Glass double doors opened into a wide but shallow space with some dirty floormats and another set of double doors beyond. It was intended as a kind of airlock: people entering the hospital were expected to wipe their feet while the doors behind them closed and the doors in front of them opened, and there was an additional benefit of not letting the frigid winds of a November evening howl through the waiting room beyond. Naturally the second set of doors opened as soon as the first did due to an overenthusiastic sensor and an underenthusiastic maintenance team so, while the two uniformed police officers were carefully scuffing the soles of their boots on a carpet that seemed likely to make them dirtier than they already were, the night wind tore into the waiting room, ruffled the papers at the reception desk and made the various clumps of people around the room shiver and huddle.
Marco, who was the more senior of the two very junior officers, led the way. Even they, heavily dressed in kevlar vests and heavy cotton stab-resistant trousers and jackets, were glad when the doors slid shut again and blocked the wind penetrating search of the room. He paused, looking over the waiting room. This was an element of professionalism that he was trying to instil in his colleague, Andrew, who bumped into him because he hadn’t been paying enough attention.
“Wait a moment,” said Marco putting a gloved hand on Andrew’s wrist. “Look around, tell me what you see.”
The waiting room was laid out in columns of chairs that led up to the reception desk, which was wide enough for three people to be on duty. At this time of night there was only one, and she was watching them both with bright eyes with dark circles under them that suggested her alertness might have more to do with coffee than how long she’d been awake. The room was set out so that each column consisted of back-to-back chairs except at the two walls where a single line of chairs backed the wall. There were four aisles between the chairs in total and there were few enough people waiting to be seen that there were clear spaces between groups. Fragments of conversation reached the two police men as Marco waiting for Andrew to answer.
“…I’m prolapsing is not our safe word, Jeremy…”
“…didn’t think it wouldn’t come out mummy…”
“…ouch. Ow. Oh god, oh god. Ow…”
“…only when you do that! Stop it!”
“A waiting room, Marco,” said Andrew.
Marco sighed, feeling put upon. He’d been feeling put upon ever since getting the roster that had assigned him to work with Andrew for six weeks and Andrew wasn’t doing anything to alleviate that feeling.
“There are four aisles,” said Marco, gesturing. The receptionist narrowed her eyes slightly, watching him carefully. “That one,” he pointed, “has the fewest number of potential hostiles along it, so we walk up that. If they decide to mob us, they’ve got to run round the ends, or climb over the chairs, and that gives us either time to retreat, or an advantage in knocking them down.”
“…safe words are how I know there’s a problem…”
“…I’ll break it off if you don’t stop it…”
“… ow ow ow ow ow…”
Andrew’s brain seemed to finally engage enough to produce words. “I don’t think most of these could mob us, Marco,” he said, sounding sullen. Marco tried very hard to treat it as an observation and not a protest by the slowest person in the room.
“If you view every room as something you need to be able to leave in a hurry,” he said patiently, “then you’ll be able to leave almost every room in a hurry. Get into good habits before you need to rely on them, right?”
“…prolapsing shouldn’t need a safe…”
“…it back in, no, don’t! The doctor…”
“…if you don’t stop it I’ll break yours too…”
Andrew gazed around and then pointed to the aisle with fewest potential patients. “So we walk up there, right?”
Marco nodded, hoping that wasn’t going to be the greatest success of the evening. “You go first,” he said, “watching everyone, including that receptionist who’s been watching us the whole time. I’ll bring up the rear, making sure that no-one’s going to try and jump us.”
“What receptionist?”
Marco made himself count to ten, pushing aside the desire to groan and punch his partner in the face.
“The one behind the desk,” he said, pointing. The receptionist stood up.
“Oh! I see her!” said Andrew, not seeing Marco’s hand tighten into a fist. “Let’s go talk to her!”
He set off, walking up the nearest aisle, while Marco, cursing under his breath, took the aisle with fewest people along it. He arrived at the receptionist first as she was already watching him intently.
“What do you want?”
“We’re looking for Dr. Fraud,” said Marco.
“This is the emergency room,” said the nurse. “We’re understaffed as it is. If it’s not a medical emergency then you can wait till the doctor’s finish their shift and then talk to them. If it is a medical emergency then you can sit down and wait your turn.”
“What if it’s urgent?” asked Marco, distracted by the idea that he should wait hours just to find out if Dr Fraud was in the building.
“Then you better hope it isn’t,” said the nurse. “Wait time is a little over three hours. And you are not making it worse by jumping the queue!”
Marco hesitated. He clearly couldn’t sit here all night waiting just for the answer to a question. He opened his mouth to ask when the doctor’s shift finished and then an idea struck him.
“Andrew?” he said as casually as he could manage. Andrew looked at him and smiled, reminding Marco of the cows on the farm he’d grown up on. “Andrew, you’re going to have to sit here and wait for the doctors to finish their shift so we can talk to them. I’ll carry on with the rest of the job. Call me, say half an hour before they finish, and I’ll come back.”
“Right!” Andrew ambled off to sit down near the man complaining to a woman about safe words. The nurse looked at Marco.
“You’re the clever one?” she said. Marco nodded. “Fine state of affairs,” she muttered, and sat back down.
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