A Nurse in Crisis

by Lilian Darcy

  ‘Big and tired,’ she answered him, more brightly than she felt. ‘She sees her GP today. I hope he takes it seriously.’

  ‘Then you do feel as if something might be wrong?’

  They were standing just outside his office and he was leaning against the doorframe in the casual pose of a man who was fit and healthy and at ease with his body. She was close enough to feel his heat and to sense the pull between them. Close enough, too, to know that he wanted to touch her. One hand, held loosely at his side, was reaching out just far enough to brush her skirt, and she felt the swish of the soft cotton against her legs.

  If she moved her own hand just a little, she could entwine her fingers with his. But something held her back. Was it simply that anyone—Rebecca, Harry, one of the receptionists, even a patient—might walk along this corridor at any time? Or was it more than that?

  She felt overwhelmed, and it didn’t seem right that so many different emotional things were happening in her life all at once. Peter’s news, Sarah’s state. Marshall’s new importance in her life.

  And, of course, she didn’t have time to worry about any of it now. Dr Gaines needed her to take a patient’s blood, then Dr Jones had to remove some infected splinters from a six-year-old boy’s foot and wanted her assistance. Little Michael Callahan needed a lot of soothing and distraction, and turned out to be out of date with his tetanus immunisation as well. Predictably, the news that he needed an injection came as the last straw.

  Harry had three more patients waiting, and so it fell to Aimee to deal with a kicking, screaming child in an attempt to push the needle home without causing him a lot more pain than if he’d lain still.

  When it was finally over she felt distinctly shaky and, with Michael’s hysterical screams still ringing in her ears, she took refuge in the practice’s small kitchen for a moment while she made a cup of tea. It was going to taste so good! Looking at her watch, she was somewhat shocked to find that it was still only half past nine.

  ‘Is my watch right?’ she asked receptionist Chrissie Dunhill in a helpless tone, when Chrissie approached from behind her, carrying an empty coffee-cup.

  ‘’Fraid so,’ Chrissie said with a wry smile. She was a trim, practical woman in her mid-forties, with three teenage children and emphatic opinions on parenting. ‘Everyone in the entire practice heard that child screaming. His mother looked grim on their way out.’

  ‘I’m shaking,’ Aimee admitted. ‘How long did he yell before I managed to give him the needle?’

  ‘I wasn’t timing it, but it felt like a good ten minutes.’

  ‘It felt like twice that long to me!’

  Chrissie shuddered. ‘I couldn’t be a nurse,’ she said, ‘let alone a doctor. I love working in a medical practice, but I don’t know how all of you do it. Cutting and stitching and jabbing. Looking down people’s throats and hearing all the details.’

  ‘I love it, actually,’ Aimee admitted. ‘Hadn’t realised, until I came back to it, how much I’d missed nursing all those years when I was at home, bringing up the children.’

  ‘What is it, though? It can’t be something perverse and twisted, because you’re all such lovely people!’

  ‘What is it?’ Aimee echoed, and tried to put it into words. ‘The importance of it, I suppose. The realness. I know that’s not a word! The fact that every day I’m in touch with what really makes people tick, physically and emotionally. Something like that, anyway.’

  She spread her hands, feeling the explanation had been inadequate, but Chrissie nodded as if it made sense.

  ‘That’s what Dr Irwin said to me recently, too,’ she said. ‘And it must definitely be true in his case, because if he didn’t love it he could afford to retire tomorrow, go on a world cruise and still buy himself a Rolls-Royce when he got home!’

  ‘Could he?’ Aimee answered automatically, hearing the way her voice had pitched itself a little too high.

  She knew nothing about Marshall’s finances, and wasn’t sure that she wanted to. Not yet. Not for a while. Not since Peter’s news.

  ‘Oh, heavens, yes!’ Chrissie said, then she tapped the kitchen door neatly shut with her heel and lowered her voice. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t talk about it, but I’ve been dying to tell someone. I mean, of course Dr Harry and Dr Rebecca know already. Probably everyone does, more or less, so it’s not as if I’m gossiping or anything. His father-in-law died earlier this year and left him a considerable amount of money. We all knew that—or I suppose perhaps you didn’t, since it happened before you started—’

  ‘No, I didn’t have any idea.’

  ‘But we didn’t know how much, until I overheard him—Dr Irwin—on the phone a few weeks ago, talking to the father-in-law’s solicitor in London.’

  She detailed exactly why it wasn’t her fault that she’d overheard, then finished with a guilty blush and an exclamation. ‘Listen to me! I’ll be honest. I could have made a noise so he’d realise I was still at the front desk, but I didn’t! And you really are the first person I’ve told. It turns out to be over a million pounds! Isn’t that incredible? That’s at least two and a half million dollars. Perhaps closer to three.’

  ‘Yes,’ Aimee said weakly. ‘You’re right. It’s a lot of money. I had no idea.’

  ‘Obviously he’s meant to keep it in trust for Rebecca and Simon. At least, that’s what he said on the phone, but there’s no actual provision for that in the will, apparently. I heard him say to the solicitor how touched he was that his father-in-law, whom he hadn’t seen for quite a few years, trusted him enough to leave the money to him outright, in the knowledge that he would do the best for the children.’

  ‘Yes, but, of course, anyone who knows Dr Irwin would realise that he’ll do exactly that,’ Aimee managed, reeling inwardly from Chrissie’s well-meant gossip.

  ‘Oops, there’s Dr Gaines calling me,’ Chrissie said. ‘I expect she wants that printout I promised her…’ Her voice trailed off into a mumbling reminder to herself about some administrative task that wasn’t Aimee’s concern. Then she opened the door and left the kitchen. ‘Coming, Dr Gaines. I’m sorry.’

  I wish she hadn’t told me. That was Aimee’s first thought after Chrissie had left.

  She stood, leaning her lower back against the sink, sipping her hot mug of tea and almost burning her mouth and the palms of her hands, which were wrapped around the mug.

  Last week it wouldn’t have mattered. This week she knew already that it did. Till Peter’s news on Saturday, and Chrissie’s revelation just now, she’d assumed that she and Marshall were equals as they teetered on the brink of their new relationship, and she’d wanted that equality so badly.

  She’d imagined him to be in more or less the same position as herself—comfortably situated, wealthier on paper than they were in lifestyle, thanks to their ownership—or, in her case, trusteeship—of a piece of real estate in Sydney’s expensive eastern suburbs.

  But, in fact, as she now knew, they weren’t equals at all. The house in Woollahra felt like hers in many ways, but wasn’t, and it was dangerous to forget that for a moment. She had no other assets, while Marshall was a millionaire, with the expectation that he’d manage his finances well and leave everything to his two children.

  There were many people in this world who might now perceive her response to Marshall as a cold-blooded pursuit, an attempt to better herself by getting her hands on his money. The very thought made her profoundly uncomfortable, and although she knew that she wasn’t in any sense a gold-digger, the disparity in their situations had her stomach churning, without her as yet being able to work out exactly why.

  Rebecca Irwin appeared in the doorway at that moment.

  ‘Oh, Aimee, there you are!’ she said. ‘I’m going to need you to help clean some grazes and suture a cut. It’s a boy from the local school, who fell in the playground, and the teacher who brought him in seems very concerned. The mother is on her way.’

  Aimee put down her half-empty mug and followed Rebecca
, who was still chatting brightly and in a not particularly natural way. ‘I’m sorry to have to tear you away from your tea. I know you had a tough time with Harry’s patient.’

  ‘I’m fine, now, Dr Irwin,’ Aimee said.

  Although married to fellow practice partner Harrison Jones, Rebecca had made the decision not to change her name on her marriage. She was a strong character, approaching each aspect of her life with enormous passion. Aimee liked her, but had become aware of a change in her manner over the past week, and understood the reason for it very well.

  Rebecca knew, or suspected, that her father and his practice nurse were involved with each other, and she wasn’t prepared to take the matter on trust. She was wary, protective of the status quo.

  Protective of her inheritance? Aimee suddenly wondered. Quite a normal response, really. Not many people would stand happily by and watch a widowed parent get involved in a new relationship if that relationship threatened their own position in any way.

  There was no time to dwell on it any further now.

  ‘I’m not going to have a needle, am I?’ said the seven-year-old boy who sat in Rebecca’s office. He was accompanied by a teacher with a very serious face, holding an object wrapped up in a tissue and placed in a plastic bag. ‘I heard that other boy crying just now. It must have hurt like anything!’

  Rebecca flashed a look at Aimee, and just then the boy’s mother, summoned from home by a phone call from the school, hurried in.

  ‘Don’t let them give me a needle, Mum,’ Aaron Lloyd ordered his harried parent in a panicky voice. ‘It’s going to hurt, and I don’t want it!’

  There was another nerve-jangling battle to administer the local anaesthetic. A piece of broken glass, hidden in the bark mulch beneath the school’s playground equipment, had cut deeply into the boy’s knee, and it needed stitches. Despite having the area numbed, the boy still whimpered throughout the whole procedure.

  This was followed by ten minutes of painstaking cleaning of the deep, grit-filled grazes that surrounded the cut so that they didn’t heal over with pieces of dirt still inside. Finally Aimee was able to dress the whole area with gauze and tape.

  ‘All finished,’ she told him cheerfully, then noticed the teacher, Adam Perry, a young man of about twenty-five, clearing his throat nervously.

  ‘Wait for us in the waiting room, mate,’ he told Aaron. ‘Have a look at the books and toys. I need to…uh…finish something with the doctor.’

  Rebecca wasn’t present at that moment. Aimee had taken Aaron to the smaller of the two treatment rooms in the practice, and it had been quite a squash with both Adam Perry and the boy’s mother looking on. She wondered what more the young teacher needed to say.

  ‘Dr Irwin is with another patient,’ she started to say, then saw Rebecca usher the pregnant woman out. The latter waddled down the corridor just behind a limping Aaron.

  ‘Was there something else?’ Rebecca asked, coming across to the corridor to the treatment room. The boy’s mother turned to follow Rebecca in.

  ‘Yes.’ Adam Perry nodded. He held up the bag he’d been so carefully holding. ‘This.’

  With the utmost care, he took the dirty object out of the bag and they all saw at once what it was. A hypodermic syringe.

  ‘Oh, my lord!’ Mrs Lloyd hissed. She looked sick and faint. ‘Did it—?’

  ‘Yes.’ The teacher nodded jerkily. ‘It was hanging from his knee when he stood up. Sticking in, but not very far. He was crying. He’d skidded on his knee across the cement and into the bark mulch, and I was on the spot when it all happened, so I pulled the syringe straight out. I’m not sure that he even noticed, and I didn’t want to say anything in front of him. A lot of the kids know about the risks of needle-stick injuries these days. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. We try to check the playground regularly, but—’

  He looked ill with regret at having to give this news, and Aaron’s mother had had to sit down.

  ‘AIDS,’ she said in a strangled voice.

  Aimee saw Rebecca hiding her own concern and bringing all the vibrancy of her personality to the situation.

  ‘Mrs Lloyd, the risk is very, very small,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a Monday morning. That needle has probably been in the mulch for at least a day, and yesterday was warm and sunny. Neither the AIDS virus nor hepatitis can survive in the absence of liquid, so as long as that syringe dried out thoroughly there’s nothing to worry about.

  ‘As well, Mr Perry’s impression was that it hadn’t gone in very far. Mrs Hilliard has just cleaned the whole area very thoroughly. We’ll do a blood test, though, just to make sure. It’ll take a week for a result to come through and then, just to make absolutely sure, we’ll do another one in three months, but, as I said, the chances are very slight. I certainly wouldn’t recommend alarming Aaron by telling him.’

  ‘He’s going to be alarmed enough by another needle,’ Mrs Lloyd joked shakily, her fears somewhat allayed by Rebecca’s explanation.

  And so Aimee took part in her third battle to administer a needle that morning. Yes, things definitely came in threes…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AT THE beginning of her lunch-break, Aimee phoned Sarah to hear about her visit to her GP that morning. There wasn’t much news as yet.

  ‘He’s sending me for another ultrasound, and he wants me to see an obstetrician. I’ve got a referral and I’ve made appointments.’

  ‘Which obstetrician?’

  ‘Well, I asked him about the husband of that doctor in your practice.’

  ‘Marcus Gaines? He’s married to Grace, who works here, yes.’

  ‘Yes, and he said he was excellent. That is, Dr Maskell said Dr Gaines…Marcus Gaines…was—’

  ‘I know what you meant,’ Aimee said quickly. She could hear the false brightness in Sarah’s tone. ‘How are you feeling today?’

  ‘Oh, OK…’

  ‘Worse?’ Aimee pushed.

  ‘Yes, worse,’ Sarah admitted. ‘I’m glad Dr Maskell is sending me for a scan because it means he’s taking it seriously…but I’m sorry he’s taking it seriously, because it means he thinks there might be something wrong. I don’t want there to be something wrong…but I know there is!’

  When Aimee put down the phone a few minutes later, she felt like a wrung-out rag, and she must have looked like one, too, because Marshall came up to her and said quietly, ‘Busy for lunch today?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Want to come for soup and a sandwich on the beach?’

  ‘Yes, please!’

  He took her hand as soon as they were out the front door of the practice, and as they came down the steps Aimee saw Rebecca getting into her car, parked across the street. She looked across at them, and for a second her frown betrayed what she was thinking about those joined hands before it gave way to a bright smile and a wave.

  ‘Enjoy your lunch,’ she called.

  ‘We will,’ Marshall called back, caressing the back of Aimee’s hand with his thumb, as if to reassure her.

  Rebecca started her car, backed dangerously close to the car parked behind it, swung the wheel, then headed out into the street with a jerk and a protest of the engine. Aimee felt rather than heard Marshall’s half-suppressed sigh, and she waited, expecting that he might say something about his daughter’s ambivalent attitude.

  He didn’t, though, which somehow made Rebecca’s attitude seem more significant, even though it wasn’t a subject Aimee wanted to bring up herself. That was illogical of her, wasn’t it?

  They walked to a local sandwich shop and Marshall treated her like a convalescent who needed fattening up.

  ‘Have the cream of pumpkin soup,’ he urged her, ‘and the sandwich special. Turkey breast, avocado…’ He listed each ingredient, making them all sound utterly tempting, then finished. ‘You look exhausted, Aimee.’

  ‘I feel it,’ she admitted, adding to the woman behind the counter, ‘Yes, I’ll have the special, too.’

  ‘Would you like to go ho
me for the afternoon? We can manage without you. We do on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, after all.’

  ‘No, I’ll be fine,’ she said, ‘and, since you’ve mentioned it, Id like to start working a full day on Wednesdays and Fridays from now on, if I could.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Well, you’ve said you’d like it if I did.’

  ‘I know, but you mustn’t feel pressured. We could always get someone else to fill in those—’

  ‘No, I’d like to do it,’ she interrupted, then feared that she’d sounded too insistent.

  More and more strongly, she was feeling that she didn’t want him to guess she was having financial problems. Not until she’d worked out for herself what it meant regarding their relationship. Why did she intuitively feel that it was going to make such a difference? It wasn’t just the possibility of other people—Rebecca, for example—suspecting her of gold-digging. There was something else.

  Marshall’s hand closed around hers, warm and caressing, and one part of her instinctively felt that she should snatch it away, while another part wanted it to stay like that for hours. He was giving her all the support he could about Sarah, and his concern made such a difference.

  Now he let his fingers slide gently away from her touch, and his arm slid around her shoulder, inviting her to lean into the strong yet trim bulk of his chest.

  He felt and smelt familiar and good, and she gave in to her deep need for his support, letting her head rest against him for a moment so that she could feel the cool linen of his shirt against her cheek, then pulling away just a little. She could still feel his touch sending strength back into her limbs, but you couldn’t have called it an embrace.

  ‘Hard being a parent sometimes, isn’t it?’ Marsh said quietly after a few moments. They were still waiting for their soup and sandwiches. ‘You think it won’t be once they’re grown up, but it still is. When they ache, we ache for them, all over again.’

  ‘Only this time it isn’t bumps and bruises and hurt feelings at school,’ Aimee agreed.