SJ Lakes

Chapter 19

Heidi scoots back to sit up in the bed. She’s wearing my old oversized Metallica shirt.

“How long have you been in here?” I ask softly.

She stretches and yawns, the sheet dropping away to show she’s only wearing panties under the shirt. That would be fairly hot if I weren’t terrified. “I got in a little late after work last night, honey,” she says, apparently missing my point. “Want me to make us some omelettes for breakfast?”

I slowly shake my head without taking my eyes off her. “How did you get in?” I ask, my mouth feeling numb and awkward.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, “I found the new set of keys you left me in the bedside table. Thanks! The keychain is so cute.”

I remember putting my spare set of house keys in a drawer after I had the locks changed, on a big plastic hibiscus keychain I bought so I couldn’t lose them. I feel light headed as my vision begins to swim a bit, and I put out a hand to steady myself against the door frame.

There’s a chance that I’m having some sort of psychotic break. Either I’m imagining Heidi’s presence now, or I’ve somehow blocked her out up to this morning. The alternative is that she has stolen my keys, apparently believing that we have an ongoing relationship.

I suddenly realise who must have been calling for me at the hospital without leaving a name, and maybe who has been calling my mobile too. My god, I might have been right to change the locks after all.

Heidi closes her eyes sleepily and says, “I filled up the kettle last night, if you want to make coffee.”

“Thanks,” I say, not moving from the doorway. I reach slowly for the small device in the back pocket of my jeans, glad now that I bought it. I depress the button without taking it out of my pocket.

“Um, do you want coffee too?” I ask.

Heidi opens her eyes again and looks at the clock radio by the bed. “Yeah,” she replies, “I’d better get up soon.”

“No!” I say, a bit too quickly. “Stay in bed, I’ll make you a coffee,” I add.

“Mm, thanks,” she says with a smile.

The cordless phone rings. I back into the living room to pick it up, trying to keep my eye on the bedroom door. “Hello?” I say, an edge in my voice as I answer.

It’s the security firm that monitors my duress alarm. Thank god they’re working for their money. “Hi, Mum,” I say to the operator. My apartment is small enough that Heidi could probably hear me from the bedroom even if I lowered my voice.

“Do you require assistance?” asks the man.

“Yes,” I say firmly. “Sure, you can come over this morning, Mum.”

The operator asks me to confirm whether I want the police sent out. “Yeah, see you soon, Mum,” I answer, and hang up.

“Mum might come over for a bit later this morning,” I call toward the bedroom. “I’ll make us some coffee now.”

I step into the bathroom and retrieve my shirt from the laundry hamper. I think I want to be dressed for whatever happens next.

I tip most of the water down the sink before putting the kettle on. I want it to boil fast. I don’t know what’s going to happen now, but I want boiling water available to me sooner rather than later, in case I need it. My heart is racing and my hands shake as I set the kettle down. I have no idea if Heidi is armed in any way. I have to assume she could become violent if she’s actively psychotic, which seems likely.

I decide against coffee for myself. I’m not at risk of falling asleep any time soon, even though I’ve been at work all night. I make a mug of coffee for Heidi, since I said I would, but I take care not to make it hot enough to scald if, say, thrown back at me.

“Here you go,” I say as I enter the bedroom again. I set the mug down on the table by the bed.

“Thanks,” murmurs Heidi, her eyes closed again.

We stay there in silence for a few minutes, Heidi relaxing, maybe dozing, and me standing frozen by the bed, panicked.

There’s a brisk knock at the door, and I quietly excuse myself to go and answer it. I close the bedroom door on my way. My heart starts racing even faster than before and my chest feels fluttery with panic.

I open the door to two uniformed police officers, a man and a woman. I feel a rush of relief to see them. They show me their badges and tell me their names, which I promptly forget.

“Lucy Klein?” asks the female officer.

I nod, gesturing for them to come in. “My ex has broken in overnight while I was at work,” I say softly. “She’s in my bed – I think she might be having some kind of psychotic episode. She seems to think she lives here. I don’t know if she’s dangerous.” I realise I’m talking faster and faster.

“What’s her name?” asks the male officer, taking notes on a small pad.

“Heidi Andersen,” I whisper. “She’s in there,” I add, pointing to the bedroom door.

“And what, exactly, would you like to happen now?” asks the female officer.

“I need you to get her out of here, first,” I say. “I’m afraid of what she might do – please, just get her out. And she’ll need to be seen by a doctor, a psychiatrist.”

“Do you want to press charges?” she asks.

I shake my head, on the verge of tears. “I don’t know,” I admit.

She touches my arm reassuringly. “It’s okay,” she says gently. “We’ll take her out of here, have a doctor examine her, and we can figure the rest out later.”

I nod and give a little sniffle.

The next few minutes feel like they last forever. Frightened, my head swimming, I back myself into a corner of the kitchen to watch as the officers enter my bedroom. I hear low voices conversing but I can’t make out what’s being said. Then -

“What?” shrieks Heidi.

I try to back further into the corner. I notice absently that I’m crying.

I hear something like a brief scuffle, and then the two officers are leading Heidi out of the room, out of the apartment. My big shirt is baggy and long on her, covering her to mid-thigh, so at least she isn’t being marched out half-naked. Her hands are behind her back – I guess in handcuffs, or whatever else the police use for restraints. She looks furious. The police leave the front door open on their way out.

After a while – I guess it’s only about a minute, but it feels like an hour – the female officer ducks back in. She says something to me about how long they can hold Heidi, which I barely hear, and has me sign something. She touches me again on the shoulder. “Is there someone I can call for you?” she asks.

For a moment I fail to answer, then I whisper, “Josie.” I’m surprised at how hoarse and far away my voice sounds. I manage to fetch my phone from my bag and find her mobile number.

The officer makes a quick call on her own phone, then tells me Jo is on her way. She hands me a card with her name and number, asking me to call her if I need to. I nod dumbly.

“You’ll be okay by yourself until your sister gets here?” she asks me.

“Yeah,” I say quietly, wiping at my eyes. I suddenly feel absurdly embarassed, and I reach for a tissue from the kitchen counter to blow my nose.

“All right,” says the officer, “remember you can call me if you need anything.” She leaves again, closing the door this time, and I hear the elevator ding out in the hall. I lock the door behind her.

I tuck the card into my jeans pocket, toss the used tissue in the bin, and run some water in the kitchen sink to wash my face.

Once I feel a bit less teary, I hesitantly step into the bedroom and glance around, checking as though to convince myself Heidi is gone. She really is. I sit down on the edge of the bed, feeling numb, staring blankly at the wall. I don’t know how much time passes.

Eventually I hear a knock again from the front door. “Who is it?” I call shakily.

“It’s Jo,” calls my sister through the door, worry evident in her voice.

I undo the locks and let Josie inside. She immediately catches me in a big hug and suddenly I’m crying again on her shoulder.

Chapter 18

The early evening is fairly quiet. I see the usual range of less than urgent cases for a few hours, plus one kid with a broken arm, who goes to orthopedics, and one acute depressive episode in a university student, who goes to outpatient psychiatric.

The patient who’s brought in around midnight was found wandering disoriented in the street. He couldn’t communicate with police, and after initially mistaking him for a drunk, they had the sense to call an ambulance when they eventually noticed his medical alert bracelet. By the time I see him, he’s been given some glucose tablets and begun to recover.

“How are you feeling, Mr Evans?” I ask as I enter the exam room. He’s an older guy, in his fifties, with a craggy, lined face. His slightly receding salt-and-pepper hair is cut short, reducing what I presume would otherwise be curls to a dense fuzz.

“Arright,” he slurs. Scratching his neck and avoiding my eye, he doesn’t seem very alert. He’s been given an IV line for saline to rehydrate him, and several of his fingertips have little spots of tape showing where he’s had capillary blood taken to check his glucose levels.

“How long have you had diabetes?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Caught it a coupla years ago,” he says.

“And how do you normally manage it?”

He shrugs again. “Manage arright.”

I suppress a smile. “No,” I say, “I mean, what do you normally do to control your blood sugar? Do you use medication, or just diet?”

“Not on a diet,” he replies. “Me doctor gimme some tablets for it. Forgot to take em yesterday so I took four of em tonight.”

I wish this was the first time I’d heard such a thing, but a lot of people have these stupid ideas about ‘catching up’ on their medication if they miss doses. Mr Evans is just lucky he’s not on warfarin or morphine.

“Okay, that’s why you made yourself unwell,” I tell him. “The tablets bring your blood sugar down so it doesn’t get too high after you eat, but if you take too many they’ll make it too low.”

He doesn’t really look like he’s listening to me. Well, I tried. I guess I’ll speak with him about it again later when he’s a bit more together.

I look at the chart and am only mildly surprised to see that his weight is recorded as two hundred kilograms. He’s a huge man, taking up the full width of the bed. I bet it was a bitch to find a vein to cannulate, especially when he came in so dehydrated. I notice he has a packet of cigarettes on the table by the bed and can’t help rolling my eyes a bit. We’ll doubtlessly see him again when he needs a gangrenous foot taken off.

“Have you tried anything to reduce your weight?” I ask him.

“Applied to go on The Biggest Loser,” he says. “Dunno when I’m gonna hear back about it.”

“Really?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected much of an answer, but I didn’t expect that. “Have you thought about trying anything else?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t wanna go on a diet and I can’t afford to go to the gym or nothing,” he says.

I fight back the urge to shout at him and just nod instead. “I’ll come and check on you again in a bit,” I say, replacing his chart at the end of the bed. This seems like a good time for a coffee break.

It turns out Mr Evans has been told repeatedly to buy a blood glucose monitor but hasn’t bothered with it, so he only ever gets his sugar checked on the rare occasions that he visits his GP. I convince the overnight registrar to admit him so we can keep an eye on him for a day or so. Since he’s obviously taking pretty terrible care of himself, I argue that we should at least monitor his blood sugar for a while to make sure the tablets are still appropriate and he doesn’t need to go onto insulin. It occurs to me that if he does need to use insulin he’ll probably accidentally kill himself with it, but we can deal with trying to prevent that once we know if insulin is necessary.

I finally get away from the hospital around five in the morning. The sun is already up, and I swap my regular glasses for a pair of sunglasses while I walk to the train. I pass a dirty, dishevelled homeless woman slumped against a wall and pause for a moment, waiting until I’m sure I see her chest moving before I decide she’s just asleep. I tuck a five dollar note into the upturned hat beside her on the footpath and continue on my way.

The train home is almost empty, as it usually is this early in the morning. I relax in my seat, resting my head against the window and closing my eyes. When I open them again the train is stopped at central station, and I almost fall over myself as I leap out of the seat and hurry off the train before it leaves the station. I once fell deeply asleep travelling home from work and woke up way out in the suburbs on the other side of town. I could do without that today.

When I get home I turn on the air conditioner right away and grab a couple of toaster pastries for breakfast. I never actually put them in the toaster. Instead I sit down at the coffee table and open my laptop, eating breakfast straight out of the foil pack. I look up the bus timetable for the trip out to Chris’s hospital, making a mental note of the times and where I need to go.

When I’m done eating I shut down the laptop and toss my pastry wrapper in the kitchen bin. I don’t bother covering my mouth as I give a huge yawn, and decide it’s time for bed. I’ll head out to see Chris this afternoon.

I kick off my sneakers and pull my shirt over my head, depositing it in the laundry hamper in the bathroom. I’m undoing my bra as I step into the bedroom.

I stop dead in the doorway, my fingers frozen behind my back as I stare in horror.

There’s a blonde head resting on one of my pillows.

I remain standing frozen in the doorway, unable to do anything but swallow noisily and stare at the figure in my bed.

After a moment the figure rolls over to face me.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” says Heidi.

Chapter 17

Dave and I spend the rest of the afternoon eating pizza, drinking beer, and watching cartoons. It’s pretty much the best way I can think of to spend my day off. It’s too hot to do anything outside, so a lazy afternoon inside with the air conditioning turned way up feels like just what the doctor ordered.

“Gross,” says Dave, picking at a slice of pizza. “There’s pineapple on one of my pieces.”

I lean over to take the sliver of pineapple and put it on the slice I’m about to eat. I’m just glad none of his ham or beef has ended up on my mushroom-and-pineapple side of the pizza.

We finish the six-pack of expensive beer that Dave brought. He declines my offer of another one of my cheaper beers, so I look in the freezer to find a bottle of vodka instead.

“I’m all out of cranberry juice,” I call from the kitchen. “Vodka and lemonade?”

“Cool,” Dave calls back.

I fix us a couple of drinks in tall plastic glasses, going fairly light on the alcohol since I’m already a bit tipsy.

We watch our way through most of season four of The Simpsons. After a couple of hours my face and belly are beginning to ache from laughter. Eventually I notice Dave is looking sleepy, his dark eyes staying closed longer and longer each time he blinks. When I glance at my watch I see it’s already fairly late.

“Do you want to crash here tonight?” I ask him.

He looks a little bit uncomfortable – or maybe it’s just my imagination. “Thanks, Klein, but I’d better get home tonight to feed the cat,” he says, rubbing his eyes.

“Well, let me call you a cab then,” I say, reaching for my cell phone on the side table.

After Dave has left I pour myself another vodka and lemonade, a bit stronger than the last one, and settle down in front of the television again. I stretch out and put my feet up on the arm of the sofa. I watch another couple of Simpsons episodes before deciding it’s time for bed.

In the morning I take a couple of paracetamol tablets with my usual pills, then I boot up my laptop to start work on my case study paper. I’m still feeling a little conflicted about this, but I can’t deny it will be good for my career to have a publication under my name, especially when I start applying for registrar positions.

I type out a few dot points, then decide I need to get some caffeine into me. I set the laptop down on the coffee table, picking up the remaining beer bottles from last night as I head into the kitchen. I put the bottles in my recycling crate under the sink as I put the kettle on for coffee.

My stomach growls, and I grab a chocolate breakfast drink from the fridge while I wait for the kettle to boil. I’m working the late afternoon shift at the hospital today, so I must remember to have a decent lunch before I go.

When I head back into the living room with my coffee I notice the roses on my side table are starting to wilt. I was never that thrilled about having them in here in the first place, so I take them into the kitchen and deposit them in the bin. The thin glass vase goes in the dishwasher – I’m not even going to try cleaning it by hand, and I don’t think I own a bottle brush or anything.

I curl up again on the sofa, laptop balanced across my thighs and a big mug of coffee in my left hand as I type with my right.

While I’m typing it occurs to me that I should go and talk to Chris about the case study when I’m at work tonight. I know Tran has already cleared it with him, gotten his permission to publish, but I’ll feel better if I can go and chat with him properly about it. It’s been a couple of days since we dropped our diagnostic bombshell on him, and I feel like I can probably go and see him now without getting too upset again. I hope Chris isn’t too mad that I didn’t check in on him over the weekend – but then I suppose he’s got more than that on his mind at the moment.

I finish typing my draft paper outline, read through it twice to make sure I haven’t written anything too stupid, then email a copy to Tran and Barlow for them to look over.

One of the senior nurses, Linda, is manning the nurses’ station when I arrive at work. I wave hello as I walk in.

“Klein,” she calls, beckoning me. “I don’t know who you owe a phone call, but for god’s sake call her so she stops bothering me here.”

I frown. “Who?” I ask dumbly.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Someone keeps calling here – I think it’s a woman – asking for you. She won’t say who she is, and she just hangs up when I tell her you don’t start till four. So whoever you’re supposed to call about something, do it before she drives me crazy!”

“Huh,” I say. “I don’t know who would need to speak to me that doesn’t have my cell number. Well, thanks, Linda.”

She nods as I head out to the cafeteria for a coffee before my shift starts. It occurs to me it’s probably a patient – or a patient’s family member. Chris. Of course.

I get my latte to go and take the elevator up to the neurological ward to see Chris. I want to speak with him anyway, and it sounds as though one of his family, maybe his step-mother, wants to talk to me too.

I knock and poke my head into the room, only to see an empty bed. The cards and flowers have been cleared away too.

“Looking for a patient?”

I jump about a metre in the air and manage to splash coffee on myself through the gap in the plastic lid. One of the ward nurses has appeared behind me.

“Yeah,” I say, swiping at my coffee-stained top. “Christopher Rossi-Smith?”
The nurse nods. “He was transferred out yesterday,” he tells me.

“Not sent home?” I ask.

“No, out to palliative,” he says. “Hang on.”

I follow the nurse over to the ward station and he looks up the details in the computer. He hands me a sticky note with the name of the palliative care hospital that Chris has been transferred into.

“Thanks,” I say, slipping the note into my hip pocket.

I guess I won’t be seeing Chris this evening after all. I could phone him – no, I decide I will go and see him. I’ve got tomorrow off work before a couple of day shifts in a row, so I’ll get the bus out to the palliative hospital to visit him then.

I finish what’s left of my coffee and toss it in the bin by the elevators. I look at my watch and see I’ve still got a few minutes before my shift officially starts, and decide to go and change my scrubs. I’ll probably be filthy by the end of the night anyway, but I’d like to at least start seeing patients without a big coffee stain on my shirt.

In the locker room, I toss my soiled shirt into the big laundry bin and change into a fresh one. “Much better,” I say out loud.

As I’m pulling the shirt down over my head I knock my glasses askew and almost off my face. I fumble for them, and as I do I could swear I see someone peer around from behind the row of lockers. Mortified that someone has heard me talking to myself, I push my glasses back on and go to see who it was. Instead I only hear footsteps rushing out and the door slamming.

I frown a bit, then shrug. Someone probably thinks I’m crazy, and I don’t even know who it is, but I guess it’s not such a big deal. I’ll just have to make a point of acting sane around everyone for a while, I suppose.

I suddenly realise I have thrown my staff ID badge into the laundry bin with my soiled shirt. “Oh, fuck,” I mutter.

Chapter 16

I get another couple of short breaks to grab some sleep during the rest of the weekend shift. The bit of rest helps to keep me going – along with liberal ingestion of caffeine – but by Monday morning I’m starting to feel the effects of the long hours with limited sleep. I’m counting down the last couple of hours before I can go home when Charlie Tran appears in emergency to see me.

“Morning, Dr Tran,” I say, stifling a yawn.

“Hi, Klein,” he replies. “Listen, Professor Barlow spoke to me about your patient, Rossi, with the FFI. He and I would like to write a case study paper, and I’d like you to co-author.” He looks at me expectantly.

“Hmm… a publication would be good for my resume,” I say, frowning slightly. This could be a big deal, actually; there are so few cases of FFI that our paper would become fairly prominent in the field by default. I’m not sure how I’d feel about writing a case study, though. The guy upstairs isn’t just the patient, he’s Chris. He has a family, and a life – and he’s dying.

“Well, why don’t I catch up with you about it later, Lucy,” says Tran, obviously sensing my hesitation. He gives me a nod before heading for the elevators.

I doze a little on the train home after I leave work. The carriage is full of commuters heading into the city, so I don’t get to sit down, but I lean up against a wall and close my eyes for a while. The air conditioning on the train is refreshing even as it struggles against the sticky heat outside and the closely-spaced bodies inside.

I feel like I’m almost asleep on my feet by the time I get home and let myself into the apartment. I grab a strawberry breakfast drink from the fridge and drink it mechanically on my way to the bedroom.

I almost choke when I see the flowers.

There’s a small glass vase on my bedside table, containing three red roses. They’re beautiful, but I’m fucking sure they weren’t there when I left. I don’t remember getting them.

I shuffle back to the kitchen to throw out my empty drink carton, rubbing my eyes as I go. I’m not sure what I expect, but the flowers are still there when I return to my bedroom. “Shit,” I say out loud, “I’m too tired to deal with this.” I move the flowers out into the living room for now, then drop onto the bed and into a deep, dreamless sleep.

My alarm clock wakes me late in the afternoon. I lie in bed for a while, listening to the radio, before deciding I am rested enough to get up and go to karate training. Eventually I get up and take a quick shower before grabbing my gym bag and heading out.

Training is a solid workout, as usual, and it feels good to stretch my muscles and move a bit after the long weekend shift. I find I’m still holding back a bit during sparring for fear of losing my glasses again; it will be good once I’ve had the surgery to be able to forget about that.

After training I shower again at the gym and change back into my street clothes. Before I walk home I take a small device out of my bag and slip it into my hip pocket. For all my martial arts training, I’m not hugely confident by myself at night; my order from the online security supply company arrived today.

Ken, the Japanese instructor of the class, stops me on my way out. “Will we see you at the grading next month?” he asks.

“Yeah, I think so,” I reply. I’ve been considering it for a while, and I think as long as I keep coming to training regularly I can make the next grading.

Ken nods and hands me a registration form. “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll pay the fee next week.” Unfortunately, the fee for grading gets higher and higher for each belt. The next grading, for my black belt, will be a couple of hundred dollars – but the cost will be completely worth it, if only for bragging rights.

The street is fairly quiet as I walk home. There are a few late-shift office workers waiting for buses, but otherwise nobody around.

When I get in I turn on the air conditioning immediately and grab a beer from the fridge. Standing in the kitchen doorway, I glare at the flowers in the living room. I don’t think the building manager would just let anyone in to deliver flowers, so that leaves a couple of even less desirable explanations. The one I’m worrying about now is that I might be losing it: either I bought them and forgot, or maybe they aren’t even real. I’m not quite old enough to be out of the danger zone for schizophrenia yet.

As I thirstily drain my beer I feel the alcohol hit me fast, and realise I haven’t really eaten all day. I finish the bottle and take a box of toaster pastries from the cupboard, managing to eat one before tiredness overwhelms me again and I go back to bed.

I sleep until a little before noon. I’m mildly surprised when I see the time, but I guess I must have had a lot of sleep to catch up on. I wake up slowly, enjoying the luxury of not having to get up right away.

I change into clean clothes when I get up, having fallen asleep in my clothes from last night. Since the air conditioner is keeping the apartment cool I put on a slightly heavy pair of jeans with one of my old T-shirts.

While I’m eating a bowl of bran cereal in the kitchen my phone beeps, prompting me to look for it around the room and finally locate it on top of the fridge. It’s a text from Dave, asking if it’s ok for him to head over now. A glance at the clock reminds me it’s not early, even though I just got up, so I send a reply that he can.

I’m just cleaning up my breakfast stuff and taking my meds when Dave arrives. I hit the intercom button to let him in and shortly he knocks at the door.

“Ooh, you brought the schmancy stuff!” I say, noticing at once that he’s carrying a six-pack of fairly decent imported beers.

“Yeah,” he says, sounding short of breath and looking a bit flushed. “I just wish I’d thought to buy them closer to your place instead of carrying them here from Spring Hill. They’d better go in the fridge.”

I take the beers and put them away in the fridge, then grab a couple of mine. I try to look apologetic as I hand Dave a bottle of much cheaper domestic beer. He opens it and drinks about half the bottle right away, then wipes his brow.

“So, how was the long shift?” he asks.

I shrug and open my own beer. “Same as usual… long,” I say. “Tran and Barlow want me to co-author a paper about Chris – the FFI patient.”

Dave grins and points at me with his bottle. “Nice one,” he says. “You deserve credit for picking that up.”

“Thanks,” I say, as we both move into the living room. “I guess I’m pretty excited to have an opportunity to publish.”

I take a seat on the sofa as Dave starts looking through my DVD collection. “By the way,” I say, “see these flowers?” He turns and I gesture to the roses on the side table.

He nods.

“Good,” I mutter.

Dave raises an eyebrow. “Trying to tell me something?” he asks, amused.

I make a little annoyed sound. “No. Um, can you keep a secret?” He nods again. I suppose I can trust Dave; we’ve known each other a few years, and I don’t think he’s the type to start rumours or gossip. “I actually thought they might have been a hallucination,” I admit, and take a sip of my beer.

Dave continues to look surprised. “I don’t know where the damn things came from,” I say. “I was afraid I might have imagined them.”

“Okay,” he says. “Well, did you find them in here?”

“In my bedroom, yesterday morning.”

Dave looks thoughtful. “I guess, unless someone else has a key, maybe you brought them in yourself and forgot. How tired were you after the weekend shift?”

“I guess pretty tired,” I say. “I don’t know.” I rub my eyes and take another drink.

“We all get messed up by the long hours sometimes,” says Dave with a little smile. He comes over and sits next to me on the sofa. I notice he leaves a reasonable space between us. “You’re not having any blonde moments at work, right?”

That’s the connection I’ve been trying not to think about. “I don’t think so,” I say weakly.

Dave stands up again and finishes his beer. “Well, don’t be afraid to ask me for a second opinion, if you ever need it,” he says, touching my shoulder briefly. “Don’t worry too much about it.”

He steps into the kitchen and returns with a couple of the imported beers, passing one to me. I set it down on the coffee table since I haven’t finished the first one yet.

Dave selects a Simpsons DVD from my collection and puts it into the player. He brings the remote control and sits down with me on the sofa again, a bit closer than before.

I drain my beer with a soft sigh and lean back into the sofa cushions. Maybe it really is all nothing; I guess I might just be tired at the moment.

“Hey, wanna order a pizza?” says Dave, opening his second beer.

I do.

Chapter 15

The hour of sleep I manage to grab isn’t much, but it should be enough to sustain me for the rest of the morning until my next break. The alarm on my watch wakes me at six and I unenthusiastically get up and move from the on-call room to the break room for a quick coffee before I get back to work.

My first patient has a severe headache that came on suddenly this morning. She’s thirty, a non-smoker, and assures me she hasn’t been drinking alcohol this weekend.

“Have you ever had this kind of pain before?” I ask her, going through the usual questions. She opens her mouth to answer, then claps a hand to her mouth with an unmistakable look of dismay. I leap up to grab her an emesis bag from the supply drawers. She manages to get it in front of her face just in time.

I add vomiting to my notes and wait for her to finish before I resume our twenty questions. Unfortunately, a headache and vomiting can indicate any number of conditions, ranging from very serious to completely banal. I’ve had enough excitement for a while; I really hope this patient has something boring.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had this bad a headache,” she says. “And I’ve never puked from pain before.” She puts a hand gently to her damp forehead as though to rub away the pain.

I ask her to rate the pain out of ten and she tells me it’s at least a nine. She’s taken aspirin, ibuprofen, and finally some leftover prescription pain killers before coming to the hospital, but the headache hasn’t changed. I frown a bit at that and have to tell her we can’t administer any more pain medication for a couple of hours. She looks like she’s about to burst into tears. I scrutinise her face and am pretty sure she’s not drug-seeking. If she were, she’d hardly be the first, and I pride myself on almost always being able to pick out the addicts.

I set down the patient chart and hold out my index fingers to her. “Squeeze my fingers,” I ask her. She does so, looking confused. Then I have her lie back on the exam room bed and lift her feet against my hands.

“Oh, god, you think I’ve had a stroke!” she suddenly blurts, and then she does start crying.

“No, no,” I say quickly. “It’s just routine for us to double check these things when we see sudden headaches. I don’t think you’ve had a stroke.”

After an awkward attempt to comfort the embarrassed woman, I send her to the bathroom to wash her face and get me a urine sample. I’m careful to explain to her how to give the sample. She seems intelligent enough, but the one time you assume a patient knows something like that is always the time you get a sample jar full of toilet water. Worse, once I asked a patient for a stool sample, and he brought back an empty jar and an old ice cream tub that he’d just taken a crap in.

While the patient is in the bathroom I get the needle and tubes ready to draw a blood sample. She doesn’t have any obvious worrying symptoms, so I’m inclined to run a full count just in case and otherwise treat for migraine.

After a minute she returns, trying to sort of palm the plastic bag with her urine sample so as not to flash it around. That kind of modesty usually amuses me, but instead I’m horrified by the look of the sample as she hands it over. Instead of a normal pale yellow, her pee is a really dark amber colour, and there’s not much of it.

“How much water are you drinking?” I ask her.

“Not as much as I should,” she admits. “A couple of glasses a day.”

I sigh. “Well, this is almost certainly what’s wrong,” I say, gesturing with the sample. “I don’t need the lab to tell me you’re badly dehydrated. I’ll take some blood so we can check your electrolytes, and I want you to stay here a few hours while we get some fluids into you.”

Like most doctors, I’m fairly awful at cannulating veins, so I ask Kelly to start an IV for me. She draws me the vials of blood I need for pathology and hangs a bag of saline while I fetch an anti-emetic wafer for the patient to stop the vomiting.

It’s a fairly slow Sunday morning, so I decide to keep her in emergency for now, rather than trying to find a ward bed. Dave and I can check on her periodically while she’s being treated, and as long as she gets better, we’ll let her go in a few hours.

“Hang in there for another hour,” I tell the patient. “Then if you still need it we can give you some more pain relief.” It still hasn’t been long enough to risk giving her more meds on top of what she took at home. I get her a cup of water and ask her to sip it, not wanting to provoke any more vomiting.

Kelly joins me for another quick coffee break later in the morning. We stand outside so she can smoke. I drink an iced coffee from the cafeteria, and follow it with a bottle of spring water, having realised that my own usual habits aren’t optimal for good hydration.

“Sorry to hear about your neuro patient,” says Kelly. “Awesome catch, though.”

I nod, absently raising a hand to wave the topic away. “Did you find yourself a car?” I ask.

“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t have much savings so I’ll have to get a loan if I want to buy it. I guess I need to so I don’t spend the other half of my life commuting, when I’m not here.”

“I hear that,” I say, draining my water and tossing the bottle in the bin. “If I didn’t live so close I couldn’t stand it. The jerks on the train and then the stupid heat between here and the station… it seriously blows.”

“When are you going to get a new car anyway?” she asks.

“Well, maybe I’ll just do without the expense,” I say. “Stick with public transport. Or get a bike. Save the environment, and all that stuff.”

Kelly looks thoughtful. “I wonder how long a bike ride it would be from here to your place,” she says.

I haven’t ridden a bicycle for so long, I have no idea of even what scale of time it would take. If I were to try walking the distance, I guess it would take a couple of hours, but I don’t know how fast I would cycle it. For that matter, I’m not even sure if I can cycle any more. I mean, I assume I can, but I don’t know if I could do it, psychologically. I suppose I don’t know just how broad my craziness about being on the road is yet.

Kelly finishes her second cigarette and we head back into the hospital. The air conditioning is like heaven after standing outside, even in the shade for only a few minutes.

I’m relieved as hell to see that my emergency patient’s blood tests come back close enough to normal. She’s been dehydrated but hasn’t done herself much damage.

“How are you feeling?” I ask her as her second litre of saline is almost finished. She has pillow crease marks on her cheek, so I guess she might have slept a little.

“Better,” she says. “The pain’s about a five now.”

I check my watch. “Do you still want a pain killer?”

“Yes, please,” she replies. I get her a couple of tablets and another cup of water.

“Can I go home soon?” she asks.

I smile, genuinely happy to give someone some good news. “Yes, you can.”