♪♪You're not alone, together we stand
I'll be by your side, you know I'll take your hand
When it gets cold and it feels like the end
There's no place to go, you know I won't give in♪♪
ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ [Keep holding on] - [Avril Lavigne]
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Kian walked into the hospital with a sense of urgency in his stride. The urgency that he considered every doctor or nurse should have with grace.
There shouldn't be any form of sluggishness or blunders in the profession. It was because Kian had learnt the hard way he came across as harsh towards his fellow associates. He simply wanted to ensure no one else made the same mistake he did.
Which is why he was going to follow through with his promise to keep a close eye on Petra.
The thought of Petra drifted his mind back to the patient in question. He exhaled while he thought of all the complications that they could face with the patient.
No matter what it took, he decided, he would handle it the way he learnt was the best way.
The fierce smell of antiseptic and bleach wafting from bedding filled his nostrils, and he immediately got a particular drive for his work. He glanced around the crowded lobby to see it filled with different patients that were being attended to or required attention. Echoes of grunts and hisses of pain flowed through the lobby along with voices over the intercom calling out codes and directions.
His fast stride towards the lobby desk slowed down the minute he noted four nurses behind the desk, bright and gossiping away.
His eyes squinted in disdain at the scene before him. They were chatting during working hours, early in the morning.
He cleared his throat to gain their attention.
The lobby went silent as their light chirpy voices instantly ceased the moment they looked up and recognized him.
All the nurses, except the one whose job was to be there, darted away.
"Good morning, Dr Lincoln," the nurse greeted nervously with a strained smile. She adjusted her looks to pass off like she hadn't been slacking off a few seconds ago.
Kian shook his head slightly in disapproval. A pinched, unhappy expression appeared on his face as he peered at the nurse.
Noticing her nerves on edge, he overlooked her. At the minute, he had other things to think about. He ignored her greeting and picked up the pen on the desk to check-in.
Another voice greeting him grabbed his attention. He looked up in the direction of the voice to meet another nurse, who he recognised was not among the ones who had hurried away earlier.
He switched expression from the frown of disapproval to a neutral look, "Morning..." He read her name on her tag, "Nurse Bennet, is there a problem?" his head tilted to the side in inquisition.
"Not so much, sir. The patient in room W-1B is awake," Nurse Bennet explained.
Kian's eyes widened with interest at the new piece of information. He dropped the pen, not sparing the other nurse a glance as he paid no attention to the previous incident any more.
A more vital issue needed his scrutiny. He walked straight up toward his office, past Nurse Bennet to get all he needed.
Nurse Bennet followed him promptly, knowing he would have questions.
"Any complications?" he asked her once they got to his office.
With a smooth speed, he took hold of his white coat from the hanger it was resting on and put it on. As he buttoned up his coat, he realised she hadn't answered his question. He swirled around to face her, only to notice her watching him.
"Nurse Bennet, I asked you a question." He cleared his throat to gain her attention back.
Snapped back into reality, Nurse Bennet titled her head to the side to hide the pink flush on her cheeks for being caught staring.
"N... none sir," she stammered and coughed to get a hold on herself, "I mean she's still really confused, she can't really talk properly. It's hard for her but she's calm since I have already told her she's safe and in the hospital. I noticed she's scared. However, I've assured her that once the doctor arrives, he will answer her questions," she said in one breath.
"Good," Kian said grabbing his stethoscope and other needed pieces of equipment. Used to having responses from the nurses like that, he didn't dwell on it and was pleased that she could control herself.
He directed them out of his office towards the patient's room. "And Nurse Wilson?"
"I have informed her. She'll meet you in there."
"That'll be all." He dismissed her and collected the patient's file from her.
Soon after he got to the door of the patient's room, a wave of force hit him. He staggered and almost tripped. Able to balance himself fast, he pivoted around to send a cold, hard glare to whoever hadn't been looking at where they were going.
The look intensified as he noticed who collided with him.
"Oops," Petra chimed lightly, "My, my, I didn't see you there, Doctor Lincoln. Pardon me, excited here," she added with a nervous chuckle.
Kian shook his head at her. "I honestly don't understand how you could be a chief nurse at such a prestigious hospital."
"Well, it's like everyone says. I'm doing nothing but living off my family's connection," she responded with a tight smile, calmly hating the thought of that topic of discussion.
Although she responded calmly, Kian saw through it and remembered just how the topic affected her. He chastised himself inwardly for bringing it up.
He opened his mouth to say something else, but Petra cut in before he got the chance. "You nervous?"
His eyebrow arched upwards at the absurdity of her statement. Nervous. He scoffed at her, "I think the one who is nervous is you."
He opened the door of the room finally so they could step inside and get the whole thing over with.
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Her ears picked up the sound of the door being opened and her eyes followed the sound to see a male figure and a female figure walk in towards her.
The patient took in the brown sugar comb-over hair of the male that fit his oval square-jawed face that was shaved clean and the caramel straight hair of the female in a nice ponytail that showed her oblong face and cat-like eyes better.
She noted the caramel straight hair and linked it to the hair she noticed the previous day.
The patient also remembered what the first nurse that attended to her informed her. A doctor and a nurse would come to answer her questions.
She took in their choice of clothing and compared it to that of the nurse and knew they were the hospital personnel that were going to attend to her.
Although she knew this piece of information, as they drew closer to her, she couldn't stop the way her heart raced out of order. The electrocardiogram (ECG) sound by her side came in quicker, responding to her quick, nervous heartbeat.
She noticed how both their eyes turned to the machine. The nurse's eyes widened in panic and rushed over to her right side.
"Hey, hey. You need to calm down, okay? You are safe." The nurse's light, high-pitched voice tried to reassure her.
The patient knew she was safe, and she knew she wanted answers, but that didn't stop her state of panic and no matter how she tried to get herself together, being stuck in a single position didn't help her either.
She was running short of breath again.
Kian moved to the patient's right-hand side urgently. He wanted to figure out what was going on. Nurse Bennet had informed him the patient was calm but scared and that she knew they were coming.
"You need to listen to my voice, okay? It's fine." Petra drawled out, hoping to draw the patient's attention away from her hyper jumping nerves, but it didn't work.
"This won't do. If she continues like this, we won't be able to get any answers or answer any of her questions. We must calm her down again. Call in..." Kian said but paused as the ECG monitor sound sped up even further.
The patient didn't want to be put to bed again. She wanted answers; she needed to know why she didn't remember who she was; she wanted to know who she was. She wanted to stay calm, but she just couldn't help herself.
"Hey! It's fine! We won't put you to sleep again! And we'll answer all your questions. We just need you to stay calm, okay?" Petra soothed in understanding the state of the patient, "You want us to give you answers, don't you? So listen to my voice. Take a deep breath in," she paused waiting for the patient to follow but she didn't, "Come on you can do it. Concentrate on my voice, a deep breath in and out. In and out."
Finally able to will herself to concentrate on the nurse's voice, the patient breathed in and out as she was told till she could grab hold on to a sense of calm.
The sound of the ECG went down along with the patient's nerves. Petra sighed in relief by the patient's side and sent a glare to Kian, but Kian just shrugged his shoulders, although he was inwardly criticizing himself for putting the patient in a more panicked state.
He switched into action, not wanting to delay for any other moment. The patient was calm now. He didn't know how long that was going to last. He took hold of his torch, "I'm going to do a quick check on you before we take questions," he explained gently to the patient.
The patient tried to open her mouth to respond but felt a tightening in her throat. She tried to switch to nodding her head, not wanting to dwell on the fact that it felt hard to talk, but even that didn't go well. Her neck felt stiff.
Before she could go into another state of panic, the nurse's voice drew her attention, "You need to take it easy, it's going to be hard to talk or move your head right away. You just woke up from a coma and your muscles have atrophied. It's still hard for you to move, so one thing at a time, okay? You can blink, right?" she asked her.
The patient blinked in response.
"Fine, we'll work with that."
Kian watched this exchange, gauging the patient's response to everything Petra said with interest. She seemed in better control of her emotions than she had been the previous day. It made him think that maybe her case would be nothing serious.
Petra sent him a look to proceed with his checkup, which he did. He shone the light from the touch in his hands into her eyes from a safe angle to check each pupil's response to the light. He turned the light off to check the response to darkness, and Petra took notes at each step.
He swung the light from pupil to pupil to check for any relative afferent pupil defect (RAPD). After the checkup, he used his stethoscope to check the steadiness of her heartbeat.
Once he was done with all the check-up he had to do, he settled down on the chair by the bed ready to ask questions.
"We will try to keep our questions to a yes or no. So if it's a yes blink twice and if it's a no blink once." Kian told the patient.
The patient felt her body trembling a bit. Her questions were about to be answered, but somehow she felt as if she would like none of the answers she was about to get. Pressure by the side of her bed caught her attention. Her eyes moved to the side to see the nurse had taken a seat by her side.
She gently took hold of the patient's hand placing her left hand under the patient's hand and her right on top to support her, "No matter what, it will be fine. Questions that can't be answered now with a yes or no, we will answer later."
Grateful for the support and encouragement, the patient blinked twice. The nurse grinned at her before sending a curt nod to the doctor.
Kian was suddenly grateful Petra was in the room with him. He definitely wouldn't have handled the case the way she was doing it. She was good at her job of compassion; it was why she was a head nurse after all despite the rumours.
He brought his attention to the patient and the grateful look she had on her oblong face. Her lush narrow lips formed a small smile and revealed a small promising dimple on her high cheekbones. Her raven black hair dangling by her side in a French braid that Petra had done it into.
Taking a deep breath in, it was time to find out what they were facing. "Do you know where you are?" he asked her.
The patient responded with a double blink, remembering the previous nurse had informed her she was in Woodthorpe Hospital.
"Do you know how you got here and why?"
Her eyebrows squinted and her forehead creased while she tried to remember why she was there, but all she remembered was darkness. Her thinking caused a sharp pain to probe her head, creasing her forehead even further.
"Take it easy, don't think too deep," the nurse said to her, "It will hurt you. Just answer with the questions you can at the top."
The patient stopped trying to think. The lines on her forehead disappeared as she blinked once in response to the question.
The questions went on. The patient blinking twice or once in response and tightening her fingers onto the hand supporting her.
Once they were done with the questions, the patient watched the doctor and the nurse share a sad look. Dread instantly filled her. The ECG picked up the small increase in heartbeat.
Kian turned away from Petra at the sound of the ECG and then to the patient. She had noticed the look he gave Petra, and now she was scared. He had to handle this matter better. This wasn't as easy as he thought. They were in for the worst-case scenario.
"Okay." Kian uttered preparing both himself and the patient for the revelation was about to be laid on the ground. He knew how to handle this; they had, had similar cases to this before but as his eyes caught sight of the hand that held tightly to Petra's hand, he felt that that case was going to be more personal and he didn't want that.
He focused back on the task at hand, vowing to cut off any personal contact with him before he got pulled in. For that moment, his patient needed answers and as her doctor, it was his right to provide them, "From the answers you've given, you don't remember who you are. This means we are dealing with retrograde brain aneurysm here."
The patient gave him a blank look at the explanation.
"Amnesia," he explained, "You don't remember who you are, why you were brought here or even when you got here. You said you can't seem to remember anything prior to waking up except darkness, which means you can't recall all your stored memories and this is because of the injury you got on your temporal lobe during your accident."
The information turned in her head. She played them one word after the other. She had an accident. She had an injury to her temporal lobe, wherever that was. She had amnesia and couldn't recall her stored memories, which is why she couldn't remember who she was.
The painful truth of the revelation didn't stop her curiosity, she wanted to know more.
"Do you want to know how you got here?" The nurse asked her as if reading her mind. She answered with a double blink immediately. She wanted to know everything.
A small sigh escaped the nurse's lips, she still held on to the patient's hand, even tightly at that moment. "As far as we know, five years ago you were in an accident."
"F i...i...ve?" The surprise at the number of years forced the patient to croak out the words shocked. She had been in a coma for five years. Years of her life gone because of an accident?
Petra instantly got a cup of water from the table by the bed and placed it at the patient's mouth. She helped the patient lift her head up slowly for easy passage of the water, "You really need to take it easy, okay?" she said sitting back down, "I know this will come as a real shock. We can stop for today if everything is overwhelming."
A quick blink of the patient's eyes told them she didn't want to stop. She wanted to know more.
Kian observed this in intrigue. He had never fully seen a patient who was so adamant on hearing things that were not favourable to her. Why did she want to know more?
Petra sent him a questioned look, and he sent her a nod in response. The patient was unpredictable and so they had to take cautionary steps with her, but a part of him wanted to see how far she would go.
"I'll only continue if you promise to take it easy." Petra informed the patient.
She blinked twice in promise. She was going to stay calm if that was what it would take to get her answers. She didn't know why she felt the pressing need to know everything, but she felt that knowing, no matter how bad, was better than not knowing.
"I'm just going to tell you this since we know. We know just a little more about you than you know about yourself. No name, just that five years ago along with some other patients you were rushed in here after they found you around Valley Road intersection losing a lot of blood."
The patient's eyes stilled at the information. She took it all in and stored them away to be reviewed later. She did not let herself dwell on them so they wouldn't create a sense of panic within her and stop her from getting all the other answers.
"From your blood sample, we could trace your ethnicity and age range though. Would you like to know?"
A double blink.
"You're definitely Croatian. We can't say if you were an immigrant or a citizen seeing as we are in Britain and we couldn't find out because we don't have a name and going with the whole picture stuff is past our hospital to patient confidentiality. As at five years ago, you were around 21 to 22 years. It's not a definite test, but using that you should be 27 years old now." she further explained.
She continued taking it all in, but a question still probed her mind.
Kian noticed that her forehead still had a crease on it, "You still have a question you want to be answered, don't you?" he asked her. She replied with a double blink.
He shared a look with Petra, silently asking her if she could figure out the question.
Petra moved on to study the patient's face, replaying the questions she had answered in her mind, "You want to know if there's anyone who knows who you are around or if anyone who knows who you are, is aware of you being in the hospital?" she inquired.
The patient blinked twice, her eyes lit up in a trill at the fact that the nurse got her question.
Petra sighed again, "I'm afraid no one has filed a missing person's report with your picture and there is no one who knows you here."
The light in the patient's eyes dimmed out at once. Tears pulled at her eyes, finally having all the answers she needed at the moment. With her gaze focused on the ceiling, all the information gathered and pooled at the forefront of her mind.
Continuous soothing taps on her hand pulled her away from her thoughts temporarily. She focused back on the nurse who had a look of worry edged on her face and the doctor who watched her with a calculative glance, "Th...a...ank... yo...you." she croaked out again, she gave them each a small smile and turn her attention back to the ceiling dismissing them letting the information she had just been told flood her mind.
Tears flowed down the side of her eyes at the realisation.
She didn't notice the look the doctor and nurse shared and wasn't paying attention even when they slipped away. She was just focused on her thoughts.
She was alone; she had been all alone for five years, but even after waking up she was still alone. It was pure darkness for five years before the light came on. She thought it would be more of a relief, but they were still darkness in the light. No name, no family, all alone. What was to become of her now?
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Aw, but you're not alone.
You have me and even Petra who has been waiting for you for 5 years. hmm.
Hiya!
I did some research on all the medical stuff and I saw that with developing technology and medical kits you can really determine a person's ethnicity and age from their blood. It's mostly used for crime scenes but awesome right.
Well here's the second chapter. Hope you loved it.
Thanks to my first comment
This chapter is dedicated to you.
What did you think? Spill it out! 💭
Till next week!💕