The Silver Protector And Me

She Sells Sea Shells

Alerted by the sound of paper rustling, Jennyanydots lumbered to the office as fast as her cumbersome midriff would allow and peeped in at the door. "Jazzie, dear. What are you doing?"

The Snowshoe didn't look up. "Tidying."

"Oh, no no no!" The Gumbie hurried in, looking flustered. "You can't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Well... I-I-I..." she spluttered. "I might not be able to find anything."

"You can't find anything at the moment," Jazzie complained, as she continued to stack up paper and files. "This place is chaos!"

"It's organised chaos!"

"It's harming patient care! I'm going to organise everything so that we know which paperwork belongs to which patient, and make sure all notes are filed and up to date. Or else, sooner or later, the wrong patient will get the wrong treatment, which would be disastrous. Is that what you want?"

"Well, of course not... but... but... it's never happened before."

"That is not a guaranteed safety net, Jenny! The fact that that HASN'T happened greatly surprises me."

Jennyanydots puffed herself up to her full height, just a tad shorter than Jazzie. "With all due respect, Doctor, but as Matron of this establishment, I really-"

"Ought to have the patients' best interests at heart. I'm sorry to sound brusque, but I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation."

"I-I-I... do-"

"Then you must trust that I know what I'm doing and let me get on with this. You can either help, or else, stay out of my way. You're choice."

"Well, really!" The Matron turned on her heel and marched out of the office, muttering crossley to herself as she did.

Sighing, Jazzie pulled out a chair and sat down heavily at the desk. She'd managed to clear a small space and started to go through one of the huge piles of risk assessments and notes that she'd neatly stacked up.

After about fifteen minutes, she started to yawn. She put the pen down and took off her pince nez. "Merde! I'm so tired!" She groaned, rubbing her eyes.

Sighing again, she picked the pen back up, returned the specs to her nose and carried on writing.

She yawned for a second time.

Her head began to droop. "Maybe could... lie down... Just for... a minute..."

*

Munkustrap arrived at the Infirmary a full minute before the hour, but almost had a serious collision with a pregnant torbie in his zeal to get to the office. "Good evening, Miss 'Dots," he said good naturedly, catching her before she went A over T. "Where are you off to in such a hurry?"

"Oh, Munkustrap! Thank goodness you're here!"

That was not the cheery response he'd expected. "Is everything alright? What's happened?"

"I was just on my way to see my sister about it!" she cried woefully. "But seeing as you're here-"

"See Jelly about what?"