Doctor, Doctor, Can you fix my broken heart?

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

“How… How long has it been now?” Carl asked in a muted voice. I glanced up at him, his blue eyes were fearful and he was chewing on his lip. I hid a small grin and glanced at my phone.

“About an hour and a half.” I yawned and stretched back, gazing across the nearly empty cafeteria. It had been an hour and a half since our Mother had gone to theatres to have her leg set. After the surgeons had come down they had decided to take her in for surgery in an emergency orthopaedic slot. She would need the bones wiring and setting with metal pegs. Carl and Russell sat with me as we waited, an empty coffee mug sat to my left, evidence that Elle had come to sit with us on her evening break. Despite it being a routine operation none of us wanted to leave, so for the past hour and fifteen minutes we had sat in the dreary hospital cafeteria eating half stale sandwiches and drinking coffee that tasted vaguely of dish soap.

“That… That’s a long time I though he said it would only be an hour!” Carl stuttered, I could see tears in his eyes and I really tried hard not to laugh. I knew I was being a bit harsh but Carl really was a bit of a baby, he despised hospitals and couldn’t cope well when people were ill or injured.

Rolling my eyes I attempted to reassure him, “He said could be an hour maybe longer, depends if they have any complications.”

“Complications!” I heard the panic in his voice. Russell sitting opposite me groaned in frustration, he knew how Carl could be.

“She means it might take longer because of the bone fragments the Doctor said she had a spiral and a… a fracture that has gone into pieces. It might take longer to get it all back where it is meant to be.”

I smiled at Russell, clearly someone else was listening when it had been explained. “It’s called a Comminuted fracture.” I stated a little smugly. Carl’s expression relaxed and he leaned back into his chair.

“Oh ok. I still think it took a while for them to take her to surgery. I mean she came in at half ten this morning but didn’t go for an ‘emergency’ operation until six at night! Surely that’s way too long.”

My brow furrowed and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes again. The general public were idiots and there was no wonder that practically everyone had issues with the health service. “Well it wasn’t a complete emergency she still had a pedal pulse which meant she had a good blood supply to her foot. And you have to be nil by mouth for operations to make it safer so it was reasonable for them to wait till this evening. Plus they might have had more emergency operations to do!”

We fell into an easy silence after that staring at Russell’s phone that had been left in the middle of the table, waiting for it to ring. As eight o’clock drew nearer Elle appeared looking harassed and tired after working all day. She grabbed some food from the nearly empty display and came to sit with us again. “Still nothing?” she asked as she sat down. We shook our heads and continued to stare at the phone.

“I… I need some fresh air.” Russell muttered as he stood, “I’ll leave it here. Grab me if it rings.” He jumped up and moved swiftly to the door, his normally tanned complexion appeared pale with the stress under the harsh lights of the room.

Elle bit her lip and giggled “He is totally going to go smoke. He always does when he is stressed. It was hilarious last time Mum caught him smoking. It was…”

“Before your graduation.” Carl filled in. “Everyone was stressed because we didn’t think we would get there in time. And he and Mum had arranged that party and everything kept going wrong. He was really worried you wouldn’t be happy with it.”

I laughed, “Well she is Daddy’s little girl. Remember when we first met him?” I smiled at the memory as Elle frowned. “We both loved him because he brought us chocolate, but Elle hated him because she thought he would take the attention away from her.”