TaNkGiRly 的網路日誌

Endymion



Chapter 1



I nearly cursed every living creature on the planet.

Oh I am sorry, you must be wondering who I am and thinking I am really rude. Even I think I am really rude myself. It just that I am not in the really good mood this morning. It all started last week when a colleague of mine, Elaine, asked me to do her shift this week so she can prepare her final exam. This was fine if only she really is preparing her exam. I only found out during the weekend that her exam had already finished last Monday and she is off to Melbourne with her beloved boyfriend!! All my generosity going down the drain!

Now, unfortunately my exam hasn’t finished yet. I have to do double shifts and finding some time to do my study. If this isn’t bad enough, this morning I actually found I am very late for my last exam and there is no way I am able to rush across the town in 15 minutes.

Hence the curse.

Ahem.

Okay, I think I owed you a proper introduction of myself. My name is Isabella Aki De Baton. I am in my second year at a nursing school. Second year students need to work in the hospital for a year, to apply all theories into the reality. So I am also working at Auckland Hospital.

I wasn’t growing up in Auckland, you know. As the matter of fact, I wasn’t even born here. I was born in Tokyo, Japan. But I wasn’t exactly Japanese, either. My mother is Chinese-Japanese and my father…………we don’t even know where he’s from. All I know is he is a sailor and left my mum before I can even remembered him. When I was three, she met a nice Australian and decided to married him. So we moved to Sydney and living there till I am 18. At age 18, I met my boyfriend, Carl. He is a New Zealander and I loved him dearly. So when he asked me to come back to New Zealand with him, how can I refuse? I dropped everything, including my angry parents, to come here with him.

Now I am not really complaining, I think Carl and I are coming to an end soon. No, I am not saying I don’t love him anymore. As the matter of fact, I still love him. It just that our love had changed to something else before we had noticed it. Our love had become…. let’s put it this way, we started talk about everything. You would probably think it is okay. But when a guy tells you everything, eg, what he thought about some silly cloths trend or a nice looking girl he met at the pub he thought he had a crush on (and I am not even having a slight jealousy), that basically means he no longer view you as his girlfriend.

Now, that’s pretty much how my life had been so far.

I think I still have to rush to this goddamn exam and try to finish it under whatever goddamn time I had left after I arrived there. I dressed, do all morning routine and finished my brekkie in 5 minutes (Man! Even I am very impressed with myself). In no time at all I am rushing out of the door and jump into my car and shoot out of my driveway like one of those boy racers.

Surprisingly enough the traffic on the road isn’t too bad. When I finally reach the lecture theatre, I joyfully found out I still have good 1 hour left to do my exam. After the exam, I returned to my car, found out by miracle my car is parking on a no parking zoom and no police had actually issue me any ticket.

My guardian angel or whatever thing is looking after me from the top must have back from his/her tea break.

Maybe my luck had changed.

I headed to the hospital. Today I have to do Elaine’s shift this afternoon.

“Isabella! Why are you here?” senior nurse Joanne raises her head and look at me as I strolled in to the door: “Get out of this place! That stupid Elaine cow can come back from OZ to do her shift!!!!” Her loudspeaker voice nearly turned everyone’s heads towards us.

“I would love to, put I need money.” No you don’t, you big softie. But there is no need to explain this to her, the damage had been done and if I don’t do it at the end it will be I getting into trouble.

Joanne gave me an ohdon’tlietomeIknoweverything look before she went back and looked at her computer screen. I quickly rushed to my locker to get changed. By the time I remerged from the changing room, I noticed Doctor Owen is standing at the counter with the small cluster of medical students gathering around him.

Lecture time.

I quickly gather my note and pen and join the cloud.

It’s a routine everyday doctors here will take the first year meds and nurses to check his patients and giving them some real life examples. Something would be better to just show it to you instead of explaining them graphically on the text book. Today it’s Doctor Owen’s turn.

Doctor Eddie Owen.

I think he had a crush on me.

No I am not being one of those bitches who thinks they are more superior to others and they should always be popular so all men should fall under their feet. As the matter of fact I reckon I am rather shy, no confidence kind of women. Just look at me, brown hair (not even silky black, this is one of the disadvantages of mix-blood), pal skin with lots of freckles on the tip of my nose and cheek, and slightly chubby body to modern day standard (in Victoria days this would be perfect). No man on this planet would be so dumb to fall under my feet……alright! Carl is the exception. But the reason he fell in love with me back then is still a mystery till this date.

Seriously, I really think Doctor Owen had a crush on me.

He never looks into my eyes when he talks to me, and always had a flush as red as monkey’s bum on his face. There were once or twice I caught him peeking on me. If you think I am over reacting. I had my friend Zoë, another senior nurse here to back me. She was once asked by Doctor Owen if I am with someone.

Now I had to say Doctor Owen is very nice looking. A lot of women like him. He had this puppy look that women couldn’t help not to fell in love with. And he had this soft blond hair that Zoë once described as “an angel hair”. But he is not really my cup of tea, to be honest with you. I respect him as a doctor and I might treat him as a friend if it comes to term (so far he’s been so shy to talk to me more than some patients’ status). But as a love interest? Nah.

Doctor Owen led us through a few patients and described their symptoms. Occasionally, he asked us a couple of related question and answered some medical enquiries from the group. Usually my job is helping Zoë checking the patients while the doctors giving the clouds some introduction.

“Psss! Are you sure you are not fancy Doctor Owen at all?” Zoë whispered at me when Doctor Owen is listening one of med’s enquiries.

“No, you’ve asked me about a million times now, young lady!!” I gave her a ohyouarenosytothecore look: “I told you he is not my kind of person. You seem to forget I am with Carl at the moment.”

“I thought you said you and Carl may be finished.”

“Now I wish I never told you that. Why are you so interested me fancy Doctor Owen thingy?”

“Coz I am nosy to the core.” She winked.

We moved to the ICU, Intensive Care Unit. There are some special cases here.

“We got someone just transfer from Escort Hospital last week,” Doctor Owen looked at his file: “this is a rather unusual case and it may be the first time all of you can see it outside of text book.”

We all entered the room.

For a moment I thought I lost my breath.

This is the nicest looking man I had ever seen. Brown-hair, well-build, and has very nice looking fingers.

Good lord.

I used to think Carl was nice looking. No, to be fare to say, Carl is really nice looking and charming. Otherwise I wouldn’t fell in love with him and came all the way across the ditch for him. But now compare to this man, Carl is really normal.

This man is gorgeous.

He is more like Greek god than a human.

Have you ever heard of the story of Endymion?

Endymion is a sheep carer. One clear and calm evening he felt asleep while he was caring the sheep, he was spotted by Diana, the moon goddess, sister of Apollo. She immediately fell in love with him. She come down to him and kissed him. He looks so beautiful when he sleep, Diana didn’t want him to wake up. So she made him in permanent sleeping condition, so she could always watch over him.

Now I saw on right in front of me.

Obviously I am not the only one. I notice other women in the group gasped.

“Sleeping Beauty.” Zoë whistled.

“This man got meningococcal septicaemia.” Doctor Owen cleared his throat: “This is a very deadly disease. It progress so rapidly, in some cases the patients only have notice some headache and cold syndromes before they collapse. The bacteria are spread mainly through intimate kissing, sneezing, coughed, or sharing a drink. In the most severe cases, the patient could die within hours after the first symptom was shown. This man only had some migraine and fatigue, went home to have some sleep and never woke up. He’s still alive, but the blood poisoning had caused the circulation to stop, resulting in gangrene. His body had shut down – except for his heart – causing damage to all of his organs. We’ve amputated his legs; he no longer has the use of his hands (the nerves were killed); his lungs aren’t functioning properly; his kidneys has failed; and his liver, eyes and teeth have been damaged. He’s been lying like this for two months now. No one knows when he will ever wake up. His family believed that he will receive better care if he is in bigger hospital, so they transferred him here.”

Most of meds here had learned the disease from the text book. But they still seems having a bit of shock. Who wouldn’t? This fine looking man here has such a horrible disease, he might as well never wake up.

I looked at the file in Zoë’s hand.

Alex McCarfferty Simpson.

Endymion has a name.