Buch lesen: «All The Care In The World»

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THE paperwork which greeted the return of Callum Hughes from his skiing holiday was piled so high on his desk that he was seriously afraid it might collapse into a muddled heap all over his surgery floor.

He shouldn’t have cut it so fine, he thought. And if his flight from France hadn’t been delayed until the early hours of this morning then he might have been able to tackle all this before surgery began.

He dropped his briefcase on the floor and said something rather impolite underneath his breath as he quickly divided the pile into two.

‘Sorry?’ said Jenny McDavid, his practice manager, whose comfortable, plump appearance belied her briskly efficient manner. She had followed him into the room with a long list of telephone message for Purbrook Surgery’s most popular doctor. ‘What was that you said, Dr Hughes?’

‘Unrepeatable,’ growled Callum, his craggy face lighting up as one of the receptionists came into the surgery, bearing an enormous cup of steaming coffee. ‘Oh, thanks, Judy,’ he murmured gratefully. ‘Just what I need! I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a biscuit?’

‘I bought you a Danish from the bakery on my way into work,’ dimpled Judy, her expression as eager as a teenager’s instead of a grandmother of two. ‘In case you missed breakfast. As you so often do, Doctor!’ she remonstrated gently. ‘I’ll go and get it!’ And she sped out of the office to return minutes later with a succulent concoction, glistening with lemon syrup and studded with nuts and raisins.

‘Mmm,’ said Callum ecstatically, as he bit into it. ‘Thanks, Judy!’ he called after the receptionist’s retreating form.

Jenny shook her head with a look of mock bewilderment. ‘I just don’t know how you do it, Callum Hughes,’ she told him sternly. ‘I really don’t.’

‘Do what?’ he queried, an innocent smile lightening his face as he lowered his large frame into the chair with surprising grace for so tall a man.

‘Have every woman in this practice eating out of your hand—’

‘Surely it’s me eating out of her hand!’ he joked, holding the pastry aloft.

‘Running around after you,’ continued Jenny, trying her best to sound severe but failing spectacularly when confronted by the distracting dazzle of his green eyes. ‘Buying your meals and doing your shopping,’ she continued. ‘And collecting your shirts from the dry-cleaners—’

‘But I’m a busy man!’ he protested.

‘And they are busy women!’ she retorted. ‘With homes and families of their own to run.’

‘On what grounds are you objecting, Jenny?’ he asked mildly, as he fixed her with a stare from his narrowed green eyes. ‘Am I exploiting them? Well, am I?’

Jenny pursed her lips as she silently acknowledged the ridiculously over-generous bonuses he gave to each staff member every Christmas. She had to admit that most of them would have run round after him if he had just given them one of his heart-warming smiles! ‘No, you’re not exploiting them,’ she agreed reluctantly, ‘but...’

Callum’s green eyes twinkled mischievously. ‘But?’

‘It’s about time you found yourself a wife, Callum Hughes!’ Jenny declared boldly.

Callum clutched dramatically at his throat with an expression of horror. ‘Don’t allow anyone with feminist principles hear you say that, Mrs McDavid!’ he declared. ‘The implication being that the principal duty of a wife is to run around after her husband—’

‘And isn’t it?’ asked Jenny cynically.

He shook his dark head and overlong strands of hair tickled his suntanned neck, reminding him that he really should have found the time to have a haircut before coming back to work. ‘Not at all.’ He shook his dark head. ‘Marriage should be an equal partnership.’

‘You really believe that?’

‘I really do,’ he agreed solemnly, though that irrepressible glint was still lurking in the depths of his green eyes.

‘Then no wonder you’ve remained single all this time,’ sighed Jenny as she stared into his craggily handsome face, thinking that if ever Dr Hughes did get around to marrying the woman who finally won him over would be fortunate indeed. She glanced down at the list in her hand. ‘Here are your messages.’

‘Anything urgent?’

She shook her head as she scanned the list. ‘Not really. We dealt with all the most pressing stuff. And—oh.’ Her face became slightly wary, as if she was the bearer of bad news. ‘Mr Petersham, the general surgeon from St Saviour’s, rang to say that he had operated on Emma Miles. He spoke to Dr Davenport—’

She halted in mid-flow as Callum lifted one hand for silence and with the other punched out the extension number of his partner. But she wasn’t offended by his occasionally peremptory approach—Callum Hughes was such a brilliant doctor that he could get away with murder, she thought.

‘David?’ said Callum. ‘Sorry to disturb you, but I’ve just got back and I believe you spoke to Mike Petersham at St Saviour’s?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ came the voice of his partner.

‘And?’ But the strained quality of those three words told Callum that the prognosis was bleak, as he had feared.

‘He wanted you to know that your suspected diagnosis of carcinoma of the stomach was correct,’ said David reluctantly. ‘He has operated and done just about everything he can, but it doesn’t look very good. I’m terribly sorry, Callum. I know how close you are to Emma and her family.’

Callum went through the motions of thanking his colleague, then put the phone down and shook his dark head as if in denial. Two deep frown marks furrowed deep lines on his forehead. ‘Damn!’ he protested on a groan, reflecting—not for the first time—how fundamentally unfair life could be. ‘Damn and damn and damn!’

‘Bad?’ said Jenny.

The practice manager was too intelligent not to know everything that was going on in the various surgeries. She was also the soul of discretion. ‘Worse than bad,’ grated Callum, feeling raw with the pain of such unwelcome knowledge. ‘Emma is far too young and beautiful to have contracted something like this. Is she still in hospital?’

Jenny nodded. ‘She is—on Poplar Ward. Will you go and see her?’

‘Of course I will,’ he sighed, as he thought of Emma’s youth and determination and beauty. He felt like raging against an uncaring God, but that would do her no good. Nor him. Nor the rest of his patients, some of whom would infuriate him with their insignificant little problems which were nothing compared to what Emma was going to have to endure during the next however many months she had left to live.

He made a mental note to ask Judy or one of the other receptionists to buy him a bunch of flowers to take with him. Or maybe she would prefer a book?

‘That’s probably the most pressing thing,’ Jenny continued gently. ‘The library at the hospital rang to say that they’ve managed to trace that new paper on asthma you wanted. Oh, and your new registrar rang up to say that she’s looking forward to her first morning with you. That’s this morning,’ she added helpfully.

Callum narrowed his eyes, briefly disconcerted by hearing the hospital term which sounded so out of place in his surgery. ‘My new what?’ he demanded.

‘Your registrar,’ explained Jenny patiently. ‘Your new GP registrar—’

‘You mean my trainee?’

‘Oh, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud, Callum! That’s their brand-new title! You must move with the times, you know!’ reprimanded Jenny tartly, until she realised that he was teasing her yet again. ‘Why did they chance the title from GP Trainee to GP Registrar?’ she asked him curiously. ‘Do you know?’

‘Patients thought that the word “trainee’ meant that they were still students,’ he answered, ‘instead of fully qualified doctors who were about to add another three years of experience while they trained to become general practitioners.’

Jenny nodded, something in the tone of his voice making her question him further. ‘And was that the only reason?’

Callum shrugged his massively broad shoulders as he began to pull the first pile of paperwork towards him. ‘I think a lot of junior doctors were also a little unhappy with the word “trainee”,’ he mused.

‘They said that it made them sound like a would-be chef or butcher, instead of a highly qualified individual with over seven years’ doctoring underneath their belts! This puts them on a par with their hospital colleagues and stops them feeling like the poor relations of medicine.’

‘And is that the case?’ asked Jenny in surprise.

Callum nodded. ‘Oh, undoubtedly. General practice has suffered from intellectual rubbishing by hospital staff for much too long now. And it’s time that we stood up and showed the world that we’re proud to be general practitioners.’

‘Yes, Dr Hughes,’ said Jenny, hiding a smile which bordered on the wistful. It was such a waste, she thought fleetingly, that a man as good-looking and as gorgeous as Dr Callum Hughes should channel all his passion and his energy into his job!

‘Anyway, she’ll be here at about eleven,’ she continued equably. ‘I told her to arrive later than we would usually expect—explained that you were just back from holidays and that you’d have a lot of catching up to do. I said it was probably best to come after surgery on her first morning, rather than throwing her straight in at the deep end. I do hope that’s all right?’

Callum was frowning at a rather bolshie letter from a consultant who had recently moved into the area. Though his surgical reputation was good, he clearly wasn’t the world’s greatest diplomat! ‘Hmm? Yes, that’s fine, Jenny,’ he said absently, and then, as he heard the practice manager head towards the door, he lifted his head and said, ‘What’s her name, by the way?’

‘It’s Nancy,’ said Jenny. ‘Nancy Greenwood.’

‘Pretty name,’ he commented, with a smile.

‘Yes,’ agreed Jenny, wondering why fate didn’t lend a hand by sending Dr Hughes a single doctor instead of one who was married! ‘You met her when she asked to be transferred from the Southbury scheme. Remember?’

Callum looked up, screwing his green eyes up in such a way that even his cynical practice manager’s heart began to pound rather erratically.

He was relatively new at training prospective general practitioners, and he had interviewed so few that it didn’t take him long to recollect the female doctor who had come to him for an interview. He frowned.

Nancy Greenwood.

Yes, of course.

She had been on a training scheme in the picturesque cathedral city of Southbury, but there had been some kind of trouble and her trainer had rung Callum to ask if she could transfer to him. Dr Farrow, her trainer, had been reluctant to discuss her desire to change her training practice, other than to reassure Callum that she was an excellent doctor and that her reasons for wanting to move were personal, beyond her control and rather distressing.

That had been enough for Callum—he wasn’t the kind of man to intrude, unasked, into someone’s private life. He liked and respected Dr Farrow, both personally and professionally. An endorsement from such a man was all he needed to agree to see Dr Nancy Greenwood.

And the only fact which swam to the forefront of his memory of that meeting was that she had been so small! But, then, at an impressive six feet and three inches comparative lack of stature was something that Callum was well used to!

And young, he reminded himself suddenly. She had looked much too young to be a doctor. He remembered thinking that at the time and had seen that as a reflection on just how ancient he must be getting. Thirty-three next birthday—just where did the time go? he wondered fleetingly.

Jenny saw him frown. ‘Her CV is on the top of that other pile if you want to look over it again before she arrives.’

‘Thanks,’ said Callum, but he was so engrossed in a leader from last week’s BMJ that he didn’t take in a word of Jenny’s last sentence and the CV remained, sitting unread, on top of the pile.

The flame-red sports car slid to a halt outside Purbrook Surgery, drawing the usual mixture of admiring and envious glances.

Switching off the ignition to the accompaniment of interested stares, Nancy found herself wishing that she could trade it in for a more discreet and ordinary car—not one that risked alienating the patients because it looked so flashy! But she couldn’t trade it in, not yet, anyway, because the car in question had been a present, and everyone knew that you should never look a gift horse in the mouth...

She got out of the car slowly, delaying walking into the surgery for as long as possible for she realised that her hands were still shaking like mad. The gold wedding band on her finger gleamed mockingly up at her as she tried to block this morning’s row out of her memory and settle herself into a more receptive frame of mind for her first day as a trainee in general practice. A few deep breaths should help settle her equilibrium.

Nancy filled her lungs with air and expelled it slowly, vague memories from a distant yoga class coming to her aid as she pushed open the surgery door, determined that her face should not register her reaction to the ugly, biting taunts that she’d been forced to endure before she’d left for work this morning.

Shaking her head to dispel the all-too-vivid images of her husband’s face distorted with a cold and untouchable anger, Nancy walked into the surgery—straight into the muted clatter of the main reception area.

Behind a desk sat the receptionists, some speaking into telephones as they made appointments and answered queries and others pulling patients’ notes out of the grey filing cabinets which had mushroomed to fill all the available space behind them. A computer terminal hummed quietly in a corner and a fax machine began to spew out paper as a message came through.

One of the receptionists looked up questioningly at Nancy as she stood slightly hesitantly before the desk.

‘Do you have an appointment?’ she asked Nancy, without preamble, her eyes flickering over her with interest.

Nancy shook her dark head. ‘No, I haven’t,’ she began. ‘You see, I—’

‘I’m afraid that the doctor won’t see you without an appointment,’ said the woman automatically, though not quite as kindly as she might have done if Nancy hadn’t been wearing a suit which probably cost as much as her entire month’s salary!

Nancy, who had spent a sleepless night in the spare room and taken part in renewed hostilities at breakfast this morning, was not best pleased at being mistaken for a patient! Looking like a patient implied that you looked unwell or out of sorts. And that implication was a little too close for comfort!

‘Do you always jump to conclusions?’ she enquired mildly.

The receptionist bristled. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she queried frostily.

Nancy bit her lip. She really mustn’t take all her impotent frustration out on a woman who was, after all, only doing her job. ‘It’s just that I’m Dr Hughes’s new registrar, not a patient,’ she explained helpfully. ‘If you had simply asked whether you could help me, rather than whether or not I had an appointment...’

Her voice tailed off as the other woman glared at her, and she realised that she had put her foot right in it. Maybe Steve was right, she thought distractedly. Maybe she was impossible to live with.

‘I have worked at this practice since it first opened ten years ago,’ the receptionist informed her rather coldly, ‘and I really think I am past the stage of being taught how to do my job properly—particularly by a newcomer!’

Nancy tried one more time. She managed a watery, apologetic smile. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I honestly didn’t mean to offend you,’ she told the woman truthfully. ‘It’s just that at the moment I’m learning all about asking open-ended questions instead of closed questions, and I—’

‘Please excuse me for a moment,’ the woman said, looking slightly mollified as the telephone in front of her began to ring and she picked it up like a lifeline. ‘Good morning!’ she trilled brightly. ‘Purbrook Surgery!’

Resisting the urge to ask someone else where she might find Dr Hughes—she didn’t want to offend the receptionist still further—Nancy was forced to endure a tedious wait while the woman conducted her conversation.

Nancy waited until the receptionist had finished scribbling down what were obviously blood results from the local hospital and had replaced the receiver before fixing an inoffensive smile onto her face. ‘I’m Dr Hughes’s new GP registrar,’ she said for the second time. ‘Nancy Greenwood.’

The woman blinked. ‘Registrar?’ she queried blankly. ‘Oh! You mean you’re the new trainee?’

Nancy shook her smooth, dark head. ‘Not any more. We have a new name,’ she answered with a rueful smile. ‘I’m surprised that nobody bothered to tell you.’

‘Oh, they probably did,’ said the woman airily, ‘but maybe you haven’t worked in a doctors’ surgery very much before—I’m afraid that the staff are much too busy with keeping everything running to learn new courtesy titles!’

Nancy was well practised in the art of keeping her face poker-straight. ‘I’m sure you are,’ she answered soothingly. ‘And if you could just point me in the direction of Dr Hughes’s consulting room I promise not to hold you up any longer.’

The woman hesitated, dying for the opportunity to witness Callum Hughes’s reaction to this slimly built but rather opinionated young woman, but then the telephone shrilled into life again and she reluctantly indicated a big notice at the end of the corridor. ‘Turn left at the end and just follow the signs to Dr Hughes’s consulting room—you can’t miss it!’ she said quickly as she picked up the phone. ‘Good morning! Purbrook Surgery!’

Nancy had to pick her way across the waiting room and every pair of eyes followed her—as they did all new arrivals—with an interest which bordered on the hypnotic.

There were very few people left, but it was almost eleven and consultations began at around eight-thirty. Nancy suspected that the waiting room would be full to bursting first thing in the morning.

The patients left were the usual mixed bunch—a hot-looking baby, grizzling in his frazzled mother’s arms, a pale and sulky-looking boy of about ten who kicked listlessly at the leg of his chair and two people who appeared to be in the best of health, though sniffing loudly and intermittently. They looked ideal candidates for the diagnosis of heavy colds, though Nancy, but you never could tell. She knew that one of the cardinal rules of diagnosis was that you should never even think about making one before being cognisant with all the facts!

Nancy glanced around her as she walked towards the corridor where Dr Hughes had his office. Most of the waiting room, whilst decorated in the usual bland, pale shades, had a distinctively homely feel to it. Glossy magazines were stacked everywhere and brightly coloured toys were littered in one corner of the blue-grey carpet, where a small child was playing quite happily.

Nice to see that patient care had won over tidiness, thought Nancy approvingly. Though it was a bit like walking through a minefield, she decided with some amusement as her elegant navy court shoe only narrowly missed landing on a teddy bear’s plump abdomen!

Dr Hughes’s consulting room was at the far end of the corridor, and as she drew to a halt in front of it she noted that his brass name-plate was much longer than those of his two partners—for the simple reason that he seemed to have twice as many letters after his name as they did!

She rapped smartly on the door, and heard the equally smart response, ‘Come!’

Nancy walked straight into the surgery and her veneer of composure was shattered like the breaking of a glass as she stared into the piercing green eyes of the broad-shouldered man, sitting behind the desk