‘I think you’re being a bit melodramatic here, Bella. You’re only going to be there for a couple of weeks.’
‘Have you ever done a shift in Emergency?’ Two spots of colour flamed on her cheeks, but apart from that Bella kept her temper firmly in check as Eddie shook his head. ‘Then take it from me, I’m not being melodramatic.’
Stepping out into the late afternoon sun, Bella dragged in a deep calming breath, but it didn’t work, her heart rate still skipping along way too fast, her brain still reeling from the unexpected carrot that had been dangled before her.
Boarding a tram, she took her usual seat at the back, only this time she didn’t eye her fellow travellers, didn’t play her usual game of people-watching, guessing who everyone was and where they were all going. Instead, she rested her head against the window and tried to quell the flurry of nerves that danced inside her; tried and failed to envisage herself back in an emergency room; tried and failed to envisage her detective application going through if she turned down the role on ‘personal grounds’. And yet…it wasn’t just nerves that were dancing as Bella stepped off the tram and walked the five-minute distance to her destination. It was excitement—pure, unadulterated excitement.
She’d be going undercover.
Undercover!
Using her own mind, her own people skills, working out clues—in fact, being everything that she wanted to be…
Except a nurse.
Stopping at the milk bar, Bella bought a magazine and chatted to Sandra, the owner, for a couple of minutes. After a very respectable pause, which the two women knew was just for effect, she decided to spoil herself with a bar of chocolate as if it were an occasional treat, not a daily essential.
‘How’s Danny?’ Ringing up the till, Sandra asked her usual question.
‘Good,’ Bella replied, just as Australians always did. Half the family could be being held at gunpoint and the answer would be the same.
Good.
‘How’s Danny?’ Bella asked Tania, the young nurse who was feeding him, putting down her chocolate and magazines on his locker and pulling up a chair before taking over the bowl of puréed mince and vegetables.
‘Good.’ Tania smiled brightly. ‘He’s just not very hungry.’
‘Still?’ Bella sighed. ‘He hasn’t eaten much all week.’
‘The doctor’s been in to see him, he couldn’t find anything wrong. He said we were to try giving him some nutritional supplements, there’s some in the fridge, I’ll go and fetch you one. Can I get you a coffee or anything?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’ Bella shook her head, stirring the unattractive meal around the plate.
‘Maybe later—with your chocolate perhaps?’
‘Maybe later,’ Bella agreed.
Another pleasant but pointless conversation, another pretence at normal that, even after all these years, merely felt false.
‘How was your day, Danny?’
He didn’t even look at her, didn’t smile, didn’t shrug, and didn’t say ‘good’. He didn’t say anything at all, just let out a moan when Bella tried to persuade him to eat the shepherd’s pie.
‘Come on, Danny,’ Bella pleaded. ‘You have to eat something. If you don’t, they’re going to put the nasogastric tube down again and you know how much you hate that.’ Lecture over, Bella forced a smile, rued the fact that even after all this time, even though she came in just about every single day, the mere sight of him could still bring her to the verge of tears. That gorgeous, athletic body, atrophied now, his blond sun-bleached hair that she’d loved so much, crudely cut now, courtesy of the mobile hairdresser more used to elderly clients. But Bella tried not to let her hurt show, tried so hard, just as she always did, to carry on chatting as if the person sitting opposite her was as animated and as interested in life as her, carried on chatting as if it were her gorgeous, vibrant, sexy fiancé she was coming home to. ‘You haven’t asked how I am! Well, I’m good, actually. Really good, in fact. You’ll never guess what Inspector Miller called me into his office for today…’
‘WELCOME to chest pain city!’
Acutely uncomfortable in her very new uniform, supremely conscious that at least one of her police colleagues was hovering out in the waiting room, Bella did her best to blend into the throng of nurses standing at the nurses’ station as the night sister smiled up at them, no doubt anxious to get the handover started and finished as quickly as possible. But even though she’d been away from nursing a long time, Bella knew this was one handover that was going to take a while. One look around the chaotic department, one look at the weary faces of the night staff and Bella knew it had been a very busy night. Several doctors were around, writing notes, making calls, working in Resus, the waiting room lined with people still waiting to be seen. Trolleys lay abandoned and unmade in the corridor, some still with rumpled blankets on top, a sure sign the night had been hell.
‘How was your holiday, Jayne?’ the night sister asked, and Bella looked over as a middle-aged woman rolled her smiling blue eyes, giving a dry laugh as she accepted the hands-free phone from the ward clerk and chatted for a moment before turning it off and placing it in her pocket.
‘Great, Hannah—only now it doesn’t feel as if I’ve been away. That was South Ward,’ she added. ‘They want to know if we can keep the patient they’re expecting down in the department till after seven-thirty. They can’t take him now because they’re busy with handover.’
‘Oh, the poor guy,’ Hannah groaned, shaking her head as a porter pushed a trolley out of a cubicle. ‘He’s been here since ten last night.’
‘Which is why I told South Ward that they were too late and he’s already on his way up. They’ll just have to tear someone away from their half-hour sit-down and mug of coffee. Go on, Jim,’ she called to the porter. ‘Take him up.’
Normal, Bella decided on the spot, peering at the name badge pinned to the woman’s crisply ironed blouse and confirming that it was indeed Jayne Davies. Her short, practical light brown hair was still damp from the shower, a slick of lipstick the only make-up she wore, and clearly, from the way a couple of doctors had already waylaid her to ask a question, the way she’d dealt with a ward’s rather annoying request, even before handover had started, Bella knew that this was a woman very much in control.
But Hannah!
Bella’s eyes worked the woman, taking in the rather jumpy appearance and wild hair, remembering the briefing she’d had from Detective Miller. A night sister, Hannah was working overtime to support her ailing husband, and apparently it was common knowledge around the department she had massive financial problems. But the weary smile she gave as she caught Bella staring, the tiny wink she imparted in a show of support for a nurse on her first day, had Bella shuffling her mental cards somewhat, discarding Detective Miller’s observations a tad and deciding to form her own opinions. Right here, right now Hannah was way down on her list.
‘I’ve let Bethany, the grad nurse, go home early,’ Hannah said to Jayne. ‘She’s got her driving test at lunchtime and obviously wanted to have a sleep first, so we’re a bit short on the floor at the moment. I haven’t even had time to check the drugs.’
‘OK, Trish.’ Turning to a nurse standing next to Bella, Jayne gave out her orders. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, you can go and check the drugs with one of the night staff. I’ll fill you in on the handover later. Something tells me that if Hannah