‘You’ve done this before!’ Greg, the charge nurse, grinned as Jasmine shooed a group of inebriated teenagers down to the waiting room. They were worried about their friend who’d been stabbed but were starting to fight amongst themselves.
‘I used to be a bouncer at a night club.’ Jasmine winked at her patient, who was being examined by Jed.
Greg laughed and even the patient smiled.
Jed just carried right on ignoring her.
Which was understandable perhaps, given that they were incredibly busy.
But what wasn’t understandable to Jasmine was that he refused a piece of the massive hazelnut chocolate bar she opened at about one a.m., when everyone else fell on it.
Who doesn’t like chocolate? Jasmine thought as he drank water.
Maybe he was worried about his figure?
He stood outside the cubicle now, writing up the card. ‘Check his pedal pulses every fifteen minutes.’ He thrust her a card and she read his instructions.
‘What about analgesia?’ Jasmine checked.
‘I’ve written him up for pethidine.’
‘No.’ Jasmine glanced down at the card. ‘You haven’t.’
Jed took the card from her and rubbed his hand over his unshaven chin, and Jasmine tried to tell herself that he had his razor set that way, that he cultivated the unshaven, up-all-night, just-got-out-of-bed look, that this man’s looks were no accident.
Except he had been up all night.
Jed let out an irritated hiss as he read through the patient’s treatment card, as if she were the one who had made the simple mistake, and then wrote up the prescription in his messy scrawl.
‘Thank you!’ Jasmine smiled sweetly—just to annoy him.
She didn’t get a smile back.
Mind you, the place was too busy to worry about Jed’s bad mood and brooding good looks, which seemed to get more brooding with every hour that passed.
At six a.m., just as things were starting to calm down, just as they were starting to catch up and tidy the place for the day staff, Jasmine found out just how hard this job could be at times.
Found, just as she was starting to maybe get into the swing of things, that perhaps this wasn’t the place she really wanted to be after all.
They were alerted that a two-week-old paediatric arrest was on his way in but the ambulance had arrived before they had even put the emergency call out.
Jasmine took the hysterical parents into an interview room and tried to get any details as best she could as the overhead loudspeaker went off, urgently summoning the paediatric crash team to Emergency. It played loudly in the interview room also, each chime echoing the urgency, and there was the sound of footsteps running and doors slamming, adding to the parents’ fear.
‘The doctors are all with your baby,’ Jasmine said. ‘Let them do their work.’ Cathy, the new mum, still looked pregnant. She kept saying she had only had him two weeks and that this couldn’t be happening, that she’d taken him out of his crib and brought him back to bed, and when the alarm had gone off for her husband to go to work … And then the sobbing would start again.
She kept trying to push past Jasmine to get to her baby, but eventually she collapsed into a chair and sobbed with her husband that she just wanted to know what was going on.
‘As soon as there’s some news, someone will be in.’ There was a knock at the door and she saw a policeman and -woman standing there. Jasmine excused herself, went outside and closed the door so she could speak to them.
‘How are they?’ the policewoman asked.
‘Not great,’ Jasmine said. ‘A doctor hasn’t spoken to them yet.’
‘How are things looking for the baby?’
‘Not great either,’ Jasmine said. ‘I really don’t know much, though, I’ve just been in with the parents. I’m going to go and try to find out for them what’s happening.’ Though she was pretty sure she knew. One look at the tiny infant as he had arrived and her heart had sunk.
‘Everything okay?’ Lisa, early as always, was just coming on duty and she came straight over.
‘We’ve got a two-week-old who’s been brought in in full arrest,’ Jasmine explained. ‘I was just going to try and get an update for the parents.’
‘Okay.’ Lisa nodded. ‘You do that and I’ll stay with them.’
Jasmine wasn’t sure what was worse, sitting in with the hysterical, terrified parents or walking into Resus and hearing the silence as they paused the resuscitation for a moment to see if there was any response.
There was none.
Jed put his two fingers back onto the baby’s chest and started the massage again, but the paediatrician shook his head.
‘I’m calling it.’
It was six twenty-five and the paediatrician’s voice was assertive.
‘We’re not going to get him back.’
He was absolutely right—the parents had started the resuscitation and the paramedics had continued it for the last thirty-five futile minutes. Jasmine, who would normally have shed a tear at this point before bracing herself to face the family, just stood frozen.
Vanessa cried. Not loudly. She took some hand wipes from the dispenser and blew her nose and Jed took his fingers off the little infant and sort of held his nose between thumb and finger for a second.
It was a horrible place to be.
‘Are you okay?’ Greg looked over at Jasmine and she gave a short nod. She dared not cry, even a little, because if she started she thought she might not stop.
It was the first paediatric death she had dealt with since she’d had Simon and she was shocked at her own reaction. She just couldn’t stop looking at the tiny scrap of a thing and comparing him to her own child, and how the parents must be feeling. She jumped when she heard the sharp trill of a pager.
‘Sorry.’ The paediatrician looked down at his pager. ‘I’m needed urgently on NICU.’
‘Jed, can you …?’
Jed nodded as he accepted the grim task. ‘I’ll tell the parents.’
‘Thanks, and tell them that I’ll come back down and talk to them at length as soon as I can.’
‘Who’s been dealing with the parents?’ Jed asked when the paediatrician had gone.
‘Me,’ Jasmine said. ‘Lisa’s in there with them now. The police are here as well.’
‘I’ll speak first to the parents,’ Jed said. ‘Probably just keep it with Lisa. She’ll be dealing with them all day.’
Jasmine nodded. ‘They wanted a chaplain.’ She could hear the police walkie-talkies outside and her heart ached for the parents, not just for the terrible news but having to go over and over it, not only with family but with doctors and the police, and for all that was to come.
‘I’ll go and ring the chaplain,’ Greg said. ‘And I’d better write up the drugs now.’ He looked at the chaos. There were vials and wrappers everywhere, all the drawers on the trolley were open. They really had tried everything, but all to no avail.
‘I’ll sort out the baby,’ Vanessa said, and Jasmine, who had never shied away from anything before, was relieved that she wouldn’t have to deal with him.
‘I’ll