by Penny Parkes
Connor blinked, slow to compute, not quite getting the joke. ‘Well, okay then,’ he said, summoning another round of drinks and wondering, not for the first time, when exactly the disconcerting feeling of standing on quicksand might finally leave him.
Chapter 17
‘Don’t let that dog near me,’ said the Major in a clumsy attempt at humour the next morning, as Alice showed him through to her consulting rooms.
Alice just smiled; she was only too aware that Coco’s prowess at cancer detection made some of their patients a little nervous in her presence. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with how some of them chose to communicate that, but still, this was a learning curve for all of them.
‘And how are you, Major? Did that steroid injection in your hip give you any relief?’ Alice asked, making sure he was seated before she started any conversation. It was one of Holly’s top tips that Alice had gratefully taken on board: people in pain struggle to multi-task, so don’t make them try.
The Major harrumphed a little as he got settled. ‘Well, I’ve been doing lots of walking with Jess and Charlotte, getting the little horses used to their new home, you know, and I don’t think I could have done that a month ago. My Grover can’t believe his luck.’ It was rare to have any conversation with the Major that didn’t involve his beloved terrier in some way.
‘Great,’ said Alice, mentally checking the boxes for improvement, mood and social interaction. ‘And how are the horses? I have to tell you that I think I’m in love with the little yellow one.’
The Major’s smile lit up his face, the years and tension dropping away, almost as though talking about a beloved grandchild; although being Peregrine Waverly, he was unlikely to be so enthusiastic about something with less than four legs. ‘Takes me right back, it does, caring for these little chaps. So much easier though in miniature. It used to take me hours, back in the day, to keep on top of all the grooming – you do everything yourself in the mounted regiments, you know, even the officers. But little Banana is an absolute joy.’ He glanced down at the peacefully slumbering dog at Alice’s feet. ‘He’ll be giving your little dog a run for her money on the assistance front too, if Charlotte and I have anything to do with it. You should see the improvement in young Jess’s confidence since she’s been working with Banana.’
Alice smiled, Jess Hearst clearly not the only one to have been given a boost by the little palomino. ‘So what can I do for you today?’
‘Well,’ the Major stumbled over his words, still casting worried looks in Coco’s direction, that in itself telling Alice what the Major’s uppermost concern was. ‘I seem to be having trouble with my plumbing. To be precise, Dr Walker, I feel as though I need to pee, while I’m still peeing. There’s no respite. I’ve given up all the things I love: coffee, Guinness, even my afternoon cup of tea. My Marion is all about not irritating my bladder; doesn’t seem to matter how much she’s irritating me with all her advice—’ He broke off, suddenly aware that he’d gone off on a tangent.
‘And you’re worried it might be cancer?’ Alice suggested gently.
‘Well, if you Google it . . .’
‘Oh, Major,’ Alice cut in, ‘if you Google almost anything these days it will lead you to cancer one way or another. How about we do this the old-fashioned way? You can tell me about your symptoms and I’ll use my cunning medical degree to work out what’s troubling you?’
The Major nodded, seemingly comforted to have the responsibility taken out of his hands.
‘So, how long has this been going on?’ Alice asked, fully expecting him to say months, if not years; the Major’s track record on avoiding medical attention preceded him.
‘Oh, about a week, now,’ said the Major. ‘And it hurts, you know? To pee. Awful backache too.’
‘And Marion insisted you came?’ Alice checked.
‘Oh no, Dr Walker, even I know something’s amiss when there’s blood in your wee.’
Alice let out a sigh of relief; even she had been concerned for a moment about the likelihood of prostate cancer, after all, he did fit the profile in terms of age and sex, not to mention his fondness for bacon. ‘Let’s get a urine sample for testing,’ she said, handing him a small plastic container. ‘But my feeling is that we’re talking about a UTI, a urinary tract infection, and that a course of antibiotics will have you sorted in no time.’
‘No cancer?’ the Major clarified.
‘Well,’ Alice hedged, ‘since you’re here it’s probably a good idea to check your prostate.’
The Major shook his head and stood up abruptly, his apparent reprieve making him skittish again. ‘Let’s try the antibiotics first, eh? I’ll come back in for that exam once I’m feeling a bit brighter.’ He eyed the box of latex gloves on her shelf with unease and made for the door, giving Alice little opportunity to protest.
‘Sure you will,’ she muttered sceptically as the door swung closed behind him. She felt like she was banging her head against a brick wall with some of the older residents of Larkford; when would they begin to realise that prevention was so much easier than cure?
If only there was a way to find some balance, she thought, as she checked her patient list for the morning and noticed yet another twenty-something with Google-itis. What was the cross-over age, she wondered, between the Worried Well and the Elderly Ostriches with their heads in the proverbial sand?
*
Wandering into the doctors’ lounge for elevenses, Alice was miles away, wondering whether they had in fact got the focus of their Health in the Community programme completely wrong. If the last three hours had proven anything, it was that their over-sixties were almost as clueless as the teenagers in Larkford when it came to their own health and well-being. Sure, they weren’t taking ecstasy or the morning-after pill, but that didn’t mean they weren’t flagrantly disregarding the instructions that came with their medication or indulging in ‘one last fling’. Maybe Big Bertha should be doing the rounds of the old people’s homes, as well as the schools, as the next part of their health initiative?
‘Come on, come on, Alice. We need one more player,’ called Dan from the table where it seemed half the team were congregated, money changing hands and banter already flying. ‘Place your bets, ladies and gents, you’ve got to be in it to win it.’
Alice pulled a ten-pound note from her wallet and slapped it down on the table. She rather enjoyed the various silly jokes and bets for ever on the go, and never missed a chance to join in the fun. ‘What’s today’s bet?’ she asked.
Dan stepped back to reveal a box-fresh game of Operation laid out on the table. ‘Well, Taffy here reckons he has what it takes to be an army surgeon. So we thought we’d put him to the test.’ He waved a hand at a selection of whistles, horns and percussion instruments. ‘It’s not exactly falling mortars but I reckon we can distract him fairly comprehensively from the job in hand, don’t you?’
Taffy’s bravado was clearly waning a little in the face of Dan’s absolute belief that he couldn’t maintain a steady hand under pressure, not to mention the fact that everyone’s money seemed to be piling up against him.
‘A tenner says he can do it,’ offered Alice supportively. ‘But I need to make it clear that this is Coco’s Bonio money, Taffy, so you’d better not let her down.’
‘Oh dear God,’ said Taffy in a strangled voice, ‘I’m not sure I can live with that level of expectation.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘Luckily for me, Coco won’t mind if I slip her a digestive biscuit instead.’
‘Whose daft idea was this anyway?’ asked Grace with a smile, sitting on the worktop and swinging her legs, watching closely but not joining in.
Everyone turned to look at her in surprise. ‘Whose do you think?’ said Jason with feeling, his not-so-secret hero worship of Dan bordering on the embarrassing at times. It took the nurse/doctor crush to a whole new level of political correctness.
‘Shhh!’ commanded Dan, winding the kitchen timer to two minutes, poised for the off. ‘One, two,
go!’
The nurses and Dan obviously took the concept of distraction incredibly seriously if the instant cacophony was anything to go by and Taffy soon had small beads of sweat on his brow as he attempted to wrangle miniature plastic body parts from their recesses, his gaze regularly flickering over to the nose. When Dan began to sing the song from the Countdown clock even Alice felt her pulse ratchet up a notch.
Ever the strategist, Taffy had worked his way down, even acing the notoriously pesky ‘butterflies in stomach’ that were inexplicably making their presence felt for Alice as she watched. She couldn’t deny that her own stress levels seemed to be rising by the day, increasingly thrown into a role she didn’t feel fully equipped for. And, as lovely as her male colleagues undoubtedly were, she was missing Holly’s experience and guidance more than she could possibly have foreseen. Even having Tilly here had somehow become an extra responsibility on her shoulders.
Not that Tilly wasn’t capable, she corrected herself; it just turned out that having a social conscience and a willingness to leap into any international fray did not necessarily translate into being an empathetic and nurturing GP. This wasn’t siege medicine, after all; this was cradle-to-grave and everything in between. Watching Taffy struggle under pressure only served to highlight that the best family physicians didn’t necessarily make the best army surgeons or Médecins Sans Frontières medics. Maybe she and Taffy were just cut from different cloth?
She pushed a mental image of her mother waving the family tartan around to the back of her mind and leaned against the worktop beside Grace. ‘How’s tricks?’ she asked.
Grace smiled, her gaze firmly riveted on the game in play. ‘I can’t believe I feel so emotionally invested in the outcome, can you? Maybe we all just need to get out more?’ She nibbled on a Gingernut and managed not to blink as the clock counted down and Taffy’s cursing became more vocal.
‘What the hell is a “Charlie horse”?’ Taffy wailed. ‘I’ve been a doctor for more than a decade and never once had a patient present with a tiny horse on his bloody thigh! And this sudden obsession with miniature horses everywhere I look?’ He tossed the pincers aside as the kitchen timer went off and pushed the hair off his forehead in frustration, looking wiped. ‘Sorry, Coco. No Bonios for you. Just as well my feet are too flat to let me in the army corps, eh, Dan?’
Dan shrugged. ‘Well, now you’re warmed up at least. Shall we have another go? I’ll put the batteries in this time.’
Taffy’s aghast expression was priceless, as was Dan’s when he realised that Taffy leaping to his feet and chasing him from the room was only partly in jest.
‘Come back here, you little—’ Taffy’s furious words were cut off by the door slamming closed behind him, to a chorus of cheers from the nursing staff who had clearly been in on the joke.
‘They’re just big kids, aren’t they, really?’ said Alice fondly.
Grace nodded. ‘I’m not sure that Dan realises how much of that would have to go, once he has a kid of his own though.’
Alice was silent for a moment, knowing that this was no idle comment. ‘Do you think it’s possible he has no idea? I mean, technically Taffy is a father of four and it doesn’t seem to have dented his joie de vivre too much, does it?’
Grace nodded. ‘But then Taffy isn’t at home doing the hard work, is he? Holly is.’
‘Oh,’ said Alice, her own nascent thoughts that she might yet be prepared to give motherhood a go firmly quashed. ‘I see what you mean. But,’ she hesitated, unwilling to sound gauche but intrigued nonetheless, ‘don’t they have a nanny now?’
‘Oh, my darling girl,’ said Grace, sounding every single one of her forty-two years, ‘having a nanny doesn’t mean you stop being a mother. You just have yet another soul in the house to handle. But what do I know? I never had one when the boys were small. I just stayed at home going quietly out of my mind and shaping my fears in Play-Doh.’ She looked defensive for a moment. ‘A lot of women do that, you know.’ Grace paused, perhaps realising that she was verging on over-sharing, in danger of breaking the unspoken pact whereby mothers kept the next generation largely in the dark about the joys that awaited them, for fear of scaring them shitless.
‘But I didn’t have a career to return to, the way you will,’ Grace said after a moment’s hesitation, only serving to confirm Alice’s suspicions.
‘And you and Dan?’ Alice asked quietly. ‘Have you decided what to do?’
Grace shook her head, smiling sadly as she watched the two men dart past the window, slipping, sliding and hollering, their race of reprisals having branched out into the icy car park. ‘I don’t know,’ she said simply. ‘We seem to have reached a stalemate. I’m happy to adopt. I actually rather like the idea of starting over and raising a child here. But I can’t pretend that the idea of a pregnancy at my age doesn’t leave me cold. I know, I know, lots of women are having babies in their forties, but I already did that. Two whole decades ago.’
Alice looped an arm around her shoulders, realising just how deeply divisive this issue was becoming. She didn’t need Grace to spell it out, that it might yet become a deal-breaker for her friend’s relationship with Dan.
‘Had you considered a surrogate?’ she asked, her mind running through options, just as she would with any patient posing this quandary.
‘Why? Are you offering?’ Grace laughed.
‘God, no!’ Alice clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘I mean, what I meant to say was—’
‘God, no?’ Grace suggested simply. ‘Don’t worry, Alice. I would never ask that of anyone. I could never ask a woman to give up her child, even if technically it’s not really hers.’ She shrugged. ‘And that’s the thing with adoption too. I think I could only justify it to myself if there was no mother in the picture.’
‘So a pregnant teenager . . . ?’
‘Might live to regret her decision,’ Grace said firmly.
Alice sighed. There was only one person she knew who could really answer that. And there was no way on earth that Alice would ever ask her how she felt about it now, seven years later. But it was fair to say that, from where she was standing, Grace certainly had a point.
Chapter 18
Holly felt a moment’s disquiet as she parked her car, badly, in the car park at the Rugby Club in Bath that same morning. It was easier to focus on her parallel-parking ineptitude, despite Elsie’s masterclasses, than the fact that she had slipped away this morning without telling Taffy where she was going.
In fact, worse than that, she’d somehow misled him into thinking she was going shopping in Bath and hence the early start, in order to find a parking space big enough for the ridiculous Volvo she was now expected to drive as a mother of four. She switched off the ignition, not even caring that she was almost diagonally taking up two spaces, her heart thumping heavily in her chest.
What was she doing?
Even considering another job felt duplicitous, almost adulterous.
Keeping this meeting a secret made it even more so.
She blinked hard to block out Elsie’s voice in her head; her shrewd questions, having overheard Holly on the phone making arrangements, had been spot on the money. ‘What’s your motivation here, Holly? Are you willing to abandon your principles out of sheer contrariness?’
Apparently she was.
In fact, the more Taffy and Dan had laughed at the notion of her joining the Rugby Club team over the last few days, the more determined she had become to make a point, apparently, no matter how skewed the logic.
It hadn’t helped that Taffy had arrived home the night before bearing her favourite profiteroles from The Deli, before sweeping her out to the pub for a drink. Rather unprecedented on a school night of late, but then perhaps he was aware that he had overstepped the mark with her? He had been sweet and funny and attentive – she hadn’t dared mention her plans for fear of disrupting their tentative détente. It had been just heavenly to relax in his company, helping Connor celebrate and, just for
once, not trading job lists and grievances.
She took a breath and tugged down the hem of her smartest work jacket, which now gripped uncomfortably at her upper arms, reminding her with every movement that, whether she was prepared to admit it or not, she was still softened by motherhood in every sense of the word.
‘Looking can’t hurt,’ she muttered to herself as she stepped out of the car, rows of Georgian buildings marking out the limits of the Rugby Club’s territory. It was an inspiring sight. ‘I’m just dipping a toe in the water,’ she told herself, ignoring the flicker of guilt that persisted.
*
‘You can’t deny it’s a first-rate facility,’ said Mike with an expansive smile, as he showed her around the Rugby Club half an hour later. His determination in persuading Holly was almost admirable; apparently he was a man who knew what he wanted and was prepared to go out on a limb to get it.
Certainly greeting her with a platter of Danish pastries and the most divine Italian coffee had put a spring in Holly’s step and distracted her from her moral quandary.
‘But, Mike, you do realise that sports medicine is just not my speciality and I hardly know one end of a rugby pitch from the other.’ Holly felt obliged to tell it like it was – there was little point in continuing the tour if he was under some illusion about her skillset. ‘I’m a GP. A family doctor.’
‘I know,’ he said, perching on the edge of the ice bath in the Physio Suite. ‘But as I keep telling you, we have zero interest in having an avid fan with one eye on the score. We want our club to feel like a family, and for players’ families to have access to the best healthcare as well.’ He looked around and dropped his voice. ‘Look, a distracted player is not a successful player and we learned that the hard way last season. If our players need peace of mind about their children’s health, or their spouses’, it’s a relatively cost-effective fix.’
‘You mean I’m cheap at half the price?’ Holly said wryly.
