Dr Tallis, you’ve spent—what is it now?—six years at medical school and a further four years studying anaesthesia. It’s called medical science. That’s what we practise here, and it’s damn expensive. Leave the quackery to the quacks and let’s get on with the job of saving lives. That is what you have been trained to do and that is your primary responsibility while you are working in ICTU.’
‘Patrick Naylor, the CEO, has given me his approval,’ she put in with a tilt of her chin.
He held her defiant gaze for an infinitesimal pause, before asking, ‘Is it true that you and he are an item?’
Allegra felt hot colour rush up into her face. How had he found out about her one dinner with Patrick? How had anyone found out about it? One date did not constitute a relationship as far as she was concerned and, besides, Patrick was still getting over a nasty separation. She had agreed to have dinner with him more because she had felt sorry for him than any degree of attraction on her part. It had been her first date in eighteen months and certainly no one’s business but her own.
‘I hardly see that my private life is any concern of yours,’ she said with a heated glare.
‘No, indeed, but if it interferes with how ICTU is run then it becomes of great concern to me. I’m here to put ICTU at Melbourne Memorial on the map as best practice for trauma reception and acutely ill patients, and I will not tolerate either my reputation or that of this hospital with the introduction of alternative “medicine” practices that do not have a scientific leg to stand on. We’ve a got a big enough workload with conventional medical care.’
Allegra got stiffly to her feet. ‘The work I’m doing on my project does not interfere with my regular workload. I do most of it in my spare time.’
He rose to his feet, his superior height immediately casting a shadow over her. ‘I’m going to give you a month to get whatever results you can, but then I’m reviewing it. And let me tell you, if there are any complaints about the methods you are using then I’ll pull the plug on your study there and then. This is a new unit and every professional and political eye is focused on it to make sure the hefty amount of public money that’s been allocated to it has been spent wisely. And my reputation is riding on it as well. I don’t want the press to get wind of trauma patients having their tarot cards read as part of their recovery program in ICTU.’
Allegra had never felt so incensed in her life. Her hands were clenched by her sides so she didn’t give in to the temptation to slap that supercilious smirk off his face. She didn’t trust herself to speak even if she could have located her voice; it seemed to be trapped somewhere in the middle of her throat where a choking nut of anger was firmly lodged.
‘Good day, Dr Tallis,’ he said, moving past his desk to open the door for her. ‘I’m sure you’ve got patients to see. I don’t want to keep you from them any longer.’
She strode past him with her head high, her mouth tight and her eyes sparking with ire.
‘Oh, and one more thing,’ he said, just as she’d brushed past.
She stopped and turned around to face him, her expression visibly taut with rage. ‘Yes?’
His eyes twinkled with something that looked suspiciously like amusement as he took in her flushed features. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, for someone who is so into alternative relaxation therapies, you seem a little tense. Have you thought about booking in for a massage yourself?’
‘Why?’ she asked with a curl of her lip. ‘Are you offering your services?’
He suddenly smiled, revealing perfectly even white teeth. ‘I’m not sure in this case that my touch would have the desired effect.’
‘Not unless I was completely comatose,’ she clipped back, and stalked out.
CHAPTER TWO
‘HOW did your meeting with the director go?’ Louise asked later that morning.
‘Grr …’Allegra answered with a fiery look. ‘Every time I think of that man I want to punch something.’
‘That doesn’t sound like you,’ Louise remarked. ‘You’re always the one telling the rest of us how to chill out and relax. Is he really going to put a stop to your study?’
‘He’s giving me a month to prove that it’s worthy of “medical science”—his version of science anyway,’ Allegra answered. ‘But how can I do anything in a month? It all depends on what patients come in. We haven’t had a coma patient since poor Alice Greeson, three weeks ago, and she didn’t recover.’ She blew out a sigh of frustration. ‘I have to change his mind. I really want to do this study, Louise—it’s important to me.’
The hospital intercom suddenly blared out in a tinny voice, ‘Code Blue, Surgical Ward,’ repeating it several times.
‘Got to go, Louise,’ Allegra said, heading for the lift. ‘I’m on the crash team this morning.’
The surgical ward was on the sixth floor, but when Allegra got to the bank of lifts none of them seemed to be moving. She shifted from foot to foot impatiently, before turning and heading for the fire exit. She started running up the stairs two at a time, glad she’d resumed her fitness programme now that Christmas had passed.
When she arrived on the ward the curtains were drawn around one of the beds in room two, the crash trolley, two nurses and the intern already doing cardiac massage on the patient.
‘What’s the story?’ she asked, as she pushed aside the curtains.
‘Sixty-five-year-old male, two days post right hemicolectomy,’ the intern answered. ‘The nurses were getting him out of bed for a wash and he collapsed. Looks like a PE, maybe an infarct.’
‘Is the floor anaesthetist on the way?’ Allegra asked.
‘He might not be coming,’ one of the nurses answered.
‘There’s some sort of complicated case going on in Theatre that’s tied up a lot of staff.’
‘I’ll intubate him,’ Allegra said, moving to the head of the bed and picking up the sucker from the emergency trolley. ‘You’ll need to help me,’ she said to the nurse on her left.
‘But I’m just out of grad school,’ the young and rather nervous-looking nurse said. ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’ve never been to an arrest before.’
‘Just do what I say, you’ll be fine. Turn on wall suction,’ she said, as she suctioned the patient’s mouth and reapplied the oxygen mask. Allegra picked an endotracheal tube and checked the laryngoscope battery. ‘OK,’ she said to the intern who was bagging the patient between cardiac compressions from the surgical ward nurse, ‘I’ll tube now. Put on cricoid pressure, will you?’
The intern stepped aside and applied cricoid pressure while Allegra removed the mask from the bag and oxygen. She rapidly intubated the patient and connected the oxygen, handing the bag back to the intern to continue ventilation while she secured the tube. The medical registrar, Peter Newton, had by now arrived and was looking at the ECG trace.
‘He’s got a rhythm,’ he said. ‘Looks like VT We’ll need to cardiovert. I’ll do it.’
