Buch lesen: «By My Side»

Chapter 1

The woman had heard the whispering; she had seen the furtive glances and listened to the hushed tones that faltered every time the girl looked up. She had looked into the mother’s face and seen the torment hiding there. She knew the story, the hurt that had been caused and the agony of loneliness felt by the girl. She knew, and that was why she was there.

Looking around the room, Lena could see huddles of faces talking quietly together, their eyes speaking loudly in their attempt to convey harsh rumour with subtlety. How could they think she wouldn’t have noticed? Their whispering would have been pointless about anything else. She sighed and looked over at the covered windows, deliberately screening the faces within from the harsh light of the bright summer's day.

Cards covered every surface. Flowers poured out their over-powering scent to all around them; oppressive, claustrophobic, smothering.

It had been nearly a month since Lena had tried to take her own life and now she was left empty, trapped under the weight of guilt and loneliness.

She looked at her ragged finger nails, worn down by the loss of her best friend and boyfriend in the same stupid affair. Of course, the two lovers had never stood a chance after she’d found them together. Their guilt had put paid to that. But for Lena it had all been too much, and in losing both of them she had also lost faith in herself and even life. Away at university, she had failed her end of year exams and one afternoon, had taken herself off and quietly swallowed a handful of tablets with a bottle of gin.

Her friend, for her sins, had been the one to find her, lying alone and unconscious in her student house.

Her mother had stuck by her every moment since that day. That was why Lena was there, at a stranger's house, for a funeral of a person she didn't even know. It was a funeral, for heaven’s sake; who in their right mind brought a depressed person to a funeral? Whoever it was, meant nothing to her, but her mum seemed to think she wasn’t safe to be left on her own. Maybe she wasn’t? Not anymore. She didn’t resent her mother for her loss of freedom; she had brought it on herself. But still, she would rather not have been there.

The doorbell rang and a friend of the grieving family walked sombrely over to answer it. Faces turned as another huddle, dressed in black, slipped inside to sip tea and join with the others in their attempts to meet the desolation in the family's gaze.

Through the gap in the door, bright light streamed in and Lena caught a quick glimpse of the dozens of beautiful wreaths laid out along the pathway of the small front garden, the vibrant colour basking in the warmth of the summer sun, and then it was gone.

A few minutes passed and the bell rang again. Caterers appeared. They were shown into the dining room and quietly started to set up.

No-one came near her. They were all too scared to try. So she stayed trapped in her cocoon, remote and afraid.

Gloria moved through the void that circled her daughter, her face trying hard not to reflect her despair. "Are you all right, Lee?" she asked laying a gentle hand on the side of Lena's head. Lena nodded. "It shouldn't be too long now," she said. "The cars are meant to be arriving shortly. I'm just helping out with the tea. Would you like to come and help me, or are you all right in here?"

Lena had looked into her mother’s eyes and seen the suffering there. "I'm fine," she said. She paused momentarily from picking her fingers to look up and then Gloria nodded and walked back to the kitchen, looking like the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders.

From beside her, a woman began to speak. Lena hadn’t even been aware that anyone had sat down there. She turned and looked at her, a young woman, probably in her thirties, dressed unusually for the day in a deep blue top and skirt and smiling warmly at her. Lena was a little unnerved by the woman’s arrival in her bubble. She turned back to her lap and continued picking at her fingers.

"You know, I could tell you a story about a woman who met the love of her life at a funeral," the woman said.

Lena looked back at her. "Sorry?"

"I said, I could tell you a story about a woman who met the love of her life at a funeral. If you like? Well, not at a funeral, but shortly after."

Lena's face turned back to her lap, she kept her eyes on her fingers, barely muttering an acknowledgement.

"You're Gloria's girl, aren't you? Lena, isn't it?"

Lena nodded and briefly met her gaze again with curiosity.

"We used to work together, your mother and I. A wonderful woman, isn't she? Always ready to help if you need her."

A barely noticeable nod was the only proof Lena was willing to offer that she was actually listening, but the woman did not seem to mind and she carried on.

"She was a bit like you, in a way."

Lena's eyebrows pulled together into a frown.

"The woman in my story. She'd lost her faith in love too. Hurt too deeply, I suppose," the woman said.

Wondering how painful this was going to be, Lena looked out around the room for distraction and then returned her gaze to her lap.

"Of course she didn't realise it at the time," the woman continued.

Lena let out a harsh breath, wishing the woman next to her would go away, but then she thought better of it, deciding it would at least pass the time, and so she asked, more politely, "Realise what?”

"That he was the love of her life," she said, infinitely patient with her.

The woman waited for a moment to see if Lena would look up and when she did the woman smiled. "Would you like to hear it?"

Lena weighed this up and then finding nothing better to do, she nodded. "Okay."

The woman laid a soft hand, as light as a feather, on Lena's right arm and began.

"It was a few years ago when it started,” she said. “The woman’s name was Kate and this story starts with her sat at her grandfather's funeral. She was only a few years older than you are now, and it was near the end of the service. You know? When the curtain comes round and that feeling of complete emptiness finally hits you…

~~~

Kate was looking straight ahead to where the coffin had been standing, daring her to touch it, to throw her arms around the wooden shell and beg her grandfather to stay. Fresh tears began to creep out along well-trodden pathways and she reached again for the handkerchief she’d not long stowed. Kate’s father asked her if she was all right. She nodded, composing herself and they walked back outside in quiet procession.

The family had gathered around to look at the flowers and read the fond farewells, but Kate could not. She forced herself to talk politely with aunts and cousins for a short while but then she had to go.

She wasn't sorry to be out of there. Small talk and sandwiches are little comfort on days such as these. So she said her goodbyes to her mum and dad and made her way quickly back to her car, with just enough time to get home and change before her shift started at two.

At work that afternoon, Kate tried to carry on as if it was just another day. She stitched and bandaged and cleared up the mess that life had brought in and then, about half way through the afternoon, she was asked to escort a patient from Accident & Emergency up to Aintree ward.

As they arrived, a nurse walked over to greet them.

"This is Mr Patterson," Kate told her, handing over a rather bulky set of notes. "Right upper quadrant pain. He's been seen and sorted by the doctor in A&E and the bloods have already gone off. We've given him some analgesia so he's a bit more comfortable now. He just needs his drug chart writing up. The doctor said she'd do that when she got to the ward because she had to dash off, so if you give her a bleep when you're ready, she'll be expecting you."

The nurse thanked her and turned to the patient, smiling warmly. "Mr Patterson,” she said. “Let's get you settled in then, shall we?" And she turned to the porter, "Bay Four, please, Mike."

Walking back along the ward, Kate passed a bay where one of the teams was busy doing a ward round, but what she heard as she passed made her stop in horror. A rather stern-looking orthopaedic surgeon was standing, towering over a young lad with an injured leg. The lad was lying in bed with a pile of metalwork sticking out of his shin, and cuts and grazes all over his body, and the consultant, whose voice was not unduly loud, but abrasive, was haranguing him about his inconsiderate attitude.

"Who gave you the right to play with other people's lives?" he said. "The woman you crashed into had no say in it at all. She'll be lucky if she gets out of here in any condition resembling her former life, and you get away with little more than a broken leg. And you're young; you'll heal quickly. Think about that the next time you get behind the wheel of a car. Think about that woman and what you've done to her." The registrar cleared his throat as the rest of the team examined the floor about them. "The only person you've got to blame for this is yourself." He pointed sharply at the patient. "So stop moaning and complaining about your lot and start making an effort."

If his intention had been to intimidate, Kate suspected he had succeeded. The lad was visibly cowering in his bed and had paled to the same colour as his sheets. Kate was incensed. Cold-hearted bloody surgeons, treading all over people's feelings without a moment's consideration, she thought. Who the hell did he think he was?

~~~

Lena's eyebrows rose. "Nice bloke," she said and the woman smiled.

~~~

The team moved on to another, now very timid, patient and Kate marched off, searching for an outlet to vent her anger.

Two nurses were raiding the linen cupboard near the end of the corridor when Kate stormed in.

"Mim, Becca, you’ll never believe what I just saw,” she told them. “I was just walking past Bay Three when I came across one of the consultants tearing strips off some young boy. It was awful. The poor thing was lying there stuck in bed with his leg all banged-up and riddled with metalwork and he just laid into him."

"Who?" Miriam asked.

"Elliott, I think."

"Elliott?"

"Yes. I've never seen such outrageous behaviour in all my life, let alone from a consultant,” she said.

"Well he doesn't take any rubbish from his patients, that's for sure. But he does seem to be very good at what he does."

"Maybe he is," she said, "but he was completely out of order in there. I was embarrassed to be in the same room as him.” She paused. “His team looked mortified."

"Oh, I think they're used to him by now," Becca added.

"Well, they shouldn't let him get away with that," Kate said. "We wouldn't get away with it. Someone should report him."

Miriam and Rebecca’s faces suddenly blanched, but Kate was too het-up to notice.

"One of you two should go back in there and see if that poor lad is all right," she continued, building into a fury by this point. "That stern-faced, self-important, egotistical… bully," her mouth was struggling to keep up with her brain. "Ugh! People like him make me so cross."

A cool, steady voice spoke up from behind her. "Well, I think we're all quite clear about that now."

Chills ran down Kate’s spine as she turned round to see the granite face of Mr Elliott staring back at her, his team hovering uncomfortably behind.

"I'm sure you have plenty of work to be getting on with," he said to the two nurses standing either side of her, and Miriam and Rebecca shuffled away as quickly as they could. Kate could feel the ice of anxiety beginning to trickle through her veins.

Mr Elliott fixed his gaze on Kate and without moving he spoke calmly to his team. "I'll meet you on Ascot Ward in five minutes," he said and they looked at each other and quickly left.

Mr Elliott took a step back. "If you wouldn't mind, please, Nurse?" and he gestured that she should move out of the linen cupboard and walk along beside him.

Kate braced herself and stepped out, still a flicker of fire in her belly. Mr Elliott walked a few paces up the ward and then opened the door to Sister's office. He checked it was empty and then indicated that Kate should go in. Kate entered the room and turned to face him. She was definitely in the right and she knew it. Perhaps she shouldn't have been voicing her opinions so loudly on the ward, but that was nothing compared to the ordeal he had put that poor boy through. So she squared up her shoulders and lifted her chin.

Mr Elliott was tall and dark; a striking man, whose features, suffused with even a modicum of warmth, might have been quite good looking on anyone else, but on him, they favoured only his gravitas. Unfortunately, in the serious light of her current situation, Kate couldn't help but quake.

She had to be strong. She had to stand up for the weak and the ill, the people who couldn't fight for themselves. It was going to be down to her to make him see how unfeeling he had been.

Grey-blue eyes bore into her as the silence lingered like a guillotine above her head and the trembling inside her began to grow.

"So you think, Nurse…" he said, deliberately peering closer at her uniform to read the name on her badge. "Excuse me, Staff Nurse Heath, that I should be reported for speaking plainly to one of my patients, do you? Maybe you would be kind enough to enlighten me as to why?"

Kate’s jaw clenched. He was patronising her, she was well aware of it, but while the little courage she had left remained, she was going to speak her mind. With the callous words of the surgeon who had recently treated her grandfather so appallingly hurtling to the forefront of her mind, she looked up into his steel-armoured eyes. "It was quite obvious that you were completely out of order in there," she said. "What gave you the right to judge that poor lad? I bet you don't even know the first thing about him; stuck up there in your ivory tower where life is so easy and Armani suits grow on trees. Who’s to say it wasn’t a genuine accident? But you wouldn't think of that, would you? You just laid into him. He was a quivering wreck by the time you’d finished."

Mr Elliott stood, poised in obvious frustration for a moment and then, when his voice finally broke, it was clenched and steady, as if a great force was being needed to keep it so. "And how should I have addressed the situation instead, may I ask?"

By this time Kate was rapidly running out of fire. She knew how to fight when her opponent shouted back, but this cool, calculated analysis had her on the wrong foot. She searched for something further to say, but came up blank.

"What, no sound advice? No words of wisdom?"

Kate bristled and shot him a glare, cursing her brain for letting her down right when she needed it.

"Maybe I had better remind you of your objections. I think the word 'bully' was in there, and from what I can remember you were attempting to incite mutiny on one of my wards. So would you care to elaborate on any of that? You were very free with your opinions a few minutes ago." He looked at her for a moment as her brain struggled hard to find the right words to say. "Maybe you should try running my team, doing my clinics and operating on my patients for a few days and then come back to me. At least then you might have some idea of what you're talking about."

"I wasn't questioning your abilities as a doctor,” she said, suddenly finding the spark she needed and tossing it right back at him, but her conviction was waning.

"Oh? Well, that is a relief." His tone had taken on a sarcastic quality that ignited the dying embers of her rage.

"No, it was your lack of compassion that I was questioning," Kate said. "It's not your right to play judge and jury, deciding who should be worthy of treatment and who should not. Are you absolutely certain he was the one to blame for the crash? It’s just as likely that he wasn’t. In fact we had one, just the other day, where a woman swerved to avoid a cat and crashed head-long into a van coming in the opposite direction."

Elliott's face paled. His stone wall cracked just a little as Kate could see the doubt settling in. For a second she could sense his turmoil and found new strength in his weakness. She looked at him straight in the eyes. "Precisely."

"Do you know what happened to bring him in here?" He asked, pausing for a moment to see if Kate would respond, but she didn’t. "No, you don't, do you? So I say to you, if someone had been a bit harder on that lad a few years ago, then maybe I wouldn't have another patient fighting for her life on ITU right now." He let out a small breath. "Maybe you should keep your nose out of business that does not concern you from now on and go back to… A&E?" He looked at her for confirmation of her department, "and concentrate on your own job. And the next time you try accusing someone of being 'unprofessional', I suggest you make absolutely sure your own behaviour is beyond reproach, or it might end up being you that gets reported for misconduct and not the poor wretch who finds himself on the sharp end of your malicious and ill-founded gossip."

Kate was defeated. Tears threatened to well up but she was damned if she was going to give him the pleasure of seeing it. She looked at the dull grey floor in front of her, Elliott's crisp black leather shoes firmly blocking her way. He hesitated for a moment, his brow crinkling and then he opened the door and stood back, letting her slip away in silence.

Kate’s hands were locked hard at her sides as she escaped the ward and walked as fast as she could, breaking out into the fresh air a few minutes later, in search of a moment's privacy. Away from prying eyes.

~~~

"I know how that feels," Lena mumbled and the woman was relieved to see the girl had been paying attention. Empathy was going to help her now.

~~~

Alone at last, Kate broke down. She leant back against a brick wall, with her palms pressed against the cool hard surface. She closed her eyes and tipped her head to the sky and slowly sank to the ground and wept. All the tension of the past few days had finally come to a head, exploding, quite dramatically, at Mr Elliott.

Footsteps approached and she quickly wiped the tears from her face and pulled herself together. A porter passed by, his thoughts a million miles away from her own. Kate dabbed her eyes with an old tissue she found in her pocket and lifted her chin, ready to face the day again.

In the canteen, she bought a sandwich and two Mars bars and found a quiet corner to sit down in. The first bar disappeared in a matter of seconds. How dare he? she thought as she sat there. Elliott had been the one losing it over one of his patients and he had had the nerve to take it out on her when all she'd done was have the courage to stand up to him. She pulled out her sandwich. He was a bully, but he was a consultant; he would never get his comeuppance. She had half a mind to go right back up to that poor lad and point him in the direction of the complaints procedure.

She wondered at how many times Mr Elliott might have been allowed to get away with this behaviour before. Maybe it was the reason he left his last hospital, she thought. She swigged back her carton of juice and decided to pocket the other bar of chocolate for later, binned the rubbish and then held out her hands. Still trembling.

Mr Elliott had slipped in under the radar when he’d joined the hospital almost six months before. Kate had neither particularly noticed, nor heard much about him, but if a fight had been what he’d wanted that day, then Kate had been in just the right mood to oblige him. She checked her watch. Arrogant bastard, she thought. She took a deep breath, straightened her uniform and walked back down to A&E.

Kate said nothing of the incident to her colleagues that day, if not because she was already questioning her part in it, then for the greater fear that if she began to speak and let go of her control, she might just fall to pieces in the middle of the department. But her reluctance to share did little to quell the undercurrent of anger she felt towards the arrogant, overbearing man, for the rest of that day.

That evening, her housemate, Sophie, realised something was up when she came home from work. She searched round the house only to find Kate in the kitchen, scrubbing the living daylights out of the work surfaces.

"Everything all right?" she asked, looking around quickly for any clues.

The sudden noise made Kate jump. "Grief! Don't do that to me," she said.

"Sorry," Sophie said.

"It was getting dirty in here," Kate told her, not faltering for a moment in her mission.

"You know I think that bit's pretty clean now," Sophie soothed.

Kate continued cleaning, her mind focussed on the task in hand and thereby avoiding everything else. She rubbed hard at the tiles on the wall behind the cooker.

Sophie watched her for a moment and then walked over and laid her hand on Kate’s, stopping the movement. Kate paused mid scrub, but did not step back, so Sophie slowly took the cloth and spray out of her hands and put them to one side. Then she led Kate to the living room and sat her down.

Sitting opposite her, Sophie took a deep breath. "Out of ten, where one is lovely and ten is crappiest day ever, what exactly are we talking about here?"

"About a nine and a half,” Kate said.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Sophie asked her.

"Not really," Kate said.

"Is it just the funeral - and I'm not saying that isn't absolutely enough on its own - but has there been something else as well?" Sophie asked.

Kate nodded.

"Something else as well as the hideousness of having to go through your grandfather's funeral and a day’s work?"

Kate nodded again and rubbed her face before recoiling rapidly at the overpowering smell of bleach.

Sophie scratched her head. "Are you on in the morning?"

"No. A late," Kate told her.

"Me too. How do you fancy going out and getting plastered?"

Kate looked aghast. "What, now?"

"Yes."

"Oh, no, Soph. I'm shattered," she said.

"Well, maybe we won't get plastered, but have a bit of fun, just for a bit. Yeah? It's better than moping around here feeling miserable. Your granddad would have wanted you to be out having fun, wouldn't he?"

The corner of Kate’s mouth perked up into a soft smile as, despite herself, she remembered how full of fun her granddad had been. She sighed. "Yeah, he would."

"Well what do you say then?"

They met Jenny and Flis, some nursing friends, at The White Horse just before ten; they had a couple of drinks and then headed off down the road to Helix.

By eleven, Kate was feeling wobbly. She had eaten only a sandwich and a packet of crisps before going out and had necked her first couple of drinks rather quickly.

"Feeling any better yet?" Sophie asked when they returned from the dance floor and plonked themselves down on a seat near the bar.

Kate nodded. "Much," she said. "Just give me a surgeon-ectomy and I'll be fine."

"Oh dear. Which one has been rattling your cage this time?" Sophie asked.

"Elliott," she said.

"What, old Jolly?"

"Who?" Kate asked her.

"Jolly. That's what we call him on our ward."

Kate was amused. "Appropriate.” Then she thought she’d better clarify. “Young orthopaedic consultant, right? Quite new?"

"Yeah. Tall, dark and gloomy."

Kate chuckled. "That's the one."

"Why? What did he do to you?"

"He hauled me into Sister's office and tore strips off me, that's what," she said.

"What on earth for?" Sophie asked her.

"I was, and quite rightly, I have to say, objecting to his behaviour, and get this, he ended up threatening to report me!"

"He's going to report you? Why? What did you do?"

"Bastard was ripping into this poor lad on Aintree, acting the big 'I am' and I… kind of accused him of being a bully."

Sophie laughed, obviously surprised at Kate’s nerve. "You go, girl!" she said.

"Oh, I wasn't as good as I would have liked to have been," Kate told her. "He was so… ugh… he was… infuriating. I tried to fight my corner, but I was rubbish and he was so icy and prickly. In the end he had me shaking in my boots."

Sophie put her arm around her friend. "I knew something must have happened when I found you scrubbing the house to death this evening. You don't normally go all manic if you're just a bit miserable. So how did you leave it?"

"With him threatening to report me."

"He’s not going to, though, is he?" she asked.

"I don't know," Kate said. "I don't think so."

"And are you going to report him?"

"I should, shouldn't I? But what's the point? They're hardly going to take my word over his."

"Bloody surgeons."

"Yeah, bloody surgeons," Kate said.

"Speaking of the forbidden things… Do you ever hear from Guy anymore, or Lee?"

Kate shook her head. "No, good riddance to the lot of them, I say.”

"Here, here," Sophie said and clinked glasses. "Not that Guy was anything like Elliott."

"No." Kate laughed at the mere comparison. "At least Guy could be a charmer. Elliott on the other hand…"

"Oh, I don't know. I wouldn't chuck him out of bed," Sophie said.

"Ugh. No!" Kate was horrified.

"You’re just mad at him. He can be a real love when he wants to be. He’s meant to be very kind to his patients. They all seem to love him.”

“Ha!” Kate found that very hard to believe.

"But Guy was gorgeous, you've got to admit.”

"Yes,” Kate conceded, “but unfortunately he had a little too much bedside manner. I doubt Elliott even knows what his is for. It probably dropped off years ago… with frostbite."

Sophie gave a wicked grin. “I dare you to find out.”

"I'd rather snog Derek," Kate said.

"Not Dirty-Derek from Cardiology? The human octopus? Ugh!" Sophie shivered and they both burst out laughing.

Flis and Jenny joined them from the dance floor, slumping down in the seats close by.

"You look better," said Flis, brushing her blonde curls away from her face. "They're not a lot of fun, are they, funerals?"

"No. I'm not sure anyone has ever described funerals as 'fun', Flis," Sophie said. "But it's not that. The girl's got surgeon-itis again."

"Oh, lord. Which one now?" Jenny said, perking up.

"Elliott," Sophie said.

"Elliott?"

"Not like that," Kate added quickly. "We had a run in today."

"Which one's Elliott?" Flis asked.

“Orthopaedics. Took over from Mr Grant.”

“Arrogant, self-righteous, pompous pillock,” Kate muttered under her breath.

The other three looked at each other.

“How much has she had to drink?” Jenny asked.