One Summer in Paris

‘You’re allowed to be human, Katie.’ Mike’s gaze settled on her face. ‘What happened was nasty. Scary. No one would blame you if—’

‘Worry about the patients, not me. There are more than enough of them.’

Katie brushed past him, ignoring the pain in her shoulder and the rapid beating of her heart. She didn’t want to think about it and she certainly didn’t want to talk about it.

She’d once overheard her mother telling someone that ‘Katie is as solid as a rock’. Up until a month ago she wouldn’t have disagreed. Now, she felt anything but solid. She was falling apart and it was becoming harder and harder to hide it from her colleagues. Just the thought of going to work brought her to the edge of a panic attack, and she’d never suffered from panic attacks.

Her mother kept calling, suggesting lunch, and she kept stalling because she was afraid she might break down.

‘Sorry.’

A nurse bumped into her as she sprinted from one end of the department to the other and the wail of an ambulance siren told her the workload wasn’t going to ease any time soon.

‘The paramedics are bringing in a nasty head injury. And that film crew are driving me insane.’

Katie had forgotten the film crew. They were filming a ‘fly on the wall’ documentary. She suspected they were beginning to wish they’d chosen a different wall.

One of the cameramen had passed out on day one, after witnessing the aftermath of a particularly nasty road accident. He’d hit his head on a trolley and she’d had to put eight stitches in his head. His colleagues had thought it hilarious that he’d ended up on the other side of the camera, but she could have done without the extra business.

‘It’s like a war zone,’ one

of the reporters had observed earlier in the evening—and, given that he’d worked in an actual war zone at one point, no one was about to argue with him. ‘No wonder you’re short-staffed. Aren’t you ever tempted to ditch the whole thing and retrain in dermatology?’

Katie hadn’t answered. Lately she was tempted by a whole lot of things, and it was starting to unsettle her.

Medicine was her life. She’d decided to be a doctor the night Rosie had had her first asthma attack. Their father had been away, Katie had been too young to be left alone, so she’d gone to the hospital too.

She’d been fascinated by the beeping machines, the soft hiss of the oxygen and the skilled hands of the doctor whose ministrations had helped her little sister breathe again.

At eighteen she’d gone to medical school. More than a decade later she was still working her way up the ladder as a doctor. She liked her colleagues; she loved the patients.

She just wasn’t sure about the job. Was it right for her?

The time to ask herself that had been twelve years ago—not now.

She turned away from the nurse. A junior doctor was hovering, waiting to discuss a case with her, but before she could open her mouth the head injury arrived. The man was drunk, covered in blood and bellowing like a wounded animal.

It was another hour before she was finally able to take a break, and she grabbed a protein bar and a cup of coffee while she checked her phone.

She had three missed calls from her sister. In the middle of the night? Damn. She gulped down the last of the bar and dialled, calming herself with the knowledge that her sister was perfectly capable of calling in the middle of the night just to say she’d taken up ballet or decided to run a marathon.

Please let that be all it is.

If something had happened to her sister that would be the end of her.

‘Rosie?’ She tossed the wrapper in the bin. ‘Are you in hospital?’

‘For crying out loud—can’t a girl call her family without everyone assuming I’m in hospital? What is wrong with you people?’

Relief flooded through her. ‘If you’re going to call your family at three in the morning then you should expect that kind of reaction.’ Katie decided to give her feet five minutes’ rest and kicked off her shoes. ‘So, is this a catch-up call?’ She eyed the chair but decided that if she sat down in it she might never get up again.

‘Not exactly. I called because I have big news—and something special to ask you.’

‘Big news?’ Why, when her sister said those words, did they sound so terrifying? ‘You’re throwing in your studies and you’re going to travel in Peru?’

Rosie laughed, because there had been a time when she’d considered just that. ‘No. Guess again.’

‘You’ve taken up Irish dancing and you’re moving in with a colony of leprechauns?’