Afternoon, Tuesday, September 12
Every year, the student nurses got obsessed with that bloody red telephone. Bryony could see two newbies standing next to it now, waiting for it to ring. It signaled trauma, and the juniors hated that.
The two student nurses moved out of her way as she brushed past them, ready to deal with her next patient.
The boy’s face was young-looking—plump-featured and sheepish—but his body was more like eleven or twelve. Tall, like the buxom woman standing in the bay next to him, and muscular, too, across the shoulders. He was holding himself cagily. His shoulder, she guessed. She checked the clipboard. Xander Burrows. His mother: Becky.
“He’s hurt his shoulder,” Becky said.
Dislocated shoulder was scrawled on the notes. Nine-year-old boy. Mother pulled him out of traffic. Relocation, reset with intranasal diamorph.
It would need strapping. “Okay,” Bryony said. “Won’t take long.”
Xander hadn’t said a word yet. Bryony silently noted it.
She had started attending further study courses a couple of years ago, when everyone she had trained with started going on endless, back-to-back maternity leaves. It gave her something to do to pass the time while her friends were off. The classes were full of overenthusiastic people, but she liked the day away from the hospital and the cups of tea. First was the advanced ulcer prevention course. But after that was the safeguarding course—now, that really had been interesting—and she was soon promoted to be the safeguarding nurse, tasked with referring suspicious admissions upward. As with everything, though, it hadn’t exactly turned out as planned, and she now spent her days spotting pedophiles and abusers and drug addicts and filling in forms about them.
She looked down at the notes again. Mother pulled boy out of oncoming traffic.
“Traffic, then?” she said.
“Nightmare,” the mother said.
The boy still hadn’t said anything. He was staring down at the floor, chin almost on his chest. He had thick dark hair, black eyelashes, and blue eyes.
“You really look like my nephew. Though he’s not as big a lad as you.”
“Right,” Xander said.
“What are you—ten?” She knew his age from the notes, of course, but she wanted to flatter him. To put him at ease.
“Nine.”
“Big school next year?” she said.
“Year after.”
Xander darted a nervous look at his mum, then flicked his eyes back down to the floor. Bryony watched, waiting for it again.
A man arrived in the bay behind her, drawing the curtain back. “Sorry,” he said. “Xander’s dad.” He looked youthful, with blond, boyish hair, tanned skin, and Xander’s blue eyes.
“All right,” he said, more to Becky than to Xander.
She started strapping Xander’s shoulder. “This will pull a bit,” she said. She didn’t like to bullshit. “But it’ll be worth it for feeling better.” He met her eyes and she smiled. “My nephew comes over every Wednesday evening,” she said as she tightened the strapping and he winced. “He likes my rabbits.”
“Rabbits?” Xander said shyly.
He was coming out of his shell, she could tell. Very slowly.
“I’ve got two. House rabbits—giant.”
“Wow,” he said. He smiled. Two dimples, either side of his mouth.
“Yep. They like to sleep by the fire.”
“I need to call Martha,” Becky said to Xander’s father, rising from her perch beside her son on the bed. “I was supposed to be meeting her and Layla in the park, and I’ve dashed off.”
Becky had that artfully messy hair the new nurses were sporting. It drifted around her shoulders as she walked out the door.
“See you,” the man said easily, sitting down so heavily that Xander bounced on the bed and set his mouth in a grim, straight line. But he didn’t cry out.
That was unusual, too.
She concentrated on the strapping. The tape was rough underneath her fingertips. She liked doing a tight, deft strap. This was all nursing used to be. Not a risk assessment form in sight.
Xander seemed happy enough, sitting on the bed, studying the bedsheets. Not in too much pain if he was still.
“So you’re Dad,” she said, looking across at the father.
He was staring at Xander.
“Marc, yes,” he said. “Pleasure.” He nodded at her.
“Your son will be right as rain in no time,” she assured him.
Marc turned to Xander as though she wasn’t there. “So, mate. Climbing frame? A bit of rough-and-tumble?”
Xander frowned at him, confused, while Bryony watched.
So he didn’t know. Oh. They were divorced, separated, maybe. “Almost done,” she said to Xander, noticing he hadn’t answered Marc yet.
The boy lifted his right arm and raked his hair back.
“No,” he said to his dad eventually.
“What, then?” There was just the slightest edge to Marc’s tone.
Xander was quiet.
“Nothing,” he said after a few moments.
Bryony’s hands stilled. Xander was staring fixedly at the curtain, as though he was concerned it would be slid across at any moment.
To Bryony’s annoyance, the father didn’t push him. She carried on strapping, the under/over motion as rhythmical and as natural to her as walking or swimming. Under and then over. Pull it tighter. Under and then over.
Marc evidently knew his son better than Bryony thought because, eventually, Xander spoke. “She just yanked me,” he said.
“Mum?” the man said, his blue eyes suddenly even wider.
Goose bumps appeared all over Bryony’s body.
Okay. This wasn’t courses. This wasn’t paperwork.
This was real.
A woman. It was never a woman. It was almost always the man, they said in the course. She had nodded, feeling vindicated in her single status.
She finished strapping.
“Yeah. In the kitchen,” Xander said.
The hairs on her arms stood up. He was contradicting his mother’s story. One of them was lying.
She ought to stop and report, refer up to Social Services. Perhaps even direct it to the police. But she couldn’t help herself. She felt a fizzing in her veins, the way laypeople would never understand. Rare cancers, abuse, interesting blood work. They got all the medics going. She had forgotten. She had forgotten how it felt.
“The kitchen, you say?” she said, trying to make her voice sound friendly but detached. “Our kitchen growing up was full of dangerous things.”
Xander looked away then, not saying anything more. She was putting the final piece of tape down when Becky reappeared. Xander’s expression dropped, turning sullen.
Marc looked at Becky. “All right?” he said to her.
Becky met his eyes and held his gaze for just a moment longer than was usual. “Yeah,” she said.
That was interesting, too. So they were divorced or separated, but he didn’t accuse her. Still looked at her with warmth, and just a dash of wariness. But no accusation.
Marc brought his hand across his face and rubbed at his stubble.
Bryony turned to leave them. “All done,” she said to Becky. She couldn’t let her know. That was one of the rules. Act naturally, then refer. Don’t arouse suspicions.
She couldn’t help but sneak a look at Becky. Green eyes, nice makeup. Cagey-looking, if she were being critical. Becky’s eyes flicked down toward the corridor, then back to meet Bryony’s gaze again. I know you, Bryony thought. You might be middle-class, in a thigh-length camel-colored cardigan. You might not be typical. But your son is frightened of you.
She reported it immediately.
“Yes, that’s suspicious,” the social worker agreed. “Very. We’ll take it from here.”
The words rang in her ears just like the red telephone.
Trauma. Abuse. Poor kid.