by Lola Keeley
Well. Where the hell did that ‘all girls together’ solidarity come from?
“Oh, absolutely. Happy to take one for the sisterhood, then,” Cassie replies, in an almost conspiratorial way. “Any kind of rank to the seating? Or just hungriest go closest to the pastries?”
“We let Jean take the head, of course,” Veronica says. “And then we just seat ourselves as we please. Wouldn’t worry about the pastries though; they have a tendency not to be fresh.”
Cassie picks up a pain au chocolat anyway, taking a hearty bite as though Veronica hadn’t warned her at all. She doesn’t even frown. Usually the only decent grub is when the upper echelons are involved. They’ve been cracked down on for using outside caterers for anything but the executive wing.
Veronica strides around the long, oval table, situating herself at what will be Jean’s right hand. Not a bad visual to impart to everyone else, and it’s force of habit now more than anything else.
To her instant discomfort, Cassie follows her and takes the free seat next to her. In a room full of otherwise still-empty chairs.
Veronica’s irritation is interrupted by other familiar faces trickling in. She makes a point of waving or nodding to everyone in turn, sparing a smile for one or two of the more competent department heads with whom she gets along.
Before long, the presence of Cassie is reduced to the peripheral. The meeting descends almost immediately into its usual territorial pissing contest and adult children squabbling over resources when they should know better. That distraction from Cassie, unfortunately, doesn’t last long. She’s soon throwing herself into the fray.
“Sorry?” Cassie seizes on a momentary lull. “I’m sure this is all very important, but are we going to be back to full surgery rosters this week, or…?”
The bluntness of the question astounds even Jean, who’s heard every complaint in the book as their overseer. Every eye in the room is on Cassie, including Veronica’s, but she doesn’t wilt despite a pink tinge to her cheeks.
“Funny you should mention that, Ms—” Jean tries to take back control.
“Taylor,” Cassie finishes for her.
“Right. Trauma. Typical. Never happier than with some viscera spilling out on the table, you lot. You’ll be pleased to hear that we are, in fact, resuming surgery, other than cancer and emergent cases this week.”
The room erupts, thrilled instead of disgruntled for once. Jean shushes them with her glasses in one hand, her dark short hair bouncing with the brief exertion.
“That does not mean you schedule everything all at once. Ramp it up, ladies and gentlemen. Anything complicated, you still need the requisite permissions and sign-offs. This is not a free-for-all.”
Cassie stands, despite the meeting being barely five minutes along. There’s a surprisingly helpful urge in Veronica to yank at her wrist and insist that she sit back down.
“I didn’t mean start now,” Jean adds, her tone just short of wry.
“Well, is anything else in the meeting relevant to Trauma?” Cassie challenges.
“It’s not about individual…” Jean actually wilts at Cassie’s raised eyebrows. “Although it’s more of a general picture, I suppose you can get the gist from minutes. If you have somewhere more pressing—”
Cassie nods and strides right out of the room. Everyone watches her go, like she just stood up to the head teacher and talked her way out of a certain detention. There are murmurs and wistful looks as others contemplate doing the same.
“Right.” Veronica is the one to pull their attention back to the front of the conference room. “So how gradually can we get back to full surgical capacity?”
With that, it’s just another Monday morning, and the familiar old arguments start breaking out from every corner.
Peter’s the first one to notice. They’re in Veronica’s office and she’s just found the words to console him about not getting the job, to be followed up with an offer of a regrettable amount of red wine at the venue of his choice. But then he greets her with, “Is it just me, or are we terribly light on juniors?”
He’s right. Where there would usually be a core of at least six on this shift, Veronica spots only one set of pale blue scrubs.
“Skiving? Striking? Locked themselves in a janitor’s cupboard again?” It would be nice if all three scenarios weren’t equally plausible with this bunch. Veronica’s still struggling to remember their names or tell them apart after a month, which is unlike her.
Still, it’s days like this that remind Veronica why she’s spent her life working towards being in this position. She makes the tough decisions, finds solutions, and watches her team flourish under the pressure. These junior doctors will be no exception, no matter how badly they’ve been treated with contracts and everything else she didn’t have to worry about. Once they come through the doors of AMU, they’re her people, and Veronica works bloody hard to send them on in the world as better doctors.
“I’ll ask the child left behind,” Peter offers, striding over to confront the trembling young doctor, who was quite competently dealing with a patient until a boss showed up. Peter looks the part, in his striped shirt and coordinated tie, the grey trousers clearly tailored. Unusually for this part of the hospital, he still bothers with a white coat over it all, even though it makes the fussy plastic aprons they all have to wear during treatment even more annoying to tie. Not to mention that the shirt sleeves hygiene policy means rolling up both the shirt and the lab coat to the elbow.
This is why Veronica sticks to bare arms or the very shortest of sleeves. Doubly wise given how warm the hospital always is. People think of these buildings as huge and draughty, but the rebuilding over previous decades has made it an insulated shell within a shell, and she could swear that the staff in Facilities keep it warm year round on purpose, if only because it keeps the patients—and possibly the staff—more docile.
Peter takes off for the shortcut through to Trauma, and Veronica follows with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Whatever the juniors are up to, it had better be medically relevant or she’s going to boot the whole bloody lot of them to maternity and out of her hair.
Only, when they open the swing doors into the back end of the Trauma ward, there’s more activity than even A&E tends to generate. Shouts. Metal clanging. Monitors beeping at maximum volume.
Absolute chaos.
And who, of course, is at the eye of the storm? Cassie Taylor, barking orders, clapping her hands, and even occasionally whooping in encouragement.
Juniors are running from bed to bed, cheered on by the patients awake enough to observe them. Most, given the nature of their injuries or conditions, are mercifully unconscious, and those are the people Veronica decides she’s jealous of.
Peter tries to ford the stream of juniors, but he ends up being handed a stack of crepe bandages and is soon lost to the fray. There’s only one way to get control of a circus, and that’s to charge down the ringleader.
“Ms Taylor?” Nothing. Veronica tries again, but there are so many people clamouring for attention, and every other second Cassie turns around to update figures on a whiteboard. “Cassie?”
That gets her, finally.
“Oh, Veronica, how nice of you to join in! I knew you must be missing surgery, stuck in all those meetings. This will sharpen you right back up.”
“Please tell me you’re not letting them perform surgery on an open ward.”
“What? Oh no, we’re running drills. Scenarios, you know. Livens things up for the patients too, instead of lying there waiting for the next drugs trolley. They learn how to triage, and how to cope with sudden deterioration. Mr Sharpe!” She’s shouting at a dark-haired man in bed three. “You’re currently deceased, sir, don’t give them any help!”
“You’ve stolen my F1s.” Veronica gestures to the ones she thinks probably belong to her. The supposedly dead patient lies
down with a sigh, apparently sorry to be excluded from the fun. “They have duties to perform, patient care to follow up on.”
“And tons of paperwork too, no doubt,” Cassie counters, whiteboard marker waving vaguely. “Listen, I don’t want to step on any toes, but they’re bright kids and they leapt at the chance for something more hands on than chasing down samples and doing rectal exams.”
“It’s a rite of passage,” Veronica argues. “It’s how I was trained, and it’s all about learning humility. Too many god complexes walk in here. Didn’t you have to learn the ropes that way?”
“I went straight from uni to the army,” Cassie explains. “We’re big fans of hands on there.”
“Well, this isn’t Chelsea barracks, so you can stand down, Major.”
“Chelsea?” Cassie scoffs. “You do know that’s the pensioners, right?”
Veronica couldn’t give even half a damn. “Send my AMU doctors back to their own ward. Don’t make me come looking for them again.”
“Or what?”
“Excuse me?”
Cassie nods towards Peter, who’s waving an abdominal surgery pack over the head of a short female junior for some reason. Rosie, that’s it. Definitely one of Veronica’s lot. “I’m just not sure what your threat’s supposed to be. Anyway, he seems to be in the spirit of things. Do you want your consultant back as well?”
“All of them.” Veronica turns on one uncomfortable heel and marches back to her own domain. The nurses clearly recognise the mood and scatter instantly, making sure they’re far too busy for eye contact or conversation. Snatching a chart from the nurses’ station, Veronica turns her attention to the patient in the first bay.
“Mr Wilson, I understand you’re waiting for surgery,” she greets him, brusque and professional. She checks the theatre boards on her tablet, confirming her suspicion that Theatre 3 is clear for the next few hours. “Well, it’s your lucky day because I’m going to tend to this pesky bowel problem of yours myself.”
She clicks her fingers at the first F1 to come scurrying back from Trauma. “You. Prep Mr Wilson for his surgery. I want him in theatre and with the anaesthesiologist by the time I’m changed and scrubbed, understood?”
“But isn’t that later with Mr—”
“Did you not hear my instructions?”
“Yes, Ms Mallick. I’ll get that done.”
“Rosie, isn’t it?” Veronica demands, barely waiting for the nod in response. “You’ll scrub in to assist.”
The girl lights up like all her Christmases came at once. Veronica remembers that feeling well, even if she doesn’t entirely approve of the long blonde hair streaked with blue. At least it matches the scrubs.
The most efficient surgical prep in recent memory begins in earnest, and Veronica heads for the locker rooms to get ready.
It’s bad enough she can’t be the fun parent to her actual son, but damned if she’ll be the stick-in-the-mud at work, too. That’ll show Taylor who’s the real teacher. Once word gets round that Rosie’s scrubbing in on a complex surgery, they’ll all be vying for it. No amount of party games can compare with the real thing, after all. Not to the ones who have what it takes.
As she kicks off her heels and pulls her trusty Nikes from her locker, Veronica startles a little at the thrumming feeling in her veins. She feels rather like she could sprint the entire hospital grounds, possibly hurdle a few benches on the way to boot.
Competition, she realises. Well, isn’t that something?
Chapter 6
God, this place is a killjoy sometimes. Mallick must have complained to someone, because the rest of the week is constantly disrupted by inspections and managers and a minor royal being shown around the ward. Thankfully the nurses are as competent as any Cassie has ever worked with, and they don’t need three chapters of backstory to get cracking with patients in need.
The registrars are a solid bunch as well, though they don’t have much to do with the F1s and F2s if they can avoid it. Cassie knew on taking the job that this was a teaching hospital, but at their age she’d already been off to Sandhurst for Officer Training. It’s frustrating to see them so hesitant, so reluctant to act without permission.
It’s not fair to speculate how many of the people around here would cope in a tent somewhere near Kabul, but Cassie can’t deny the internal sense she has for sorting her colleagues into the sink-or-swim categories.
“Morning, Major Taylor,” Pauline greets her. She’s a recent transfer in from Veronica’s ward, part of the infinite shuffling and reallocating of resources that seems to go on in this place.
Cassie would prefer to build a team of Trauma specialists, but she knows that it’s more important to have capable people in general. Nurses like Pauline are an exceptional asset to any department, so it’s very pleasant to have tempted her over to resume the Trauma career she first trained for.
“You look desperate to get into theatre,” Pauline continues.
“When am I not?” Cassie replies with a wry smile. She’s still in her running gear, having caught an earlier train and changed up her dull route near home for the far more pleasant paths of Hyde Park, a stone’s throw from the hospital.
“Only you might have to skip theatre more this week,” Pauline suggests, already sorting the charts back into a usable order. “Budget time, all the department heads are groaning about it. Hope you brought your calculator.”
“Oh, well, Mr Travers said they had most things in place for Trauma for the coming year. I just need to see if anything’s missing and sign off.”
“Really?” Pauline raises an eyebrow and purses her lips in a way that never fails to make Cassie laugh. “I wouldn’t go telling the others that. Might make you unpopular.”
“Unpopular?” Cassie says with a faked gasp. “Oh, how would I live? I’d have to flee the country. Would they take me in Ghana, do you think?”
Pauline pretends to consider. “I don’t know, you got any experience living abroad?”
Cassie smacks her forehead. “I knew I should have travelled more. Ah well, I’ll just have to stay here and face the music. I think you might have put in a good word for me on the Ghana front, though. I’d love to go back to Accra.”
“I might still, but for now I suggest that you get your skinny legs out of those running tights and get ready for the day. It’s all very well being Usain Bolt before breakfast, but that’s no good to me in the Trauma bays, is it?”
“You make a fair point,” Cassie admits. “Try not to admit anything juicy until I’ve had a shower?”
“I make no promises.”
Cassie jogs to the locker room, irritated that her brand-new trainers are squeaking against the linoleum. Not properly broken in, then. It’s barely even a detail, but it feels like one more way in which this new life doesn’t quite overlap her edges correctly. She isn’t prone to panic, but there are isolated moments in this place when she wants to sit on the floor with her head between her knees until the strangeness of it all passes.
It’s better, she knows that. No sane person would long for a battlefield. When she changes into her scrubs, she’ll feel a little more grounded. She can put her squeaking shoes back on, but she checks her surgical pair is in their plastic bag in the bottom of her allocated locker. Coincidence, of course, that it’s the one right next to Veronica Mallick’s.
That woman is a piece of work, there’s no denying it. She’s also incredibly good-looking, in a way that Cassie often finds is wasted on a straight woman.
Also a woman who doesn’t put a padlock on their locker. Well, that’s incredibly trusting. Cassie knows better than to sneak a peek, at least at first. Nobody ever found a scintillating detail in a room that smells faintly of stale sweat and feet, even though the disinfectant and deodorant do their best to cover it.
Oh, to hell with it.
She eases the door open as
though a creaking hinge will summon someone else. Comparison, she tells herself. These established surgeons will have efficient tips and tricks that Cassie and her “one duffel bag fits all” existence could learn from. Even though Cassie’s own locker is as neat as it always was for barracks inspection, it’s fun to see how the other half lives.
It’s not even that exciting. Two silky blouses hanging more or less on the hangers, still in their dry-cleaning bags. Pastel-toned running shoes, new-looking Nikes. So the mighty Mallick does come down from her teetering heels occasionally. A few toiletries, some antibacterial gel in a clear bottle.
There’s a little disorganisation in the toiletries, like they’ve been placed back any old way, but barely a personal touch to be seen. Only on closing the door does Cassie notice the picture tucked into the locker’s door frame. A younger Veronica, in a hospital gown of her own. Baby in her arms, taking up her entire attention.
Well. That’s nice.
Certainly not disappointing, no sir. Cassie doesn’t much care one way or another. Sure, Veronica has captured her attention, and there’s a certain frisson when they clash over the right way to work, but that doesn’t mean Cassie automatically finds her attractive. Well, okay, she’s objectively attractive, but that doesn’t mean anything. Just the aesthetic. Presuming queerness is a bit like asking for trouble, especially since Veronica looks at her as if everything Cassie says is akin to suggesting they burn the hospital down.
Footsteps outside. Cassie slams the locker door harder than she meant to, shuffling back the few inches to be in front of her own.
The steps keep going, fading as they go down the corridor. Cassie exhales, leaning her forehead against the cool metal in front of her. She can’t stay this much on edge all the time, but neither the running nor the busywork on the ward are helping.
It’s going to take surgery. A few focused hours of slicing and suturing with nothing to worry about beyond cauterising the next bleed and the steady drone of the monitors.