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‘That’s OK.’ He stood up and smiled at her flatmate. ‘Nice to meet you, Lucy,’ he murmured, and taking Allie’s arm, he ushered her out of the door.
His car was outside—a very normal, ordinary car, nothing too big, just a sensible car for the town. She was surprised. She would have expected him to have a—well, a sexier car, somehow, but what? A Ferrari, for heaven’s sake? A Mercedes?
He was only an SHO.
And that was another thing that was puzzling her. Surely by now he should have been a registrar? Unless he’d taken time out for something else … She’d have to ask.
He opened the passenger door for her, went round and slid behind the wheel. Suddenly the car seemed much smaller, and astonishingly intimate.
‘All set?’ he asked, throwing her a grin, and she nodded.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Pulham St Peter. It’s just north of here, and the pub’s very good, so I’m told.’
Pulham wasn’t far. She settled back against the actually very comfortable seat and watched him out of the corner of her eye. Within seconds she was totally relaxed. He was a good driver, quiet, competent and not hasty, but he didn’t hang about, either.
She realised she felt safe, and it was a strange feeling. She was normally edgy with other people driving her. She didn’t have long to worry about it, though, because they were pulling up in the pub car park in no time, and he was ushering her into the busy, crowded bar.
It was noisy and full, but by a miracle another couple vacated a table in the corner just as they had got their drinks and they were able to sit down out of the way and study the menu.
‘Shall we eat in here, or in the restaurant?’ he asked her.
Conscious of the price and the fact that tonight she was definitely going halves, she said, ‘In here, I think.’
He nodded, scanned the menu again and looked at her. ‘Decided yet?’
‘Scampi and chips—and I’m paying for mine.’
He chuckled. ‘How did I know that?’
He went to the bar armed with her money and placed the order and paid, and then came back and handed her her change. ‘There you are, you stubborn, independent young woman.’
She smiled and pocketed the money. She felt better now. She didn’t want to feel she owed him anything. Not that he would take advantage, but there had been the odd occasion in her past where a man had felt he had a right to her body because she’d accepted a meal from him. It hadn’t taken her long to dissuade her erstwhile suitors, but it had left a nasty taste in the mouth, and she didn’t want to mess up their budding relationship—
‘Penny for them.’
She laughed. ‘Not a chance. What are you having?’
‘Same as you.’
Their eyes clashed, and she looked away, her heart hammering. Oh, Lord. It would be so easy to fall for him. She cast around for a neutral topic of conversation, and remembered her thoughts about his career progression.
‘Tell me about your work,’ she said, sipping her drink. ‘How come you’re still an SHO? I would have thought you’d be a registrar by now.’
He grinned wryly. ‘I would have been, but I changed horses in the middle of the race. Well, actually, I changed races. You know I wanted to do general surgery, like my father?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I remember. You were keen.’
‘I was—until I started doing it. Then I felt curiously detached from it all. The patients come in with a problem that someone else has detected, you fix it, and they go away. You never see them again, never know how they are unless there’s a problem.’
‘But that’s good. If you don’t see them again, you’ve done your job.’
He shook his head. ‘Maybe—but it’s not the job I want to be doing. I want to find the problem, send them to get it sorted and follow it up afterwards at home.’
‘But that’s general practice,’ she said, a little bemused.
‘Exactly.’
She stared at him in astonishment. ‘But you’re going to be a surgeon.’
He shook his head. ‘No. Not any more. That’s why I’m doing paeds, why I’ve done obs and gynae, and A&E, and general medicine, and geriatrics—’
‘You want to be a GP?’ she said slowly, the penny finally dropping.
He smiled. ‘Yes—why not?’
Why not? She thought of the stress her father was under, of his partner who had found the strain all too much and taken the easy way out, leaving his wife and two young children to cope alone without him—
‘Why not?’ she said incredulously. ‘Because it’s an awful life, that’s why not. It’s dreadful. That’s why they can’t recruit GPs for love nor money. It’s stressful, it’s bogged down with paperwork, the hours are horrendous, it’s a thankless task—’
‘No. It’s not a thankless task. It might be all the other things, but it’s not a thankless task, and the hours are much better now. Nearly all GPs are in cooperatives, so their time on call is much better organised and less stressful.’
She snorted. ‘Talk to my father about it.’
‘I have—I did. He agrees.’
‘No, he doesn’t. Well, he might have done five years ago, but he doesn’t now. Why do you think he’s taking early retirement?’
Mark shrugged. ‘To enjoy the rest of his life while he still can?’
She snorted again. ‘Not my father. He’s a workaholic. No, it’s stress, I know it is.’
‘Well, whatever, it’s what I want to do, Allie,’ he said quietly, straightening the edge of his beermat with a strong, blunt fingertip. ‘I’m not cut out for hospital medicine, I know that now.’
She was stunned. Shocked, confused, utterly baffled by his announcement. He was going to be a surgeon. She’d always known that. It was who he was—wasn’t it?
She sipped her drink again absently, and then the barmaid called out a number and Mark stood up, coming back moments later with two fragrant, steaming baskets of scampi and chips nestled on absorbent paper napkins, two wooden forks and a selection of condiments in another basket.
‘Here—it smells gorgeous.’
It did. Fattening, wicked and absolutely lovely. She let her breath out on a quiet sigh, sprinkled salt liberally over her food with total disregard for her health, and tucked in.
A GP, for heaven’s sake—
‘Allie?’
She looked up, searching his face for any clue that he’d been winding her up, and found none.
‘What?’
‘What’s the matter?’
Was she so easy to read? She shrugged. ‘I just thought—I don’t know. I always knew you were going to be a surgeon.’
He grinned. ‘Well, I’m not. Believe me, I was shocked as well. You’ll get over it. The scampi’s good. Do you want some tartare sauce?’
‘Mmm.’ She tore the corner off the packet and squeezed it out mechanically, then stuck the little wooden fork into a piece of scampi and bit into it. He was right, it was good. She put thoughts of his career out of her mind and concentrated on eating and enjoying his company, but something had gone, like a light being switched off inside her.
It was only later, after he’d taken her home and given her another of those sizzling kisses on the doorstep, that she realised why.
They had no future, because there was no way she could spend her life with anyone who was going into general practice. There was no way she’d marry him if things went that far. She couldn’t bring children into the world knowing their father might not last the course. She’d seen at first hand the havoc it could cause in a woman’s life, and she had no intention of letting it happen to her.
Then she chided herself for being ridiculous.
You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself, Allie Baker. You’ve had two dates—and one of them didn’t even really count. Stop acting like he’s asked you to marry him!
She got ready for bed, climbed under the chilly duvet and snuggled down, and waited fruitlessly for sleep to come.
They had a new admission the next day, a little girl of seven from the cystic fibrosis clinic. Claudia Hall had been diagnosed with CF at birth, and was currently struggling with yet another deep-seated chest infection.
She was coming in for intravenous antibiotics to combat it, and Allie greeted her and her very pregnant mother affectionately. It was the second time she’d been in in the few months Allie had been on the ward, the last time to insert a gastrostomy tube in her stomach so she could have special feeds delivered by pump overnight to boost the amount she was able to eat, because her appetite was dreadful and she wasn’t able to take in enough to sustain herself.
Everybody thought CF was just a chest condition, Allie mused, and yet it affected the intestines just as much, causing havoc with the assimilation of food and secretion of enzymes. In fact if Claudia ate anything with fat in it, she took handfuls of enzyme pills to enable her to digest it properly. Between the enzymes and the tube feeds, Claudia had been gaining weight, but now she’d lost it again with this infection. Allie had hoped they wouldn’t have to see her again so soon, and it was a shame. She’d had more than enough to deal with already in her short life.
‘Where am I this time?’ the little girl asked as she looked round the all too familiar ward.
‘Nice bed by the window—that do you?’ Allie said with a smile.
Claudia nodded. ‘Yes, please. I don’t want to be in the Winnie the Pooh room again.’
Allie laughed. ‘Well, you won’t have to this time because you’re MRSA free, so we won’t have to isolate you. How’s Piglet?’
Claudia pulled up her jumper and showed Allie her gastrostomy tube, nicknamed Piglet because of the Winnie the Pooh room she’d been put in when she’d gone down with the MRSA infection in the gastrostomy site. ‘He’s fine. Still eating all night.’
‘Good. Right, we need to admit you and do all the paperwork, then you can go and find out who’s in the playroom.’
‘Is Katie still here?’ she asked.
Allie shook her head. ‘No, sorry. She went home a few weeks ago. There are a couple of girls of your age, though. I’m sure you’ll get on with them.’
Claudia nodded and scrambled up onto the bed, triggering a coughing fit that ended in her vomiting. Allie was prepared. It was a frequent occurrence with CF children, and she was ready with a paper bowl.
‘She’s really gone downhill the last few days,’ her mother Jayne explained. ‘She’s been coughing more and more—Dr Barrett thought she should come in and get it sorted. She’s got pneumonia this time—I suppose it makes a change from Pseudomonas.’
Allie nodded. ‘Yes, she’s down for gentamycin. That should clobber it. Can’t have you feeling this poorly, can we?’ she said with a smile for Claudia, who was flopped against the backrest looking exhausted.
‘She hasn’t been sleeping all that much,’ Jayne said, and Allie could tell by the bags under her eyes that Jayne hadn’t, either.
‘When’s the new baby due?’ she asked.
‘Three weeks, but I may not make it that long. I’ve got dodgy ligaments in my pelvis and it’s so painful. I have to wear a belt round my hips to support it, and it’s getting really tiresome, not to mention difficult to move around, so they might induce me early.’
As if the poor woman didn’t have enough on her plate. ‘It’ll soon be over,’ Allie said comfortingly, and then turned back to Claudia. ‘All right, poppet? Feeling a bit better?’
She nodded, but it was only politeness. She looked awful, poor kid, and Allie wanted to hug her.
‘Dr Jarvis’ll be here in a minute, I expect, and he’ll check you over and get your IV line in. Then we can get some bug-zapper into you and you should start to feel a bit better.’
Claudia nodded again, and Allie flipped open her file and took out the sheet at the front with all the labels on. They were printed with name, address, next of kin, hospital number and so forth, and were stuck on anything to do with the patient. It saved hours of copying and potential inaccuracy—when they were right.
Allie checked, on the principle that one could never be too sure. ‘Are all your details still the same? Address, phone number and so on?’
Jayne nodded. ‘Yes, nothing’s changed.’
‘Good.’ She stuck Claudia’s labels on the charts, clipped them to the end of the bed and took her temperature and blood pressure. The respirations she’d already done surreptitiously while Jayne had been talking, and they were up, as she’d expected.
‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ she asked Jayne when she’d finished.
‘Oh, I’d love one. Can I make it?’
Allie shook her head. ‘You sit there, I’ll find someone to do it for you. Weak, black, no sugar—is that right?’
‘How did you remember that?’ Jayne asked softly, and looked near to tears. Allie guessed that this pregnancy had been very difficult for her. She had a horrendous obstetric history, by all accounts, and it was touch and go whether this one would be all right. Still, at least she was almost there. That was a huge improvement.
‘I have a very retentive memory for useless information,’ she told Jayne now, and with a smile, she left them alone and found Pearl, the Jamaican ward orderly. ‘You couldn’t take a cuppa to Jayne Hall, could you? She’s over there. Weak, black, no sugar.’
‘I remember, darlin’, don’t worry. I know Jayne very well. Sometimes I think she lives here. Sure, I’ll take her a cup of tea. I was just goin’ to ask her myself.’
Allie left Jayne in Pearl’s capable hands, and thought not for the first time what a gift to the ward the matronly woman was. She was possessed of infinite kindness and patience, and seemed to be able to keep order with the bored and naughty children absolutely effortlessly. They all adored her, and it was mutual. She would have made a wonderful nurse, but perhaps she was more useful as an orderly, because she never had to do anything unpleasant to the children and that made her easier to trust.
Allie checked on Amy Fulcher who had come back from Theatre yesterday after she’d gone off duty. She was looking better already, much more comfortable, and her mother was slumped in the big vinyl armchair beside her, sleeping.
It seemed a shame to wake either of them, so Allie left them to it for a little while. Sleep was probably more useful than anything to the baby at the moment, and the mother was exhausted.
She looked across at Claudia’s bed and saw Mark had arrived and was chatting to them. He had one hip hitched up on the edge of the bed, and he was smiling and teasing Claudia into smiling back. He was good with children, she realised, and wondered why he didn’t go into paediatric surgery.
He’d been so keen, so certain of his choice—
She shook her head. She was still stunned by his revelation, and was trying to reconcile herself to the bitter fact that there could be no future for them beyond the immediate one of a few dates—except maybe, because he was the only man she’d ever felt like this about, a brief affair.
Nothing lasting. Nothing permanent. No happy ever after. Just something to remember him by when he moved on.
She swallowed hard and found herself something to do at the other end of the ward, away from him and his laughing eyes and wide, ready smile that made the sun come out.
Her reprieve was short-lived, though, because he asked her to assist him with Claudia’s intravenous line. He was putting in a long line, not as long as a Hickman line that went all the way to the heart, but one that went into the arm in the crook of the elbow and up into the top of the chest.
‘As you know it lasts longer than a needle cannula,’ he explained to Jayne and Claudia, ‘and this treatment’s going to take a couple of weeks. We don’t want to have to keep putting in another line and messing you about, do we, Claudia?’
