feel quite so brave, though, as she walked down Hill Street, turned the corner and walked past the New-Age shop she had worked in for two years after finishing school. She’d been happy then, if a little restless. Her desk had been stuffed with nursing brochures and forms and she had tried to pluck up the courage to apply to study nursing, telling herself she could do it, that even if didn’t appeal, she could get through her general training and then go on to work in mental health.
It would seem she’d been wrong.
She could hear the noise and laughter from the beer garden, knew her friends were wondering where she had got to, and she stood outside for a moment and pretended to read a text on her phone. She looked out at Coogee Beach and longed to walk there in the darkness and gather her thoughts.
‘Ruby!’ Tilly, her housemate, caught her just as her decision to wander was made. ‘Finally you’re here!’ Tilly said, and then frowned. ‘Are you okay?’ Tilly always looked out for her, for all the girls really. Ruby wondered whether she should just come out and say that Sheila had warned her that unless things improved she was going to have to repeat her Emergency rotation, except Ruby remembered that Tilly had news of her own and was desperate to tell her friend.
‘I’m fine. So what’s your news?’
Tilly’s face spread into a smile. She was a redhead too, but there the similarities ended. Her hair was lighter and much curlier than Ruby’s and Tilly was taller and a calmer, more centred person. Also unlike Ruby, she was totally in love with her work. ‘I delivered an unexpected breech today. Ruby, it was brilliant, the best feeling ever.’ Tilly was a newly qualified midwife and babies, mothers, bonding, skin to skin were absolutely her passion. Even if Ruby could think of nothing more terrifying than delivering a breech baby, she knew this was food for Tilly’s soul.
‘That’s brilliant.’ Ruby didn’t force her smile and hug. She was genuinely thrilled for Tilly.
‘I just saw this little bottom …’ Tilly gushed. ‘I called for help but as quickly as that he just unfolded, his little legs and hips came out and he just hung there. Mum was amazing. I mean just amazing …’
Ruby stood and listened as Tilly gave her the first of no doubt many detailed accounts of how the senior midwife had let her finish the job, how the doctor had arrived just as the delivery was complete.
‘I’m talking too much,’ Tilly said.
‘You’re not!’
‘Come on,’ Tilly said. ‘Your mob are here too.’
‘My mob?’ Ruby asked as they walked in. ‘You’re my mob!’
‘There are loads from Emergency here.’
God, that was all she needed. Half of Ruby’s problem with Emergency was that she didn’t like the staff. Okay, it was probably an eighth of her problem, but they were just so confident, so cliquey, and so bloody bitchy as well, and close proximity to them was so not needed tonight.
Ruby walked in and straight over to her friends, deliberately pretending not to even see the rowdy Emergency crowd and hoping that they wouldn’t see her. Not that there was much chance of that. With her long auburn hair she always stood out, but they’d hardly be wanting a student nurse to join them, she consoled herself.
‘Here she is!’ Jess, another housemate, had already bought her a beer and Ruby took a sip as Jess asked how her shift had gone.
‘Long,’ Ruby said, and she did what she always did and smiled, because she was a happy person, a positive, outgoing, slightly flaky person—it was just Emergency that affected her so much. ‘Where’s Ellie?’
‘Chatting up “the one”.’ Jess grinned and nodded over to the bar, where Ellie was sitting on some guy’s lap, the pair earnestly talking, utterly engrossed and oblivious to everyone around them. Ruby laughed, because for the next few weeks he would be all they heard about. Ellie, determined to find her life partner and get the family she craved, drifted happily from boyfriend to boyfriend in her quest for ‘the one’, but as Ruby turned back to Jess and Tilly, her eyes drifted to the emergency table, and inadvertently she caught Connor’s eye.
‘Ruby!’ Connor waved for her to come over and she was about to pretend she hadn’t noticed but knew it would be rude, so she beamed in his direction and gave a wave. ‘I’ll just be two minutes,’ she said to her friends. ‘Any longer and you have to come and rescue me.’
‘Where did you get to at work?’ Connor asked as she came over. ‘I never saw you after supper. I thought you were down to work with me in Resus?’
‘My assessment took a bit longer than expected,’ Ruby answered.
‘Yeah,’ Connor joked, ‘you’ve always got an excuse.’ He was just chatting and joking, he certainly wasn’t there to talk about work, or tell her off, except inadvertently he had echoed Sheila’s words. It seemed to have been noticed that any patient that needed to be taken to the ward, Ruby put her hand up. Any stores or laundry that needed to be put away, Ruby was already onto it and, yes, people had noticed.
‘So?’ Connor asked. ‘How was it?’
‘How was what?’ Ruby said, biting into her lemon.
‘Your assessment?’
‘Oh, you know …’ She forced a smile and rolled her eyes. ‘Must try harder.’
Her face was burning, but she certainly wasn’t going to share with Connor all that had been said and stupidly she felt as if she was going to start crying. God, Ruby thought, she should have had that walk on the beach before she’d come in. Her eyes darted for escape, for a reason to excuse herself, and suddenly there he was. Cort Mason was back in her line of vision. This time, though, his tie was loosened and he was sitting next to a doctor she vaguely recognised. He gave her a very brief nod, or did he? Ruby couldn’t be sure, and then he turned back to his conversation but, not that she could have known it, his mind was on her.
It had been since she’d walked into the bar and perhaps, Cort admitted to himself, for a while before that.
‘Hey, Ruby!’ He pretended not to be looking, except his eyes roamed the bar and his ears were certainly not on Geoff’s conversation as Ruby’s friend came over. ‘We’re supposed to be celebrating with Tilly …’
‘Sorry, Jess!’ Ruby smiled, glad they’d remembered to rescue her! ‘Just coming … See you, Connor.’ She glanced over to the table but everyone was busy with conversations of their own, but she did, Cort noticed, make an effort. ‘Catch you guys.’ She gave a brief unreturned wave that had the light reflecting off all her silver bracelets and then as she drifted off he saw her back and there was a lot of back because she was wearing a halter neck that showed her white shoulders and way down her spine. She was also wearing a small skirt and flat sandals and for the fist time in a very long time Cort noticed everything. Then he glanced across the table and saw Siobhan’s eyes on him, watching him watching Ruby, and Cort knew to be more careful than that. So very deliberately he didn’t look out for her again after that. Instead, he chatted to Geoff and the rest of the table, yet she was there in the background, laughing and happy, a blaze of colour in the middle of the bar. Though he tried not to notice, he still did, so much so that he was aware the minute she left.
‘Leaving?’ Siobhan asked as he drained his drink.
‘No,’
