‘Okay, thank you.’ Mattie nodded.
‘We also brought in her cycling helmet, which had broken into three pieces on impact.’
‘Great.’ Again Mattie thanked him, handing the helmet to one of her team. It could come in useful in assessing exactly how her patient had landed.
Finally, she approached the woman.
‘Okay, Ashley, sweetheart. I’m Mattie, your doctor. I’m just going to check you over.’ Her head, which had been crowded with thoughts of Kane only moments before, instantly cleared as she focused on her patient.
She ran through her thorough checks efficiently as her team moved around slickly, all knowing their jobs with nominal direction from her. At length she concluded her obs and stepped away to brief the ward sister in a low voice.
‘Can you page Ortho, please? She’s got a C2 fracture and she’s unstable, so we need some portable c-spines, then get her in for CT and MRI. No evidence of intra-abdominal injury but there’s a mid-shaft fracture of the left clavicle.’
The positive was that the patient’s obs were stable and she seemed neurologically intact, but Mattie knew that if her patient moved, she could sever her own spine. Not to mention lose her ability even to breathe. But this was her job. It was what she loved to do, even in these circumstances.
* * *
For the next few hours Mattie concentrated on the busy A and E department. After her cyclist came a broken leg, then a cardiac arrest, a duodenal fistula, and if each one kept her brain whirling, and mercifully well away from Kane, well, so much the better.
Now, finally, she had her last patient of the shift, and one of Mattie’s more unusual cases. Another female, but this one was an elderly woman with a knife embedded in her back.
Her husband hovered, stricken, at his wife’s bedside. He started talking to Mattie the moment she approached them.
‘I didn’t mean it... I just... She was just...’ He faded out as the young paramedic placed his hand on the older man’s arm to calm him.
‘It’s all right, Vern. Let me explain to the doc, okay?’
The older man bobbed his head unhappily.
‘This is Dot, eighty-two, she has a stab wound to her back with the knife still in situ. Dot and Vern were preparing veg together for their family, who are visiting tonight, when Dot tried carrying a pan of water from the sink to the hob.’
‘It was heavy,’ Vern added, agitated. ‘Really heavy. I told her to leave it and wait for me.’
‘I will explain...’ the paramedic began.
Mattie moved swiftly to interject with a gentle smile. Right now she wasn’t interested in apportioning blame as much as treating her patient, but clearly the old man wanted her to understand the circumstances, and it was going to be quicker to listen than to argue.
Plus, a part of her thought it was lovely that he was caring and concerned. Once upon a time, in what felt like a lifetime ago, she’d thought that she and Kane would grow old together. Still caring for each other, like this couple did.
She’d forgotten that. So why was it there, in the forefront of her brain, right now? She thrust it away.
‘It’s all right, sir. Do you want to briefly tell me what happened?’
The man nodded gratefully, his shoulders sagging slightly.
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‘I was chopping carrots. That’s my job, you see. Peeling and chopping the veg whilst Dot deals with the meat.’
‘Of course.’ She smiled again.
‘So Dot tried to carry the pan, but she isn’t as steady on her feet as she once was, you see? And she slopped a bit over the edge and onto the floor.’
‘I see.’ Mattie nodded encouragingly.
‘So she slipped. In the water, see?’ He gestured to the floor as though that might somehow better illustrate what had happened. ‘And I went to catch her. See?’
‘With the chopping knife still in your hand?’ she asked, more for the sake of clarity than anything else.