A Nurse to Trust Page 12

  ‘God knows, I didn’t mean to shout at you, Clare,’ he grated. ‘I just couldn’t bear the thought of you being hurt.’

  ‘But I wasn’t hurt. George was there—’

  ‘Stop going on about George!’

  Clare blinked as realisation dawned. ‘That’s what’s really got to you, isn’t it? George was there to help me and you weren’t. He was being the tough guy while you were just being a doctor. It’s your male pride that’s really been offended here.’

  Dan looked startled at the accusation and for a moment was lost for words.

  She threw up her arms. ‘Men! They have to play the hero all the time. Can’t you see that George was just doing his job? So what? It’s what he’s here for, and I love him for doing it so well, but it’s not a threat to you and me. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you—’

  She choked off in astonishment at her own words and the turmoil of emotions coursing through her. Dan tentatively reached out a hand to her, but Clare shrugged it off.

  ‘There’s nothing for us if you don’t believe that in your heart,’ she continued in a small voice that was almost swallowed up by the land about them. ‘Until then this sort of thing will keep on happening. Trust in me, Daniel! I know it’s a risk because you might be terribly hurt again. Well, I’ve been hurt before as well, so I know what it’s like! But it’s all or nothing now. We can’t go on not knowing like this, just playing safe for ever…’

  She stared into his eyes, looking desperately for some response. He shook his head slowly.

  ‘You don’t know how bad it was, Clare. Breaking up with Bee destroyed my faith in love, I suppose you’d say. You’d understand if you knew.’

  ‘Then let me into your heart and show me—and I’ll show you it doesn’t have to be the same again! We’ll take a leap of faith together.’

  But Dan could only shake his head again. ‘Maybe you’re right. I want to play the hero…but I can’t be one, not truly. Punching the lights out of that bully Clarke would have been easy. Physical courage is no problem. It’s risking everything else that makes life worthwhile that’s so hard to face.’

  ‘Do you think it’s any easier for me?’ said Clare despairingly. ‘It’s unbearable, not knowing. You must make that leap soon. I…can’t wait much longer.’

  They walked back to the mobile surgery like two strangers.

  George looked from one to the other of them as they took their seats and shook his head in exasperation. The journey home was completed in a silence as cold and unbending as stone.

  That evening Clare sat curled up on her sofa, hugging a cushion to her and staring blankly into space. She still felt an inner chill that the friendly warmth of the cottage could do nothing to dispel.

  At about eight the phone rang.

  She hesitated before picking it up, but it was Phylippa.

  ‘I’ve heard from the hospital,’ she said, sounding breathless. ‘They’ve got a bed for me in the endocrinology ward. They want me to go in on Saturday.’

  With a huge effort Clare pushed her dismal thoughts to one side and put on a cheerful voice.

  ‘That’s wonderful, Phylippa. The sooner you get started on your treatment the better. What time do you have to be there?’

  ‘About two o’clock.’

  ‘Right, I’ll get to you about one. We haven’t a morning surgery, so it won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not asking you to take me, or else I would have asked straight out,’ said Phylippa, sounding almost bubbly. There was a longish pause, and then she added in a rush, ‘Oh, Clare, you’ve been so marvellous to me. I don’t know how I would have managed without your help. I hope you won’t be offended, but Mr Mustard—Teddy—is going to pick me up. Apparently he has to visit a patient in a village not far away. He’s coming in time for lunch.’

  ‘That’s…really nice of him,’ Clare said, knowing full well how unlikely it was that there was any patient in a nearby village.

  ‘He’s a really great bloke, isn’t he? One of the nought point one per cent—just like your Dr Davis.’

  ‘Yes…just like Dan,’ Clare agreed.

  After she’d put down the receiver, Clare buried her face in the cushion. She couldn’t be sad for Phylippa and Teddy. Despite all the problems and uncertainty ahead of them, it looked as though they were going to take that leap together.

  Whereas she and Dan…

  Tears came again. She’d challenged Dan’s courage, but was hers any greater? If she was absolutely sure of their love, she’d have made him see it somehow. But she hadn’t gone that little bit further either. Now the conversation about children that they’d started in the surgery, and which he’d promised they’d finish later, would never be concluded. There would be no trip to the Isle of Wight at the weekend to meet her parents, unless she went alone to seek their comfort. Alone! She and Dan would both be alone now, with only the empty void of what might have been before them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THIS time there was no reconciliation in the morning.

  They barely acknowledged each other when they met at the surgery. George looked concerned but said nothing, rightly realising that there was nothing he could say that would help. They worked their way through the morning mechanically, putting on their professional masks for the patients and exchanging routine comments about treatments with every outward sign of calm civility.

  But inside Clare felt dead and cold. The terrible suspicion was overtaking her that this was all it would ever be. That for some cruel reason their desire for each other was fated never to be realised. How could two people love yet apparently be completely unsuitable for each other in their personal lives? Was work the only safe way for them to communicate?

  Full morning surgeries meant they had to work though lunch. It was only after their afternoon visits were completed that they could stop to eat and rest before turning for home.

  They found a quiet spot to pull over and George made himself scarce, perhaps in the hope that Dan and Clare would start talking. They sat on some smooth flattened boulders beside a stream. They were only a few feet apart, but it might as well have been a thousand miles.

  Eventually conscience forced Clare to say tonelessly, ‘Phylippa rang me last night. She’s going into hospital on Saturday. Teddy’s going to take her. He said he’d got a patient in a nearby village.’

  Dan said lightly, almost as though he was speaking to himself, ‘Sounds as though he’s invented an excuse for picking her up. It must be serious, then.’

  ‘Phylippa sounded years younger than when we first met her in the surgery,’ Clare volunteered.

  ‘I wish them luck,’ Dan said evenly.

  ‘So do I,’ said Clare. She took another bite of her sandwich. ‘It won’t make it difficult, will it, him being her consultant?’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘Don’t think so, if they’re discreet about it. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t get together. They’re both free agents. It’s when there’s a wife or husband lurking in the woodwork that things get difficult…’

  His voice trailed away. Silence descended again.

  Ten minutes later George reappeared. He took one look at the two of them sitting like statues, muttered something under his breath and climbed into the cab. Mechanically they followed him.

  The mobile phone, lying on the ledge in front of the cabin, suddenly trilled into life. Dan picked it up.

  It was the health centre at Trewellyn. Jane’s voice came over loud and clear. ‘This is outside your remit,’ Jane said, ‘but it’s an emergency.’

  ‘Put us in the picture, Jane,’ Dan said crisply, his dull mood melting away as though it had never been.

  ‘There’s a small girl exhibiting all the symptoms of meningitis, according to her father who’s just phoned us. The family’s on our list which is why they phoned here for help. They live on a farm just south-west of Charcombe which was your last stop, so you should be quite nearby. All the ambulances, regular and air,
are out on call. It would be quicker for you to get there than anybody we can send. Do you want to take it?’

  ‘Give us the address and we’re on our way,’ said Dan without hesitation.

  He phoned back the centre ten minutes later to have another word with Jane.

  ‘Can you give me any more info?’ he asked. ‘We’ve located on the map what we think is the farm, from the directions that you gave, but it’s not called Fullers, it’s called Small Farm. George thinks that it changed hands some time ago when the last owner died—his name was Carpenter. He was probably on our list so there might be some record of him. We don’t want to go miles out of our way to the wrong place.’

  Jane was back on line in a few moments. ‘George is right. Carpenter was the previous owner of Small Farm. The Fullers have recently moved in.’

  ‘All right. We’ll be there in five minutes.’ He glanced at their driver. ‘Well done, George.’

  The Fullers’ Farm was miles from the main road and only accessible through a series of twisting tracks.

  Clare had the feeling that only George could have found it, nestling as it did in a fold in the undulating moors. For some reason she had expected it to be rundown and dilapidated, but it wasn’t. It was a well-kept building, painted green and white under a slate roof, with a pretty garden surrounding it.

  On the lawn in front of the house was a swing, a small pool and a colourful beach-ball, together with other scattered paraphernalia that a small child might have.

  The front door was flung open by a man of around sixty as they drew up in front of the house.

  ‘Are you from the health centre?’ He sounded desperate and exhausted as he waved his hand uncertainly at the mobile surgery. ‘It’s Charlotte, you see, my little granddaughter. She’s so ill, and we don’t know what’s wrong.’

  The man looked to be at the end of his tether.

  Quickly Daniel got out of the cab and introduced himself, taking his medical case with him. He always carried his case in spite of having a fully equipped van of medical supplies. ‘Old habits die hard,’ he’d said when Clare had once teased him about it.

  ‘And you must be Mr Fuller,’ Dan continued. Clare jumped down from the cab holding the bag containing the mobile oxygen cylinder. ‘This is Nurse Summers. You lead the way and we’ll follow.’

  The door of a room at the top of the stairs was open and a murmur of voices issued from within.

  A young man and woman were sitting on either side of a small single bed. They were each holding a hand of a little girl who was lying almost flat on the bed and turning her head from side to side. She was moaning softly, clearly in pain.

  There was also an older woman in the room, holding a towel in one hand and a bowl in the other. ‘Charlotte’s just been sick, Doctor,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘Projectile vomiting.’

  Daniel nodded and smiled. ‘And you’re Grandma, doing the cleaning-up chores,’ he said softly as he began moving toward the bed. ‘And, I’m guessing, a retired nurse? Not a common phrase, “projectile vomiting”.’

  The older woman smiled tremulously back. ‘I’ve got to make myself useful somehow,’ she said. ‘She’s very ill, poor little scrap. Her temperature’s sky high and she has a raging headache.’

  The expression in her eyes told both Daniel and Clare that she was aware that her granddaughter was probably suffering from meningitis, even if the rest of the family weren’t sure.

  The young man stood up as Daniel reached the bed, letting go of Charlotte’s hand and offering his own to Daniel.

  ‘Frank Fuller,’ he said, ‘and this is my wife, Bella. And this…’ he stretched out a hand and stroked the little girl’s hair ‘…is Charlotte.’

  Bella Fuller didn’t look up or relinquish Charlotte’s hand.

  Clare thought, She’s trying to transmit all her strength into Charlotte, willing her to get better.

  Daniel said gently, easing back the sheets which were up to the child’s chin, ‘I need to listen to her chest.’

  Mrs Fuller started to drag the clothes up again. ‘She mustn’t get cold,’ she muttered. ‘My baby mustn’t get cold.’ She had an unusual broken accent.

  Clare stepped forward and firmly folded the bedclothes back.

  ‘Your baby has a raging temperature, Bella,’ she said, holding her hand an inch or two away, still feeling the heat radiating from the small body. ‘We must cool her down as soon as possible.’ She turned to Mrs Fuller senior. ‘Would you be kind enough to fetch a bowl of tepid water and a flannel or sponge?’ she asked.

  ‘Coming right up,’ replied Charlotte’s grandmother.

  The relief in her voice was obvious, and Clare guessed that she had already suggested doing that very thing, but that for some reason Bella wouldn’t go along with it. She had been hell-bent on keeping Charlotte cocooned in layers of bedclothes.

  But however she had reacted earlier, she didn’t raise any objections now. She meekly went along with the suggestion, perhaps aware of the authority in Clare’s voice. She stood by silently, clasping and unclasping her hands as Clare gave Charlotte a whiff of oxygen by laying the mask on the pillow a few inches from her nose.

  ‘To help her breathe,’ Clare explained to Bella. ‘But as she’s restless, I won’t try to fix it on as she’ll only try to take it off again.’

  Bella nodded. ‘Understand,’ she said.

  She moved closer to the bed, laying her hand on the little girl’s head. Mrs Fuller senior came back with a bowl and flannel, and Clare began sponging the child’s face, arms, trunk and legs with the tepid water. Bella agreed to have the windows open so that the faintest of breezes stirred the curtains that were drawn across to shield the small patient from the light.

  That was probably at Grandma’s instigation, thought Clare.

  Charlotte was restless and only semi-conscious, but Daniel spoke to her quietly as he ran his stethoscope over the little girl’s chest and back. She didn’t respond in any way and her head still turned from side to side. Only when he examined her eyes with the ophthalmoscope did she try to turn her head away, muttering quite plainly, ‘Light…hurts.’

  He straightened up and spoke to the anxious parents. ‘That was a good sign,’ he said. ‘It shows that she’s still aware. But she needs antibiotics, a strong painkiller to relieve her headache and something to control the sickness.’

  ‘I’ll give these by injection,’ he continued. ‘I also want to get some fluids into her. She’s dehydrated on account of the vomiting and high temperature. We won’t be able to get in sufficient by mouth, so we’ll run a tube into her arm and drip fluids through it, if that’s all right with you?’

  He gave them both a kind, reassuring smile as they nodded their agreement.

  Then he turned and spoke to Mrs Fuller senior, who was standing quietly just inside the door. ‘Would you be kind enough to tell George—he’s our driver—that I want the emergency intravenous kit from the van, please…And if you can rustle up a jug of iced water, it wouldn’t come amiss. Charlotte might be able to keep some down once we’ve stopped the vomiting.’

  ‘No sooner said than done, Doctor,’ said Grandma, marching out of the room.

  She’s a good, old-fashioned nurse, thought Clare, and is glad to be able to do something constructive and practical. She must have been tearing her hair out, watching her daughter-in-law doing all the wrong things. Claire wondered how long she would have let it go on before intervening in her granddaughter’s interest. For that matter, why was Bella being so obstructive?

  And what about Frank? He looked terrible and also needed something to do to make himself feel useful. She handed him the bowl she had been using to sponge little Charlotte’s body and asked him to bring in fresh tepid water.

  ‘I want it just above being cold,’ she said. ‘This has already warmed up, which shows that it’s doing its job.’

  ‘Thank God something is,’ said Frank, sounding desperate as he disappeared through the open bedroom door. />
  Clare took the little girl’s temperature again and saw with satisfaction that it had dropped half a degree. ‘Come on, little one,’ she murmured. In spite of it being unprofessional, she bent and dropped a kiss on the child’s still hot forehead.

  ‘You good nurse,’ said Bella. ‘Kind.’

  Clare tried not to blush at this unsolicited praise, and leaned across the bed to show Daniel the reading on the thermometer.

  ‘Brilliant,’ he murmured. ‘If we can get it down another couple of degrees we may see some improvement. Now, if you’ll get Charlotte in position, I’ll give her her injection.’

  Frank returned with the fresh bowl of water which he put on the side table for Clare. ‘Is it helping?’ he asked. ‘Is her temperature coming down?’

  ‘Fractionally,’ Clare confirmed.

  She nodded toward Daniel. ‘But this is going to help even more.’

  Daniel held up the syringe full of pale liquid to show to the Fullers. ‘I’ve drawn up an antibiotic, painkiller and anti-nausea medicine into one injection. It looks a lot but is better than giving her three separate jabs.’

  Bella gave a little hissing noise as if she could feel the needle pierce the skin as Daniel skilfully slid the needle into the small round buttock.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’ll try to explain what I think is wrong with Charlotte. That she has a severe infection is obvious, of course, and I believe that the infection might be meningitis. But we won’t know for sure until she has a lumbar puncture done at the hospital—’

  ‘A lumbar puncture—what is that, please?’ asked Bella.

  ‘It’s a procedure where a little fluid is taken from her spinal column. It will tell us whether or not it’s meningitis and, if so, what sort of meningitis it is. There are other conditions that can mimic the same symptoms, such as cerebral flu. But that doesn’t produce the faint rash that Charlotte’s got over her chest and trunk, which is also one of the signs that this is probably meningitis.’

  Dan’s eyes were full of kindness and compassion.