offered you friendship.
The tempting thought tried to settle but he shrugged it away. There was no point. His life had changed the moment his brain had been jolted violently on its axis and dinner the other night had left him in no doubt that being with Hayley only reminded him of everything he’d lost. That’s why he’d hurt her feelings and sent her away. He couldn’t risk her coming back.
It was all about survival, pure and simple.
His survival.
He thought about the lecture hall full of medical students waiting for him, and waiting for him to make a mistake. How long would it take before they considered his experience passé?
‘Tom, do you want me to come up?’
‘No, stay there, Jared. I’m coming straight down.’
He picked up his computer and his cane, patted his pocket for his wallet and keys and opened the door. He paused for a moment, visualising the route: thirteen steps to the lift and avoid the ornamental palm in the unforgiving ceramic pot at step nine.
Yes, it was all about survival.
‘HAYLEY, come talk to us.’ Theo winked and patted the space on the couch next to him. ‘Been having any more dinners with dark-haired doctors?’
All the other night-duty nurses’ heads turned toward her so fast she could hear cervical vertebrae cracking. Damn it, why had she asked Theo about Tom?
‘ I know it won’t be Finn Kennedy.’ Jenny looked up from her cross-stitch, sympathy in her eyes. ‘I see you’re back on the night-duty roster again. That’s his way of saying, “Behave and don’t usurp your superiors.”’
Thank you, Jenny, for moving the conversation away from Tom and thank you, Mr Kennedy, for a week of nights and seven days of sleep. ‘I promise I’ll be well-behaved from now on.’
‘Good.’ Theo pulled a green badge from his pocket and handed it to her.
She stared at the picture of a light bulb with a red line through it. ‘What’s this?
‘It’s to remind you to turn out the lights. You’re my worst offender. Do you realise everywhere you go you leave a trail of light behind you and that’s adding to global warming? Meanwhile, ICU is whipping us and I want to win the sustainability grant. Everyone …’ he paused and glared at all the staff ‘… has to get on board. If you’re not in a room, turn out the lights.’
‘I didn’t realise you had a scary side, Theo.’ Hayley forced a smile and stuck the badge on her scrubs, knowing that was the easy part. Turning lights off went against years of ingrained behaviour, years of using light as a refuge from fear.
‘And now back to who you’re dating.’ Suzy Carpenter’s mouth was a hard, tight line.
‘Don’t stress, Suzy,’ Theo teased. ‘There’s no new doctor on the block so she’s not stealing anyone from you.’
Thankfully, Hayley’s pager started beeping because, short of torture, she refused to tell anyone how she’d made a fool of herself with Tom. As she read the page she quickly rose to her feet. ‘This can’t be good. Evie wants me downstairs stat for a consult. Gear up, gang, we could be operating soon.’
Hayley took the fire-escape stairs two at a time rather than waiting for a lift, and a couple of minutes later she was in the frantic emergency department. Nurses were speed-walking, doctors looked harried and she glimpsed three ambulances standing in the bay. It all pointed to a line-up of serious cases.
‘Hayley!’ Evie gave her an urgent wave while she instructed a nurse to get more dexamethasone. ‘We’ve got a problem.’ She tugged her over to a light box where a CT scan was firmly clipped. She tapped the centre of the film. ‘Gretel Darlington, a nineteen-year-old woman presenting with a two-month history of vague headaches, but tonight she’s had a sudden onset of severe, migraine-type headache. She’s in a lot of pain, slightly disorientated, and on examination has shocking nystagmus. She’s not got control over her eye movements at all.’
Hayley frowned as she stared at the black and white image of the patient’s brain, wondering exactly why Evie was showing it to her. ‘She hasn’t got a migraine. That tumour’s the size of an orange.’
Evie moved her pen around the perimeter of the tumour. ‘And she’s bleeding. She needs surgery now to relieve the pressure.’
‘Absolutely.’ Hayley had no argument with the diagnosis or the treatment plan, but she was totally confused as to why Evie had paged her. ‘Exactly what’s this case got to do with me?’
The usually unflappable Evie had two deep lines carved into her forehead and her hazel eyes radiated deep concern. ‘You have to do the surgery.’
Tingling shock whooshed through Hayley so fast she gaped. ‘I’m a general surgical registrar, Evie, and this girl needs a neurosurgeon!’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ Evie shoved her hair behind her ears with an air of desperation. ‘Rupert Davidson is at a conference with his registrar and Lewis Renwick, the on-call neurosurgeon, is already in surgery over at RPH. By the time he finishes there and drives over the bridge to here, it could be three hours or more. She doesn’t have that much time.’
Hayley bit her lip. ‘There has to be a neurosurgeon in private practice we can call.’
‘Tried that. The problem is that most of Sydney’s neurosurgeons are at the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia’s conference.’ She shrugged, the action full of resignation. ‘It’s in Fiji this year and because it’s winter more than the usual number went, leaving all the hospitals stretched.’
‘What about Finn Kennedy? He’s got all that trauma experience from his time in the army.’
Evie flinched. ‘He’s not answering his pages. It’s you, Hayley.’
Brain surgery. A million thoughts tore around her mind driven by fear and ranging from whether she could actually do the surgery without damaging the patient to possible law suits against her. She was in Sydney, NSW, not Africa. This lack of appropriate surgeons shouldn’t have happened here and yet circumstances had contrived to put her in this position. To put her patient in this position.
She stared at the scan again, but it didn’t change the picture. The brain fitted snugly inside the bony protection of the skull and the design didn’t allow for anything else. No extra fluid, no blood, no extra growths. Nothing.
She was between a rock and a hard place. If she didn’t operate, the woman would die. If she did operate, she risked the life of her patient and her career. She could just see and hear the headlines of the tabloid papers and the sensational television current affairs programmes if something went wrong.
‘Evie, it’s so damn risky, and not just for the patient.’
The ER doctor’s hand gripped her shoulder. ‘Believe me, if there was another option, I would have taken it. Pretend we’re in Darwin, Hayley. All emergency neurosurgery up there is done by general
