Spanish Doctor, Pregnant Nurse

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘So, I repeat—I do not want her leaving this department!’

  As Ciro called over the porter and handed him the bloods to take directly to Pathology, Harriet stood stock-still at the desk, pen poised over the notes she was writing, her eyes shuttered for a moment. It wasn’t Ciro’s ominous warning that caused her eyes to close in horror, but the use of the word ‘child’.

  They were talking about a fifteen-year-old child, and she mustn’t lose sight of that fact. It was their duty to protect her, especially if Ciro’s educated hunch proved to be correct.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Charlotte nudged her, putting a massive pile of drug charts in front of Harriet that needed to be checked.

  ‘The patient in cubicle four,’ Harriet murmured, her mind ticking over. ‘Alyssa Harrison…’

  ‘The head injury that’s here with her mother?’ Charlotte checked. ‘I thought she was being discharged.’

  ‘Not any more. Ciro doesn’t want her to leave the department. I’m going to ask Security to keep an eye on them.’

  ‘But what if the mother wants to take her?’

  ‘Then a simple head injury will become incredibly complicated.’ Harriet gave a thin smile. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. For now just keep an eye open and let me know straight away if they show signs of leaving.’ The emergency phone trilling loudly interrupted the conversation and had Charlotte practically dancing on the spot with anticipation. When the red phone rang, everything stopped! A direct line to Ambulance Control, it was used to warn the staff about any serious emergencies they could expect, and sometimes, if the situation merited it, an emergency squad of nurses and a doctor would be sent out.

  Harriet answered the telephone calmly, listening patiently to Ambulance Control and shaking her head as Susan came over swiftly, with Ciro following closely behind, clearly wanting to find out what was coming in, or whether the squad needed to go out.

  ‘Just a plane about to land with one engine,’ Harriet said easily, and Susan gave a dismissive shrug, before wandering off. Even the easily excited Charlotte managed a rather bored rolling of her eyes and went off to answer a call bell.

  Only Ciro remained, his expressive face clearly appalled at the news.

  ‘One engine!’

  ‘Yep,’ Harriet answered. ‘I’ll just let the nursing coordinator know.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Then what?’ Ciro barked, clearly frustrated by her obvious lack of urgency. ‘Am I to go out to the airport? Should we start moving patients out of the department?’

  ‘Ciro…’ Putting up her hand, Harriet stopped him. ‘It’s no big deal.’

  ‘Tell that to the poor souls flying thirty thousand feet in the air,’ he started, and somewhere deep inside, something flared in Harriet—a twitch of a smile on her lips, a small gurgle of laughter building within, a tiny flash of mischievousness at the realisation that she could prolong his agony, a glimpse of the old Harriet, the old, fun-loving Harriet, that seemed to have been left behind somehow. Ciro responded to it.

  ‘What?’ His lips were reluctantly twitching into a smile, too. ‘What is so funny? I am overreacting, no?’

  ‘Yes.’ Harried grinned. ‘You obviously haven’t worked in an emergency department that covers an international airport before.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Those poor souls won’t even know there’s a potential problem. This type of thing happens all the time. Ambulance Control alerts us as a courtesy, to be ready in case…’

  ‘Then shouldn’t we be doing something, getting ready?’

  ‘Ciro, we are ready,’ Harriet answered. ‘The mobile emergency equipment was all checked at the beginning of the shift, we’ve got a major disaster procedure plan in place, ready to be implemented at any given moment. This is a fairly regular occurrence. Planes can and do land perfectly well with one engine. However, as a precaution, the airport emergency crews will all be ready to meet the plane and if, if, a disaster were to eventuate, we’d commence the major incident plan. But for now it’s way too soon to do anything.’ He didn’t look particularly convinced. ‘Ciro, if they had rung to say a plane was going to land with no engines, we’d be moving. This time next month you’ll barely turn a hair at the news. They’ll ring soon to say it’s landed safely.’

  He gave a relieved nod and she should have left it there, should have ended it with a swift smile and got straight back to work, but she didn’t.

  ‘Unless, of course, the wheels get stuck in the undercarriage.’

  ‘Now you are teasing.’

  ‘Yes.’ Harriet smiled, but somewhere in mid-smile it wavered, somewhere in mid-conversation the witty responses ended and all she could do was stare. Stare back at those mocha eyes that held hers, stare at that full, sensual mouth. He smiled back at her and the terrible realisation hit that she was flirting.

  Oh, not licking her lips and hand on hips flirting, but there was a dangerous undercurrent that was pulling her. A rip in the ocean that was slowly but surely dragging her in, this seemingly light conversation peppered with dangerous undertones. Surely, surely she shouldn’t be noticing the tiny golden flecks that lightened those velvet eyes, surely she should no more than vaguely register the heavy, masculine scent of him. But instead it permeated her.

  Harriet could feel her own pulse flickering in her throat and from the tiny dart of his eyes Ciro registered it too, and for a slice of time the department faded into insignificance, for a second it was only the two of them, not two colleagues sharing a light-hearted joke, but instead a man and a woman partaking in that primitive, almost indefinable ritual. A ritual that somehow acknowledged mutual attraction, that managed, without words, to voice a thousand questions. Never had she been more grateful for the sharp trill of the emergency phone ringing, dragging her back to reality, a mental slap to her flushed cheeks, a chance to regroup, to pull back, a chance to stop something that must never, ever be started.

  ‘It landed.’ Her voice was high and slightly breathless as she replaced the receiver, taking great pains to calmly log the call in the book, anything other than look at him. ‘Safely.’

  ‘I told you it would!’ Blinking in confusion, she dragged her eyes to his, smiling despite herself when he gave a nonchalant shrug and somehow turned the previous few minutes on their head. ‘Didn’t I try and tell you that you were overreacting, Sister?’

  One good thing about being busy was that the hours went by quickly. Ciro, clearly used to dealing with a full department, worked his way expertly through the patients. Harriet guessed that once he didn’t have to pause to look up every last phone number and find out where every blessed form was kept to order various tests, he’d be an absolute dream to work with—so long as you followed his rules!

  ‘Look at you, Harriet!’ Charlotte’s voice was almost a screech. ‘You’re in the newspaper! Why didn’t you say?’

  Mortified, clutching a telephone receiver in one hand, with the other Harriet reached out to grab the paper, but Charlotte was having none of it. At twenty-one she was a huge fan of Drew’s and never missed an opportunity to talk about him.

  ‘I just saw one of the patients reading it! I told them that you worked here so they let me have the paper—Oh, Harriet, you look gorgeous!’

  ‘I look huge,’ Harriet corrected, refusing to even glance at the beastly photo of her on the red carpet at the acting awards ceremony that had been held the previous night.

  ‘Any results back on Alyssa?’ Ciro asked as he came over. ‘The medics are waiting to see her, but I want some more information before I speak with the mother again and tell her that we’re keeping her in.’

  ‘I’m still on hold.’ Harriet didn’t even look at him, couldn’t actually! She was concentrating too hard on breathing, tiny white spots dancing in front of her eyes, sweat beading on her forehead as great waves of nausea rolled over her. And Charlotte’s incessant voice wasn’t exactly helping matters.

  ‘But y
ou’re not huge, you look stunning!’

  ‘Who looks stunning?’ she could hear Ciro asking, mortification heaped on mortification as behind her back Charlotte gleefully showed him the photo and took the new doctor on a whirlwind tour of her supposedly wonderful life.

  ‘Harriet here is married to a soap star.’

  ‘Soap?’

  ‘Soap opera!’

  ‘Her husband is an opera singer?’

  ‘No, he’s on TV. How come,’ Charlotte asked with the tactlessness only a very pretty twenty-one-year-old could get away with, ‘that with the patients your English is brilliant, but when you’re talking to us it’s—’

  ‘Charlotte!’ Harriet warned, putting her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, but Ciro was unfazed.

  ‘Because most of the English exams that I had to pass concentrated on medical terminology,’ Ciro answered easily. ‘I can name every bone in your body yet I cannot talk easily about television shows.’

  ‘He could name every bone in my body,’ Susan sighed as Ciro headed back to the cubicles, with Charlotte following like a faithful puppy. ‘He’s very good, isn’t he?’ Susan carried on, following Harriet’s far-away gaze as she sat on the telephone on seemingly eternal hold, trying to chase up Alyssa’s blood results. Despite marking the forms as high priority the results still hadn’t come through and Mrs Harrison’s already short fuse was clearly about to run out. Glancing over to cubicle four, Alyssa frowned as Mrs Harrison pulled the curtain, effectively blocking her view.

  ‘He’s doing well,’ Harriet admitted almost reluctantly, determined not to let even a hint of what she was feeling carry to her peers, rolling her eyes as yet again the switchboard operator asked her to stay on hold. ‘So long as you don’t ask him for any favours.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning I asked him to write up two Maxalon for me and he refused. He said that he’d only write them up if he examined me first.’

  ‘And you said no!’ Susan teased. ‘I wouldn’t have to be asked twice to take my kit off. Are you OK?’ she asked more seriously when Harriet didn’t smile back, just fanned her face with her hand and licked lips that were suddenly dry.

  ‘No,’ Harriet finally admitted. ‘In fact, once I get these results I think I’m going to have to take first break. Susan, would you mind going and checking on Alyssa? Tell Mrs Harrison that we need the curtains kept open, unless she’s using a bedpan, of course.’

  ‘Sure.’ Susan stepped down from her stool. ‘And when I’ve done that do you want me to ring the supervisor, and see if she can send someone down to replace you?’

  ‘Fat chance.’ Harriet rolled her eyes. ‘I was the last of the last resorts already. I’ll just have to grin and bear it, I’m afraid. Let’s hope the department stays quiet.’

  Jinx!

  Even as the words came out of her mouth, even before the two nurses could touch the wooden desk in front of them in an effort to stop the jinx, the urgent call went up!

  A loud crash, followed by a wail of horror filled the relatively quiet department and, throwing the receiver down on the desk, Harriet managed a rueful smile as she ran towards cubicle four, Susan quickly apportioning blame as she ran behind. ‘That’s your fault, Harriet!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  CIRO beat them there.

  Pulling back the curtain and assessing in a split second what had happened, Ciro knelt down and swiftly examined Alyssa who lay unconscious on the floor. He checked her vital signs as Harriet pulled an oxygen mask from the wall and placed it over the young girl’s mouth, careful not to move her until Ciro gave the OK.

  ‘She said she felt OK,’ Mrs Harrison was sobbing. ‘I thought if I got her home to her own bed—’

  ‘Did she hit her head when she fell?’ Ciro’s question was direct.

  ‘No. She was just getting off the trolley and she went dizzy.’

  ‘Did you break her fall?’

  ‘Yes!’ Mrs Harrison’s voice was a screech. ‘What the hell’s happening? Has she fainted or something?’

  That was what Harriet had been hoping when first she’d seen the young girl collapsed on the floor, but normally, with a simple faint, consciousness returned almost as soon as the patient was prone. But despite the oxygen, despite the seconds ticking past, Alyssa still lay unconscious.

  ‘Let’s get her over to Resus.’ Ciro’s expression was grim as he attempted to check her blood pressure, but as Harriet went to pull out the trolley Ciro impatiently shook his head. He swiftly removed the oxygen mask. Picking up the feather-light young girl in his arms, he carried her through the department to the better-equipped resuscitation room as Harriet moved like lightning ahead of him.

  ‘Fast-page the paediatricians,’ Ciro ordered, but thankfully Susan was already on to it. Even Charlotte was thinking ahead, pulling open a flask of IV saline to run through a drip, but though Harriet was pleased to see her acting independently, she still needed supervision.

  ‘Charlotte,’ Harriet called, as she attached Alyssa to a multitude of monitors, ‘run the saline through a paediatric burette. She’s extremely underweight so we have to be very careful of doses.’

  ‘We need to be very careful not to overload her with fluid,’ Ciro confirmed and even though he was busy, inserting an IV and connecting the drips, he still managed to find the time to explain his thought process to the eager grad nurse. ‘Her heart is beating irregularly, she may have some heart failure, so the last thing we want to do is give her more fluid than her heart can deal with. On the other hand…’ He paused as he carefully examined Alyssa’s neck, checking her jugular venous pressure. Then he whipped out his stethoscope and listened carefully to her lungs for a moment before resuming his knowledgeable lecture. ‘She is undoubtedly dehydrated. Let’s give her a stat 200 ml bolus. I want a catheter put in and her input and output strictly monitored.

  ‘Come on, Alyssa.’ His words were loud, the call to his patient sharp as he not-too-gently rubbed her sternum. It worked. Alyssa’s eyes flickered open as she attempted to push him away. ‘Good girl.’ Ciro’s voice was more soothing now, moving quickly to orientate his patient to her new surroundings. ‘You lost consciousness again, Alyssa, so we have moved you to a different area of Emergency where we can keep a closer eye on you…’ The frantic running of feet along the corridor outside heralded the arrival of the paediatric team, but instead of turning to greet them, Harriet noted with approval that he carried on talking to Alyssa, perhaps sensing that a full emergency team arriving at her bedside would be daunting for the young girl. Ciro took time to reassure her that, despite the apparent chaos, everything was very much in order. ‘We were concerned about you so there are going to be a lot of doctors arriving and a lot of talk that you don’t understand, but you are going to be OK.’

  There certainly were a lot of doctors arriving. An emergency call always merited a rapid response, but the page had been put out as a paediatric emergency and though the difference was probably negligible, Harriet was sure that everyone had run just that bit faster to get there, from the anaesthetist to the nursing supervisor.

  ‘Alyssa Harrison,’ Ciro explained, ‘presented with a head injury secondary to a fall while dancing…’

  Harriet listened as she worked on, listened to his heavily accented English barely faltering as he explained Alyssa’s complicated symptoms, and even though it was his first night, even though none of the doctors had met him before, he delivered his findings with a calm authority that demanded respect, explained without words to the rapidly gathering crowd that he was very much in control.

  ‘Can you chase up those results?’ Ciro looked over and Harriet let out a low moan.

  ‘I’ve left the pathologist hanging on the line.’

  ‘Tell him we’ll be sending some blood gases along shortly,’ Ciro called as Harriet rapidly headed back for the nurses’ station.

  It took for ever to get through, the switchboard operator telling her in a rather pained voice that ‘yet again’ she was ab
out to be connected, but suddenly those tiny white spots that had been dancing in front of her eyes earlier seemed to have returned for an encore. The nurses’ station seemed impossibly small all of a sudden. Sweat trickled between her breasts as she choked back bile, pleading with the powers that be to just let her get through the next few minutes of her life without major problems. If she could just get the blessed results down, she could hopefully escape the department for five minutes.

  ‘Harriet, we need those results!’ Ciro’s voice was booming at her, his impatient face swimming before her eyes as she looked up. Finally Harriet conceded to herself that she had to get to the bathroom at once. Hurling the receiver somewhere in Ciro’s direction, she stumbled off the stool.

  ‘The pathologist is on the line now.’

  ‘So, what are the results?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled, backing out, her hand over her mouth. Thankfully Susan was around, and recognised potential disaster before it hit. Susan’s reflexes were like lightning, guiding Harriet to a vacant cubicle, sitting her on a chair and mercifully producing a bowl as she pulled the curtains on one of the many humiliating moments in Harriet’s life!

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘GIVE her the Maxalon, you meanie,’ Susan teased as Ciro stepped into the cubicle a few moments later.

  Thankfully his telephone conversation with the pathologist had at least given Susan enough time to remove the offending bowl and for Harriet to rinse her mouth and at least manage a semblance of dignity.

  ‘I’ve already discussed this with Harriet,’ Ciro said, completely unmoved. ‘Now, will you let me examine you?’

  ‘There’s no need,’ Harriet insisted. ‘I went out to dinner last night, the food was really rich…’