More Than Time

But it was Ross and not Lucy who opened the door a few minutes later. He walked over to Lizzi and stood close to her as he studied the chart.

‘How’s he doing?’

Lizzi shrugged. ‘Not well.’

Ross shook his head. ‘I doubt if he’ll make it. He’s so badly shocked, and he was under the anaesthetic for hours. Oliver and I were working on him together.’

Lifting up the edge of the bedclothes, Ross frowned at the drainage bag from the catheter.

‘His kidney’s been bleeding a bit.’

‘Kidney? Just one?’

‘We had to remove the left one. It was shot to bits.’

They watched dismally as a steady trickle of blood ran into the bag.

‘Damn.’

‘Will you have to open him up again?’

Ross shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He opened up the drip a little so that the whole blood ran faster, and checked his blood-pressure. ‘Pressure’s OK. I think we’ll just watch him closely. It may stop on its own. The last thing he needs is another anaesthetic. He’s got so much alcohol in his system that he really can’t take it. His system is depressed enough.’

‘He was drunk?’

‘As a skunk. The police are waiting to talk to him.’

As the old familiar rage swept over her, Lizzi lost all compassion. ‘Why the hell was he driving?’

‘Good question. He caused the accident, apparently. Ploughed into Jennifer Adams—it’s her husband in ITU with the head injuries, by the way—and then spun off and caught Roger Widlake and his wife broadside. She’s fortunately only slightly injured.’

‘Bastard,’ Lizzi whispered, it would serve him right if he died!’

Ross blinked. That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?’

‘It’s no more than he deserves!’ Lizzi said bitterly.

Just then there was a dramatic drop in blood-pressure, and the heart monitor registered a flat trace.

‘Here we go again,’ Ross said with a sigh, and rolled the man carefully on to his back, tipped back his head and breathed into his mouth while Lizzi automatically slid a board under his chest, then, locating his sternum, he crossed his hands and pumped steadily.

‘Get an airway in, Lizzi.’

Lizzi hit the alarm button, ripped open a Brook’s airway and inserted it carefully into the man’s mouth, forcing her professional side to take over from the unprecedented surge of emotion. Suddenly the room was full of people. Someone took over the air bag, attaching it to the airway and squeezing it steadily in the gaps between Ross’s rhythmic cardiac massage.

‘Do you want the defibrillator?’ someone asked.

‘No, he’s gone into asystole. He’s just given up—he may have a ruptured aneurism. We’ll have to keep him going if we can. If it isn’t that, he may pick up again.’ Ross snapped out instructions which had already been anticipated by the well-trained team. The atropine, calcium and adrenalin were already drawn up, and were injected into the giving set in the patient’s arm, as soon as they had been checked.

There was no response, and adrenalin injected directly into the heart was equally ineffective. The trace remained persistently, stubbornly flat.

After several more fruitless minutes, Ross straightened up with a sigh. There’s nothing more we can do. It must be his aorta—the PM will tell us. All right, thank you everybody.’

No one was surprised. The staff filtered out of the room, and left Lizzi and Ross alone with the dead man.

‘Probably just as well,’ Lizzi said flatly as she removed the airway and switched off the monitor.

‘Aye. Maybe.’ Ross sounded gruff, and Lizzi shot him a look.

‘Don’t you agree?’

‘Depends on your reasons for wishing him dead. If it’s to spare him any further suffering, then yes. If it’s just because he was young and irresponsible, I think it’s a bit extreme.’

Lizzi blushed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to over-react. I just—feel very strongly about drunk drivers.’

Ross straightened, and flashed her a weary grin. ‘Technically I agree with you, but I’d just spent several hours of my life struggling to save the young fool, and it’s hard to see it all thrown away. I like working miracles, and I don’t like to be cheated! But you’re right, the poor bloke’s better off dead. God knows what complications he would have had if he’d lived.’

Lizzi followed him out of the room. ‘What about relatives?’ she asked.

‘They hadn’t managed to contact any by the time they brought him down this morning, I don’t think.’

But they had. Lucy Hallett ducked her head out of the office door and smiled.

‘I’ve got Mr and Mrs Holden in here. They’re wondering about how Michael’s getting on.’

Ross and Lizzi exchanged glances, and he nodded.

Thanks, I’ll see to it. Perhaps you’d get him presentable?’ he murmured quietly to Lizzi.

Lucy frowned, and Lizzi shook her head slightly. Lucy’s mouth formed an ‘O’, and she came soundlessly out of the room as Ross went in and closed the door firmly behind him.

‘What happened?’

‘He arrested—probably as a result of a traumatic aneurism. Just as well. Mr Hamilton was about to have to take him down to Theatre to sort out his kidney again, because it was still bleeding. Did his parents realise how bad he was?’

Lucy gave a hollow little laugh. ‘I doubt it—I didn’t know, and they were getting their information from me. I was having difficulty holding them; they were almost determined to find him.’

Lizzi went back into Michael’s room and took down the drip, removed the catheter and tidied up the bed. No doubt his parents would want to see him now, and she did her best to disguise the damage. Just as she was about to leave the room, Ross appeared with Michael’s parents.

She left them to it. Telling relatives was a part of her job that she liked the least, and she wasn’t particularly good at it. She realised she was also feeling very angry with the dead man still, and probably wasn’t the best person to deal with his relatives anyway. Maybe it was cowardly of her, but she made her escape nevertheless and went to see how Sarah was doing with Roger Widlake.

He seemed to be holding his own much better than Michael had, and Lizzi went back to her office and contacted the mortuary technician, and then rang ITU to tell them that they now only needed one bed.

Shortly afterwards she saw Ross escorting the Holdens out, and she didn’t see him again until much later, by which time Roger Widlake was in ITU and her ward was her own again.

She was sitting in her office doing battle with the rota when he opened the door and popped his head round.

‘Can I come in?’