A Placement in A&E

When I was a student nurse, the only placement that I did not enjoy was A&E ( ER)
My father died right at the beginning of my three month span of duty there, so in a show of support by the nursing staff, I was moved from the resus area ( where all city traumas were brought in) to work with the staff that were allocated to the " walking wounded".
It was mildly interesting and less stressful than the cut and thrust of the adrenaline filled trauma room.
Only one experience from a humdrum collection of cut fingers,boils on the bum and dislocated wrists  sticks in my mind to this day, and that was the time I was conscripted by a pretty Scottish sister to help her with a patient.

This sister in question collared me as I tidied up a treatment room with a " could I ask you to help me with something important?" She looked upset, so of course I agreed and she led me to a curtained off cubicle where she told me in hushed tones that an elderly woman had been brought in and had unfortunately died just as she reached hospital. Her husband, who had accompanied his wife's ambulance in a good Samaritan's car , had turned up in the department and had just been informed of his wife's death.
" what do you need me to do?" I asked the sister
" he wants to feel her arms around him a last time" she explained with a gulp,
" and I can't do it by myself".
There was no one else around, so of course I agreed.
And so between us we gently sat the old gal up a little on a hospital trolley and ever so gently helped her husband up onto it where he lay against her with a sob.
The woman was around 80, and had a single roller in her white hair. She wore a white cardigan as I remember.
I held one of the woman's arms around his shoulders and the pretty Scottish sister did the same with the other and there we stood for what seemed like the longest of times.

The old man whispering  and crying to his wife all the time as we, with our eyes brimming with tears, tried to look elsewhere.