A Nurse to Trust Read online

  ‘I thought you were principally a beer man,’ said Clare.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing like a pint of real ale after a scrum,’ he said. ‘I bet your dad would agree with that. But, by the same token, there’s nothing like a superb glass of wine partaken in good company.’ He raised his brandy glass in a salute.

  He was full of surprises tonight, Clare thought. He was being poetical, almost romantic in an old-worldly sense, though not in a sloppy fashion.

  ‘Well, if you want to visit Dad’s wine cellar, that should be simple enough to arrange. You only have to say the word and we’ll nip across the Solent and have a day on the Island. Mum and Dad can’t come here at the moment, but they’d love to meet you.’

  They sat chatting a little bit longer until their glasses were empty. Then Daniel wished Clare a quiet, gentle goodnight and let himself out through the garden gate into the little back alleyway, as St Steven’s clock chimed one.

  He never did tell me any more about his family, Clare thought as she washed the glasses at the kitchen sink. Probably best not to pressure him about it. I mustn’t do anything to spoil what we’ve got now. Friendship is too important for that.

  But a small voice inside her whispered that he could be so much more than just a friend. Yes, that was true, she had to admit. The question was what, if anything, came next? Neither of them wanted a sexual affair. Or did they?

  At the thought of having Dan as a lover she felt a stirring inside her that she hadn’t experienced for a long time.

  With an effort of will she tried to consider the matter rationally. She’d been celibate for quite a while and suspected it was the same with Dan. Their work threw them constantly together. They had established they shared common interests—this very evening had proven that. They were both physically healthy specimens that any unbiased observer would probably agree were presentable and at least reasonably attractive.

  Looked at like that, how long could they resist simple biological need?

  There was quite a queue of patients waiting for them next morning when they reached Stoneybridge-on-the-Moor. Stoneybridge was another large village, nearly as large as St Mary Otterburn, and rested on the southern fringes of Dartmoor.

  The sun was shining but there was no sign of another heatwave, it was just pleasantly warm. In spite of the sun, however, there was a bleakness about Stoneybridge that made Clare shiver.

  ‘It absolutely shrieks of the hound of the Baskervilles,’ she said to Daniel and George as they drew up. ‘Miles and miles of desolate moorland and bogs, where escaping criminals come to a sticky end. Listen…’ she cupped a hand round her ear ‘…and you can hear the hound howling.’

  She gave another deliberately dramatic shiver. ‘And if it can strike one like this on sunny summer morning, what on earth must it be like on a winter’s night?’

  George jerked his head in her direction. ‘Bit of a romantic, our Clare, isn’t she, Doc?’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ said Daniel, shooting Clare a teasing smile as he agreed with George.

  Clare merely smiled inwardly, thinking of the previous evening and knowing there were at least two confirmed romantics sitting in the cab at that moment.

  Many people on their various routes had taken to phoning the health centre to book appointments with the mobile surgery. Clare’s first patient, Vicky Fox, had done just that, specifically asking for an appointment with the nurse. Clare had brought Vicky’s medical records with her from the centre.

  It was a slim packet. Vicky had only been registered with the health centre at Trewellyn for a couple of months. The last entry on the card from her previous GP was dated two years ago. ‘Spontaneous miscarriage of six- to eight-week-old foetus. D and C recommended.’ So according to her date of birth, which put her at twenty-one, the abortion had occurred when Vicky was nineteen.

  There was nothing more. Had she had a D and C? Dilatation and curettage was the usual procedure after an abortion, to clear out all the debris left behind in the uterus. Perhaps the hospital had failed to confirm that it had been done, or the confirmation had gone adrift. Whatever, the best way to find out was to see Vicky and ask her.

  When Vicky limped into the treatment room at the appointed time, Clare saw that one foot and ankle were clumsily bandaged.

  ‘I’ve sprained it or something,’ Vicky said dismissively, nervously twisting her fingers together. ‘That’s why I couldn’t drive in to Trewellyn. I need a Tubigrip support really, but there’s no pharmacy here so I had to do the best I could with an old crêpe bandage.’

  Clare smiled reassuringly. ‘Take a seat. We can soon do a proper job of bandaging to give it more support. How did it happen?’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t come about that,’ said Vicky impatiently as she scrambled onto the reclining chair couch.

  So why is she so uptight? wondered Clare. ‘Well, tell me, what can I do for you?’

  ‘I think I should have a smear test done—a cervical smear. You can do that here, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But what makes you think that you need a smear, Miss Fox?’

  ‘Vicky,’ the young woman muttered.

  ‘OK, Vicky. So what has happened to make you think that you need a smear?’

  ‘I’m sure that you’ll have seen on my notes that I had a spontaneous abortion a couple of years ago, and I should have had a D and C. But I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Vicky looked uncomfortable, embarrassed almost. ‘My partner—the guy who was then my partner, we’ve separated now—didn’t want me to. He said that because I was young and healthy there wasn’t any reason. As soon as my menstrual cycle settled down it would clear itself.’

  Clare couldn’t stop her eyebrows rising and disappearing beneath her short crisp fringe. Vicky’s answer threw up a whole bagful of other questions. ‘Did he have any medical qualifications to allow him to make such a statement?’ she asked.

  The young woman was silent for a moment, and then she said, ‘He was a house officer at the hospital where I was training as a student nurse. I was halfway through my second year. I’m now near the end of my fourth.’

  So she had a fair amount of medical knowledge herself, which explained why she was able to express herself succinctly.

  ‘Your partner, was he a junior house officer?’ asked Clare gently, suspecting that he had been a young man over the first hurdle of passing his exams and thinking that he knew everything. But, then, why had Vicky been deceived? As a second-year nurse, as she had been then, she’d probably known more than he had in a practical sense.

  ‘Yes, it was his first hospital job.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh,—’ She bit off the expletive. ‘Why did I listen to him? I knew it wasn’t right, I knew that I should have had a D and C!’

  ‘But why was he so against you having it?’

  ‘Because I would have had to go into our own gynae ward at the hospital. He was afraid that if it got about that I had been pregnant with his child, he would be kicked out. You see, the miscarriage had happened in our flat, and he called my GP instead of an ambulance. It was a weekend, there was a locum on duty. He made sure that I wasn’t bleeding unduly, said that I should have a D and C and then disappeared.’

  ‘But didn’t you follow it up at all? Go back to your regular doctor?’ Clare asked. ‘You must have felt ghastly for a day or two and needed painkillers.’

  ‘It was a big practice and I rarely saw the same doctor twice. I took a couple of days off, dosed myself on paracetamol, then just got on with things.’

  Déjà vu. It was the Phylippa Jordan story all over again. A lot of doctors, especially in big city practices, too busy to establish a rapport with their patients. But it still didn’t explain why Vicky was suddenly desperate to have a smear test. What had happened recently to frighten her into believing that she should have one?

  Clare did some rapid thinking, and then said, ‘Vicky, I could do a smear, but I want you to see Dr Davis first. He needs to examine y
ou. He’s busy at the moment, and has several people to see who have appointments, but if you wouldn’t mind waiting outside for a short while, I’ll get him to see you as soon as possible.’

  All sorts of expressions flitted across Vicky’s face—anger, fear, exasperation, mutiny. She made to swing herself off the chair.

  ‘I might as well go,’ she said. ‘I just want a smear.’

  I’ve got to keep her here, thought Clare. She must see Daniel. Time for shock tactics.

  ‘Do you think that you’ve got cancer of the uterus?’ she said bluntly.

  The C word was something that one still skirted around, even though there had been huge leaps forward with treatment in recent years and it was being talked about more than it ever had been in the past.

  Vicky stopped in mid swing, her legs halfway to the floor. Slowly she swivelled them back again.

  ‘Yes,’ she grated. ‘I’ve just found out that my mother died of cervical cancer. She died when I was little. I always thought that she died giving birth to my stillborn brother. That’s why I want a test. I haven’t felt too brilliant lately, and though I haven’t missed a period they’ve been light and painful and irregular. I thought that it was about time to put things right.’

  Clare heard the patient that Daniel had been seeing leave his office. ‘Stay put,’ she said to Vicky.

  She followed Daniel back into his office and rapidly gave him a summary of Vicky’s condition.

  ‘Do a smear,’ he ordered. ‘It’ll ease her mind and may turn up something. After what she’s been through, poor girl, let’s see what we can do to put matters right. I’ll see her after the next couple of patients.’

  Clare was smiling as she stepped back to her own room to give Vicky the news. She was sure Vicky would be all right now, whatever the results of the smear and examination, because she was in the right hands.

  Clare could have hugged Dan for the way he came to the right humane decision without any hesitation.

  She could have hugged him…She knew then that she could have done much more than that.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THERE were a host of both regular and holiday patients waiting for them at their first stopover the next day. And, as was to be expected in August, many waiting to be seen were children. The weather had settled down over the last few days to being pleasantly warm and sunny. Bright enough to produce several cases of sunburn.

  Daniel calmly but forcefully read the Riot Act to parents with small children for allowing them to get burnt. And he patiently explained to children old enough to understand how important it was to smother themselves in protective sun cream and wear hats and tops when playing outside.

  ‘The kids seem to understand better than the parents,’ he told Clare, leaning on the little sill of the pharmacy window, when there was an unexpected lull between patients.

  ‘Perhaps that’s because they don’t have to pay for it,’ she said. ‘You’ve been prescribing it by the bucketload this morning, and not just to people with skin conditions who qualify to have it on the NHS. I’m almost out of stock and I don’t think that our esteemed manager is going to be any too pleased. It’ll make a dent in her budget.’

  Daniel smiled. ‘A little extra spent now will save thousands in the future. Imagine all those kids turning up with skin cancers in a few years’ time. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘OK, Doc, you’re preaching to the converted,’ said Clare.

  She was going to say something else, but further conversation was forestalled when they heard someone come into the waiting area. Never mind. She’d tell him what she’d decided during their lunch-break.

  A couple of hours later, Daniel stopped in mid bite. ‘So you want me to meet your parents,’ he said, his mouth half-full of a cheese sandwich.

  ‘Well, that’s the general idea. And, of course, to see Dad’s wine cellar and no doubt, be offered a taster or two.’

  Dan had sounded surprised. Did he think that she was being a bit too pushy, forcing the pace of whatever they had between them? Was it too old-fashioned, wanting to introduce him to her family? The tiniest flicker of doubt assailed her for a moment. But only for a moment. Of course he wasn’t thinking any of those things. They’d talked about seeing her parents the night that they’d gone to the theatre. He’d said that he wanted to meet them. It didn’t commit either of them to anything.

  They were sitting outside the van on a little grassy area beside the village pond. Ducks were waddling round, waiting for scraps.

  Daniel threw them the rest of his sandwich. ‘Well, there’s no way I can refuse an offer like that,’ he said. ‘Saturday or Sunday will suit me. Although…’

  Clare’s heart sank. ‘Although?’

  ‘There’s a jazz festival on on Saturday night near Tiverton, and I was wondering…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you’d like to go to that?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said without hesitation.

  ‘Brilliant. Then we’ll go to the Island on Sunday.’

  ‘I’ll let Mum and Dad know. I’ll ring them tonight.’

  They had a busy afternoon, visiting two isolated villages, both of which had only a handful of permanent residents. But their numbers were swollen with day-trippers and holidaymakers staying in various houses offering bed and breakfast. Several women had also come in from outlying farms for attention to themselves or their children.

  ‘Is this within your remit, Doc?’ George wanted to know when they reached the second village and found another crowd waiting for them, made up of a similar mix of people. ‘Some of them have come in cars from the farms, and most of the holiday people who are staying in the village have cars with them. Shouldn’t they go into Trewellyn to the health centre, or the casualty department at the hospital? Do you want me to sort them out, send them packing?’

  Daniel grinned cheerfully. ‘Well, I don’t mind the extra work, if Clare doesn’t.’ He glanced at Clare. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think that if I were on holiday, or a busy farmer’s wife, and I had some minor injury or a kid with earache, I wouldn’t want to trek twenty or more miles for attention if there was help on the doorstep.’

  ‘Listen to you two,’ grumbled George. But there was admiration his voice. ‘Trying to provide a health service all on your own.’ Then he all but rubbed his hands with glee. ‘Miss Bossy-Boots back at base will be mad as a hatter.’

  ‘So the war still goes on between you two,’ said Daniel. ‘She’s only doing her job, you know, and doing it superbly well.’

  ‘I know,’ replied George, ‘but I like seeing her rise to the bait.’

  The next day continued with patients in the category Clare had predicted.

  There was a small girl, Trixie Saunders, with a bee-sting and a tear-stained face. ‘It bit me,’ she told Clare indignantly. ‘It sat on my arm and bit me.’

  Trixie’s mother was agitated. ‘She had a beesting last year and had a dreadful reaction to it,’ she told Clare. ‘She couldn’t breathe properly and they kept her in hospital for two days until the swelling and inflammation had died down.’

  ‘How long ago did this happen?’ Clare asked, examining the little girl’s arm, which was slightly red and swollen, but there was nothing to indicate a severe reaction.

  ‘About twenty minutes ago. The people that I’m staying with told me that you were going to be here, and that it would be quicker to see you than getting her to hospital. So I thought that I’d better bring her along, although this time it doesn’t look so bad. I hope I’m not wasting your time.’

  ‘You are certainly not,’ Clare reassured her. ‘Bee or wasp stings are strange and can’t be accurately assessed, and can be dangerous, as you already know. It might be to do with where they’ve been harvesting nectar, from crops perhaps that have been sprayed with insecticide, or there might not be an obvious answer. Trixie here may simply be allergic to some types of venom.’

  She smiled at the small girl as she sw
abbed the reddened area with iced sterile water, after making sure that the barb was out. She spread on a tiny smear of witch hazel and, more to please Trixie than because of need, put a tiny dressing over the puncture mark.

  ‘There, that should be fine,’ she said. ‘You’ve been a brave girl.’ She offered the child the sweetie jar.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ said Mrs Saunders. ‘I really hope we haven’t troubled you for nothing.’

  Clare shook her head. ‘Not at all. You can’t be too careful with bites and stings.’

  ‘Say thank you to Nurse, Trixie.’

  ‘Thank you, Nurse.’ The little girl beamed Clare a wide, sticky red smile as they left the treatment room.

  ‘That’s all right, poppet,’ Clare replied. ‘It’s a pleasure.’

  A desire to hug the child, sticky mouth and all, threatened to overwhelm her as a great rush of primitive maternal feelings took hold of her. This desire for a baby of her own, to hug and kiss and love as her own, was suddenly so strong as to be breathtaking. It took a moment or two, standing behind the closed door of the treatment room, to compose herself.

  There was a knock at the door which was then opened a crack. ‘May I come in?’ asked Daniel.

  She nodded dumbly and muttered, ‘Of course,’ since she couldn’t think of any reason not to admit him.

  He said at once, ‘Are you all right?’

  She could only shake her head because she was suddenly beyond speech. She felt hot tears welling up behind her eyes, tried to wipe them away, gave up and let them flood out.

  And then Dan was hugging her gently to him, and she let her head rest on his chest and gave herself up to the strong reassurance of his arms. It was the first time they had ever touched like this, the most intimate they had ever been. And it felt very good.

  After a minute the tears subsided. Dan offered her a handful of tissues from the treatment tray.

  ‘Have a good blow,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It usually helps.’

  It did. She took a few deep breaths, but didn’t try to free herself from his arms.