should have told me.’
‘When?’ Tilly asked. ‘You wanted him out the next morning …’
‘He hasn’t told anyone about her,’ Ruby said. ‘Even his colleagues don’t know or most of his friends.’ Tilly turned then and looked at her.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it? When someone you care about can’t confide in you?’ But Tilly didn’t hold grudges and she gave her friend a hug as the lights of Emergency came into view. ‘Maybe he had his reasons.’
‘I think I was supposed to be his get back out there fling.’
‘And what was he supposed to be?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ruby admitted. ‘If I’d even thought about it for a moment it would never have happened. I’ve just made things a whole lot more complicated—not only do I have to face Emergency, I have to work alongside him, after all the terrible things that I said.’
‘Then say sorry.’
‘What if he won’t accept it?’
‘Then at least you’ll have said it.’ Which wasn’t the answer Ruby wanted, but it was, she knew, the right one.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Tilly said. ‘No running away.’
‘I won’t.’
At night the side door wasn’t open so she had to walk through the waiting room and already it was steaming, two people asking her on her way through how much longer they would have to wait. Already her temples were pounding, but she went to the staffroom, took out a little white teapot she had painted her name on in red nail varnish, made a big pot of herbal tea and told herself she could do this.
‘Evening, Ruby!’ Sheila gave a tight smile as she walked into the staffroom and Cort deliberately didn’t turn his head from the television. ‘Ready for some action?’
‘Bring it on!’ Ruby smiled.
Cort had been unable to comprehend that she, that anyone, could throw so much away for the sake of three nights, but as the weekend progressed, he started to see it.
See what he never really had before.
It was like finding out about sex when he had been younger. Suddenly it was there glaring at him at every turn—how on earth had he not noticed? Now, though, it was the dark side of A and E that was illuminated. All the stuff he usually just ignored or shrugged off or put up with was blazingly obvious, and there was this part of him that wanted to shield her from it. There were fights breaking out in the waiting room, angry relatives, abusive patients and the drama of sudden illness. He watched her face become pinched, even though she smiled; he saw her eyes shutter regularly as if another knife had been stabbed in her back; and he started to see that for some, the emergency room was damaging.
Not that he could do anything about it.
Once she tried to talk to him, but Cort was still too churned up, and he blanked her, then regretted it all through the next day when he couldn’t sleep, wondering if she’d be back.
She was.
To a place that was twice as busy and twice as angry as before, and he noticed it—all of it—even the little things he would never have seen before.
‘I’ll eat my supper here.’ Siobhan peeled off the lid of her container. Ruby had made it through Thursday and was back for round two—a busy Friday night and the patients were particularly feral.
Siobhan was in the grumpiest of moods because she’d been brought back from the staffroom as the numbers were too low for her to take a proper break. They had a young overdose in cubicle six and they couldn’t identify the tablets she’d taken, despite poring through books and the internet, and Sheila had asked Siobhan to make a phone call. Now Siobhan sat, stuck on hold to Poisons Information, as Cort tried to work out a drug dose. He watched Ruby’s shoulders tense as Siobhan’s bored eyes fell on the student nurse.
‘What are you doing, Ruby?’ she asked. Ruby was holding a newborn baby and screaming toddler, who’d cut his forehead falling against his toybox and had blood all down his pyjamas.
‘Mum’s just gone to the toilet,’ Ruby answered.
‘Well, can’t she take them with her?’ Siobhan asked. ‘We’re not a child-minding service.’
‘It’s no problem.’
‘Actually,’ Siobhan answered, ‘if another emergency comes in, or someone goes off and you’re holding a baby, it becomes one!’
‘Ooh, that smells nice!’ Sheila’s only comment was about the smell wafting over as Siobhan stirred her supper. ‘What is it?’
‘Veal and noodles,’ Siobhan said, and just for a second, so small no one, not even Ruby, noticed, there was a shadow of a smile on Cort’s mouth as Ruby rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath.
‘That’d be right.’
She hated it, Cort fully realised. Behind the smile she was in torture, and given what had gone on, he’d made it much worse for her.
‘Thanks so much.’ A tearful mum came and took her baby and tried to scoop up the toddler, who was on the floor.
‘I know I keep asking, but have you any idea how much longer?’
‘We’ll get to him as soon as we can,’ Siobhan answered before Ruby had a chance. ‘Only there are still a couple of patients before him and it will take two staff to hold him down and we just can’t spare them at the moment.’
‘But you’ve time to sit and eat,’ the mum snapped.
‘I’m eating my supper at the desk because I’m on hold to Poisons Information and I expect to be for the next half-hour,’ came Siobhan’s tart response.
‘I’m actually supposed to be on my break, but I’m here to hopefully free up a colleague.’
Yes, she was right, but it could have been handled so much better, because the mum promptly burst into tears. ‘There are drunks down in the waiting room. I can’t sit and breastfeed …’
And Ruby truly didn’t know what to do. There was literally nowhere to put them. Every cubicle was full, all the interview rooms were taken, and though, had it been up to her, she’d have popped Mum into the staffroom, the reality was it was needed for staff to get a break from the perpetual craziness.
‘Bring him through.’ Cort stood up. He didn’t have time, but he’d just have to make it.
‘Suture room’s not cleaned from the last one.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Ruby said, and glanced at Siobhan. ‘And I can hold him by myself.’
Ruby scuttled off and did the quickest clean-up she could, then washed her hands and set up a trolley for Cort.
‘You’ll need a drawer sheet to wrap him in.’ Cort came in, but didn’t look at her. ‘Mum won’t be able to help with holding him.’
