Hello Stranger

He turned his attention to a noisy bunch of lads on the seats across the aisle, then dropped his eyes back to his novel.

What is your favourite novel?

That’s what I wanted to ask him. The question looped over and over in my head, but I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t talk over the stupid jeering idiots across the aisle and call his focus back to me.

I pretended to read, but I was crap at it. The words blurred on the pages, making no difference at all as my heart bounced in my chest.

What is your favourite novel?

I wanted to ask him. I wanted to spit out the question and tell him all about my favourite just as soon as he’d answered, and how much I loved reading it and how he should read it too.

But I didn’t.

I couldn’t.

Idiot boys kept jeering, and the stranger kept on staring at his pages, flicking them over and over, and I was all a fluster. All a fluster with no common sense and a strange sickly squiggle of feelings way down deep.

What is your favourite novel?

He coughed and cleared his throat at Newstone, glancing up at a guy walking up the aisle who had the messiest blond beard I’ve ever seen, but still his eyes went back to the pages.

He stared up at an old lady who got on at Churchley, and who scowled at the idiot boys like she wanted to kill them from beneath her crazy bright flowery scarf, but still his eyes went straight back to the pages.

What is your favourite novel?

I was going to ask him. I was going to pluck up the courage to ask him. It was right there in my throat, blown out of ridiculous proportion by the fact I’d held it back for so long on the journey when I should’ve just piped up at the beginning.

What is your favourite novel, stranger?

But then the train pulled into Harrow. Just like that. And like a moron I hadn’t been prepared for it, or made myself ready for the dash to the hospital.

Crap, crap, crap.

My nerves were back on a mission as I leapt up from my seat and gathered myself to go.

Finally, the stranger’s eyes met up with mine. But only for one final second. Just long enough for me to blurt out one last thing to him before I zoomed away.

“Thanks again,” I said, and I meant it.

And with that I was gone.5LoganThe white rabbit was off in another flurry, up and out of the station in a flash. Too frazzled to even glance back along the platform.

There was one sunken part of me that regretted the final part of that train journey. One solitary flare down deep, wanting to ask one pointless question that would never make any difference to my life.

What is your favourite novel, Chloe?

But no.

The bustle onboard had intervened.

A rowdy bunch of boys causing chaos, a bundle of people boarding at every stop, and no reason to. No reason whatsoever to seek out conversation with Chloe with the shimmer in her hair.

I made my way slowly towards Harrow District Hospital, soaking up the last of my quiet time in easy steps. I needed to. From the very moment I stepped onto Franklin Ward, my day was always an unrelenting blur of focus. An oxymoron at its finest.

Maybe I should have picked up my pace a little, and put my efforts into the walk ahead, just to stop thinking about Chloe with Gone with the Wind.

At least one of my questions from the night before had found an answer. Yes, she had read Master and Margarita. Many times over, it seems.

Extraordinary.

She really was an extraordinary little bookworm with a zing in her step.

Much, much different to mine.

The hospital arrived in front of me and the unrelenting blur of focus swallowed me up.

The ward had its highs and its lows that day. We lost one old guy as he met his end and helped make a few ladies comfortable as they faced up to theirs. I spoke with relatives, and managed pain, and supported the nurses as they did their best to bring light into the darkness for the people finding it so hard to see ahead.

I did my job.

Wendy Briars knocked on my consulting room door at just past lunchtime. The head of hospital nursing had a clipboard in hand, ready to talk to me about Gina Salzaki from my ward, who was about to head off on maternity leave post her trainee placement.

“We’ll assign you a new nursing member,” she told me, and her cheeks were freckled and her hair was bound up loose in a bun with a few strands flowing free.

Only Wendy Briars’ hair was red, not mousy brown with a shimmer of gold.

“Please make sure they are fully prepared for the ward,” I asked her. “This department can be intensely emotionally challenging.”