Dr. Dark and Far-Too Delicious (3 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

T
HERE
WAS
,
J
ASMINE
decided, one huge advantage to being related to two fabulously strong, independent women.

It sort of forced you to be fabulously strong and independent yourself, even when you didn’t particularly feel it.

The hospital squeezed her in for that month’s orientation day and after eight hours of fire drills, uniform fittings, occupational health and safety lectures and having her picture taken for her lanyard, she was officially on the accident and emergency roster. Lisa had, as promised, rung the crèche and told them Simon was a priority, due to the shortage of regular staff in Emergency.

So, just over a week later at seven o’clock on a Wednesday morning, two kilograms lighter thanks to a new diet, and with her hair freshly cut, Jasmine dropped her son off for his first day of crèche.

‘Are you sure he’s yours?’ Shona, the childcare worker grinned as Jasmine handed him over. It was a reaction she got whenever anyone saw her son, even the midwives had teased her in the maternity ward. Simon was so blond and long and skinny that Jasmine felt as if she’d borrowed someone else’s baby at times.

Until he started to cry, until he held out his arms to Jasmine the moment that he realised he was being left.

Yep, Jasmine thought, giving him a final cuddle, he might look exactly like Penny but, unlike his aunt, he was as soft as butter—just like his mum.

‘Just go,’ Shona said when she saw that Simon’s mum looked as if she was about to start crying too. ‘You’re five minutes away and we’ll call if you’re needed, but he really will be fine.’

And so at seven-twenty, a bit red-nosed and glassy-eyed, Jasmine stood by the board and waited for handover to start.

She never even got to hear it.

‘I’ve decided to pair you with Vanessa,’ Lisa told her. ‘For the next month you’ll do the same shifts, and, as far as we can manage, you’ll work alongside her. I’ve put the two of you in Resus this morning so don’t worry about handover. It’s empty for now so I’ll get Vanessa to show you around properly while it’s quiet—it won’t stay that way for long.’

‘Sure,’ Jasmine said, in many ways happy to be thrown straight in at the deep end, rather than spending time worrying about it. And Lisa didn’t have much choice. There wasn’t much time for handholding—experienced staff were thin on the ground this morning, and even though she hadn’t nursed in a year, her qualifications and experience were impressive and Lisa needed her other experienced nurses out in the cubicles to guide the agency staff they had been sent to help with the patient ratio shortfalls this morning.

Vanessa was lovely.

She had been working at the hospital for three years, she told Jasmine, and while it was empty, she gave her a more thorough tour of the resuscitation area as they checked the oxygen and suction and that everything was stocked. She also gave her a little bit of gossip along the way.

‘There’s Mr Dean.’ Vanessa pulled a little face. ‘He likes things done his way and it takes a little while to work that out, but once you do he’s fine,’ she explained as they checked and double-checked the equipment. ‘Rex and Helena are the other consultants.’ Jasmine found she was holding her breath more than a little as Vanessa worked through the list of consultants and registrars and a few nurses and gave titbits of gossip here and there.

‘Penny Masters, Senior Reg.’ Vanessa rolled her eyes. ‘Eats lemons for breakfast, so don’t take anything personally. She snaps and snarls at everyone and jumps in uninvited,’ Vanessa said, ‘but you have to hand it to her, she does get the job done. And then there’s Jed.’ Jasmine realised that she was still holding her breath, waiting to hear about him.

‘He’s great to work with too, a bit brusque, keeps himself to himself.’ Funny, Jasmine thought, he hadn’t seemed anything other than friendly when she had met him, but, still, she didn’t dwell on it. They soon had their first patients coming through and were alerted to expect a patient who had fallen from scaffolding. He had arm fractures but, given the height from which he had fallen, there was the potential for some serious internal injuries, despite the patient being fully conscious. Resus was prepared and Jasmine felt her shoulders tense as Penny walked in, their eyes meeting for just a brief second as Penny tied on a large plastic apron and put on protective glasses and gloves.

‘This is Jasmine,’ Vanessa happily introduced her. ‘The new clinical nurse specialist.’

‘What do we know about the patient?’ was Penny’s tart response.

Which set the tone.

The patient was whizzed in. He was young, in pain and called Cory, and Penny shouted orders as he was moved carefully over onto the trolley on the spinal board. He was covered in plaster dust. It was in his hair, on his clothes and in his eyes, and it blew everywhere as they tried to cut his clothes off. Despite Cory’s arms being splinted, he started to thrash about on the trolley

‘Just stay nice and still, Cory.’ Jasmine reassured the patient as Penny thoroughly examined him—listening to his chest and palpating his abdomen, demanding his observations even before he was fully attached to the equipment and then ordering some strong analgesia for him.

‘My eyes...’ Cory begged, even when the pain medication started to hit, and Penny checked them again.

‘Can you lavage his eyes?’ Penny said, and Jasmine warmed a litre of saline to a tepid temperature and gently washed them out as Penny spoke to the young man.

‘Right,’ Penny said to her young patient. ‘We’re going to get some X-rays and CTs, but so far it would seem you’ve been very lucky.’

‘Lucky?’ Cory checked.

‘She means compared to how it might have been,’ Jasmine said as she continued to lavage his eyes. ‘You fell from quite a height and, judging by the fact you’ve got two broken wrists, well, it looks like as if you managed to turn and put out your hands to save yourself,’ Jasmine explained. ‘Which probably doesn’t feel very lucky right now.

‘How does that eye feel?’ She wiped his right eye with gauze and Cory blinked a few times.

‘Better.’

‘How’s the pain now?’

‘A bit better.’

‘Need any help?’ Jasmine looked up at the sound of Jed’s voice. He smelt of morning, all fresh and brisk and ready to help, but Penny shook her head.

‘I’ve got this.’ She glanced over to another patient being wheeled in. ‘He might need your help, though.’

She’d forgotten this about Emergency—you didn’t get a ten-minute break to catch your breath and tidy up, and more often than not it was straight into the next one. As Vanessa, along with Penny, dealt with X-rays and getting Cory ready for CT, Jasmine found herself working alone with Jed on his patient, with Lisa popping in and out.

‘It’s her first day!’ Lisa warned Jed as she opened some equipment while Jasmine connected the patient to the monitors as the paramedics gave the handover.

‘No problem,’ Jed said, introducing himself to the elderly man and listening to his chest as Jasmine attached him to monitors and ran off a twelve-lead ECG. The man was in acute LVF, meaning his heart was beating ineffectively, which meant that there was a build-up of fluid in his lungs that was literally drowning him. Jim’s skin was dark blue and felt cold and clammy and he was blowing white frothy bubbles out through his lips with every laboured breath.

‘You’re going to feel much better soon, sir,’ Jed said. The paramedics had already inserted an IV and as Jed ordered morphine and diuretics, Jasmine was already pulling up the drugs, but when she got a little lost on the trolley he pointed them out without the tutting and eye-rolls Penny had administered.

‘Can you ring for a portable chest X-ray?’ Jed asked. The radiographer would have just got back to her department as Jasmine went to summon her again.

‘What’s the number?’ Jasmine asked, but then found it for herself on the phone pad.

Jed worked in a completely different manner from Penny. He was much calmer and far more polite with his requests and was patient when Jasmine couldn’t find the catheter pack he asked for—he simply went and got one for himself. He apologised too when he asked the weary night radiographer to hold on for just a moment as he inserted a catheter. But, yes, Jasmine noticed, Vanessa was right—he was detached with the staff and nothing like the man she had mildly joked with at her interview or walked alongside on the beach.

But, like Penny, he got the job done.

Jasmine spoke reassuringly to Jim all the time and with oxygen on, a massive dose of diuretics and the calming effect of the morphine their patient’s oxygen sats were slowly climbing and his skin was becoming pink. The terrified grip on Jasmine’s hand loosened.

Lisa was as good as her word and popped in and out. Insisting she was done with her ovaries, she put on a lead gown and shooed them out for a moment and they stepped outside for the X-ray.

Strained was the silence and reluctantly almost, as if he was forcing himself to be polite, Jed turned his face towards her as they waited for the all-clear to go back inside. ‘Enjoying your first day?’

‘Actually, yes!’ She was surprised at the enthusiasm in her answer as she’d been dreading starting work and leaving Simon, and worried that her scrambled brain wasn’t up to a demanding job. Yet, less than an hour into her first shift, Jasmine was realising how much she’d missed it, how much she had actually loved her work.

‘Told you it wouldn’t take long.’

‘Yes, well, I’m only two patients in.’ She frowned as he looked up, not into her eyes but at her hair. ‘The hairdresser cut too much off.’

‘No, no.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s white.’

‘Oh.’ She shook it and a little puff of plaster dust blew into the air. ‘Plaster dust.’ She shook it some more, moaning at how she always ended up messy, and he sort of changed his smile to a stern nod as the red light flashed and then the radiographer called that they could go back inside.

‘You’re looking better.’ Jasmine smiled at her patient because now the emergency was over, she could make him a touch more comfortable. The morphine had kicked in and his catheter bag was full as the fluid that had been suffocating him was starting to move from his chest. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like I can breathe,’ Jim said, and grabbed her hand, still worried. ‘Can my wife come in? She must’ve been terrified.’

‘I’m going to go and speak to her now,’ Jed said, ‘and then I’ll ring the medics to come and take over your care. You’re doing well.’ He looked at Jasmine. ‘Can you stay with him while I go and speak to his wife?’

‘Sure.’

‘I thought that was it,’ Jim admitted as Jasmine placed some pillows behind him and put a blanket over the sheet that covered him. After checking his obs, she sat herself down on the hard flat resus bed beside him. ‘Libby thought so too.’

‘Your wife?’ Jasmine checked, and he nodded.

‘She couldn’t remember the number for the ambulance.’

‘It must have been very scary for her,’ Jasmine said, because though it must be terrifying to not be able to breathe, to watch someone you love suffer must have been hell. ‘She’ll be so pleased to see that you’re talking and looking so much better than when you came in.’

Libby was pleased, even though she promptly burst into tears when she saw him, and it was Jim who had to reassure her, rather than the other way around.

They were the most gorgeous couple—Libby chatted enough for both of them and told Jasmine that they were about to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, which was certainly an achievement when she herself hadn’t even managed to make it to one year.

‘I was just telling Jasmine,’ Libby said when Jed came in to check on Jim’s progress, ‘that it’s our golden wedding anniversary in a fortnight.’

‘Congratulations.’ Jed smiled.

‘The children are throwing us a surprise party,’ Libby said. ‘Well, they’re hardly children...’

‘And it’s hardly a surprise.’ Jed smiled again. ‘Are you not supposed to know about it?’

‘No,’ Libby admitted. ‘Do you think that Jim will be okay?’

‘He should be,’ Jed said. ‘For now I’m going to ring the medics and have them take over his care, but if he continues improving I would expect him to be home by the end of the week—and ready to
gently
celebrate by the next.’

They were such a lovely couple and Jasmine adored seeing their closeness, but more than that she really was enjoying being back at work and having her world made bigger instead of fretting about her own problems. She just loved the whole buzz of the place, in fact.

It was a nice morning, a busy morning, but the staff were really friendly and helpful—well, most of them. Penny was Penny and especially caustic when Jasmine missed a vein when she tried to insert an IV.

‘I’ll do it!’ She snapped, ‘the patient doesn’t have time for you to practise on him.’

‘Why don’t you two go to lunch?’ Lisa suggested as Jasmine bit down on her lip.

‘She has such a lovely nature!’ Vanessa nudged Jasmine as they walked round to the staffroom. ‘Honestly, pay no attention to Penny. She’s got the patience of a two-year-old and, believe me, I speak from experience when I say that they have none. How old is your son?’ She must have the seen that Jasmine was a bit taken aback by her question, as she hadn’t had time to mention Simon to Vanessa yet. ‘I saw you dropping him off at crèche this morning when I was bringing in Liam.’

‘Your two-year-old?’

‘My terrible two-year-old,’ Vanessa corrected as they went to the fridge and took out their lunches and Vanessa told her all about the behavioural problems she was having with Liam.

‘He’s completely adorable,’ Vanessa said as they walked through to the staffroom, ‘but, God, he’s hard work.’

Jed was in the staffroom and it annoyed Jasmine that she even noticed—after all, there were about ten people in there, but it was him that she noticed and he was also the reason she blushed as Vanessa’s questions became a bit more personal.

‘No.’ Jasmine answered when Vanessa none-too-subtly asked about Simon’s father—but that was nursing, especially in Emergency. Everyone knew everything about everyone’s life and not for the first time Jasmine wondered how she was supposed to keep the fact she was Penny’s sister a secret.