It wasn’t long before the casualties began to arrive. The first ambulance brought in a woman with cuts and bruises and a child with what seemed little more than a broken arm, but the mother was hysterical. Kate took control, whisking them through to a cubicle within A&E and found a free nurse to get them checked in and taken care of before hurrying back to Resus. As it turned out they were also expecting the other daughter of this woman, the girl who had been worst hit by the car, so she quickly ran back around and promised to let them know the moment the girl came in, but insisted they get seen to while they waited.
Doctors came hurrying down the corridor and entered Resus just as the second ambulance was arriving. They pulled on gloves and hovered about, trying to glean what information they could about the casualty expected.
Mr Cobham appeared and began to take control. An elderly man strapped to a back board arrived. He was handed over and assessed by the team. They got to work and soon X-ray were there too. It was Kate’s job to fly around making sure everything was being done and chasing up anything that seemed to be taking too long.
Another ambulance arrived and all but the few staff needed to deal with the gentleman in bed one moved over to bed two along with the paediatrician, who had been waiting in the background for the girl to arrive.
Mr Elliott left his registrar to handle the man and came over to see the girl. The child was in the process of coming round and appeared to be very distressed. They had been told that she was nine years old and called Sasha. She had been hit by the car when the elderly man appeared to have collapsed at the wheel. Kate moved around to the head of the bed and started talking to the girl very calmly while Fiona, the paediatrician, got a needle in the back of her hand and then Mr Elliott stepped up to take a look.
Kate tried her best to comfort the girl as Mr Elliott began assessing her limbs and asking her questions, but the child was too scared and began to cry again. Her legs were hurting and Kate leant in closer still to talk softly into her ear. The girl grabbed her, her pleading gaze searching Kate’s, and then her face just crumpled.
“Sasha,” she soothed. “I’m Kate and I’m going to stay with you until you’re safely on the ward. Your mum and your little sister are already here waiting to see you, but they have injuries of their own and they need to get those seen to before we can get you all back together. Now these nice men and women here are just trying to find out what’s hurt and what’s not and then we’ll get you comfortable and we can bring them in, okay?” Sasha sniffled and looked up at her. “I promise I’ll stay with you.”
Kate looked across and caught Elliott’s eye. He held her gaze for a moment and then nodded. “See that handsome doctor down the end there?” she said. Mr Elliott smiled uncomfortably. “Well he needs to ask you a few more questions and when he’s done, this nice lady here is going to get you something else for the pain.”
Mr Elliott called down instructions, asking Sasha to wriggle her toes and if she could feel him touching her legs and Kate did her best to keep the girl calm. After he was satisfied with her legs, he moved up to her arms and went through the whole process again, with Kate trying hard to comfort the girl as they went.
Fiona drew up the pain relief and injected it through the line in the back of the girl’s hand and Kate checked that she was more comfortable as the doctors and nurses began to disperse to their various tasks.
With her hand firmly by Sasha’s side, Kate called across to one of the other nurses. “Pam, you wouldn’t fetch Sasha’s mother and sister for me, would you? I think they’re in Cubicle Six. They’ll probably have just about enough time to see her before X-ray are ready.”
Mr Elliott nodded his thanks and wandered over to the side to write in the notes. Suddenly the little girl started fitting and Kate called across to Fiona, who was back by her side in an instant.
The final ambulance arrived with the wife of the old man. She had been trapped in the car and had just been released. Reluctantly Kate had to leave Fiona and a junior nurse to deal with the little girl and hurried to the main door to receive the last casualty.
The lady was lifted onto the third bed where Mr Cobham appeared at Kate’s side. His registrar, who had been dealing with the gentleman in the same bay, finished writing and moved over to help. Orders were called out and staff began to materialise around the trolley.
Kate picked up the scissors and started to cut away the clothes so that the doctors could better examine the lady and a shout went out from behind the curtain next door: Cardiac arrest.
Looking over, Kate realised they were running short of staff, so she shouted for the medical student to carry on cutting and dashed over to pitch in.
Staff flew everywhere chasing equipment and drugs needed for all the casualties, like ants in a burrow, each one a part of something greater.
Sasha’s mother appeared around the corner with the smaller child at her side and Kate shouted at the nearest nurse, “Get them out of here!”
Kate was still busy with Mr Cobham, doing chest compressions on the man in Resus One, when the anaesthetist peered round the curtain to see if he was needed. Fiona was managing Sasha and Mr Elliott was working on the old lady.
They lost the old man.
Kate pulled the curtains around the trolley and checked round the other casualties. They were all in hand.
The Anaesthetist stayed to help out with the elderly lady, whose injuries seemed to be mainly to do with her right leg. Mr Elliott checked around the other casualties too, deciding which ones were a priority for Theatre, and then he returned to Mr Cobham, who was arranging a plan for each one.
Mr Cobham turned round and put his hand on Kate’s shoulder. He looked at his watch. “Kate, it’s nearly ten. Go home. The cavalry’s here and they’re stuck in. We’ll be fine. Thanks for staying on.”
“I’ll just check in on Sasha,” she said.
“She’s intubated now and Fiona’s with her,” Mr Elliott said, coming to stand beside them. “She won’t know.”
“What about her mother? Has anyone gone to talk to her?”
“I think Sue’s with them right now,” Mr Cobham assured her. “Go home, Kate.”
“Thank you,” Mr Elliott said. “With the girl.”
Kate looked at his furrowed brow, aware that he had a long night’s work ahead of him. “No problem,” she said and as she made her way out to her car and drove home, she wondered, had she really described Mr Elliott as ‘handsome’?
Letting herself back into the house, Kate called out a hello to Sophie and was reassured by a reply. He had thanked her for her help, spontaneously. That in itself was a surprise. Maybe the man was feeling guilty? Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all? Whatever the workings of his mind, Kate knew she would be back again tomorrow and Mr Elliott would still be there, but for the rest of that night she had a date with a glass of wine and a pillow, and nothing and no-one was going to get in the way of that.
A few days later Mr Elliott stopped by in A&E and asked to speak to her. Kate was in a cubicle when she heard his voice. Her body froze as she wondered what he could want with her this time and she excused herself from her patient for a moment to step outside and speak to him.
“Kate, I thought you might want to know that the girl from the other night is going to be all right.”
“What, Sasha? Oh good,” she said. “Is she still here? I wondered if she’d end up on a neurosurgical unit.”
“No. Her CT didn’t show any bleeding, just a bit of swelling which we can handle here. She’s off ITU and recovering up on the children’s ward if you’d like to go and see her. She’s been asking after you. She thought you were an angel.”
Kate laughed. “Not quite. But thanks for letting me know. I’ll pop up in my break.”
“Good.