She smiled as Rachel’s mother arrived back in the room, clutching a wash-bag and looking incredibly tired.
‘Good morning. She looks a little better.’
Alison looked at her daughter anxiously. ‘Do you think so? She certainly seems a little cooler but she was very fretful in the night.’
‘It’s early days yet,’ Libby agreed, ‘but hopefully she’ll start to pick up today. We need to get her drinking so that we can get that drip out.’
The mother looked at her doubtfully. ‘I suppose I could try her with a bottle now…’
‘Let’s give her another half-hour and see if she wakes up a bit,’ Libby suggested, breaking off as Andreas walked into the room.
‘Good morning.’
His voice was warm and intensely masculine and Libby felt her whole body hum with sexual awareness.
Colour warmed her cheeks. ‘I need to check her temperature, but she’s sleeping at the moment,’ she explained quickly, as he picked up the chart. ‘She seems to be picking up and I thought she’d be better off being left to rest. We’ll try her with a bottle in half an hour.’
He scanned the chart briefly, looking at the readings the night shift had recorded. ‘Let me know what her obs are when you’ve checked them and keep her fluids up. If there’s a problem, call me. I’ve got to go down to A and E to see a child.’
Breathing a sigh of relief that he was going to be absent from the ward for at least a short time, Libby got back to work.
She checked on the patients who were her responsibility and then went back to Rachel and found her sitting on Alison’s lap, looking much more alert.
‘Oh, she’s definitely a bit better,’ Libby said, pleased by the change in the child in such a short time. ‘I’ll just check her temperature again and then we’ll try and get that bottle down her.’
The temperature reading was down considerably and the baby took the bottle eagerly.
Alison was delighted. ‘She wouldn’t touch it yesterday so she must be feeling better.’
/> Libby nodded. ‘We’ll keep the drip up for now and I’ll speak to Dr Christakos about it later. I expect he’ll want her to carry on having her antibiotics into the vein for now, but hopefully if she carries on drinking plenty then we can take that drip out later today.’
Making a mental note to discuss it with Andreas next time he appeared on the ward, Libby recorded the results and went to check on her next patient.
Her morning was horrendously busy and she was just starting to hope that she might actually be able to stop for a coffee when a five-year-old child was admitted with vomiting and fever.
Andreas appeared on the ward just as she arrived and Libby grabbed him immediately.
‘Her GP sent her in because she’s not keeping anything down and she’s becoming dehydrated,’ she told him as she briefed him about the patient. ‘I’ve put her in a side ward for now, until we know what it is. If it’s something infectious then we obviously don’t want it spreading over the whole ward.’
He nodded and scanned the letter. ‘OK—let’s take a look at her.’
Melanie Palmer was lying on the bed, crying and clutching her stomach.
Her mother was sitting next to her, her face drawn with worry. She stood up when Andreas entered the room.
‘She’s been like this since yesterday morning, and she’s getting worse,’ she told them, her eyes pleading. ‘What do you think it is?’
‘I’m going to take a look at her now,’ Andreas said immediately, walking over to the sink to wash his hands. ‘How did it start, Mrs Palmer?’
The mother closed her eyes briefly, battling with tears. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, ‘but I’ve been up all night with her…’
Her face crumpled and Libby slipped an arm around her shoulders. ‘Don’t apologise. We understand how stressful it is when your child is sick. Take your time.’
‘It started yesterday,’ Mrs Palmer told them. ‘She seemed a bit tired when I left her at Sunday school but nothing that made me anxious.’
‘And when you picked her up, how did she seem?’
‘She was white as a sheet and complaining of pain in her stomach, but I assumed that was because of the vomiting,’ Mrs Palmer said. ‘I left it for a few hours, but then her temperature shot up and she seemed so poorly I called the GP. He just said it was a stomach bug and to give it twenty-four hours to settle.’