Rain hammers the concrete forests of Sydney’s skyline.
“Operational demands Lucy,” the transplant director sighs.
I hang up, throat tight. Violet looks up from my lap, cheeks sticky from toasted marshmallows and fresh tears. Flickers of firelight catch her wide, worried eyes. She’s known the sound of my work pager since she was 4 years old. Greg picks her up, swinging her aimlessly. Aeroplanes. She giggles as I prepare.
“Mummy’s playing musical theatres, Vi,” Greg says, nuzzling her neck. “She’ll be back before presents.” He looks at me pointedly as he closes the door. “She promises.”
The trip lets me centre. Rain blurs the windscreen. A pothole ejects me too close to the edge as lightning streaks the sky in yellow. A twenty-car pile-up blocks the M8. That’s at least two donations, I think. My pager’s going mad on my hip.
Joe’s waiting in resuscitation bay, arterial spray splattering his scrubs, when I arrive. “Thank fuck, doc,” he mutters.
“That bad?” I ask as we walk to theatre 9.
“Ten dead on arrival.”
“The reaper works on a different clock.”
“Twenty-one years young tomorrow he was,” he scrubs in, hands almost bleeding.
Guilt tugs violently on my heart, forcing me further down this path. Violet turns seven tomorrow. Instead of marshmallows, I smell iodine. We crack his still chest, slicing and stitching the wreckage. Time blurs. Theatre 9 lets me give theatre 11 breath again. We work until theatre 11’s body is stitched back up. I collapse aside theatre 11’s wife. She embraces me, ignoring the blood on my scrubs.
“Thank you…” she whispers through tears. Her son’s tenth birthday is next week.
The rain eases, but the roads we travel are no kinder. Floodwaters rise.
I text Greg. Home soon.
His bubble lights up. Love you. Cheese toasties for tea. Vi says ‘presents mummy!’.
I smile and drive. Storms are complicated.
