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
