word with you.’
‘I’m Holly Jones, the registrar,’ she said. The young man looked so nervous that she didn’t ask him his name in case it made him bolt. It was more important to find out more about her patient. ‘Can you tell me a bit more about Gary?’
‘He just collapsed.’
Holly nodded. ‘Has he taken anything?’
‘No. Just drink.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Look, I’m not here to lecture you. I’m not going to grass you up to the police or anything like that. I just need to know what he’s taken so I can treat him properly.’ She spread her hands. ‘I’ve seen enough drunks in my time here to know when someone’s drunk. Gary doesn’t smell of booze. What did he take?’
‘He hasn’t taken nothing.’
‘It looks like amphetamines to me. Ecstasy?’
The young man looked at her for a moment, then sighed, as if knowing that he was beaten. ‘No. He couldn’t get no disco biscuits. He bought some Eve.’
Eve, or MDEA, was a type of amphetamine similar to Ecstasy. ‘Thanks,’ Holly said. ‘Do you have any idea how long ago he took it?’
‘Forty minutes—something like that, I guess.’
‘Great.’ She smiled reassuringly at him. ‘Now I know just what to give your mate to get his body back to normal.’
‘He is going to be OK, isn’t he?’
‘It’s too early to say, I’m afraid—though you did the right thing by calling the ambulance. If you want to wait in the relatives’ room, I can come and see you later to let you know how he’s getting on.’
‘Right.’ The young man bit his lip. ‘He’s been doing it for a while. E, I mean. And Eve. I thought he knew what he was doing. But this bloke offered him some cheap. I never saw him before. Must have been dodgy.’
‘It happens.’ And the friends and family were left to pick up the pieces. Holly knew that only too well—both as a doctor and as a relative.
‘You’re really not going to have a go about how drugs are bad for you?’
She shrugged. ‘Not my place. And you’re old enough to know that for yourself.’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled wryly back at her.
‘There’s a coffee-machine in the corridor outside the relatives’ room, if you need it. There’s a vending machine for chocolate, too.’
‘Cheers.’
Holly turned back to her patient. Since he’d taken the drugs less than an hour ago, activated charcoal would help to reduce the amount his body absorbed.
‘Gary, I’m going to give you something to help your body get rid of the drugs still in your stomach. And I’m going to take a blood sample to see how you’re doing.’
She took the sample, capped it and called to the staff nurse working on her team. ‘Miche, can you get the bloods sorted, please? Usual stuff—full blood count, Us and Es, creatinine, glucose and arterial blood gases. And if you could give me a hand with some activated charcoal?’
‘My favourite,’ Michelle said wryly. ‘I’ll get these to the lab and then I’ll come back.’
The charcoal was messy but effective.
‘I’m not happy about his temperature—or his blood pressure,’ Holly muttered to Michelle a little later.
‘Or his ECG,’ Michelle said, looking at the display. ‘He’s still tachycardic.’
Before either of them could say another word, Gary started having a fit.
‘Oh, no. Can someone get me some chlormethiazole?’ she called. Although diazepam was usually used to control fits, chlormethiazole had the extra benefit of helping to lower a fever.
‘Hold his arm still for me. I’ll get it in,’ David said, appearing with a syringe.
‘Sure,’ Holly said, knowing that now wasn’t the time to be proud. She needed his hands as well as the contents of the syringe. When someone was having an epileptic fit, it was much easier if one person held the arm still while another did the injection. Michelle was holding Gary’s head, making sure he didn’t swallow his tongue. Holly held Gary’s arm still and David injected the chlormethiazole.
The fit stopped, and then Gary was sick again.
‘It’s OK,’ Holly soothed, wiping his face. How many times had a doctor given the same treatment to her brother, back in Liverpool? And how many more times would it have to happen before Dan realised what an idiot he was being?
Gary couldn’t be more than a year or two younger than her brother. For a moment her vision blurred and she saw Daniel’s face in front of her. Then she blinked. Hard. This wasn’t Dan. And her brother had been clean for months now. He might even have turned the corner.
And elephants were pink, with wings.
When Holly was sure that Gary was responding to his treatment, she almost staggered to the rest room for a break. She nearly walked out again when she saw David already sitting there. She really, really wasn’t in the mood for facing him right now.
‘Hey.’ Almost as if he’d guessed that she was about to back away, he held up a bar of chocolate. ‘I owe you half, I think. Seeing as you shared your brownie with me last night.’
Colleagues. Yes. She could handle that.
She grabbed a coffee and sank into the chair next to his. ‘Thanks,’ she said, taking the proffered squares.
‘Tough night?’ he asked.
‘Drug cases always get to me. I suppose it’s because of Dan,’ she said. ‘I always think it could be him.’
‘Why?’
She sighed. ‘He got in with a bad crowd at uni and went off the rails pretty spectacularly. He’s living with Mum and Dad right now, in a temporary truce—but every so often he does something stupid, Mum gets too heavy with him and I have to go back to broker peace between them again.’
‘Little Danny does drugs?’ Disbelief was written all over David’s face.
‘Dan’s not so little now,’ she said wryly. ‘He’s twenty-five—bigger than me. Bigger than you, actually.’ She shrugged. ‘Ah, well. Your mother was right. Our family’s stuck-up, and we’ve had our comeuppance for it. Both of the kids brought shame on the family.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
As if he didn’t know. ‘Forget it,’ she said shortly.
‘Holly—’
‘Just forget it,’ she said, and walked out before she said something she’d regret.
Just what was going on in her head? She was impossible. Really, really impossible, David thought angrily. Holly might be a good doctor—and good at defusing awkward situations with patients—but her manner with him left a hell of a lot to be desired. Yes, they had a history, but she shouldn’t take out her guilt on him!
Maybe on Monday, after he’d had some sleep, he’d have a word with Sue and see if he could be moved to the other team.
‘Peter Kirby. Suspected multiple rib fractures,’ Rick said as he ran through the handover. ‘Query organ damage, too.’
Holly glanced at their patient and winced. ‘Someone’s given him a hell of a kicking. Funny, he doesn’t look the fighting type.’
‘Probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ Rick said wryly. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if it was gay-bashing.’
‘Hey. We’re not all homophobic,’ she said gently,