Australian Affairs: Tempted: Tempted by Dr. Morales

‘Where’s Harry?’ Lillian asked as she walked through the observation ward.

‘He’s at home.’

‘He’s still on call, though?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cate, something has to be done,’ Lillian said. ‘What if he gets called in tonight?’

‘I believe he’s making arrangements, although the consultants’ childcare plans are not a nursing concern.’ Cate did her best to terminate the conversation but Lillian was having none of it.

‘It becomes a nursing concern when it’s the nurses who end up watching the said consultant’s children. Cate, you’re the acting nurse unit manager.’

‘As of tomorrow.’

Juan’s eyes snapped open as he heard Cate’s tart response. He hadn’t been asleep for a moment, but since his time on the spinal unit he was exceptionally good at pretending that he was.

‘Well, as of tomorrow, Cate, it will be up to you to ensure it doesn’t happen.’

‘That what doesn’t happen, Lillian? That we don’t ask Harry to come in when we’re without a consultant or concerned about a patient? Is that what you want?’ Cate looked her boss in the eye. ‘I happen to be very grateful that the nursing staff have a consultant who, despite personal problems, is prepared to come in at short notice when he’s not even rostered on. I’m very grateful to have a consultant who will accept a worried phone call from a member of the nursing staff and get in his car and come straight in.’

‘It can’t continue.’

‘I’m sure Harry is more than aware that the situation is far from ideal.’

Juan lay there and listened as the director of nursing pointed out some health and safety issues. He listened as the nurse who had admitted she liked working in Emergency because of the back-up she received from her colleagues backed up a member of her own team one hundred per cent.

‘What if one of the nurses can’t get a babysitter?’ Lillian challenged. ‘We can’t run a crèche in the staff-room!’

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’

‘Not good enough, Cate.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Cate responded. ‘And it’s a poor comparison. If a nurse can’t come in I can ring the hospital bank to have them cover a shift or I can ask for a nurse to be sent from the wards. We have ten nurses on duty at any one time, but there aren’t very many emergency consultants to call on at short notice.’

He heard the director of nursing walk off and he heard a few choice words being muttered under Cate’s breath and he couldn’t help but smile, but it faded as Cate took a phone call and then came over.

‘Are you awake?’

Juan turned over and looked at her. ‘I am now.’

‘How are you feeling?’

He gave a wry laugh.

‘I just took a phone call from a Ken Davidson,’ Cate told him. ‘Apparently he helped you today. He said he waited until your bike was picked up.’

‘Did you get his number?’ Juan asked, relieved that the call hadn’t been from Martina. ‘I need to thank him.’

‘I did,’ Cate said. ‘He’s also got your wallet.’

‘Thanks.’ Juan said. ‘And I’m sorry for what I said before about you getting back to your stock. You do a great job—I guess I was just spreading the misery.’

Cate gave a small nod of acceptance. ‘Harry’s happy for you to go when you’re ready or you can stay the night.’

‘I’ll go home, thanks.’

‘Do you want a lift when I finish?’

‘Do you always offer patients a lift home?’ Juan asked.

‘I would offer any colleague a lift home in the circumstances.’

‘Then that’d be great.’

It was either that or ask to borrow fifty dollars for a taxi.

For Juan, it was Indignity City today.

Juan borrowed a pair of scrubs and she watched him try not to wince as he bent down to pull on his boots. He carried a bag containing his clothes and crash helmet and they walked, pretty much in silence, to her car.

It wasn’t how it was supposed to have been, Juan thought. He loathed all his secrets being out, but now they were and, as he had expected, she was acting differently with him.

‘Watch the speed bumps,’ Juan said as she drove him home slowly. ‘I might jolt my neck and suddenly have no feeling from the chest down.’

‘You don’t need to be sarcastic.’

‘You’re driving as if you have a Ming vase rolling around on the back seat,’ he pointed out.

‘I’m a careful driver,’ Cate said, about to add, unlike some of us, but Juan turned and saw Cate press her lips firmly closed.

‘I should have just run it over,’ Juan said. ‘I should have killed the baby koala bear.’

‘It wasn’t a koala,’ Cate said, and she almost smiled. Almost. But Juan knew she thought he shouldn’t have been out motorcycling in the first place.

‘So, I am supposed to walk slowly, not run, not climb, not surf or ski…’ He looked over at her. ‘Athletes go back and compete after the injury I sustained. I am not doing anything my doctor does not know about. I walk everywhere, I run most days. I take my health seriously.’

‘I get it.’ Cate gripped the wheel.

‘I don’t think you do.’

‘I get it, okay?’ There were tears in her eyes as she realised he was right, and yet her fear had been real. ‘I just got a fright when I heard how seriously injured you had been.’

He looked at her tense profile.

‘Fair enough,’ Juan conceded. ‘Do you know how my accident happened?’ Cate said nothing. ‘I was going to get a haircut…’ He gave a wry laugh as Cate drove on. ‘It was embarrassing really on the spinal unit. There were guys who had been diving, playing sport, car accidents—I had been walking to get a haircut. A car driven by an elderly woman mounted the kerb and really only clipped me, but the way I fell…’ He let out a long, exasperated sigh. ‘It was bad luck, chance, whatever you want to call it.’

‘So now you take risks?’

‘Yes, because I never did before and look where it got me, lying on my back paralysed from the neck down. Now I live, now I do as I please…’

‘It’s all just a game to you, isn’t it?’

‘It’s no game,’ Juan said. ‘I have ridden a bike for years, it is how I get around back home. I’m not on some daredevil mission. I’m living my life, that’s all.’

‘Well, your fiancée is beside herself.’

‘Ex.’

‘Because you’re too bloody proud and have too much to prove.’

‘You don’t know me.’ His grey eyes flashed back; it was the closest Juan had come to a row in a very long time. It was the closest he had come to anyone in a long time and that was what he had been trying to avoid, Juan reminded himself as they pulled up at his apartment and he climbed out.

‘I know that today would have been your first wedding anniversary,’ Cate called to his departing back, and watched as he turned slowly.

‘It would have been, except Martina decided she didn’t want to marry a man in a wheelchair.’

Cate sat there, her knuckles white as she clutched the wheel. Of all the things he might have told her, that was the last she had been expecting.

‘Juan!’

She went to step out of the car.

‘Please, don’t.’ Juan put his hand up. ‘Thank you for the lift.’

‘Juan,’ Cate said. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Because I didn’t want you to know.’

‘I don’t want to just leave you—’

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