“Hey Cleo, can I have some help?” Carter asked, rushing through the door to the lounge and chucking something in his locker.

Cleo jumped, not expecting anyone to walk in. She took a sharp breath and did her best to look fine. “Is that the 10 year old?” she asked him, hoping that he was in too much of a rush to notice.

“No, a 5 year from an MVA is being brought in by the paramedics. ETA 5 minutes.”

“OK, be right there” she called after him as he ran out the door.

She stood up and glanced at her self in the mirror. She looked a mess but she didn’t have time to compose herself. She just hoped that all the staff would be occupied enough saving this child’s life that they wouldn’t notice.

* * *

“What have we got?” Cleo asked, joining the gurney that was being wheeled along the corridor.

“5 year old male, involved in a head on MVA. Trauma to the abdomen, and possibility of head trauma,” Carter recited off the information she needed.

“Do we have a name?”

“Jamie.”

“Okay, Jamie, my name’s Cleo,” she told him as the pushed him into Trauma Room 2. “I’m a doctor, and I’m going to help make you feel better.” The child nodded weakly in acknowledgment. She quickly looked him over, assessing what would be needed. “Right, let’s get a unit of o-neg into him, while we cross match some blood to find type specific. And push a litre of saline to get his fluid levels up.”

“Cleo,” Abby said, in that voice she knew meant trouble. Looking up at Jamie’s face, she saw his eyes had rolled closed. She pulled back the eyelids and shone her torch in, checking his pupils.

“Pupils are equal and reaction.” She breathed a sigh of relief, before turning back to his abdomen. There was a deep, penetrating wound to the left hand side, and she knew she needed an x-ray to determine whether anything vital had been damaged. “Let’s take him up to radiology, get an x-ray and a head CT please. And Chuny, could you take some blood and get a CBC and chem-7, just to check.”

“Do you want another unit of o-neg?” Carter, who’d been letting Cleo run things until now, asked.

“No, I’ll wait until we have type specific.” She started to push the gurney towards the door. “Let radiology know we’re on our way.”

“Cleo, he’s bleeding out.” Carter stuck his foot in front of the wheel, stopping the gurney. “He needs more blood.”

“I want to wait for type specific, we don’t have an unlimited supply of o-neg, and I think he’ll be okay.” She tried not to panic, she didn’t want to lose her cool with Carter. Today was turning out to be a pretty tough day, and this one simple thing was making it so much worse.

“His fluid levels are dropping even as we speak.”

“Push another litre of saline then,” she ordered, glancing at Abby, who nodded. She grabbed the gurney, and pushed it hard, trying to ram past Carter.

“Cleo, are you okay?” Stopping, she stared at him angrily.

“What do you mean am I okay? I just made a clinical decision, which I think will be best for the welfare of all patients.”

“And I don’t think that’s the correct decision. I also don’t think you’d normally make that decision. Is something going on?”

“How dare you,” she seethed. “How dare you challenge me like that, in front of colleagues, and a patient.”

“A patient who’s unconscious, and will be a lot worse off if we don’t get on with things.” Carter looked at her, obviously unwilling to change his mind.

“Fine, do what you like with the damn patient,” she said quietly yet angrily, pulling off her gloves. “I mean, what do I know? I’m only the paediatric doctor, and this is only a five year old kid.” Ripping her apron off, she threw it on the floor and stormed out of the room, letting the doors swing strongly behind her.

“Cleo!” Carter shouted after her, but he didn’t get a response. He sighed, and turned back to Jamie.

“Do you want me to go after her?” Abby asked.

“Let’s just treat the patient, yeah?” He was angry now, and he wasn’t going to lose this patient.

“You okay?” she asked, glancing at him, concerned.

“I will be, when we’ve treated this patient. Another unit of o-neg please.” She nodded, and hooked the blood up to the IV. “Now let’s get him up to radiology, before we have a disaster that could have been averted.”

* * *

Cleo walked through the double glass doors into the freezer that was Chicago. She took off her stethoscope and stuffed it into her lab coat pocket. She needed a breath of fresh air to calm herself down. Having her medical abilities questioned by a colleague was something she could do without right now.

She sat down on the bench outside.

“Mum?”

Cleo heard, but kept staring at the floor. A bit too long perhaps because the little boy stepped closer.

Cleo looked at him and smiled. “Kyle, I…” She stood up and hugged her son. To say that she was shocked and unprepared would’ve been an understatement. Disbelief also didn’t come close to what she was feeling yet somehow when she hugged her son, nothing else seemed to matter.

She pulled away and looked at him again, tears stinging the back of her eyes. “What are you doing her? Where’s Auntie Janet?”

Kyle shrugged. “She left. She dropped me off outside and left, said you’d be out soon.”

What? Cleo made a mental note to kill her. Her own sister didn’t even want to see her. She wasn’t sure she’d want to see herself either but that didn’t matter.

“Wait there” she told him, picking up his bag and putting it on the bench next to him. “I’ll be right back.”

* * *

“Frank, I’ve got to leave” she said, running up to the desk after getting her coat and bag out of the lounge.

“What?” The clerk looked up from the computer screen. For once it looked like he was actually working. “You know Weaver’ll kill you, right?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I don’t really want to be caught in the crossfire.”

Cleo flashed him an apologetic look as she disappeared out the ER doors.

* * *

“Do you want anything to drink?”

Cleo closed the door of her house behind them both, and awkwardly tried to communicate. It was uncomfortable. It wasn’t like she had never gone to visit him, she did as much as she could but she had always thought it best to leave things how they were. She found even asking a simple question difficult.

Kyle shook his head and sat down on the sofa. He wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as she was. He was a very bubbly, friendly child who just got on with things. His relaxed mood put Cleo a bit more at ease.

She felt slightly ashamed that she didn’t know how to act around her own child but she would just have to work on it.

Cleo went into the living room and sat down next to him.

“Do you want to be here?” The question had come out a bit blunter than she had intended but she needed to know what he felt.

Kyle shrugged. He chewed his sweater sleeve nervously and looked down at the floor.

Cleo turned to face him, a serious but gentle look on her face. “It’s OK if you don’t, I don’t blame you. Don’t feel guilty.”

He gave her a timid little smile. “I wish auntie Janet didn’t just leave me” he said truthfully, “I might’ve liked to go with them. They just organised moving without me, just assumed I’d come and live here.”

Cleo took this in. If they had known all this time that they were going to leave Kyle behind, why did they wait so long to call? She really hated her sister at the moment. And seeing her little boy so upset just made it worse.

Another silence. But not quite so uncomfortable this time.

“You’ve got a nice house” Kyle finally said, getting over his brief spell of shyness.

“Thank you” Cleo said, smiling. “Do you want to see where you can sleep?”

* * *

Carter knocked on Cleo’s door, still wondering if he should’ve come round. But he felt terrible about what had happened earlier and knew he couldn’t wait too long to apologise.

He heard footsteps come down the stairs, then someone unhooked the door latch. Cleo opened the door and looked rather surprised, or even shocked, to see him.

“Oh, Carter. I…” she started rather nervously.

“I can’t stay long. I just wanted to say sorry for earlier, I should’ve listened to what you thought.” He paused. “Is everything OK? I was going to apologise earlier but Frank said you had already left.”

Cleo glanced around, rather anxiously, eager for him to leave.

“Do you want me to go? I’m…” He was interrupted.

“Mum, who’s at the door?”

Kyle came running down the stairs enthusiastically and came up beside Cleo.

She closed her eyes and dropped her head, not wanting to see Carter’s reaction. She sighed and put her hands on her son’s shoulders.

“You’d better come in” she invited, stepping inside to let him through.

“No really, it’s fine” Carter told her, but she could tell he was surprised. He started to walk down the steps to his car but she called after him.

“Carter. I really need to talk to someone.”