Page 40 of One Step Behind
‘Shouting and hitting him isn’t going to solve anything,’ her mum says, her voice angrier than Sophie has ever heard it before.
‘He caught me in the balls, Sarah. I didn’t mean to hit him.’
‘But you did because you’re drunk. You’re always drunk. Just get out. Drink yourself into an early grave somewhere else.’
Sophie waits for her dad to laugh or shout something back. Instead he strides away without another word.
Chapter 21
Monday, 17 June
Jenna
It’s a quiet day for once in A&E. A slow current of patients pulls me through the morning. My thoughts feel coated in gloop. I can’t concentrate. I work on autopilot, treating patients without thinking, then having to double back and check them all over again, doubting myself.
There is no game face today, no way to switch off my thoughts from you. For five whole days, five wonderful days, there have been no dismembered dolls left on my doorstep, no shattered glass, no cruel taunts emailed to me. And yet I can’t unwind. I can’t shake you from my thoughts.
By lunchtime my head is pounding and the fluorescent strips of light on the ceiling are hurting my eyes. All I want to do is crawl on to one of the beds and close my eyes. I must look as bad as I feel because without asking Thomas acts like my shadow, helpingme with my patients, fetching me cups of coffee and guiding me to where I need to be.
We see a man limp in with a pulled groin muscle. I tell him to rest and take ibuprofen. Then it’s a woman with a rash on her arm that is barely visible by the time I see her. She thinks it’s meningitis. I tell her to take an antihistamine and consider changing her brand of suncream.
My next patient is a fifty-five-year-old male presenting with a sum total of a runny nose and a headache. I get it. People use A&E when they can’t get an appointment with their doctor. It’s part of the job and something that is unlikely to change. I’ve never let it get to me before. But something about the weasel-like man with his oval glasses crawls under my skin. I check his vitals for any sign that this is more than just a cold. It isn’t. I give him two painkillers and a cup of water before going to check on another patient. Twenty minutes later I return to the man with the runny nose.
‘Mr Shorter,’ I say, walking to his bed. ‘How are you feeling now?’
He touches the tip of his red nose, sniffs dramatically and closes his eyes for a moment as though the effort required to reply is insurmountable. ‘Better, I think,’ he says with a long sigh. ‘The medication you gave me seems to be working. I can probably go home now.’ He checks his watch and nods, agreeing with himself. ‘The golf starts on the telly in half an hour.’
A wave of frustration crashes over me and the words fire out before I can stop them. ‘So it’s fine for you to waste our time, but not for us to waste yours?’
Mr Shorter jerks his head back, cowering a little asthough I’m wielding the mother of all needles and want to inject it into his eyeball.
I take a step closer, a why-the-hell-not feeling pumping through my body, finally wiping away the sludge from my thoughts. ‘You do realize that people die here, Mr Shorter? Elderly people, mothers, fathers, children even. Many would be alive today if the doctors had seen them just ten minutes earlier, but we don’t because we’re wasting our time on people like you.’
This is and isn’t an exaggeration. If someone comes to A&E seriously ill, they’ll be pushed to the top of the list and people like Mr Shorter will have to wait. But for all the people who come to A&E when they don’t need to, there are just as many who stay home when they are desperately ill because the wait times will be so long or because they don’t want to be a burden to the NHS.
‘I … I … I’m ill,’ he splutters. ‘The medicine you gave me worked, that’s why I’m feeling better.’
I sense someone behind me and a hand rests on my shoulder. I turn to see Diya, her face full of concern, and even though I know I’ve gone too far I can’t seem to stop myself. ‘I gave you paracetamol, Mr Shorter. It’s available from most shops and costs less than a chocolate bar. You’ve wasted your own time, you’ve wasted a bed, you’ve wasted the nurses’ time, and you’ve wasted mine.’
‘That’s enough, Doctor Lawson,’ Diya says, her voice low but filled with authority.
I shrug Diya away, also aware of Thomas’s eyes on me. His face is a mix of alarm and something else. Awe, maybe. It’s not often we stand up to the timewasters, but right now I don’t care what anyone thinks.
I feel caged in, trapped. I have to get away before I do something worse than shouting at a patient. I spinon my heels and stride away, out of A&E, and through the warren of corridors until I’m locked inside the last cubicle in the toilets and wishing I was the type of person who could lash out, kick at the door until my foot hurts, and feel better.
My pager beeps ten minutes later. Two sharp beeps that vibrate against my hip bone. My hand moves, curling around the black matchbox shape. The movement is automatic, like reaching to scratch an itch, but it’s not an emergency. I’m being summoned.
The medical director’s office is small. No bigger than a treatment area. There is a desk and a computer instead of a bed; paperwork instead of medical supplies; two framed photographs of Westbury hanging on the wall instead of wires and monitors.
Nancy Macpherson, the A&E medical director, appears in the doorway, smoothing down the silk of her red blouse and offering a tight smile. She sits behind her desk, the chair creaking from her weight. The assessment runs through my head before I can stop it. Obese female, mid-fifties, presenting signs of high blood pressure and possible early diabetes based on the empty tins of fizzy drinks I spy in the waste-paper basket.
‘I’m sorry.’ I blurt out the apology before Nancy can say anything. ‘I shouldn’t have let that patient get to me. He was wasting our time.’ The anger has yet to dissolve and it’s there in my tone. I grit my teeth and will myself to calm down. This isn’t me.
‘I agree with you, Jenna.’ Nancy drinks from an open can of Coke on her desk.
‘But?’ I prompt.
She dabs her mouth before she speaks. ‘But there are ways of handling it, as you know.’
