Tato Potato, don't worry about not reviewing the last chapter. I'm posting it a bit too quickly to expect reviews every time. I really do appreciate your review though - I'm very happy you're enjoying it.
ETWentHome, thank you for your review - your reviews never cease to make me happy! I'm really glad you're enjoying it.
Tanith Panic, I hope you will like Louise more as the story progresses - but I will take it as a compliment that you think she's worth hating! Thank you for your review.
Thank you to everyone else who's still reading too.
Jacob breathed a secret sigh of relief as they finally reached the ground floor. He hadn't let his façade drop for a second – Jacob Masters never let anyone see when he was scared – but it was fair to say that the journey down the stairs had been on the hair-raising side. With three unwell patients, a wheelchair to carry and no-one else to help, Jacob had seriously been wondering if they would get out of the ED alive.
But he'd kept cheerful as they'd made their way down, helping Charlie to ensure that the boys saw it as an adventure and nothing more. Probably a false alarm, but something which they had to pay heed to all the same.
As they approached the doors, Jacob left Charlie in charge of the wheelchair as he went ahead to open the doors. They all seemed impossibly slow, but Jacob's smile didn't waver. "Out we come… and we made it! Good job, boys. The Great Escape was a success." Once they'd reached a safe distance, they all exchanged high fives.
Robyn saw them first and clapped a hand to her mouth. "Charlie! Oh my God! I didn't know you were still in there!"
"That's probably just as well, considering how worried you look!" said Jacob.
Charlie smiled. "I'm okay, Robyn. I've just been having an adventure with my room-mates. We pretended the stairs were a mountain."
"They feel like a mountain at the end of a long shift," said Robyn, her face relaxing in response to Charlie's smile.
"I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that," said Charlie.
Jacob quickly interjected. "Robyn, could you take charge of these young men while I discuss tactics with Charlie?" In reality, he wanted to check that Charlie was none the worst for his little excursion, but he knew Charlie would prefer him not to broadcast the fact.
"Sure: come with me!" said Robyn. She smiled warmly at both boys, who, to Jacob's amusement, both seemed to fall a little bit in love, though it might have been more to do with her ample chest than her smile. Jacob watched them for a moment, then turned back to the one nurse whose opinion he valued more than his own.
Lily had never been so relieved to see Cal.
Her relief lessened just slightly when she realised Cal was crying, but he'd just have to get over whatever was wrong and do his job. "Dr Knight!"
Cal jumped and brushed his hand quickly across his face.
"Dr Knight, what is wrong with you?" said Lily. "There are patients who need our assistance."
"I… I can't work now." Cal sniffed and wiped the back of his hand across his nose.
Lily gave him a disgusted look and a tissue. "You have to."
"I have to stay with Taylor." Cal gestured towards a blonde girl lying on a trolley beside him. A nurse was injecting pain relief into a cannula while another was taking her pulse. "She was attacked today. She's already been in cardiac arrest." He sniffed again, but to Lily's relief, he used the tissue this time. "I don't know the extent of her injuries, but she's in pain and I love her."
"Cal, I know this must be difficult for you, but you're a doctor and you have to put your job first," said Lily.
On the trolley, Taylor moaned.
Cal stroked her hair. "It's okay, baby. I'm still here. I'm not leaving you."
Lily ground her teeth and wondered if, under the circumstances, shaking some sense into Cal might be acceptable.
"I'm sure one of the ambulances will be back soon," Cal said to Taylor. "It shouldn't take too long to get you to St James' and once you're there, they'll be able to make you more comfortable. And I'll be with you the whole time. I promised you I wouldn't leave you and I won't."
"Cal, you can't-" began Lily, but she stopped when Louise appeared. "Louise, did you find any of the doctors?"
"No sign of any of them," said Louise. "No Mrs Beauchamp, no Dr Hanna, no Dr Keogh, no Cal, no Ethan… I don't get it. They should all be here."
This news gave Lily a nasty feeling in her stomach, but she ignored it. "I've found Cal," she said, with a flicked glance in his direction.
He was staring, aghast, at Louise. He was clearly trying to speak, but it took him several attempts to get the words out. "What do you mean: no Ethan?"
"I mean he's not in the car park," said Louise, as though she were explaining to someone considerably younger and much less intelligent than Cal. "There are no ED doctors here apart from you two."
"Then where is he?" said Cal.
Max was making another frenzied circuit of the car park when he was suddenly seized from behind. He knew at once that the arms were too strong to be Zoe's, and that she wouldn't be grabbing him like that in any case, but he couldn't help hoping and he hated himself for it.
"Where are you off to in such a hurry, Maximilian?"
Max glared at Big Mac. "I told you. It's just Max."
"Max Lindsey Gerald, so I was told," said Big Mac.
"Yeah, all right: I don't have time for this now," said Max. "I can't find Zoe!"
"She'll be around here somewhere," said Big Mac comfortingly. "There are so many people, all moving around. She might be helping the paramedics or she might have gone to St James'."
"St James'?" said Max blankly.
"The more seriously ill and injured patients are being taken there by ambulance," explained Big Mac. "So Zoe might have gone with them. Why don't we go and see if we can find Dixie or Iain? They should know."
Max nodded and went with him. He was aware of Big Mac talking to him, but he didn't hear the words. He was remembering the last time he'd seen Zoe. She'd looked so cute in Dylan's earphone-things and he'd got a sudden urge to see her wearing the earphones and nothing else.
Max stopped walking.
The earphones.
He knew Dylan used them for noise reduction… but exactly how much sound did they cut out?
Dylan knew what he ought to be doing. He needed to leave the hospital and look after the patients he still had a hope of saving. It was ridiculous to sit on the floor Resus, keeping watch over a dead body. It was stupid. It was morbid. And there were so many people who needed help.
Lofty was sitting beside him. He'd made a few attempts at speaking to Dylan, suggesting they both went outside, but Dylan had so far not spoken. There were a million thoughts racing through his head, many of them contradictory, and he couldn't talk to Lofty as well.
Anyone who saw him would think he was being obsessive-compulsive, but Dylan was actually fighting the urges fairly well. What he wanted to do was to get up and try to revive the man lying on the bed. He wanted to do that more than anything: to continue with compressions until the man was back with him.
But the logical part of his brain knew that would achieve nothing. Even if there had been a chance of saving him before, it was gone now. Too much time had passed and the defibrillator probably wasn't switched on in any case.
He knew all this, but it didn't make the urges go away.
"How are you now, Dylan?" asked Lofty, his voice patient and calm. You would never have known from listening to Lofty that there was some kind of emergency going on and they were sitting in Resus when they should have been outside at the evacuation point.
"I don't know," said Dylan.
Lofty smiled. "That's okay. I'm not really sure how I am either. I feel quite calm and I feel happy because you're talking again, but I'm sure I'm terrified really."
Dylan turned towards him as the enormity of what Lofty was doing finally hit him. "You should go. It's not safe."
"I'm not going without you," said Lofty.
Dylan was hit by a wave of terror. He breathed through it and hoped it would soon pass. He wasn't only being stupid, he was endangering Lofty's life and he didn't want that. Lofty could be irritating at times, but he was the one person in the hospital who'd accepted Dylan as he was. When Dylan suddenly shouted at him, overwhelmed by stress and panic, Lofty remained calm and unoffended. When Dylan worried about checklists and numbers, Lofty behaved as though this was utterly normal. When Dylan panicked, Lofty just waited. He never attempted to touch Dylan or to tell him everything was all right, but Dylan somehow knew that Lofty wanted to reassure him. And knowing that made him feel reassured.
"No. You have to go," said Dylan.
"Will you come with me then?" said Lofty. "I don't want to go out there on my own." He stood up and held out his hand to Dylan. "Come with me, Dylan. It's okay. It's going to be fine."