Sue MacKay - A Family This Christmas

Didn’t they teach nursing students not to tease their patients? ‘I’d kill for a strong coffee right about now.’

‘Nil by mouth, I’m sorry. At least until after Mr McNamara has seen you, and then only if you’re not having surgery.’

‘I totally get it. It’s called wishful thinking.’ Talk about getting more than her share of apologies today. Cameron Roberts had looked and sounded more than apologetic, with tiredness and stress blinking out at her from those coffee-brown eyes peeking from under a mass of wayward blond curls. Bet those gorgeous twins were more than a handful. Trouble and twins were synonymous. She had first-hand experience of that.

The nurse smoothed the already smooth bedcover. ‘If you want anything, call me. There are some magazines lying around somewhere but they’re years out of date.’

‘I’m fine.’ She could pretend, couldn’t she?

‘Great.’ The student flashed another smile and went to charm another patient, leaving her in relative peace to contemplate her situation. Which was looking rather dire.

Stuck. That’s what she was. Stopped in her tracks, all because of a boy on an out-of-control skateboard. He’d wrecked everything. Like she’d slammed into a brick wall and there was no way round. She’d wanted to yell at those boys, tell them they should’ve been looking where they were going, not shouting and taunting each other to go faster. She did remember turning to see what the noise was about seconds before the boy—Marcus?—had crashed into her. But in all reality she’d been miles away, unaware of much except that boat heading out and the sun on her face.

The boys had looked so repentant. They’d also appeared as if they’d had enough of being told off and wanted to be given a break. She totally knew what that was like. How many times had she and Alison driven Mum insane with their mischief? Cameron Roberts hadn’t known she knew what she was talking about. ‘Bet I could teach those boys a thing or two about being naughty.’

Then an image of Cam’s tired and frustrated expression slipped into her mind and she retracted that thought. The man didn’t need any more problems.

‘Emma? What’s the matter, baby?’ In the next cubicle the mother’s panic was immediately apparent. ‘Why’s she gone so red? Emma. She’s not breathing.’

Jenny swung her legs over the side of the bed, ground her teeth on the flare of pain. ‘I’m a doctor. Pass her here.’ One look at the child’s terrified face, which only minutes ago had been grinning at her, had Jenny reaching back to slam her hand against the emergency button on the wall behind her bed. ‘What was she playing with?’

‘I’m not sure. Cotton balls, I think.’

Grabbing the child from the distraught mother’s arms, Jenny ran a finger around the inside of her mouth, scooped out sodden cotton balls. Had the child swallowed any? ‘Does Emma have any allergies that you know of?’ she demanded.

‘No.’

Emma definitely wasn’t breathing. Instantly laying the child over her knees with her head hanging down, Jenny began striking the child firmly between the shoulder blades with the flat of her hand. Strike one. Two. Come on, baby. Breathe for me. Three. Please. Four. Please, please, please. Five. Where are the doctors? Check the resp rate. The tiny chest wasn’t moving at all.

Jenny knew the mother was screaming at her but she ignored her, focused on saving this little girl. Quickly standing on her good foot, ignoring the pain slicing up her leg, she held Emma around her waist and located her belly button with her finger.

‘What’s going on?’ A doctor raced into the cubicle, followed by two nurses.

At last. But handing over now meant wasting precious seconds. Jenny fisted one hand. ‘This child appears to have choked. No resp rate. I’ve done five back strikes.’ Oh. Tell him. ‘I am an ED doctor.’ I was an ED doctor. Her fist thrust upward into Emma’s abdomen. One. Two. Emma coughed hard and a small round object shot across the floor.

‘A lid off a pill bottle by the look of it.’ One of the nurses retrieved it from under the next bed.

The doctor took the now crying and bewildered child from Jenny’s arms and laid her on the bed. ‘Shh, sweetheart. You’re going to be all right.’ He looked over his shoulder at the crying woman and the frantic father trying to get off his bed. ‘Mum? Come and hold your little girl while I examine her. What’s her name?’

‘Emma.’ The mother scooped up her baby and held her tight.

‘Easy. I need to give her a complete exam. Nurse, bring me a child’s blanket. Jason, get back on that bed. You shouldn’t be moving. You’ll start that wound bleeding again.’ The doctor turned back to his little patient and gave her a quick but thorough going over. ‘She’s going to be fine, thanks to this doctor.’

The mother had lost all colour in her cheeks. ‘Thank you so much, all of you. If you hadn’t done what you did …’ She swallowed.

Jenny eased her butt back onto her bed. The pain in her ankle had intensified now that she wasn’t being distracted. ‘Don’t go there,’ she advised with a smile she hoped wasn’t a grimace as pain stabbed repeatedly. ‘Instead be glad you were here and not at home when it happened.’

Within minutes the department had returned to normal. Except for the hiccups in the next cubicle as the mother slowly calmed down, only muted voices could be heard once more.

With a sigh Jenny lay back. Talk about having the day from hell. But a broken ankle was low on the scale of urgency and really she was incredibly lucky. Euphoria nudged her despair aside. That child would’ve been saved by any of the doctors or nurses on duty but she’d done it. Her old instincts had kicked in instantly. She hadn’t had to spend precious moments trying to recall the procedure. It had been there, lying in some unused corner of her brain waiting to be summoned.

It was good to know she still had it, even though she wasn’t about to do anything stupid like go back to being a doctor. Yet the words ‘I’m a doctor’ had spilled off her tongue without thought. If she had stopped to consider that, she’d probably have handed Emma to another medic and lost precious seconds.

Wriggling further back against the pillows, she wondered what she’d do once she was discharged. Originally she’d planned on staying in Blenheim for a couple of nights and visiting the vineyards she’d gone to with Alison two years ago and having a glass of her sister’s favourite bubbly.

Did she still stop here until she was capable of getting around again? Doing what? Reading, eating, sleeping. Boring. What about going to Havelock? Her chuckle was humourless. Less than five hundred people lived there. So not her, a place like that. All too soon the locals would start saying hello, and then asking how her day was going. She shuddered. Face it. Stopping for more than three nights anywhere was so not her at the moment. But as of now she was no longer on the move.

Almost six months on the road hadn’t solved anything, hadn’t given her the forgiveness she ached for, hadn’t brought her any closer to accepting what had happened.

This road trip had just about run its course anyway. There were only two more stops to go. Yeah, well, like climbing mountainsides in the Kahurangi National Park was going to happen now. Saying goodbye to Alison might have to wait another year.

Tears welled up, spilled down her face. ‘So sorry, sis. I intended being at the place where you left me on the first anniversary.’ Now that final goodbye had been taken from her in a single hit. A little like Alison’s death. One fall off a mountainside and she’d gone. For ever.

‘You look like you could do with some company.’