a smile as her father stepped forward, because Dr Vermont was speaking to Ronan. ‘I hear everything went very well last night.’ Marnie took down Ronan’s hand from the pole and Dr Vermont checked the colour and sensation in the tip of Ronan’s heavily splinted finger. He asked Ronan to try and move the finger and Marnie watched with relief as the pink tip lifted just a little.
‘You can feel this?’ Dr Vermont checked as Ronan closed his eyes.
‘Yes.’
Marnie let out a breath and then smiled as Ronan again said he could feel the touch of the needle as Dr Vermont checked the other side.
‘It’s doing everything it should,’ Dr Vermont said. ‘I’ll see you in two days and then…’ He hesitated as he looked at the address on the admission notes. ‘Do you do want to be followed up here?’ Dr Vermont checked. ‘I see that you live quite a distance away.’
‘Here would be great,’ Ronan said. ‘I can catch up with Marnie when I have an appointment.’
‘It’s the only way you’ll get to see her,’ Maureen Johnson muttered, and Marnie chose not to respond to her mother’s barb and stayed silent as Dr Vermont spoke to Kelly. ‘Could you schedule in some hand appointments for Mr Johnson?’ he asked, and then turned to Ronan. ‘If we book the next couple in, at least you’ll know what you’re doing.’
He gave a few more instructions and then moved on to the next bed.
‘You can get dressed,’ Marnie said to her brother a little while later when Kelly had come off the phone.
‘I’ll give him a hand,’ Kelly said, as she pulled the curtains around the bed. ‘I’ve made the appointments. We’ll see you the day after tomorrow and then again on the twenty-third. Is that okay?’
Ronan looked up at his sister, but thankfully the curtain swished past and Marnie had a second to collect herself before she answered for him.
‘The twenty-third’s fine,’ Marnie said, and deliberately didn’t look at her mum as the one date they all dreaded was, for the first time in a very long time, mentioned.
Trust the Irish to not make a fuss when it mattered!
‘THIS TOO WILL pass,’ Dr Vermont said. ‘It’s my favourite saying and one I’ve used often over the years working in this place.’
It was two in the morning and Marnie was on her first night shift at Bayside. It had been difficult logistically without Harry as they struggled to cover the department but, more than logistics, he was sorely missed by everyone, including Marnie.
Especially Marnie.
She was missing him on a whole different level, though—the flirting, the teasing, just the fun of having someone as shamelessly male as Harry around.
Not that she told that to Dr Vermont, of course. They were going through the doctors’ roster for the next couple of weeks and trying to cover the gaps as they ate Marnie’s chicken and mango salad that she had brought in from home.
‘I’ve been through staff shortages, work to rule, the whole lot,’ Dr Vermont continued. ‘And, though it feels like it will never end, invariably it does. It will all get sorted, and I’ll say it again—this is not your fault.’
Dr Vermont was lovely and extremely practical when Marnie had confessed what was on her mind.
‘Even if you had let Charlotte, or was it Adam, lie on the sofa, this still would have happened.’
‘I was trying to make things easier for him,’ Marnie admitted. ‘I know I looked like I was being mean when I told him to go home a couple of times but I was trying to show him that he wasn’t completely indispensable…’
Dr Vermont laughed. ‘Well, you did!’
‘I know.’ Marnie ran a worried hand over her forehead. ‘I was trying to prove to him that we could call the trauma team or the medics, that it didn’t have to all fall to him,’ Marnie explained. ‘I just wish that I’d handled things a little differently. I wish—’
‘Marnie,’ Dr Vermont interrupted, ‘Harry has been struggling to find balance between work and home since Jill died. I honestly don’t know how he’s managed to do this job for so long without a partner. Marjorie, my wife, managed to have a career and raise our family, but we had a lot of support too. Harry’s sister and parents all live a couple of hours away.’
Dr Vermont thought for a moment. ‘I could not have done this job and raised a family without Marjorie. Even when the place is fully covered you can still expect to be called in. I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve been on take and yet I’ve still rung Harry to come in to give an opinion, or there’s been a multiple trauma and another pair of hands has been needed. Marjorie was more than used to it—long before coffee machines were around she made sure there was a flask of coffee by my bed so that I could have a drink as I drove in.’ He smiled at the memory and so did Marnie. ‘What I’m trying to explain…’
His voice trailed off and Marnie looked up from her salad, waiting for him to continue. ‘Dr Vermont?’ Marnie stood. For a bizarre, still hopeful, second, she hoped that he might have fallen asleep in mid-sentence, but even as she called his name again, Marnie knew what was happening. As she dropped her salad and raced around her desk, he took a couple of laboured breaths and she watched as Dr Vermont’s skin tinged to grey and he let out an ominous gurgle.
‘Dr Vermont!’ Marnie shouted, as she tried to locate a carotid pulse. Her mind was in twenty places—she held onto his shoulder as he toppled forward and Marnie knew she couldn’t get to the phone or door without him falling to the floor.
‘Can I have some help?’ Marnie shouted, trying to break his fall and kick the chair away at the same time, but no one was answering. ‘Can someone…?’ She laid Dr Vermont on the floor and raced to open the door, shouting loudly for help as she grabbed the phone from her desk.
Summon help, the nursing part of her brain told her, yet she wanted to start compressions. Marnie put out a crash call, explaining to the startled switchboard operator that she had to be specific. ‘Code red, Emergency Department, in the nurse unit manager’s office.’ She was shouting, Marnie realised, when usually she was calm. ‘Make sure you say that.’
She started compressions as the intercom crackled into life. But, alerted by her shouting, Clive, the night porter, came running.
‘Oh, no…’ he moaned, but he knew, without Marnie telling him, exactly what to do.
‘I’ll get help.’
‘Get the crash trolley as well,’ Marnie called, as she carried on with the compressions.
There was nothing emergency staff dreaded more than family or friends being brought in, but to have a colleague suddenly collapse at work was truly awful.
The staff came running and in no time Marnie’s office looked more like the resuscitation room. Eric, the on-call cardiologist, arrived first. His shocked expression as he saw Dr Vermont lying on the floor, his shirt open, his glasses
