St Matthew's Passion - By Sam Archer Page 0,43
She laid her hand on the back of his, briefly.
Then she rose and turned and walked out.
Chapter Ten
The call came in at two-thirty in the afternoon.
It was a Monday, the beginning of Melissa’s last full week at St Matthew’s. By Sunday she’d be gone, and after half a week’s break she’d start a two-week locum job down in Devon near her parents. She was waiting for responses to three applications she’d sent off for posts on training schemes in Manchester, Bristol and Newcastle respectively. All were choice, highly sought-after jobs.
None of them, though, were at St Matthew’s.
Melissa had spent the last three weeks saying quiet goodbyes. Everybody expressed sorrow at her imminent departure, and everybody seemed genuinely to mean it. Even Deborah had looked her straight in the eye and said, with real regret: ‘I’m so sorry it’s come to this.’ There was a low-key leaving do arranged for her on Friday, a simple buffet lunch at the hospital. Melissa had requested that they not go overboard, so the proposed raucous send-off had been shelved, much to the disappointment of many of the staff who’d been looking forward to a night’s carousing at the department’s expense.
Emma had adopted a jollity around Melissa that was a little forced, as if she was afraid her friend’s last few weeks at St Matthew’s would degenerate into bitterness and tears if she didn’t keep the mood upbeat. Professor Penney had treated her with a kindly sadness. Fin had once more drawn into himself, becoming as he had when she’d first started there: not quite aloof, but more distant, and less lavish with his praise of her. This time Melissa wasn’t perplexed or frustrated. They couldn’t be anything but awkward around one another, in the final throes of their brief and tumultuous association.
She used her final weeks to squeeze as much learning as she possibly could from the job, volunteering for every possible procedure, assisting both Fin and Professor Penney in theatre, taking on extra on-call duties in order to maximise her experience. One thing she hadn’t yet managed to do was take her skills outside the hospital in the community. So when the call came through the Accident & Emergency Department that a major incident had occurred on the river, involving a collision between two boats, and a trauma specialist was needed to accompany the paramedics to the scene of the accident, Melissa felt a thrill of exultation.
She raced down to A&E, not quite sprinting – nobody who worked in a hospital really did that, outside of television dramas – and arrived to find an ambulance crew gearing up. They recognised her from numerous previous interactions and gave her a friendly nod. One of the paramedics threw a bright green bundle to Melissa and she caught it in midair. It was a set of fluorescent overalls with the word DOCTOR prominent on the back, to identify her role at the scene.
Melissa was handed the case with equipment she might need, if the injuries on site were so severe and of such a nature that the standard kit carried by the ambulance turned out not to be enough. In the ambulance bay in front of the hospital doors she swung herself up into the back of the vehicle, the engine of which was already running. The paramedic who was already in the back, a man named Charlie, slammed the doors and the ambulance took off.
On the way Charlie briefed Melissa.
‘Two cruise boats collided under the Millennium Bridge,’ he said. ‘We don’t know exactly why, but we think the captain of one of them had a stroke or a heart attack and lost control. The extent of the traumatic injuries to the passengers isn’t clear yet, but there’ll be a lot of people being fished out of the water and we’ll be tied up dealing with them.’
Melissa gazed through the window as the ambulance sped along, one of many in the convoy, its lights and sirens at full blast. The February day was clear and bright, but had started out frostily cold and hadn’t warmed up much. Looming in the near distance Melissa could see the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, which stood adjacent to the northern end of the Millennium Bridge.
She was through the doors almost before the engine had stopped, running with her case gripped in her hands. She faltered for an instant when she took in the scene before her.
Along the bank of the river emergency vehicles were massing, a riot of flashing