by Bryce Taylor
v 1.0
Chapter 1
From the plane Sydney is a miniature wonderland, teeny tiny harbour bridge, two spiky clumps of office buildings sprouting out of either side, we circle over beaches stretching as far as the eye can see, trees and more trees and itty-bitty houses spreading out in patchwork below the plane.
I have my face pressed up against the window, suddenly riveted despite the fourteen hours stuck in the same seat. The excitement of escaping the Irish winter and trading it in for three years in Australia, with sunshine, friends and good times. Well, and work and study too. Even that isn't too bad. Nursing isn't a dream job, but it is a good solid job that pays the rent.
And my Mam's.
After clearing customs, I don't have to struggle far with my enormous wheelie bag of what I suspect are clothes suited to far colder climates. Diarmuid and Katie are waiting in the arrivals area, bouncing with the kind of excitement that could only come from not spending the last thirty hours traveling to the other side of the planet in germ infested tube.
Diarmuid, tall, gangly and dark of eye and hair, handsome only when he is laughing, like now, floppy hair falling in his eyes as he rushes towards me, catching me in his arms, swinging me around.
Katie is not far behind, tiny, pixie-like Katie, with her long dark hair, skin so pale she looks translucent in full sun, we joke that she is actually a vampire. She usually threatens to bite us when we do so.
I don't realise how much I'd missed them until they are both hugging me and tears are leaking from my eyes, down my cheeks and I'm clinging to Diarmuid’s t-shirt, the same stupid Beamish Stout shirt he's been wearing for six years.
We'd been college roommates at Trinity back in Dublin. At eighteen we were fresh faced and filled with hope for a bright shiny future, Diarmuid studying drama, Katie philosophy and I the practical one doing nursing. We met when we were the only ones sad enough to turn up to a campus improv theatre group on a Thursday night, starting a tradition of Thursday night "improv" drinking that carried on for the next three years. The next semester we'd taken a flat in Rathmines together and amazingly stayed there together, through dating and disasters, feuds over toilet paper and dishes, in sickness and in health until we graduated.
Diarmuid had left first, picking up a part in a successful run of Chekov's 'Uncle Vanya', that played theatres all over Ireland and then Katie had taken a job crewing on a yacht in the south of France. I'd been placed in a hospital just out of the city that had entailed working more hours in the day then I'd had dreamed were possible.
The day before she left we put all the flotsam and jetsam of our lives on the footpath, teacups and plates, posters and milk crates for the next generation of students.
I'd rented an adult sized apartment, bought brand-new all of the things I'd seen in magazines, paid for by a pay packet padded out with overtime hours.
I'd dated, boozed and created friendships all within the confines of the hospital. A life without a single moment alone, certain of my foundations in the world.
Two years later the financial crisis hit like a hammer, destroying everything in its path.
When I'd been let go from my job I'd gone to work in a hospital London for a year but after a disastrous relationship with a doctor and an increasing annoyance with all thing English I'd been all ears when Diarmuid and Katie extolled the virtues of life in Sydney, despite their crappy jobs. At least they were getting paid, which was more than they'd have in Ireland. Diarmuid doing sales for a company that leased photocopiers. Katie doing traffic control for council work. As in actual traffic control, directing cars with a stop and go sign. This is why I studied nursing I'd told her smugly in one of our Skype chats.
By the time we arrived at their little flat a few blocks back from the beach it was like we've never been apart, laughing and carrying on like teenagers on the back seat of the bus. We drag my luggage up the two flights of stairs, Diarmuid and Katie giving me hell for bringing so much.
A few drinks later and we are ready for some serious catching up, the kind of things that you don't say on the phone. It's never too late to gain comfort from the wordless sympathy of friends when you recount your worst times, the sudden death of Diarmuid’s mother that has left him depressed and aimless, the abortion Katie had after a one-night stand that she is torn apart by, and the relationship I'd finally fled from in London that has destroyed all my sense of self-worth.
I don't remember much after the third bottle of wine, but I do remember falling asleep between clean sheets and feeling as if I'd come home.
I'd woken in the early hours in jet-lagged confusion, pounding headache, sneezing from the hay fever that gripped my sinus's and discover that in my packing I hadn't included one t-shirt, just what feels like hundreds of jumpers and cardigans. Despite these trials, burning my toast, missing the first bus, getting off at the wrong stop and finding that the hospital complex is about the size of a housing estate I'm still twenty minutes early.
I walk around for a while, sweltering in the damp humid heat before realising I am on completely the wrong side of the complex. Fifteen minutes later I'm on the right side, but still no closer to knowing where I'm supposed to go. I stare at the unhelpfully obtuse map, trying to figure out the location of the nurse's office, desperately looking for a fellow nurse to ask.
The next three cars to come into the parking lot are definitely not nurses. A brand new black two-door Audi slides into a parking space followed by the roar of a black Porsche and a late model white BMW. I guess based on cost and ponce factor, doctor, surgeon and resident. Fecking doctors, same no matter what side of the planet you are on.
An old beat-up car crawls in behind them. Definitely, a nurse I think with relief as a woman about my age in boots, torn jeans and white translucent tee stepped out of the car, blonde hair tied into a short ponytail, earbuds in her ears. I look her up and down, admiring her legs, eye fucking her just a little.
Too much to hope she'll be on my ward. Nothing wrong with the odd fling with a work colleague after all.
Well.
As long as it stays a fling.
"Hiya," I say more brightly than I'm feeling, hoping to find that the much-vaunted Aussie friendliness is actually a thing.
She looks up from her iPod, eyes me sideways, looking a little putout, one eyebrow raised as if to say, 'what?', startling blue eyes capturing my attention.
"Err, hi, I'm Aednat, uh, it's my first shift. I'm trying to find the nurses office?" I ask uncertainly, unsure of myself, immediately hating myself for my doubts.
Her face relaxes but she doesn't quite smile. She is very pretty, from across the car park I would have described her as sporty, all tanned and spare limbs, but now, in front of me, she is angelic, a choir boy, wide mouth, deep blue eyes and high cheek bones.
A very serious, sexy choir boy.
Not really my type.
Ok.
Exactly and utterly my type except for the lack of any facial expression.
She gives a slight tilt of her head to indicate I should follow her and I scurry after her and even though I am only a few inches shorter than her, she is somehow going twice the speed with half the effort.
When I catch up to her I start to babble, my natural reflex when people make me nervous. Especially these days.
"So, today is my first day in Australia, oh and I had an adventure getting here this morning," I tell her, my words tripping over themselves. "I was awake at four this morning from the jet lag, you know. Then I couldn't find my clothes and oh, I got the wrong bus."
She is watching me out of the corner of her eye, worried I might be crazy, a faint crease in her forehead. I drop my eyes to her hands, watching her twine her headphone cable neatly around her long fingers.
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"Yeah, I flew in from London last night," I say as if she has asked me a question, "I'm not English, obviously, I'm Irish, but I've been working in London. Just got sick of the fecking English, you know? There are still no jobs in Dublin, so I thought I'd give Sydney a go. "
A shadow, an impression of a smile has appeared at the corner of her mouth and I can feel my heart-rate increasing. There is something desperately magnetic about the way she is looking at me.
"Well, you can get away from the bloody English in Australia but as a nurse you can't get away from the doctors. Can't have it all, can you?"
I'm not entirely sure why I am still talking.
She has turned her head, to regard me openly, looking interested.
"Well, most of the doctors are bastards, aren't they? The only thing worse in a hospital is the surgeons who all think they are god’s gift to women don't they?"
Her mouth has quirked into the tiniest of smiles and her eyes are sparking with suppressed laughter. Crap.
She is definitely my type.
"Well, I made the stupid mistake of falling for a surgeon, didn't I?" I ask rhetorically as if I keep talking she will eventually say something, "he was a total prick in the end."
I think about that for a second.
"Actually, he was a prick the whole way through," I tell her regretfully, "I was just too stupid to see that he loved his job and his car more than he loved me."
I trail off as we arrive at a reception area. She flashes me a wide grin and turns to the lady seated at the computer.
Her smile is like a hundred sunrises and I feel weightless. I want her to turn back to me and smile at me for hours.
Days.
I want to bask in the glow of it.
I bet she is a great kisser.
"This is one of your new recruits, Gloria," she says to the lady in an aristocratic Londoner accent.
I can feel hot flames of colour burning up my neck and across my cheeks. I hurriedly shut my mouth when I realise it has been hanging open.
My only comfort is that she is finding this hilarious, her eyes glinting with suppressed laughter again.
It's a small comfort.
"This is Aednat," she says flashing that devastating grin at Gloria since it's clear from my reddening cheeks that I am incapable of introducing myself.
Despite this I am struck by the realisation that she pronounces my name perfectly.
She cranes her head over the desk as Gloria is frowning at the list in front of her. "Oh, here," she says pointing, "A-E-D, yes, that's her."
Sweet Jesus. She can't just say my name, she can spell it too.
"Thank you so much, Dr Grenfell," Gloria says in a simpering tone, batting her lashes. "Is your car out of the shop yet? I bet my old Honda isn't exactly handling the same way as your lovely machine."
"Before the weekend hopefully," she says, "and not that I'm complaining but I must admit your loaner really doesn't appreciate the hills the way mine does."
She half-turns and smiles sweetly at me as she says this. Oh, she is wicked, she has no shame at all.
"Well, goodbye Gloria," she says politely, turns back to me. "See you round, Aednat."
With that she strides off back down the hallway, looking like a runway model in what I now recognise are not high street, but designer jeans.
Gloria eyes me sympathetically.
"Yes, Dr Grenfell does have that effect, doesn't she?" she says watching her go, "I've been married to my man for thirty-two years and I'd still consider switching teams for that one."
If anything, the flames in my cheeks get hotter and my eyes get wider as I stare back at the plump and slightly grey-haired woman in front of me who is craning her neck to get a last glimpse.
"It's not every day that a new nursing recruit gets a guided tour from a senior A&E surgeon now is it?" Gloria says smiling at my flushed cheeks.
Oh, shite.
She has to be a fecking surgeon as well.
"I thought you said Dr Grenfell," I say stupidly. As if that's a consideration right now; a surgeon being called doctor.
She looks at me oddly for a moment before comprehension dawns on her.
"We started calling surgeons 'doctor' a while back," she says, "it seems a bit sexist to keep calling them 'mister' doesn't it?"
"Come on, love," she says with a laugh, "we can't stand around all day perving on the doctors, can we?"
As if I'm the one who was ogling her arse.
"What was your name again, love?" she asks consulting her spreadsheet, "Ad-Nat?"
"It's Eye-nit," I pronounce carefully, sighing inwardly.
Whilst I'm signing forms I find out all about Dr Grenfell. Gloria is more than willing to answer every single question I have and then some I don't.
Age? Thirty-five. I'd pegged her in her late twenties, but even at thirty-five she is still far younger than a senior surgeon should be. A role that she is perfectly suited for according to Gloria. Who else is more driven, more talented, more deserving of the job than Dr Grenfell?
First name? Leigh. For some stupid reason my stomach flip flops when Gloria tells me.
Gay? Yes. Definitely. The only surgeon who is apparently. Although realistically the other gays are probably just still in the closet.
Single? Maybe. Probably. She's a complete workaholic, but she is occasionally seen with another woman who she may or may not be dating.
Arrogant? Yes. But only to other doctors and apparently it is well deserved since she is one of the best surgeons in the hospital. The best if you are asking Gloria. The nurses all love her. Especially Gloria. One of the other nurses in the office hears Gloria say this and loudly agrees emphatically. Dr Grenfell is the best.
Soon there is a gaggle of middle-aged nurses swapping 'Dr Grenfell' stories. Between Gloria's telling of that time Leigh lent her brand-new Maserati to Gloria for her daughter's school dance, to another nurse's recollection of an epic takedown by Leigh of the then head of ICU when he was ordering completely the wrong care of a patient.
Apparently, she accused him of not being able to organise a fuck in a whorehouse.
In the ward.
In front of the nurses and the patient's family.
The family then wrote to the hospital board when it turned out she'd saved their son from being murdered by the stupid hubris of an overly-tired doctor.
There are a lot of these latter tales, Leigh obviously has a hot temper and not much patience when it came to her fellow doctors. Particularly not when their pride is getting in the way of the patient's well-being. Qualities to be admired I think, wishing I hadn't screwed things up so horrifyingly this morning.
The rest of the day passes like any other day in any other hospital I've been in. The same shit so to speak. I'm in Oncology today, but apparently, I'll be rotated around as needed to start with. Stupidly I wish that I'm placed in the ER in the hope that I'll run into Leigh. I wonder if she has thought about me or if she laughed it off and moved on with her day.
That night Diarmuid cooks his special pasta, a jar of store bought pasta sauce mixed with hot sauce plus whatever vegetables are in the fridge and some sliced ham. We sit together around the dining table, falling into the habits of our college days as easily as breathing.
"So how was your first day?" Katie asks.
"Oh, it was good," I say thinking of Leigh and blushing, "you know, everyone was lovely, the hospital was the same as they all are."
Diarmuid is grinning at me.
"Everyone was lovely, or one person was lovely?" he asks far too perceptively, an eyebrow raised.
Katie elbows him.
"Don't say that," she tells him, "Aednat has barely gotten over that bloody man, she's hardly going to start a new romance at work on her first day on the job now, is she?"
She turns to me and narrows her eyes.
"Are you?" she says sternly.
I lower my eyes to my plate.
"Aednat?" she says.
I put my fork
down.
"Alright, there was someone," I say reluctantly.
"I knew it," interjects Diarmuid, grinning triumphantly at Katie.
She glares at him and he struggles to put a serious expression back on his face. They both turn back to me.
"I mean, it's nothing," I say.
They both stare at me, waiting for more details.
"It's nothing," I repeat. It really is nothing. There isn't anything that can come of this.
I blush as they continue to stare.
"It's just this girl, woman, I mean, that I ran into, we barely even spoke," I say crossly, "can we please talk about something else?"