Free Emergency at Bayside by Carol Marinelli

only a short drive, and even as the car pulled away Meg instantly felt calmer. Everything would be fine now. The hospital was in sight, and by emergency standards this wasn’t particularly serious—not in the controlled setting of a hospital anyway.
    ‘Thank goodness you were there.’ The woman had stopped sobbing now, and was swallowing hard to compose herself.
    ‘What’s your son’s name?’
    ‘Toby. I’m Rita.’
    Meg smiled down at the little boy as the car pulled into the ambulance bay. ‘We’ll have you sorted in no time, Toby.
    ‘June, grab a trolley from the entrance and bring it up to the car,’ Meg instructed. But Mike the porter,grabbing a quick smoke between jobs, had already beaten her to it. Pulling the back door open, he popped his head in. ‘Here you go, Meg—anything I can do to help?’
    ‘We just need him on the trolley, but I’ll have to keep his leg up and the pressure on.’
    ‘No worries.’
    Anywhere else they would have looked a curious sight—four adults dressed in their bathers pushing a trolley with a bleeding child—but here at the Bayside Hospital they barely merited a second glance.
    ‘You’re starting your shift a bit early!’ Jess joked. ‘You really can’t stay away from the place, can you?’
    ‘I was supposed to be topping up my tan,’ Meg groaned. ‘It’s pretty deep,’ she added in low tones, so as not to frighten Toby and his mother. ‘Arterial bleed. He lost a lot of blood at the beach.’
    ‘Right.’ Jess nodded, bandaging a huge wad of Combine firmly into place and elevating the foot of the trolley, then taking over pressing behind Toby’s knee. ‘We’ll not disturb it until the doctor gets here. Speaking of which…’ She turned and smiled as Flynn entered.
    ‘What have we got here?’ He barely glanced in Meg’s direction, his eyes firmly fixed on Toby. ‘You’ve been down at the beach, I see, young man.’
    ‘I stood on a broken bottle.’ It was the first time Toby had spoken, and Meg smiled at the little lisping voice.
    ‘There was blood everywhere; he must have lost a gallon.’ This was a slight exaggeration from Rita, but Meg nodded.
    ‘He did lose a lot—the bleed’s arterial. I stopped it with popliteal and direct pressure and we’ve kept it elevated.’
    ‘Good.’ Still his eyes stayed fixed on his young charge. ‘Toby, I’m going to put a little needle into the back of your hand so I can give you some medicine to take away the pain. It will only hurt for a second. I know that you’ve been so brave up to now—can I ask you to be brave for just a moment longer?’
    Toby nodded, but his mother wasn’t convinced. ‘Can’t you numb it first? He hates needles.’
    ‘He’ll be fine,’ Flynn said confidently. ‘Numbing it would take twenty minutes or so to take effect, and I’d like to give him some fluid thorugh a drip and take some blood. He looks a bit shocked, and I’m sure he’d appreciate something to settle him before we take the dressing down.’
    But Rita wanted an anaesthetic. ‘He’ll scream the place down.’
    Meg watched Flynn’s shoulders stiffen a fraction. The only person who was getting upset was Toby’s mum, and if she carried on Toby was likely to start getting anxious again.
    ‘Look, Rita,’ Meg suggested, ‘why don’t we go and grab a cool drink and let the doctor get on with it? It must be very upsetting for you to watch all this.’
    ‘Surely it would be better if I stayed?’
    Meg took a deep breath. Honesty was the best policy, and all that, but she wasn’t sure how well it was going to be received. ‘It’s probably better if we go and get a drink and calm down. The drip will be upby the time we get back and you’ll feel a lot better then.’
    Rita seemed to accept this, and after a rather tearful kiss and hug with Toby allowed herself to be led away.
    ‘Is there anyone you’d like to ring?’ Meg offered once they were in the staff room. Given that both women were dressed in