‘There you are!’ Tom was cut off by Lou crying out down the corridor as her heels clicked along the linoleum. She skirted Tom and Ash, went directly to Frankie and grabbed her hand. A look passed between the two girls and Frankie gave a slight shake of her head.
‘Need to borrow your slave for a while boys,’ Lou said, starting back up the corridor with Frankie in tow behind her. They left Tom feeling frustrated, and with the crazy urge to run after them and demand that Frankie tell him what was upsetting her.
‘Boss?’ Ash shook him out of his trance as he watched the girls rush away. ‘We’re going to be late.’
‘Right, yeah,’ he said distractedly. ‘Sorry, mate, let’s go. And stop calling me fucking boss.’
Chapter 7
Cardiac arrests and perverts
I’m not exactly a fan of working nights, but I don’t usually find it too hard to sleep in the day so I’m better off than most. However, the next couple of days after that phone call from A&E were stressful to say the least, and sleep had not been too high on my priority list. I’d managed to sort the problem for the time being, and luckily the staff in A&E were discreet, so it was unlikely to hit the hospital grapevine any time soon.
It was two in the morning, and I was on my fourth coffee when my crash bleep went off.
‘Thank God,’ I muttered when I looked at the display. I sighed with relief as I abandoned the notes I was writing in, waved bye to the nurses at the ward desk, and sprinted down the corridor.
Now this is going to sound weird, and maybe even a little callous as it’s someone’s life in the balance, but I love cardiac arrests on nights. Nights in general are a bit of a lonely affair when you’re on the wards. As you’re covering tons of patients you spend your time running all over the hospital fighting fires. An arrest is a nice change of pace. You have to stop whatever boring ward work you’re doing, and you get a run to stretch you legs.
When you arrive there’s generally no grey areas or deliberation; it’s black or white, alive or dead. The whole thing is run strictly to protocol and I like the way everyone moves together as a team, so well drilled that it almost feels like a dance as people move around performing each of their tasks.
The team is made up of the medical registrar, the anesthetist, a core trainee, an F1 (first year doctor) and a couple of nurses from the ward. After trailing round the wards on lonely missions it’s nice to be part of a team and they are usually a pretty fun bunch.
The bonus on this night was that Lou had swapped into the shift, so she was the medical registrar on call. I suspected she had done this to keep an eye on me after the goings on of the last couple of days. We hadn’t discussed it, but it was the kind of thing Lou would do, and I loved her for it.
The anaesthetist, who was running out of the intensive care unit, joined me on my sprint. Of course, with my stellar luck recently, it would have to be Tom’s girlfriend Cassie.
I had spoken to her a couple of times during cardioversion lists on CCU and she was nice, damn her. She should by rights be a screaming bitch, but she even made me feel slightly guilty about my murderous millionaires’ shortbread fantasies. She was just so bloody friendly, and outrageously beautiful, with her long blonde hair and willowy, tall figure. I’m sure I looked like a small troll running along beside her with my two strides to every one of hers.
‘Hi, Frankie,’ she chirped, barely out of breath whilst I was panting and on the verge of collapse. ‘Good night? Busy?’
‘So so,’ I managed to gasp, then forced myself to smile in her direction. After all, it wasn’t her fault that she was going out with someone whose neck I frequently wanted to lick. If anythingIshould be apologizing toher. ‘Gower ward have Quality Street,’ I informed her, feeling generous, ‘and I think there are donuts in CCU.’
The whereabouts of snacks on nights is often a closely guarded secret, so it was a real gesture of friendship to be sharing them.
‘Gosh, thanks,’ she said gratefully. ‘I’m Hank Marvin.’
Our destination was the cardiothoracic surgical ward, and by the time I wheezed my way in behind Cassie, Lou had already taken control of the situation.
‘Stand clear,’ she said loudly, and everyone moved back, taking the oxygen mask and equipment with them. The automated defibrillator delivered the shock and then told us to resume CPR. The nurse that had been doing the chest compressions was red-faced and looked spent, so I moved to take her place.
During the second round of chest compressions I heard Lou greet someone, and I looked up to be confronted by a large man peering down my scrub top. I was standing on a stool and was therefore leaning over the patient to administer CPR. This meant that my scrub top was gaping at the front, and from his position the guy probably had a clear view of my bra.
To be honest, I wasn’t surprised; I recognized him as a cardiothoracic surgeon called Mr Fletcher. He was in his early forties, tall and broad with graying dark hair. He always wore a cheeky expression and multiple gold chains round his neck. In a testosterone-fuelled world full of big egos, this guy took both to a new level.
I had met him before, at the bi-monthly joint cardiology and cardiothoracic meetings. You could almost cut the atmosphere in the conference room at those meetings with a knife. The surgeons and the cardiologists sat at opposite ends of the table and glared daggers at each other.
This rivalry is common in other hospitals, but had gotten out of hand here after an unfortunate incident ten years ago, when one of the cardiologists slept with a cardiothoracic surgeon’s wife. Apparently the surgeon had punched him right in the middle of the meeting.
Since then there had been no more actual physical violence, but there was certainly tension. In one meeting I even heard one of the surgeons call Tom a pussy because he thought they should treat a patient conservatively. Tom didn’t blink an eye.
‘Stand back, princess,’ Mr Fletcher said smoothly, smiling at me, and I noticed that he was wearing sterile gloves. I looked to Lou and she nodded. As soon as I had stepped back from the table there was a flurry of activity as the chest was covered in iodine and the surgeon undid the clips and wire, cracking it open. Internal paddles were produced and he shocked the heart directly. I stood open-mouthed as he calmly watched the heart in question resume a normal rhythm.
He winked at me as he signalled his team to move, and in a surprisingly short amount of time the patient and all the accompanying equipment had been swept out on its way to the intensive care unit. The gorgeous Cassie led the transfer, so at least I would be spared further evidence that she was a thoroughly nice person.
As they all left the ward Lou grabbed my arm.
‘Yowzers!’ she exclaimed. ‘My lady parts just spasmed in a good way.’
