Wendy Jones - By My Side

~~~

Kate was looking straight ahead to where the coffin had been standing, daring her to touch it, to throw her arms around the wooden shell and beg her grandfather to stay. Fresh tears began to creep out along well-trodden pathways and she reached again for the handkerchief she’d not long stowed. Kate’s father asked her if she was all right. She nodded, composing herself and they walked back outside in quiet procession.

The family had gathered around to look at the flowers and read the fond farewells, but Kate could not. She forced herself to talk politely with aunts and cousins for a short while but then she had to go.

She wasn't sorry to be out of there. Small talk and sandwiches are little comfort on days such as these. So she said her goodbyes to her mum and dad and made her way quickly back to her car, with just enough time to get home and change before her shift started at two.

At work that afternoon, Kate tried to carry on as if it was just another day. She stitched and bandaged and cleared up the mess that life had brought in and then, about half way through the afternoon, she was asked to escort a patient from Accident & Emergency up to Aintree ward.

As they arrived, a nurse walked over to greet them.

"This is Mr Patterson," Kate told her, handing over a rather bulky set of notes. "Right upper quadrant pain. He's been seen and sorted by the doctor in A&E and the bloods have already gone off. We've given him some analgesia so he's a bit more comfortable now. He just needs his drug chart writing up. The doctor said she'd do that when she got to the ward because she had to dash off, so if you give her a bleep when you're ready, she'll be expecting you."

The nurse thanked her and turned to the patient, smiling warmly. "Mr Patterson,” she said. “Let's get you settled in then, shall we?" And she turned to the porter, "Bay Four, please, Mike."

Walking back along the ward, Kate passed a bay where one of the teams was busy doing a ward round, but what she heard as she passed made her stop in horror. A rather stern-looking orthopaedic surgeon was standing, towering over a young lad with an injured leg. The lad was lying in bed with a pile of metalwork sticking out of his shin, and cuts and grazes all over his body, and the consultant, whose voice was not unduly loud, but abrasive, was haranguing him about his inconsiderate attitude.

"Who gave you the right to play with other people's lives?" he said. "The woman you crashed into had no say in it at all. She'll be lucky if she gets out of here in any condition resembling her former life, and you get away with little more than a broken leg. And you're young; you'll heal quickly. Think about that the next time you get behind the wheel of a car. Think about that woman and what you've done to her." The registrar cleared his throat as the rest of the team examined the floor about them. "The only person you've got to blame for this is yourself." He pointed sharply at the patient. "So stop moaning and complaining about your lot and start making an effort."

If his intention had been to intimidate, Kate suspected he had succeeded. The lad was visibly cowering in his bed and had paled to the same colour as his sheets. Kate was incensed. Cold-hearted bloody surgeons, treading all over people's feelings without a moment's consideration , she thought. Who the hell did he think he was?

~~~

Lena's eyebrows rose. "Nice bloke," she said and the woman smiled.

~~~

The team moved on to another, now very timid, patient and Kate marched off, searching for an outlet to vent her anger.

Two nurses were raiding the linen cupboard near the end of the corridor when Kate stormed in.

"Mim, Becca, you’ll never believe what I just saw,” she told them. “I was just walking past Bay Three when I came across one of the consultants tearing strips off some young boy. It was awful. The poor thing was lying there stuck in bed with his leg all banged-up and riddled with metalwork and he just laid into him."

"Who?" Miriam asked.

"Elliott, I think."

"Elliott?"

"Yes. I've never seen such outrageous behaviour in all my life, let alone from a consultant,” she said.

"Well he doesn't take any rubbish from his patients, that's for sure. But he does seem to be very good at what he does."

"Maybe he is," she said, "but he was completely out of order in there. I was embarrassed to be in the same room as him.” She paused. “His team looked mortified."

"Oh, I think they're used to him by now," Becca added.

"Well, they shouldn't let him get away with that," Kate said. " We wouldn't get away with it. Someone should report him."

Miriam and Rebecca’s faces suddenly blanched, but Kate was too het-up to notice.

"One of you two should go back in there and see if that poor lad is all right," she continued, building into a fury by this point. "That stern-faced, self-important, egotistical… bully," her mouth was struggling to keep up with her brain. "Ugh! People like him make me so cross."

A cool, steady voice spoke up from behind her. "Well, I think we're all quite clear about that now."

Chills ran down Kate’s spine as she turned round to see the granite face of Mr Elliott staring back at her, his team hovering uncomfortably behind.

"I'm sure you have plenty of work to be getting on with," he said to the two nurses standing either side of her, and Miriam and Rebecca shuffled away as quickly as they could. Kate could feel the ice of anxiety beginning to trickle through her veins.

Mr Elliott fixed his gaze on Kate and without moving he spoke calmly to his team. "I'll meet you on Ascot Ward in five minutes," he said and they looked at each other and quickly left.

Mr Elliott took a step back. "If you wouldn't mind, please, Nurse?" and he gestured that she should move out of the linen cupboard and walk along beside him.

Kate braced herself and stepped out, still a flicker of fire in her belly. Mr Elliott walked a few paces up the ward and then opened the door to Sister's office. He checked it was empty and then indicated that Kate should go in. Kate entered the room and turned to face him. She was definitely in the right and she knew it. Perhaps she shouldn't have been voicing her opinions so loudly on the ward, but that was nothing compared to the ordeal he had put that poor boy through. So she squared up her shoulders and lifted her chin.

Mr Elliott was tall and dark; a striking man, whose features, suffused with even a modicum of warmth, might have been quite good looking on anyone else, but on him, they favoured only his gravitas. Unfortunately, in the serious light of her current situation, Kate couldn't help but quake.

She had to be strong. She had to stand up for the weak and the ill, the people who couldn't fight for themselves. It was going to be down to her to make him see how unfeeling he had been.

Grey-blue eyes bore into her as the silence lingered like a guillotine above her head and the trembling inside her began to grow.

"So you think, Nurse…" he said, deliberately peering closer at her uniform to read the name on her badge. "Excuse me, Staff Nurse Heath, that I should be reported for speaking plainly to one of my patients, do you? Maybe you would be kind enough to enlighten me as to why?"

Kate’s jaw clenched. He was patronising her, she was well aware of it, but while the little courage she had left remained, she was going to speak her mind. With the callous words of the surgeon who had recently treated her grandfather so appallingly hurtling to the forefront of her mind, she looked up into his steel-armoured eyes. "It was quite obvious that you were completely out of order in there," she said. "What gave you the right to judge that poor lad? I bet you don't even know the first thing about him; stuck up there in your ivory tower where life is so easy and Armani suits grow on trees. Who’s to say it wasn’t a genuine accident? But you wouldn't think of that, would you? You just laid into him. He was a quivering wreck by the time you’d finished."