Page 12 of Chaos & Carnage

“Ok. Ok. Come get me if you need me.”

*****

A noise woke me. Pushing through the blackness, forcing my brain awake. Footsteps. The creak of stairs. The squeak of a swollen door in a weak frame. My eyes wouldn’t comply, opening slowly, my brain seconds ahead and my tired body not keeping up. But eventually my lids peeled off dry eyes, straining in the dark room, the faint orange glow from streetlights on the other side of the building the only light.

I was huddled in a chair in the corner, a thin blanket covering me, pulled up to my chin, but the cold had got to me anyway, my joints stiff, my body slow. A shadow moved in the dark. Footsteps ringing out on the old, bumpy laminate as it moved across the floor purposefully in the dark.

“Abbie?” I called out, my voice weak with tiredness.

“Shit! Alice? What the fuck you doing in the dark?”

Stuart. I recognised the accent. The undertones of the south with the Geordie influence. Not quite northern enough.

“I just took a nap. What time is it?”

“Eight.”

“Shit. That wasn’t a nap that was a complete sleep.”

Somewhere in front of me Stuart shuffled, and then the light above us snapped on, the dated staff room bathed in an offensive bright white. I rubbed at my eyes, blinking uncontrollably.

“What are you doing here, Stuart?” I asked as my vision cleared and I could focus on the man stood beside the locked drugs cabinet. “Thought you were off tonight.”

“I am. Forgot to put the next medicine order through.” He waved a sheet of paper in the air above his head.

“Thought we’d just had a delivery the other day?”

“Yeah. I’d missed a few off the order. Sorting it now.” He dipped his head and scribbled something on the sheet of paper he’d just waved.

On the table in front of me my phone lit up, and then a half second later the ringtone blared. I groaned, more loudly than I should in front of my boss.

“First one of the night, huh?” Stuart asked.

I nodded.

“I’ll leave you to it.”

On the table in front of me, the phone continued to ring. For a moment I didn’t pick it up, just watched the green call button flashing on and off, waves of nausea washing over me. Then I snatched the phone off the table, pressed my thumb into the button and held it to my ear.

*****

“Fuck, that was rough,” Abbie cursed as we cleaned down the operating table.

Blood still pooled on the floor at our feet, slowly drying. Swabs and blue roll sat in a red-soaked pile at the end of the table. I didn’t answer, casting a glance towards the room of patients that was filling up fast.

“You think she’ll pull through?” Abbie asked, breaking the silence again.

I shrugged, exhausted, mentally broken. She stepped round the blood on the floor, grabbing an armful of swabs and shoving them in the bin. And all I could do was lean against the operating table staring down upon it.

“What’s wrong, Alice?” she asked, turning from the bin and standing at the other end to face me.

“I’m just so tired. And I love my job, Abbie. I really do. But sometimes I wonder whether there’s more to life than this.”

I stood upright, wafting a hand up in the air beside my head.

“You need some time off.”

“Yeah. Well, Stu never agrees to any. I always need to cover for him.”