Chapter 1 - part one

Time doesn’t bode well with you, thought Justine, massaging her fingers into her forehead. It was 1 am, just after rush hour, and the nurse had a headache. She was slouched on the staff room’s sofa with the lights turned off, and her coffee cup for company. Saying that the evening had been stressful was an understatement, yet everyday was stressful on the Emergency Ward, and it didn’t help Justine that the hospital was severely lacking in staff.

Today she had the usual bingers and drunkards, as well as an assortment of slips, bumps and car accidents, but what had made her job hell this evening was a stabbing, because with a stabbing comes the police, and with the police comes chaos. Patients are under no obligation to say whether they’re smokers or not, and there’s nothing the medical staff can do to put patients under jurisdiction, but if the police suspects a patient has been smoking, they are fully in their rights to arrest that patient. Frankly, the whole system was shit. The main reason why smoking tobacco had become illegal was to relieve healthcare services from patients affected by the Smog, but every time the police becomes involved with a case, the entire hospital turns upside down as the smokers scramble to make themselves scarce. The poor buggers with lung cancer but not from their own doing don’t stand a chance. Police tactics were becoming more and more brutalised, however Justine didn’t blame them, it was the Government who allowed their society to deteriorate, even in Dorset, of all places! The yearly healthcare budget cuts worsen the wounds, Justine thought. Not only do the hospitals not have enough money to improve their services, but who’d want to work in one now? Nurses are paid a pittance. Fucking Government.

Justine rubbed her eyes. Although she detested it, what her grandpa had said was true; a war really would benefit the country. Certainly not immediately, what with the economic situation the country was in, yet in the long term it would be beneficial to the people. Why? Because at the moment the country was floundering, trying to fight to survive, but not knowing who to fight against or why. If the enemy was more physical than a faceless entity, it would give everyone a focus, and a reason to appreciate and, dare it be said, enjoy life again. Regardless of this rather appealing idea however, Justine hated the thought of the suffering that a war would bring, and hated herself more for thinking about it.

And of course, a war would put even more pressure on her job. Her head throbbed in discontent.