One Night in Emergency

‘Cuts and bruises at this stage, one or two sound as if they may have fractures, and the driver has a nasty seat-belt injury—injuries I can deal with blindfolded,’ Mary thundered on. ‘It’s twenty-four young men with too much C2H50H on board I can well do without.’

‘C2H…’ Eleanor frowned, her voice trailing off as she tried to, first, remember to look assertive and, second, to work out just what on earth Mary was going on about now.

‘You don’t write that on their notes, mind,’ Mary said sharply as Eleanor dutifully wrote the mass of letters and numbers down. ‘They can smell like a brewery, have slurred speech and be staggering as they walk, but it would be very dangerous to make any assumptions. The symptoms are the same as a head injury and it won’t go down too well in court if it’s even been hinted at in the patient notes. Have I made myself clear?’

Eleanor nodded, but her frown remained.

‘Now Resus is already full, so I’m going to head in there and give Dr Heel a hand to clear the place. Caitlin is on triage…’

‘Helen, one of the agency nurses, has got an ICU certificate,’ Vicki ventured. ‘Why don’t you take her into Resus with you? Heather and I can manage the trolleys. And I’m sure Pier will be OK doing the cubicles.’

The look that Mary shot Pier told everyone present that Mary was yet to be convinced. Pier might be divine to look at, might be incredibly eager to please, but the fact his English was heavily laced with a thick French accent was already causing more than a few problems.

‘Sounds good.’ Mary nodded. ‘The rest of you will have to pitch in.’ Her eyes again turned sharply to Eleanor.

‘You did some Emergency in your grad year, didn’t you?’

‘I did,’ Eleanor gulped, ‘but it was a tiny country hospital, I wouldn’t exactly call myself—’

‘They have bandages in the country I presume?’ Mary broke in, and Eleanor nodded nervously.

‘Then you can have the walking wounded with Pier. Patch them up and move them on. And, for goodness’ sake, once they’re seen, do your best to get them into a taxi and as far from here as possible. I do not want my waiting room pumping with renditions of ‘‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’’ or ‘‘Danny Boy’’.’

‘We’re in Australia, Mary,’ Vicki pointed out with a grin. ‘It’s ‘‘Waltzing Matilda’’ here.’

‘I don’t need a song sheet,’ Mary barked. ‘Just get them treated and home to their mothers. Poor women!’

‘Right.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘The first will be here in fifteen minutes or so which gives us time to do a quick clear up and get the place ready. Now, do we all know where we’re supposed to be?’

Everyone nodded and started to drift off to their assigned tasks. Everyone except Eleanor. She didn’t want to ask stupid questions, didn’t want to take up Mary’s valuable time, but given she’d been so specific about not writing in their notes, Eleanor had no choice but to ask exactly what it was she couldn’t write.

‘Mary, sorry to be a pain, it’s just that I didn’t understand what you meant when you said…’ Eleanor swallowed hard, beating back a blush as the dispersing crowd all stopped, then turned to hear her question. ‘What exactly is C2H…?’ She glanced down at the scrap of paper in her hand where she’d hastily written the jumble of letters. ‘C2H5OH?’

‘Oh.’ Mary gave her a very nice smile, which Eleanor was sure was false. ‘I’m sorry, Eleanor, did I not explain myself clearly enough for you? I should have said that it’s the chemical equation for ethanol.’

‘Ethanol?’ Eleanor repeated, the question in her voice evident, her bewildered eyes looking back up to Mary.

‘It means drunk, Eleanor,’ Mary said through strained lips. ‘Does that make things clearer for you?’

‘Much,’ Eleanor replied, blushing to the roots of her hair.

‘So take no nonsense from any of them,’ Mary warned. ‘A pretty thing like you will be like a sitting duck.’

* * *

‘What’s wrong?’ Pier asked as they headed for the cubicles, noticing Eleanor’s grimly set face. ‘I also did not know that was the chemical equation for alcohol.’

‘It’s not that,’ Eleanor retorted, shaking her head and marching on as Pier struggled to keep up.

‘Then what ever is the matter with you all of a sudden?’ Pier asked, clearly perplexed. ‘The accident is not as serious as we first thought, we will all manage.’

‘I know we will. It’s not that, it’s what Mary said about…’ Eleanor shook her head angrily. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ But the French clearly weren’t fazed by a dash of emotion and Pier just followed her into the four-bedded treatment area, patiently waiting as Eleanor pulled a blanket around the shoulders of an elderly lady.

‘What did she say that has you so angry? And you are angry, Eleanor,’ Pier pointed out, watching as she stripped a case of a pillow, then rammed the unsuspecting foam rectangle into a fresh pillowcase.

‘Well, so would you be.’ Her eyes flashed as she spoke, two spots of colour burning on her cheeks. ‘What on earth do my looks have to do with anything? Two hours into my first shift and the charge nurse is making little jabs about me being pretty.’

‘But you are pretty,’ Pier exclaimed. ‘Beautiful even! Blond hair, blue eyes, a very feminine shape.’ He made a rather lewd hourglass gesture with his hands, but somehow Pier could get away with it without causing offence. ‘In fact, if I went for women, I would definitely go for you.’ He watched as her lips tightened. ‘I am not making things better, no?’

‘No,’ Eleanor replied, as they stripped the linen off a trolley and started to remake it in preparation for the new set of patients. ‘Mary wasn’t paying me a compliment, Pier, believe me. I’ve been up against a few ‘‘Marys’’ in my training and grad year and they all assume that a blond-haired, blue-eyed nurse can only be after one thing.’

‘Sex?’

‘A husband,’ Eleanor wailed, thumping him none too gently with the pillow. ‘They all assume I’m merely biding my time until some suitable rich and good-looking man comes along.’

‘We all are.’ Pier grinned then, realising humour wasn’t called for here, he stared at her thoughtfully for a long moment.

Eleanor wasn’t just pretty, she was seriously beautiful. China-blue eyes heavily framed with dark lashes were an absolute contrast to the thick blond hair, which, unless she went to the hairdresser’s weekly, was for once natural—all set off with a deep red rosebud mouth in a clear-skinned face and, given that Pier was rather more in tune with his feminine side than most men, he finally saw her problem.

‘Eleanor, people can be jealous, say cruel things, make silly assumptions, pigeonhole you for how you look, how you talk, the job you do even. But you have to learn to let those hurtful comments go. Once you learn to be confident in who you are and what it is you want from life, those bitchy comments will just wash over you. Believe me, I know.’

Something in his voice reached Eleanor, something in Pier’s stance told her that as happy and confident as he appeared life hadn’t always been easy for him, and she gave a dejected nod. Pier’s sympathetic advice and surprising understanding was all she needed to open up a touch.

‘I didn’t do too well in my grad year, that’s why I finally made the decision to leave my home town and came here to get some experience.’

‘You were in the country, oui?’

Eleanor nodded. ‘The manager didn’t like me—in fact, that’s a massive understatement. Rita actively disliked me and in a tiny country hospital there aren’t too many places to hide.’

‘How small was it?’

‘Three wards and a tiny emergency department, but when I say emergency it was more of a GP unit. Any real emergencies were transferred to the city.’

‘So you do not have much experience in emergency nursing.’

‘I would have had,’ Eleanor said darkly, ‘if only Rita had let me within a square mile of the place. Even though it was a tiny hospital, we covered a vast area. There were a lot of farming accidents, heart attacks, even a few suicide attempts. Of course, they were moved on to the city once they were stabilised, but until the paramedics arrived they were treated at the hospital. If Rita had only let me in a bit, I’d have had a lot of experience by now.’ Eleanor gave a tight shrug. ‘She treated me as if I’d barely got my first Guide badge, let alone a nursing degree. I spent my whole time in my so-called emergency rotation giving tetanus shots, putting on slings and bandages and making cups of tea for relatives. If I hadn’t worked the wards for six months I’d have come out of my grad year none the wiser than when I’d started. I had to tell them at my interview, of course. They assumed I had some emergency experience, but when I told them how little I’d really done it was decided that I’d be rostered on with Mary for the next few months. If I last,’ Eleanor added. ‘She seems so fierce.’

‘She needs to be, I guess. Imagine if this minibus crash had turned out to be really serious.’

‘I suppose. And I know that I’m not much help at the moment, but I’m not completely useless. I might not be a great emergency nurse yet, but I have spent the last year working. It mightn’t have been a busy teaching hospital, but we still had sick patients. I mightn’t have learnt a lot in emergency but it was a different story on the wards. The country’s crying out for nursing staff. Towards the end of my grad year I was even in charge of some shifts on the wards, yet Mary seems intent on treating me as if I’m a complete novice. At the interview she seemed so nice…’

‘She is nice,’ Pier broke in, smiling at Eleanor’s dubious expression. ‘Emergency nurses are a funny lot. ICU and coronary-care nurses are the same—cliquey, bitchy, always thinking that they’re the busiest, most understaffed unit in the whole hospital.’ As Eleanor’s frown deepened, Pier’s smile widened. ‘But they’re also the funniest, most down-to-earth, loyal lot you’ll ever hope to meet, and once you’re in you’ll be there for life. You’ll end up being Mary’s biggest fan, I bet.’

‘I doubt it,’ Eleanor scoffed. ‘And how come you’re such a fan, when all she’s done is roar at you?’

‘She’s testing me,’ Pier responded easily. ‘I guarantee if I make it through this shift, by the morning she’ll be giving me the pick of the unfilled shifts on the roster. But I still don’t understand,’ Pier moaned, unfortunately getting back to the one subject Eleanor wanted to avoid. ‘Why didn’t this manager like you?’

‘Well, in my written report Rita said that I wasn’t assertive enough, that I was too busy focusing on petty details and not getting the job done.’