sound of an ambulance siren had her look up and she saw Lydia standing in the forecourt, frantically gesturing for her to run. Clearly there was something big coming in.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.
‘Go!’ Steele said, and he watched her run through the car park and to the forecourt, where not one but three flashing-light ambulances were now pulling up. Kelly ran past him too and as Steele walked up the corridor the anaesthetists and trauma teams were running down it towards Emergency.
Candy, Steele thought, was in for one helluva morning.
She was.
She raced into the changing rooms and stripped off her jeans and T-shirt and got into scrubs as Kelly did the same.
‘What is it?’ Kelly asked.
‘Multi-traumas.’ Candy passed on the little Lydia had told her as she’d dashed past. ‘Four of them.’
‘Four are coming here?’
It was rare to get four all at once but apparently there were several more critically injured patients going to different emergency departments. A high-speed collision, involving several vehicles, meant there would be nothing to think about other than the patients any time soon.
It was on this morning that Candy fell back in love with Emergency.
Yes, it was busy and stressful but it was what she loved to do. Helping out with a little girl who had looked dire when she’d first arrived but who was now coughing as Rory, the anaesthetist, extubated her was an amazing feeling indeed.
‘It’s okay, Bethany,’ Candy said as the girl opened her eyes and started to cry. ‘I’m Candy. You’re in hospital but you’re going to be okay.’
Thank God! She looked up at Rory, who gave her a wide-eyed look back because it had been touch and go. Bethany had had a chest tube inserted as her lung had collapsed in the accident and her heart hadn’t been beating when she’d arrived in the department.
To see her coughing and crying and alive, Candy knew why she’d fought so hard to do a job she loved.
Rory and the thoracic surgeon started talking about sedation and getting Bethany up to ICU, and it all happened seamlessly.
‘Busy morning?’ Patrick, the head nurse in ICU, smiled when Candy came up with her patient.
‘Just a bit.’
‘You look exhausted,’ Patrick commented. ‘So this is Bethany?’ He looked down at the little girl, who was sedated but breathing on her own. He nudged Candy away for a moment. ‘I’m going to put her in a side room. I thought about putting her next to Mum but I think it’s going to scare her more for now.’
‘How is her mum doing?’ Candy asked, because she had been so busy working on Bethany that she didn’t really know what was going on with the rest of her family.
‘Won’t know for a while,’ Patrick said. ‘They’ll keep her in an induced coma for at least forty-eight hours. Is it settling down in Emergency now?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I haven’t looked up yet.’
‘Go and grab a drink,’ Patrick said.
He was nice like that and Candy headed round to the little staffroom and had a quick drink from the fridge, pinched a few biscuits and then headed back to the unit.
It was quiet. One elderly man was being wheeled in on a stretcher and Candy rolled her eyes at Kelly as she walked into Resus to start the massive tidy up.
It was going to be a big job.
‘Let’s get one bed completely stocked and done,’ Kelly said, ‘just in case something comes in, then we can deal with the rest.’
They got one area cleared and restocked and were just about to commence with the rest when Lydia came in.
‘I’ve asked if everyone can come through to the staffroom.’
‘Now?’ Candy checked, because there was still an awful lot to do.
‘Just make sure that one crash bed is fully stocked,’ Lydia said, ‘and then come straight through. I need to speak to everyone.’
Steele’s morning flew by too.
He had a video meeting with some of his new colleagues in Kent and arranged to go there next Thursday as he wanted to see how the extension was coming along. He also had a house lined up with a real estate agent and wanted to take a second look.
Mr Worthington passed away just after eleven, his radio on, his family beside him. Steele spent a good hour with the family afterwards in his office at the end of the ward.
As they left, instead of heading back out, he sat and thought about Candy. He didn’t know how he felt and he didn’t know what to do.
He looked up when there was a knock at the door and he called for whoever it was to come in then remembered that he’d asked Gloria to send Macey’s niece in once the Worthington family had gone home.
‘Hello, Dr Steele.’ Catherine smiled. ‘Gloria said that you wanted to talk to me.’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘Come in.’
‘Aunt Macey has just gone for an occupational therapy assessment,’ Catherine said. ‘It’s nice to see her walking again.’ She took a seat and then looked at Steele. ‘It’s bad news, isn’t it …?’ she said, and her eyes filled up with tears.
‘No, no.’ Immediately Steele put her at ease. ‘I haven’t called you in to break bad news about your aunt’s health.’ He watched her let out a huge breath of relief. ‘Her physical health anyway,’ Steele amended. ‘But as you know, Macey’s been depressed.’
‘She seems to be getting better, though,’ Catherine said. ‘The tablets seem to be starting to work.’
‘They are,’ Steele said. ‘She’s talking a bit more and engaging with the staff. The thing is,’ he said, ‘it isn’t just medication that your aunt needs at the moment. She’s asked that I speak with you. There’s something that’s upsetting her greatly and it’s been pressing on her mind.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Your aunt has something she wishes to discuss with you, a secret that she has kept for many, many years, and it’s one she doesn’t want you to find out about after her death …’ He told her that Macey had had a baby more than fifty years ago and that he’d been given up for adoption at birth, but Catherine kept shaking her head, unable to take in the news. ‘We’d have known.’
‘Very few people knew,’ Steele said. ‘That’s what it was like in those days.’
‘But my aunt’s not like that …’ Catherine said, and then caught herself. ‘When I say that, I mean she’s so incredibly strict—she’s always saying that women should save themselves and …’ She stopped talking and simply sat there as she took the news in. ‘Poor Aunt Macey. How can we
