got hold of him.
Waiting patiently wasn’t her forte any more. And waiting in an ED was cruel. There’d been a time she’d loved nothing more than turning up for her shift in the emergency department. She’d thrived on the heightened anticipation brought on when waiting for the unknown to come through the doors, and by helping put people back together after some disaster had befallen them. ‘Yeah, well, you turned out to be useless at that, didn’t you?’
The ED was full to overflowing. The adjacent cubicle wasn’t completely curtained off, leaving her open to scrutiny from a blue-eyed toddler with curls to die for. A young man lay on the bed in obvious pain, after apparently coming off his farm bike and being pinned underneath for an hour until his wife had found him. The injuries couldn’t be life-threatening or he’d be in Theatre already.
‘Up.’ A very imperious tone for someone so young.
‘No, Emma, leave the lady alone.’ The child’s mother snatched her out of reach to plonk her on a chair by the man’s bed. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said the harried woman.
‘No problem.’ Jenny dredged up a smile and watched as the little girl clambered off the chair the moment her mother’s attention left her.
‘You all right there?’ asked a chirpy trainee nurse from the other side of Jenny’s bed. Too happy for her own good. ‘Anything I can get you?’
Didn’t they teach nursing students not to tease their patients? ‘I’d kill for a strong coffee right about now.’
‘Nil by mouth, I’m sorry. At least until after Mr McNamara has seen you, and then only if you’re not having surgery.’
‘I totally get it. It’s called wishful thinking.’ Talk about getting more than her share of apologies today. Cameron Roberts had looked and sounded more than apologetic, with tiredness and stress blinking out at her from those coffee-brown eyes peeking from under a mass of wayward blond curls. Bet those gorgeous twins were more than a handful. Trouble and twins were synonymous. She had first-hand experience of that.
The nurse smoothed the already smooth bedcover. ‘If you want anything, call me. There are some magazines lying around somewhere but they’re years out of date.’
‘I’m fine.’ She could pretend, couldn’t she?
‘Great.’ The student flashed another smile and went to charm another patient, leaving her in relative peace to contemplate her situation. Which was looking rather dire.
Stuck. That’s what she was. Stopped in her tracks, all because of a boy on an out-of-control skateboard. He’d wrecked everything. Like she’d slammed into a brick wall and there was no way round. She’d wanted to yell at those boys, tell them they should’ve been looking where they were going, not shouting and taunting each other to go faster. She did remember turning to see what the noise was about seconds before the boy—Marcus?—had crashed into her. But in all reality she’d been miles away, unaware of much except that boat heading out and the sun on her face.
The boys had looked so repentant. They’d also appeared as if they’d had enough of being told off and wanted to be given a break. She totally knew what that was like. How many times had she and Alison driven Mum insane with their mischief? Cameron Roberts hadn’t known she knew what she was talking about. ‘Bet I could teach those boys a thing or two about being naughty.’
Then an image of Cam’s tired and frustrated expression slipped into her mind and she retracted that thought. The man didn’t need any more problems.
‘Emma? What’s the matter, baby?’ In the next cubicle the mother’s panic was immediately apparent. ‘Why’s she gone so red? Emma. She’s not breathing.’
Jenny swung her legs over the side of the bed, ground her teeth on the flare of pain. ‘I’m a doctor. Pass her here.’ One look at the child’s terrified face, which only minutes ago had been grinning at her, had Jenny reaching back to slam her hand against the emergency button on the wall behind her bed. ‘What was she playing with?’
‘I’m not sure. Cotton balls, I think.’
Grabbing the child from the distraught mother’s arms, Jenny ran a finger around the inside of her mouth, scooped out sodden cotton balls. Had the child swallowed any? ‘Does Emma have any allergies that you know of?’ she demanded.
‘No.’
Emma definitely wasn’t breathing. Instantly laying the child over her knees with her head hanging down, Jenny began striking the child firmly between the shoulder blades with the flat of her hand. Strike one. Two. Come on, baby. Breathe for me. Three. Please. Four. Please, please, please. Five. Where are the doctors? Check the resp rate. The tiny chest wasn’t moving at all.
Jenny knew the mother was screaming at her but she ignored her, focused on saving this little girl. Quickly standing on her good foot, ignoring the pain slicing up her leg, she held Emma around her waist and located her belly button with her finger.
‘What’s going on?’ A doctor raced into the cubicle, followed by two nurses.
At last. But handing over now meant wasting precious seconds. Jenny fisted one hand. ‘This child appears to have choked. No resp rate. I’ve done five back strikes.’ Oh. Tell him. ‘I am an ED doctor.’ I was an ED doctor. Her fist thrust upward into Emma’s abdomen. One. Two. Emma coughed hard and a small round object shot across the floor.
‘A lid off a pill bottle by the look of it.’ One of the nurses retrieved it from under the next bed.
The doctor took the now crying and bewildered child from Jenny’s arms and laid her on the bed. ‘Shh, sweetheart. You’re going to be all right.’ He looked over his shoulder at the crying woman and the frantic father trying to get off his bed. ‘Mum? Come and hold your little girl while I examine her. What’s her name?’
‘Emma.’ The mother scooped up her baby and held her tight.
‘Easy. I need to give her a complete exam. Nurse, bring me a child’s blanket. Jason, get back on that bed. You shouldn’t be moving. You’ll start that wound bleeding again.’ The doctor turned back to his little patient and gave her a quick but thorough going over. ‘She’s going to be fine, thanks to this doctor.’
The mother had lost all colour in her cheeks. ‘Thank you so much, all of you. If you hadn’t done what you did …’ She swallowed.
Jenny eased her butt back onto her bed. The pain in her ankle had intensified now that she wasn’t being distracted. ‘Don’t go there,’ she advised with a smile she hoped wasn’t a grimace as pain stabbed repeatedly. ‘Instead be glad you were here and not at home when it happened.’
Within minutes the department had returned to normal. Except for the hiccups in the next cubicle as the mother slowly calmed down, only muted voices could be heard once more.
With a sigh Jenny lay back. Talk about having the day from hell. But a broken ankle was low on the scale of urgency and really she was incredibly lucky. Euphoria nudged her despair aside. That child would’ve been saved by any of the doctors or nurses on duty but she’d done it. Her old instincts had kicked in instantly. She hadn’t had to spend precious moments trying to recall the procedure. It had been there, lying in some unused corner of her brain waiting to be summoned.
It was good to know she
