The Surgeon's Marriage

by Maggie Kingsley

  Helen unwrapped the cuff and shook her head. ‘It looks to me as though you might just be one of those women whose blood pressure fluctuates when you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Is that good or bad?’

  ‘Annoying would be more accurate,’ Helen replied her brown eyes twinkling. ‘We doctors don’t like the unexplained. It gets us twitchy. OK, I’ll make you another appointment to see me in a month’s time, but I can’t guarantee you’ll actually see me. Our new consultant will have arrived by then, you see, and he’ll probably want to take a look at you as you’re one of our infertility patients.’

  ‘The new consultant. He’s Mr Caldwell’s brother-in-law, isn’t he?’

  Helen’s lips curved as she made a note of the date of Jennifer’s next appointment in her diary. The speed with which news travelled through the hospital never ceased to amaze her. She’d only been told yesterday that Annie’s brother had been appointed consultant in charge of their new infertility clinic and yet already the news had filtered down to the patients.

  ‘I was rather hoping you’d be looking after me for the rest of my pregnancy, Doctor,’ Jennifer continued, doubt and not a little uncertainty plain on her face.

  ‘I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen,’ Helen admitted. ‘All I can say is if you do become one of Mr Hart’s patients, he’s coming to us with the very best of references, and I’m sure you couldn’t be in a pair of better or safer hands.’

  ‘I suppose so, but…’ Jennifer sighed. ‘I guess I just don’t like change, Dr Helen.’

  Nobody did, Helen thought as she showed Jennifer out, but in many ways it could be a good thing, forcing people to reassess their lives, encouraging them to sit down and think about what they really wanted from life.

  As Mark had done on Tuesday night.

  Canada.

  Even now, three days later, she still couldn’t quite believe that he’d actually asked her to go to Canada with him. He’d meant it, too, but nobody just upped sticks and moved to another country. You thought about it for weeks, months. You weighed up the pros and cons. You didn’t just go.

  You did if you were in love with somebody, her heart pointed out. If you were in love with Mark, you’d willingly go to the ends of the earth with him. If you were in love with him.

  ‘Helen, have you got a minute?’

  She whirled round to see her husband standing in the doorway of her consulting room, and her heart skipped a beat. ‘Of course I’ve got a minute. What’s the problem?’

  ‘There’s a patient in my room I’d like a second opinion on.’

  A patient. He wanted to talk to her about a patient. She’d thought—hoped—that perhaps he might want to talk about themselves, but he didn’t.

  ‘What do you think is wrong with her?’ she forced herself to ask.

  ‘I think she may have PUPPPs.’

  The girl did, and it was the worse case of pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy Helen had seen outside a medical book.

  ‘Why on earth didn’t her GP send her to us before?’ she demanded once the girl had gone. ‘She said the rash first appeared when she was thirty-seven weeks pregnant, and her son’s over five weeks old now.’

  ‘To be fair to her GP, he could have thought it was a sweat rash—’

  ‘A sweat rash that’s all over her arms and back and legs, and which has blistered like third-degree burns?’ Helen shook her head. ‘Frankly, I don’t know how she’s coped. Not being able to wear anything but pyjamas for the last three months. Not being able to sleep, or breastfeed her baby, or take a shower because of the pain. She must have been climbing the wall.’

  ‘The trouble is, GPs are so overworked nowadays,’ Tom observed, getting to his feet and piling the files of the patients he’d seen that morning into his out-tray. ‘Four minutes is all they’re supposed to give to each patient, and even if he realised it was PUPPPs he probably thought it would disappear after she had her baby. It often does.’

  ‘Well, it quite patently hasn’t in this case,’ Helen retorted. ‘He should have sent her to us right away, Tom. We could have started her on steroids, but now it’s going to take weeks—if not months—to cure.’

  ‘I know.’

  Of course he did, Helen thought as he sat down again. Just as he’d also not needed a second opinion. OK, so PUPPPs might be extremely rare, but Tom had considerably more medical experience than she did and he hadn’t needed to come looking for her.

  ‘You didn’t really need a second opinion, did you?’ she said, and saw a dull flush of betraying colour creep up his neck.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ he admitted, ‘but I did want to talk to you, and it’s so hard to talk at home what with the kids always about.’

  ‘Sounds ominous,’ she said, managing a smile, but he, she noticed, didn’t. In fact, he looked nervous and uncomfortable, and her heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach. Well, she was the one who’d said they needed to talk, so she could hardly cut and run now, much as she might want to. ‘What…?’ She moistened her lips. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

  Tom lifted the letter-opener on his desk and began turning it round in his fingers. ‘Do you remember the little pensione we stayed in for our honeymoon?’

  She stared at him blankly. ‘The pensione? Of course I remember it. It was off St Mark’s Square, and we had a really stunning view from our bedroom window over one of the canals. The owner was a Mr…Mr…’

  ‘Mr Angelis,’ he finished for her, putting the letter-opener back down on his desk. ‘He thought he could have been an opera singer—’

  ‘But in reality he was actually tone deaf.’ She nodded. ‘I remember, but—’

  ‘And do you remember the day I took you out on one of the gondolas because you said it would be romantic, and the wind changed, and you were horribly sick?’

  Of course she remembered. She remembered every detail of their honeymoon, but why was he talking about it now, why was he reminiscing about it now?

  ‘Tom—’

  ‘We always said we’d go back there one day, didn’t we?’ he continued. ‘To actually see Venice—the buildings, the churches, and museums—instead of just the inside of our bedroom.’

  ‘I expect we will, when the children are older.’

  ‘You’d like to go back?’

  There was suddenly an arrested look on his face, and Helen gazed at him, bewildered.

  ‘Of course I’d like to go back. Venice is a beautiful city.’ But right now I don’t want to talk about it, she thought. I just want you to tell me what’s on your mind. ‘Tom…’ She swallowed and started again. ‘Tom, you’re obviously trying to tell me something, so why don’t you just say it?’

  There. She’d got the words out at last and, oh, Lord, he’d reached for that damn letter-opener again.

  ‘Helen…Helen, we’ve been married for ten years, and they’ve been good years, haven’t they? I mean, I know we’ve had our ups and downs recently—what couple hasn’t? But on the whole they’ve been good years, haven’t they?’

  She felt cold and sick inside. Been. As in the past. As in it’s all over, Helen.

  ‘What are you trying to tell me, Tom?’ she said with difficulty.

  ‘That I—’

  ‘Oh, thank goodness you’re still here, Dr Brooke.’ Doris beamed as she bustled into the consulting room. ‘I’m afraid I’ve just had Admin on the phone, wondering where your E47 forms are. The ones about patient throughput?’ she added as he gazed at her in confusion. ‘They were due in yesterday, and you haven’t sent yours up yet.’

  ‘Does it have to be now, Doris?’ he demanded. ‘Couldn’t it—?’

  ‘Wait?’ She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid they’re getting a little bit impatient. Apparently every other specialist registrar has sent up their forms apart from you, so—’

  ‘OK, OK,’ he exclaimed, striding across to his filing cabinet and yanking out a drawer. ‘They’re in here somewhere…someplace…’
/>   ‘It’s a gorgeous day, isn’t it, Dr Helen?’ the secretary said as Tom flicked impatiently through his files, then with a huff of annoyance started again, more slowly. ‘Pity we haven’t had many more like it for Dr Lorimer, especially as he’s leaving us on Sunday. The poor man must think it never does anything but rain in Scotland.’

  The woman’s eyes were on her, thoughtful, speculative, and Helen managed to smile.

  ‘I don’t suppose Dr Lorimer came here for the weather, Doris.’

  ‘Indeed—indeed,’ the secretary said. ‘He’s off to Canada now, isn’t he? I wonder which part? I have relatives there, and—’

  ‘My E47 forms, Doris,’ Tom interrupted, holding them out to her.

  She took them from him, and glanced through them with a slowness that set Helen’s teeth on edge.

  ‘Well, they seem to be in order,’ she said at last, all too obviously deeply disappointed. ‘Thank goodness Dr Lorimer managed to fill in his forms correctly. It would have been the devil’s own job trying to contact him once he’s gone to Canada. We’re going to miss him, aren’t we? A regular breath of fresh air he’s been, and so handsome and charming.’

  ‘Quite,’ Tom said tightly. ‘Now, if you’ll—’

  ‘You’ll miss him particularly, of course, Dr Helen,’ Doris continued, her eyes suddenly fixed on her.

  ‘I don’t know about the “particularly”,’ Helen replied, cursing the colour she could feel rising in her cheeks. The colour she knew Doris was undoubtedly filing away as potential gossip material. ‘But he’s certainly been a great help to us, with Dr Dunwoody being away on compassionate leave.’

  ‘Yes, but you and Dr Lorimer seem to have become such good friends while he’s been here,’ the receptionist said, her eyes never leaving Helen’s for a second. ‘Such very good friends.’

  What did she know? Helen wondered uneasily. There was no way she could know about Mark asking her to go to Canada with him, or have seen him kiss her, but she obviously knew—or suspected—something.

  ‘Dr Lorimer is a very easy man to get along with,’ she replied, wishing the woman would just go, leave, and Tom must have thought the same because he strode over to the door and opened it pointedly.

  ‘If there’s nothing else, Doris?’

  The secretary didn’t want to leave. It was quite obvious that she didn’t, but with the door open, and Tom standing beside it, there was nothing she could do but take the hint.

  ‘You were right about that woman,’ Tom exclaimed when Doris had finally gone. ‘She’s trouble.’

  ‘And you’ve only just realised it?’ Helen protested with a shaky laugh. ‘Honestly, Tom, sometimes I think you go around with your eyes shut.’

  ‘So it seems,’ he murmured.

  She glanced up at him quickly. There was pain in his eyes. A wealth of pain and heartache that she’d never seen before. Yes, she had. She’d seen it the day the twins were born, when she’d been holding onto his hand for dear life as each contraction had torn through her, and she’d never wanted to see it again.

  ‘Tom—’

  ‘Helen, what I wanted to talk to you about…’ He bit his lip. ‘We’ve been drifting apart recently, haven’t we? I know our work hasn’t helped—the lousy shifts we do—’

  ‘Things will be better now we’ve got our own infertility clinic,’ she said brightly, too brightly. ‘We’ll be able to have a lot more free time, and didn’t you say that you thought David was going to be a real asset to the department, and that you’d enjoy working with him?’

  ‘He certainly seems very able. Full of new ideas and plans, of course, but none of them sound too unrealistic or extreme.’ He met her gaze. ‘But that’s not the point, is it?’

  It wasn’t. All the new staff in the world weren’t going to make any difference to them if the love between them was gone. Well, she’d said she couldn’t stand any more uncertainty, and doubt. She’d said she wanted to know if her marriage was over, and she took an unsteady breath.

  ‘So…so what is the point, Tom?’ she said.

  ‘Do you…do you remember when you asked me if I’d ever been attracted to anybody else?’

  Her stomach clenched into a hard knot of pain. I was talking about my attraction to Mark, she wanted to cry. I didn’t ever think—suspect—that you might have fallen in love with somebody else. But you have, haven’t you? That’s what you’re trying to tell me, and I don’t want to hear it but I know I must.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I remember,’ she whispered.

  ‘Helen…’ He reached out and clasped her hand in his. The hand that bore her wedding ring. ‘You’ve always been the most precious thing in my life, but—’

  His phone jangled into life and with a muttered oath he snatched it up, and barked ‘Dr Brooke’ into the receiver, and her heart sank as she watched his expression change.

  ‘You’ve got to go,’ she said when he slammed it down again.

  It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway.

  ‘Liz says Mrs Lennox is still being sick after her op, and she’d like me to take a look at her. I’m sorry, Helen.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said with a slightly crooked smile. ‘I understand.’

  And she did understand, but never had she resented her job so much. Never had she so wished she were a teacher, or a solicitor—anything but a doctor—as she did when Tom strode out of his consulting room.

  She wanted to ask him who he’d fallen in love with. She wanted to know if it was somebody at the hospital, somebody she knew, and she wanted to know how long it had been going on.

  A ragged sob broke from her, and she gripped her hands together tightly. Don’t fall apart. Not here. Not when anyone could walk in. You’ve got to get through this day. Somehow you’ve got to get through this day and then you can cry, but not now, not here.

  Blindly she stumbled out into the corridor, and almost cannoned into Doris.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped, trying to sidestep the woman without success.

  ‘Are you all right, Dr Helen? You’re looking very flushed.’

  ‘I’m fine—fine,’ Helen muttered, beginning to walk on, only to see Doris come after her. ‘If you’ll excuse me…’

  ‘Dr Brooke doesn’t look very well either.’

  He didn’t. In fact, he looked grey, and drawn, but there was no way she wanted to talk about Tom.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I really do have to go,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ve a morning round to do, and—’

  ‘I’m sure when Dr Lorimer leaves everything will be all right again, Doctor.’

  What did the woman know, Helen wondered, coming to a halt in the middle of the corridor. She couldn’t know anything, she couldn’t.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said stiffly, and saw Doris smile. A knowing, ingratiating smile.

  ‘Dr Lorimer’s attentions towards you…Well, they’ve been quite marked, haven’t they? And a less secure person than Dr Brooke…I’m not surprised if he’s become a little jealous.’

  ‘I can assure you that my husband hasn’t had any cause to feel jealous,’ Helen retorted, all too conscious that the heat she could feel sweeping across her cheeks must be totally belying her words.

  ‘Oh, of course not,’ Doris protested. ‘Please, don’t think I’m implying—suggesting—that you might have welcomed his attentions. Good heavens, I would never suggest such a thing, but you know how people talk.’

  Especially meddlesome, gossipmongering old biddies like you, Helen longed to reply, but she didn’t.

  Somehow she managed to keep her temper. Somehow she managed even to smile tightly at the woman before striding towards the ward but as she walked along Doris’s words kept reverberating round and round in her head.

  Tom jealous? He couldn’t be jealous. Tom never noticed anything. Good grief, even when it had been obvious to the entire hospital that Gideon and Annie had fallen in love, he’d been the last person to see it.

  So why are you wishing that he was jea
lous? her mind demanded. Why do you care so much if Tom has found somebody else? He’s been taking you for granted for years, using you as an unpaid housekeeper. Face it, he doesn’t even know you’re around, so why should you care what he does?

  Because he’s the father of my children, and Emma and John will be devastated if he leaves.

  And is that the only reason you’re upset? her heart asked as she opened the door of the Obs and Gynae ward.

  She didn’t know. She was so confused and upset, she didn’t know anything any more except that she wanted to go home and stay there. But she couldn’t, not when Annie was already hurrying towards her, interest and curiosity plain on her face.

  ‘Liz just told me that Tom had a case of PUPPPs in his clinic this morning. I wish he’d called me. I’ve never seen an example except in medical books.’

  ‘Believe me, it’s not something you’d wish on your worst enemy,’ Helen replied with an effort, noticing Tom emerging through the curtains round Mrs Lennox’s bed. ‘The poor woman was in agony, and all because her idiot GP didn’t pick up on what was wrong with her.’

  ‘Makes you wonder if it’s wise for any woman to get pregnant, doesn’t it?’ the junior doctor said. ‘I mean, it’s bad enough knowing you’re going to have morning sickness, an aching back and varicose veins and piles to look forward to, but to have a dreadful rash as well…’ She shook her head. ‘It’s a wonder anybody ever decides to have a baby.’

  Helen couldn’t help but smile. ‘Thankfully PUPPPs is very rare so if you and Gideon are thinking of adding to your family I wouldn’t worry too much about it.’ A tinge of faint colour appeared on Annie’s cheeks, and Helen’s eyes flew to hers. ‘Annie, you’re not—I mean, you and Gideon aren’t…?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Annie confessed, her colour deepening. ‘I haven’t done a test yet, but I seem to have suddenly gone right off tea, and the last time I felt like that was when I was expecting Jamie.’

  ‘Oh, Annie, I’m so pleased,’ Helen exclaimed. ‘Are you pleased if you’re pregnant?’