Sharon Kendrik - A Medical Liaison

‘Hello, there!’ smiled Magda. ‘Louisa, wasn’t it? You must tell me all about yourself. Where did you do your training?’

‘At Barts.’ Louisa prayed that she didn’t sound too much on the defensive.

‘Really?’ The other woman looked interested. ‘I am impressed! One of London’s most famous hospitals—and yet you decided not to do any of your house jobs there?’

The inevitable question. ‘No. I wanted to come to St Dunstan’s.’

‘Oh?’ Magda seemed to be expecting more, but she could whistle for it, thought Louisa stubbornly, knowing all the time how weak and feeble her explanation sounded. Because, although St Dunstan’s was a well-respected and busy general hospital, it carried none of the élitism and status attached to St Bartholomew’s—known to its staff as ‘God’s own hospital’.

The grey eyes stared at her reproachfully for a moment, then turned to gaze fondly on Adam.

‘Would you like me to show her the ward? Leave you to have your coffee and do your paperwork in peace?’

He looked at Louisa for a moment, then nodded his agreement.

‘That would be a great help. Is that all right with you, Dr Gray?’

How formal he was with her! ‘Perfectly. Thanks, Sister.’ She was aware that her voice sounded stiff, starchy even.

She left the office, following the neat, swinging rear of Magda Maguire, feeling disgruntled. The day had got off to a bad start, and there was no doubt in her mind who was responsible.

IT WAS her first full day as a working doctor and she was mentally and physically unprepared for the sheer hard work, the relentless pace of it, and the demands. As a student she had done a ‘shadow’—tailing the house officer for four weeks, to give her a taste of the job. But this time she was on her own. True, she had her SHO, her registrar, and ultimately her consultant to call upon, but she had been taught as a medical student not to abuse the back-up system. They each had a heavy work-load—she must get on as best she could, save in a real emergency where she felt unable to cope.

Magda Maguire had pointed out the geography of the ward, and then taken her to each patient, where Louisa had quickly written down their name and initial diagnosis, intending to bone up on them that evening so that she was fairly well acquainted with them in time for tomorrow’s ward round.

Then she returned to Dale and did the same there, and Mandy Patterson made her a cup of coffee for which Louisa was extremely grateful, but she had no chance to drink more than a couple of mouthfuls, and by the time she returned it had formed a thick skin and had to be thrown away.

And in between trying to learn all about forty new patients and their illnesses, she was having to deal with some of the problems which had arisen overnight, and non-urgent problems from the preceding weekend. One patient had developed a livid red rash after being commenced on a new drug treatment. Another’s intravenous infusion had ‘tissued’—the cannula had slipped out of the vein into the surrounding tissue—and it took Louisa ages to resite, partly because she was not yet very practised at it, but the sound of Magda Maguire clicking her tongue impatiently beside her did little to improve her confidence.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.