LITMIR.BIZ

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Bella replied easily, walking towards the drug room with Jayne.

      ‘How’s Mrs Adams?’

      ‘Better. Heath’s still in with her. She’s still upset, though. Oh, that’s what I came out for. Where do I get tissues? There aren’t any spare boxes in the interview room.’

      ‘I’ll get Tony onto it for you,’ Jayne answered, swiping her ID on the drug-room door and waiting for the access light to turn green.

      ‘The domestic?’ Bella checked. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll ask him. I actually want him to service the room while he’s in there, it looks as if a bomb’s hit it.’

      ‘I’ll speak to him about it,’ Jayne said, fiddling with the drug cupboard keys then giving a rather weary sigh as she opened it. ‘Remember to smile for the camera!’

      ‘So it is true, then?’ Bella asked innocently. ‘Drugs really are going missing?’

      ‘I’m afraid so. I’m sorry you had to find out that way but, with the way gossip spreads in this place, it’s just as well that you know and can understand why everyone seems to be acting a bit strange at times. No one likes being under suspicion and until they catch whoever is responsible we’re going to just have to live with it. It’s awful, isn’t it?’ Jayne added. ‘That’s why I came on a bit strong out there. We have to be more careful, have to,’ she reiterated. ‘It’s all very well for Heath to say I’m overreacting, but he isn’t the one signing his name at the beginning and end of the shift in the drug records.’

      ‘And there are really cameras in there?’ Bella peered inside, staring at the neat rows of drugs and pretending to try and locate a lens.

      ‘Not in there.’ Jayne laughed. ‘At least, not that I’ve heard. Up there.’ She gestured to a small black box on the ceiling. ‘It’s supposed to be hidden, but everyone knows it’s there.’

      ‘Gosh.’ Bella stared upwards, resisting a childish urge to wave to her colleagues.

      ‘Anyway, it’s nothing for you to worry about. Just make sure you check things carefully and don’t be rushed. It’s just common sense really.’ Pulling out a box of pethidine, she opened the drug book. ‘Pethidine, 100 milligrams. There should be nineteen ampoules.’ Swinging the ampoules around in the package so the drug name was visible on each, she waited patiently while Bella checked. ‘I’m taking one, which leaves eighteen.’ They both signed off the drug book and safely locked everything away then Jayne collected a kidney dish and syringe as Bella watched. ‘This is for a Mr Benjamin Evans, a forty-eight-year-old who was trying to put the roof on a pergola this morning and forgot to secure the ladder. He’s hurt his back.’

      ‘Ouch.’ Bella grimaced.

      ‘He’s had X-rays and Jordan, the registrar, has had a look. The damage is muscular, so we’re going to give him this and send him home in a couple of hours for a few days of bed rest.’

      ‘One hundred milligrams?’ Bella checked, looking at Jordan’s writing, surprisingly neat for a doctor.

      ‘He’s a big guy,’ Jayne responded, pulling up the drug into a syringe and placing it in the kidney dish. ‘And a bit of a baby,’ she added. ‘You’ll soon see.’

      Walking towards the cubicles, Bella didn’t need to be told twice who the medication was for—the groans coming from cubicle four spoke for themselves. But at that moment Jayne’s pager shrilled loudly.

      ‘Damn,’ she cursed, glancing down at the little bleeper clipped to her blouse. ‘I need to get this. Bella, go and tell him I’ll be there in two seconds.’

      ‘Sure.’

      He certainly was a big guy. Mr Evans practically filled the trolley, but Jayne’s rather mean description that he was a baby seemed a touch harsh, Bella thought as she introduced herself to the patient. He was in a lot of pain yet still he managed an understanding nod when Bella explained there was a bit of a hold-up with the medication.

      ‘It shouldn’t be too much longer, Mr Evans.’

      ‘Ben.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s my own stupid fault anyway. That’ll teach me to go climbing ladders.’

      ‘Just think.’ Bella smiled, happy to make small talk to keep his mind off the pain. ‘In a few weeks this will all be behind you and you’ll be sitting under your lovely new pergola, having a nice cold beer.’

      ‘If I ever get the roof on the damn thing!’

      ‘Sorry about that, Mr Evans.’ Jayne bustled in, waving the kidney dish and prescription chart as Bella checked the patient’s name band.

      ‘Benjamin Evans, ID number 1514103.’

      They both checked the name band and drug sheet, making sure the identity matched before turning to the drug order.

      ‘Pethidine 100 milligrams,’ Jayne confirmed, and Bella nodded. ‘OK, Mr Evans, just a small scratch.’ Swabbing his thigh, Jayne slipped in the needle and delivered the powerful drug, before carefully disposing of the needle and syringe in the sharps box on the wall. ‘Now, that should take a little while to start working, but once it does, you’ll be feeling a lot more comfortable.’

      “Thanks, Sister.’

      ‘You were very nice to her,’ Bella said a couple of hours later as Heath wandered into the staffroom, where she stood attempting to read the instructions on a massive vending machine and rueing the fact that the five-dollar note in her hand wasn’t going to fit into the coins-only slot.

      She meant it.

      After the initial discomfort Heath had guided the trembling woman through the event, listened as she’d told them how she’d bought the tablets from a ‘doctor’ on the internet, sure this would be the answer to Charles’s little problem.

      And he’d been wonderful, gently explaining to Celia that the tablets she and Charles had purchased could, in fact, be dangerous in the wrong hands, that Charles’s cardiac condition meant he wasn’t suitable for that type of medication. However, he’d gently said, it didn’t mean it wasn’t treatable, that with a sympathetic real doctor they could, when Charles was better, resume a fulfilling sex life.

      ‘And very well informed on erectile dysfunction too,’ Bella added with a cheeky smile, giving up on the vending machine and heading for the massive tin of brown powder that supposedly passed as coffee and pulling out a mug to wash from the overflowing sink.

      ‘I was about to buy you a coffee,’ Heath responded, not remotely fazed by the below-the-belt humour nurses lived by—police officers, too, come to that. ‘But if you’re going to be like that, I guess I’ll just have to watch you suffer.’ He fed a dollar coin into the machine and Bella listened as it whirred into motion, the delicious smell of coffee beans reaching her nostrils as Heath stood watching his cup fill, jangling his loose change in his suit pocket. ‘Are you going to take that back?’

      ‘Absolutely.’ Bella smiled, weakening instantly, the smell of coffee just too good to resist. ‘I think there’s algae growing in that sink. Doesn’t anyone ever wash up here?’

      ‘No,’ Heath said, and Bella could have sworn there was an edge to his voice. ‘But whenever I say anything, apparently I’m nagging.’

      ‘Says who?’

      ‘Jayne!’ Heath rolled his eyes. ‘Apparently, since my temporary promotion I’ve become picky, that if I were just a bit easier on the domestic staff they might stick around a bit longer. The place is falling apart and I’m not supposed to notice!’

      ‘Do you have change for a note?’

      He rolled his eyes and fed a dollar into the machine then headed off, leaving Bella to make her selection. If she had just been a nurse the conversation would have ended there—the polite small talk made around the coffee-machine, a fifteen-minute break from outside activity definitely

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