Hospital love- Camren

Chapter 1

Camila took a deep breath as she slid on her white lab coat.

"Deep in thought?" Lauren asked from behind her, clad in an identical white coat.

"You know, Laur, I love working in the hospital, I do, but why the actual hell do we start at 6 am when most patients are still fast asleep?" Camila complained, whining childishly and eliciting a small laugh from Lauren.

"You're the star psychiatrist here, where else would you be at 6 am...whereas me, I'm just a lousy doctor, I should be at home sleeping" Lauren countered, grabbing her coffee from next to her.

"And by a lousy doctor you mean world-class pediatrician," Lauren corrected. Camila rolled her eyes.

"I'm gonna go to the staff room, you coming?" she asked Lauren, who quickly shook her head in response.

"I'll be there in a minute," Lauren said, pressing her lips into a thin smile. Camila nodded hesitantly.

"You're okay, right?"

"Of course," Lauren replied with a brief nod. The moment Camila ha left she made her way hastily to the staff bathroom, fidgetting anxiously as she did so. She made her way into a cubicle and fell to her knees. She bent over and stuck two fingers down her throat, the way she had been doing for almost a year now. She flushed the toilet and proceeded to curling up, burying her head in her knees. A sharp beeping sound pulled her back down to Earth. She grabbed her pager only to see that a nurse was paging her pager with a 911 for one of her cancer patients.

Lauren jumped to her feet and dashed out of the bathroom.

"Camila, I need you, NOW," Lauren exclaimed as she burst into the staff room. She nodded, detecting the urgency in her eyes, and grabbed her clipboard before following Lauren out of the room. They were never supposed to run, but Lauren couldn't help but break into a jog when she heard the frightened screams of Aliyah, her 12-year-old patient.

They entered the room to see a thin, small figure dressed in a hospital gown fought against three nurses dressed in scrubs to make her way towards the large window at the side of the room.

"Aliyah," Lauren said calmly, keeping her distance from the incident.

"I WANT TO JUMP OUT OF THE WINDOW," the girl shouted, squirming under the grip of the nurses. Lauren sighed and walked to the door.

"Stay here, she's going to need a psych consult," Lauren said to Camila, who nodded silently, clearly taken aback by the situation. Lauren quickly returned, holding a needle attached to a syringe filled with clear liquid.

"Can we get her lying down on the bed please?" Lauren said to the nurses who nodded, there now being 5 of them present, and worked to pin the struggling figure down on the bed. Lauren walked over placidly.

"Okay, you're going to feel a small scratch," she said as she pressed the syringe into her vein. She ignored the screaming of the girl and pressed liquid in. She then proceeded to moving towards her, comfortingly stroking her hair.

"You're going to be okay," she said quietly, noticing how the girl was already calming down.

"The magic of lorazepam," Lauren said under her breath, nodding to the nurses to loosen their grip.

"I want to-," Aliyah tried to get out, panting.

"You want to know something? Hospital windows are restricted, so they only open a little bit which means you can't get out of there anyway, hmm," Lauren said soothingly, watching the girls chest starting to move up and down less rapidly.

"Now, I know you're scared, but we need to do something called a risk assessment, do you think that would be okay?" Lauren asked, making eye-contact with Aliyah.

"What's a risk assessment?" the small girl asked, trying to sit up but being pushed down by the nurses holding her.

"It's okay, let's get her up," Lauren said, watching as one of the nurses lifted her to an upright position from under her arms.

"Okay, so in a risk assessment, we just have to ask you some questions so that we can understand how best to help you. My colleague is about to come in and do all that now that you're a bit calmer".

"Why can't you?" She whined.

"Hey, none of that whining now," Lauren warned, standing up and nodding to Camila to come in. "I'm not qualified to carry out a risk assessment, but Dr. Cabello is so she's going to be talking to you now, but I'll stay right here where you can see me, hmm".

"Nurses, you can leave the room, thank you," Camila said, pulling a chair up next to the bed where Aliyah was sitting. Lauren sat down next to her, offering her a hand to hold.

"Are you sick?" Aliyah asked quietly, looking up at Lauren who looked back in confusion.

"No, I'm not, honey".

"Then why do you have vomit in your hair then?" She asked. Lauren froze, her heart skipping a beat. She felt Camila's eyes lifting from her clipboard to focus on her.

"We need to focus on those questions, hmm," Lauren said, tucking the wet bit of hair behind her ear and trying not to cringe at the cold feeling.

"Um, right," Camila murmured, drawing her attention back to the risk assessment she was holding.

***