Chapter One
It was 9pm and Lily was preparing for the night shift. A day of deep sleep followed by sudden, jagged wakefulness had left her exhausted and, even she realised, not at her best. It wasn't fair, she needed to be on form and she had tried to deal with her grief. She had approached it methodically, clinically, starting with a diagnosis. But once she had diagnosed grief she faltered and then fell face first into a lack of self-awareness. Lily has, she realised, flung on ambition as if she were covering an ugly outfit with a stylish coat and now her father's death had ripped off the buttons.
What was underneath she couldn't understand. She had a vague idea of herself, of a cruel and jealous little girl staring out of a pretty, clever doctor. A vague idea of disguising maliciousness as drive and bitterness as ambition. Of lying to herself and fooling nobody.
By the time Lily left the house she was already late. It had taken her too long to decide what to wear. Ridiculous, she knew, but nothing had looked right. Even the expensive silk blouse and skinny black trousers with impractical heels didn't make her look like Connie, like someone who could run an emergency department. She looked like a child in her mother's clothes. Tripping into her car, unsteady in the heels, Lily shivered realising that the brisk cold of November had wound its way inside during the day. Starting up the engine she turned the radio on and was in the hospital car park before it even occurred to her that maybe she should have called in sick.
It was a quiet shift, Wednesday night's tended to be reasonably peaceful. Lily supposed it was a good thing. Better to be told by Alicia that she had missed a mild concussion than a traumatic brain injury. Sitting alone in the on call room, though, she didn't think she had ever felt worse. It was bad enough that grief was crippling her emotionally; she didn't need a crippled career as well. Lying back Lily faced the wall as she tried to compose herself. A patient presents with a severe asthma attack, what would she do? Use the severity assessment table to choose the correct treatment pathway. Measure and record the peak flow, pulse rate, pulse oximetry. Had her father been proud of her? No, what had she missed? She needed to check arterial blood gasses and capillary blood gases if they were available. And then what? Check the levels of increasing symptoms. She had done all of this to make him proud, sprinted through her career, hurtling towards the day she would become a consultant. And then he had died. Check the amount of reliever use prior to presentation. All that pressure, all those times he had told her to make him proud. And he hadn't bothered to stay alive to see her do it. He never gave her the chance. Check the use of accessory muscles.
'Lily. Lily you need to wake up.'
Typical. Alicia. Lily sat up to see her mentee nervously waiting just out of reach as if she expected a physical assault rather than a verbal one.
'What mistake do you need me to fix for you this time?'
Alicia widened her eyes in shock and Lily wondered if she still believed in Santa Clause. She'd never last in an Emergency Department. Probably not as a doctor either, frankly Lily would be surprised if she graduated.
'No it's…. it's not me. You've overslept. Everyone's been looking for you like an hour. Mrs Beauchamp's going mental.'
'What?' Lily scrabbled to the edge of the bed and onto the floor. 'That simply isn't possible. I set my alarm.'
Alesha stood awkwardly watching as Lily checked and double checked her phone. Her confusion would have been funny if she didn't look like she was going to cry.
'I mean I'm sure it's fine. Like I'm sure Mrs Beauchamp will understand if you explain you overslept. She wants to see you though, by the way, straight away in her office.'
Lily burst into tears.