Kaden's Luna

I walk into the hospital at exactly 8.55 a.m. and clock in before taking my seat behind the receptionist’s desk. After turning on the computer, I turn to grab the list of tasks for today…only to find no paper on my desk. I move stuff out of my way, looking underneath folders and notepads but with no such luck.

“Weird. Why hasn’t Henry given me my list today?” I mumble, standing up and deciding to just ask him myself. I walk towards his office, knocking on the door before opening it when he calls me in. He’s looking through a file whilst making notes but stops as soon as I walk in.

“Good morning, Luna.” He smiles, making me stare at him in confusion.

“Um…good morning sir. I was wondering about my tasks today? There is no list on the table.” I explain, watching him make a noise of exclamation before reaching over and grabbing a piece of paper.

“There you go.” He says and I step forward and grab it.

I’m shocked that there are only five tasks for me to do today and at the bottom it says that I can leave when I’m finished. I look up at Henry for confirmation and he nods his head with a smile, his hands clasped in front of him. I turn and make my way out of the door, something was up with him today. He’s normally barking orders at me left, right and centre until I’m reduced to an exhausted mess by the end of the day.

Nevertheless, I carry on and start on my first task which is filing some paperwork. I get that done in thirty minutes whilst greeting patients and taking calls. There’s a rush today and people are walking in and out, some having appointments and some visiting their loved ones.

Around one in the afternoon, I take my break and walk towards the canteen in the hospital. Grabbing a pack of sandwiches, a salad and a smoothie, I pay for my food before finding a table. I scroll through my phone from one app to another whilst texting Maddox, who is also at work.

After I’m done with lunch, I make my way back and find that one of the doctors would like me to join him so that I could learn more about tending to patients in the emergency department. I make my way towards the ward he’s directed me to and meet him by the desk.

“Ah, Luna!” He smiles widely, telling me to follow him. “You’re going to be with me in the emergency department today.”

“Great! I’m excited to learn.” I smile, looking up at him as he explains what we will be doing today.

I am on acute placement at this hospital which means that I see the treatment of patients with serious conditions. I’m often called to the emergency wards where I’m taught how to react as quickly as possible or to the ICU where the experienced doctors and nurses teach me how to care for patients with conditions over a long period.

Most of the time I call in advance of my shift to see what I’ll be doing and how I should prepare. When the rush is slow, which is a rare occurrence, I’m in the emergency department or the ICU wards all day but other times, I’m either helping the doctors in other units of the hospital or doing receptionist work.

“Now, there’s a bit of a rush so I don’t know how long it will take before I let you go. Henry will join us after an hour.” Doctor Barnaby explains, holding the door open for me.

I thank him and step into the ward, immediately seeing people occupying the waiting area. Dr Barnaby leads me to his assigned room and I take a seat, opening my notepad and taking out a black pen. After he has set up and assessed his schedule, he calls the first patient in.

A boy around the age of eight walks in with his parents who look distressed. My eyes immediately focus on how he’s clutching his swollen right arm with a pained expression, dried tears on his cheeks. Dr Barnaby greets them and tells the boy to take a seat on the bed, making me stand and help him up since it was too high and I didn’t want him to be in any more pain than he already was.

After physically examining his injury and asking the parents about how it happened, he tells them that we will need to take an x-ray of the arm. We take him to the Radiology department and I stand beside him, since he doesn’t want to let go of my hand, whispering words of encouragement which lessens his worry.

In no time, I’m walking him back to the waiting room where his parents are, telling them that it’s going to take at least fifteen minutes before we call him back in.

Dr Barnaby walks into the room just five minutes after I’ve taken a seat and written down notes. We work with two other patients who have similar injuries, one is a man in his forties while the other is a girl in her teens. After getting their x-rays done, we tell them how long they’ll have to wait before we call Charlie, the first patient, back in.

He walks in, baby blue eyes finding mine and I smile, helping him up onto the bed when he walks over to me. I refrain from pinching his cheeks when he yawns adorably, swiping his blonde hair out of his eyes.

“Okay, so I have confirmed that Charlie here has a forearm fracture. We’re going to immobilise it with a plaster cast so the bone can heal.” He explains to the parents who nod, their eyes flitting between their child and the doctor. “Luna here will get that done and I’ll prescribe some pain medication for him.”

I nod and immediately grab the supplies necessary before making my way to the little boy. Dr Barnaby hands him a lollipop, which he takes quite happily, while we work on plastering his arm. We measure his arm first before cutting the material so that his thumb and fingers are visible. After, we wrap some gauze around it before wetting the plaster and wrapping it over the length of his arm.

I hear the door open as Henry makes his way into the room to check up on me. Since he’s my supervisor, he does this regularly. He fills out a form as I work with Dr Barnaby. We wrap some material onto the plaster so that it is covered and Dr Barnaby asks which sleeve Charlie would like.

“Um…blue – no! Red, I want the red one please.” He smiles toothily, making me laugh.

After we’ve placed a red sleeve on his forearm, Dr Barnaby prescribes painkillers for Charlie before telling his parents about the recovery process and how long it will take. He also suggests what exercises Charlie can do once the cast is off to regain movement and strength in the arm. I write this all down in my notepad as he talks before waving goodbye to Charlie and his parents as he walks out the door.

Next, we tend to the two other patients the same way and they are out the door within an hour. As time passes, I assist Dr Barnaby in assessing conditions that are easily treatable to much more serious ones that we must admit them in a ward for.

Throughout this, I take down notes on assessing a patient’s history, physical examination tools, taking vitals and assessing pain levels. The new thing that we did was carry out pain and nausea control of a patient and this was my first time experiencing it.

Around four in the evening, I’m told that I can go. I walk back to my main workplace, only to stop and stare at the coffee cup and pastry left on my desk. I look around, thinking someone else must have placed it here, when Henry walks out of his office with the same coffee cup.

He notices that I’m frowning at him in confusion and chuckles nervously before explaining. “I thought you might need one after working in emergency.”

“Oh…thank you Henry.” I smile, taking a sip of the coffee before looking at my list.

I had two more tasks before I could leave. Finishing my coffee and the scone he had brought me, I stocked up the cabinets with medical supplies since we run out of them quite fast before throwing away the boxes into the recycling bin. Next, I help some of the nurses tend to patients in the elderly care ward.

We make our way from one ward to the next, chatting as we go. I have my notebook and pen with me and am taking down notes of how they care for the older patients. I stay for an hour, chatting to patients and keeping them company before bidding goodbye and helping the nurses.

After that, I’m told that I can leave by Henry who is still acting weird. I grab my things before making my way out of the hospital, surprised to see Kaden’s Mustang parked outside.

I walk towards his car, leaning down to see him sitting in the driver’s seat and bopping his head to the music. He jumps when I knock on the window and hurriedly turns down the volume. I laugh and open the door, placing my things by my feet before putting my seatbelt on.

“Hey, I told you I would walk back home.” I greet him whilst he reverses and merges in with the traffic on the main road.

“I don’t mind, it’s getting darker in the evenings these days.” He looks both ways before turning onto the road.

I nod, leaning back in my seat. My feet were aching from rushing around today and I saluted all the doctors and nurses who did this every day from morning to night. I was just glad that Henry didn’t give me many tasks today otherwise I wouldn’t be functioning right now.

Speaking of…

“What did you do to Henry?!” I ask Kaden, sitting upright.

He chuckles, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“Because he’s…he was nice today? It was…I don’t know, it was weird and he only gave me five things to do today! Five!” I exclaim, watching him laugh loudly in reply. “He even bought me coffee with a damn scone! I’m the one who buys him coffee. Seriously, what did you say to him?”

He shrugs half-heartedly, passing a traffic light that had turned green. “I just gave him a little talk about how what he was doing wasn’t right.”

“Yeah…okay.” I reply sarcastically, his lips quirking in amusement. “Thank you for doing that though, work is much more better now that I don’t have him breathing down my neck every second.”

“No worries, he was being an a**hole and needed a reality check.” He smiles, driving out of uptown Berlin.

“What did you get up to today?” I ask, feeling like all I did was talk about myself.

“Nothing much, just fixed up a few bits of my house before I had a meeting. I met up with Matt for lunch, he looks like sh*t still.”

I laugh lightly, listening to Kaden talk about how Matt takes a few days to look like himself again after getting that wasted on a night out.

“What do you do by the way, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Not at all. I’ve started up my own business where we help others in their marketing departments such as promoting, advertising, branding, etcetera.” He explains and I nod, finding it interesting.

“That sounds really cool!” I comment, making him shoot me a small smile.

“Thanks. It’s taking time to get other companies to give us their projects but we’ll get there.” He nods confidently, turning into my neighbourhood.

“Well, every business starts out slow so don’t worry, you’ll be getting a lot of projects soon. You just have to be patient.”

“Yeah, I have a meeting with one of the biggest companies in Berlin tomorrow. Hopefully it goes well and I get the project.” He states nervously, biting down on his lip.

“Just be yourself and show them how passionate you are about what you want to do. Over confidence will kill the chance so be humble and accepting if things don’t work out the way you want to. There’s always other companies.” I smile as he parks the car right outside where I live.

He turns to me and nods, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “That’s some solid advice, are you sure you want to be a nurse?”

I chuckle and nod, swiping a strand of hair from my eyes. “Very sure.”

A moment of silence ensues and I don’t feel like leaving just yet, but I know I can’t stay forever. But just as I pick up my bag and notepad, Kaden clears his throat making me look at him. His expression is one of nervousness and I almost laugh at how he struggles to get a word out.

Finally, he asks what’s on his mind. “Would you…um, like to go out on another date again?”

I nod, chuckling when his body visibly sags in relief and he lets out a low sigh. “I would love that. What day do you have in mind?”

“I was thinking Thursday, if you’re free?”

“I don’t have any plans, so yes.” I reply, excited at our plans.

“Great! I’ll text you the details.” He grins, a happy glint in his eyes.

“Okay, I’ll see you then. Goodnight, Kaden.”

He leans forward and brushes his lips against mine, making my eyelids flutter shut. I sigh in content, pressing my lips against him and we kiss slowly, passionately. It was short and sweet and I was pulling away for breath after a while, smiling up at him shyly.

“Goodnight.” I whisper, before grabbing my things and exiting the car.

When I’m inside the house, I hear him drive off. I lock the door and greet Eva who’s made dinner for us today. The sight of food has my mouth watering and I immediately set down my things before taking a seat beside Maddox.

We chat about our day, Maddox telling me that he spent half his day in the infection control unit before going to the haematology department. I remembered that Haematology was the study and treatment of blood from one of our lectures in second year.

Maddox was studying to become a specialist nurse to deal with patients who have conditions such as problems with the heart, strokes, diabetes, infections, tumours and blood diseases. For this, Maddox was being taught a deeper understanding of pathophysiology, the impact such conditions have on life and how to manage diseases long term.

Eva however, was studying to become a midwife and therefore had different lectures to ours. She also had extra health assessment labs that focus on pregnancy care, management of complications during birth and pharmacology. Today was her day off so she was in college until three before she went to the library and then came home to start on dinner.

After I washed up the dishes, I cleaned the kitchen before making my way to my bedroom. My phone vibrated and alerted me of a text before it started ringing. I picked it up to see that it was my mother calling before I accepted it, holding it to my ear.

“Hey, mom.” I smile, taking a seat on my bed.

“Hi sweetie! How are you? Have you eaten?” She rushes out, making me chuckle.

“I’m good, a little tired. How are you guys? Yes, I just had dinner.” Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FindNøvᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Oh, you had work today, right? Take a bath before you go to sleep okay, it’ll relax those tired muscles.” Her worried tone filters through the speakers. “And we’re fine, we just had dinner too. Your father and Nick are cleaning up.”

Just as she’s said that I hear my father in the background before taking the phone from her and greeting me. We talk for a long while, about how college and work is going while I ask him about work and what he’s been up to. They put the phone on speaker and ask me when I’m getting my winter break.

After telling them that I’ll be home around mid-December after my exams, I talk to Nick. He is currently back in Amsterdam for two weeks break and he sounds like he’s enjoying the down time.

About thirty minutes later, my family have talked about anything and everything under the sun before we bid goodbye and I hang up. Deciding to take a bath, I run the warm water before putting in a bath bomb, the colour of the water turning pink immediately.

As I sink into the bath, I grab a book and sigh in content. I’m sure my body will thank me for this in the morning.