Angel Kate (2 page)

It gave Kate a lovely warm glow inside, thinking about babies. Of course there wasn't one on the way yet. But she'd been giving James encouraging little hints and she was pretty sure he was getting the message.
Perhaps it might even be tonight!
James would whip an engagement ring out of the pocket of his white coat and go down on one knee … no, silly, she didn't expect that, of course she didn't, but surely it wasn't unrealistic to believe they had a future together?

In the locker room Kate changed into the mint green tunic and navy trousers worn by A&E nurses, still preoccupied with the sight of Tom Galvan, watchful and brooding. The hospital grapevine liked to make out he was the most gorgeous man walking the corridors of Crisp's - which was just silly and frivolous. The important thing about Tom was his brilliant surgical technique. He and his team were saving hundreds of lives. Looks and physique had absolutely nothing to do with it. They said he stayed calm under extreme pressure, was good-humoured and amiable with theatre staff. And showed no inclination ever to play the rôle of doctor-god.

All good.

Smoking in the car park was of course  regrettable but no one was perfect.

*  *  *

Newly qualified, and anxious to stay on so she'd be near Dr Mallory, and because after three years' RGN training Lindminster and St Crispin's felt like home, Kate Wisdom had, after a momentary hesitation, accepted the temporary post of junior staff nurse on Casualty night duty.

'I know your heart's in medical nursing,' said Mrs Harris, the Chief Nursing Officer, in her brisk Scots burr, 'but if you'll bide your time till a staff job comes up, then we'll be glad to interview you for the post.' She dipped her head, observing across the top of her tortoiseshell frames the young woman's reaction to working nights on A&E, noting the hesitation and the intake of breath.

 Wisdom's expression was as composed and calm as ever, but her rough-skinned hands rubbed nervously together. Gaynor Harris concealed a frown. Evidently not leaping with joy at the prospect. Wasn't there a bit of an odd background here? Some kind of family crisis. Might be an idea to check back in the records when the girl had gone back to her ward.

Hmmm!
St Crispin's ought not to let one of the London hospitals poach this mature and reliable RGN. You couldn't imagine this one ever fooling around with the junior doctors or cat-napping on night duty. If anything, Wisdom was a mite too solemn; wouldn't do any harm for the girl to lighten up a bit…

'I can't offer jobs to all you girls when you graduate—wish I could. We could use every one of you, but we have to operate on minimum staffing levels. So tell me, Wisdom, why you prefer medical nursing.'

Kate' face was bright and eager and her words were fervent. 'On surgical wards the patients get better more quickly and go home before you get a chance to know them. It's different on a medical ward. Longer stay patients are often very sick and need considt hands-on care. I love the work. Oh, I do!  It's hard and demanding, but - ' she shrugged and her voice trailed away. She could have added that medical nursing tended to be routine and undramatic and that she was thankful for it  because she'd known enough drama to last a lifetime.

 'If that's where I can be most useful, then of course I'll go to Casualty,' she said quietly.

'Excellent. Then I'd like you to start there next week.'

*  *  *

Kate turned the key in her locker, checked the door was firmly closed and took a deep breath. This was nursing at the sharp end of the service, crises a part of the working day and night.

She had been on nights for the past six weeks, but still her stomach gave its usual nervous leap. A sort of  stage fright.

Once over the threshold of A&E, she was fine. 

Violent attacks on  casualty staff were becoming such a nationwide problem that the Royal College of Nursing was giving serious consideration to the idea of bodyguards. But although she wasn't particularly brave, it wasn't fear of violence that bothered Kate. A sense of imminent crisis looms over any Casualty department. An adrenalin-charged atmosphere that some nurses thrive upon. Not so Kate. It got under her skin and gave her the jitters.

Yes, she knew she could cope as competently as any: outwardly calm and matter-of-fact, helping process patients through the system which admitted them into a hospital bed or despatched them home to lick their wounds. All the same, her fervent prayer was to be taken off A&E at the earliest opportunity.

'Ready for the fray, Kate?' commented the Casualty Registrar as she hurried in, twisting up her long hair into a firm knot at the back of her head.

'Hi there, Simon! How's things? Are we busy tonight?'

'Not yet, but the night is young. Look, I need to grab a bite while there's a ceasefire. If you need me send me a postcard.' He winked.

With an amused shake of her head Kate glanced back at the disappearing white coat tails. Simon Brownley had once shared a flat with James, but that had been before she arrived at St Crispin's. Simon was married now, with twin baby daughters.

'Hi there, gorgeous,' teased Mike Filing, the Senior House Officer, creeping up on Staff Nurse Wisdom as she tested the oxygen taps in a treatment room. 'I saw you batting your eyelashes at Simon Brownley.'

Kate wasn't amused. 'Don't be silly – Simon's an old friend of Dr Mallory's.' She rechecked equipment prepared earlier by the day staff, knowing that nothing was more infuriating than to start an aseptic technique and find no Savlon on the trolley. She removed an empty bottle from an overhead cupboard and added it to the dispensary basket just inside the door. 'You're a fusspot,' scoffed Mike.

Kate ignored this.

'Fusspot Kate,' he taunted, trying to make her react. 'I take my job seriously,' she said serenely.

'You can say that again, Matron!' grinned Mike gleefully. Ever since the first night she'd reported for duty on A & E and innocently confessed to nerves, confiding in the red-headed SHO with the cheeky grin, he'd been fascinated by Staff Nurse Wisdom with her unadorned face and her unflirtatious ways.

Angel Kate,
Mike had nicknamed  the new staff nurse. She was very competent in spite of that self-confessed secret terror. If he hadn't heard it from her own lips, he wouldn't have believed it. 'So-o-o?' he teased, leaning on the nurses' station and grinning all over that boyish freckled face which had inspired so many unwise confidences in the past. 'Why should Brownley be rewarded with smiles, while I get the cold shoulder? Stop fighting it, Angel Kate. You know you feel an overwhelming desire for my fit young body.'

Kate's look of annoyance shut Mike up for all of ten seconds, but he knew he'd sussed her out.
Oh yes!
Someone that cool just had to be a volcano underneath. What was she doing with a boring git like Mallory?

Mike never gave up easily. He could generally wear them down. He followed her into the sluice and Kate found herself trapped in a corner by the sink clutching an armful of grey papier mâché vomit bowls. She sighed and looked pointedly at the fob watch pinned upside down on her tunic, waiting patiently for Mike to get bored and abandon this ridiculous carry-on.

She'd got such perfect skin. He leaned closer. 'What you need is someone to show you how to do yourself up a bit. Put stuff on your eyes, bit of lippy, make the best of yourself. With your figure you could be one of those top models. You'd earn a damn sight more than you will slaving away here at Crisp's.'

Kate went tense. 'Don't be silly,' she said tightly. 'Please let me get on.'

Wouldn't get any encouragement from James Mallory though, would she. A pathologist, for chrissake! One of that breed who hide themselves away in laboratories because they can't cope with real live people … Well, that was Mike's theory. He dashed a hand through his mop of red curls.
How the hell
did these two get involved in the first place?

'Mike!' complained a voice from the doorway, 'I've been looking for you everywhere! You promised you'd supervise me doing bloods.' It was the plump blonde medical student from Leeds, mask dangling beneath her chin, doing volunteer work in order to get some extra clinical experience during the Easter vacation under the guidance of the elusive Dr Filing.

'Nope, hadn't forgotten you, Em. Staff here was in need of my advice and expertise, but we're finished here now.'

Kate raised an eyebrow and got a broad grin in return.

'I
told
you I'd been invited to a party over in the block,' complained Em. 'Now it's too late for me to go home and change.' 

'They'll turn the lights off,' said Mike knowingly, 'who's to notice? Might pop across later myself to check you're ok.'

Kate made good her escape.

*  *  *

Emergency! The red phone had a direct line linking St Crispin's with the ambulance station. Its urgent message shrilled through the department. Kate—nearest member of the team—had her hand on the phone within seconds.

She would never forget the horror of that September day when she had crouched helplessly over her father's body. If only she'd know what to do, how to help him. It was knowing he need not have died that had been the wake-up call to make her change her silly selfish life. To grow up and make herself useful in the world.

This night, hand and voice were steady and confident as she took the emergency call.

'St Crispin's. Accident and Emergency.'

The staff nurse's ear received the terse message with alert detachment: three minutes warning of a bad RTA being brought in from the motorway.

Simon Brownley, the Resident Surgical Officer, was back from supper but busy in theatre patching up a teenage motor-cyclist with a number of nasty, though not disabling, injuries.

'Sue! Get Mike Filing!'

Kate called urgently to a third-year nurse who had heard the emergency phone and was holding aside the curtains of the cubicle in which she'd been dressing a knife wound.

'RTA, one man—multiple injuries, arriving in two minutes!'

As the ambulance raced up to the emergency doors Kate was ready and waiting, glancing back anxiously over her shoulder for reinforcements. The ambulance crew would have done all they could as trained paramedics, but right now that patient needed the doctors! Where the hell had Mike got to? Surely everyone must have been alerted by the shrill call of the emergency phone.

'Any other casualties, Ted?' she questioned breathlessly as the driver of the ambulance ran round to open up the rear doors for her to board.

Ted Piggott shook his head, his face unusually grim. 'Poor devil must've fallen asleep at the wheel, hit one of the motorway bridges. They work too damn 'ard, our doctors. Brace yourself, Staff, we've got Mr Galvan in here!'

The world spun.

Then a sort of frozen professionalism urged Kate to her patient's side. Only the thick black curls were just about recognisable beneath a film of pale dust that must have showered Tom Galvan when he smashed into the concrete obstruction. He didn't seem to be wearing his thick overcoat. His swollen face was a mess of bloody lacerations. The features could have belonged to anyone.

'You're
sure
it's Mr Galvan?' There was a shudder in Kate's voice as she recalled the surgeon as she'd seen him only a short while ago, tall, handsome, at the height of his physical and intellectual powers, sombrely shrugged into his heavy black overcoat.

Tim O'Reilly winced at the memory of that tangle of yellow twisted metal. Mr Galvan had operated on his father-in-law once—removed a clot from his brain and made a new man of him. His voice was choked with emotion. 'Soon as I saw the wrecked car, I knew! I shouted it out loud.
'Not him. Not our Tom.'

At this, though to all appearances unconscious, the injured man groaned. Kate remembered that the sense of hearing remained acute even in those close to death. She put her finger to her lips.

The crew had seen to the basics, checking the airway and keeping their surgeon warm beneath a space blanket. Carefully Kate exposed the upper body, noting the evidence of traumatic injury: left arm oddly distorted and clutched across the chest in such a way that it was impossible to gauge the damage to heart or lungs.

That was definitely a grunt of protest.

'Won't let us near that arm, Staff.'

As if he comprehended what was being said Tom Galvan sighed and muttered, and it seemed to Kate that an almost subliminal determination on the injured surgeon's part held his shattered arm immobile. Chill droplets of perspiration beaded his forehead mingling with the cuts and dirt. Reaching beneath the blanket, she noted the cold clammy feel of hands and feet, the racing, thready pulse reflecting a heart struggling to circulate its diminishing supplies of blood.

An icy desperate calm took hold of her as her worst fears were realised. Somewhere deep within there must be haemorrhage, the silent unseen oozing of blood into the cavities of the body.

'BP a hundred over sixty,' hissed O'Reilly. 'Pulse a hundred and fifty and rising.'

Kate nodded, her face stiff with tension. In the absence of a doctor it was up to her to assess Mr Galvan's most urgent needs … A low reading, to be sure, but as yet not disastrous. Blood pressure is resilient, she reminded herself, the last thing to go. But when it can hold out no longer the drop will be sudden and Tom Galvan will be minutes from death.

As she replaced the blanket her fingers grazed the damaged arm and the man's lips moved in silent protest. Gently she touched the swollen hand in comforting reassurance. 'No one is going to move your arm.' She spoke very distinctly, bending close to his ear.

Another sigh escaped the bruised lips and he drifted deeper into unconsciousness.

The ambulance crew were not in the least offended by this angry and curt young staff nurse issuing orders right left and centre. They quite agreed: where the hell
were
all the bloody doctors? Yes, they would transfer their gravely injured patient with due care and speed to the Emergency Room while Kate Wisdom personally dragged the duty surgeon screaming and kicking out of theatre.