want to leave you—I’m going to stay home.’
‘Please don’t,’ Ruby begged. ‘I just want to be on my own.’
She heard her friends leaving and lay there quietly. Her room was warm and she pushed the window wide open then pulled the drape and stripped down to her pants. She turned on the fan and lay on the bed and tried to work out what to do, if there even was something she could do now that she’d burnt all her bridges with Sheila.
She heard the doorbell and ignored it, just not up to speaking to anyone.
She turned on her soothing music and lay there but it didn’t soothe. Then there was a knock at her door.
‘Tilly, please.’ She just wanted to be alone with her thoughts. ‘Go out with them …’ Her voice trailed off, as standing there was a man who shouldn’t be back in her bedroom again. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘God knows,’ Cort said, because she was lying on top of her bed in just her knickers with a fan blowing.
She’d been crying, her eyelids were swollen, her nose and lips too, and there was a jumble of used tissues by the bed. But there were two other things he noticed as well and he couldn’t have this conversation with them there. ‘Don’t you cover up when your friends come in?’
‘My friends don’t come in when there’s a scarf on the door,’ Ruby said with her eyes closed again. ‘And, no, Tilly, probably sees a hundred boobs a day in her job.’
‘Please,’ he said, and she opened her eyes and with a sigh leant over to a pile of clutter beside the bed and pulled out a very little top, but at least it covered her. She lay back and closed her eyes again and Cort opened the little purple sack on her bedside and tipped out her worry dolls.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Checking on them,’ Cort said. ‘And they’re looking a lot more frazzled than they did last time I was here.’
She almost smiled.
‘I’m a happy person usually,’ she said. ‘At least I was till I worked there. I’m not going back.’
‘Up to you,’ he said.
‘Anyway—I’m not your responsibility.’
And given twelve hours or so ago they’d been in this bed together, somehow he felt that she was.
‘I spoke to Sheila.’
‘Oh, that’s really going to stop the gossip.’
‘Not just about you,’ Cort said. ‘Emergency is a difficult place to work and sometimes the atmosphere and the people can turn nasty. It’s how they deal with it,’ Cort explained. ‘You see so much, you get hard, you get tough, and sometimes it just gets like that. People forget to support one another and they just need a little bit of nudging. It can be a very nice place. We’re a great team usually,’ Cort said.
‘I don’t care if they’re all singing and smiling and holding hands,’ Ruby said, ‘I’m not going back. It’s not just the staff, it’s the patients and the relatives …’ She closed her eyes and tried to explain it. ‘It’s the violence of the place.’
‘It’s not exactly a walk in the park on the psych ward,’ Cort pointed out. ‘If you’re talking violence …’
‘They’re sick, though,’ Ruby flared in passionate response. ‘In Emergency they’re just plain drunk or angry.’
‘You’re a good nurse.’
‘No, I’m not.’ She hated being placated. How did he know she was a good nurse? He’d seen her hold one arm. He didn’t have much to base it on.
‘You’re going to be a great psych nurse, but part of that means you need good general training.’
She knew he was right.
‘And that also means that you can be appalled and devastated by what happened at work this afternoon. That was a shift from hell.’
Finally she looked at him.
‘Are you upset?’
He just sat there, because he tried so hard not to examine it, he really tried to just get on with the job, but she made him do so and finally he answered.
‘I’m gutted,’ Cort said, realising just how much he was, and he closed his eyes for a moment and blew out a breath. ‘I guarantee everyone on that shift today is.’ He heard her snort a disbelieving sigh, and even if he didn’t go on paint-ball excursions, he always supported his team, everyone, at any time, even here in her bedroom.
‘Everyone hurt today—whether or not they show it as you might expect. The thing is, Ruby, you’ll be gone from there in a couple of weeks, but they are there, day in, day out, doing their very best not to burn out.’
Her phone rang and Ruby frowned at it.
‘It’s work.’ She swallowed then answered it, and opened her mouth to speak and then listened, said goodbye and hung up.
‘That was Sheila. She wants me back in for my early tomorrow, and she says if I do that she won’t say anything about what happened today.’ Ruby gave a tight shrug. ‘She sounds like my mother.’
To Cort it didn’t sound like Sheila, because she always had plenty to say on everything, but he chose to keep quiet, because at least Ruby seemed to be thinking about going back.
‘I shouldn’t have run out.’ She closed her eyes and all she could see was Violet, just a sweet little angel, and she wanted to weep at the horror, to fold up into a ball and sob, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t while he was there.
‘Just go,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not leaving you on your own.’
‘I’m not your problem. Why would you want to help me?’
‘You were very helpful to me last night.’ He said it so awkwardly that she actually laughed.
‘You make it sound like I cured your erectile dysfunction or something.’
‘Er, no.’
‘Helpful?’ She wouldn’t drop it, she really was the strangest person he had ever met. ‘What do you mean, I was helpful?’
‘Nice, then,’ Cort said. ‘When I didn’t know I even needed someone to be. So now it’s my turn to be nice to you. Come on, I’ll take you out for dinner.’
‘I don’t want dinner.’
‘Okay, you sit with your tissues and I’ll fetch you a bottle of wine, shall I? How about a tragic movie? I’ll just sit in the lounge and read a magazine till your friends get home, but I’m not leaving you on your own. Is there anything to eat in this place?’
‘Okay, okay!’
