One Night in Emergency. Carol Marinelli

we covered a vast area. There were a lot of farming accidents, heart attacks, even a few suicide attempts. Of course, they were moved on to the city once they were stabilised, but until the paramedics arrived they were treated at the hospital. If Rita had only let me in a bit, I’d have had a lot of experience by now.’ Eleanor gave a tight shrug. ‘She treated me as if I’d barely got my first Guide badge, let alone a nursing degree. I spent my whole time in my so-called emergency rotation giving tetanus shots, putting on slings and bandages and making cups of tea for relatives. If I hadn’t worked the wards for six months I’d have come out of my grad year none the wiser than when I’d started. I had to tell them at my interview, of course. They assumed I had some emergency experience, but when I told them how little I’d really done it was decided that I’d be rostered on with Mary for the next few months. If I last,’ Eleanor added. ‘She seems so fierce.’

      ‘She needs to be, I guess. Imagine if this minibus crash had turned out to be really serious.’

      ‘I suppose. And I know that I’m not much help at the moment, but I’m not completely useless. I might not be a great emergency nurse yet, but I have spent the last year working. It mightn’t have been a busy teaching hospital, but we still had sick patients. I mightn’t have learnt a lot in emergency but it was a different story on the wards. The country’s crying out for nursing staff. Towards the end of my grad year I was even in charge of some shifts on the wards, yet Mary seems intent on treating me as if I’m a complete novice. At the interview she seemed so nice…’

      ‘She is nice,’ Pier broke in, smiling at Eleanor’s dubious expression. ‘Emergency nurses are a funny lot. ICU and coronary-care nurses are the same—cliquey, bitchy, always thinking that they’re the busiest, most understaffed unit in the whole hospital.’ As Eleanor’s frown deepened, Pier’s smile widened. ‘But they’re also the funniest, most down-to-earth, loyal lot you’ll ever hope to meet, and once you’re in you’ll be there for life. You’ll end up being Mary’s biggest fan, I bet.’

      ‘I doubt it,’ Eleanor scoffed. ‘And how come you’re such a fan, when all she’s done is roar at you?’

      ‘She’s testing me,’ Pier responded easily. ‘I guarantee if I make it through this shift, by the morning she’ll be giving me the pick of the unfilled shifts on the roster. But I still don’t understand,’ Pier moaned, unfortunately getting back to the one subject Eleanor wanted to avoid. ‘Why didn’t this manager like you?’

      ‘Well, in my written report Rita said that I wasn’t assertive enough, that I was too busy focusing on petty details and not getting the job done.’

      ‘What sort of details?’

      Eleanor shrugged. ‘Take Agnes over there.’ She gestured to the elderly woman, who was sitting up now, her dirty feet sticking out from the blanket, her worldly goods wrapped in two carrier bags under the trolley.

      ‘Can I have a bedpan, love? No hurry.’

      ‘All night I give bedpans.’ Pier rolled his eyes, ducking out and coming back two minutes later as they both helped the elderly woman on and waited outside the curtain. ‘All night I tell you. You were saying?’

      ‘My manager would have sent her off into the night, whereas I…’

      ‘Would have let her sleep?’ Pier ventured.

      ‘And I’d have probably tried to arrange a social work referral for the morning, but Rita hated it. She said that I was slow, not good at finishing a job, that I left the place in a mess after I’d done a shift. But I didn’t come into nursing just to check drugs and drips. I want to get to know my patients, to make a difference.’

      Pier gave a knowing nod. ‘It can be a bit like that sometimes. But what has all this got to do with you being pretty?’

      Eleanor didn’t want to go there, didn’t really want to rake over old ground, but there was something about a night shift, something about sharing twelve hours with a virtual stranger you might never see again, and definitely something about Pier that made her open up. ‘Apparently I hid behind it.’ When Pier didn’t respond she elaborated further. ‘I’d bat my eyelashes to get my own way. Make a mess of things and then apologise, and apparently because I flashed a bit of cleavage all was forgiven.’

      ‘You flashed your cleavage?’ Pier’s eyes were aghast.

      ‘No.’ Eleanor found she was smiling. ‘It rather tended to flash itself. We had to wear baggy old theatre gear and the neckline wasn’t exactly tailored. Well, I heard Rita saying that I used my…’ Stumbling over the word, she was infinitely grateful when Pier chose a better one.

      ‘Assets?’

      ‘Thank you. I heard Rita implying that I used my assets to gloss over the fact I was a lousy nurse.’

      ‘She sounds horrible,’ Pier stated loudly. ‘Horrible and ugly, too, I bet?’

      ‘She was actually,’ Eleanor admitted. ‘But without her on my side I wasn’t going to get anywhere. I really want to be an emergency nurse, Pier, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. That’s why I decided to cut my losses and move to the city.’

      ‘So it didn’t help when the charge nurse brought up your ravishing looks the first night you were here?’ Pier asked perceptively, a smile twitching on his lips. ‘Don’t tell me, you want to be taken seriously—isn’t that what all the models say?’

      ‘I’d settle for being thought of as a good nurse.’

      ‘Then be a good nurse,’ Pier said simply.

      ‘Finished, love.’

      They helped Agnes off, and then headed to the pan room, the blue lights of the ambulance flashing past the window as the first of the minibus accident casualties arrived. ‘We’d better get out there.’

      Eleanor gave a watery smile. ‘Thanks, Pier, thanks for listening.’

      ‘Any time,’ Pier said airily. ‘If I can think of anything you can do to improve things, I will tell you on our meal break. I am good at advice.’

      ‘So am I.’ Eleanor grinned as they headed across the unit. ‘So here’s some—if you don’t want to be giving out bedpans all night, trying saying yes instead of oui!’ She looked at his bemused expression. ‘You’re sending out subliminal messages, Pier. Every time one of the old ducks hears you say wee, they ask for a pan!’

      ‘You really aren’t just a pretty face after all!’

      ‘No, Pier,’ Eleanor turned her blue eyes on her new friend and fixed him with a determined glare. ‘And I intend to prove it.’

      * * *

      As Mary had predicted, the arrival of the rugby team certainly livened the place up, not that it had been quiet before. But once the ambulances started arriving, in no time at all every cubicle, every trolley and every chair was packed to capacity, with staff rushing between them, prioritising patients, commencing treatments, pagers buzzing like unattended alarm clocks as the phones rang ever on. But somehow it was controlled chaos, a team stretched to its limits yet performing impeccably under Mary’s fierce guidance, and for Eleanor, although busy, although more rushed than she’d ever been in her rather short nursing life, it was a night for falling head over heels in love with Emergency.

      Real Emergency.

      A team working independently at times, but always looking out for each other.

      Monitors bleeping, blue lights flashing past, paramedics racing in, even Jim the porter providing invaluable back-up, wheeling patient after patient around to X-Ray, while quietly, in his own unobtrusive way, guiding the junior and new staff, taking Eleanor gently aside time and again and pointing out that Mary preferred portable drip stands to be secured to the trolleys, not IV poles pushed alongside them, that in an unexpected emergency it made transportation easier and that maybe she should give the nebuliser the doctor had just ordered before he wheeled the patient up to the