Two of a kind
Part 4
After a thirty second long awkward silence which felt like an hour, Jac finally decided to say something.
"What would you like me to do?" she asked Dixie as she tried to shake off her "reputation."
"Well the fire fighters are saying its safe for a couple of us to go in now, so if you'd like to that and perhaps Mr. Byrne could help the casualties outside the building," Dixie suggested.
Jac looked at the burning block of flats, it didn't look that safe to her, in fact in looked like it could collapse at any minute. She pondered whether or not to take up Dixie's offer for a few seconds before deciding she'd be better risking her life than listening the Joseph's snide remarks.
"Ok I'll go in, who's coming with me?" Jac asked, surely they wouldn't send her in alone. She glanced at Ruth hopefully.
As Jac caught Ruth's eye, Ruth quickly looked away, staring at the ground. She wondered why Jac was staring at her, why would she want to go on a potentially fatal mission with someone who was more of an ice queen that her. After twenty seconds of everyone twitching and trying to avoid eye contact with Jac, Ruth looked up and agreed to go with her.
"I'll guess I'll go then," said Ruth unenthusiastically, what did she have to lose anyway. Surely being in a burning building was better than listing to Jeff and Dixie's childish banter.
Jac smiled slightly and gestured Ruth to follow her as they headed towards the entrance of the flats. Ruth nodded and trudged along behind.
"I could do with the experience after all", Ruth muttered to herself under her breath, shaking her head.
"Did you say something?" Jac said looking a bit confused.
"No," said Ruth quickly, "nothing important anyway." She nervously smiled at Jac then quickly looked away again.
Jac just shook her head and kept walking towards the building. She suddenly realised who Ruth was, turns out she wasn't the only one with a reputation, she knew she looked familiar. Jac remembered seeing in the local paper about a junior doctor for the E.D attempting suicide and Ruth was that doctor. She wondered if it was such a good idea going into the flats with someone that was probably mentally unstable. Even if Jac had done some unforgivable things, at least she always knew her own head and wasn't likely to throw herself out of a fifth floor window. She
decided now wasn't the time to be sizing Ruth's ability up and decided to just hope for the best.
"Are we going in then Dr. Winters?" asked Jac, just to check Ruth was actually going to go in with her.
Ruth nodded and said, "Should we split up when we get in there?" Ruth thought she was perfectly capable to handle the situation alone without some scary surgeon minding her.
"I think we should probably stay together, just in case something happens," replied Jac, seeing that Ruth was clearly annoyed that her idea had been shut down. But there was no way she was going to let a junior doctor wander alone into a situation like that. If something happened to one of them the other would be blamed and neither them needed anymore of a reputation.
Meanwhile Joseph and the paramedics were helping the walking wounded by the ambulances. Suddenly there was a bang, which sounded like extremely loud thunder. The fire fighters came running over to Dixie informing her that the staircase had collapsed and the two female doctors had just gone in.
