sage?’
‘You light it…’ She put a mug of coffee into his hands. ‘It’s supposed to clear the room of negative energy…’
Why didn’t he think of that?
‘And these?’ He picked up some tiny little figures, no bigger than her fingernails.
‘They’re my worry dolls,’ Ruby said. ‘You tell them your problems at night and then put them in a little bag under your pillow and they take care of them while you sleep…’
This was so not him.
This hadn’t even been him ten years ago when it had been okay to wake up with a student nurse with a joint by her bedside.
He could hear wind chimes outside her window and they grated on his nerves.
‘What time do you have to be in?’ Ruby asked as he glanced again at his watch.
‘I’m off today. You?’ Cort asked.
‘I’m on a late shift.’ She was grateful of the temporary reprieve, that now she wouldn’t have to face him at work till tomorrow and then she was off for almost a week before she did her stint of nights.
His phone rang then and he looked at it and grimaced.
‘Cort Mason.’ He took a drink of coffee, perhaps sensing that would be all he had for a long time. ‘What do you mean, she’s not coming in?’ He shook his head. ‘No it’s fine to call. What’s the problem?’ He listened for a moment, taking in more coffee. ‘Okay, tell him to leave it. Just put on a saline soak and I’ll be in as soon as I can. Make sure he’s got analgesia.’
‘Okay?’ Ruby checked.
‘I’ve got to go in after all. Jamelia…’ He didn’t elaborate. ‘They need me in.’ He was cursing himself because he just hadn’t been thinking, had not been thinking last night. He just wanted to go home and clear his head, but now he had to go into work.
‘I’d better go.’ Cort grimaced as his phone rang again, because now he’d said he was coming in, he was public property. Ruby felt a bit sorry for whoever was on the end of the line because he was more than a bit crabby as he took the call while at the same time retrieving his discarded, crumpled shirt. ‘I said I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ Cort snapped, and then hung up. ‘I need to get there, but I can’t go in yesterday’s suit.’
‘You can have a shower here,’ she offered. ‘Maybe wear some scrubs.’
She didn’t get it, but it wasn’t her fault. ‘I can’t look as if I’ve been out all night,’ Cort said, because, well, he couldn’t. ‘You know what they’re like.’
‘God, yes.’ Because she did—the whole clique of them, with their noses in everybody’s business—and she could understand why he wouldn’t want them in his, especially if it involved her.
‘I can get you something to wear from Adam’s room,’ Ruby offered, and Cort closed his eyes. God, had it really come to this? But reluctantly he nodded and then headed down the hall to a very cluttered bathroom, brimming with straighteners and make-up and tampons spilling out of a box and beach towels instead of towels. He was too bloody staid and sensible to be doing this.
Ruby had to go back downstairs, because that was where Adam’s room was.
‘Poor Adam.’ Jess grinned as Ruby came out with a black casual shirt that looked the sort of thing a registrar might wear on a Sunday. ‘No wonder he’s always moaning he can’t find his things when he gets back.’
Ruby met Cort in the bedroom, wrapped in a beach towel, and she averted her eyes as he dropped it and pulled on his clothes.
‘Thanks for this,’ he said as he pulled on Adam’s shirt.
‘No problem.’
He picked up his jacket and was obviously wondering what to do with it.
‘You can pick it up later,’ Ruby said, and because she knew he didn’t want that awkward moment where he had to face her later, she added kindly, ‘I’m on a late shift so I won’t be here. I’ll leave it on the porch.’
‘It’s just…’
‘I know.’
She did.
‘It’s not just for me,’ Cort said. ‘I don’t want it to be difficult for you at work—and, believe me, it would be.’
‘It won’t be,’ Ruby said, ‘because no-one will find out.’
He could hear the chatter from the kitchen, the little gaggle he’d have to walk past on the way out, but she must have read his thoughts. ‘It’s just my housemates, they won’t say anything.’
‘Ruby…’
She shook her head, because she didn’t want the big speech or promises that wouldn’t be kept and she really didn’t want to examine last night with him.
In fact, confused as to her own part in this, her own behaviour with him, Ruby didn’t want to examine last night at all.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Get back to being crabby.’
And he’d do that.
He had no choice but to do that, but it would be a hard ask to forget last night.
He went to go, but he couldn’t quite yet.
Couldn’t just leave it at that, as if it had been nothing.
He walked over and took her into his arms and she let him hold her, and she knew he would soon be back to crabby, knew at work he had to ignore her and that was a blessing because she felt as if he had exposed her last night, but it was nice that it ended with a cuddle.
Okay, a kiss, Ruby thought as he searched for her lips.
Why couldn’t he be a bastard? Ruby thought as his lips roamed hers.
Bastards were gone when you woke up, or chatted up your friend on the way out, or ‘borrowed’ twenty dollars for a taxi. Every girl knew that. There was even a coded list on the fridge downstairs, and now that he was kissing her, and so very nicely too, she couldn’t even add him to it.
It really was a lovely kiss that tasted different from last night. It was slow and tender and laced with regret because she’d be back at work this afternoon and so would he and last night wouldn’t have happened.
Except, Ruby realised as he let her go and walked out her bedroom door, it had.
CHAPTER SIX
‘RUBY…’ He did not look up as the nurses did their handover and Sheila did the allocations. He’d deliberately avoided the staffroom as the late staff arrived, but Cort knew there really was no avoiding her. ‘You’re with me in Resus.’
‘Sure,’ came her voice and still he didn’t look up.
Just this awkward first bit to get through, he told himself, but really he knew that for as long as she was there, awkward was how it was going to feel.
Still, no one would notice if he ignored her. He wasn’t exactly known for his small talk, or for flirting with the nurses.
‘Where did you disappear to last night, Cort?’ Siobhan wasted no time in asking. ‘One minute you were there…’
‘I wasn’t aware…’ Ruby found she was holding her breath as Cort stood up and ended Siobhan’s fishing with a very frosty response ‘…I needed to hand you a sick note.’
Sheila’s eyes widened as Cort stalked off. Siobhan’s face reddened and Connor let out a low whistle.
‘Someone got out of the wrong side of bed,’ Connor explained. ‘He’s been like that all morning.’
Or just the wrong bed perhaps, Ruby thought. As the afternoon wore on, crabby was actually a very good description that she’d come up with, because he growled at any member of staff who approached, whether on foot or by phone, although he was very nice to the patients, not
that they had many in.
Resus, to Sheila’s clear annoyance, was quiet. One chest pain came in and Ruby attached him to the monitors and ran off a trace, her hands shaking as Cort came over and she handed over to him.
‘ST elevation…’ Cort spoke to her just as he would any student, pointed out the abnormalities in the tracing and took bloods as an X-ray was performed, but the cardiologists were quiet too, and the patient was soon taken up to the catherisation lab, leaving Ruby just to clean up and then mooch around, checking and double-checking everything.
‘The ward’s ready for Justin.’ Hannah came off the phone and Ruby saw her chance to escape.
‘I’ll take him,’ Ruby offered, because it wasn’t Resus she wanted to avoid now but Cort, who was sitting nearby.
‘Hannah can take him,’ Sheila said. ‘I want you to stay in Resus.’
‘There are no patients, though,’ Ruby pointed out.
‘There will be,’ Sheila said. ‘For now you can check all the equipment.’
‘I just have,’ Ruby said.
‘Double-check,’ Sheila said, ‘and then you can recheck the crash drug trolley.’
It was possibly the longest, most excruciating shift of her life. Sheila was determined that Ruby was not going to get caught up, as she so often managed to, in other things, and Cort watched, while trying not to, and simply couldn’t make her out.
Ruby was competent and certainly not lazy. If anything, she was looking for jobs to do, and she was smiling and happy with all the patients, more than happy to stand and talk to them. He didn’t get why she annoyed Sheila so much.
‘God, it’s quiet,’ Sheila moaned, and Cort looked up, because in Emergency you can think it’s quiet, you can know it’s quiet, you just never ever say that it is—and in response to Sheila’s foolishness the emergency phone shrilled.
‘You’ve jinxed us now.’ He gave a half-smile and calmly picked up the phone, before a leaping Sheila could answer it, but he wasn’t smiling at all when he hung up.
‘House fire. Mum’s out—she’s coming to us with smoke inhalation, they’re going in for the children. Seems that there are two.’
‘Okay.’ Sheila snapped into action, and so too did Cort, calling down the anaesthetist and paediatric team as Sheila allocated her staff. ‘Ruby, come with me and set up for number one, Hannah and Siobhan take number two…’
Mum arrived and though distraught was physically well enough to go to the trolleys, but Ruby could smell smoke as she was rushed past and she could smell it on a firefighter who was brought in too, as well as a paramedic who came and gave them more information as he received it on his radio, before it made it to the emergency phone.
‘They’re out, both in full arrest.’
Happy now? Ruby wanted to say to Sheila as her stomach churned in dread. Is this busy enough for you?
But of course Ruby didn’t say anything. Instead, she did everything she was told and everything she possibly could to save the little girl in front of them. And she would have given anything she could if only it might work.
She watched Cort work and work and work on the child and she stood there when she really wanted to run. She saw her hands shaking so much she actually stabbed herself with a needle and had to discard the drug and put a sticky plaster on as Sheila snatched up a new vial and swiftly pulled up the drug.
She could feel her body soaked with adrenaline, every instinct begging her to flee as, when hope had long since left the building, Cort made the decision to stop.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the whole team then moved and helped work on the other little doll that had been brought in behind her sister.
She was bright red from the carbon monoxide, and absolutely and completely perfect, on the outside at least. Again Ruby just stood there as Siobhan and a horde of people moved her up to ICU, with her little sister forever left behind.
‘I’ll go and speak to the parents,’ Cort said.
‘Dad’s just arrived,’ Hannah said. ‘He’s in with Mum.’
‘Okay.’ Cort’s eyes flicked to Ruby, but he wasn’t that cruel. ‘Hannah, could you come with me?’
‘Ruby,’ Sheila said. ‘Come and help me get Violet ready.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Her parents will want to see her.’
She stared at the curtain and what was behind it.
‘I can’t,’ Ruby said.
‘You need to.’ Sheila was insistent. ‘We still need to look after Violet and her family.’
‘I can’t,’ Ruby said, and it was final. She could not be in the department for even a second longer. She could smell the smoke and hear the mother’s screams, and she wasn’t leaving them short because as a student she was supernumerary anyway and, Ruby realised as she headed to her locker and took her bag, they didn’t need a nurse who couldn’t cope.
‘You can’t just walk out mid-shift,’ Sheila said as Ruby walked back with her bag.
‘I’m sorry, Sheila.’ She just had to get out of there. She wasn’t being a drama queen, she knew Sheila was far too busy to beg or to follow her, and her warning was brusque and firm when it came. ‘Ruby, do you realise what you’re doing?’ Sheila checked.
‘Absolutely,’ Ruby answered. Siobhan had just returned from ICU and actually smirked as Ruby walked past. ‘I’m getting out of the kitchen.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘THAT was too much, Sheila.’ Cort looked at the NUM as Ruby walked out.
‘We can’t choose our patients,’ Sheila responded. ‘I can’t hand-pick what comes through the doors so that it doesn’t upset Ruby Carmichael.’
Cort hesitated, but just for a moment. Her surname was not the point, or the fact he might have slept with a good friend’s little sister last night.
The point was, if he said anything, he’d say way too much, and right now he had a grieving family to deal with.
‘Later,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’
He did.
Perhaps Sunday afternoon wasn’t the best time to do it, especially not with the day that they’d had, but by that time he should have been home hours ago. Cort was seething—not that anyone would really notice, he wasn’t the most sunny person at the best of times, but when his office door closed on Sheila there was no doubting his dark mood.
‘The students are not your concern, Cort.’ Sheila did not want to discuss this.
‘The morale in this place is my concern, though,’ Cort said. ‘I’m a day away from speaking to Doug about it. There’s a student nurse running out in the middle of her shift, and a doctor not turning up because she doesn’t want to be here on her own because she feels the nurses have no respect for her.’
‘It’s not my fault Jamelia can’t cope.’
He looked at Sheila, whom he liked and respected and was the leader of a good team. Yet, as happened at times, the team was splintering. Emergency was the toughest of places to work and in an effort to survive the things they saw, people hardened. Black humour darkened and sometimes it needed reeling in.
‘We’re supposed to be a team.’
‘Really?’ Sheila gave him a wide-eyed look. ‘Since when, Cort? You’ve been hell since you got back from your holidays. You do nothing to be a part of this so-called team. Look at yesterday with Jamelia—you just swanned in and took over…’ Her voice trailed off, because it wasn’t the best of examples. After all, without him the patient wouldn’t have even made it to ICU, so she tried a different tack instead. ‘I don’t see you at any of the staff functions—you didn’t come on the team-building exercise. I’ve worked with you for years and I don’t know anything more about you than I did on the first day we met.’
‘I’m talking about work,’ Cort said. ‘We don’t need to be in every aspect of each other’s lives to function as a team.’
‘Then I’ll try to ensure we function better.’ Sheila spat his chosen word back at him, and Cort knew she was right, knew he was asking more than he was prepared to give.
‘Okay,’ Cort said. ‘Point taken. I am trying to make more of an effort…’ He just hated the touchy-feely stuff, and a day shooting paint balls in a team-building exercise simply wasn’t him. ‘And I’ll work the roster and see if I can shadow Jamelia for a couple of weeks—maybe build up her confidence. What about you?’ Cort said, demanding compromise.
‘Fine,’ Sheila snapped. ‘I’ll have a word, keep an eye open…’ She gave a weary nod. ‘I was actually going to speak to Siobhan anyway. I know how she can come across at times, but her heart is in the right place. I’ll talk to them,’ Sheila offered.
‘Good,’ Cort said, and really he should have left it there, except as he turned, he couldn’t.
‘What about the student?’
‘Ruby.’ Sheila didn’t play games. ‘I think we both know her name.’
Cort chose not to dwell on whatever point Sheila was making. Instead, he tried to act as he always did. ‘As you said, the nursing staff are your concern.’
But weren’t they supposed to be changing how they did things around here? Cort thought as he went to walk out. Hadn’t Sheila demanded that he didn’t act as he always had, that instead he get more involved? For the second time he turned. ‘Maybe you could give her—’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Sheila said, without Cort having the chance to speak, because despite an exchange of words she respected him far too much to make him ask what he possibly shouldn’t. ‘I’ll ring Ruby later—I just hope she’s in the right frame of mind to listen.’
He hoped so too.
He really hoped so, as he walked to his car, which had been parked overnight in the hospital. Cort ached, not just for a bed that was a bit bigger than the small one he’d shared last night but space and a shower and clean socks and underwear and some beans on toast and some lovely silence.
He’d done all he could, Cort told himself, turning on the radio, because silence actually sent his mind back to her.
It was up to her now, Cort insisted.
So why on earth was he indicating to turn left?
Cort Mason - Dr. Delectable Page 5
