Kate Hardy - Hot Docs On Call - One Night To Forever?

Once, when a young life had been lost, he had come from Theatre and told the parents that he had been unable to save their child.

In fact, Victoria and Glen had been the crew who had brought the patient in.

It had been the worst of nights.

His career meant that he was no stranger to death, but while all loss hurt, this one had been particularly painful.

Dominic had raced the little girl to Theatre but she had died on the operating table and telling the parents had been hell.

They had wanted her to be an organ donor and wanted her heart to go to another child.

It was their fervent wish, yet she was already dead.

Dominic had never been more grateful for the appearance of Rebecca in the interview room. She headed the transplant team and Dominic could only admire her empathy for the parents.

She had spoken with them at length and had gone through what could be done to give the gift of hope to another child.

Yes, she had empathy because, seeing Dominic, she had said that she would take it from here.

He had lain in the on-call room going over and over the surgery, wondering if there was anything more he could have done, while knowing that the child’s fate had been sealed at the moment of impact.

Unable to sleep he had got up and it had been to the turret that he retreated, where he had looked out to a dark London night.

There, away from the constant background hospital noise, he had thought about the doctors who had fought so hard to save his brother, and accepted he had done the same for that child.

There was solace in that quiet space.

And together he and Victoria had found solace again on a very different night—the night that little William had been born.

Every sensible part of him screeched for caution and told Dominic that he could well be being taken for a ride.

Yet the sensible parts did not take into account the magic of that night, the mutual succour, for despite Victoria’s denial, despite insisting her pensive mood was reserved only for the loss of the famed institution, Dominic was certain that she had been hurting for other reasons that night too.

He wanted to know Victoria some more.

Baby aside, caution aside, he wanted to know the woman behind the cool façade and it was time to do something about that.

* * *

‘You’ve got an admirer, Victoria!’

She returned from a call-out with Glen to the light teasing of other staff. A large bouquet of gorgeous flowers was waiting for her at the station. There were freesias, which were her favourite, as well as hyacinths and other blooms. They filled the air with a rich sweet scent and all the gorgeous shades of spring were on display.

Though her heart was beating rapidly she did not show it in her expression. In fact, Victoria rolled her eyes as she opened the card, for she was quite certain who they were from.

If Dominic thought that a stunning array of flowers was going to give him a second hearing, and that she would let him in on the ultrasound, then he could not be more wrong.

But then she read the card and found out that no, she was not at the forefront of his thoughts.

‘It’s from Lewis’s parents,’ Victoria said, and she smiled as she read it. ‘He was the neck injury from the fire at Westbourne Grove.’

‘How is he doing?’ her line manager asked.

‘Apparently he’s doing really well and they’ll soon be taking him home.’

Victoria only knew that from the card. Unlike Glen, who checked on almost everyone, Victoria chose not to follow up on her patients.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care; it was more that bad news was unsettling and she had made a conscious choice not to get overly involved.

Lewis’s parents had left a present for Glen too—a very nice bottle of wine that he decided would remain in his locker until they had finished nights next week, as on the Monday it would be his and Hayley’s wedding anniversary.

Glen chatted about his plans for that night as they drove to their next job. ‘Ten years,’ Glen said. ‘I can’t believe it.’

Nor could Victoria envision it! ‘So what are you getting her?’

‘Hayley says that she doesn’t want anything. She just wants...’ Glen hesitated and then changed whatever he had been about to say. ‘I’m getting her an eternity ring. Sapphire and diamonds.’

‘That sounds gorgeous,’ Victoria said. ‘So what does she really want?’ She looked over to Glen, who concentrated on the road ahead, but Victoria could guess exactly what Hayley wanted and Glen knew it.

‘Leave it, Victoria.’

Victoria would not.

‘How did you pull up after the school fire?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine. They got everyone out.’

Victoria knew that Glen was stressed. They had been crewmates for two years now. Though it had taken her a while to open up, even a little bit, Glen had been open right from the start.

He was friendly and laid-back and brilliant at his job, but recently things had changed.

They had been called out to a motor vehicle accident a couple of months ago and taken a very sick child to Paddington’s, where she had subsequently died.

Some jobs were harder than others and Glen had taken this one very personally indeed. The little girl had been the same age as his daughter and the accident had occurred on a road that his wife often took.

It was a couple of weeks after that that Victoria had noticed the change in him. Instead of his usual laid-back self, he was tense at times and kept calling home to check with Hayley that everything was okay.

Despite Glen’s insistence that he was fine, Victoria was sure that Hayley wanted Glen to speak to one of the counsellors made available to them, but Glen steadfastly refused to do so.

She would wait for her moment, Victoria decided, and, in the meantime, keep a bit of a closer eye on him.

‘Your flowers were nice,’ Glen said.

‘Beautiful,’ Victoria agreed.

Which they were, of course, but what was niggling her was that there had been a thud of disappointment that the flowers weren’t from Dominic and this unsettled her.

It was a busy morning and just as they were starting to think about lunch they were called out to a woman who had collapsed in a shop.

‘I haven’t got time to go to hospital,’ the woman protested as she lay there. Her daughter was with her and was upset, and as they were transferring her mother to the ambulance, they found out that it was her ninth birthday.

‘No school today?’ Glen asked the little girl.

‘She’s goes to Westbourne Grove,’ her mother said.

Victoria looked over and gave the young girl a smile. ‘You’re having a bit of a time of it, aren’t you?’

The girl nodded. ‘My friend Ryan is very sick.’

‘That must be so hard for you,’ Victoria said.

They took her and her mother to Riverside but once they had settled them in, and just as they were making up the stretcher, Victoria saw her father walking into the department.

He gave her a very cool look. ‘Victoria.’

She gave him a small nod back and let out a breath when he had passed.

‘Who’s that?’ Glen asked, but Victoria just gave a noncommittal shrug as if she wasn’t really sure who the man who had just passed was.

She wasn’t going to tell Glen that it was her father.

Glen chatted about his family all the time and, though it drove Victoria bonkers on occasion, she liked the glimpses of family life and was embarrassed by the state of her own.

They were just starting to think about lunch again when Dispatch asked if they could transfer a patient from Riverside’s children’s ward to the burns unit at Paddington’s.

The burns unit had been stretched to capacity by the fire but a bed had opened up and a very sweet little girl called Amber was, this morning, on her way to join the others at the Castle.