A Heart Worth Mending

by Amanda Canham

There it was again. Quieter this time; like the wasp was in the other room, or maybe on the other side of the pillow. It was so dull though, she could easily ignore it.

  She was almost back to sleep when the rocking started. Something warm and firm was rocking her shoulder, sending electrical pulses down her arm and across her chest. The hand was nice; it could stay, if only it would stop the rocking. She was starting to feel sick from the rocking. The rocking and the buzzing were not doing her head any favours.

  ‘Kelli…Kelli…It’s your phone. It’s the hospital. Kelli, you need to answer it.’

  It took a minute to clear through the cobwebs in her mind, but it sounded like Travis. Travis talking to her; touching her in her bed!

  Her eyes flew open beneath the pillow and she stared down at the hand still touching her shoulder.

  She was going to have to emerge from beneath the pillow.

  At least the buzzing had finally subsided.

  Slowly, hesitantly, she twisted her body to face the one lying next to her. She was careful to make no sudden movements, just to make sure her head didn’t implode.

  Her eyes alighted on a navy blue t-shirt with white writing, stretched across a chest broad enough to be Travis’. Bracing herself against both the onslaught of light and the sight of the man in her bed, Kelli lifted the pillow off her head.

  As she suspected, Travis was in her bed. Propped up on one elbow, very sexy stubble developing across his chin, he was certainly a sight she could enjoy waking up to.

  If only she didn’t feel like shit.

  ‘What happened last night?’ she managed to croak out, though she did have to clear her throat a few times. Ugh! Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool.

  ‘You had a bit too much to drink,’ he said. His words were light, but his eyes were wary.

  ‘Why would I—?’ But she broke off as flashes of the night before came back to her - shots, and dancing, and shots, and drinking and more shots. Ugh! No wonder she felt like crap.

  And then she remembered why she’d been drinking. Stupid Travis and his stupid attempts to fix her life. It didn’t need fixing. She was getting by just fine before he’d gone and butted his nose in.

  ‘I’m still mad at you,’ she felt the need to state the obvious, though the intensity of the anger had dimmed significantly since yesterday. Well, it was pretty hard to maintain any sort of intense emotion with this raging hangover.

  And she knew his intentions had been good, no matter how wrong he was.

  ‘Thought you would be,’ he replied with a slight grimace. ‘Do you want me to leave?’

  ‘No,’ she answered after a moment, the answer surprising her as much as him. ‘You can be my whipping boy for a bit longer,’ she finished with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘As long as you want me,’ he assured her, a matching grin beaming down at her, and she found herself suffused in warmth. For an instant all the pain disappeared. Then the headache came crashing down again.

  ‘How did you get here?’ she asked, pushing aside her see-sawing emotions to focus on putting the fragmented pieces of last night back together.

  ‘You rang me.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm,’ he nodded and it looked like he was supressing a chuckle.

  ‘What did I say?’ Kelli asked, a little concerned by his degree of mirth.

  ‘I don’t think you’re ready to hear it,’ he answered, tight-lipped.

  ‘Ugh… that bad?’ Kelli groaned, pulling the pillow back over her head as his laughter came tumbling out.

  Bzzz-bzzz. Bzzz-bzzz.

  The corner of the pillow lifted and Travis poked his head beneath it. ‘It’s the hospital again.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll take it,’ Kelli groaned, ripping the pillow off their heads and throwing it across the room.

  ‘Do you want me to grab you some painkillers?’

  ‘That would be awesome,’ Kelli said as she reached for the phone. ‘They’re in the cabinet above the fridge,’ she told him, sliding the green answer button across the screen. She kept her eyes trained on him as he hopped out of bed, hoping for a glimpse of… damn! He was still in his pants. Considering she was also fully dressed, she could assume they hadn’t gotten up to any funny business last night.

  Lips quirking at the thought, Kelli placed the phone next to her ear and switched into professional mode. ‘Dr Maloney speaking.’

  ‘Hi, Dr Maloney, it’s Jayne from the Emergency Ward. One of your patients has just been admitted this morning. Brianna Waters.’

  It took a moment for Kelli to place the name. Young woman. Severe Narcolepsy. Almost ready for her MWT. ‘Yes. That’s right. Why has she been admitted?’

  ‘She was in a car accident while she was coming down the Toowoomba range in the early hours of this morning. Suspected spinal injuries. It took them several hours to cut her out.’

  Kelli’s stomach dropped out at the words.

  ‘Is she stable?’

  ‘She’s drifting in and out of consciousness, but her stats have been solid for a good hour now. It’s actually why Dr Manning has asked me to call you. He can’t find any explanation for why she won’t maintain consciousness. He was wondering if you might have some ideas.’

  ‘I…’ Kelli paused, thinking, but without any of the pertinent details, she was at a loss. ‘I need more to go on than that. Can you email me the notes?’

  ‘Of course, Dr—’

  ‘Actually, no. Scrap that. I’ll come in.’ It would be better if she was there, if she could look at the results in person, make an assessment of Brianna herself.

  ‘There’s no need for you to come in. We’ll take good care—’

  ‘Yes, there is. I’ll be in shortly,’ Kelli cut her off and was about to hang up when another thought occurred to her. ‘Was there anyone else hurt in this accident?’

  ‘The driver of the other car is deceased, and two passengers are critical. Only the driver of Brianna’s car came out relatively unscathed.’

  Oh, those poor people! And the families—what they must be going through, waking up to this news. Hopefully she’d be able to figure out what was wrong with Brianna quick smart.

  ‘Can you order a tox-screen for me? I need to know if she’s been on her meds.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Kelli ended the call as Travis returned with a couple of Nurofen, water, and a glass of fizzing orange.

  ‘Berocca. You legend.’ Kelli downed the Nurofen in one gulp before draining the orange liquid. ‘Sorry to kick you out and all, but I’ve got to get up to the hospital. My narcoleptic patient was in a crash last night.’

  ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘Suspected spinal injuries. There was a fatality, and two others are critical.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but Kelli, what do you think you can do? She doesn’t need a sleep doctor. She needs to rest, and allow the other specialists to deal with her, surely?’

  ‘She keeps drifting in and out of consciousness. The registrar can’t figure out what’s wrong with her.’ Kelli brushed his protests aside as she moved towards her wardrobe to grab some new clothes. ‘It might be related to her narcolepsy somehow. I know it’s clutching at straws, but…’

  ‘You’ve got to do what you can.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Kelli nodded, glad she had his support in this.

  ‘You do know you need to have a shower first, right?’ he said, eyeing the clothes already in her hand. ‘And don’t forget to wash your hair.’

  ‘I need to get up there ASAP,’ she protested.

  ‘Smell your hair.’

  Kelli grabbed a dank curl and held it up to her nose. ‘Eeugh!’ The smell of stale vomit and alcohol invaded her senses, and her stomach began to roll. How totally and utterly embarrassing! And to think he slept next to her all night whilst she smelt like…Ugh.

  ‘I did say you had too much to drink,’ he shrugged, and Kelli could tell by his tightly-pursed lips he was struggling
not to laugh at her.

  ‘You didn’t mention I was throwing up like a newly-graduated Schoolie on their first big night out. Okay, fine, so I’ll shower first and then go,’ she sighed, leaving the clothes in the cupboard. ‘But I still need you to leave.’

  ‘Nope. We’ll go once you’re done,’ Travis corrected.

  ‘No. I don’t need to be babied.’

  ‘I’m not babying you. Your blood alcohol content is too high to drive. The last thing we need is for you to have an accident, too.’

  There was no arguing with that kind of reasoning, so Kelli gave in with good grace and headed to her en suite.

  At least he’d accepted the necessity of her trip without trying to stall her further. And he was being rather sweet about her hangover. He seemed to know instinctively she wasn’t up to talking, and stayed silent most of the trip up the motorway, aside from pulling into the McDonalds drive-through to get her a bacon and egg roll - her favourite hangover cure.

  Once they’d reached St Mary’s Hospital, Kelli pointed to the Emergency entrance drop-off point. ‘I can get out here.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll park and come and meet you.’

  Kelli paused in her mad dash to leave the car to throw a quizzical look his way. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’ he demanded, pulling up outside of Emergency, ‘if this really is a sleep-related problem, surely two heads are better than one?’

  ‘How will it look if we turn up together on a Sunday morning? You don’t really want more rumours, do you?’

  ‘I don’t care about the rumours, Kelli.’

  ‘Really?’

  He was trying to tell her something, this was significant, somehow…but she was too damn hung-over to figure it out.

  ‘Look, she’s my patient, not yours. If it looks like I’ve called you in for the consult, what’s that going to say about me?’

  ‘I don’t care how it looks,’ he insisted. ‘I want to come in with you.’

  ‘You might not care anymore, but I do. People will either assume we are together, or that I don’t know how to do my job and I’ve called you in to help. I don’t want to deal with the fall-out from either scenario,’ she said as she undid her seatbelt and reached for her bag.

  His face dropped at her words, and Kelli tried to ignore the hurt that flickered into his eyes. ‘Yeah. All right.’ Travis stared straight ahead, his hands tightly wrapped around the wheel. ‘I’ll leave you to it then.’

  Hand hovering in the door handle, Kelli hesitated, not sure how to make things right. Not even sure she wanted to make things right. She was so confused after the maelstrom of emotions she’d been through in the last twenty-four hours. But was this really how she wanted to leave it?

  ‘Thanks for the…ah…the ride.’ It sounded lame, but Kelli wasn’t sure how else to continue.

  ‘No worries,’ he answered, but his eyes remained straight ahead, refusing to look at her.

  ‘I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ she said, slipping from the car.

  Her feet had barely left the pavement before he was off, zooming back into the inner city streets and out of her life.

  She should be happy. It’s what she wanted.

  But she wasn’t.

  Ugh! She didn’t have time for this. She needed to sort out her patient.

  Pushing the angst away, she slipped inside the busy ED waiting room. She manoeuvred past the screaming child and the swaying drunk, past the man quietly moaning in the corner, and the couple loudly complaining to each other about just how long they’d been waiting. Grabbing hold of the hospital I.D. card she had swinging around her neck, she let herself through the waiting room and into the ward itself.

  Though a little less chaotic, the ward was still uber busy, with nurses flitting about in a mad rush, dispensing medications, moving portable monitoring equipment from bed to bed as needed. Not wanting to interrupt the ordered flow, Kelli ducked behind the nurses’ station and checked the electronic board for Brianna’s bed allocation.

  ‘Hey, Kelli, I didn’t think you were on call this weekend.’

  Kelli glanced away from the screen to talk to Carmen, one of the more senior nurses in the ED.

  ‘I’m not. But one of my patients was admitted following a car accident this morning. Jeremy’s having a bit of trouble figuring out what’s wrong with her, so I figured I’d come in and try to help.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right. Nasty prang that was, such a terrible accident. Two fatalities and the third isn’t looking good.’

  ‘Two, now? There was only one when I spoke to Jayne before.’

  ‘I know. One of the passengers just coded.’

  ‘Do they know the cause yet?’

  ‘Driver fell asleep at the wheel. Their car crossed over to the other side of the road, apparently. They’ve finally got everyone out, thank goodness.’

  ‘One good thing, I guess,’ Kelli shrugged, though the casual gesture did nothing to disguise her grave concerns for the victims.

  ‘Who was your patient?’

  ‘Brianna Waters,’ Kelli answered.

  ‘I think she’s back from x-ray. She’s in bed…ten,’ Carmen said after a quick glance at the bed chart.

  ‘Thanks.’ Kelli moved away from the nurse and down the curtained hallway until she found the cubicle for bed ten. Poking her head around the curtain, Kelli saw Brianna, all pale and wax-like lying flat on her back, padded cervical collar around her neck. Her eyes were closed, but she was still breathing. By her side was a young man with dishevelled hair, his clothing scuffed and a little torn, with bruises on his knuckles suggesting he’d been in the vehicle as well. He didn’t stir when Kelli entered, just kept his head bowed, resting on the hand he had clenched around Brianna’s.

  Confident she wasn’t interrupting a consult or an examination, Kelli slipped inside the cubicle and picked up the woman’s chart, flicking through it. The curtain behind her rustled and she turned to find Jeremy, the English-born ED registrar walking in, x-ray films in hand.

  ‘Hi, Jeremy,’ Kelli greeted the doctor.

  ‘Kelli, hi,’ he answered. ‘Jayne mentioned you’d pop by.’

  ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘Do you want to come out and have a look at these?’ He held up the x-ray films.

  ‘Sure,’ she followed him back out past the curtain. He placed the films on the back-lit board and switched the light on. Kelli examined each slide, running her fingers near the outline of the spine as she followed it down, looking for cracks. ‘There’s a lot of swelling,’ she finally said, standing back from the board to talk to the doctor.

  ‘Yeah. We won’t be able to make a full assessment until it goes down. At this stage there doesn’t look to be any damage to the C or T levels of her spine, but just here,’ he pointed to a place on one of the films, ‘it looks like a possible hairline fracture along L4. The swelling could be masking the severity of the break.’

  ‘I guess it’s a waiting game, then.’

  ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t explain the total muscle weakness she’s experiencing when she’s conscious.’

  ‘That could be cataplexy.’

  ‘But I thought cataplexy reduced dramatically once a patient was medicated.’

  ‘If they take their medication.’

  ‘You think she hasn’t been?’

  ‘Have you got the results of the toxicology screen?’

  ‘Not yet, but I’m also concerned about the frequency with which she’s slipping into unconsciousness. There’s no evidence of swelling in her brain.’

  ‘It’s possible she’s sleeping. The trauma of the event may be affecting her narcolepsy. She’s already predisposed to frequent napping in stressful situations.’

  ‘Hmm…maybe. I hadn’t thought of that. But it makes sense.’

  ‘Here are the results from the tox screen, Jeremy,’ Carmen whisked down the corridor, handing the print out to him on her way through.

  Kelli leaned in next to him to look at the results. Brianna’s b
lood was clear of alcohol and a whole range of illicit drugs, which was one positive. And she did have Modafinil in her system, although the levels were a little on the low side. So, she’d at least been taking her meds up to a certain point.

  ‘Has she been given Modafinil since she was admitted?’

  ‘I don’t recall ordering any…’ They ducked back into the cubicle, Kelli reaching the chart first. Flicking through to the medications administration page she ran her hand down the list of pain meds. Once she reached the bottom she looked up from the page and into Jeremy’s eyes, her expression telling him all he needed to know.

  ‘I’ll get some now,’ Jeremy told her, and rushed out of the cubicle.

  ‘Is that you, Dr Maloney?’

  Kelli looked towards the bed. Brianna’s eyes had fluttered open and were straining to look towards her without moving her head.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. How are you feeling?’ Kelli moved to the side of the bed.

  ‘I’ve had better days,’ Brianna attempted to smile, but she couldn’t make it last. ‘What did the x-ray show?’ Fear was written all across her face.

  Kelli glanced down at the films in her hands. ‘You’ve got a lot of swelling around the spine.’

  ‘Is that all it is?’ The young woman asked.

  ‘There’s a possible fracture to your L4.’

  At her words, Brianna began to weep, and the boy next to her tightened his hand around hers.

  ‘Does that mean she’s going to be paralysed?’ he asked, clearly holding back tears himself.

  ‘We won’t know until the swelling goes down,’ Kelli answered.

  ‘Why did this happen to me? I was being so good. It’s not fair,’ the girl moaned, and Kelli was scared she was going to start twisting her head. Kelli felt sick to the stomach watching her. She was such a young girl to have to deal with so much.

  ‘I took all my meds and I’ve been feeling so good. I haven’t been behind the wheel since you told me not to. You said the chance of me falling asleep at the wheel and having an accident was too high. But I had an accident anyway, and I wasn’t even driving!’

  ‘I was driving,’ the young man whispered, shifting in the seat so he could see Kelli whilst still gripping Brianna’s hand, as though something precious would disappear if he let go. ‘It’s my fault. It’s my fault Brendan’s dead. It’s my fault Bri’s here, my fault if she’s par—’