Splintered Memory Read Online Free Page A

for the phone, which Emily passed to him. He looked at her curiously, and she handed him the x-ray that she’d been carrying around with her whilst she’d been looking for him and that she wanted him to look at.
    “Thanks ,” he said as he took the phone from her. He then wedged it into its usual position between his shoulder and ear whilst at the same time taking the x-ray and looking at it.
    H e held it up into the light, and as he looked at it Emily looked at him and tried to gage what he was thinking. She’d come to be able to read his face better than anyone else in the hospital, and she could sometimes tell from his expression alone what orders he would give for a patient before he even spoke.
    Dr Grayson was not only her teacher , and an extraordinarily good doctor, but outside of the hospital he and his wife were her friends. Yet as she continued to watch him she stifled a yawn. She was tired, but then they were all tired. It’d been a long day, and she hadn’t even been in for as long as Dr Grayson had. She also knew from a conversation that she’d had with Charlie earlier in the week that Dr Grayson had virtually been living at the hospital for the past few weeks, and it was showing. He looked dead on his feet, and she wondered how he was still standing.
    “It ’s fine,” he said handing the x-ray back to her; “but we’ve got a couple of ambulances on the way in. There’s been an accident on the Bristol road, two men from one car with minor injuries, and one female in a bad condition from another. It sounds like she’s gonna be DOA though.”
    Emily lo oked at him and saw her own tiredness reflected back in his. At that moment her pager also began to buzz and she followed Dr Grayson towards the ambulance bay, and as she walked she tried to shake off the tiredness that was descending upon her with increasing urgency.
    ***
    Her whole life had been dedicated to becoming a doctor. So when she’d found herself ready to quit within the first two weeks, she’d been confounded as to why. She’d had no idea why she’d been struggling so much with the demands of a life as a doctor, and she’d been devastated.
    Emily had known that a career in medicine would be hard. She’d known that unlike many other professions, it wasn’t a job where you worked a standard forty hour week. It wasn’t a job where you clocked in and out at the same time every day. Yet what she hadn’t realised was that none of her preparations, nor her desire to be a doctor, would actually help her cope with the continual tiredness that she’d felt on a day to day basis.
    The twelve hour shifts were gruelling, and always ran longer than twelve hours. Working in the A&E meant that you never really had slow days. You never had the same patients. You were constantly challenged with different situations, and your medical knowledge and ability to react quickly was always being tested to breaking point. She’d also had to learn that being tired wasn’t an excuse for errors or delays. There simply couldn’t be any delays when your decisions resulted in a patient living or dying.
    I f it hadn’t been for Charlie, Emily felt sure that she wouldn’t have completed her first month at the hospital. Every shift had become overwhelming, and the sleep deprivation had begun to feel like it was killing her. She knew that if she hadn’t stumbled across the infamous Mrs Grayson when she’d been sat outside the A&E crying, then she would have walked away from medicine.
    ***
    “Dr Peters isn’t it?” A young woman asked sitting down next to Emily.
    “Y es,” Emily said slightly bemusedly not knowing who this woman was.
    “I’m Charlotte Grayson. Don’t worry, ” she said smiling kindly; “I’m not a patient, or an angry patient’s next of kin that wants to yell at you. I’m just here to see if I can find my husband.”
    “You mean Dr Grayson ?” Emily asked, and then she smiled and added; “well obviously you do, you just said that