Knight on the Children's Ward

‘Well, he’s looking right over at you!’ Cassie sighed. ‘He’s amazing, and the kids just love him—he really is great with them.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know…’ Cassie admitted. ‘He just…’ She gave a frustrated shrug. ‘He gets them, I guess. He just seems to understand kids, puts them at ease.’

Annika did not, would not, look over to where he sat, but sometimes she was sure he looked over to her—because every now and then she felt her skin warm. Every now and then it seemed too complicated to move the sandwich from her hand up to her mouth.

Ross Wyatt certainly didn’t put Annika at ease.

He made her awkward.

He made her aware.

Even walking over to empty out her tray and head to work she felt as if her movements were being noted, but, though it was acutely awkward, somehow she liked the feeling he evoked. Liked the thrill in the pit of her stomach, the rush that came whenever their paths briefly crossed.

As she sat in handover, listening to the list of patients and their ages and diagnoses, he popped his head around the door to check something with Caroline, the charge nurse, and Annika felt a dull blush on her neck as she heard his voice properly for the first time.

Oh, she’d heard him laugh on occasion, and heard his low tones briefly as they’d passed in the corridor when he was talking with a colleague, but she’d never fully heard him speak.

And as he spoke now, about an order for pethidine, Annika found out that toes did curl—quite literally!

His voice was rich and low and without arrogance. He’d made Caroline laugh with something he said—only Annika couldn’t properly process it, because instead she was feeling her toes bunch up inside her sensible navy shoes.

‘Back to Luke Winters…’

As the door closed so too did her mind on Ross, and she began concentrating carefully on the handover, because this rotation she had to do well.

‘He’s fifteen years old, Type 1 Diabetes, non-compliant…’

Luke Winters, Annika learnt, was causing not just his family but the staff of the children’s ward a lot of problems.

It was his third admission in twelve months. He was refusing to take his insulin at times, ignoring his diet, and he had again gone into DKA—a dangerous, toxic state that could kill. He had an ulcer on his leg that had been discovered on admission, though had probably been there for some time. It would take a long time to heal and might require a skin graft. His mother was frantic—Luke had come to the ward from ICU two days ago and was causing chaos. His room was a mess, and he had told the domestic this morning, none too politely, to get out.

He was now demanding that his catheter be removed, and basically both the other patients and the staff wanted him taken to an adult ward, though Ross Wyatt was resisting.

‘“Teenagers, even teenagers who think they are adults, are still children.”’ Caroline rolled her eyes. ‘His words, not mine. Anyway, Luke’s mum is at work and not due in till this evening. Hopefully we can have some order by then. Okay…’ She stared at the patient sheet and allocated the staff, pausing when she came to Annika. ‘I might put you in cots with Amanda…’ She hesitated. ‘But you haven’t been in cots yet, have you, Cassie?’

When Cassie shook her head and Caroline changed her allocation Annika felt a flood of relief—she had never so much as held a baby, and the thought of looking after a sick one petrified her.

‘Annika, perhaps you could have beds eight to sixteen instead—though given it’s your first day don’t worry about room fifteen.’

‘Luke?’ Annika checked, and Caroline nodded.

‘I don’t want to scare you off on your first day.’

‘He won’t scare me,’ Annika said. Moody teenagers she could deal with; it was babies and toddlers that scared her.

‘His room needs to be sorted.’

‘It will be.’

‘Okay!’ Caroline smiled. ‘If you’re sure? Good luck.’

Lisa, who was in charge of Annika’s patients, showed her around the ward. It was, as Cassie had said, completely different. Brightly painted, with a detailed mural running the length of the corridor, and divided pretty much into three.

There were cots for the littlest patients—two large rooms, each containing four cots. Then there were eight side rooms that would house a cot or a bed, depending on the patient’s age. Finally there were three large four-bedded rooms, filled with children of various ages.

‘Though we do try to keep ages similar,’ Lisa said, ‘sometimes it’s just not possible.’ She pointed out the crash trolley, the drug room, and two treatment rooms. ‘We try to bring the children down here for dressings and IV’s and things like that.’

‘So they don’t upset the other children?’ Annika checked.

‘That, and also, even if they are in a side room, it’s better they have anything unpleasant done away from their bed. Obviously if they’re infectious we can’t bring them down, but generally we try to do things away from the bedside.’

Annika was offered a tabard to replace her navy one. She had a choice of aprons, all brightly coloured and emblazoned with cartoon characters, and though her first instinct was to politely decline, she remembered she was making an effort, so chose a red one, with fish and mermaids on it. She felt, as she slipped it over her head, utterly stupid.

Annika started with the obs. Lunches were being cleared away, and the ward was being readied for afternoon rest-time.

The children eyed her suspiciously—she was new and they knew it.

‘What’s that for?’A mother demanded angrily as her first patient burst into tears when Annika went to wrap a blood pressure cuff around her arm.

Lisa moved quickly to stop her.

‘We don’t routinely do blood pressure,’ Lisa said, showing her the obs form. ‘Unless it’s stated on the chart.’

‘Okay.’

‘Just pulse, temp and respirations.’

‘Thank you.’

The little girl wouldn’t stop crying. In fact she shrieked every time Annika tried to venture near, so Lisa quickly took her temperature as Annika did the rest of the obs. In the room, eight sets of eyes watched her every awkward move: four from the patients, four from their mothers.

‘Can I have a drink?’ a little boy asked.

‘Of course,’ Annika said, because that was easy. She checked his chart and saw that he was to be encouraged to take fluids. ‘Would you like juice or milk…?’

‘He’s lactose intolerant!’ his mother jumped in. ‘It says so above his bed.’

‘Always look at the whiteboard above the bed,’ Lisa said. ‘And it will say in his admission slip too, which is clipped to his folder.’

‘Of course.’ Annika fled to the kitchen, where Cassie was warming a bottle.

‘Told you!’ Cassie grinned when Annika told her all that had happened. ‘It’s like landing on Mars!’

But she wasn’t remotely nervous about a sullen Luke. She knew he had no relatives with him, and was glad to escape the suspicious eyes of parents. It was only when she went into the side ward and realised that Ross was in there, talking, that she felt flustered.

‘I can come back.’

‘No.’ He smiled. ‘We’re just having a chat, and Luke needs his obs done.’

‘I don’t want them done,’ Luke snarled as she approached the bed.

That didn’t ruffle her either—her extra shifts at the nursing home had taught her well, because belligerence was an everyday occurrence there!

‘I will come back in five minutes, then,’ Annika said, just as she would say to Cecil, or Elsie, or any of the oldies who refused to have their morning shower.

‘I won’t want them done then either.’

‘Then I will come back five minutes later, and five minutes after that again. My name is Annika; it would seem that you’ll be seeing a lot of me this afternoon.’ She gave him a smile. ‘Every five minutes, in fact.’

‘Just take them now, then.’

So she did.

Annika made no attempt at small talk. Luke clearly didn’t want it, and anyway Ross was talking to him, telling him that there was no question of him going home, that he was still extremely ill and would be here for a few weeks—at least until the ulcer on his leg was healed and he was compliant with his medication. Yes, he would take the catheter out, so long as Luke agreed to wee into a bottle so that they could monitor his output.

Luke begrudgingly agreed to that.

And then Ross told him that the way he had spoken to the cleaner that morning was completely unacceptable.

‘You can be as angry as you like, Luke, but it’s not okay to be mean.’

‘So send me home, then.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

Annika wrote down his obs, which were all fine, and then, as Ross leant against the wall and Luke lay on the bed with his eyes closed, she spoke.

‘When the doctor has finished talking to you I will come back and sort out your room.’

‘And I’ll tell you the same thing I said to the cleaner.’

She saw Ross open his mouth to intervene as Luke snarled at her, but in this Annika didn’t need his help.

‘Would you rather I waited till children’s nap-time is over?’Annika asked. ‘When you feel a little less grumpy.’

‘Ha-ha…’ he sneered, and then he opened his eyes and gave a nasty sarcastic grin. ‘Nice apron!’

‘I hate it,’ she said. ‘Wearing it is a bit demoralising and…’ She thought for a moment as Luke just stared. ‘Well, I find it a bit patronising really. If I were in cots it would maybe be appropriate. Still…’ Annika shrugged. ‘Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to.’ She replaced his chart. ‘I’ll be back to clean your room shortly.’

Ross was at the nurses’ station writing notes when she came over after completing the rest of the obs. He grinned when he saw her.

‘Nice apron.’

‘It’s growing on me!’Annika said. ‘Tomorrow I want to wear the one with robots!’

‘I can’t wait!’ he replied, and, oh, for a witty retort—but there wasn’t one forthcoming, so instead she asked Lisa where the cleaning cupboard was and found a bin liner. She escaped to the rather more soothing, at least for Annika, confines of Luke’s room.

It was disgusting.

In the short time he had been in the room he had accumulated cups and plates and spilt drinks. There were used tissues on the floor. His bed was a disgrace because he refused to let anyone tidy it, and there were loads of cards from friends, along with all the gadgets fifteen-year-olds seemed to amass.

Luke didn’t tell her to leave—probably because he sensed she wouldn’t care if he did.

Annika was used to moods.

She had grown up surrounded by them and had chosen to completely ignore them.

Her father’s temper had been appalling, though it had never been aimed towards her—she had been the apple of his eye. Her brothers were dark and brooding, and her mother could sulk for Russia.

A fifteen-year-old was nothing, nothing, compared to that lot.

Luke ignored her.

Which was fine by Annika.

‘Everything okay?’ Lisa checked as she finally headed to the kitchen with a trolley full of used plates and cups.

‘All’s fine.’ The ward was quiet, the lights all dimmed, and Ross was still at the desk. ‘Do you need me to do anything else, or is it okay if I carry on with Luke’s room?’

‘Please do,’ Lisa said.

Luke wasn’t ignoring her now—instead he watched as she sorted out his stuff into neat piles and put some of it into a bag.

‘Your mum can take these home to wash.’

Other stuff she put into drawers.

Then she tacked some cards to the wall. All that was messy now, Annika decided as she wiped down the surfaces in his room, was the patient and his bed.

‘Now your catheter is out it will be easier to have a shower. I can run it for you.’

He said neither yes nor no, so Annika headed down the ward and found the linen trolley, selected some towels and then found the showers. She worked out the taps and headed back to her patient, who was a bit wobbly but refused a wheelchair.

‘Take my arm, then.’

‘I can manage,’ Luke said, and he said it again when she tried to help him undress.

‘You have a drip…’

‘I’m not stupid; I’ve had a drip before.’

Okay!

So she left him to it, and she didn’t hover outside, asking if he was okay every two minutes, because that would have driven Luke insane. Instead she moved to the other end of the bathroom, so she could hear him if he called, and checked her reflection, noting the huge smudges under her eyes, which her mother would point out to her when she went there for dinner at the weekend.

She was exhausted. Annika rested her head against the mirror for a moment and just wanted to close her eyes and sleep. She was beyond exhausted, in fact, and from this morning’s assessment it seemed it had been noticed.

Heather would never believe that she was working shifts in a nursing home, and the hardest slots too—five a.m. till eight a.m. if she was on a late shift at the hospital, and seven p.m. till ten p.m. if she was on an early. Oh, and a couple of nights shifts on her days off.

She was so tired. Not just bone-tired, but tired of arguing, tired of being told to pack in nursing, to come home, to be sensible, tired of being told that she didn’t need to nurse—she was a Kolovsky.

‘Iosef is a doctor,’ Annika had pointed out.

‘Iosef is a fool,’ her mother had said, ‘and as for that slut of a wife of his…’

‘Finished.’

She was too glum thinking about her mother to smile and cheer as Luke came out, in fresh track pants and with his hair dripping wet.

‘You smell much better,’ Annika settled for instead, and the shower must have drained Luke because he let Annika thread his T-shirt through his IV.

‘What are you looking so miserable about?’ Luke asked.

‘Stuff,’ Annika said.

‘Yeah,’ Luke said, and she was rewarded with a smile from him.

‘Oh, that’s much better!’ Lisa said, popping her head into the bathroom. ‘You’re looking very handsome.’ Annika caught Luke’s eyes and had to stop herself from rolling her own. She sort of understood him—she didn’t know how, she just did. ‘Your mum’s here, by the way!’ Lisa added.

‘Great,’ Luke muttered as Annika walked him back. ‘That’s all I need. You haven’t met her yet…’

‘You haven’t met mine!’ Annika said, and they both smiled this time—a real smile.

Annika surprised herself, because rarely, if ever, did she speak about her family, and especially not to a patient. But they had a little giggle as they walked, and she was too busy concentrating on Luke and pushing his IV to notice Ross look up from the desk and watch the unlikely new friends go by.

‘Are you still here?’ Caroline frowned, quite a long time later, because, as pedantic as Ross was, consultants didn’t usually hang around all day.

‘I just thought I’d catch up on some paperwork.’

‘Haven’t you got an office to go to?’ she teased.

He did, but for once he didn’t have that much paperwork to do.

‘Annika!’ Caroline called her over from where Annika was stacking the linen trolley after returning from her supper break. ‘Come and get started on your notes. I’ll show you how we do them. It’s different to the main wards.’

He didn’t look up, but he smelt her as she came around the desk.

A heavy, musky fragrance perfumed the air, and though he wrote it maybe twenty times a day, he had misspelled diarrhoea, and Ross frowned at his spiky black handwriting, because the familiar word looked completely wrong.

‘Are you wearing perfume, Annika?’ He didn’t look up at Caroline’s stern tone.

‘A little,’ Annika said, because she’d freshened up after her break.

‘You can’t wear perfume on the children’s ward!’ Caroline’s voice had a familiar ring to it—one Ross had heard all his life.

‘What do you mean—you just didn’t want to go to school? You can’t wear an earring. You just have to, that’s all. You just don’t. You just can’t.’

‘Go and wash it off,’ Caroline said, and now Ross did look up. He saw her standing there, wary, tight-lipped, in that ridiculous apron. ‘There are children with allergies, asthma. You just can’t wear perfume, Annika—didn’t you think?’

Caroline was right, Ross conceded, there were children with allergies and, as much as he liked it, Kolovsky musk post-op might be a little bit too much, but he wanted to step in, wanted to grin at Annika and tell her she smelt divine, tell her not to wash it off, for her to tell Caroline that she wouldn’t.

And he knew that she was thinking it too!

It was a second, a mere split second, but he saw her waver—and Ross had a bizarre feeling that she was going to dive into her bag for the bottle and run around the ward, ripping off her apron and spraying perfume. The thought made him smile—at the wrong moment, though, because Annika saw him and, although Ross snapped his face to bland, she must have thought he was enjoying her discomfort.

Oh, but he wanted to correct her.

He wanted to follow her and tell her that wasn’t what he’d meant as she duly turned around and headed for the washroom.

He wanted to apologise when she came back unscented and sat at her stool while Caroline nit-picked her way through the nursing notes.

Instead he returned to his own notes.

DIAOR…He scrawled a line through it again.

Still her fragrance lingered.

He got up without a word and, unusually for Ross, closed his office door. Then he picked up his pen and forced himself to concentrate.

DIARREA.

He hurled his pen down. Who cared anyway? They knew what he meant!

He was not going to fancy her, nor, if he could help it, even talk much to her.

He was off women.

He had sworn off women.

And a student nurse on his ward—well, it couldn’t be without complications.

She was his friend’s little sister too.

No way!

Absolutely not.

He picked up his pen and resumed his notes.

‘The baby has,’ he wrote instead, ‘severe gastroenteritis.’

CHAPTER TWO

HE DID a very good job of ignoring her.

He did an excellent job at pulling rank and completely speaking over her head, or looking at a child or a chart or the wall when he had no choice but to address her. And at his student lecture on Monday he paid her no more attention than any of the others. He delivered a talk on gastroenteritis, and, though he hesitated as he went to spell diarrhoea, he wrote it up correctly on the whiteboard.

She, Ross noted, was ignoring him too. She asked no questions at the end of the lecture, but an annoying student called Cassie made up for that.

Once their eyes met, but she quickly flicked hers away, and he, though he tried to discount it, saw the flush of red on her neck and wished that he hadn’t.

Yes, he did a very good job at ignoring her and not talking to her till, chatting to the pathologist in the bowels of the hospital a few days later, he glanced up at the big mirror that gave a view around the corridor and there was Annika. She was yawning, holding some blood samples, completely unaware she was being watched.

‘I’ve been waiting for these…’ Ross said when she turned the corner, and she jumped slightly at the sight of him. He took the bloodwork and stared at the forms rather than at her.

‘The chute isn’t working,’ Annika explained. ‘I said I’d drop them in on my way home.’

‘I forgot to sign the form.’

‘Oh.’

He would rather have taken ages to sign the form, but the pathologist decided they had been talking for too long and hurried him along. Annika had stopped for a moment to put on her jacket, and as his legs were much longer than hers somehow, despite trying not to, he had almost caught her up as they approached the flapping black plastic doors. It would have been really rude had she not held it open—and just plain wrong for him not to thank her and fall into step beside her.

‘You look tired,’ Ross commented.

‘It’s been a long shift.’

This had got them halfway along the corridor, and now they should just walk along in silence, Ross reasoned. He was a consultant, and he could be as rude and as aloof as he liked—except he could hear his boots, her shoes, and an endless, awful silence. It was Ross who filled it.

‘I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you…’ He had—long before he had liked her.

‘Oh?’ She felt the adrenaline kick in, the effect of him close up far more devastating than his smile, and yet she liked it. She liked it so much that she slowed down her pace and looked over to him. ‘About what?’

She could almost smell the bonfire—all those smiles, all that guessing, all that waiting was to be put to rest now they were finally talking.

‘I know your brother Iosef,’ Ross said. ‘He asked me to keep an eye out for you when you started.’

‘Did he?’ Her cheeks were burning, the back of her nose was stinging, and she wanted to run, to kick up her heels and run from him—because all the time she’d thought it was her, not her family, that he saw.

‘I’ve always meant to introduce myself. Iosef is a good friend.’ It was her jacket’s fault, Ross decided. Her jacket smelt of the forbidden perfume. It smelt so much of her that he forgot, for a second, his newly laid-down rules. ‘We should catch up some time…’

‘Why?’ She turned very blue eyes to him. ‘So that you can report back to Iosef?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Tell him I’m doing fine,’ Annika snapped, and, no, she didn’t kick up her heels, and she didn’t run, but she did walk swiftly away from him.

A year.

For more than a year she’d carried a torch, had secretly hoped that his smile, those looks they had shared, had meant something. All that time she had thought it had been about her, and yet again it wasn’t.

Again, all she was was a Kolovsky.

It rankled. On the drive home it gnawed and burnt, but when she got there her mother had left a long message on the answer machine which rankled rather more.

They needed to go over details, she reminded her daughter.

It was the charity ball in just three weeks—as if Annika could ever forget.

When Annika had been a child it had been discovered that her father had an illegitimate son—one who was being raised in an orphanage in Russia.

Levander had been brought over to Australia. Her father had done everything to make up for the wretched years his son had suffered, and Levander’s appalling early life had been kept a closely guarded family secret.

Now, though, the truth was starting to seep out. And Nina, anticipating a public backlash, had moved into pre-emptive damage control.

Huge donations had been sent to several orphanages, and to a couple of street-kid programmes too.

And then there was The Ball.

It was to be a dazzling, glitzy affair they would all attend. Levander was to be excused because he was in England, but the rest of the family would be there. Iosef and his wife, her brother Aleksi, and of course Annika. They would all look glossy and beautiful and be photographed to the max, so that when the truth inevitably came out the spin doctors would be ready.

Already were ready.

Annika had read the draft of the waiting press release.

The revelation of his son Levander’s suffering sent Ivan Kolovsky to an early grave. He was thrilled when his second-born, Iosef, on qualifying as a doctor, chose to work amongst the poor in Russia, and Ivan would be proud to know that his daughter, Annika, is now studying nursing. On Ivan’s deathbed he begged his wife to set up the Kolovsky Foundation, which has gone on to raise huge amounts (insert current figure).

Lies.

Lies based on twisted truths. And only since her father’s death had Annika started to question them.

And now she had, everything had fallen apart.