Ruby had walked along the beach, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, looking at the waves that kept rolling in. A little child was gone and there was no point regretting her decision to flee from Emergency because absolutely she could not have gone in to her, could not have laid a little child out.
And if that made her a bad nurse, then she was one.
If this meant she had failed, so be it.
And now she’d head home to her friends who loved her and who would try to talk her out of it, who would do everything they could to encourage her to go back, which they might have succeeded in doing had she told them everything.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jess looked up as Ruby walked in. ‘I thought you were on a late.’
‘I had to come home.’ Ruby saw them all carefree and smiling and hated what her work would do to their evening. ‘There was a house fire…’
‘I heard about it on the radio,’ Ellie groaned. ‘I never even thought… Did they come in to you? Oh, Ruby…’ Ellie stood, but Ruby didn’t want to hear it and shrugged off Ellie’s words and her waiting hug and just headed to her room.
‘Leave her,’ Ruby heard Tilly say, and was grateful for it as she went to her room. The scarf was still on her door, but she knew Tilly would ignore it and felt the indentation of the bed a little while later when Tilly came in and sat down.
‘I don’t want to go back,’ Ruby said.
‘I know.’ Tilly did her best to be understanding. ‘Remember when I helped deliver that stillbirth?’ Tilly said gently. ‘I knew the mum was coming in for induction the next day and I honestly didn’t know if I was up to it, but you told me the mum would be better off for having me there.’
‘It’s not the same,’ Ruby said. ‘Because you’re good at what you do, whereas all I did today was stab myself with a needle when I was pulling up the drugs and yesterday, when I sat with the relatives, I couldn’t say even one single word. I’m useless…’
‘You’ll be a wonderful psych nurse.’
‘I’ll only be a wonderful psych nurse so long as the patients don’t go collapsing or fainting or getting sick.’ She closed her eyes. ‘And psych patients die too… Just leave me, Tilly,’ Ruby said.
‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘Aren’t you all going to the beach for a barbecue?’
‘I don’t want to leave you—I’m going to stay home.’
‘Please don’t,’ Ruby begged. ‘I just want to be on my own.’
She heard her friends leaving and lay there quietly. Her room was warm and she pushed the window wide open then pulled the drape and stripped down to her pants. She turned on the fan and lay on the bed and tried to work out what to do, if there even was something she could do now that she’d burnt all her bridges with Sheila.
She heard the doorbell and ignored it, just not up to speaking to anyone.
She turned on her soothing music and lay there but it didn’t soothe. Then there was a knock at her door.
‘Tilly, please.’ She just wanted to be alone with her thoughts. ‘Go out with them…’ Her voice trailed off, as standing there was a man who shouldn’t be back in her bedroom again. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘God knows,’ Cort said, because she was lying on top of her bed in just her knickers with a fan blowing. She’d been crying, her eyelids were swollen, her nose and lips too, and there was a jumble of used tissues by the bed. But there were two other things he noticed as well and he couldn’t have this conversation with them there. ‘Don’t you cover up when your friends come in?’
‘My friends don’t come in when there’s a scarf on the door,’ Ruby said with her eyes closed again. ‘And, no, Tilly, probably sees a hundred boobs a day in her job.’
‘Please,’ he said, and she opened her eyes and with a sigh leant over to a pile of clutter beside the bed and pulled out a very little top, but at least it covered her. She lay back and closed her eyes again and Cort opened the little purple sack on her bedside and tipped out her worry dolls.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Checking on them,’ Cort said. ‘And they’re looking a lot more frazzled than they did last time I was here.’
She almost smiled.
‘I’m a happy person usually,’ she said. ‘At least I was till I worked there. I’m not going back.’
‘Up to you,’ he said.
‘Anyway—I’m not your responsibility.’
And given twelve hours or so ago they’d been in this bed together, somehow he felt that she was.
‘I spoke to Sheila.’
‘Oh, that’s really going to stop the gossip.’
‘Not just about you,’ Cort said. ‘Emergency is a difficult place to work and sometimes the atmosphere and the people can turn nasty. It’s how they deal with it,’ Cort explained. ‘You see so much, you get hard, you get tough, and sometimes it just gets like that. People forget to support one another and they just need a little bit of nudging. It can be a very nice place. We’re a great team usually,’ Cort said.
‘I don’t care if they’re all singing and smiling and holding hands,’ Ruby said, ‘I’m not going back. It’s not just the staff, it’s the patients and the relatives…’ She closed her eyes and tried to explain it. ‘It’s the violence of the place.’
‘It’s not exactly a walk in the park on the psych ward,’ Cort pointed out. ‘If you’re talking violence…’
‘They’re sick, though,’ Ruby flared in passionate response. ‘In Emergency they’re just plain drunk or angry.’
‘You’re a good nurse.’
‘No, I’m not.’ She hated being placated. How did he know she was a good nurse? He’d seen her hold one arm. He didn’t have much to base it on.
‘You’re going to be a great psych nurse, but part of that means you need good general training.’
She knew he was right.
‘And that also means that you can be appalled and devastated by what happened at work this afternoon. That was a shift from hell.’
Finally she looked at him.
‘Are you upset?’
He just sat there, because he tried so hard not to examine it, he really tried to just get on with the job, but she made him do so and finally he answered.
‘I’m gutted,’ Cort said, realising just how much he was, and he closed his eyes for a moment and blew out a breath. ‘I guarantee everyone on that shift today is.’ He heard her snort a disbelieving sigh, and even if he didn’t go on paint-ball excursions, he always supported his team, everyone, at any time, even here in her bedroom.
‘Everyone hurt today—whether or not they show it as you might expect. The thing is, Ruby, you’ll be gone from there in a couple of weeks, but they are there, day in, day out, doing their very best not to burn out.’
Her phone rang and Ruby frowned at it.
‘It’s work.’ She swallowed then answered it, and opened her mouth to speak and then listened, said goodbye and hung up.
‘That was Sheila. She wants me back in for my early tomorrow, and she says if I do that she won’t say anything about what happened today.’ Ruby gave a tight shrug. ‘She sounds like my mother.’
To Cort it didn’t sound like Sheila, because she always had plenty to say on everything, but he chose to keep quiet, because at least Ruby seemed to be thinking about going back.
‘I shouldn’t have run out.’ She closed her eyes and all she could see was Violet, just a sweet little angel, and she wanted to weep at the horror, to fold up into a ball and sob, but she wouldn’t. She couldn‘t while he was there.
‘Just go,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not leaving you on your own.’
‘I’m not your problem. Why would you want to help me?’
‘You were very helpful to me last night.’ He said it so awkwardly that she actually laughed.
‘You make it sound like I cured your erectile dysfunction or something.’
‘Er, no.’
‘Helpful?’
She wouldn’t drop it, she really was the strangest person he had ever met. ‘What do you mean, I was helpful?’
‘Nice, then,’ Cort said. ‘When I didn’t know I even needed someone to be. So now it’s my turn to be nice to you. Come on, I’ll take you out for dinner.’
‘I don’t want dinner.’
‘Okay, you sit with your tissues and I’ll fetch you a bottle of wine, shall I? How about a tragic movie? I’ll just sit in the lounge and read a magazine till your friends get home, but I’m not leaving you on your own. Is there anything to eat in this place?’
‘Okay, okay!’ Ruby said.
He looked at the floor that seemed to be her wardrobe, and after a huff and a puff she stood and went to the real one and selected a skirt that Cort thought a little too short and a top not much bigger than the bra thing she was wearing, then she did something he wasn’t expecting.
She turned and gave him a smile, a big, bright, Ruby smile, and he didn’t return it because he knew it was false.
‘You don’t go that fast to happy.’
‘I do,’ Ruby said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t mope about.’
‘I don’t need entertaining,’ came Cort’s response.
He took her to a place near his flat, which was a suburb further than hers from the hospital, and, yes, he hoped no one from work would see them and, yes, it felt strange to be out with a woman who wasn’t his wife.
‘Just water for me.’ She beamed when the waiter handed him the wine menu. ‘You go ahead, though.’
‘Just water, thanks,’ Cort said, because he needed all his wits about him tonight. As he stared at the menu he told himself he was being stupid. He’d been out with friends, with his sister, with colleagues, but that had been different. Then he looked over his menu to where she sat and knew why. He hadn’t been out in a very long time with a woman he’d made love to and he was clearly rubbish at one-night stands because as much as she insisted she wasn’t, she felt a whole lot like his problem.
He just couldn’t read her.
He knew she was bleeding inside yet those brown eyes smiled up at the waiter.
‘Mushroom tortellini, and I’ll have some herb bread, please.’
‘I’ll have a steak.’ Cort glanced through the cuts available.
‘Actually,’ Ruby said, ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ Cort said. He glanced up and was about to select his choice and add ‘Rare’ to the waiter, but in an entirely one-off gesture, because there would be no more dinners, because this wouldn’t happen again, because, after all, she hadn’t even wanted to come, he revised his choice. ‘I’ll have the tortellini, too, thanks.’
He waited for her to interrupt, to say no, go ahead, it didn’t bother her, he should have what he wanted, but she didn’t, and as he handed back the menu she smiled again.
‘Thanks.’
‘What do your friends say about it?’
‘Well, we don’t go out for dinner much, but if they bring home lamb curry or something I just tend to…’
‘I meant about today.’ He would not let her divert him and he saw the tensing of her jaw, felt her reluctance to talk about it. ‘What did they say when you told them about today?’
‘That it’s understandable—I mean, anyone would be upset about a child…’
‘About you running off?’ Only then did it dawn on him that she was being deliberately evasive. ‘You haven’t told them?’ Cort frowned as she blushed. ‘I thought you were close.’
‘We are!’ Ruby leapt to the defence of her housemates. They were together in everything, there for each other through thick and thin… Except Cort was right, she hadn’t told anyone how she was feeling. She lifted her eyes and looked at the one person that she had told and couldn’t fathom why she’d chosen to reveal it to him.
‘I hate it, Cort,’ Ruby admitted. ‘I feel sick walking to work.’ She waited for his reaction, for his eyebrows to rise, for him to frown or dismiss her, but he just sat there, his lack of reaction somehow encouraging. ‘I spend the whole time I’m there dreading that buzzer going off or the emergency phone ringing… I was going to run off yesterday before we spoke to the relatives…’
‘But you didn’t.’ Cort tried to lift her up.
‘I wish I had.’ Ruby was adamant. ‘I wish I had, because then I wouldn’t have gone back, then I’d never have seen what I did today.’
‘What do you think your friends would say?’ Cort asked. ‘If they knew just how much you’re struggling right now?’
‘They’d be devastated,’ Ruby said, and that was why she felt she couldn’t do it to them. ‘I don’t want to burden them, I don’t want…’ She didn’t want to talk about it and luckily the waiter came with their tortellini and did the cheese and pepper thing, and by the time he’d gone, thankfully for Ruby, Cort had changed the subject.
‘Are you Adam’s sister?’
Ruby nodded and saw his slight grimace. ‘He bought the house and I guess I’m the landlady.’ She grinned at the thought. ‘I rent it out for him, drive his car now and then, he comes back once in a while and…’ Her voice trailed off. She’d been about to make a light-hearted comment about how every time Adam returned and didn’t notice Jess he broke her heart all over again, but that would be betraying a confidence, a sort of in-house secret, and she looked over at the man who had taken her out for dinner on the worst of nights, and wondered how he made it so very easy to reveal things she normally never would.
‘What’s he doing now?’
‘He’s doing aid work.’
‘Still for Operation New Faces?’
Ruby nodded. ‘He’s in South America, I think. Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything to him about what happened.’ She smiled at his shuttered features. ‘Anyway, you’ve treated me very well. We’ve been out for dinner and everything…’ There was almost a smile now on his lips. ‘He’s hardly an angel himself.’
‘Still,’ Cort said, and then looked at her lovely red hair and remembered something else. ‘I worked once with your dad.’
She winced for him.
‘Before I moved to Melbourne I did a surgical rotation. I worked with him in plastics—he was Chief.’
‘He’s Chief at home too.’
It was a shame he didn’t have a steak because he’d have loved to stick his knife into it, because he could suddenly well remember the great Gregory Carmichael, holding court in the theatre, throwing instruments if a nurse was a beat too late in anticipating his needs. He remembered too how he had regaled his audience as he’d worked with the dramas in his home life, the wild teenager who answered back and did everything, it would seem, any normal teenager would, just not a teenager of Gregory’s, because, as he told his colleagues, he was once and for all going to sort her out.
‘What does he say about you doing nursing?’
‘He doesn’t like it, especially that I want to go into mental health. I used to work in a little shop on the beach, selling New-Age stuff…’
‘He’d have hated that.’
‘Not really,’ Ruby said. ‘They had no problem with me working at the shop, they gave me an allowance as well.’
‘It’s nice that they can.’
‘It’s all or nothing with them. I had to follow in his grand footsteps or have a little job while I waited for a suitable Mr Right. A psychiatric nurse isn’t something he wants me doing.’
‘Are you talking?’
‘Of course,’ Ruby said. ‘We didn’t fall out or anything. We talk, just not about what I do.’
‘So I’m guessing you can’t discuss with him the problems you’re having.’
She gave a tight shake of her head.
‘What about your mum?’
‘She’ll just say I should have listened to my father in the first place.’
‘What if I keep an eye out for you.’
‘How?’ Ruby said, because she knew it was impossible. ‘Can you imagine Siobhan if she gets so much as a sniff…?’
‘Why don’t you tell your friends?’ Cort suggested. ‘And you’ve got Sheila having a think… Don’t give it up, Ruby.’
They didn’t talk about it again, not till his car was approaching the turn for Hill Street.
‘Drive me down to the beach.’
‘It’s time to go home, Ruby.’
‘It’s two hundred metres,’ Ruby said, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen. He was a senior registrar and didn’t park his car by the beach like some newly licensed teenager, so he took her home instead.
‘Are you going to come in?’
‘No,’ Cort said, and his face was the same but had she looked at his hands she would have seen that they were clenched around the wheel.
‘Please,’ Ruby said, because, well, she wanted him to. ‘I’m not going into work in these trousers again,’ Cort said, because he knew she wasn’t asking him in for coffee. He thought of her room and the little slice of heaven they’d shared there last night, and then he told the truth, because aside from work, aside from the age difference, a relationship between them was the last thing he could consider now. There was so much hurt, so much blackness in his soul, he couldn’t darken such a lovely young thing with it. ‘We’d never work.’ He turned to her.
‘I know,’ Ruby said, because, well, they couldn’t. ‘You’re going to stop for a burger on the way home, aren’t you?’
‘Probably.’ Still he looked at her. ‘Are you going to go in tomorrow?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ruby admitted.
‘Try talking to your friends,’ Cort said. ‘You don’t always have to be the happy one.’ He saw her rapid blink. ‘If they’re real friends—’
‘They are,’ she interrupted.
‘Then you can turn to them. Go on in,’ he said.
‘Don’t I get a kiss?’
‘Ruby, please…’
‘One kiss,’ Ruby said. ‘Just one…’ And she made him smile. Not a big grin, but there was lightness where there had been none. ‘Then you can go back to ignoring me.’
‘I’m ignoring you now,’ Cort said, and went to turn on the engine.
‘Just a kiss on the cheek.’ Ruby’s hand stopped him. ‘End it as friends.’
He leant over and went to give her a peck, just to shut her up perhaps, but his lips had less control than he did and they lingered there. He felt her skin and her breath and she felt his, felt the press of his mouth on her cheek and then his lips part and he kissed her skin, traced her cheek with his mouth and traced it again. He held her hair and then removed his mouth and kissed her other cheek till she was trembling inside and her mouth was searching his cheek. If her friends were kneeling up on the sofa, watching, they might wonder why they were licking cheeks like two cats, but it was their kiss and their magic and she wanted his mouth so badly that torture was bliss.
Cort Mason - Dr. Delectable Page 6
