“Wayne Hill.” In his forties, she guesses, a few random strands of grey in his floppy dark hair, his eyes are striking in their blueness.
“Come on in.”
In the surgery, she takes her seat and swivels to face him.
He sits slowly, carefully.
She produces her professional smile. “How can I help?”
He clears his throat. “I don’t suppose there’s a male doctor coming?”
“There’s one in Killrowan if you want to get the ferry across.” It would speed things up for her.
“No, no. It’s fine. I’m being ridiculous.” He smiles.
Grace thinks: STD.
“I have a wound,” he says. “Between my legs.”
What has he been up to? Grace wonders.
“It’s become quite painful.”
“Right. I’d better have a look.” Grace gets up and starts to pull the faded yellow curtain around the bench. “So just remove your clothes from the waist down, hop up onto the bench and cover yourself with the blanket.”
He flinches.
Maybe “hop” was a bit too optimistic?
Wayne Hill takes off his fleece, leaves his satchel by the chair and then disappears behind the curtains with the enthusiasm of a man going to the gallows.
To the sounds of undressing, Grace washes her hands, wipes down a metal trolley with alcohol swabs, sets up a sterile dressing kit and snaps on a pair of sterile gloves. It has all gone quiet behind the curtains.
“Ready?” she asks.
His, “Yup,” borders on a yelp.
Opening the curtains with an elbow, she pushes in the trolley.
“You wouldn’t mind folding back the blanket,” she says to him. “My gloves are sterile.”
He does as asked then averts his eyes to the wall beside him.
“Now if you could bend your legs and let your knees fall apart,” Grace asks, feeling some tiny equality for all the women given this instruction every day by male gynaecologists.
Wayne Hill, eyes still averted and already pale, pales even further. He obliges with the grimace of a man in great pain.
Seeing the wound, Grace keeps her face impassive. No wonder the grimace. No wonder the yelp. Grace is looking at a roaring infection.
“You’ve put up with this a bit longer than you should have,” Grace says.
His eyes dart to hers. “I was waiting for the stitches to dissolve!”
She keeps her gaze steady. “These aren’t dissolvable stitches.” Though they should be for this delicate area.
“What?” His already strong jaw looks suddenly stronger. “Dr. O’Malley said they were dissolvable!”
Once again, Grace hides her reaction. Could this really be her partner’s second mistake in as many days? And if so, is it some fluke? More pressingly, what will she say to the patient?
“Don’t worry. I can remove the stitches for you. But not now. You have an infection I’m afraid. That’s the reason for your discomfort.”
“Discomfort? I’d call it pain. And even that would be an understatement.”
She understands his fury. But needs to move towards a solution. “So, I’m going to remove two stitches now, so that any pus that may have accumulated behind the wound can escape. Then I’m going to take a swab to send to the lab.” She eyes the small fridge in the corner and hopes it’s working. “I’ll also start you on antibiotics and clean the wound. We may have to alter the antibiotics when the swab results come back.”
He nods.
Grace gets to work. “Okay, I’m going to remove two stitches now. I’m sorry, this is going to hurt.” Grace, as gently as she can, starts to remove a suture where the wound is at its reddest.
“Do you mind me asking how you acquired the wound?” she asks to distract him from the pain she’s about to inflict. Also, she’s curious. The edges are surprisingly jagged.
“I was climbing over a barbed wire fence,” he says like it’s the last time he’ll ever be attempting that.
“Ah,” she says instead of “ouch.” “You’ve had a tetanus shot, then, I take it?”
“No. I have not had a tetanus shot,” he says like he wants to jump on the first flight back to the US.
Grace doesn’t understand it. Her partner is a hugely respected doctor. What was he thinking? Or not thinking? Is he just under too much pressure? When Grace gets back, she needs to start seeing patients fast, take that pressure off him.
She looks up at Wayne Hill. “In that case, you’ll need to come to the surgery on the mainland for a shot, as soon as the storm passes.”
“Don’t you have one here, now?”
“No. It has to be kept in a temperature-controlled environment.”
“What about the fridge?”
“Too cold for tetanus I’m afraid.”
“This is ridiculous.”
He’s right. It is. But what can she say? “Right. That’s two of them out!”
“Really? That wasn’t too bad,” he says in surprise.
“Now, I’m going to apply a little pressure. Sorry.”
“Whoa!” His hands grip the sides of the bench.
A tiny bead of pus escapes and she catches it with the swab. She pops it into its container.
“I don’t understand how it got infected!” he says desperately. “I did everything he said! Salt baths! Letting the air at it!” He looks suddenly mortified as though realising the visual implication of what he’s just said.
Grace tries not to visualise him walking around in the nip and fails, becoming unprofessionally giddy in the process. “I’m sure you did everything you could. It’s the area. It’s incredibly prone to infection.” She doesn’t spell out that it’s warm and moist. “I’m just going to clean the wound now. It’s going to feel cold.”
He flinches when the first saline-soaked swab lands.
“This should be cleaned twice a day with hydrogen peroxide and cotton buds. If you can’t come to the surgery, you could do it yourself. As long as you can see it properly and–”
“I’ll do it myself. Are cotton buds Q-tips?”
She nods, dropping the swab into a plastic bag she has attached to the trolley. “You can get everything you need in the pharmacy when you come over for the tetanus shot. You should get sterile gloves and dressing kits. And I’ll ask them to order in silver dressings for you.”
“Actual silver?”
“Apparently,” she says, picking up another swab with the sterile forceps and dipping it into the saline.
“Well, I guess they deserve silver.”
She smiles. “When you come for the shot tomorrow, I can show you how to dress the wound.” Then Grace remembers his initial mortification. “You may want to go back to Dr. O’Malley, though, and that’s fine.”
“Not a chance.”
Grace starts to cover the wound with a dressing. Not an easy task, given the area. “Cold packs might ease the pain – applied to the general area, obviously, not the wound itself.” She snaps off her gloves and drops them onto the trolley. “You can get dressed now. No rush.”
She pushes the trolley through the curtains, discards the dressing kit and swabs down the trolley again. She washes her hands thoroughly. Then retrieves antibiotics from her bag. Thank God she brought samples.
Wayne Hill emerges from behind the curtains, his jaw out of kilter again. She doesn’t know if it was the pain of getting dressed or being alone with his thoughts but his fury is back and it’s swallowing up the tiny room.
“Have a seat,” Grace says.
“I’ll stay standing if that’s okay,” he says grimly.
“Sure.” Grace gets up, hands him the antibiotics and explains how to take them. She goes back to her bag and retrieves her Nurofen Plus. He’ll need them. “Here are some painkillers. There’s codeine in them so when the pack’s gone move to plain Nurofen.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“And you’ll come across tomorrow for the tetanus shot – assuming the storm breaks?
”
“I’ll have to, won’t I?”
She nods. “When the infection has cleared, I’ll remove the rest of the stitches.”
She checks to make sure she has the right telephone number for him on file in case she needs to change the antibiotic. That’s when she sees that his occupation has been entered as a novelist. It makes sense. Only an artist would opt to visit Torc in winter.
“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says.
Luckily, he pays in cash as there doesn’t seem to be a credit card machine.
When he opens the door, she catches a voice from the waiting room call to him, “Lord above, we thought you were having open heart surgery in there.”
Glancing at her watch, Grace realises the consultation took thirty minutes. She’ll have to speed up.
22
It has taken Des half an hour to get that piddly little SIM card into his phone. Now he’s staring at a barrage – a blizzard – of missed calls and messages, dating back to Friday, including school hours and the middle of the night. The man is either crazy or an out-and-out bully. There’s no question that he’s the latter. He’s also, most likely, the first.
Bracing himself, Des goes back to the very first message. As he listens to each one, pain expands in his heart, the pain of knowing what they have had to live with for years on end. He’s so glad they’re not hearing this, so glad that Grace thought to pre-empt it. Anyone would crumble under this litany of threats, guilting, bribery, blackmail. Des wants to go up there and kill the man. Man is too kind a word.
One of his – many – threats is that he will come down to Killrowan. Given how unhinged he seems, Des has to take this threat seriously. He can’t rely solely on Paddy – who could be anywhere at any given time. And he, himself, hasn’t the strength he used to. In all honesty, he couldn’t fight a flea. He needs to tighten security. Especially given the fact that he doesn’t have any.
If Alan Wolfe had a nickname it would be “Not a problem.” He arrives in his usual navy overalls, carrying his usual toolbox. A tall, affable man with a tendency towards weight, Alan can turn his hand to anything. Just as importantly, he is discreet; no one will know, unless they see for themselves, that he is installing a security system at Des Sullivan’s place.
“So,” Des says, “I want the best locks you can get on the doors and windows. And I want you to put in an alarm for me.”
Alan licks a pencil and jots everything down in a small notebook. Then he looks up and smiles. “Not a problem. I’ll just have a quick look around.”
His “quick look” involves taking photos and measurements.
When he’s done, Des offers a cup of tea.
And delivers it with scones.
Alan takes out his iPad, places it between them on the table, and goes through a selection of locks and alarms, explaining the pros and cons of each. Des makes his selections, then runs a hand back and forth over his mouth.
“You’re not happy,” Alan probes.
“No, I am, I am. I was just wondering… what would you think about chains on the doors as well?”
Alan looks automatically at the door. “I’m not too keen on the chains, myself, Des. They can be kicked in too easily. You’d be better off with one of them camera yokes to see who’s at the door and then just not open it if you don’t like the look of them.”
Des nods slowly. “You’re right. Let’s get a camera.” Again, his hand runs over his mouth. “You know what, put one on the back door too. Just to be on the safe side.”
Alan looks at him as if to say: “Is it an Armageddon you’re expecting?” Instead, it’s a simple: “No problem.” He takes the pencil down from behind his ear and adds ‘two cameras’ to his list. “Let’s have a look at some options.”
“I’ll leave it to you, Alan.”
Alan looks uncomfortable at that. “I’ll do up a quote for everything and, when I drop by with it, I’ll show you the cameras I’ve picked.”
“Good man,” Des says, not in the slightest bit worried. Alan knows what he’s doing and never overcharges. In fact, sometimes Des wonders how the man makes a living at all.
They drain their cups. Alan gets up and dusts down his overalls as he always does when it’s time to go. “Grand, so. If you’re happy with the quote and everything, I can get moving on it straight away.”
“I’ll be happy, don’t you worry.” Des opens the front door.
Alan pauses. “I hear Grace is back,” he says as though he has been meaning to all along.
“She is, yeah.” The thought of that still cheers Des.
“Does she have a number at all?”
Of course, she has a number, Des thinks. The last thing she needs is men sniffing around. But then, she and Alan always were good pals. And she’s a grown woman. If she doesn’t want anything to do with men, she can tell Alan that herself. He gives him her number. “Don’t be giving it out, obviously.”
Alan looks horrified. “I wouldn’t do that. It’d just be great to catch up. How’s she getting on?”
“Oh. Settling in. She’s out on the island at the clinic, today.”
Alan frowns. “With the storm on the way? She’ll never get back.”
Des doesn’t blink. “She’ll probably have to stay over.”
Alan nods. “That’s what she’ll do. Right, so. I’ll give you a shout.”
Des stands at the door, watching Alan climb up into his white van. They wave to each other and the van disappears off up the road. Des glances up at a sky that is darkening with angry, charcoal clouds, carried in on a blustery wind. He knew yesterday that the storm was on its way but didn’t warn Grace. He wanted her to get to the island and see a rake of patients, one after the other – to get over her first day and kill the fear that comes with no one wanting to see you. He knew, too, that if she got to the island, she wouldn’t get home; she’d be forced to have a night to herself. Away from everyone. The kids. Her old man. The lot. Grace won’t find the person she was in one night. But one night is a start.
The sky is as dark as a fresh bruise. Down in the harbour, the sea is grey and choppy, white horses as far as the eye can see. A gale howls through a gap in the graveyard wall. In through it the three friends go, coats zipped up to their chins, Holly feeling like a musketeer – one who has just joined and hopes she can stay.
Round-faced, Aoife, turns to Holly and Jenn. “Have ye got yer sandwiches?” she asks with the confidence of a leader.
They nod quickly. Then all three girls root in their schoolbags.
Holly opens her lunchbox and produces half a sandwich she deliberately left uneaten. “I hope he likes peanut butter.”
Jenn snaps open a Tupperware box. “I have ham if he doesn’t.”
Holly and Jenn hand their sandwiches over to Aoife like some sort of sacrifice. Then she turns to face the sea. “Come on!” she shouts over the gale. “Let’s go.” She darts into the graveyard.
Holly and Jenn race to keep up.
Aoife slows, glancing around.
“Where is he?” Holly asks, scanning between the tombstones.
“Over there!” Jenn calls, pointing.
Holly spies their holy grail: a black and white Border collie sitting like a Sphynx, gazing up at a tombstone. His owner, a woman called Sheila Crowley, died last week and he just won’t leave her. People have tried to coax him away. Now they have started to look after him, here. There’s a roster. But Aoife, Jenn and now Holly aren’t on any roster.
Reverently, they approach.
Holly thinks of Benji. And knows how this dog feels.
The friends squat down at the edge of the grave, not wanting to invade his sorrow.
“He’s so gorgeous,” Holly says to her friends.
Aoife makes a face. “Gawd, you sound fierce posh all of a sudden.”
Any other time, Holly might freak out that she’s about to lose her new friends. Now, all she cares about is this dog. She feels his pain in her heart. It mirrors the ache she feels fo
r Benji.
Aoife breaks the sandwiches and feeds him pieces. He takes them gently as if he’s doing so to keep them happy not because he’s hungry. Jenn tips out the water in his bowl which the wind has filled with leaves. She tops it up with her water bottle.
Holly is happy to just watch.
The wind howls through the tombstones. The sky is low and threatening.
Jenn glances around. “This is starting to get freaky.”
“Yeah. Let’s go,” Aoife replies.
They grab their bags. “Bye, Benji,” they say like their minds are already home.
“Wait! What did you call him?” Holly asks, not believing.
“Benji.”
“No way!”
“What?” Aoife asks impatiently.
“That was my dog’s name.”
“Cool,” Aoife says but not like she really cares. She turns and hurries away, Jenn at her heels.
But Holly can’t leave. She moves onto her hands and knees and closer to Benji.
“Hey, come on!” Aoife calls impatiently.
Holly turns.
Her friends have stopped and are waiting for her. The sight lifts her.
She’s still not leaving. “I’m going to stay for a while,” she calls.
“Okay, cool. See ya tomorrow,” Aoife says.
“Be careful,” Jenn adds.
Holly waves then turns back to the dog. “Hey, Benji. How’re you doing? How’re you doing, boy?”
He looks up at her with sad eyes and whimpers.
“I know. I know you’re lonely. It’s so hard, isn’t it? So unfair.”
Benji lays down and Holly lays with him, her head against his side, rising and falling with every breath. “I don’t have to go for a while,” she says.
23
At five, Grace closes the door behind her last patient. She is exhausted. And starving. It has been full-on, all day. She worked through lunch to finish early. Never thought to bring a sandwich. Now, she snatches up her things. Grabs the pus swab from the fridge. Turns off the heater. And hurries out into the hall. She has been listening to the wind all day. And it hasn’t been that bad at all. No one has come from the ferry. Another case of weather forecasters getting overexcited. She locks up and hurries down the hill.
Season of Second Chances: an uplifting novel of moving away and starting over Page 11
