Nightshade

42

John Fraser looked at his watch. It was six o’clock in the morning, which meant he had two hours to go before his shift ended and he could go home. The graveyard shift they called it, but that was actually a misnomer. It was quite rare for a patient to die in the ICU at night. Most died in the daytime, and the joke among the nursing staff was that the number of deaths rose in line with the number of doctors in attendance. Fraser knew that was a fallacy, too. Patients in the ICU were at their most stable when they slept, because then the body was able to get on with healing, or least keeping itself stable. During the daytime, with all the lights and the noise, stress levels increased and with stress came an increased risk of death.

Fraser had asked for the transfer to the ICU but was starting to have second thoughts. He had assumed the medical staff there would be making life and death decisions and that those decisions would save lives, that they would make a difference. But in the six months he had been there, he had realised the medical care actually had very little to do with whether the patients lived or died. They came in, they were hooked up to machines that measured all their life signs, and they were monitored. Some patients got better and lived. Others got worse and died. But the medical staff tried equally hard with all the patients; they weren’t the ones choosing who lived and who died. It wasn’t a case of doing the right thing or the wrong thing – sometimes patients died no matter what the doctors did, and Fraser was finding it hard to come to terms with that. In almost any other job, the harder you worked the better the results. But not in the ICU. It didn’t matter how hard they tried, patients still died.

The money was good, and the work was challenging, but Fraser was already thinking about asking for a transfer back to a general ward.

Fraser was doing a walk-around of the various units, checking that the equipment was functioning properly, drips hadn’t been compromised and patients were as comfortable as they could be. He opened the door to Mrs Dawson’s room. She was in her sixties and had been involved in a bad car accident that had burst her spleen, broken her back in three places and punctured her lung. She’d been lucky, she’d been wearing a seatbelt, and an airbag had cushioned her against the worst of the impact. Her husband hadn’t been wearing his belt and the airbag in front of him had malfunctioned and he’d ended up under the rear wheels of the truck that had smashed into them. Her face was a black and blue mass of bruised tissue but she was breathing on her own, which was a good sign. Fraser checked her drip, then dabbed a paper towel at the dribble of saliva that was running from her open mouth to her pillow. She swallowed and then moaned softly. ‘Ron?’

Ron was her husband. Fraser tossed the paper towel into the bin and left the room. One of the unit’s doctors was walking slowly down the corridor, texting on a BlackBerry. He looked up and smiled when he saw Fraser. His name was Joe MacDonald and he was newly qualified and still eager to please. ‘Fraser, how’s everything?’

That was always the sign of a newly qualified doctor or an intern. They bothered to remember the names of the nurses because more often than not it was the nursing staff who pulled their nuts out of the fire. ‘All good, Doctor MacDonald.’

‘I’m going to have a lie-down. Give me a shout if you need me.’

‘No problem, Doctor MacDonald.’ MacDonald hurried down the corridor towards the windowless room that housed the camp bed where doctors could snatch a few hours’ sleep when they needed it. It was one of the inequalities of the medical hierarchy. Doctors could nap, but a nurse would be sacked for sleeping on duty. Not that Fraser wanted to be a doctor. He didn’t envy them their long hours, or the stress, or the decisions they had to make on an hourly basis. Fraser liked people, and he enjoyed helping them, and that’s what nurses did. He’d always wanted to be a nurse, ever since he’d been in hospital as a child to have his tonsils removed. His classmates had teased him and his parents hadn’t been keen on his choice of career, but Fraser had stuck with it and he couldn’t have been happier.

He opened the door to Isabella Harper’s room. The little girl was lying in her bed, looking up at the ceiling. She smiled when she saw him. She put her finger to her lips and went ‘shhhh’, then pointed at the chair at the end of her bed where her father was sleeping, his head resting on a pillow jammed against the wall. Bella’s parents took it in turns to stay overnight in her room. It was against the rules, but Bella was nine years old and after all she had been through it was generally agreed the parents could come and go as they pleased.

Fraser went over the bed. ‘Can’t sleep?’ he whispered.

‘I’m not tired,’ she said.

‘Are you okay? Do you need anything?’

Bella shook her head. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘Soon,’ said Fraser. ‘You’re moving to a general ward tomorrow and I think you’ll be home in a few days.’

‘I saw Jesus,’ said Bella solemnly.

‘Really?’

Bella nodded. ‘He was very kind. And I saw the Archangel Michael. He was nice too.’

‘Good,’ said Fraser.

Bella’s father snored and moved his legs, then went quiet again.

‘Jesus gave me a message for you, John,’ said Bella.

‘What?’

‘There’s something he wants you to know.’

‘Bella, come on now, it’s time you were asleep.’

Bella waved at him, urging him to move closer. ‘Come here, John, I’ll tell you what he said. It’s important.’

Fraser frowned. He looked over at Mr Harper, but he was fast asleep.

‘Really, John, it’s important. But I have to whisper it, okay?’

‘If I let you whisper it, you’ll go to sleep?’

Bella nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘Okay,’ said Fraser. He bent over her and put his ear close to her mouth. He could smell her breath and he frowned. It was sour and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. Maybe the little girl hadn’t been cleaning her teeth, or perhaps it was something she’d eaten. ‘What is it you want to tell me?’ he asked.