today,’ Mark said. ‘I had a transfer from Rosebud that got cancelled and then we were called out to Annie here.’ Jasmine smiled at her new patient. ‘Annie Clayfield, eighty-two years old, fell at home last night. We were alerted by her security when she didn’t respond to their daily phone call. We found her on the floor,’ Mark explained. ‘Conscious, in pain with shortening and rotation to the left leg.’
He pulled back the blanket and Jasmine looked at the patient’s feet and saw the familiar deformity that was an obvious sign of a hip fracture.
Annie was a lovely lady and tough too—she tried to hold back her yelp of pain as they moved her over as gently as they could onto the trolley.
Jed came over when he heard her cry and ordered some analgesic.
‘We’ll get on top of your pain,’ Jed said, ‘before we move you too much.’ He had a listen to her chest and checked her pulse and was writing up an X-ray order when he saw one of the paramedics leave the stretcher he was sorting out and head over to Jasmine.
‘So you’re here now?’
‘That’s right.’ Jed noted that her voice was falsely cheerful and he had no reason to listen, no reason not to carry on and see the next patient, except he found himself writing a lot more slowly, found himself wanting to know perhaps more than he should if they were planning to keep things light.
‘I heard you and Lloyd split up?’
‘We did.’
‘What’s he doing with himself these days?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Jasmine said. ‘We’re divorced now. I think he’s working in his family’s business.’
As Jed went to clip the X-ray slip to Annie’s door he saw the paramedic give Jasmine a brief cuddle.
‘You had nothing to do with it, Jasmine, we all know that. You don’t have to hide.’
‘I’m not hiding.’
And there was no such thing as uncomplicated, Jed decided, looking at Annie’s X-rays a good hour later and ringing down for the orthopaedic surgeons. They’d both agreed to keep it light, to take things slowly. Neither of them talked much, about families or friends or the past, and it should suit him, and yet the more he knew, or rather the less he got to know …
The more he wanted.
Despite all efforts to take things slowly, things were gathering pace between them. They’d been seeing each other for a few weeks now—at least, whenever they got a chance.
They rang each other a lot, and went out whenever shifts and babysitters permitted, or more often than not they ended up back at his for a few stolen hours.
It just wasn’t enough, though.
Concentrate on work, he told himself as he ran along the beach that night.
Except she was home, he knew it.
And Simon would be in bed.
And she wanted to keep that part of her life very separate.
So too did he, Jed reminded himself.
He caught sight of the city shimmering gold in the distance. Melbourne offered a gorgeous skyline but a different skyline from the one he knew so well.
He’d come here to get away, Jed reminded himself.
To finally focus on his career and get ahead.
Yet he looked at the tall gleaming buildings of Melbourne and as much as he loved Peninsula, there was something about the city, or rather a busy city emergency department.
And still Melbourne Central beckoned.
JASMINE STARED AT the roster and gritted her teeth.
Jed was filling out blood forms and suitably ignoring her, and Penny was at her annoying best, suggesting that the nurses join her in Resus so that she could run through a new piece of equipment with them.
A new piece of equipment that had been there as long as Jasmine had and had been used often.
Honestly, the second the place was finally quiet Penny found a job or an activity for everyone.
No wonder she was so unpopular.
The roster had finally been revealed for the next eight-week period and as she tapped the shifts into her phone Jasmine could feel her blood pressure rising.
Yes, she was the new girl.
Yes, that meant that she got the rubbish shifts—but she had more late duties coming up than she could count, and lots of weekends too, which she would usually be glad of for the money, but of course the crèche wasn’t open on weekends and, even though she’d been told it was only about once every three months, there was another stint of nights coming up in two weeks.
Her mum would be on her cruise by then.
‘Problem?’ Lisa checked.
‘Just the nights,’ Jasmine said. ‘I thought it was every three months.’
‘Well, we try and share it, but especially when someone’s new I like to get them to do some early, so that was an extra for you.’
Was she supposed to say thanks?
She liked Lisa, Jasmine really did, and she was running a department after all, not Jasmine’s childcare arrangements, but the pressure of shift work and single parenting, let alone trying to date, was starting to prove impossible.
Idly flicking through the patient bulletin, her eye fell on the perfect job for a single mum who actually wanted to have a little bit of a life too.
It was in the fracture clinic and was almost nine to five.
It was a level above what she was on now, but with her emergency experience she would stand a pretty good chance at getting it.
‘Fracture Clinic!’ Vanessa peered over her shoulder. ‘You’d go out of your mind.’
‘I’m going out of my mind looking at the roster,’ Jasmine admitted.
‘Don’t think about it,’ Vanessa said breezily. ‘Something always turns up.’
Jasmine rolled her eyes as Vanessa walked out. ‘I wish I had her optimism.’
‘Jasmine.’ She turned and smiled at the sound of Mark’s voice. ‘How are things?’
‘Good.’ Jed saw she was uncomfortable, saw she glanced over her shoulder to check whether or not he was there, and it was none of his business, he wanted it that way, yet he wanted to know what the problem was, why Mark thought she was hiding.
‘Just giving you the heads up, no doubt you’ll be alerted soon, but there’s a nasty car versus bike on the beach road. Sounds grim.’
‘Do we know how many?’ Jed asked.
‘That’s all I’ve got but they’re calling for backup.’
‘Thanks.’
Jasmine let Lisa know and the orthopods were down anyway, looking at a fractured femur, and Lisa said to just wait till they heard more before they started paging anyone but that she’d let Penny and Mr Dean know.
Then Mark’s radio started crackling and he listened, translating the coded talk of the operator. ‘They’re just about to let you know,’ Mark said. ‘One fatality, one trapped, one on the way—adult male.’
The alert phone went then and Lisa took it just as Penny appeared, looking brusquely efficient as usual.
‘Car versus motorbike,’ Lisa said. ‘We’ve got the biker coming in,