There were ten runners in the Champion Chase and my interest was heightened when I saw that not only was Dick McGee riding, but so were both Jason Conway and Mike Sheraton.
I sat up and leaned forward to get a better view of the screen.
Over the years, I’d had various encounters with all three jockeys in my role as a racecourse doctor, but on those occasions I had been dealing only with their physical form rather than with their minds and personalities.
Now I was interested in them as people, not merely as patients.
What did they know about Rahul and why was it so important to stop me finding out?
Whereas the Gold Cup on Friday would be the ultimate test over three and a quarter miles, the Champion Chase was the zenith for two-milers, the sprinters of steeplechasing. It was always run at a fast pace but, on this occasion, one of the runners set off as if it were in the Charge of the Light Brigade, establishing a lead of three lengths or more by the time it reached the first fence, only a few strides from the starting gate.
Even the television commentator thought it unusual.
‘Jason Conway is certainly in a hurry on Checkbook,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he’s acting as a pacemaker for the favourite, but no one is going to keep up with that gallop.’
I watched as Checkbook jumped the second fence at least six lengths ahead of the rest of the field, which remained tightly bunched at a more sensible speed.
And so it went on. By the time they passed the enclosures and swung left-handed, Checkbook and Jason Conway were a good ten to twelve lengths in front but the others were already beginning to close, and they surged past on the run towards the water jump.
Checkbook did not even finish the race, pulling up when tailed off last at the top of the hill. Jason Conway would definitely not get my vote as ride of the day and I wondered what the stewards would have to say about it.
The others, meanwhile, swept downhill towards the three remaining fences, their pace now picking up as the business end of the race approached.
Dick McGee went down at the second-last, his horse getting in too close and hitting the fence hard with its shoulders, forcing it to screw sideways on landing and unceremoniously dumping its jockey onto the grass. Dick had had no chance of staying on but it was clearly not going to be his week. That was the third time he’d met the turf face-first, and we were only halfway through the second day.
Mike Sheraton, however, went on to win the race in another tight finish, using considerable skill to coax the horse to the front just before the line.
I lay back on the pillows and sighed loudly. I hardly had enough energy to keep my eyes open. How was I going to start investigating something?
Grant was alarmed by my sigh.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked for the umpteenth time, worry lines etched across his forehead.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just tired.’
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked. ‘Shall I get you something now? We didn’t have any lunch.’
Was I hungry? Hunger was something I tried not to think about.
But I should be, I thought. Not only hadn’t I eaten any lunch, but I’d had no breakfast either. And absolutely nothing to eat the previous day. I’d been too excited at the prospect of working again to have any breakfast and I simply didn’t have time during the day to even grab a sandwich. I had intended having a chicken breast for supper, but I’d never made it home.
There’d been some improvement in my eating since my admission to Wotton Lawn but it remained low on my list of priorities, very low.
‘How about a cheese omelette?’ Grant asked.
‘That would be lovely,’ I said. I smiled at him and he smiled back, but his was a smile full of worry rather than one of love.
What was happening to me?
Why couldn’t I be well and normal?
I believed that I must have some resolution of my problems before I could even start to get better, but I still didn’t know what the problems were, let alone how to resolve them. They had something to do with my parents and my childhood but I couldn’t figure out exactly what.
Maybe there was no single cause, and no magic solution.
My psychotherapist continually encouraged me to talk about my emotions with regard to my mother and father, but I would often leave the session more confused and distressed than I had been beforehand. It was almost as if talking about my childhood unhappiness stirred everything up again, like shaking up the sediment in a bottle of excellent vintage Bordeaux – it made the whole contents unpalatable. Perhaps it would be far better to leave things undisturbed, decant and enjoy the fine wine above, and then cast away the bitter sediment with the empty bottle.
But I remained driven to find ‘the main cause’, to run round and round in circles searching like a dog that has lost a ball in the long grass. Only maybe there was no ball to find at all. Somehow, even though I knew it was madness, I was impelled to go on looking, and all my other problems had to wait.
I desperately wanted to break out of this cycle of misery but no one had told that to my unconscious mind, which went on working in its own mysterious and enigmatic manner.
‘Here you are,’ Grant said, placing a tray down on my lap. He had prepared not only an omelette but also a large bowl of fruit generously covered with Greek yogurt.
I smiled up at him. ‘Thank you, darling.’
Grant did his best but he didn’t really comprehend what was happening to me. Neither did I at times. From the outside, an eating disorder was impossible to understand and, from the inside, impossible to explain. Most of my friends grasped even less than Grant.
‘Surely it’s just a matter of free will,’ one of them said to me. ‘You must be able to eat if you want to.’
But I did want to eat. If I had learned only one thing in hospital it was how dangerous my situation had become and, without more food, I would certainly die, probably from heart failure. I had used up all the fat in my body and had started consuming my muscle tissue simply to survive – and the heart is a muscle. I was slowly devouring the very organ I needed most.
Eighteen months ago, for my fortieth birthday party, I had struggled to fit into my favourite dress – a low-cut sexy black number. It had been a struggle because, whereas the dress was a size 12, my body had, in truth, been closer to a size 14. But, as a fairly tall woman of five feet eight inches, I’d been rounded rather than chubby, weighing in at just under twelve stone.
Things had all changed dramatically the following year.
I had started to view my body as gross and disgusting, as if it were some alien creature from another planet that had to be defeated by starving it to death, and over the next six months, I had lost almost a third of my body weight.
That same sexy black dress now hung on my bony and protruding shoulders like a shapeless sack.
Yet the voice in my head still refused to believe the bleeding obvious and, with every mouthful I took, it became louder and more difficult to ignore.
Spit it out! Spit it out! it demanded.
Resisting the voice was a daily fight, and one I needed to win if I was to see my forty-second birthday.
Since leaving hospital, I had been winning, but I couldn’t let down my guard even for a day. I had been incredibly stupid not to have eaten anything on Tuesday and I was now paying the price.
Had I really been pushed? Or had I simply been too weak from lack of sustenance to notice the bus?
No one believed me and now I was beginning to doubt myself.
I ate the omelette and picked at the fruit. Grant urged me to finish it all but I was too full. I had been trying hard to gradually increase my daily intake but I still couldn’t eat a big meal. And it wasn’t safe for me to do so anyway.
Refeeding syndrome had been first recognised as a potentially fatal condition at the very end of the Second World War when some emaciated Japanese soldiers died after they had surrendered to the Americans in the Philippines. Too much food given to them
too quickly had caused electrolytic disturbances in their red blood cells as essential minerals were diverted to their digestive tracts, resulting in insufficient oxygen being delivered to the brain and heart to maintain life.
It had been one of my biggest fears and had been further ammunition for the voice in my head advising me not to eat anything at all.
And it didn’t help when everyone else tried to tell me what I should do. I already knew, and I didn’t like being lectured, especially by those who had no comprehension at all of my problem.
‘Can I get you anything else?’ Grant asked.
‘No, darling,’ I said. ‘Thank you. I’m fine.’
I watched the rest of the racing on the TV until the boys came home from school.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Oliver said, sweeping into the sitting room and dumping his bag on the floor. ‘What’s to eat?’
The twins were always hungry after a day of studying and that clearly overrode any concern for their concussed mother.
‘Have an apple,’ I said. ‘There are some in the fridge.’
Oliver turned his nose up. ‘Got any crisps?’
‘You finished them on Monday.’
I had meant to do an online food order but that was something else that had been sidelined by the bus.
‘Leave Mum alone,’ Grant said. ‘She’s meant to be resting.’
‘What for?’ Oliver asked. ‘Are you on nights again?’
‘No, darling,’ I said, smiling at him. ‘I’m just resting after banging my head.’
He nodded as if he’d just remembered.
How wonderful, I thought, to be fourteen. Not only did Oliver believe he was immortal but he also believed it of those he loved. He wasn’t worried that his mother had been almost killed by a bus, his concerns were more about his sexuality and whether the blonde girl in his class he fancied also fancied him, and what he’d do about it if she did.
Toby appeared dressed in his Gotherington Colts football kit.
‘Hi, Mum,’ he said. ‘I’m off for a team practice. We’ve, like, got a local derby on Saturday morning against Woodmancote.’
Woodmancote was a nearby village – huge rivals, not least because both teams’ members went to the same school.
‘Be careful,’ I said to his departing back.
‘Yeah,’ he said, as if he would.
Normal family life went on unchanged just as it had for years. It was me who was different, not everyone else – something that had taken me a long while to appreciate.
Grant went back to work early on Thursday morning and, as usual, the boys caught the bus to school from outside the village post office, leaving me alone in the house.
I’d promised Grant that I would take things easy all day but, there again, I’d never been that good at keeping my promises. I had already rested for the required twenty-four hours and now I felt absolutely fine, without so much as a minor headache.
I tidied the kitchen and put away the breakfast things. I stacked the dirty cups and bowls in the dishwasher and set it going. Next I went upstairs and made the beds and picked up the clothes that the boys had dumped on their bedroom floors. Then I vacuumed the carpets, tied back the curtains, plumped up the cushions on the sofa and straightened the magazines on the coffee table. I put on a wash load from the dirty-linen basket, and then I sorted my medications, yet again.
Finally, I sat down on a kitchen stool and looked at the digital clock on the cooker.
It read 9.40.
What shall I do now?
I tried to read an article on the internet about interior design but my mind wasn’t on it.
At five past ten I put my coat on and went to Cheltenham races.
14
This time I did park my Mini in the doctors’ assigned spaces in the jockeys’ car park. It was not so much that I didn’t want to have to cross the Evesham Road again, it was just that I expected to leave before the last race, before the traffic became too bad.
‘Hello, Dr Rankin,’ said a voice as I climbed out of the car. ‘Thanks for your help the other day.’
I turned to find Dave Leigh, the jockey who had broken his collarbone on Tuesday, his left arm now in a sling. He was parked right next to me and was still sitting in a BMW 3 Series with the driver’s window down.
‘Hi, Dave,’ I said. ‘How’s it going?’
‘OK, I suppose. But I’ll be off for at least four weeks. Damned nuisance.’
I decided not to say that, after such a crashing fall, he was lucky to be alive, let alone well enough to come racing only two days later, albeit this time as a spectator rather than a participant.
‘At least you can drive,’ I said.
‘Automatic,’ he said, smiling. ‘Only need one arm and one leg.’
‘Are you here just for the atmosphere?’ I asked.
‘Naah. The TV people have asked me to do a bit in the changing room about what it’s like just before a big race but, to be honest, I don’t know if I can do it. I’m totally gutted. I should be riding Card Reader in the Gold Cup tomorrow. Best horse I’ve ever been on. Has a really good chance.’
‘Who rides him now?’
‘Bloody Mike Sheraton,’ he said. ‘Switched from a no-hoper. Probably win on him too, and that will be the end of me riding him forever, in spite of all our past successes.’
‘Surely not.’
‘Surely will. No owner would jock off a Gold Cup winner.’
‘But won’t Mike Sheraton tell the owner to reinstate you?’
He looked at me as if I were mad, which indeed I might be. ‘You must be bloody joking. Mike Sheraton is a complete bastard. He’d even put you through the wings if he thought it would be to his advantage.’
‘So you want him to lose?’ I asked.
Dave gave me a long cold stare that I took to mean that yes, of course he wanted him to lose.
‘Good luck with the TV,’ I said.
‘Yeah. Thanks.’ He didn’t smile.
At least I wasn’t the only one feeling depressed.
Whenever the actual saint’s day falls, Cheltenham decrees the third day of the Festival to be ‘St Patrick’s Thursday’ and there were many in the entrance queue wearing over-large green leprechaun hats, some with attached red beards. It was quite obvious that more than a few had been enjoying a drink or two, or three, in the car park even at this early hour.
I used my ‘Authorised Doctor’ pass to gain entry and made my way towards the weighing room.
Even though I wasn’t acting in an official capacity – I had received an email from Adrian Kings telling me I wasn’t expected back – I was sure he wouldn’t refuse a little extra help if I offered it for free, especially as there were even more runners in the seven races on the card today than there had been on Tuesday. However, as soon as I walked into the medical room, I realised it had been a huge mistake to come.
Adrian Kings was not happy to see me, and that was an understatement.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said crossly. ‘How did you get in?’
‘I walked,’ I said flippantly. ‘I may have banged my head on Tuesday but I’m not an invalid. I’m here to help if I can.’
‘You’re not wanted,’ Adrian said sharply.
That hurt. I could feel the tears welling in my eyes but I fought them back. I would not give him the pleasure of seeing me cry.
‘You should not have hidden from me the fact that you spent a month as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital with an eating disorder.’ He was loud, and he was angry.
I wondered how he had found out. Not that it mattered.
‘I didn’t hide it,’ I said. ‘I just didn’t broadcast the fact. And it has no relevance to my competence as a doctor.’
‘Of course it’s relevant.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why does having a psychiatric condition make me less able as a doctor?’
He didn’t have an answer. He just waved his hand in a dismissive manner.
But I wasn’t finished.
‘You of all people should know.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’ he demanded furiously.
I had known of Adrian Kings for a very long time. We had both been students at Guy’s Hospital Medical School in London during the 1990s, even though we had never actually met while there. He was some five years older than me and had already qualified as a junior houseman when I was still doing my pre-clinical studies. But stories of the ‘mad doctor’ had permeated down to us lesser mortals. Adrian had suffered with obsessive-compulsive disorder, in particular to do with washing his hands. All physicians are taught to keep their hands clean and germ-free, but Adrian had taken it to extremes, washing his far too often and scrubbing them until they bled. It was said to be the reason why he had gone into general practice rather than becoming the heart surgeon that he’d intended.
‘I was at Guy’s in the nineties,’ I said.
He stared at me. He must have known to what I was referring, but if I thought that, as a fellow sufferer, he might be more understanding of my position, I was much mistaken. If anything, it made him more determined to be rid of me.
‘I don’t want you here, not now, not ever,’ he said loudly and adamantly. ‘Get out and stay out.’ He pointed at the doorway.
He was the senior medical officer and it was his prerogative to have whomever he wanted on his team. I feared that my days as a racecourse doctor might be over for good.
I took just one step out of the medical room, my mind trying to come to terms with how my situation had so suddenly changed when all I had wanted to do was to help.
The tears came back into my eyes, blurring my vision.
The door to the medical room was in one corner of the male jockeys’ changing room and I stood outside it gazing into space, almost as if in a trance.
My life seemed to be moving in an ever-steepening downward spiral. I still wasn’t allowed by the Medical Director to return to my day job and now I had seemingly lost my most enjoyable distraction from hospital work.
I wiped the tears from my eyes and realised that I had been staring into the changing room in general and at Dick McGee in particular. He stood on the far side holding a set of red-and-white-striped silks while wearing just a towel around his waist. He must have felt that I had been purposely looking straight at him. He glowered back at me. I slightly lifted a hand in apology and he responded by removing the towel.
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