Author's note: Thanks for all the lovely reviews, I really, really appreciate it. Keep them coming.
"Ray!"
Ray stopped in his tracks and turned around to face Susan who was just coming out of Trauma 1 with a little girl of around five. "Yeah?"
"This is Cammi. I just need someone to watch her while Abby sorts out some things with her mom."
Ray looked down at the child and then back up at Susan, defensively holding up the chart in his hand. "I'm on my way to a patient," he explained.
Susan stepped forward and took the chart out of his hand. "I'll take care of this. You keep Cammi company."
Ray was about to protest but Susan was gone. He turned his attention down to Cammi who was looking up at him. He smiled at her. "Hey, Cammi, I'm Ray."
Cammi smiled right back at him. "Hi, Ray."
"Ok, come on, let's find something fun to do, huh?"
Cammi nodded at him. He offered out his hand and she took hold of it as they walked off down the hall.
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Neela stood at the nurse's station, fighting a losing battle against a mountain of paperwork. Today really wasn't her day.
"Neela, can you take this dislocated shoulder in curtain 3 for me?" Luka asked, walking up to her with a chart.
"I'm a little snowed under right now, Luka," she pleaded.
"It's a quick one, I promise," said Luka as he placed the chart on top of her paperwork and walked away. Neela looked down at it, not impressed.
"Neela," said a female voice with a distinctive accent.
Neela looked up to see her mother and father standing in front of her. She was stunned. This really was the last thing she needed right now.
"Mum, dad," Neela stated dumbly, still assessing the situation in her mind. "What are you doing here?"
"You invited us, silly girl," her mother stated.
"I invited you, yes," Neela agreed. "But you're not supposed to be here until tonight."
"We got an earlier flight," her father explained. "We wanted to see you at work. I wanted to see that all that money was well spent."
"Dad, I'm paying you back for that. I'm working on it," Neela explained.
"Yes, and until you do it's still my money," her father stated matter-of-factly.
Neela looked annoyed but didn't say anything. She knew better than that. Instead she turned to Jerry who was sat typing at the computer a little away from her. "Jerry, can you page Ray for me, please?" she asked.
"Sure thing," he replied, reaching for the phone.
A little back-up, that's what she needed.
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Forty minutes and five pages later and Ray was nowhere to be seen. Neela was seething. Where the hell was he? She'd managed to convince her parents how busy she was and had made them wait in chairs but she could still see them looking at her.
And then she saw Ray approaching, far too casually for her liking. And next to him was some child wearing his stethoscope and holding a chart.
"Hey, Neela. This is my new friend, Cammi. That's Cammi with an 'I' and there's a little heart over the 'I'." Ray turned to Cammi. "Right?"
"Right," Cammi nodded.
Ray shot her a smile.
"Where have you been?" Neela asked him, but Ray didn't pick up on the tone.
"I've been with Cammi. Her mom was in an accident and now she's very tired so Cammi's being my assistant while mommy catches some shut-eye," Ray explained.
"I paged you five times," Neela stated.
"I didn't get any pages," Ray said, puzzled. He put his hand to his hip where he usually kept his pager. It wasn't there. He slid his hand across his waistband to his other hip. No pager. His gaze then fell to Cammi who was looking up at him. Of course, he gave his pager to Cammi along with his stethoscope and the chart. "Cammi, pager?"
Cammi took the pager off her own waistband and handed it to Ray.
"Thanks, sweetie," he said. He looked at the pager. "And it's off." He looked up at Neela. "Sorry."
"Well that's just bloody brilliant, isn't it? What if there was a trauma?" Neela asked, clearly very unhappy.
Ray looked at her like a little boy that had just been told off. "I said I was sorry, Neela."
Neela was getting more weary by the second. Her gaze fell down and she noticed Ray had a leather cuff on his wrist, a leather cuff that wasn't there earlier. "Where did that come from?" she asked. "You didn't have that on this morning."
Ray followed her gaze. "Oh, I found it in my locker." He looked up to see Neela looking very unimpressed. "What?"
Neela shook her head. She really couldn't be bothered to get into it right now.
"What did you want, anyway?" Ray asked her. She signalled to her parents sat in the waiting area. "What?" Ray asked. "Difficult patients? You need a hand?"
"They're my parents, Ray," Neela explained.
Ray looked back over at them. "Oh." He turned to face Neela again. "I thought they weren't coming 'til tonight."
"Yes, well, change of plan apparently." She stopped as she saw her parents were heading back over to her. She smiled at them. "Mum, dad, this is my boyfriend, Ray," she explained.
"Hi," Ray smiled at them and extended his hand out but no one took hold of it. Neela's mum looked his up and down and then started a conversation with Neela in Punjabi. Ray retracted his hand again. He saw Neela's dad looking at him so he smiled and gave a small nod but got no response.
Great, Ray thought to himself.
He turned his attention to Cammi who tugged a couple of times on the bottom of his lab coat.
"What are they saying, Ray?" Cammi asked him.
Ray looked over at Neela and her mother for a few seconds and then back down to Cammi. "I got no idea, kid."
