Ethan drove Cal home with the intention of picking up his brother's car in the morning (Cal couldn't drive himself after all the drinks friends had insisted on buying for him). Ethan slowly mulled through everything that Robyn had told him. Could it really be possible that Taylor was having someone else's baby? He decided to leave Cal downstairs and headed to his room, where he got changed and climbed into his bed. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't sleep. He tossed and he turned but nothing helped. Instead he focused on the sounds from downstairs, the gentle hum of the TV playing an old football game, the occasional clinking of bottles as a pile formed in the recycling bin. When that failed he climbed out of bed and grabbed his iPod from his bag. He rammed the headphones in and played reruns of old comedy sketch shows. He curled up in the duvet and let the canned laughter carry him into sleep.
It was 4:30 am when the alarm blared too early and a weary Ethan lugged himself out of bed and down the stairs. How much sleep had he actually had? It felt like mere minutes, but it must have been at least 3 hours. Still, not a lot. He scrawled a note for Cal before making himself a strong cup of coffee:
Cal,
I have the 6-6 Sunday shift. Your car is still outside the pub- if you want it go and get it.
Ethan
He sat and sipped his coffee, willing the caffeine do its job as soon as possible, while looking out of the window into the darkness. It may be near the beginning of spring but it certainly didn't feel like it. The 6-6 shifts were horrible. You drove to work in the dark only to drive home in the dark; spending your day in the artificial lights of the hospital. He was pretty sure prisoners see more daylight than him on days like this... He grabbed an apple and munched it as he ran back upstairs and got changed. He was out of the house by 5:20 and made it to the hospital ten minutes before his shift began. Robyn followed him in.
'Have you talked to Cal?'
'Not exactly...'
'What do you mean? It's too early to make me think!'
'I have talked to him just not about the whole baby situation. We got home, I went to bed and he had several more bottles of beer in front of a football match.'
'Please promise me that you'll talk to him soon!'
'Look, Robyn. I don't want to break my brother's heart. I don't want to hurt him. If I'm going to tell him anything about this it's once I know for definite and there is no other explanation.'
'So what do we do?'
'You start your shifts - it's 6 o'clock.' Robyn and Ethan turned around to find Connie stood at the door to the staff room. Didn't that woman ever go home?!
As Robyn had said: it was too early to think. For now, the priority was getting through the day without dropping off in the middle of tending to any patients. Thinking could come later, but by the end of their shift neither Robyn nor Ethan had the energy to continue their discussion following a major RTC involving a packed bus and a lorry. It was days like today where they really felt the strain of the career path they had chosen, with its never ending flow of injured patients.
Yes, it was normally rewarding, but it was also physically and mentally exhausting. So thinking could wait longer still... At this rate, Ethan may be able to delay it forever...