Kate Hardy - The Spanish Doctor's Love-Child by Anja

Author:Anja [Anja]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-05-13T17:53:53+00:00

‘And we need to give you a catheter so we can measure your urine output. It’s going to feel a bit uncomfortable, but I promise you’ll start feeling a bit better soon.’ He turned to Becky.

‘We’ll start him on this at fifteen mils an hour and then increase it in fifteen minutes—I want him down to about a hundred and ten diastolic,’ he said. ‘I’m going to put in an arterial line—

and I think you should page ICU, as it’s the best place to keep an eye on someone with hypertensive encephalopathy.’

‘Leave it with me,’ Becky said.

She was monitoring Tom when the phone rang. ‘His parents are in Leeds,’ Tom’s friend said, and rattled off the number.

Becky read it back to him to check she’d written it down properly, then asked, ‘Did you find the tablets?’

‘There’s two. One’s a packet of paracetamol. The other’s not marked.’

‘Thanks. Can you bring them both in?’ Becky asked.

When she’d cleared the line, she rang his parents to explain the situation and they promised to come straight away.

‘Before you come—can I just ask you about your family’s medical history? Does anyone have blood-pressure problems?’

‘No, nobody,’ Tom’s father said.

‘And Tom doesn’t take drugs?’

‘Of course not. He’s a nice boy, though when he went to college we were worried in case he fell in with the wrong crowd and started taking something just to fit in. But his friends are all nice boys, too. They don’t do that sort of thing.’

‘Sorry to ask. We just had to check. Come to the emergency department and ask for Becky Marston. I’ll take you up to him myself,’ she said.

Though before Tom’s parents arrived, the tox screen was back.

And she knew it wasn’t good because Leandro said something very short in his own language.

‘Problems?’

‘Amphetamines.’

‘Oh, no. That’s probably what’s in the unmarked bottle his friends found.

They’re bringing in a sample,’ Becky explained.

She tried to prepare Tom’s parents when she took them up, but neither of them would believe that Tom would have taken drugs. Despite the fact that when the sample arrived, it turned out to be amphetamines.

But at the end of their shift, when Becky and Leandro dropped in to ICU to see how Tom was doing—thankfully, he was going to recover relatively unscathed—the story came out.

‘Apparently he’s been worried about his exams,’ Mrs Foster said ruefully. ‘He was worried he wouldn’t pass, and ended up so stressed he had a headache. He didn’t have any headache tablets, so he borrowed one from someone on his corridor.’

‘Except it wasn’t a headache tablet,’ Mr Foster said. ‘It turned out it was speed. It kept Tom awake, and then he hit on the idea that if he took these things he’d be able to stay awake longer and have more time to study. So he’s been taking them for a few weeks now.’ He sighed. ‘He won’t tell me the name of the student who gave him the stuff because he doesn’t want to get his friend into trouble. But I can’t believe he was so stupid.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.