Chapter 3
ORLA FERGUSON
‘…And in non-medical patient news, I caught Mrs Colquhoun in bed four feeding Mr Graham a strawberry tart today and he was supposed to be nil by mouth. Thankfully, his op has been postponed until tomorrow. Mrs Finch and Mrs Cotter in room two had a wee singalong last night and I think Britain’s Got Talent should know about them.
And Mr Lewis in room six threw his slipper at me when it was time for a bed bath.
Apart from that, it’s all calm and running like a dream,’ Orla Ferguson, nurse on the Elderly ward at Glasgow Central Hospital, was delivering the early-morning handover to her friends and colleagues, Charge Nurses Keli Clark and Yvie Danton.
Orla normally worked the same rota as them, but she’d swapped today and was ready to get home after her twelve-hour shift.
‘Oh, and I’ve filled the biscuit bin in the staffroom, because that’s the kind of lovely person I am.’ That came from another friend, Emmy Sweeney, who’d just worked the night shift with her.
‘I knew there was a reason I liked you,’ Yvie said, as she picked up one of the ward iPads and prepared to get to work on the morning tasks.
‘And while I appreciate the bribery, Emms, you’re still not keeping Orla on your rota.
This was a one-time deal, and we demand her safe return to our shift tomorrow. ’
Emmy sighed. ‘Fine. But I’ll be taking the biscuits back then.’
Orla giggled and not even the other slipper that came flying out of Mr Lewis’s room could shake her mood.
She had thirty-six hours off from this moment.
And not just any thirty-six hours. Today was the very last day of April and her monthly ovulation test kit had determined that she had just entered her peak fertility window.
Emmy and Keli broke off into their own conversation about ward matters, allowing Orla to have a quiet word with Yvie.
‘Thanks again for being so flexible with my shifts this month. I really do appreciate it.’ It had just taken one phone call to Yvie, with the results of her test kit, and her friend had rearranged the ward schedules for her.
‘You don’t have to thank me. I’ll make your shifts work any way you need them to, you know that.
We’re all rooting for you. And for Kyle too, obviously.
’ She paused, before adding, ‘But mostly you, because there’s no way he’d be able to work twelve hours in this little slice of paradise and still be smiling. ’
Orla picked up the slipper and handed it over to Yvie, thinking that she would always be grateful that she’d made the move from Cork.
Much as she’d loved her life and her job in her home city, when she’d met and fallen in love with a man from Glasgow, it had made so much more sense for them to move here because Kyle’s job as the manager of his family’s construction company wasn’t one that was transferrable to Ireland.
It had been a tough adjustment when she’d first arrived.
Newly married, and settling into an area she didn’t know, she’d worked in a private hospital just outside the city for her first year.
Then, one day she’d been having a coffee in a café just five minutes from the hospital, and she’d struck up a conversation with a group at the next table.
It was Yvie, Emmy and Keli, having lunch on their day off.
They’d told her about a job vacancy on their ward and Orla had submitted an application before the day was out.
It wasn’t a coincidence. Orla didn’t believe in those.
But she did believe in fate. Destiny. Or whatever cosmic force had led them all to be there that day.
Back then, the most she’d hoped for was that she would enjoy the day-to-day work, but the friends she’d made here had been a huge extra bonus.
Yvie, Emmy and Keli were a ready-made friendship group, and she’d been welcomed right in.
Handover finished, she headed to the staffroom with Emmy and they grabbed their jackets, then took the lift to the ground floor and joined the others leaving the building at the end of their shifts.
Outside, the sun was shining, and it was finally getting light in the mornings.
It was the one thing she would change about living in Scotland.
In the winter, it was dark until almost 9 a.m., and the sun set before 4 p.m., so if she was on a block of day shifts, she could go days without seeing daylight, other than through a window on the ward.
Winter consisted of life under those horrible hospital lights, counting down the days until spring.
‘What’s the plan for today then?’ Emmy asked her, as they cut across the car park to their cars.
Almost the moment it was out her mouth, she immediately backtracked on the question and covered her ears.
‘Noooooo, don’t say it. I’ve just remembered why you swapped your shift and there are some things that I don’t need to see in my imagination.
Anything to do with your ovaries or your naked husband falls into that category. ’
‘Then don’t ask me what I’ve been up to when you see me again at handover in thirty-six hours’ time,’ Orla said, the laughter distracting her from the anxiety that was already beginning to tighten in her chest at the thought of yet another attempt to get pregnant.
Of course all her friends knew about her baby hopes and they’d been with her every step of the way for the last year.
As Yvie had said, they were always happy to swap shifts or cover for her if she had to take an extra day off.
Although, they had stipulated many times that if she had a girl, she had to be named Yvie Keli Emmy Ferguson.
‘Right. Noted. I’m just going to imagine that you’re spending the next day and a half binge-watching every series of Below Deck Down Under.
Mainly because that’s probably what I’m going to be doing because Cormac is on double shifts this week and I’m knackered.
’ Emmy’s husband was a firefighter, and if their shifts clashed they could go almost a whole week and only see each other in for brief moments as one was coming home and one was leaving – something Orla was grateful for, because it gave her someone to hang out with when Kyle was working overtime.
Which he seemed to be doing constantly lately.
They said their goodbyes and Orla climbed up into Kyle’s Nissan Navara pick-up truck.
Not the most economical of cars, and a fortune to insure, ever since it became the go-to vehicle for criminals hellbent on pulling ATM machines out of stone walls, but her old battered, beloved Mini Cooper had given up on life a couple of months ago, so Kyle was letting her borrow it.
He had the use of the company vans, so he was just bringing one of them home at night.
He wasn’t thrilled about it, and she would have to buy a new car soon, but right now, other things took priority.
She’d just manoeuvred it out of the car park when her phone rang, as it always did around half an hour after the end of every shift. Her mum had a copy of her rota, so she always knew when to call.
‘Good morning, Mam.’ Just saying those words made the anxiety loosen its grip just a little more. ‘How are you doing today?’
From the noise in the background, Orla guessed her mam was in a moving vehicle.
It wasn’t a surprise. For the last ten years, since she’d retired from a forty-year career in nursing, her mum had worked for the Red Cross in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America and could be dispatched at a moment’s notice to help deliver humanitarian aid and human care.
For the last two weeks, she’d been on the road, delivering medical supplies to a remote area of Angola that had been afflicted by severe flooding.
‘Good morning, my love. Just checking in, but I’m about to lose signal, so don’t be fretting if we get cut off.’
Sometimes her mam could be out of signal for days at a time, but Orla had learned not to worry. It was just one of the sacrifices that came with a job that was truly her mother’s life’s passion.
‘That’s okay, Mam. Are you good?’
‘Just grand. It’s over ninety degrees and I’ve got sweat running down my back, and I’m going to need a hip replacement after eight hours in this truck, but apart from that, I’m great.’
‘You know you could just retire, Mam. Stay home. Do normal seventy-year-old things. Have a bit of fun and relax.’
‘Och, but where would the joy be in that, love?’ Orla heard the laughter and she could picture her mum’s smile and the twinkle in her eye as she said that.
They both knew there would be no stopping Nula O’Flynn.
She’d been at least a decade older than all of her friends’ mums – Nula was already in her early forties when she’d adopted Orla, and past her mid-forties when Orla had started school – but her age had never made a difference.
She’d brought Orla up as a single mum while working full time as a nurse in a busy hospital in Cork, and she’d always had more drive and energy than anyone Orla had ever known.
She still did. As long as Nula could hoist herself up into the wagon of a truck, and be of use in a crisis, she’d be doing that job.
‘You know it’s being busy that keeps me young. ’
It was a discussion they had so often that Orla knew there was no point in arguing. And, actually, much as she worried about her mum, she admired her even more. ‘Well, just be careful please, and remember I love you.’
‘I know, angel, and I love—’
Orla sighed as the line crackled and then went dead. It happened all the time. Clearly, global telecommunications couldn’t keep up with Nula O’Flynn.
Orla let the greatest hits of Chris Stapleton accompany her the rest of the way home, singing the wrong words to a few of the verses, but she didn’t care because no one could hear her.
Besides, she had other things on her mind, so she had the excuse of being distracted.
Actually, there was only one other thing on her mind.
It had to be this month. Had to be. Because she wasn’t sure her heart could take another disappointment.
Sometimes Orla looked back and marvelled at how oblivious she’d been about how difficult it might be to start a family.
She’d thought that it would be simple, after she ditched the contraceptives on her wedding night, two years ago.
Other girls dreamt of the perfect man or the big wedding, but for Orla, her future dreams always came with a huge family.
Four kids. Maybe five. As an only child, going through life with a mum who was also an only child, they’d had no close family at all, so a huge brood was her happy ever after.
She just hadn’t realised how difficult it would be to get there.
She was only twenty-eight, so her doctor had said to be patient, to give it twenty-four months of trying to get pregnant before they started exploring fertility options.
This was month twenty-four and she was hoping that the next two days of scheduled passion would finally work.
Today had to be about positivity. Today was the day. It had to be. She just hoped that the fates were listening.
Her neighbour, Aidan, was just pulling out of his driveway as she slowed down at her home, so she gave him a wave.
She didn’t know him well, but he was thirty-something, good-looking, did something in finance, drove a flash sports car, and she regularly saw two or three different women going in and out of his house, so while she was always friendly, she had plenty of judgements that she kept to herself.
When she stopped in her driveway, she was so tired from the night shift, it took a moment to register what was wrong with the scene around her. It eventually dawned. No van.
Where was Kyle? The importance of today wasn’t a secret – he knew that was why she’d swapped her shift and she’d asked him to speak to his dad and say he’d be working from home today.
On the way into the house, she pulled out her phone and called him.
‘Hey, babe, where are you?’
Over the noise of the van in the background, she could hear that he sounded flustered. ‘Sorry, I just had to…’ There was a pause. The signal must be really bad wherever he was. ‘Go sort out a problem at the office.’
Her phone was balanced between her shoulder and her ear now, as one hand carried her bag, and the other slid her key in the lock. ‘At seven o’clock in the morning?’
‘Yeah, the office alarm was going off again.’
‘Babe, you really need to get that fixed. That’s what? The third time in the last few weeks that you’ve had to go out during the night?’
She dropped her bag on the console table at the front door and kicked off her shoes before heading to the kitchen.
‘Yeah, it seems to be an intermittent thing. Look, I’ll be home in ten minutes, but I need to go back to work again at lunchtime. There’s some stuff that can’t wait until tomorrow.’
Orla took a deep breath, trying desperately to stay calm and positive.
It was disappointing, though. She’d rearranged everything to give them as much time together today as possible.
Last month, when she was ovulating, they’d managed to have sex four times in twenty-four hours, and sure, it wasn’t exactly the stuff of romance, but if they were going to make this happen, then they had to try everything.
Although, being in the same place and naked would definitely be a start.
She wasn’t going to cause any tension, though.
All that mattered was that he got home and they tried again to have the baby they both longed for.
They just had to get lucky once.
And it might just be the positivity talking, but she truly felt that this month could be their time.