Knight on the Children's Ward (11 page)

‘Come back with me,' Ross interrupted.

How badly she wanted to—to go back to the farm, where she could breathe, where she could think. Except Ross would be gone on Tuesday, and all this would still be here.

Her mother was summoning her over and Annika took her cue. ‘I have to go.'

‘I'll see you at work on Monday,' Ross said, and suddenly he was angry. ‘If you can tear yourself away from the Minister's son!'

R
OSS'S
words rang in her ears as she raced home and pulled on her uniform. After this afternoon, she knew it would confuse Elsie to see Annika in anything else.

Yes, she was supposed to be at the after-party event, and, yes, her mother was furious, but even though she wouldn't get paid for tonight, even though she wasn't on duty, she
had
to be here.

‘How is she?' Annika asked, as Shelby, one of the night nurses, let her in.

‘Close to the end,' Shelby said. ‘But she's lucid at times.'

‘Hi, Elsie.'

They were giving her some morphine when Annika walked in, and the smile on the old lady's face was worth all the effort of coming. Now she was in her uniform Elsie recognised her. Yes, Annika would be tired tomorrow, and, no, she didn't have to be here, but she had known and cared for the old lady for over a year now, and it was a very small price to pay for the friendship and wisdom Elsie had imparted.

‘My favourite nurse,' Elsie mumbled. ‘I thought you weren't on for a while…'

‘I'm doing an extra shift,' Annika said, so as not to confuse her.

‘That's good.' Elsie said. ‘Can you stay with me?'

She couldn't.

She really couldn't.

She'd only popped in to check on her, to say goodnight or goodbye. She had to be at work at twelve tomorrow. The charity do would be all over the papers—it was unthinkable that she call in sick.

But that was exactly what she did.

She spoke to a rather sour voice on the other end of the phone and said she was getting a migraine and that she was terribly sorry but she wouldn't be in.

There was going to be trouble. Annika knew that.

But she'd deal with it tomorrow. Tonight she had other things to do.

Elsie's big reclining seat was by her bed, and Annika put a sheet over it and sat down beside her. She took the old bony hand in hers and held it, felt the skinny fingers hold hers back, and it was nice and not daunting at all.

She remembered when her father had been so ill. Annie had been his nurse on his final night. How jealous Annika had been that Annie had seemed to know what to do, how to look after him, how to take care of him on his final journey.

Two years on, Annika knew what to do now.

Knew this was right.

It was right to doze off in the chair, to hold Elsie's hand and wake a couple of hours later, when the morphine wore off a little and Elsie started to stir. She walked out to find Shelby.

‘I think her medication's wearing off.'

And Shelby checked her chart, and then Elsie's, and agreed with Annika's findings.

Gently they both turned Elsie, and Annika combed her hair and swabbed her mouth so it tasted fresh, put some balm on her lips. Elsie was lucid before the medicine started to kick in again.

‘How's Ross?' Elsie asked.

‘Wonderful,' Annika said, because she knew it would make Elsie happy.

‘He's good to you?' the old lady checked.

‘Always.'

‘You can be yourself?'

And she should just say yes again, to keep Elsie happy, but she faltered.

‘Be yourself,' Elsie said, and Annika nodded. ‘That's the only way he can really love you.'

The hours before dawn were the most precious.

Elsie slept, and sometimes Annika did too, but it was nice just to be there with her.

‘I'm very grateful to you,' Elsie said, her tired eyes meeting Annika's as the nursing home started to wake up. The hall light flicked on and the drug trolley clattered. ‘You're a wonderful nurse.'

Annika was about to correct her, to say she wasn't here as a nurse but as a friend, and then it dawned on her that she could be both. Here, she knew what she was doing, and again Elsie was right.

She
was
, at least to the oldies, a wonderful nurse.

‘I'm very grateful to you too,' Annika said.

‘For what?'

‘You've worked it out for me, Elsie.' And she took Bertie's photo and gave it to Elsie, who held it instead of Annika's hand.

The next dose of morphine was her last.

Annika stepped out into the morning without crying. Death didn't daunt her, it was living that did, but thanks to Elsie she knew at least something of what she was doing.

Her old friend had helped her to map out the beginnings of her future.

‘A
NNIKA
.' Caroline had called her into the office immediately after handover. ‘I appreciate that you have commitments outside of nursing, and I know that your off-duty request got lost, but I went out of my way to accommodate you. I changed your shift to a late and you accepted it!'

‘I thought I would be able to come in.'

‘Your photo is in the paper—dining with celebrities, drinking champagne…' Caroline was having great trouble keeping her voice even. ‘And then you call at four a.m. to say you're unable to come in. Even this morning you're…' Her eyes flicked over Annika's puffy face and the bags under her eyes. ‘Do you even want to be here, Annika?'

Just over twenty-four hours ago her answer would have been very different. Had it not been for Elsie, Annika might well have had her notice typed up in her bag.

But a lot had changed.

‘Very much so.' Annika saw the dart of surprise in her senior's eyes. ‘I have been struggling with things for a while, but I really do want to be here.' Annika was trying to be honest. It wasn't a Kolovsky trait, in fact her life
was a mire of lies, but Annika took a deep breath. All she could do was hope for the best. ‘I wasn't sick yesterday.'

‘Annika, I should warn you—'

‘I am tired on duty at times but that is because I have been doing shifts at a private nursing home. Recently I have tried to arrange it so that it doesn't impinge on my nursing time, but on Saturday I found out that my favourite resident was dying. She has no visitors, and I went in to see her on my way home from the party. I ended up staying. Not working,' she added, when Caroline was silent. ‘Elsie had become a good friend, and it didn't seem right to leave her. I'm sorry for letting everyone down.'

‘Keep us informed in the future,' Caroline said. ‘You've got a lecture this morning in the staffroom—why don't you get a coffee?'

She had expected a reprimand, even a written warning. She was surprised when neither came, and surprised, too, when Ross caught up with her in the kitchen.

‘Caroline said you were at the nursing home on Saturday night?'

‘I'm surprised she discusses student nurses with you.'

‘I heard her on the phone to Heather Jameson.'

‘Oh.'

‘Is that the truth?' He didn't know. ‘Or did it take you twenty-four hours to come up with a good excuse?'

‘It's the truth.' She filled her mug with hot water.

‘So why couldn't you tell me that?' Ross demanded. ‘Why did you make up some story about an after-party event?'

‘I thought I was just going to drop in on Elsie; I didn't realise that I'd stay the night.'

‘You could have told me.'

‘And have you tell Caroline?' Annika said. ‘Or Iosef? He's given me some money so that I don't have to work there any more.' She swallowed hard. ‘I wasn't actually working. I don't expect you to understand, but Elsie has been more than a patient to me, and it didn't seem right to leave her—'

‘Hey.' He interrupted her explanations with a smile. ‘Careful—you're starting to sound like a nurse.'

‘I thought I would be in trouble,' Annika admitted. ‘I didn't expect Caroline to understand.'

‘You could have told me,' Ross said. ‘You could have trusted me…'

‘I don't, though,' Annika said.

Her tongue could be as sharp as a razor at times, but this time it didn't slice. He stared at her for a long moment.

‘Why do you push everything good away?'

He didn't expect an answer. He was, in fact, surprised when she gave one.

‘I don't know.'

 

Each Monday, patients permitting, one of the senior staff did an informal lecture for the nursing staff, and particularly the students. As they sat in the staffroom and waited for a few stragglers to arrive, Ross struggled to make small talk with the team. His mind was too full of her.

He watched as she came in and took a seat beside Cassie. She smiled to her fellow student, said hello, and then put down her coffee, opened her notebook, clicked on her pen and sat silent amidst the noisy room.

Her eyes were a bit puffy, and he guessed she must have spent the night crying. How he wished he had known—how he wished she had been able to tell him.

Ross waited as the last to arrive took their seats. It was all very informal, even though it was a difficult subject: ‘Recognising Child Abuse in a Ward Environment.'

Ross was a good teacher; he didn't need to work from notes. He turned off the television, told everyone to get a drink quickly if they hadn't already. As he talked, he let his eyes roam around the room and not linger on her. She was probably uncomfortable because it was Ross giving the lecture—not that she ever showed it. She nodded and gave a brief smile at something Cassie said, and she glanced occasionally at him as he spoke, but mainly—rudely, perhaps—she looked at the blank television screen or took the occasional note on the pad in her lap.

‘Often,' Ross said, ‘by the time a child arrives on the ward there is a diagnosis—perhaps from a GP, or Emergency, or perhaps you have a chronically ill child that has been in many times before. It is your responsibility to look beyond the diagnosis, to always remember to keep an open mind.' He glanced around and saw her writing. ‘Babies can't tell you what is wrong, and older children often won't. Perhaps they are loyal to their parents, or perhaps they don't even know that something is wrong…'

‘How can they not know?' Cassie asked.

‘Because they know no different,' Ross said patiently. ‘This is particularly the case with emotional abuse, which is hard to define. Neglect is a hard one too. They are used to being neglected. They have grown up thinking this is normal.'

It was a complicated talk, with lots of questions. None from Annika, of course. She just took her notes
and sometimes gazed out of the window or down at her hands. Once she yawned, as if bored by the subject, but this time Ross didn't for a moment consider it rude.

He remembered the way she had sat at the charity ball, ignoring the speaker, oblivious to his words. Now, standing in front of everyone, he started to understand.

‘A frozen look?' Cassie asked, when he explained what he looked for in an abused child, and Ross nodded.

‘You come to recognise it…' he said, then corrected himself. ‘Or you sometimes do.'

There were more questions from the floor, and all of a sudden he didn't feel qualified to answer, although he had to.

‘These children sometimes present as precocious. Other times,' Ross said, ‘they are withdrawn, or lacking in curiosity. You may go to put in an IV and instead of resistance or fear there is compliance, but often there is no one obvious clue…'

He wanted his lecture over; he wanted a moment to pause and think—and then what?

He felt sick. He thought about wrapping things up, but Cassie was like a dog with a bone, asking about emotional abuse—what did he mean? What were the signs?

‘“Just because I can't see it, I still know you are hurting me.”'
He quoted a little girl who was now hopefully happy, but had summed it up for so many.

And you either understood it or you didn't, but he watched Annika's mouth tighten and he knew that she did.

‘How can you get them to trust you?' another student asked.

‘How do you approach them?' Cassie asked.

But Ross was looking at Annika.

‘Carefully,' he said. ‘Sometimes, in an emergency,
you have to wade in a bit, but the best you can do is hope they can trust you and bit by bit tell their story.'

‘What if they don't know their story?' Annika asked, her blue eyes looking back at him, and only Ross could see the flash of tears there. ‘What if they are only just finding out that the people they love have caused them hurt, have perhaps been less than gentle?'

‘Then you work through it with them,' Ross said, and he saw her look away. ‘Or you support them as they work through it themselves. It's hard for a child to find out that the people they love, that those who love them—'

‘They
can't
love them…' Cassie started. ‘How can you say they love them?'

‘Yes,' Ross said, ‘they can—and that is why it's so bloody complicated.'

He had spoken for an hour and barely touched the sides. He didn't want her to be alone now, he wanted to be with her, but it was never that easy.

‘Sorry to break up the party.' Lisa's voice came over the intercom. ‘They need you in Emergency, Ross. Two-year-old boy, severe asthma. ETA ten minutes…'

And the run to Emergency would take four.

As everyone dispersed Annika sat there, till it was only the two of them left.

‘You have to go.'

‘I know.'

Her head was splitting.

Don't tell
.
Don't tell
.
Don't tell
.

Family
.

No one else's business
.

How much easier it would be to walk away, to shut him out, to never tell rather than to open her heart?

‘You know that my brother, Levander, was raised in the orphanages…'

He did, but Ross said nothing.

‘We did not know—my parents said they did not know—but now it would seem that they did.' It was still so hard to believe, let alone say. ‘I thought my parents were perfect—it would seem I was wrong. I was told my childhood was perfect, that I was lucky and had a charmed life. That was incorrect too.'

‘Annika…'

‘You want me to be open, to talk, and to give you answers—I don't know them. When I met my brothers' wives, when I saw what “normal” was, I realised how different my world was…' She shook her head at the hopelessness of explaining something she didn't herself understand. ‘I was sheltered, my mind was closed, and now it is not as simple as just walking away. Every day it is an effort to break away. I don't like my mother, and I hate what she did, but I love her.'

‘You're allowed to.'

‘I realise now my parents are far from perfect. I see how I have been controlled…' She made herself say it. ‘How conditional their love actually was. I am starting to see it, but I still want to be able to sustain a relationship with my mother and remember my father with love.'

‘I'm sorry.' He had never been sorrier in his life. ‘For rushing you, for…'

‘It can't be rushed,' Annika said. ‘And I am not deliberately not telling you things. Some of it I just don't know, and I don't know how to trust you.'

‘You will,' Ross said.

She almost did.

His pager was shrilling, and he had to run to the
patient instead of to her. He had to keep his mind on the little boy and, though he was soon sorted, though the two-year-old was soon stable, it was, Ross decided, the hardest patient he had dealt with in his career.

So badly he wanted to speak with her.