Major Surgery

by Lola Keeley

  “He’ll be okay,” Veronica murmurs, more for her own benefit than anything. “But please, I have to keep busy. I’ll go mad otherwise.”

  “Go,” Angela says, more gentle now. “Just keep that phone charged, and Vee, the very second—”

  “I promise. No distractions.”

  “Good.”

  With that, Angela unfolds her tall frame from the passenger seat, a swing in the curves of her hips even just dashing up the garden path, waving to Veronica from the door when there’s no miracle waiting.

  A minute later, Veronica fastens her seatbelt and pulls away from the kerb. It’s time to shake the trees a little harder.

  “How long?” Pauline asks, leaning on the nurses’ station in AMU, where she’s just been chatting with Lea. “Did you ask in A&E as well?”

  “Unofficially his name is flagged at every admitting desk in London,” Veronica replies, fussing with her hair as it refuses to stay out of her face. She’s going to have to attempt a French braid at this point, if her fingers still remember the patient steps. “And they’ve had a word with the boys at the Met, but no dice yet.”

  “Angela okay?” Pauline asks. They’ve always gotten on well, at least out of shared exasperation with Veronica at one time or another. “I think I had a text from her, but I haven’t really checked my phone yet.” She fusses in her backpack for it.

  Veronica offers them a wan smile. “Now, I know the rules, and you can’t technically come running if he does show up here in an ambulance, or dragged in by the feds.” Veronica wants to smile that she’s picked up Danny’s slang for them. “But I would really, really appreciate it if anyone catches so much as a glimpse.”

  “Of course,” Lea assures her. “He’s one of ours; the rules can be bent a little. It’s only for his own good. I just hope he’s been out with his friends. You can shout at him then.”

  “There’s a queue for that,” Veronica agrees. “Thank you both. As always, I don’t know where I’d be without you.”

  “I knew you’d miss me when I went to Trauma.” Pauline preens just a little. “Speaking of, I better get through there before they start asking for some of Ms Taylor’s games again. Too many fragile ones for wacky races.”

  “She’s in already? Ms Taylor?”

  “Before I was,” Pauline replies. “She’s getting quite keen on the place, I reckon. You two seem to work well together, when your paths cross.”

  “Hmm? Oh, I suppose so.” Veronica tries and fails to block out the near-miss kiss of the previous evening. “I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me. If I’m out at any point, I’m just double checking the A&E waiting room.”

  “Godspeed.” Pauline squeezes her hand. “Your boy will come home.”

  “He’d better.” Veronica steels herself not to cry yet again. “He’d better.”

  Chapter 18

  “Pauline! Just the sister I was looking for.”

  “I was through in AMU,” Pauline starts to explain.

  Cassie waves her off. This isn’t a punctuality crackdown. “Of course. Anyway, rumour has it my new bedside kits are finally coming in today. Will they come right here, or is it to stores?”

  Pauline is playing with her phone instead of listening, which is unheard of, even in the short time that Cassie has known her.

  “I appreciate not everyone is as excited as I am…” Cassie doesn’t need to explain that her fixation on the new trauma protocol is more about ignoring what did not happen last night, rather than a love of first-aid supplies. “But I did expect it to have registered.”

  “What?” Pauline looks up then. “Sorry, Ms Taylor. It’s just my friend’s son… Actually, you know Ms Mallick well enough by now. Her son, he didn’t come home last night.”

  “Right. Well, he’s a teenager. I thought they all did what they wanted now? Decay of society or whatever.”

  “He’s barely thirteen,” Pauline corrects, looking cross. “And you might think everything short of Kandahar is a peaceful place, but there are a lot of dangers in a city like London when you’re a young biracial lad.”

  Cassie trips over her own thoughts. She’s never been good at this, the whole empathy trip. Sympathy and compassion, sure, but never quite thinking in the other person’s shoes. It’s no great leap for Pauline—she has beloved children of her own. Honestly, Cassie has always wondered if she’s a bit lacking in some way, that she has to be nudged into the appropriate level of sadness or panic. She prefers to think of it as being good in a crisis.

  “Of course. I wasn’t thinking. Is there anything we can do to help?”

  “She’s hoping he shows up here. Angela, his other mum, is at home waiting. Everyone’s alerted that can be, short of an official missing person report. That’ll go in this evening if he hasn’t shown by then.”

  “Right. Bloody hell. Wait, Veronica is here?”

  “Best place for her,” Pauline cuts her off, loyalty showing fiercely now.

  “I’d feel the same, I’m sure.” Cassie is floundering. “Well, I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Your delivery will come to A&E stores; the supply company usually hits us about two.”

  “Very good. We’re coping here on the ward? All looks peaceful.”

  “It is, but they’re short in A&E today. Might want to send a body down or we’ll have them triaging cold symptoms into Trauma again.”

  “I’ll go,” Cassie says, seizing on something to be busy with. “If you hear anything, or if anything kicks off here, just beep me.”

  “You got it. Actually, as long as we stay quiet, would you mind if I go over to AMU? See if I can’t help Veronica look for him?”

  Cassie nods and takes off to give half a day to A&E. While Cassie would never trade the heightened stakes of Trauma, there’s no denying that this is seeing some of her usual types of cases one stage earlier. It’s also a lot of staring blankly at people who think minor injuries requiring a swipe of antiseptic are emergencies. Even after seeing a paramedic, receptionist, triage nurse, and then a consultant. Shameless, in its own irritating way.

  She ducks out for a coffee when the backshift clocks on, the waiting room down to a manageable number. The hospital coffee shop will do, although there’s a fleeting moment when she considers getting the good stuff and taking some to Veronica. She might even appreciate it.

  But that means maybe acknowledging that charged moment. Or maybe having another one, which appeals more than it should.

  No, Cassie has learned her lessons about dating people she works with. Not getting involved means no more heartbreak, no more terrible guilt to carry around. The whole point in learning to be independent and self-sufficient is that she doesn’t need to be caught up in all that nonsense. And on the odd occasion it gets a bit lonely, well, there are dating apps for that. Not that she’s ever done more than install them and stare, baffled, at the array of women on there, but still. The possibility exists for detached, almost anonymous sex, nothing that can upend her life.

  Nothing that makes her chest hurt just to think about. Or ruins her ability to handle a surgery gone awry.

  It’s lingering over which flapjack to have with her double-shot latte that does her in. Even though she’s not used to the hospital environment entirely, and hasn’t worked in a civilian one since her training years, Cassie has quickly picked up doctor blindness. To walk the halls of anywhere so full of sick people, especially when wearing scrubs or any other form of uniform, requires a certain level of obliviousness.

  So any other time she probably wouldn’t have seen jiggling handles on the fire exit, a sign someone’s trying to open it from the outside. She’s used to assessing a situation in a split-second, so it just takes the recognition that one of them is Daniel, the fact that it’s directly opposite a stores cupboard, and the fact that it’s going to trigger an alarm for her to spring into action.

 
Swiping her pass over the sensor means it opens without the incessant beep beginning, letting the boys stumble inside, almost hitting the ground before they right themselves. Daniel is dressed in casual clothes this time, not his school uniform, but Cassie is already sure. His mate is taller than him by a few inches, much broader, too. His hair is grown out into twists, where Daniel’s is shaved in close. Rugby build, but currently bent almost double and cradling his abdomen where some kind of T-shirt is making for an improvised compress.

  “This way,” she barks at them both, knowing orders get better results than questions. Knowing the hospital better now, she leads them into an overflow room, mercifully unoccupied and technically part of her domain. It will make it easier to deflect nosy enquiries.

  Daniel has enough sense to help his mate up onto the examination bed, ripping the disposable paper sheet in the process.

  “Going to need a name,” Cassie says, although she doesn’t reach for the admission forms on the counter. “You can make one up, but that might be too much effort.”

  “Nigel,” the injured boy says.

  Okay. Not even close to Cassie’s best guess, but different strokes and all that. “What happened here? I’m going to need to move this to examine you, Nigel.”

  “No!” He protests, clutching at the blood-stained cloth. “We been trying all night, but this is the only thing that keeps the blood stopped.”

  “I’ve got better methods, I promise you. I can’t use them until I see it. Knife? Or broken glass? What are we talking about here?”

  “It was a knife, yeah?” Daniel takes up the narrative, watching the door like a prisoner knowing the guards can’t be far away. “Not a fight, nothing like that. A bunch of us were just pissing about, but he slipped and it nicked him.”

  “Sounds like first aid would have been enough,” Cassie says, taking hold of Nigel’s wrist and easing the ruined shirt away from his stomach. “Your mum—”

  “You gonna grass?” Daniel asks, but there’s no bravado in it. He’s a scared little boy. “I’m gonna get so much shit about curfew, but if we’d brought him in anywhere it’d be in the computers and stuff.”

  “No telling tales from me. I can’t disclose on a patient. You helped clean him up?” Cassie sees the wound is spotless. Not wide, but deeper than she’s happy about. Technically Daniel isn’t her patient, and she should march him into Veronica’s office right now. Any junior should be able to do a quick scan for internal bleeding and stitch Nigel up.

  “Yeah, you think I didn’t get First Aid for Dummies as soon as I could talk?”

  Cassie expected nothing less. “I’m surprised your mother doesn’t have you sewing banana skins to get your technique honed early.” The look in response says she’s not far off the mark.

  “Am I gonna die?” Nigel asks. His mid-puberty London accent is tinged with something far away, something Cassie faintly recognises. Her gut says Sudan, possibly. She did some peacekeeping trips there, before it all went to hell. And after.

  “Not if I can help it. You risked a lot taking this long to see a doctor.” Cassie hesitates. “You don’t have papers, do you?”

  “My mum doesn’t, no. We registered me for school and stuff, but this is different. Anything with knives means police.”

  “I’m not calling them,” Cassie reassures him. “There’s no need. You can be treated without worrying. Does your mother know where you are?”

  “I texted. She works nights; I’m out before she gets home.”

  “Were you at his place all night, then?” Cassie asks Daniel. She’s going to be grilled on this at some point, needs some facts on her side.

  “Yeah, we went there and I kept an eye on him.”

  “And you couldn’t call your mum? One of them?” Cassie has heard enough junior recruits wriggling around with excuses, so Daniel had better not try a weak one on her.

  “To have them come round and drag him in anyway? My mums are… Well, they’re all about the rules, and how the system will set you free. You’ve met her; tell me she’s not exactly that.”

  Cassie snorts. He has a point. Surely, though, presented with the facts, Veronica would have taken care of the boy off the books, as simply as Cassie is doing now? Even being on the premises doesn’t require paperwork, strictly speaking. She has to assume the son knows his mother better than she does from a couple of months of professional interaction.

  And whatever last night was.

  “You know she’s out of her mind with worry. If you leave him with me and go let her know you’re okay, I promise you, I won’t put Nigel’s name on anything. I’ll treat him myself.”

  “But—”

  “He’s going to need some blood; he’s lost a lot. I’ll check there’s no permanent damage in that wound, and get him stitched up so the bleeding stops for good, yeah?”

  “Then I’ll wait til you’ve done that. Sorry, Doc, you seem like good people, but I promised I’d see him back home without it getting anyone in trouble.”

  “Then the minute I say he’s good to go, you take him by your mother’s office before leaving. I’d shake on it, but I’m already in bloodied gloves. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  She works quickly, most of the basics already stocked. A&E must not know about this room or it would have been raided by now.

  “Okay, I just need to get a transfusion kit. Keep an eye on him while I grab a bag from the blood bank.”

  Daniel and Nigel nod. Nigel’s rallying now that the bleeding has stopped.

  Cassie leaves the door slightly ajar as she steps out into the corridor. The main bank is up by the operating theatres, but Trauma has its own mini chilled room for blood storage. If she were an F1 she’d be off begging permissions and codes, but there’s something to be said for being the boss. Another swipe of her slightly magical key card and she has access to a couple of pints of O-neg.

  When it goes wrong, it does in that awful slow motion usually reserved for crashes and other unexpected collisions. Daniel pokes his head out of the exam room door when Cassie’s barely feet away from it, just as his distracted mother turns from the A&E corridor to the junction that splits Trauma and AMU. A literal crossroads, and there’s almost the sense they’ll get away with it, if not for the way that Daniel hisses, “Ms Taylor!”

  Veronica startles at the sound of his voice, a soft cry escaping her lips. She looks to Cassie and her slightly contraband blood next, adding up each side of the equation and coming to a conclusion of, no doubt, blinding range.

  “Danny!” she shouts, rushing to him and tackling him with a hug that belies their relative sizes.

  All this time and Cassie didn’t realise that Veronica would have made a decent rugby flanker. It’s a wonder Danny is still standing under the onslaught.

  Their conversation is rushed, too fast for Cassie to follow at first. A flurry of where have you been and what happened and are you okay that sounds like pure panic spilling over. There’s not much point in running now, but Cassie’s calf muscles tense like there might be.

  “Sorry, I need to, uh—” Nigel isn’t all patched up yet, and Cassie does need to crack on.

  It would be better if Veronica focused that sudden, babbling rage and relief on her. Instead, Cassie gets a glare that might well turn a person to stone.

  Maybe she should stop and explain the little she knows, show Veronica that Daniel has never really been in danger, that he’s been helping in the way any of them might have. Under Veronica’s furious scrutiny, though, Cassie finds that words fail her. She continues back into the treatment room, unsurprised when Veronica shuffles right in after her, not letting go of Daniel for a second.

  “How are you doing, Nigel?” Cassie asks. Focus on the patient, ease Veronica into the bigger story.

  “Sorry, Mrs… Daniel’s mum?” Nigel starts out talking to Cassie, but defaults to Veronica’s n
atural, bristling authority. He flounders in the glare of all their attention. The boy’s had enough terror for one night, and Cassie is ready to intercede on his behalf. Thankfully Veronica looks back and forth between the two boys, before yanking Daniel towards the door.

  When Cassie turns back, Veronica and her son have disappeared down the corridor. She can’t follow. There’s a job to finish, a promise to keep.

  And the definite, horrible feeling that she’s fucked up something beyond repair.

  Chapter 19

  The minute Veronica pushes through the double doors with Daniel in tow, there’s an eruption from the nurses’ station.

  “I need to let your mother know you’re here.” Veronica pulls her phone out. “Stay here with Pauline and Lea. I mean it, Danny. No more than five steps in any direction.”

  “Your mums have been worried sick!” Pauline greets Danny with a visual once over that turns into a full-body hug. “We’ve told everyone in the hospital to look out for you. I’ve left Ms Taylor short of nurses in Trauma to help out. You better be in one piece, boy.”

  Whatever reply Danny makes is muffled, and Veronica ducks away when Angela answers on the second ring.

  “He’s here. Came in with someone, but Danny’s okay. He’s okay.”

  There’s no need for introductions or small talk. That’s what matters. Veronica tucks herself behind the column that the station is built around, letting it take her weight as the trembling passes through her, shoulders to knees.

  “He’s not hurt?”

  “No, he… I don’t even know what happened yet, I found him in the corridor. Should I—”

  “I’m coming. We’ll… Just wait for me in your office?”

  “Of course.” Veronica ends the call and brushes away the tears that have welled up again. She’s usually more resilient than this, but Daniel has always been the exception. Walking over hot coals would be nothing if he needed it, but the prospect of anything bad befalling her boy leaves her oddly paralysed like this.