Author's Note: I could not write a story set in my country, New Zealand, without using words from the Maori language, especially as one of my main characters is Maori. I have included a glossary of the words used is at the end of Chapter 3 for those readers who are interested. And no, 'bach' is not a mistake. It is a word New Zealanders use for a holiday home, usually a rough and ready sort of place, most often beside the sea.
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'Here, you can take over now, Nurse. He may need one or two more stitches here and here. Otherwise he should be Ok to shift to the recovery room. I have to go over to Cubicle Five and deal to the new one that's just come in."
It had been a very rough week at the Auckland Hospital's Accident and Emergency unit and today was the icing on the cake. Wet roads had caused a five-car pile-up on the Southern Motorway, two fatalities, one of whom had died while being worked on at the hospital, and eleven others with multiple injuries. Plus, there had been the usual parade of sick people or those with minor strains, cuts and abrasions that should really have taken their problems to their General Practitioner. And then this dork of a Black Power bikie, whacked out of his skull on dope, had lost control of his chopper and gone flying through a wooden fence; a large piece of which had pierced his thigh up near his groin. She and Naomi had been working on the guy for over an hour now, picking out splinters and shards of wood. And all the ungrateful shit could think of was to make leery suggestions to the two young women that they should check out what he had inside his filthy underwear!
Sherri nodded encouragingly at the young junior doctor. Her heart went out to the woman. She was only three or four years older than Sherri was, say twenty-five or twenty-six, but right now she would pass for ten years older than that! She was gaunt. Huge purple fatigue marks stained her cheeks above her surgical mask. Her eyes were dull and lifeless. Naomi was just about out on her feet and there were still a couple of hours to go before the end of their twelve-hour shift.
Sherri was 'new' to nursing, a relatively raw trainee. When she was young, she fooled around at school, believing all the snide remarks from her teachers and her peers that she was the atypical dumb blonde and consequently, she left early without any qualifications. She drifted from dead end job to dead end job, but she never had any trouble finding work. Sherri was naturally blonde; blue eyed, big breasted, luscious and curvy, if a tiny bit plump, with a happy, somewhat naive personality. Prospective employers instantly fell in lust with her at interviews, but their lecherous desires always went unsatisfied, because Sherri had Steve. She went out with other boys before Steve, but he was the one who took her virginity a month after her seventeenth birthday and they had been together ever since. It seemed inevitable that someday they would get married.
She became a nurse almost by accident. Yet another go-nowhere job had folded on her and Work and Income persuaded her to go on a training programme as a trial to become a nurse's aide. To her astonishment, Sherri found that she could study! What was more, she loved helping people and the idea of becoming a fully-fledged, registered nurse! Now, two years later, she was in the thick of 'the blood and gore' at Auckland Hospital's A&E Unit, still not yet nearly qualified, but loving every minute of the work.
Sherri found herself constantly rostered on duty with Dr Naomi Panapa, a Maori woman who was only a few years older than she was. Dr Panapa drove herself hard. She had plenty to prove, not only as a woman, but also as a Maori, who are significantly underrepresented in the medical profession in proportion to their numbers in New Zealand society. At first, Sherri was scared witless of the classically beautiful, but severe coldly aloof young doctor. At times, she felt as though she was being stripped to the bone by the hard looks being fired in her direction. Then one day, when they were working together to repair a ten-year-old boy who had been knocked off his push-bike by a car, she heard Dr Panapa saying, "You do good work, Sherri, have you considered going all the way? Becoming a doctor, I mean."
Sherri was so astonished she almost knocked over a tray of surgical instruments. "N-no, I couldn't…" she stuttered.
The doctor looked up from the sutures she was inserting in the boy's arm. "Why on earth not?" Her gaze above her surgical mask, at all previous times frostily professional, was now like a warm bath, and carried an underlying hint of amusement.
Sherri felt her knees trembling. For some reason she couldn't identify, she was now more frightened of Dr Panapa than ever before. "I…I don't have the brains…"
"That's bullshit, girl! You are as bright as anyone else is around here…and you care! Think about it!"
On the bus home at the end of that shift, Sherri felt as if she was floating on air. It was impractical. She would never be able to put together the tens of thousands of dollars in course fees, but Dr Panapa actually thought she would make a good physician! Thereafter, she found herself working often with the Maori doctor. They developed an instinctive rapport, a symbiosis in which their combined skills became more effective than the sum of the individual parts. Professional decorum was maintained in front of the 'clients', but in more relaxed moments, they became 'Sherri' and 'Naomi'.
At last the horror shift was finished. Their hand-overs warned them to be careful when leaving the hospital saying, "It's blowing a cyclone out here!" The two women left together via the staff entrance. When a hefty blast of wind hit them, they huddled close and linked arms for support against the gale. Sherri was instantly aware of Naomi's soft breast at her elbow, and the other woman's arm rubbing against her own bosom as they walked. She tried to pull away to minimise the contact, but all her concerns were literally blown away by a tempestuous, swirling gust that caught the skirt of her uniform dress and lifted it high above her hips, showing off her legs and knickers for the entire world to see.
The mortified Sherri fought unsuccessfully to subdue the madly flapping cloth, drawing appreciative yahoos and tooting horns from a group of ambulance drivers standing by for their next callout. Laughing like a madwoman, Naomi dragged her beetroot faced companion around a corner into the relative calm of the enclosed walkway that led to the bus stop.
"Well, that was their cheap thrill for the night," she grinned, helping Sherri to restore herself to decency. "You looked a bit like that famous Marilyn Monroe scene just then!"
"Ohhhh! That was so awful! I'll never be able to speak to those guys again without blushing. Maybe I should start wearing trousers like you!"
Naomi looked at her sternly, "No, don't do that. You have nice legs. I only wear these pants because mine are terrible…they wouldn't have reacted the same way if that had been me!"
"But you have a nice…"
Just then, there came a piercing whistle and the sound of a man's voice shouting from the far end of the walkway, "Hey! Naomi! Kia ora, sweetheart!"
Naomi turned and yelled, "Henare…Oh, Henare! Is that you?" Then in an instant, with arms outstretched, she was running towards the large male shape standing at the end of the alleyway.
Sherri followed slowly behind, feeling short-changed by the interruption to the compliment she was about to pay Naomi. As she approached the hugging couple, she saw that the man was massive, probably only 6 feet tall, but he looked about 6 feet broad. He had Naomi clasped to his chest, cuddled in his arms like a little child, and she had her arms around his neck and was showering him with kisses.
Eventually, Naomi remembered that Sherri was with her and told the man to put her back down. "Sherri, this is Henare…" her eyes were glowing with love and happiness, and there were spots of high colour on her cheeks. "Henare's the only real man in my life…aren't you my love!" She hugged him again.
Henare was Maori, like Naomi, with typically broad features and a strong jaw line. He extended his huge paw to shake hands. "Kia ora, Sherri," he smiled, looking deep into her eyes. "Pleased to meet you."
