Medical Romance August 2016 Books 1-6

CHAPTER FIVE

FOR A MOMENT there Adele had thought that her luck was finally changing.

You make your own luck, Adele told herself.

She just didn’t know how.

It was her second week of nights and she couldn’t wait for them to be done and for her two-week break to commence.

She was still smarting at Zahir.

It was six p.m. and there was a staff accreditation that Adele needed to have signed off. She wanted to get it done before she went on annual leave.

She wasn’t going to the south of France. Despite the offer still being available, it remained too expensive, so she had decided she would take the Eurotunnel to Paris.

In the morning she would book it.

It really was time to move on with her life, while still including her mother.

And she was going to have a holiday romance.

Absolutely she was.

She was tired of her lack of a love life and that she was twenty-four years old and still a virgin.

And, as she went over to the nurses’ station and Zahir didn’t even acknowledge her, she decided was tired of having feelings for someone who thought so little of her.

He looked immaculate. He was wearing his suit and clearly hoped to get away quickly.

‘Zahir,’ Meg asked, ‘is there any chance of you staying back?’

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I have to finish at six. Bella is waiting for me to pick her up. We are going to the theatre.’

Ouch, Adele thought.

‘I just need to write up this drug regime and then I’ll have to go,’ he said.

With all the drama of his mother being sick and settling her into the hotel, as well as the constant calls back home, he had forgotten to tell Bella they were over. Zahir did not want to put it off for even one more night. He would tell her tonight soon after the curtain came down.

Helene came in then, all ready for staff accreditation too before her night shift.

The staff rotated, and did two weeks of nights every twelve weeks or so.

‘You made it!’ Janet smiled.

‘I nearly didn’t.’ Helene gave a dramatic sigh. ‘I took Hayden out for a driving lesson this afternoon and I’ve decided I’d rather pay for an instructor. I actually value my life. Honestly, he’s—’

‘Adele.’ Janet halted Helene’s latest rant about her son. ‘Could you get the annual leave roster from my desk?’

Janet had seen Adele’s eyes shutter.

It wasn’t Helene’s fault. She didn’t know.

Few did, but Helene loved to give dramatic blow-by-blow accounts of her day, and with her son just learning to drive, it must be pretty hellish for Adele.

‘You know Adele’s mother isn’t well?’ Janet checked with Helene once Adele had gone.

‘Yes...’

‘She suffered a severe head injury. Adele was at the wheel of the car—she was learning to drive at the time.’

‘Oh, no.’ Helene cringed. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Of course you didn’t, she doesn’t really talk about it. Just know that she’s had the most awful time.’

Zahir said nothing.

He finished writing up the chart and headed to his office.

There was Adele coming towards him with the roster.

‘Adele...’ he said, but she didn’t stop walking.

In fact, she brushed past him.

She was on the edge of tears at what Helene had said and she never broke down. Right now, she knew, Janet would be having a discreet word with Helen. And she was fed up too with Zahir. She was tired of smiling only to never have it returned, and being offered the dream job just to have it snatched away by him had been the final straw.

At least she hoped that it was.

She was over him for good.

Oh, no, she would not turn around.

‘Enjoy the theatre,’ she called over her shoulder, and there was a jealous barb in her tone.

She was cross with him and hurt by him and too weary to not let it show.

Still, she had a fun couple of hours spent with mannequins being signed off on her CPR technique. Having found out she was going to Paris, Janet had remembered a beret she had in her locker and had put it on Ken, the mannequin, when it was Adele’s turn.

‘Ooh, Ken,’ Adele said in a terrible French accent as she knelt over him, ‘Why do you just lie there so still? Let’s get this heart racing...’

Janet was laughing loudly and then looked up at the open door. ‘Oh, Zahir, I thought you’d gone.’

‘I’m just leaving now.’

She got more reaction out of Ken, Adele thought as, blushing, she massaged his chest.

The best bit was supper was provided!

Maria came in and grabbed a couple of sandwiches. ‘I’m about to go home,’ she said. ‘Janet I tried not to admit anyone, but I’ve got a patient that needs to be in the obs ward overnight. Her name is Gladys Williams. She’s eighty and had too much to drink and fell and hit her head. I can’t send her home.’

‘Of course not.’ Janet said.

They were low on staff numbers and would do their best to keep the observation ward closed for as long as possible.

At nine they hit the ground running.

Gladys would have to wait to be admitted. For now her gurney was parked in the corridor where the staff could keep an eye on her without her taking up a cubicle or having to open the observation ward.

She lay there, singing, and didn’t seem to mind at all.

‘It’s supposed to be a Tuesday night!’ Helene moaned as the place started to look more like Accident and Emergency on a Saturday after the pubs had turned out than a weeknight.

A group of young men, all the worse for wear, were creating a bit of a ruckus in the waiting room. The security guards were in there, watching them, as Adele called one of the men through.

It wasn’t even ten o’clock and the place was full.

She put on some gloves and peeled back the dressing that the triage nurse had put over his eye.

‘Sorry, Oliver,’ she said as he winced. ‘That must hurt.’

It was a nasty cut and was going to require a lot of stitches.

Phillip came in and introduced himself and then took a careful look at the wound.

He was a nice doctor, calm and laid back, and Adele would always remember how kind he had been to her the day he had broken the awful news.

Phillip never referred to it and Adele was grateful for that.

Now, though, she understood the tears in his eyes that day. Phillip was very much a family man and he had a daughter close in age to Adele.

‘I want to take my time to suture this,’ Phillip told Oliver. ‘Which means you might have to wait for a few hours until I’m able to give it the attention it deserves.’

The patient nodded.

‘For now, Adele will put on a saline dressing to keep it moist. Adele,’ Phillip asked, ‘is the overnight ward open?’

‘It’s about to be.’ Adele nodded.

She was going to take Gladys around after this.

‘Well, why don’t we admit you there?’ Phillip said to his patient. ‘You can get some rest and then when the place is quiet I’ll come and suture you.’ He turned to Adele. ‘Hourly obs, please.’

‘Sure.’

Adele started to dress the laceration as Phillip wrote up his notes and then he opened up the curtain to head out to see the next patient.

It was then Adele heard an angry shout. ‘There he is!’

It all happened very quickly after that.

A group of men—not the ones from the waiting room—had come into the corridor and had found who they were looking for.

They barged Phillip aside, and he was knocked to the floor and trampled over in their haste to get to Oliver.

Unfortunately for Adele, she was now the only thing between them and the man they wanted. As Oliver went to jump down, the gurney moved and the punch aimed at Oliver hit Adele’s cheek. She fell to one side, her fall broken by a metal trolley to her middle.

It was over in seconds.

The security guards hauled the men out of the cubicle and Adele found out the police had already been alerted as soon as the group had burst into the department.

She could hear the sirens.

Janet moved her away from the drama and onto the computer chair at the nurses station and Adele just sat there, feeling her eye and trying to work out what had just happened.

‘You’ll be okay,’ Janet said as she checked her eye.

And then Adele remembered Phillip and that he had been knocked to the floor.

‘How’s Phillip?’ she asked.

‘He’s a bit winded. He’s in his office. Helene’s with him.’

No work was getting done.

The night manager was on her way down and would arrange cover. Ambulances would be placed on bypass for now as the department dealt with what was, unfortunately, not a particularly rare occurrence.

Helene came around then and brought Janet up to date. ‘Phillip’s okay,’ she said. ‘Just a few bruises and his glasses are broken.’

‘Is Zahir on his way?’ Janet checked.

‘He’s fifteen minutes away,’ Helene replied.

Zahir would make it in ten.

CHAPTER SIX

ZAHIR WAS TAKING Bella home when the phone call came in.

Rather, he was taking Bella back to her apartment.

They had loosely dated for a few weeks and though he had been upfront from the start—that they would go nowhere—Bella seemed to have completely blanked out that particular conversation.

When she had rung to say she had tickets to the theatre, Zahir had told her that he was considering going home.

‘I could come over and visit.’

For Zahir it was by far the worst suggestion she could have made.

But it wasn’t the rules of his land that made him end things.

He just couldn’t ignore his feelings for Adele any more and he was certain that they were reciprocated. Perhaps it wasn’t such a foolish idea for her to see where he lived.

If he was going to fight for them.

Zahir had never run from a challenge, yet he knew this was perhaps an impossible one.

Now he chose to face it.

Zahir hadn’t rushed from Emergency to take Bella out.

Instead, he had stopped by to visit his mother.

After that he had dropped in at Emergency to hopefully speak with Adele but she was busy making out with a mannequin and making others laugh.

And at the theatre, instead of watching the performance, he had sat in the dark, thinking about Adele and what she had been through.

Who was he to deny her a holiday?

He loved his homeland very much.

Oh, there were problems. Serious ones at that. Yet there was a certain magic to Mamlakat Almas that Adele deserved to experience.

He knew, even if she would be looking after his mother, that she would be beautifully taken care of at the palace. He thought of the golden desert and the lush oases. He thought of steam rising from hot springs and the majesty of the stars at night. How, no matter how many problems you had, the night sky held you in such awe that it reduced them. So much so that sometimes you simply forgot your troubles completely.

Adele could certainly use that.

And as for the two of them?

He didn’t know the answer—just that they could not end without a chance.

He was just about to launch into his it’s not you, it’s me speech with Bella when his phone had rung.

Seeing that it was the hospital, he took the call, hoping that there wasn’t a problem with his mother.

It was Helene and she sounded somewhat breathless.

‘Zahir, there’s been a gang fight in the emergency department and some of the staff were in the middle of it. A couple have been injured, not seriously, though.’

‘Who?’ Even as he asked the question he was executing a U-turn.

‘Phillip. He’s got a few bruises and his glasses are broken. Adele has a black eye and is a bit winded, and Tony, the security guard, was kicked.’

As they approached the hospital Zahir could see blue lights from several police cars and vans outside the ambulance bay.

‘Wait here,’ he said to Bella as he pulled into his reserved spot.

Bella though had no intention of waiting in the car, he soon realised, because as he arrived at the nurses’ station he turned and saw that she had followed him in.

‘It just came from nowhere,’ Janet explained to Zahir as he looked around the chaotic department. ‘We were already busy. I don’t think they intended to hit out at the nursing staff or the doctor. I’m sorry we had to call you in.’

‘You were right to call me in,’ he said. Phillip was in no way fit to see patients and, as well as that, the staff deserved to be treated at times like this by the most senior staff.

He could see that Adele was sitting in a chair with her arms folded over her stomach. Her eye and cheek were swollen and she looked angry.

‘Where’s Phillip?’ Zahir asked.

‘He’s in his office. Tony’s already in a cubicle.’

‘I want Adele and Phillip both in gowns and in cubicles.’

Zahir would do everything to keep this completely professional. As Janet was taking Adele to get changed, Bella chose her moment to speak.

‘How long do you think you’ll be?’ she asked, and Zahir turned impatiently.

‘Why don’t you get a taxi home? I might be a while.’

‘I’m happy to wait in your office.’

Adele heard the brief exchange as she made her way to the cubicle.

Janet had been wrong, it would seem. Bella hadn’t been gone by morning and never had Adele felt more drab in her baggy scrubs and showing the beginnings of a lovely black eye.

She could hear the sounds of the police radios and tried not to think back to the last time she had been in a cubicle, waiting for a doctor to arrive.

As he waited for Phillip and Adele to get changed, the receptionist, as was protocol, brought up Adele’s old Accident and Emergency notes. He flicked through them and tried to be objective. He read about an eighteen-year-old nursing student with minor injuries who had been the driver in a high-impact motor vehicle accident.

Phillip had wanted to admit her to the observation ward but the patient had refused and said she wanted to go and wait near Theatre.

There was a self-discharge form attached to the notes that Adele had signed.

Everything was there, even her muted reaction when Phillip had broken the news that her mother was critically ill, was noted.

It just didn’t seem enough, Zahir thought.

Yes, the notes were detailed but there was a brevity to them, to all patient notes here, that Zahir could not logically explain to his colleagues.

First he checked in on Phillip. He now had spare glasses on but there was a small cut over his eye and a nasty bruise on his back. He checked Phillip’s abdomen. ‘Any tenderness?’ he asked.

‘A bit,’ Phillip admitted.

‘I would like his urine checked for blood,’ he said to Janet, and then spoke with Phillip. ‘I would like you to stay in overnight.’

‘It might be better,’ Phillip agreed. ‘Meredith will get a fright if I come home in the middle of the night.’

Tony, the security guard, was next and he wanted to get back to work but, having examined him, Zahir said that he should go home.

‘Adele.’ He came in to see her with Janet. ‘I’m so sorry that this happened.’

She didn’t respond.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fantastic!’ Adele knew her sarcastic response was perhaps a bit harsh but what hurt more than the bruise was that, after a year of being ignored, now that she was a patient he was finally being nice to her.

He went through everything and asked if she’d been knocked out.

‘No.’

He went through all the allergies and her medical history and Adele answered him in a monotone.

‘Are you on any medication?’

‘No,’ Adele said. ‘Just the Pill.’

She didn’t add it was the pill of perpetual hope, hope that one day she would be doing what seemingly every other twenty-four-year-old had already done.

It really wasn’t the best of nights.

He picked up the torch and checked her pupils’ responses. He tried not to notice unshed tears, but he could see her pain. Oh, his findings were not evidence based, but he could see that there were years of agony there.

‘I need to look at the back of your eye.’

He picked up ophthalmoscope and Adele stared ahead as he moved in close. She managed not to blink and then thankfully it was over.

She felt as if he had just stared into the murky depths of her soul.

His fingers gently probed the swelling around her eye.

‘It’s a soft-tissue injury,’ Zahir said.

‘I know.’

‘It needs to be iced but you are going to have a black eye. Is it painful?’

‘No.’

It was the truth. It didn’t really hurt, as such. What pained her more was the shock of what had happened and the indignity of Zahir now being kind to her.

‘I need now to look at your stomach,’ Zahir said.

‘I was just winded.’

‘Adele,’ Zahir said, ‘this will probably go to court and my notes need to be thorough. Lie down, please.’

She did so and Janet covered her neatly with the blanket before lifting her gown. He examined her abdomen and she answered the question before he asked it.

‘There’s no tenderness,’ she said as he probed her stomach. And then she gave a wry laugh.

She hadn’t just been talking about her abdomen—there had never been any tenderness from him.

‘Did I miss the joke?’ Zahir asked, and he gave her a smile as he covered her with the blanket.

And maybe because she was hurting so badly she was allowed to be a little bit mean too.

‘I don’t need your small talk and your pleasant bedside manner, Zahir,’ she told him. ‘We don’t get on, let’s just keep it that.’

She glanced to Janet, who gave her a small smile as if to say, You get to say what you want to tonight.

Janet had seen for herself the way that Zahir was with her, though she knew it had nothing to do with them not getting on!

‘I would like you to stay in the observation ward tonight,’ Zahir said.

‘Well, I’d prefer to go home.’

‘Who is there to look out for you?’

Adele thought of Helga and James and closed her eyes as Janet spoke. ‘I’m not putting you in a taxi to go home to those flatmates tonight. I’m not going to be argued with on this, Adele.’

‘Is Phillip going home?’ Adele asked.

‘Phillip is staying here tonight too,’ Zahir answered the question. ‘He doesn’t want to upset his wife by turning up in the middle of the night.’ His mind was made up. ‘You’re staying in and then I’ll sign you off for the rest of the week.’

Adele would far rather have gone home but instead she had to lie there listening to Phillip snoring and Gladys, who was now in the opposite bed, first singing and later talking in her sleep.

And then she too started to snore!

As well as that there was a lot of chatter coming from the staffroom as people went for their breaks.

Yikes, she would be quieter in the future when she took her break, Adele decided.

A light was shining from the desk and Adele asked if the curtain could be pulled around her.

Then, just as she drifted off, it was time for her hourly observations.

And then, a while later, from the other side of the curtain came the balm of Zahir’s voice as he asked the night nurse for an update.

‘How’s Gladys?’

‘Sobering up.’

‘How’s Phillip?’

‘His obs are all fine, he’s sleeping soundly. What happened with Tony?’

‘He was discharged home.’

And then he asked about her.

‘What about Adele?’

‘Her obs are stable, she’s not sleeping very well, though.’

‘Okay.’

Zahir went off to see some more patients.

It was an exceptionally busy night but in between seeing patients he made his it’s not you, it’s me speech to a very put-out Bella.

Normally he would have seen her home, but tonight he could not leave the department and he could not string her along so she had gone home in a taxi.

Now, as the day staff started to trickle in, Zahir made coffee.

And he took one in to Adele.

She was finally asleep, not that anyone took such a thing into consideration in the observation ward!

‘Adele.’

He watched as she woke up and opened both eyes, and he was pleased to see that her eye had not closed over.

‘How are you feeling?’ he enquired.

‘A bit sorry for myself,’ she admitted. ‘And I’m sorry if I was rude to you last night.’

‘I get it.’

‘I doubt it.’ She sat up and saw that he was placing a mug of coffee on her locker.

‘Ooh, I really am getting the royal treatment this morning,’ she said, and then smiled at her own joke and Zahir found that he did too.

‘I’ve discharged you,’ he said. ‘Roger comes on at seven and I shall bring him up to speed with all that happened last night and then I shall drive you home.’

‘I don’t want you to drive me home, Zahir,’ she said.

She didn’t.

All she needed was to get away from him, from the torture of being crazy about someone. He had been horrible to her, rude to her, and while she understood that he might not fancy her she loathed the sudden false niceness.

‘I’m going to call a friend to come and get me,’ Adele said.

‘No, you’re not,’ Zahir refuted. ‘We need to talk.’

‘About?’

‘We shall discuss things in the car.’

He made no secret that he was taking her home. In fact, when Phillip asked Adele how she was getting home, Zahir responded that he would take her himself.

And, really, no one gave it a thought.

Janet had offered her a lift and so had Helene and a couple of other staff too.

Of course her colleagues were concerned.

The mood was sombre and assaults on staff were not good for morale.

‘Here.’ Janet had fetched Adele’s clothes from her locker and brought her a towel and the little overnight pack that Gladys and Phillip would be getting too.

It contained a tiny bar of soap, a minute tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush and a little plastic comb.

Adele freshened up and pulled on the tube skirt and top she had worn yesterday and slipped on shoes.

Zahir was waiting for her at the desk and speaking with Janet.

‘I’m on my holidays!’ Adele smiled. ‘Do you think I’ll pull?’ And it made Janet laugh as she stood there with a huge black eye.

‘Have a wonderful break, Adele,’ Janet said, as Adele walked out in the clothes she had arrived in, trying not to be just a little more disillusioned with the world.

‘Send us a postcard...’

They walked out and Adele winced at the bright morning sunlight.

‘You’re not very good at parking your car,’ Adele commented, because it was over the line and at an angle.

He did not tell her the reason—that on hearing she had been injured he had hit the accelerator and when he had arrived he had practically run in to see how she was.

Instead, he held open the door for her.

Adele got in and a moment later he joined her.

‘We meet again,’ she said.

As he drove past the bus stop Zahir thought of all the times he had driven on, pretending not to have noticed her there.

And so did Adele.

She didn’t understand why he briefly turned and smiled.

She didn’t smile back.

‘Are you sulking?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’m sulking.’

‘Are you warm enough?’ he asked, because he had the air conditioner on up high.

‘You can stop being nice now,’ she said. ‘I’m not your patient any more.’

‘No, you’re not. Adele, I have spoken with my mother. If you are still interested, she would love you to be her private nurse.’

‘I don’t need you feeling sorry for me, Zahir.’

‘I spoke to her last night, before the incident.’

He had.

Zahir had thought long and hard about it.

He had been avoiding Adele for twelve months now and it had got him precisely nowhere.

He wasn’t used to avoiding anything, yet his feelings for Adele could challenge a lifetime of thinking and centuries of tradition.

Wasn’t he asking his father to do the same?

It was time to face things.

‘On Monday she will fly home to Mamlakat Almas. A car would collect you at six in the morning and you would meet her at the airport...and you would return to England on a commercial flight two weeks later.’

Adele frowned.

‘You don’t have to worry about a uniform or what to wear, everything will be provided.’

She turned and looked at him and for the first time since last night she properly smiled. ‘What does that even mean?’

‘Just bring what you feel you want to. We are very used to having guests in the palace and accommodating them.’

‘Oh.’

‘And if you are worried about something, there will be someone who can advise you. It really will be relaxing and you need that. Especially after last night.’