Ecstasy

Chapter 13

Calla:

I was leaning against the computer desk in the emergency department. The room was mostly empty, with a patient or two waiting for x–rays and stitches. The whole evening had been slow and my eyes were drooping as a few of the doctors droned on about a patient up in the ICU.

"Calla, you're not falling asleep there are you?" Cassie asked.

I looked up at the nurse as she walked around the desk, and sat down opposite me. I gave her a smile, "I'm trying not to."

She chuckled. I glanced at the clock. "Your mum's shift should be finished soon. So you don't have long to wait."

"Thank god." I groaned and slumped on the desk. My hair fell over my forehead and I blew it out of my eyes. Cassie laughed again.

It was already three o'clock in the morning and my brain was fuzzy with sleep deprivation. I had finished the research component for my school assignment ages ago, but it was already too late then for Dad to come pick me up, so I was stuck here, on the first floor of the Tweed Hospital. Told to sit still, be quiet and not interfere.

I looked up as I heard shoes squeak against the floor. My mother was walking fast towards the swinging doors that opened to the ambulance bay. I frowned at her expression as she walked past.

"Cassie, page Johneson and Bradley please. We have a hard one coming in."

I perked up at her order, finally something to stay awake for. I watched with interest as two more doctors arrived and went to wait outside the doors for the ambulance. In no time I could hear the tell tale sound of a squealing siren and the flashing lights flickering in the windows. Two more interns rushed into the room and began to set up some type of equipment. I eyed the bottles labelled charcoal. I stood up from my chair and went to stand near the door, hoping to catch a glance.

"Calla!" Cassie chastised me from the other side of the room. "Get away from there. They need to come through there, don't get in the way."

I nodded absent-mindedly, stepping only a few steps back. I fiddled with the hem of the blue scrubs I was commissioned to wear. I was pulling at the thread when suddenly a stretcher bed came bursting through the doors, being pushed by paramedics. I jumped back; there was so much noise. Paramedics shouting over doctors that were making orders. My mother was running quickly alongside the bed as they wheeled the patient up to a bay. Her fingers were steady as she taped pulse receptors on the patient's arms. The paramedics quickly transferred the person to the bed, still communicating information about the patient's status. I watched from across the room; standing on my tippy toes to get a look over the shoulders of the interns and doctors rushing around. It was then that I realised it wasn't just doctors, paramedics and hospital staff crowding the bed. There were two police officers, too. I walked around to the other side of the room.

The boy looked young, with brown scruffy hair and angry blue eyes. He was shuddering violently, struggling against the hands pushing him back to the bed as he tried to sit up.

"We think he's had a cocktail of MDMA, heroin, and cocaine but he could have more for all god knows," I heard a paramedic say to one of the doctors as they worked quickly, trying to calm the boy down.

"And he smells like marijuana," I heard my mother say.

They were attempting to stick a drip in his arm while gently trying to reassure the boy but he was shaking and yelling incoherent words. The paramedics and police struggled to hold him down as one of the doctors tried to inject something in his arm.

I held my breath as I recognised the boy. Tyson Shelley's face was creased with fear. He pushed the arms off him, resisting against any of their help.

"Get off me!" He was screaming, he tried to move away from the helpers. "Let me go!"