by Peter James
The music began playing.
You’re the queen of the slipstream . . .
The song caught Marcus. As he drove on, he was nodding his head in time to the music. Oh yes. My Queen of the Slipstream.
Georgie had told him on that Saturday night that this was her and Roger’s song. The song they had fallen in love to. The song that was going to be their first dance at their wedding.
How bizarre this should come on just as I was thinking about you, Georgie. Although I’m thinking about you a lot of the time.
Minutes after the song had ended, he took a diversion away from the clogged rush-hour traffic, passing the pet-food store and around past the north entrance to the hospital, with the wide green to the left where the town’s homeless drunks hung out, as he kept on singing the words aloud.
He was still singing them as he drove into the car park.
Will you breathe not a word of this secrecy?
Will you still be my special rose?
He switched the engine off. Smiling.
He glanced at his watch.
Later than he’d intended.
But he didn’t care. He was smiling.
My Queen of the Slipstream.
And she had accepted him as a follower on RunMaster!
Does she know it’s me? he wondered. Is it a further sign of her interest? Along with giving me her mobile number and wanting me to join her class?
Before getting out of the car he looked at the app on his phone. But to his disappointment she had not recorded any new activity today. No morning run.
Why not?
Hey, the day was still young.
He strode into the Gwyneth Huelin wing entrance with a spring in his step that he’d not felt in a long while, and smiled at a young ICU nurse, Theresa Adams, getting a coffee at the cafeteria counter.
‘Hi, Theresa! Let me know when you’re going to dump your husband, won’t you!’
She patted her swollen midriff. ‘Marcus, can’t you see? It will be a while, so dream on! Any case, I’m not sure you could handle me!’
‘Oh, such a waste . . .’
‘I thought you liked babies.’
‘Yes, but not when they get in the way of you and me!’
‘Yeah, yeah, keep dreaming – laters.’
‘You know where I am.’
‘You are incorrigible!’
‘And you are bloody gorgeous. Make sure Mr Adams cherishes you!’
Smiling as he climbed the stairs, he was humming the tune again.
You may not know it yet, Georgie Maclean. But you are going to be my Queen.
Oh yes you are!
17
Monday 17 December
A few minutes later Marcus entered his small, immaculate office and looked around, disapprovingly. The cleaners had, as usual, moved stuff about.
He was sure they did it just to show they’d been. And it really pissed him off.
Sitting at his desk, he carefully adjusted the position of his computer screen, keyboard, phone, mouse mat and pens, stood up and straightened some crooked files on a shelf, then looked at the round, utilitarian wall clock. It was running a minute fast. He adjusted it then sat back down and checked everything else in the room, noticing a tin of furniture polish spray and cloth that the cleaner had left on a bookshelf.
He dropped both items in his bin.
Finally satisfied, he tapped his keyboard to wake his computer, entered the new password he’d created – Georgie4Me – and began to deal with the emails that had come in over the weekend. Referrals from doctors. Requests for him to talk at various conferences. Notification of the Obs and Gynae department Christmas drinks party. Another notification for the Friday afternoon consultants’ meeting – this week to focus on abnormality and morbidity.
He looked at his schedule for the day. Meetings all morning, then theatre in the afternoon. A couple of caesareans, followed by a relatively simple early-stage cervical cancer op, which would be shifted in case of any complications with either of the C-sections – which there sometimes were. Followed by one he was not looking forward to at all.
A nice lady in her early thirties on whom he’d performed an operation a few months back for borderline ovarian cancer. Now the cancer had returned, a very aggressive tumour that was metastasizing. And, sadly, she was pregnant. He was going to have to abort the foetus, and in a couple of weeks he would have to perform major surgery on her. Even then, her prognosis was not going to be good. Life was so random, so damned cruel and unfair at times.
He was the on-call obstetrician today, which meant he would have to stay at the hospital until 9 p.m. and be prepared to come out at any time of the night until 8 a.m. tomorrow. But as he looked down his list, his mind was drifting. To Georgie. To running.
He needed to be fully kitted out to become a competitive runner again. He opened Google and typed in ‘best running shoes for speed’, thinking that, just like cars needed good tyres for optimum performance on the road, he needed good running shoes to help him perform. Next, he trawled a couple of running websites to upgrade his kit. He ordered a basket load. Then he googled ‘personal trainers in Jersey’. Near the top appeared ‘Georgie Maclean, Jersey, trainer’.
She just kept popping up into his life.
He googled some more, and a row of images appeared. He saw Georgie halfway along them and clicked to enlarge it. An instant later she appeared full screen. In a slim-fitting tracksuit. Red hair pinned up. Challenging smile on her face.
Beneath was the legend:
BE FIT FOR PURPOSE! BEL ROYAL HOTEL GYM – FREE ASSESSMENT SESSION – ONE-TO-ONE OR GROUP CLASSES, CALL OR EMAIL FOR DETAILS.
And suddenly his day felt a whole lot better. He felt fit for purpose!
As he waltzed into the meeting room, one floor down, he had a smile on his face, despite the seriousness of the meeting. In a conference call with a cytopathologist from the Cervical Cancer Screening Centre in Sheffield, they would be discussing the management of three Jersey women with cervical pre-cancer or cancer.
Two fellow obstetrician/gynaecologists were attending, two pathologists and a medical student.
‘You’re looking very sunny this morning, Marcus,’ fellow obstetrician Kath Clow said. ‘What was that delicious white wine you served us up last week?’
‘It was a white Burgundy – Meursault. I get it from that rather splendid wine cellar over in Gorey. How was your weekend?’
‘Good, thanks. Saturday was mostly taken up by Charlie – he was playing in a rugby match, so I had to be the dutiful cheering parent on the touchline. Then Sunday I was the taxi service to take him to his best friend’s house for a party and fetch him later – typical that they live on the furthest point of the island from us!’
Marcus was aware she doted on the boy, her only child, and his godson. ‘The joys of parenthood, right?’ He raised his eyebrows.
Kath grinned back. ‘Yep.’
‘I can’t believe my little blue-eyed godson is nine now!’ Marcus said.
‘Ten in February.’
The meeting started and for the next half-hour Marcus barely absorbed a single word spoken. He was elsewhere. Thinking about his running. How he could get fit quick.
Thinking about Georgie Maclean.
Looking surreptitiously again at his phone, below the tabletop. At her photos. He’d cropped and saved his favourite from the dinner party, in which she was smiling at him.
He was looking at that now. The way she was smiling at him excited him. He knew it was wrong, but he was increasingly craving her. She was under his skin. God, how he wished he was under her skin – no, not under – inside. He felt his cock growing at the thought.
He had a choice, he knew that. He could stop. He should stop. These things rarely had happy endings. And there were so many obstacles on the way. Claire, their kids, Roger, Georgie’s pregnancy. Why couldn’t he just knock this on the head?
But Georgie wanted it too. He could tell from the looks she’d g
iven him that she was up for it. Tired of her pilot? Craving excitement? He felt it. The electricity she had radiated.
However hard he tried to put her out of his mind, she came back into it even more strongly. And with even fewer clothes on.
18
Monday 17 December
Two thirty on Monday afternoon, the time Roger always joked – cheesily, but it made Georgie smile – was ‘dentist time’. Toof hurty. Geddit? Georgie perched, nervously and awkwardly, on a hard chair in the waiting room of the Little Grove Medical Centre, along with a mother with a crying child and several other, mostly elderly, patients who sat in rigid silence, reading magazines or watching Countdown on the television screen on the wall in front of them, waiting for their names to be called.
It felt like they were all actors in a stage set, seated motionless as the curtain rose, waiting for their cues.
She tried to focus on an article in a fancy publication called Lux she had picked up from the table, on lifestyle and interior design, but all she could think about was what the midwife was going to tell her. She was too anxious to focus, reflecting on the warning her GP, Dr Doyle, had given her last week about pregnancy at her age. She faced, he had told her, what seemed to be a whole minefield of risks. But he had reassured her, too, not to worry.
How could she not worry?
Her dream had finally come true, but at her age she knew there was so much that could go wrong.
After an eternity she heard her name on the tannoy.
‘Georgina Maclean for Midwife Fletcher.’
Midwife Fletcher? Wasn’t Fletcher the name of the actress who played the terrifying Nurse Ratched in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?
She closed the magazine, jumped up and walked along the corridor, passing several closed doors before she reached the one labelled with the name LOUISE FLETCHER.
The same first name, too!
She knocked and heard a woman’s voice. ‘Come in!’
The short, plump, dark-haired woman in her early thirties was as far from Nurse Ratched as could be. She greeted Georgie with a warm smile, instantly putting her at ease, and ushered her to a chair in the tiny room. Georgie noticed the notepad on the clipboard on her desk, with her own name typed in large letters at the top and a whole page of handwriting beneath.
‘So – Georgina – is it OK if I call you that?’
‘Georgie’s fine.’
‘Georgie, good! I’m Louise. So, how are you feeling?’
‘I don’t know. Nervous, I guess. Worried.’
Louise Fletcher smiled. ‘Don’t be, this is a very exciting time in your life, embrace it!’
‘Well, I’d like to – but—’
‘Tell me your concerns?’
‘I guess, my age.’
‘There are plenty of women considerably older than you who have given birth to bonny, healthy babies. Of course, there are risks, but there are risks at every age, so let’s take the positives, shall we?’
Georgie smiled. ‘Thank you.’
The midwife looked at her notes for some seconds, then back at her. ‘You’re forty-one?’
She nodded. ‘Guess I’m in the last-chance saloon.’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, you’ve a few more years yet, but yes, forty-one is approaching the upper age for conceiving. I don’t want to worry you, but I’d be wrong not to warn you that statistically the risk of pregnancy complications does rise exponentially after the age of thirty-five.’
‘What kinds of complications?’
‘Well, I don’t want to give you a rose garden. You need to be aware that you do risk one or more problems: miscarriage, hypertension, pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes. And the odds of genetic problems also hike up because of your maternal age.’
‘Great!’ Georgie said with a bitter twinge in her voice that she couldn’t help. ‘I feel like – I don’t know . . .’
‘Most people at your age have completely healthy babies, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t point out the risks,’ Louise Fletcher said.
‘There are tests that can be done, right?’
‘Indeed, but none are completely one hundred per cent. There’s a basic twelve-week series of tests they do at the hospital, which include a dating scan and blood test. The blood test will look for chromosome 21, which is Down’s syndrome, as well as chromosome 18 – Edwards syndrome – and chromosome 13, Patau syndrome, which causes abnormal morphology mainly incompatible with life. These tests are about 85 per cent accurate. But if you wanted to spend the money, you could go private and have a Harmony test that costs £350. In that there is 99 per cent accuracy in the risk assessment of those three chromosomes.’
‘I’ll go for the Harmony,’ she said.
Fletcher nodded, approvingly. ‘I think that’s sensible.’ She handed Georgie a green-and-white A4-sized booklet headed ‘Pregnancy Notes’. ‘This is your pregnancy planner. We’ll just fill in some details, then you’ll need to take this with you to every appointment.’
Georgie flipped through a few pages. It appeared pretty thorough.
‘Have you given any thought to where you might like the birth to take place?’
She shook her head. ‘No, none. I’m still kind of – in – sort of shock that it’s actually real. I mean – like – wonderful shock. I’d almost given up all hope of ever having a child.’
For the next twenty minutes, the midwife noted down a detailed medical history of Georgie, as well as taking blood and urine samples and her blood pressure.
When those were done, she asked Georgie about her current mental state. She assured the nurse she was fine. Her biggest concern was about her business – how long could she go on running, training clients and exercising with them?
Right through to the last few weeks of pregnancy, the woman assured her, so long as she had no other obstetric problems and felt up to it. She questioned Georgie about the date of the start of her last period, in order to calculate the due date, then said, ‘I estimate that you are currently eleven weeks into your first trimester. For someone of your age, we like to closely monitor your baby’s growth and your blood pressure. If there are no other problems, I hope you will go into spontaneous labour around your due date.’
The midwife consulted a chart. ‘So, the due date is Monday, July 22nd.’ She smiled. ‘What a perfect day – remember that poem, “Monday’s child is fair of face”?’
‘I’ll take that!’
The midwife looked serious again. ‘So, given your age and your medical history, I think it would be sensible to refer you to an obstetrician, in addition to the normal regular antenatal clinics, to do your first trimester scan. I’d be present for that, also.’
‘Sure, I’ll be completely guided by you,’ Georgie replied.
‘The consultant I advise is the top man on the island. He’s very thorough. He delivered both of our children, which tells you what I think of him!’
‘That’s a pretty good recommendation.’
‘His name’s Mr Valentine, I’ll—’
‘Marcus Valentine?’ Georgie interrupted.
‘Yes.’ The midwife hesitated, looking at her strangely. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Well, yes.’ She hesitated, wondering if she was being silly. ‘I’ve actually met him socially – and it just feels a bit weird to have him as my obstetrician.’
The midwife absorbed this for some moments. ‘Well, he is a very fine consultant and his patients worship him. To be honest, you’ll get to know any obstetrician pretty well!’ She smiled.
Georgie laughed. ‘Funny, my fiancé said the same thing!’
‘Ha! It’s no problem, Georgie, if you want someone different. There’s a lovely lady consultant obstetrician who I think you’d get on with very well. She’s a keen runner, as you are. She does triathlons – I think you two will really hit it off. She’s called Kath Clow – how does she sound?’
‘Oh yes, I know, I know, Kath and I are friends, and I was
going to suggest her. That’s great! I feel very safe in her hands.’
19
Monday 17 December
Twins!
Two new little mites to bring into the world. To add to all the others in the Postnatal ward, with their exhausted mothers and fretting fathers. New life. In his hands – what an amazing thing, what a gift! Brand-new parents as yet unable to comprehend how these little bundles of joy would change their lives forever. Beautiful!
He remembered one young mother lying in bed holding her baby, just a few days after a traumatic birth, looking up at him and saying, ‘Strange to think this tiny thing will one day be pushing me around in a wheelchair.’
Everyone reacted differently to their first experience of parenthood, Marcus Valentine thought, as he stood in the small locker room with his registrar, a short-arse in his late twenties called Barnaby Cardigan, who always rubbed him up the wrong way, and a Romanian medical student, Robert Resmes, a lightly bearded, intense young man, who was currently shadowing him before moving on to Kath Clow. Marcus felt Resmes would one day make a fine doctor.
‘Don’t you think a caesarean makes it too easy for a pregnant woman?’ Cardigan asked him, suddenly. He was constantly asking questions, but half of them made Marcus feel the man was interrogating him in the hope of tripping him up.
‘Not when there’s a breech birth, no. Back in the old days that could be fatal.’
‘But surely that’s the point?’ Cardigan pressed. ‘Natural selection? Eventually that mother will be edited out of the gene pool.’
Pulling on blue sterile trousers, wriggling into a smock and shoving his feet into his white clogs, Marcus gave him a withering look. ‘Barnaby, I didn’t take the Hippocratic Oath out of allegiance to the sodding gene pool. I went into medicine to help people. If you don’t get that, then you’re in the wrong bloody profession.’
He popped a mint into his mouth and donned his sterile cap, festively printed with snowy scenes and Santa Claus with his reindeer – one of a bunch of identical ones he wore every December to add a festive touch, to put a smile on his patients’ faces. They all seemed to notice, and it was a good icebreaker.
