by Jax Burrows
It was his turn to cook, which would be a welcome distraction from thinking about Lexi and Riordan’s warning not to get involved with her. He hadn’t been able to concentrate properly all day and had given himself a stern talking to when he nearly missed an important symptom in a patient that would have affected his aftercare. As it was, he spotted it in time and swore to himself that he wouldn’t let it happen again. His patients were his priority, his private life had no right to intrude on his performance as a doctor.
He chopped leeks and carrots and filled the bottom of a casserole dish with the vegetables before laying chicken fillets on the top and, after placing the lid on the dish, shoving it into the oven to cook slowly. He showered quickly and set the small table for two. As an after-thought he added a red rose that he had cut from the gardens on his way in; Catalina would appreciate the gesture, he was sure. She had mentioned that roses were her favourite flower.
He was just opening the bottle of wine when the doorbell rang.
‘Hi, Catalina, come in.’ She came into the flat and he took the bottle she offered him. ‘Vermouth?’
‘Yes, it is an aperitif.’
‘Would you rather have this than the wine?’
‘Oh no, the wine is perfect, and you have already opened it. Are we having chicken? It smells delicious.’
‘Have a seat.’ He gestured to the old three-seater sofa and, when she was settled, gave her a glass of sparkling white wine. He then settled himself next to her and held up his glass. ‘Cheers.’
‘Salud.’
‘So, what kind of day have you had?’
‘The same kind we always have, Casey, you know A&E.’
‘True. Okay, let’s talk about something else.’
‘How was the Family fun day? Did you all have fun?’
He wondered how much to tell her. She knew that he had only just found out about his daughter, but he hadn’t mentioned his feelings about it.
‘All except Lexi who has a water phobia. I just wish she’d told me before.’
‘Oh, the poor girl. Did something bad happen to her in childhood? That is where most phobias have their beginning.’
The lady knew her stuff. ‘Got it in one. She was pushed into a swimming pool and held down as a youngster and she never got over the fear.’
‘That is so sad. If only people realised the damage they did to others when they behave in such a foolish way.’
‘Yes.’ He wanted to offload, tell Catalina his fears and ask for her sage advice, but he also wanted his dinner guest to enjoy her evening and not be burdened with his problems. He didn’t really know her well enough to divulge private information about Lexi.
Catalina sipped her wine thoughtfully and said nothing. He got up and wandered into the kitchen to check on the chicken.
*
Lexi had been on a late and was looking forward to getting home to bed. Something, however, was niggling at the back of her mind. Casey had made love to her with a passion equal to the night they had met. It had been glorious, and she had felt sure that the dynamics of the relationship would change. Casey, however, had carried on as normal. Nothing had been said, no plans to go out as a couple, or to talk about the way they felt about each other.
If Casey thought they would have sex whenever they felt like it and then carry on as if nothing had happened, he needed to think again. She didn’t normally indulge in casual sex; he was the only man she had slept with on the first night. Yes, she had thought they could have another night of hot sex with no strings, but now, in the cold light of day, or evening, she realised how irresponsible that was. There would have to be boundaries, for Jade’s sake as well as their own.
She decided to have it out with him. The doctors’ accommodation wasn’t far from A&E, she would call in on the way home and they’d have a serious talk. He had never invited her there, saying there was nothing much to look at. It was small, basic, and Casey only really used it for sleeping in. Well, maybe she could help him make it more comfortable. Perhaps all it needed was a woman’s touch.
*
‘This is beautiful, Casey, you’ve gone to a lot of trouble.’ Catalina gestured to the rose and smiled. She was a beautiful woman with dark brown eyes, black hair and olive complexion. She was exactly the type of woman Riordan said he went for and his brother was right. Catalina was comfortable in her own skin, happy with who she was. Her gaze was direct and, as he looked into her eyes across the table, he realised that, with a bit of encouragement on his part, they could become lovers.
Is that what he wanted? Should he take his brother’s advice and see Jade on his own? The sex between himself and Lexi was wonderful, but was sex enough?
For dessert he had bought a lemon meringue pie and left it warming in the oven whilst they ate the chicken.
‘I love this sweet, how clever of you to know it’s my favourite.’
‘That’s one of my superpowers, didn’t I tell you?’
Catalina laughed and tossed her hair over her shoulder. ‘You are a very accomplished man, Casey.’
They were flirting and Casey was enjoying it. He felt irritated when the doorbell rang. He would send them away pronto so he could continue his evening with the lovely Catalina.
‘Casey, hi. I’ve just finished my shift and I wondered if we could have a talk.’
Caught completely off guard, Casey stood staring at Lexi with his mouth open. He felt guilty suddenly although he had done nothing wrong.
‘It’s not very convenient at the moment. Could we have a talk another day?’
Lexi frowned and tried to peer over his shoulder to see who was in the flat. He heard the sound of a chair being scraped on the floor. Catalina had finished eating.
‘Okay. Come in.’ He stood back and let her walk in.
She stopped when she saw Catalina. ‘Oh, I didn’t know you had company.’
‘This is Dr Martinez, she lives next door. This is Lexi Grainger.’
Catalina came forward with her hand out. ‘Very pleased to meet you Lexi.’ Catalina was holding the rose and twirling it in her fingers. She saw Lexi watching. ‘It is beautiful, no? Casey cut it from the garden.’
‘Did he?’ Lexi’s voice was like ice and Casey cringed.
‘Catalina was kind enough to cook a meal for me when I first moved in and I was returning the compliment.’ Why was he explaining? It was a perfectly innocent meal and he was a free agent.
‘Right.’ Lexi stood rigidly in the middle of the room, her face like thunder. Suddenly, Casey felt angry.
‘You should have rung me, Lexi.’
‘Yes, I see that I should have.’
‘I’ll go, shall I?’ asked Catalina, ‘I can see that you two have a lot to talk about.’
‘No, you won’t, Lexi will. We’ll talk at a time mutually convenient to both of us, okay?’
Lexi turned to look him in the eye. He was dismayed to see tears in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry I interrupted your meal.’ Then she turned and opened the front door.
‘Lexi, wait…’
She left without turning around.
‘Blast!’
‘I think that was a bit harsh, Casey, don’t you? It’s obvious the girl has strong feelings for you.’
‘Would you like some more wine?’ Maybe he could salvage something of the good mood of earlier.
‘No thank you. I think I should go. I have an early start in the morning. Thank you, though for a beautiful meal.’ She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Then she left.
He was alone with half a bottle of wine and the washing up, wondering what had just happened.
Chapter Seventeen
Lexi was on night duty. When she arrived for her first shift, she walked into the middle of a heated discussion between Raj, Theresa and Sarala.
‘Just you wait,’ Raj was saying as he typed up a patient’s notes on the computer, ‘it’s the worst night of the year. Soon A&E will be full of kids, spewing their guts up from eating too many sweets.’
Sarala caught sight of Lexi and drew her into the conversation. ‘Lex, which side of the fence are you on? Halloween - the work of the devil or good harmless fun?’
Lexi smiled and shrugged. ‘I’ll let you know at the end of the shift.’
They all laughed at that and Lexi joined in. But the truth was, she was worried. Casey, who wasn’t on duty that evening, had asked her permission to take Jade, Jess and Craig, Trick or Treating. He was also taking Tom as Riordan was on call. This, as far as Jade was concerned, was the pièce de résistance. She loved having her father to herself without her mother around, but to have her beloved cousin at her beck and call too caused her daughter to dissolve into giggles of happiness. Jade was simply in heaven with the chance to dress up and eat sweets.
Lexi had longed to refuse but, how could she? She couldn’t break her daughter’s heart by playing the heavy and making her miss out on all the fun, but she was worried sick. She hated Halloween, and she was still smarting from the way Casey had treated her when she interrupted his meal with Dr Martinez. He had made it clear that he didn’t want her there. She couldn’t help wondering if there was something going on, but she pushed it to the back of her mind to focus on the night ahead.
The previous year she and Jess had taken Jade and Craig Trick or Treating; just around the local streets. She’d held Jade tightly in her arms the whole time and refused to put her down. It was a real eye-opener. All the idiots in Leytonsfield, and it appeared that night that there was a hell of a lot of them, were out on the streets dressed in costumes meant to cause the most disgust and revulsion to the local citizens. She had never seen the point in trying to scare people for the fun of it. Life was scary enough in her opinion, why try to make it worse than it already was?
She vowed she would never take Jade again, even though Craig loved every minute of it and even Jess argued that it wasn’t as bad as she was making out, but she hadn’t reckoned on Casey being part of their lives the following year. He, of course, loved Halloween.
They had been having lunch in the canteen at the hospital when he had asked her about it, and Riordan had joined them briefly, listening in to the conversation.
‘It’ll be a fun evening, Lexi, the kids will love it and what harm can it do? The four of us always went Trick or Treating. Our parents took us when we were little and then we went alone as we got older. Riordan was in charge and he never let the rest of us get out of line, did you Bro?’
Riordan shook his head. ‘Absolutely, and we got tons of sweets. One of the perks of being the offspring of the local GP.’
She had tried to argue with them ‘Trick or Treat’ isn’t the same as Halloween anyway. That’s come over from America. It’s just an excuse for the confectioners to make lots of money.’
‘I never realised you were so cynical,’ said Casey grinning.
‘Lexi’s right though,’ said Riordan who always considered people’s arguments seriously. ‘The original festival was an old Celtic one called Samhain which means the end of summer. Then the Christians took it over and it became All Hallows Eve, a precursor to All Saints Day which is a time to remember the family’s departed.’
‘I don’t care what we call it, I love it and the kids will too.’
‘Well, be careful, okay? It seems to me that it’s just an excuse for normally sensible, thoughtful people to dress up and scare the living daylights out of each other.’
Casey had laughed at that and, when they all stood up to leave, he had taken her in his arms and kissed her on the nose. And in front of everyone too. And then he had ordered her out of his flat because he was entertaining another woman. Talk about mixed messages.
That was the end of that conversation. Casey had decided and there was nothing she could do but put it to the back of her mind, stop worrying about Jade and get on with being a nurse.
As Lexi checked the cubicles, getting everything ready for the onslaught, Raj was still on his soapbox.
‘What other day of the year do we think it is fine to let kids stuff themselves stupid on sugar, run around in the dark behaving like hooligans, banging on people’s doors and accept sweets from strangers? It’s everything we tell our kids not to do.’
‘You really have a downer on Halloween, don’t you?’ asked Sarala.
‘Yes, I do, with good reason, you’ll see.’
Lexi secretly agreed with everything Raj said, and it wasn’t long before he was proved right.
Their first serious case of the night was a young boy who had run into the road without looking and been swiped by a car. Luckily, he only sustained cuts and bruises as the driver was going extremely slowly, on the look-out for stray kids, he said. But the child’s mother was in hysterics, threatening to take the man to court for dangerous driving and shouting about her precious boy.
‘Then why didn’t she keep an eye on her child?’ Raj said in disgust.
The driver, an elderly man with a kind expression and a gentle voice, was clearly in shock. Although he was not strictly a patient, Lexi was concerned for him and made him a cup of sweet tea. This inflamed the mother even further and she screamed at him that the police were going to lock him up. The police, calm and in control as always, managed to pacify the mother and the driver went home in a taxi, too shaken up to drive.
Raj raised his eyebrows but declined to comment. He had plenty to say, however, when another boy was admitted as he had, apparently, eaten sweets containing sugar instead of his usual diabetic sugar-free ones. Another boy had dared him to do it.
Raj was furious but professional and kept his opinions to himself, concentrating instead on treating the boy expertly to prevent him slipping into a hypoglycaemic coma. He stabilized him and had him admitted to the ward whilst the sister in charge spoke to his parents.
After that, there was a steady stream of children being brought in with stomach ache, vomiting and diarrhoea.
‘Okay, okay,’ Sarala said as Raj looked ready to explode with frustration, ‘you win, Halloween sucks.’
She was right. Their A&E department was overrun with overexcited kids in fright wigs. Lexi’s thoughts were never far from Jade and how safe she really was in Casey’s care. He could behave like an overgrown schoolboy sometimes and, only the fact that sensible Jess was with them, stopped her from constantly ringing to make sure everything was okay.
After one little girl of about the same age as Jade arrived with her mother, Lexi’s nerves unravelled and she texted Casey to, casually, ask how things were going.
He replied by texting a selfie of them all in their costumes, with huge grins on their faces. Lexi had to admit, Jade looked sweet dressed up like a black cat, complete with whiskers and tail. Craig wore a skeleton costume and Tom was dressed like Harry Potter.
Jess looked happy as did Casey. Why was she always the party-pooper, unable to join in the fun? Was it fear or because she was knee-deep in the negative reality of Halloween. The A&E department resembled a war zone and there would be a lot of clearing up to do before her shift was over.
She texted back. ‘Great! Have fun all of you and be careful.’ Then she turned back to the fray.
Raj was still pontificating, and Lexi and Sarala smiled at each other in sympathy.
‘What you all need to be on the alert for,’ he said, looking more tense than she had ever seen him, ‘is a child with something other than sugar overload. Appendicitis or gastritis. You never know, there may actually be a kid suffering from a genuine medical condition amongst that lot and I’d hate for us to miss it.’
‘Yes, boss,’ said Sarala making a face and rolling her eyes behind his back.
The sound of a child crying alerted them to the arrival of another patient. A little girl of about eight had been bitten by a dog and blood streamed down her arm. She was crying whilst her father shouted blue murder and t
hreatened to kill someone.
‘What happened?’ Raj asked as they lifted the child onto a trolley and began to examine her arm.
‘That bastard set his dog on the kids. They weren’t doing anything wrong. He said he got sick of them banging on his door. It’s Trick or Treat for God’s sake, what does the old fool think happens at Trick or Treat?’
The man was purple in the face and his daughter looked terrified. Whether from the blood loss or her father’s expression, Lexi wasn’t sure.
After considerable effort, they calmed the father down and he eventually turned his attention to his daughter. He kissed her on the forehead and said, ‘Never mind, sweetheart, Daddy will make sure the police arrest the nasty man.’
The wound was superficial, and father and daughter left the hospital soon after. As they left, they heard the little girl say to her father, ‘Can we get some more treats now?’
‘Yes, darling, of course,’ replied her father.
Raj raised his eyes to heaven and muttered, ‘Unbelievable.’
*
The stream of child casualties lessened to the odd one or two, then dried up altogether. They were left with the usual broken bones, cuts and bruises and heart attacks that were the mainstay of a night shift in A&E.
Lexi was just starting to relax, hoping the worst of the night was over, when, at the stroke of midnight, the doors to the A&E department burst open while the red phone in Resus started ringing to alert them to a code red. It seemed to Lexi, that the gates of hell had been flung wide and unleashed all the horrors in creation on the unsuspecting staff.
People streamed in, a lot of them covered in blood. They were holding on to each other to keep themselves upright; people were crying, a few were arguing, pushing and shoving, some were making threats and the majority were extremely drunk. The noise level rose in direct relation to the stress Lexi was feeling and her heart rate increased in line with the noise. A fight broke out as two men threatened to kill each other. Chairs were overturned, and trolleys and equipment went flying against the wall.
