Caller: Can an ambulance take him? I’m a bit tied up right now.
Call Handler: No, love. You’d need to go with him—
Caller: Yes, but there would be attendants on the ambulance, right?
Call Handler: Yes, but he would need a parent or guardian along with him. I can see here there’s an A&E about five miles down the road from you. I’m afraid it’s a busy night for the emergency services. It might be faster to bring him there yourself.
Caller: Yeah, there is. [Muffled swearing] Love Island was going to be starting in a bit and—Jamie! Put your hands down!
Call Handler: Emma, are you able to get your son to A&E or shall I call an ambulance for the both of you?
Caller: Yes. Fine. I’ll go. I’ll have to watch it on catch up. Fookin’ nightmare. Anything else?
Call Handler: No, love. If Jamie has any new symptoms or his condition gets worse, changes or you have any other concerns call us back.
Caller: Jamie! Hands down! [Call ends]
Call Handler: Struth. The future of Britain looks bright indeed – oh! Bugger.
Chapter Twelve
A sense of dread washed through Flo as she glanced at the large wall-mounted clock. Ten minutes and her shift would be over. Over 1500 calls the team had answered that day. Over 1500 lives helped. Hopefully. She did worry about them. The callers. Wondered if little Jamie’s bottom would feel the heated wrath of his mother’s hand when and if she’d missed winter Love Island. Flo tried not to judge, but she was inclined to draw the line at someone who prioritised observing other people’s lives (fictional or otherwise) over the actual life they were meant to be living.
Ha! Who was she kidding? She judged all the time. Or, as she preferred to call it, pre-flight character assessment. Nearly forty years in a flying sardine can had given her lightning-sharp assessment skills. Who would be difficult. Who could be relied on to sleep through the entire flight. Who the talkers were and what type (the kind best avoided or the funsters who’d relish a mini-tour of the aircraft and end up exchanging addresses … oh, the villas they had been invited to).
She looked across her section to the far end of the room that served as their kitchen area. The Staff Leisure Area. Oh, dear. There was that poor girl again. Sue. She was staring at the staff notice board in a way that suggested she could walk away and not name a single item on the board.
Poor love. She’d offer her another coffee but it was well after tea time and she would lay down money Sue wouldn’t be sleeping well. Not if she was sleeping in her own house, anyhow. Coffee was not the anecdote to her sorrows. Not tonight, anyway.
Flo closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like walking into her house minus Stuart. No. She couldn’t do it. Completely impossible. He was like one of the taps or the doorframes. A fixture. They’d moved into the modern bungalow after Stuart had retired and, rather to her astonishment, had convinced her to retire as well. Their bolt hole, he’d called it. Their launchpad, she’d called it. In a way, both of them had been right.
She’d fled the confines of the house the moment she figured out Stu was never going to leave it. Taking job after job, trying to fill the void a life of travelling the world filled. Rearing the Wolfhounds had been a highlight. Right up until they’d sold their last litter a year back. That day had been weighted with heartbreak. Seeing the last of the pups scooped into a child’s arms and, without so much as a backward glance, driven away to a brand new life filled with heaven knew what.
When Flo opened her eyes, she saw Sue was still staring. She rose to go to her, her head catching as her headset cable snagged on the edge of her cubicle. A red number caught her eye up on the Scoreboard, the television screen that told them whether or not people were waiting. Then she saw Raven, the lovely girl she’d gone to the funeral with heading over towards the Staff Leisure Area. Nice to see a young woman showing a bit of compassion. The younger generation these days seemed to be all me, me, me. Her parent’s had obviously raised her to be a cut above the rest.
Flo’s gaze moved back to Sue, lost as she was, in a world of her own. Back a week after she’d laid her husband to rest. Didn’t she have family insisting she take some time off? Children to comfort? Parents to move in with who would bring her a hot water bottle and an endless supply of tissues? Battling all of that grief and bewilderment on her own? Horrid, horrid, horrid. Flo willed Raven to offer her a comforting word or two. It wouldn’t be much more, the girl barely spoke, but … sometimes a word or two did the trick. It was why she, herself, had trouble sticking strictly to the script lately when she took her calls. She’d already had a telling off (two, actually) since she’d joined a few months back, but the managers changed so frequently, she didn’t mind going off piste when the situation called for a more personal touch. After all, life was nuanced. Why shouldn’t advice be?
She sat back down again, her eyes on the Scoreboard. She’d not been wrong. The calls were flooding in now that teatime/bathtime/storytime was over. The surgeries were closed. Babies, youngsters and oldies were meant to be in bed by now and if they weren’t … she popped on her headset and pressed a key on her keyboard, ‘You’re through to the NHS 111 service, my name’s Flo and I’m a health advisor. Are you calling about yourself or someone else?’
Chapter
