A Nurse to Trust Read online

  As if she had read her thoughts, the old lady said. ‘He’s special, isn’t he, Dr Dan? I’ve not seen much of him since my husband died seven years ago of diabetes. We had a car then and could get into the surgery. But the doctor visited when Albert got too ill to drive, and after Albert died he called several times to see how I was getting on. Nothing seems to be too much trouble for him.’

  ‘So why on earth didn’t you phone him when your legs or your chest began to get so bad? He would have come like a shot.’

  ‘I did phone once, but a receptionist I didn’t know said that if I wanted a visit, I’d have to speak to the emergency doctor. So I said thank you very much, it didn’t matter, and put down the phone. Didn’t want to see a stranger, you see. Years ago, the health centre—it was simply called the surgery then—only had two doctors and a nurse-receptionist. One’s got to accept change, but it’s going a bit too fast to be comfortable these days for us oldies.’

  Clare was beginning to see the difference between the large general practice, with its shifting, mixed community, that she’d worked for in London and this scattered, rural practice where people had lived in villages for generations. The younger people, what there was of them, easily adapted or moved out to the cities, but older people tended to resist change.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘the centre’s grown over the last few years, because Trewellyn itself has grown. That’s why the mobile surgery service has been created. And now that Little Burton is on our list, we’ll be here each week.’

  She finished the massage, rolled down Mrs Hutchinson’s wide-legged trousers and added a tube of gel to the other items that Daniel had prescribed. ‘Massage a little witch hazel in each night and morning,’ she advised. ‘It’ll give you some relief. And come to the surgery next week so that we can check up on you, or phone if you need help earlier.’

  ‘Will do, and thank you, my dear, and thank the doctor for me, too.’

  ‘You look whacked,’ Dan told Clare as they relaxed at the end of the surgery in Little Burton. It was the last surgery of the day and they could begin to unwind.

  ‘It’s the heat,’ she replied. ‘I can’t wait to get out of this rag of a uniform.’ She flapped the collar to stir the air round her neck, and pushed her fingers up through her hair.

  ‘Doesn’t look like a rag,’ Daniel said. ‘In fact, it looks rather fetching with those top buttons undone.’

  Clare raised a smile. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she murmured, ‘you look quite fetching, too, for the same reason.’ He’d taken off his tie and opened his shirt directly after the last patient had left, revealing damp but still shiny, curly chestnut brown hair at his throat. ‘You look cool and laid-back and—’

  She stopped short, realising the conversation was getting dangerously personal. The same look of apprehension was clouding Dan’s features.

  ‘We have to talk,’ he said. ‘We have to work out some sort of understanding. And I want to apologise about last night—’

  ‘Wait for George to get back with the food first. Then we’ll talk.’

  They were parked at the rear of the Old Coaching Inn, in the middle of the moors. The doors of the vehicle were wide open to catch whatever air there was but in spite of that, and the air-conditioning still being on, a breathless closeness seemed to hang over everything.

  George had gone to fetch a snack, giving Clare and Daniel privacy to discuss the patients they’d seen and update their records. He returned within a few minutes with a tray of fizzy drinks and some packets of crisps and slid it onto the narrow shelf in Clare’s treatment room.

  ‘There we are, folks, as ordered by you, Doc—white wine spritzers and salty crisps so that you don’t expire through dehydration. Now I’m going back inside to have a low-alcohol beer and a sandwich. All right if I come back in about half an hour, or do you want to get away smartish?’

  Dan and Clare glanced at each other uncertainly. Dan interpreted the expression in her eyes. ‘Half an hour will be fine, George,’ he confirmed.

  Dan handed a glass of spritzer loaded with ice, and a packet of crisps to Clare. She was stretched out on the patient’s reclining chair which served as a treatment couch. He ignored the stool that Clare perched on when applying dressings or whatever, and slid down to the floor and rested against the wall.

  He swallowed half his drink in one go. ‘I needed that,’ he sighed.

  Clare drank more slowly but with equal relish.

  They munched and drank for a few minutes, then Dan said, ‘Shall we deal with the patients first before we sort out our own problems?’

  ‘Yes, let’s.’

  He considered her through narrowed eyes. ‘You still look concerned about something. What’s triggered it off? It’s more than the heat, isn’t it? It has to be something to do with the last few patients—you were fine earlier. I thought you could manage work all right.’

  ‘I can. This is what you might call half-personal—but nothing to do with us or being here in this job as such.’

  Dan smiled wryly. ‘We should be able to sort it out then. I’m here if you want to get something off your chest. Sometimes it helps to talk it over with a stranger—well, near stranger. It isn’t a favour, just a purely unbiased, pragmatic offer. If you’re distracted by something it might interfere with your work, and I don’t think either of us wants that.’

  ‘Agreed. And thanks.’ Clare took a deep breath. ‘It was that rush of babies we saw this afternoon…’

  The explanation for the numbers had turned out to be quite simple. Several of the little ones had had rashes, which the parents had thought was measles. In fact, when Daniel had examined them, he’d diagnosed simple heat rash and had been able to reassure the anxious parents. Clare had been kept busy, sponging small bodies with tepid water and issuing calamine-based lotions to apply to relieve the irritation. She’d also taken the opportunity to stress putting on sun cream, keeping infants and children in the shade during the current heat wave and filling baths with cool water for them to splash around in. She’d also reminded them that children and water have to be supervised.

  Jason, the last infant they’d seen, hadn’t had a heat rash but had been brought in by his grandmother for a check-up.

  ‘My daughter has just started a new job in St Mary Otterburn,’ Jason’s grandmother explained in a thick Somerset accent. ‘She couldn’t ask for time off to take Jason in to Trewellyn to the clinic. Is it all right to bring him here?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ replied Clare. ‘We’re simply an extension on wheels of the health centre. Although there are some things that you will have to take him in to Trewellyn for, like vaccination and certain injections—we don’t carry sufficient stock to cover those.’

  Jason had black curly hair, a rosebud mouth and pudgy fists that he waved angrily at Clare when she weighed him. He in particular filled her with all sorts of primitive longings and desires. And even when he sprang a wee all over her, she only laughed and handed him reluctantly back to his grandmother…

  Clare finished recounting the incident then pushed the reclining chair into an upright position so she could look Dan straight in the eye.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that at thirty-four I’m becoming aware of the biological clock ticking. I find myself getting broody at times. Seeing all the babies today simply underlined it. It’s funny. Until a year or so ago I hadn’t really thought about it. Then suddenly it seemed important—next stop, the menopause.’

  Dan’s hazel eyes were very bright and intelligent. ‘So what happened a year or so ago to spark it off?’

  Clare frowned down into her drink. How silly to think that she could deceive him by vague references to age—he was much too clever for that. She could feel his eyes still on her. She made herself look up again. Part of her wanted to tell him about Larry. In some ways it would be a relief. She had never discussed it with anyone in depth.

  ‘There was a man,’ she said. ‘He was divorced, but getting over it. I’d also been hur
t a little before, but was well and truly over it and quite happy chugging along in my unattached way. We didn’t fall passionately in love, but were drawn to each other. We both wanted a long-term commitment, a family. I really thought that he was the right man for me.’

  ‘The right man for you,’ Daniel muttered gruffly. ‘But obviously he wasn’t. So who dumped who?’ There was a note of cynicism in his voice.

  Not only cynicism, but censure, Clare fancied.

  ‘Well, he dumped me, of course,’ she said sharply. ‘Not for another woman, but for a French medical religious order doing missionary work overseas.’ The expression on his face made her add, ‘And for what it’s worth, I’m not in the habit of dumping people.’ She felt hurt and bewildered at the same time. She hadn’t expected this reaction. One minute he’d been perfectly reasonable, the next this. It was all going wrong between them again!

  Dan was cursing himself as he saw the expression on her face. He hadn’t meant this to happen. Just because her story mirrored the break-up of his own marriage in some ways it didn’t give him the right to make assumptions. Just because it had been his wife who had walked out on him, there was no reason to assume that it was always the woman who did the dumping.

  How paranoid can you get, Davis? he asked himself. The reason you chose this woman out of the dozens who’d applied was because she was cool and professional and presented no threat. He didn’t want to spoil that at any cost.

  He scrambled up from the floor and looked her in the eye. For a large man he moved very fast.

  ‘An apology isn’t enough, but I don’t know what else to say, except that I’m desperately sorry. I said I’d be unbiased and I should have been. It was unforgivable of me to even hint that the break-up of your relationship was down to you.’

  For a moment Clare didn’t speak, and then she said, ‘I think you must have been hurt very badly by your ex-wife to leave such bitterness. Even worse than I was hurt maybe.’

  Daniel paced up and down restlessly for a few moments, before finally perching on the stool and staring down at the floor.

  ‘I was torn apart,’ he admitted. ‘But that’s absolutely no excuse for what I said just now. You were hurt, too, but you haven’t taken it out on me. You still came to work today looking bright and cheerful. I should also be able to do that.’

  ‘But you do. Don’t get things out of perspective. You’re an absolute rock and everybody depends on you. I can see that even after the short time I’ve been here. Something threw you just now and sparked off your reaction. That can happen to any of us. Remembering an anniversary, or some other special occasion. Did it upset you because I talked about wanting a baby?’

  ‘No…Yes…I don’t know. But you were right, it did remind me of a conversation that I’d had with Bee not long before we split up.’

  She was tempted to ask him if he wanted to talk about it, to reciprocate his offer to her, but she held back, sensing that he was not yet ready. She didn’t even know how long ago they had split up. But, however long, behind the casual, friendly exterior and kind eyes that he presented to the world was a very private man with ice still in his heart.

  Right now, she guessed, he was regretting his outburst which had shown him to be so vulnerable and which he was afraid might spoil their working relationship. Well, that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Their work was important, both to them and to the patients who they cared for.

  His fists were clenched, his knuckles white.

  ‘Dan,’ she said, ‘we’re both still hugging our private hurts. Perhaps neither of us will ever be able to wholly put them behind us, or talk really frankly about them. I think we’ve had some bad luck in our personal dealings. But we can be colleagues, even friends. Just so that we don’t jeopardise our working relationship.’

  Slowly Daniel’s hands relaxed, and he said quietly, ‘My feelings exactly. I hope that my ridiculous outburst hasn’t tarnished that.’

  ‘Not in the slightest,’ Clare said firmly. ‘In a way it was flattering that you were able to let yourself go in front of me.’

  Dan smiled. ‘I’ll take that as a back-handed compliment. All right, then. We put personal feelings aside. For the time being let’s concentrate on making the mobile surgery a success. It’s one thing we can agree on that’s worthwhile.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Clare said emphatically.

  Dan gathered up their glasses.

  ‘Come on. Let’s return these and have a drink with George in the bar as a fitting ending to a long, hot day. I think the three of us deserve it.’

  ‘Yes. Solid, sensible George. Whatever our problems, he’ll always be there.’

  Yes, thought Daniel. Thanks for reminding me that we are part of a team. If I muck it up it’s not only she and I who will be affected but George as well. He’s been so generous with his time and help and a friend to both of us.

  A few minutes later they were inside the pub, toasting the mobile surgery’s first working day on the road.

  It was a steamy hot night with a full moon silvering everything it touched.

  ‘“A harvest mouse went scampering by, with silver claw and silver eye,”’ Dan quoted aloud from a half-remembered poem by Walter de la Mare. Or was it another nineteenth-century poet? He couldn’t be sure.

  Unable to sleep, he was leaning on his bedroom window-sill, breathing in the faintly petrol-laden air that lingered in the high street. St Steven’s church clock chimed two.

  On a sudden inspiration he pulled on shorts, a thin Hawaiian-type shirt and thonged sandals and let himself out of his flat. He crossed the deserted, moonlit high street and made his way toward the churchyard.

  As it was on a slight rise, there would be the faintest of breezes stirring the air and rustling the leaves on the trees, he told himself.

  And number three Church Cottages overlooks the churchyard on the north side, said a small voice in the back of his head.

  So what? Dan thought back.

  You know what, continued the irritating voice. You’re hoping that the lovely Clare might put in an appearance.

  What, at two o’clock in the morning? Daniel retorted.

  Well, you can’t sleep because of the heat, so perhaps she can’t either.

  Yes, he admitted to himself. He had thought, hoped, that by some miracle he might see her, though for the life of him he wasn’t sure why. They had said everything this evening before they’d driven home.

  They had come to a sensible understanding and were back on course again, each knowing a little more about the other but still preserving some privacy. He hadn’t told Clare the whole story, and he was pretty sure that she hadn’t come absolutely clean with him.

  But, then, why should they confess everything to each other?

  They were just going to work together. Hopefully, in time, they would become friends. But that was all.

  It was slightly cooler in the churchyard, though when he touched one of the ancient headstones the day’s warmth still lingered within. He rounded St Steven’s squat tower and stood in its shadow, looking across the lane at Clare’s cottage, bathed in moonlight. The bedroom windows were wide open and the curtains undrawn—but the room was in darkness and there was no figure at the window.

  He sighed, and grinned in a wry fashion. ‘Well, what did you expect, you fool?’ he murmured into the silent night. ‘That’s what comes of letting your imagination run away with you. Get real, man, and stop behaving like a lovesick youth.’

  That pulled him up short. Lovesick! But he wasn’t lovesick.

  Love didn’t come into the way he felt about Clare. He would welcome her friendship but nothing more. Nothing that went too deep. It was perfectly possible for a man and woman just to be friends these days.

  He raised his hand and saluted her dark window. ‘Sleep well, Clare,’ he whispered. Turning on his heel, he made his way back through the silent churchyard to his flat, and at last to his own rest.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AFTER only three weeks
on the road, everything pointed to the fact that the mobile surgery was a tremendous success. At almost every village they had a full surgery. The feedback from medics at other health centres bordering their own was also excellent. The number of call-outs to remote locations, sometimes for trivial reasons, had fallen by a notable percentage. More importantly, several patients attending the mobile surgery had turned out to be in need of urgent treatment or referral to specialist practitioners.

  By catching their cases early, they saved the trauma and expense of emergency admissions, and perhaps a few lives.

  So they worked on cheerfully through the hot days. The countryside turned from green to golden brown around them as they moved into high summer. Then one morning a ferocious storm put an end to the heat-wave.

  By the time Clare had run through the churchyard and along the high street to the health centre, her white ankle-length raincoat was streaming wet.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ said Dan as she was almost blown into the mobile surgery and turned to close the door behind her.

  There was hardly any room inside the vehicle core, with the surgery undeployed, since the floor space was crowded with stacked chairs and work units mounted on castors.

  Dan moved from the doorway of his room, rubbing his hair vigorously with a towel and looking tousled and boyish. He reached round her to slide the door of the little porch closed.

  ‘Thanks.’ She smiled and blinked at him through the raindrops clinging to her long dark blonde lashes.

  She took off the modern version of the old-fashioned sou’wester hat—white like the raincoat but with a tartan brim—and threw it through the doorway of his room, aiming at his wash-basin in the corner.

  ‘Good shot.’ Daniel laughed, as it landed with a satisfactory plop.

  ‘I wasn’t captain of the netball team for nothing,’ she said with a smile, and began unbuttoning the raincoat with numb fingers.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ Daniel repeated, and started undoing the rest of the large, feature tartan buttons.