writing_shadows

“Look, there she is!” Rachel leaned over to the nurse standing next to her and nudged him in the ribs. He shook his head in mock despair. “Honestly, you lot”, he said, grinning. “You're as bad as teenagers. Leave her be, can't you?” But he peered down the corridor himself, and couldn't resist a thrill of curiosity.

The clamour of questions began as soon as Ruby set foot inside her office. “How did you meet him?” “How long have you been together?” “Who did you get to talk to at the parties?” And, of course, the one that was enough to genuinely bother her: “Did you meet him the same way you met Gaby Peterson?” She clapped her hands loudly to bring them to quiet and stood imperiously in the middle of the gaggle. They shushed, and waited for her to speak. “Mowlan, they need you down in Cardio.” There was a tangible sigh of disappointment, which Ruby waved away with an impatient hand. “Giniver and Patel, please divide Ward Nine between yourselves – we've plenty of empty beds up there, be sure and wait for A&E to call up. Smithson, you're on triage. Everyone else, check your log books: remember, this is a B-week.”
“But Matron,” piped up Rachel, who liked to think of herself as something of a favourite of Ruby's. “Aren't you going to tell us anything?” Ruby pursed her lips and glanced over the arrayed nurses. “Get on with you all now, move along. It's gone seven: the shift started five minutes ago.” They knew, then, that they had no hope of getting anything out of her that morning. Murmuring among themselves, they wandered off to their assigned places to begin the day's work.

Ruby exhaled deeply and turned round to settle down at the desk. She had a mountain of paperwork to do, and only a few hours to do it in: there was a ward matron's meeting at nine, and they needed to be able to compare notes while they were all together. She pulled the first stack of forms toward her, and her own face stared up at her from the top of the pile - someone had left a copy of the Daily Mail on her desk, folded open to the gossip columns. Knowing that no-one was about, she allowed herself a moment of self-indulgence. It was a terrible photo, that much was immediately obvious: she bore the startled expression of a rabbit caught in the headlights, she was clinging onto Janos's arm like a drowning woman, and somewhere along the way she'd managed to smudge her lipstick. “A kick in the teeth for every woman who ever cared about her appearance”, read the caption, but Ruby ignored that. She'd noticed something that she hadn't seen before: this one had managed to catch him glancing down at her. His expression was concerned, though (it seemed to her) not without a touch of amusement, and filled with a loving warmth that made her smile a little despite herself. “Is going to be everywhere,” he'd warned as they sat in the car on the way to Leicester Square. She'd assured him, at the time, that it was better all round if she just didn't look but she found in the end that she couldn't quite bear it. With everyone talking about it the curiosity had got the better of her, and there was something compulsive about reading all the insults, both thinly veiled and out-and-out, that were being slung in your direction by someone you had never met. “The first reporter to call you either plain or dumpy gets some of what Simon Cowell got”, he'd said to her once. At the time she'd laughed, and thought to herself that they wouldn't ever have cause to – but now they'd said all that and worse, and she hoped against hope that he really had only been joking.

She sighed when the phone rang. She had a sneaking suspicion she knew just who it was going to be, and the chances of her finishing everything she needed to get done before the meeting began were diminishing rapidly. “Addenbrooke's, Matron Whyte speaking.”
“That you, our Ruby?” Her older brother's familiar voice was comforting, though she couldn't help but wonder what was coming next. “Yes, Robbie. It's me. You'll have to be quick, duck; I'm at work.”
“I know you're at work, you silly mare - I just rang yer work phone.” Ruby smiled to herself, and let the fond insult pass. “What do you want, Robbie?”
“What do you think I want? Daft cow, ye've gone and done it this time. Pa nearly went blue when he saw it on the news. 'Our Ruby!', he kept sayin', over and over. Most he's said in weeks, truth be told.”
“How is he? Other'n worrying hisself about me.” Ruby could hear her accent growing stronger, as it always did when she spoke to Robbie.
“Never mind the old coot”, her brother tutted dismissively. “Aren't you going to tell me what the hell is goin' on? You could've warned us, love.” Ruby shrugged helplessly, a slightly pained expression on her face as she replied. “Sorry. You're right. I just didn't know what to say. 'By the way, Pa? You remember that Dr Caligari? Off the telly, you know. Well, I've been stepping out with him.' I'm not twenty-one any more, Robbie; these things ain't so simple as they used to be. For a while I didn't know what he was thinking, how serious he was. No – that sounds bad. I just mean – I just didn't know what to tell you, that's all.”
“We'll forgive you”, he said, and Ruby could practically see the little twinkle he always had in his eye when he'd successfully wound her up. “Just tell me, lassie: what's he like?” Ruby paused before answering, glanced self-consciously toward the closed door. “Gentle”, she replied after a moment. “Gentle, and thoughtful, and quiet. He's ever so charming, and then there's all this hurt and anger underneath somewhere, and that makes me worry for him. But then, I worry about everyone.”
“That you do, lass.” Robbie hesitated before asking his next question. “Do you love him?”
“Yes.” The word was out before she'd taken the time to think about it, and there was a note of surprise in her voice that made her brother chuckle quietly to himself. “Yes,” she repeated, with more certainty. “Yes, I do.”