Over the next few days Lily found it gradually harder to ignore the now extremely painful stomach cramps. Harder still was her effort to keep attributing it to the time of the month: although she was nearly due she'd never experienced anything like this. She kept telling herself it was just a result of working hard and kept her almost constant discomfort a secret from her colleagues. Or so she had thought. Ethan observed an obvious difference in the junior doctor. Her patience with the other staff members was noticeably lacking and she'd become unbearably short-tempered, although she never once snapped at a patient. He'd long since worked out she was trying to impress him with her bedside manner, so he made an effort to complement her regularly. Out of the sight of patients, it wasn't just Ethan who had noticed the way she flinched in pain when she leant over, or visibly winced when he put his arm around her waist.
Lily found it somewhat easier to tell people she was fine when the ED was busy and there was no-one to take her place. But nothing escaped Zoe's eagle eyes, and it didn't take long for her to take action.
"Connie, I need a word," she said as the clinical lead stepped out of resus.
"Can it wait? There are patients in cubicles who need my attention," Connie said shortly.
"In a word, no. It'll only take a few minutes and it's important, so come on." Connie was at first a little taken aback by Zoe's tone, but something about it made her question her initial intention to pull her up for being disrespectful.
Zoe almost missed the instant quiet that fell over the clinical lead's office once the door was pressed shut. But being the clinical lead had never been her cup of tea, and it made her far happier these days to treat patients without a title holding her back.
"It's Lily. You need to make sure she isn't called into resus until further notice," Zoe said, cutting straight to the point, as was usually best with Connie – whose expression told Zoe all too clearly what she thought of this proposition. "Connie, there's something wrong with her, haven't you noticed? She is not fit to be treating patients in resus!" Zoe exclaimed.
"Be that as it may -"
"No, Connie, I'm sorry but you're wrong. You know as well as I do, this department will have far more problems if we lose a patient as a result of Lily's affected performance, than if we all just have to pick up the slack a little bit. We can function with one less doctor. For God's sake we've dealt with worse!" The two consultants fell silent, both engrossed in their own thoughts. Connie frowned, reminded of the crash which had put several of their staff out of action, including herself for a short period. Zoe slipped deep into thought about the fire that had devastated the ED almost killing Dylan and herself.
"All right," Connie finally conceded, knowing she couldn't win the dispute. "I'll do my best, thank goodness we don't have to worry about Ethan so much now. Are you going to inform Lily of our decision?"
"Not unless she asks, I don't think she'll be in favour, you know what she's like."
For the next week, Lily only ended up in resus once, and even then only to assist and never to lead. Luckily for Zoe she didn't question it, on the contrary she was almost grateful for a break. In comparison to the dynamic, high-energy environment of resus, triage was child's play.
"Be careful!" a young mother said sharply, as Lily gently lifted her son's arm and he cried out in pain.
"I'm sorry, I'm being as gentle as I can be. We're looking at an all but certain fracture; I'm waiting on a porter to take you down to X-ray." At that moment, Max came through the curtain, automatically switching on his charm.
"I'm terribly sorry young man, there's going to be a little wait, so I thought this might be of use to you." He dropped a pad of paper on the bed and produced a few felt pens from his pocket. Lily smiled appreciatively to him, before turning back to the boy and his mother.
"Seeing as you'll be waiting a little longer, I can top up your pain relief to make you more -" She suddenly took a sharp breath in and nearly doubled over in pain. Max wheeled around, having been about to leave.
"Lily! are you okay?" he asked worriedly.
"I – er – yes, um, would you mind bringing Dr Hanna please?"she said, trying to steady her voice but more preoccupied with steadying herself by gripping the side of the bed.
Less than a minute later he returned at a run, Zoe hot on his heels. Intuitively she placed one hand softly on Lily's lower back and used the other to steady her and lead her into the next cubicle, which was luckily empty.
"What happened?" she said, scanning the young doctor for any visual clues. None.
"I've just been having really bad cramps lately." She stopped to sit on the bed and hold the edge of the mattress tightly. "I'm due," she said, blushing.
"Lily, you're a doctor, of all people you shouldn't be ashamed of that. Has this happened before?"
"No," Lily said truthfully. "Never like this. And now I've humiliated myself in front of a patient to top it all off!"
"Don't worry about the patient, I can cover for you and sort him out, no problem. My office is open – in the second drawer down, on the left of the desk, there's a hot water bottle. Go to the on-call room and use it."
Lily was extremely grateful that Zoe was so understanding. Slipping into the on-call room unseen by the other ED staff members, she filled the hot water bottle and curled up on the bed, waiting for the pain to subside. Her thoughts wandered to how on earth she would explain herself, Zoe was sure to ask a lot of questions, or request to give her a check-up. Her shyness made her prickle with self-consciousness just thinking about it.
When Zoe came looking for her a short time later, the pain had completely subsided so Lily found it easy to brush it off as nothing. Zoe was worried, but she was also in a rush, so had to accept Lily's stammering explanation without further explanation.