"You're only young once," he heard the scatty, bubbly and very persuasive Donna Jackson reason with her slightly severe senior nurse, Lisa Fox. "I was at a party last night. You know me, never one to miss out on a chance of fun."
"Don't I know it," the fair haired woman, not much older than Donna, try to remind her one time flat mate of her responsibilities. "but you're ten minutes late. One of your friends will be waiting to get off their shift."
"I'll work extra hard and make up for lost time as I always do," the irrepressible rubber ball personality spieled back with long practice. "Mr. Curtis, don't you agree with me?"
Will Curtis threw up his hands to resist being dragged into the matter. "Nothing to do with me, I only performs life saving operations."
His manner was the curious mixture of one who was out of his depth in dealing with fast-mouthed adolescent girls and a lordly consciousness of his importance in the affairs of hospital, and that others were mere adjuncts to this process. The fact that he was married with two children made no difference to that uneasiness as, after all, he was a busy man working long shifts to provide for his family.
"How many times have I heard that old chestnut?" a broad scouse voice came from behind him as the laughing face of Staff Nurse Tricia Williams came into view. She worked in Darwin Ward and wasn't Donna's responsibility, thank God. She was a middle aged woman whose happy go lucky manner was younger than her years and whose own daughter Chrissie worked uneasily with her. She had heard them all and had said them all.
Donna smiled sheepishly in response and took one glance out of the corner of her eye at the approaching figure and beat a hasty exit as a sterner, more determined authority figure was on hand.
"Mr. Curtis, nice of you to favour us with your presence," Came the cool commanding tones of his arch enemy, the very dominant Connie Beauchamp, Consultant Cardio thoracic Surgeon, and Medical Director of St. Mary's Hospital, Darwin Ward. She was very much in charge and let Will know of this in particular. There was no love lost between the two of them. If there was anyone Will felt tense to be around it was Connie Beauchamp. She had that knack of making him feel that she was his old schoolteacher, who had ticked him off for his shirt tail hanging out. His modern day insecurity was that her verbal fluency could leave him flat footed and had built up to the point that the slightest word made him flare up.
"I think that I am entitled to some holiday to spend time with my wife and my children but then again, you wouldn't know about such things."
His answer was delivered in that flat, neutral tone born of standing to attention as a one-time army doctor whose career path had inexplicably veered to civilian life. Even at his most boilingly angry inside, rules and regulations never allowed his tone of voice to let itself go and so he resorted to his take on subtle sarcasm if suitably provoked.
"As far as I am concerned, you don't exist outside this hospital. That's only fair, as outside my job I don't exist either," Connie retorted with a slight smile on her face and lowered eyelids that mixed the slightly flirtatious with the totally dismissive. She knew well enough that this was the perception that everyone who worked under her had of her. She had that spring heeled nimbleness in verbal sparring to twist that outrageously to her advantage. before continuing in a slightly harder tone.
"However, you know what I think if your home life ever interferes with your job…….but this is not a time for arguments. Have a nice day."
She twirled round and headed off elsewhere as she delivered that last remark so softly that it had the recipients guessing that fraction of a time too long before she was gone. Will was left fuming in her wake. He always made the mistake of trying to beat her in a fair open verbal exchange.
"Back to the chain gang, eh," Came the easy joking tones behind him that calmed Will down a little. "I've gone through that one with my children and I've come through the other side pretty unscathed."
The voice was that of Ric Griffin, Consultant General Surgeon of Keller Ward. Of Jamaican origin, he came from the same school of very English diction as Trevor McDonald. He was an easy-going man who was happy to get along with those around him. They started to stroll down the wide airy central corridor running down the central core of the hospital. It permitted a clear view down as far as the eye could see unlike the crooked, dog legged corridors of Larkhall, which were bound and limited by sets of barred gates.
"You should know as you have had enough of them…..and wives as well," Joked Professor Zubin Khan, Head of Anaesthetics. He was alluding to Ric's four ex wives and nearly a fifth and nine children which always made Zubin's mind boggle at the thought. He prided himself as a restrained man of moderation and he felt that the one late wife and grown up daughter was quite enough to handle on top of himself.
"The first time I asked for my first wife's hand in marriage, I was really nervous. When it got to the fourth, it was a piece of cake. And, as for children, can I be blamed?"
"There's no answer that I can repeat in polite company," Retorted Zubin in that slightly earnest way of speaking that he always adopted. His manner was softened by a tone of easy familiarity with Ric, born of a thirty year friendship at medical school which still made Will feel uneasy as the relative newcomer. "Got to go," He added as his place of work took him in a different direction.
"Talking of polite company, I had an argument with Connie not five seconds after I got here," Will remarked to Ric, clearly seeking sympathy from him. "Doesn't she ever let up?"
"And you lost it, I don't wonder. The secret of a happy life, Will, is not to rise to the bait which Connie dangles so temptingly in front of you," Laughed Ric. He had slipped into the not altogether welcome role of middleman, arbitrating between all sides and somehow avoiding any confrontation with Connie.
"You've not answered my question, Ric. Why does she make a dead set at me?" asked Will and a complaining tone of voice unusually broke through.
"You have to admit that Connie Beauchamp is a total professional," Explained Ric patiently. "She drives herself as hard as she drives others. You must know that from seeing her in action. She feels that anything that could go wrong in her hospital is a potential threat to herself……"
"You've put your finger on it. She feels that it is her hospital. Why on earth can't she just lighten up?"
Ric gave up. He had been Medical Director once and all it was to him was a bed of nails, eternally arbitrating between so many squabbling individualists. He would sooner have spent a day with Jess and Leo when they were hell on earth squabbling adolescents. He just didn't have that drive within him and there was a definite limit to his ambitions. He knew that Connie was different and he respected that difference when he knew, what Zubin did not, how onerous was that responsibility. He sighed. He might as well have been reasoning with Zubin who periodically got on his high horse about Connie in a similar way that Will did in his petulant fashion.
"She just wants to knock you into shape. Standard practice for young registrars," Laughed Ric.
Will winced. The words made him feel as uncomfortable as Connie's seductive intonation on those very same words that Connie had directed at Will when, for some reason which he could not explain, he gave up on his intention to go into general surgery under Ric instead of specialist cardio thoracic surgery under Connie. It had seemed a good idea at the time, only Connie's brief good humour had vanished and she was back to hounding him as before.
"Tom, will you have a look at this patient? I need a second opinion," Ric had asked of the slightly built man who quick movements visibly bristled with the authority and the mannerisms of the dominant rooster in the farmyard. It was understood that while Connie was not available with her managerial functions, Tom Campbell-Gore, consultant cardio thoracic surgeon would be on hand.
Tom narrowed his eyes while Ric's deplorable taste in rock music provided a curious accompaniment. The general public's image was of surgeons earnestly at work in total dedicated silence and would have never suspected that they could carry on an impeccably coordinated conversation as to the best course on how to operate, to be undisturbed by the variety of music going on in the background and at the same time, the very adrenaline charged and combative personalities could snipe and counter snipe at each other. Even without the mere minor details of the operation, the cross fire could be deadly, as for example between Zubin and Connie whose respective authorities in the almost military pecking order of the hospital allowed this to go on. This seemed to be similar of all institutions whose evolution owed something to military in its origins, whether hospital or prison service.
"Leave this to me," He smiled in satisfaction as he ruminated on the medical conundrum. "I've seen him before, Ric. I never forget a face. Now who is he? The name will come to me in a second."
After the light switched on in his face, Tom worked with restrained control with the tools of his trade, surrounded by his acolytes, the life saving heart monitors and other expensive machinery and a respectful Ric giving him the respect due to him.
"BP steady," Announced a flat tone, cueing him as he worked away. The tall thin figure of Zubin, the anaesthetist, hovered in the background, unusually silent as he performed his function. He was also silent as Tom's ego bruised his sensitivities as to his place in the world. A cynic about him would consider that, deep down, Zubin gained comfort in extending his long standing area of moral disapproval from Tom through to Connie, whose bold and brash intrusion into the exclusive male world of consultant surgeons, had disturbed his conventional ideas of what was right and proper. Ric could never tell Zubin that he did not know that he was well off in only having Tom to spar with and that, as he got on well enough with the other two, why on earth couldn't he get some peace and quiet in his life. The problem was that there was a tendency to take for granted his easy going tolerant surface personality.
"I don't approve of the way that Tom conducts his operations. I have nothing personal against him. It is my duty to stand up for what is right," Zubin had repeatedly urged him in those actorish tones, which Ric shrugged off. Well, Ric smiled cynically, Zubin could not claim the same about Connie. It was all a shame as, kept off those subjects, Zubin gave him that easy, friendly male company that stretched back far back in time.
Staff nurse Tricia Williams dispensed her cheerful and reassuring care lavishly to the patients on Darwin ward who perked up immediately. She felt especially on top of the world as she was sure as anything she was sure of that she was engaging the abundant Cuban-American charms of Carlos Fishola, the consultant plastic surgeon. If ever a man were an advertisement for his profession, it was he. His suave good looks combined that exotic American drawl in his voice with that Latin American charm, an irresistible combination. From the perspective of her native Liverpool, he was a window on the world and the answer to any woman's dreams, teenage or otherwise. Right now, she could manage anything, even her daughter Chrissie's testiness.
You were never sure how the day was going to go, she reflected, her mind on the job. It all came down to the registrars she came to work with. She could never work out exactly why but there was a tendency for young registrars fresh out of medical school to treat the nurses and sisters as personal slaves, dependent on the passing whim of the moment. Will Curtis should have known better but he had been one of the worst of them until time and circumstances knocked a few of those rough edges off him. He had everything coming to him that way and he seemed to have learnt a few lessons. Today, fortune had smiled on her as behind her Tash Bandara, the General Surgical Registrar strolled along behind her. She was an imperturbable woman in her mid thirties whose wise eyes must have looked out into the world from when she was a little girl. She had that knack of calming the most agitated person with that mere presence of hers. She did not have to speak a single word to achieve that effect. She was an intensely private woman who respected others privacy. So self-contained was she that Ric had spent inordinate efforts to chat her up without suspecting that she was a lesbian. She smiled to herself as she entered the ward when she recalled Ric's puzzled expression as that particular penny, so far from refusing to drop, had been irretrievably positively welded to the slot. They could work a ward between them with hardly an exchange of words but they both knew that they had spent a companionable morning together.
The rest of it was down to what emergency might break out on the wing and that everyone had to jump immediately into action.