The night shift, p.25
The Night Shift, page 25
Because he knew from experience how people operated. They started out perfectly happy with what he could offer but they usually wanted something more from him in the end. What if Violet was the same? What if he was unable to keep her satisfied? What if she tired of him as others had? Or, perhaps worse, what if she only wanted him for sex? Was being good in bed enough of a draw to keep her? It seemed crazy to even think it, given the rapid pace of this relationship, but he already knew he’d be devastated to lose her. She had been right when she unintentionally skewered him with her earlier comment – he did crave emotional security. And maybe it was because of his parents. It would make sense. The fractured instability of his childhood had resulted in a need for absolute and long-lasting commitment, a slow and steady progression to a relationship built on rock-solid foundations. Of course, it was sod’s law that he’d fallen head over heels for an individual who didn’t need that – someone entirely at ease with their independence who would be just as happy alone as attached.
He made his way along the corridor in the opposite direction to the woman who had only moments ago made him feel like some sort of legendary love-god, and by the time he got to the HDU to meet Karen and the rest of the team he’d lost the swagger and reverted back to his default position of slightly worried scenario-builder instead.
Violet
Marvin was sat up in bed chewing on a Chomp bar from his selection box when Violet made it up to ward twenty. He grimaced as she stuck her head around his door.
‘This is my third of the day,’ he said guiltily.
‘Third chocolate bar or third selection box?’ she said, perching on the end of his bed.
‘Third bar.’ He nodded agreeably. ‘That’s made it sound positively frugal. Please thank your lovely parents for all of this.’ He gestured to the stack of confectionery piled around him. ‘Although I do wonder whether my getting diabetes is going to aid my recovery.’
‘I think the idea was that you shared them out with the ward staff,’ said Violet, laughing.
‘We have! This is what’s left over.’ He passed her a handful of Curly Wurlys and Freddos. ‘Why don’t you take these? Share them with lover boy.’
She beamed as she pocketed the chocolate. ‘Maybe I will. Anyway, you should probably be trying to get some sleep. It’s ten o’clock and I’m only here for a super-quick hello. I’ve got to go and see my real patients in a minute, but I wanted to make sure you were still improving.’
‘The surgeons tell me I’m doing wonderfully,’ he said proudly. ‘A Christmas miracle, they said.’
‘Did they now?’
‘Yup! Drain’s out. Christ, that stings a bit, doesn’t it? Pulling a plastic tube out of your newly healing insides.’
‘Yeah, I can’t really comment,’ said Violet. ‘Never had one myself and I haven’t even done my surgical attachment yet so haven’t had to remove one from anyone else either.’
‘Well, when you do, you make sure you’re nice to those patients,’ he said. ‘And by nice, I mean offer them some decent pain relief, like a kilo of heroin. Or a blow to the head. Although, to be fair, I’ve already had one of those.’ He smiled ruefully.
‘Have you spoken to the police again today?’ Violet stood, reluctant to leave so soon after arriving but knowing she had to get on.
Marvin shook his head. ‘No. They’ve not been back,’ he said. ‘They suggested that I get in touch if I remember anything else.’
‘And do you?’ Her voice was cautious.
‘Not sure.’ Marvin pulled the blanket across his knees and looked shifty. ‘Maybe. We’ll see.’
She leaned across to kiss him goodbye. ‘Swelling’s gone down,’ she said. ‘Few days’ time and you’ll be back to your gorgeous self.’
‘Hmm. Speaking of gorgeous, how are things going with Gus? Do I even need to ask? Judging from the look on your face I take it things are still perfect in paradise?’
She couldn’t contain her grin, it spread from ear to ear. ‘I think I might be in love with him, Marv,’ she said. ‘That’s a crazy thing to say, isn’t it, but honestly, it’s like I never want to be apart from him. I wake up and I think of him. I go to sleep thinking of him. I’m a mess.’
‘But you’re a happy mess,’ said Marvin wisely. ‘And that’s the most glorious thing in the world.’
Barney Snell was arriving on the ward as she left and he held the door open for her. She hadn’t seen him since he’d walked in on her and Gus the night before but she decided to brazen it out.
‘Thanks,’ she said curtly as she ducked under his arm, catching a waft of some expensive aftershave and deodorant combination.
‘No problem,’ he said, clearly amused. ‘Happy to provide assistance to a colleague, in whatever form that assistance may take.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Her tone might have been a little belligerent but she was feeling defensive.
‘Nothing,’ he said, sounding wounded. ‘Just that you struggled to find the exit last time you were here.’
She nodded, checking his face for signs that he was making fun of her, alluding in some way to the compromising position he’d caught her in with Gus. But thankfully he seemed to be genuine, and she smiled.
‘I did,’ she said. ‘Those door-release switches always confuse me. It seems you spend five minutes pressing them only to find out it’s the light switch and that the doors are open anyway, or you try and barge your way through like I did, find the doors are locked, and nearly break your face!’
‘Well, no harm done to that face of yours, thankfully,’ he said. ‘It’s nice when colleagues can get along. Help each other out.’ For a second she could have sworn there was a glint of something challenging in his expression, but the moment was fleeting and he carried on smiling. ‘Hope the rest of your shift goes well.’
‘You too,’ she said as she strode off down the main corridor, feeling his eyes on her until she rounded the corner to the next ward.
It was approaching eleven o’clock by the time she made it to ward ten but she was glad to see that Mr Zeller was still awake, his eye mask perched jauntily on the bedside cabinet beside a black and white photograph of a woman in her twenties who was laughing into the camera.
‘My Magda,’ he said proudly, following Violet’s line of sight. ‘Thought I might as well make myself at home seeing as I’ve been here all bloody week.’
‘She looks lovely,’ said Violet, meaning it. The woman in the photo was evidently brimming with happiness. Her laugh was relaxed and full of joy, aimed no doubt at the person taking the photo, who Violet suspected had been Mr Zeller himself. She pulled up a chair and drew the curtain behind her so as not to disturb the patient in the neighbouring bed.
‘Wondered where you’d got to yesterday,’ said Mr Zeller, his eyes accusative. ‘Thought you might have jetted off on holiday or something.’
She snorted. ‘Chance would be a fine thing, Mr Zeller,’ she said. ‘I’ve still got another night shift after this one and then from New Year’s Eve I’ll probably just try and sleep. Two days to catch up and back to work by Thursday.
‘Well, I suppose it’s what you signed up for when you decided to do this job.’ He scrutinised her carefully from beneath his creased brow. ‘Still, bit tough being stuck here over Christmas with all of us old crumblies when you could be gallivanting away at some boozy rave-party.’
‘I’m not really a boozy, rave-party kind of girl,’ said Violet. ‘So don’t trouble yourself on my account.’
He nodded, unsurprised, and they spoke for a few moments about his wife, Magda. He explained that the photo had been taken when they first met, back in Poland, and Violet noticed his expression softening the longer he talked.
‘You clearly loved her a great deal,’ she said when he’d finished telling her about their emigrating to England more than forty years ago. A move that had been entirely Magda’s decision.
Mr Zeller nodded. ‘She was everything to me,’ he said simply. ‘I’d have followed her to the ends of the earth. And now she’s gone.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t really see the point anymore.’
A little alarm bell rang in the back of Violet’s brain and she wondered whether she should go and get a depression screening questionnaire to assess his suicide risk, but thought that this might ruin the moment. She decided to stick to her usual tactic of direct questions. ‘Do you mean you can’t see the point in living anymore?’ she said. ‘Do you think you might try and kill yourself?’
‘There it is – the bedside manner we know and love.’ He barked a short laugh and shook his head. ‘No, Doctor. I haven’t got the energy to do anything dramatic, don’t worry. Anyway, I expect the good Lord has already got things sorted out on that score, if my scan result is anything to go by.’ He inclined his head towards the pile of notes resting in her lap. ‘Sounds like I don’t need to be worrying about waiting for a royal telegram on my hundredth birthday.’
She opened the file. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I think you might be right. Has someone been to have a chat with you about the scan then?’
‘Briefly,’ he said. ‘But I wanted to talk to you, so I told them to bugger off.’
She laughed. ‘And there’s the polite patient behaviour we know and love.’
‘Touché,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘We’re a pair, you and I.’
They sat for a while talking through the options but it was clear that Mr Zeller was not interested in further surgery and Violet suggested that it might be worth having a discussion with the palliative care team.
‘Even if you do decide to go ahead with an operation, it would be useful to know your options if the surgery doesn’t result in a complete cure,’ Violet said. ‘And they’re all very nice in palliative care. Nothing like me and my dreadful communication skills. I’ll ask one of them to drop by maybe?’ She jotted it down in his notes. ‘Dr Grainger,’ she said, thinking of a colleague she’d had some contact with about a previous patient. Both Anjali and Gus had rated her too. ‘She’s just come from an attachment at St Martin’s Hospice. I think you’d like her.’
He nodded wearily. ‘We’ll see.’
‘And I do think you should talk to the surgeons as well,’ she said, watching as his face pursed up in disapproval. ‘I can see you’re deeply suspicious of them but they know what they’re doing. Saved my friend’s life just a few days ago.’ She nodded as he raised his eyebrows. ‘Really,’ she said. ‘They’ll be able to give you a much better idea than me as to what can and can’t be done with this tumour of yours.’
‘I’m not speaking to that idiot who came round a few nights ago,’ he said, folding his arms across his chest.
‘Mr Snell?’ said Violet. ‘He’s not so bad. He did come back and talk you through the procedure a second time after I asked him to. And I wasn’t very polite when I spoke to him.’
‘That makes two of us.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ She smiled. ‘No, I’m sure it will be one of the other surgeons who’ll come and talk to you. Maybe after they’ve had their big meeting with the oncologists and radiologists.’
He nodded and reached across for his lavender pillow spray, emptying half the contents of the bottle onto his bedding with a vigorous pump action before settling his head back, a contented expression on his face. Violet took this as her cue to leave but as she stood, he reached out a hand to hold hers in an awkward half-shake.
‘You alright, Mr Zeller?’ she said, looking at him closely. The soft folds of yellowing skin crinkled around his eyes as he nodded. He gave her hand the briefest of squeezes before letting go.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
Violet made her way back to the nurses’ station and had a chat with Cindy about a couple of the other patients. They got to the end of the list and Cindy gave her an apologetic look. ‘Mrs Chambers,’ she said.
‘Breathless again?’ Violet panicked that she’d missed something yesterday.
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Venflon?’
Cindy nodded. ‘Blocked this evening. And – she’s asked specifically for you to re-site the next one. Otherwise I’d have got Dr Jacobs to do it earlier. Sorry.’
‘No problem,’ said Violet, feeling quite smug about being selected. She also wanted to catch up with how Mrs Chambers was doing, given that when she’d seen her yesterday to check her breathing, they’d had a chat about her plans for a cruise around the Caribbean as soon as she was discharged from hospital. Violet had even stopped to look at the brochures which was most out of character, but she’d enjoyed talking to her more than she’d expected.
On her way to get the bits she needed for the cannulation she stopped outside the wandering Mrs Jenson’s door, opening it a fraction to see her daughter-in-law sat reading in the lamplight.
‘Evening,’ she whispered, hoping not to disturb the slumbers of her patient who was as usual snoring like a freight train.
The daughter-in-law looked up from her book and nodded. ‘Hello, Dr Winters,’ she said at normal volume. ‘Don’t worry,’ she inclined her head towards the bed, ‘you won’t wake her now. I’m going to head off as soon as I’ve finished this chapter, get back home for some sleep.’
‘Sounds like things are going well,’ said Violet. ‘Chest infection’s almost completely resolved. I hear they’re hoping to discharge her tomorrow.’
The woman smiled and patted her mother-in-law on the hand fondly. ‘It’ll be lovely to have to her home in time for New Year,’ she said as Mrs Jenson senior paused in her snoring, muttered something about swimming to Durdle Door and settled back into her pillows with a loud trumpeting fart.
‘The place will certainly be quieter without her,’ said Violet and the woman laughed.
‘I know she gave you a difficult time those first few nights, didn’t she?’
‘She was just confused,’ said Violet. ‘My gran has dementia. I know what it’s like.’ She realised as she spoke that she had never previously volunteered this information to a patient, let alone one of their relatives. Mrs Jenson’s daughter-in-law was looking at her with a new kind of shared understanding.
‘It’s not easy,’ she said. ‘But I know Maureen’s still in there somewhere. We see glimpses now and again that make it all worthwhile.
‘Same with my gran,’ said Violet. ‘She’s a real character. It’ll take more than dementia to knock that out of her.’ They shared a smile of solidarity. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to get on,’ she said. ‘If I don’t see you again, have a lovely New Year.’
The woman nodded. ‘You too, Dr Winters. And thanks for everything. Cindy told us it was your idea, me and Jim being able to stay here with Maureen. It’s made a big difference to us.’ She stood from her chair and crossed the room, surprising Violet by wrapping her into a hug. ‘Thank you,’ she said again.
Later, making her way down to help Anjali down on medical admissions Violet thought about the parallels between her patients and her own grandmother. Many of the people she’d seen this week had been confused, elderly, frail. All of them were reliant on institutional care to keep them alive and well, whether it be a hospital or a nursing home. And all of them were in some way dependent on the staff working in those institutions. Her trainers squeaked across the linoleum of the freshly polished corridor, her bleep nudging against her hip, reminding her of its continued presence, and she wondered about the many health workers employed up and down the country, those people working the night shift as she was now, quietly going about their business of caring. She realised that she was now an established member of this vast army, she was doing her bit. A small but essential cog in a machine dedicated to saving and improving the lives of the population it served. The thought gave her a quiet satisfaction and she smiled as she passed through the doors of medical admissions, greeting a tired-looking Anjali who was sat hunched over a set of notes at the admissions desk.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’m all yours. Who do you want me to see?’
Gus
Gus bleeped Violet and they arranged to meet in the mess at the end of the shift. He’d been busy through the small hours of the morning with the girl who’d been brought in with sepsis a few nights previously – some of her blood results were troubling and there had been lengthy conversation with the consultant on call about whether she needed transferring back to intensive care. Alongside this there had been a crash bleep that turned out to not be a cardiac arrest, just a patient who had fallen and a healthcare assistant who had panicked. This had at least given him an opportunity to see Violet confidently siting a new cannula in the arm of the woman who, despite her heart not having actually stopped, was looking decidedly worse for wear and in need of immediate intravenous fluids.
‘Nice work, Dr Winters,’ he’d said as Violet taped the tubing into place. ‘Looks perfect.’
‘Why, thank you, Dr Jovic,’ She had given him a meaningful stare. ‘You’re not looking too shabby yourself.’
Anjali had also been at the crash call and had raised her eyes briefly from the patient’s notes at this exchange. He wondered whether she’d later asked her foundation doctor whether anything was going on between the two of them. The thought of Violet discussing him in any capacity was both thrilling and terrifying. What would she say? ‘Oh, it’s nothing much, just a bit of casual sex to get me through the week of nights’, or ‘Well, Anjali, I can confirm that after spending less than a week in his company, Gus Jovic is the best thing that ever happened to me and I’m madly in love with him. In fact, I’m planning on shagging his brains out at the next available opportunity.’ He had to concede that the second option was improbable. Violet was never the most effusive of people and even if she did usually say the first thing that popped into her head, it was unlikely to be that.
