Too little, too late

I'm floating on an ocean of comfortable nothingness. Its silent except for the gentle lappng of the water. Calm. Peaceful. I can hear a voice in the distance. So far away it's almost inaudible above the waves. I strain, trying to work out where it's coming from.

"Rosie", I awake with a start. I'm on the ward in T9, the nurse is leaning over me, her hands resting gently on my arm. I try to rub the sleep out of my eyes, temporarily confused as to my whereabouts. "Walk up sleepy head, transports here".

A wave of anger hits me like a train, knocking the sleep out of me once and for all. "What, now? Buts it's too late! I've cancelled my nurses and Dad's gone home. What time is it anyway?"
She glanced at the clock. "Nearly 11pm" at this, a disgruntled man stuck his head round the curtain. "It's she ready or not?" He moaned, starting daggers. "We don't have time to be hanging about".

A tidal wave surged inside me, flooding me with hot adrenaline. I tried to swallow it back down, but there was no room. My volcano of frustration would not be contained. "We don't have time to be hanging about?!" I repeated, turning phasers to death con one. "Who the hell do you think you are?!" The man opened his month to reply, but my razor sharp gaze stopped him dead in his tracks. The colour drained out of his face, turning him a rather peculiar shade of grey. 

"I have been waiting for you to turn up since 3 o'clock this afternoon, and have spent my day being continuously lied to and fobbed off by your useless bloody company. As a result, I have been unable to return home and wil have to spend another night incarcerated with no sleep". The man gulped, shrinking back against the curtain, desperate to find some kind of relief from the intolerable heat of the death stare.

"So what do you want us to do?" Croaked the ambulance driver, eyes resolutely fixed on the floor, a shadow of his former bolshy self. I contorted my face into a smile and replied in little more than a whisper, "I want you to go back to your controllers and recant my immense displeasure. They shall be hearing from me with a formal complaint in due course".

His frantic nodding reminded me of one of those nodding dogs. The nurse and I watched in cold stony silence as he desperately tried to find his way out of the small gap in my curtains. Then like an animal being returned to the wild, he disappeared out of sight as fast as his short legs would carry him.