Alfie

At that point, I didn't know her that well.

She'd only been at York Hospital for a couple of weeks then, but over her stint working with me, I'd already learned I liked her a lot.

She was kind.

in spite of a job that punished that sort of thing and she was a laugh on a night out and never took things too seriously.

She felt more like a nurse than a doctor and I mean that as a compliment.

Not to diss doctors or anything but they can be a bit up themselves.

But Hayley always listened to us when we gave her advice.

Always remembered staff like me and Tracy might not have been doctors but we had been working in the hospital for years something that she and her fellow junior doctors didn't have the luxury of doing.

It was sad, seeing her so distraught.

So broken, but I understood it.

I told her it was fucking horrendous, because it was.

It always is.

You get used to it in some ways, unshocked by the death and horrors, but it doesn't do you any good to get like that.

Deep down, under the layers of thick skin, you always feel it.

Sometimes it's sharp enough to poke right through to the surface.

We didn't say anything else.

We just stood, and Halina silently wept.

I didn't escape A&E for another four and a half hours after that.

Seven more people died, and by the time I pulled into the drive and let myself back into my mum's house through the back door so I didn't wake my mum or my sisters, I'd almost completely forgotten about the girl on the gurney.

I fell face down into my unmade bed, fully clothed and sticky with sweat and God knows what else, and finally, finally, I slept.