That was all it took to connect the dots in her mind and send her thoughts spinning back eleven years and four months to another message from another boss, asking her to come to her office.
Becca’s ward manager, Jane Fielding, was a brisk middle-aged woman with hair dyed a shade darker than suited her lined and jowly face. They’d never had a harmonious relationship, Becca’s sense of humour and her habit of being silly to cheer up her patients apparently unprofessional in her manager’s eyes. Jane was always pulling her up on little things that didn’t really matter. Nitpicking, Becca thought, putting it down to a controlling personality who liked things done her way. But this was something else.
She’d never been called into the office for a formal chat before, and the mood was sombre. Becca’s hands felt clammy where they rested in her lap.
‘I’m sorry to have to do this,’ Jane said, her voice brusque and businesslike, ‘but I’m afraid circumstances demand it.’ Her mouth became a hard, scarlet line, a mean slash across her doughy face. ‘I’m going to have to suspend you from duty pending an investigation. With immediate effect.’
Becca held on to her chair, shocked beyond words for a moment while Jane continued. ‘These are very serious allegations.’
Her patronising tone unblocked the logjam of words that had been stuck in Becca’s throat. ‘You can’t think I’m in any way involved in harming the patients?’ she said, incredulous. Her heart was racing, revving like a jump-started engine. ‘You can’t think that. I treat everyone like they’re family, and everything I do is to help make them better.’ She glowered at her manager, fingers tightening round the seat of the chair as her mind scrabbled for a way to make Jane see that she’d got it wrong. ‘Who made these accusations against me? Let me talk to them. Maybe it’s a misunderstanding.’
Jane sat back in her seat, her eyebrows knotted into a continuous line. ‘It’s not one accusation; it’s a number of incidents. Initial investigations show they appear to have started when you first joined us here on the ward.’
‘What incidents?’ Becca’s mind immediately started reviewing recent events. There had been a crisis the previous day, a resuscitation. And one a couple of weeks earlier. Is that what this is about? She wiped her clammy hands on her uniform as if smoothing out the creases. ‘Surely I’ve a right to know exactly what I’m being accused of?’
Jane nodded. ‘Yes, you do, and you’ll be given a formal letter detailing everything. It’s being prepared as we speak, but the decision was made to suspend you immediately to safeguard the patients in our care.’ She gave Becca a stony look. ‘We’re investigating incidents of patients being given the wrong medication and the wrong doses, leading to catastrophic outcomes in some cases.’
Becca shook her head, her heart racing so fast she felt lightheaded. ‘I’m always extremely careful with medication. Ask the other nurses.’ There was desperation in her voice. ‘Please just talk to them. They’ll tell you. I’m always double-checking.’
Jane gave her a curt nod. ‘We will be checking, don’t you worry. And in the meantime, you are relieved of your duties. The police will be wanting to interview you, and I hope you will give them your full cooperation in this matter.’
The police? Becca thought she was going to faint and could only nod her response. She was being picked on, made a scapegoat by a woman who had her favourites amongst the nursing staff, and Becca wasn’t one of them. Had a colleague pointed the finger? Was anyone else being suspended? She had no answers, only questions, as she was sent home.
From that moment on, Becca’s life spiralled down into the worst hell she could have imagined.
Days at home, ostracised by her colleagues while the investigation was underway, made her start to doubt herself as she walked through her medication rounds in her mind, trying to remember every detail. But memory is a fickle creation at the best of times, and instead of reassuring herself that she was in the right, she became convinced that it was possible she’d made some terrible mistakes. That people had died because of her actions.
She found herself repeating mundane tasks, and the repetition turned into an obsession until she couldn’t drink from a mug until she’d washed it three times. Couldn’t empty the washing machine until she’d done another rinse and a spin. Had to check three times that she’d locked the door when she went out. Switching things on and off, washing her hands before meals, after meals, while she was cooking. Her hair started to fall out. She couldn’t eat, and when her sister found her collapsed on the bathroom floor, she was admitted to the mental health unit, suffering from anxiety and depression.
The truth, when it eventually came out, that the ward manager had been behind the problems, was shocking. Although Becca was exonerated from any crime, she’d been broken by the experience, both mentally and physically, her confidence shattered.
She’d become incapable of caring for herself, and her mother suggested she come and stay in the family home for a couple of weeks so she could be discharged from hospital. It turned into a couple of months and became increasingly clear she’d outstayed her welcome.
Tina’s invitation to go and stay with her in Australia was a major turning point in Becca’s life. Their friendship had started at university, where Tina had trained as a mental health nurse, and although she specialised in caring for dementia patients these days, when Becca arrived at her house, she spent hours helping her to see that she’d done nothing wrong. Gradually, Becca started to get control over her obsessive behaviour, and one by one she managed to eliminate all her little tics. By the time she met Connor, she was feeling like her old self again, and the bar work was making her socialise and interact with people. She began to think that she could leave the whole traumatic incident behind and move on with her life.
Leave the past behind? How naive to imagine scars like that could ever properly heal. It only took a bit of pressure, a bit of stress, to pull the wounds apart, and all the old doubts and fears and obsessions came bursting out again, like the stuffing from a ripped cushion.
4
The sound of her phone ringing roused Becca from her thoughts. It was Carol again. There was only one reason for her to call, but Becca answered, hoping she was wrong.
‘Hi, Carol. I just picked up your message. Everything okay?’
‘Hello, love. Yes, fine.’ She gave a quick laugh. ‘I always say that, don’t I? To be honest, I’m under pressure today. There’s two off ill and we’ve four new patients just out of hospital. I wondered if you could do an extra shift this week. You know I wouldn’t ask unless we were desperate, but could you manage to come in tomorrow morning?’
Becca worked three mornings a week, which felt like a lot with Mia to look after and Dean away so much, but she had to work a certain number of hours to keep her nursing registration. It was such a long-winded process getting back into the profession if she were to let it lapse, and once Mia was at school, she’d want something to get her out of the house and fill her days.
Quite apart from that, nursing was a vocation for her, rather than a job, and something she really enjoyed – looking after other people was a fundamental part of who she was. Admittedly, it had been a struggle, an extra pressure going back to work when Mia was six months old, but she’d landed a position as a district nurse, based at the local medical centre in Llandudno. It used to be a short walk from the house they’d been renting at the time and gave her flexible hours, the staff covering for each other if ever there was a problem. They were like a little family, all getting along, and she loved being part of a team. She also enjoyed the variety of the job – being out and about in the community – much more than she’d ever enjoyed working on a ward.