Practically Perfect

by Caroline Anderson

  Patrick snorted, convinced she was worrying about nothing, and he was fortunately right. As it turned out, Killer was nothing of the sort.

  He was a great, hairy lurcher, a leggy, straggly hound of indeterminate origin with enough of some sort of gazehound in him to justify the term ‘lurcher’, but not enough to give him any intrinsic grace or good looks. He settled down on the floor by the door, whined occasionally and gave off the general odour of fox mess from a nice patch of crispy hair behind one ear.

  Connie thought he was actually rather sweet if he didn’t smell so bad, but she kept Edward away from him just to be on the safe side. Toby and Rolo sniffed around him for a while, but then lay down, one eye apiece just cracked open, checking him out while they dozed.

  She and Edward were doing puzzles at the kitchen table, fitting together interlocking shapes to build a simple three-D tower. It was fairly easy, but too much for him on his own, and it was the only toy in his suitcase. Connie vowed to send Patrick toy-shopping one day soon.

  They had just put the last piece in when Patrick came through from the surgery. ‘Right. Would you two like to jump in the car, and I’ll take Killer in the pickup—Good grief, whatever is that awful smell?’

  Edward seemed to shrink, but Connie laughed. ‘Fox mess, I think. My mother calls it “the great smell of woof”. These two have been known to partake of it on occasions.’

  Patrick looked at the dog in disbelief. ‘Well, it’s certainly not Chanel,’ he said drily. ‘Right, come on, then. I suggest you follow me, so we don’t lose each other.’

  He handed her the keys, called Killer and went out of the kitchen door into the car park. Connie followed, telling the dogs to stay, and then had the problem of putting the keys in the ignition on the right hand side of the steering column with her left hand.

  Not easy. Fortunately the car started with the first turn of the key and, being an automatic, she simply had to aim it. Well, she thought, at least I know I can drive an automatic if the worst comes to the worst, and then felt vaguely sick.

  Was it really a possibility? She thought she’d felt a little more sensation the past few days, but had she been deluding herself?

  What if it never came back? What if her hand remained nerveless and feeble? She wouldn’t even be able to give injections properly, or set up drips, or do any of the other many things a physician had to do. It wasn’t only surgeons who needed two hands. What if she couldn’t go back to medicine at all?

  ‘Connie? What’s the matter?’

  She turned round and looked at Edward, strapped onto his booster cushion in the back seat. ‘Nothing, darling. I’m just concentrating. I’ve never driven Patrick’s car before.’

  She tried to keep her mind on the job, watching Killer in the back of the pickup and making sure she didn’t lose them.

  She didn’t, and she was happy to hand over to Patrick and slide into the other seat. He found the neighbour, gave him the key and then turned to Edward and Connie. ‘Fancy a pub lunch?’ he asked.

  ‘Have you got time?’

  ‘Should have. Sound good?’

  They both nodded. ‘Anywhere special?’ Connie asked.

  ‘There’s a thatched place we passed.’

  ‘The Three Horseshoes. It’s good.’

  ‘So I’d heard. Let’s give it a whirl.’

  Connie and Patrick had baguettes stuffed with prawns and salad, and Edward had cheese and pickle sandwiches and pinched some of Connie’s prawns. It was difficult to eat with one and a half hands, and one of the prawns fell down inside the cast.

  ‘Oh, yuck!’ she squeaked, and tried to shake it out, but it wouldn’t come. Patrick tried to poke it out, and Edward had to see, but in the end she had to wait until they were back at the surgery before Patrick could extract it with a pair of forceps.

  ‘There. Want to eat it?’ he teased, offering it to her in the jaws of the forceps, but she pushed it away, laughing a little humourlessly.

  ‘Patrick, don’t,’ she said, and he lowered the forceps slowly and looked at her.

  ‘Connie? What is it?’

  ‘I need this cast off,’ she told him a little petulantly. ‘My arm’s healed and it’s just a nuisance now. I can’t be bothered to go back to London. Could you do it?’

  ‘You need a plaster saw—and anyway, you ought to go back and see your consultant.’

  ‘No!’ she exclaimed, and then shook her head. ‘I don’t want to see her.’

  ‘Because she’s going to tell you what you don’t want to hear?’

  Connie turned away, hanging onto her control by a thread. ‘No, she’s not. She’s just going to tell me off for not resting it. I’ll go next week.’

  And she escaped back into the house to Edward, who didn’t ask difficult questions and who kept her busy enough that she didn’t have to think about it.

  Patrick was getting worried about Connie. He was sure she’d missed at least one follow-up appointment, and he decided to tackle her again about it later.

  For now, though, he was too busy. The practice nurse, Jane Pierce, was running a routine surgery that afternoon, and he had a couple of hours off, technically speaking, in which to catch up with his admin, write a few hundred referral letters and get straight.

  It was not to be. Jane popped her head round the door with an apologetic smile. ‘I don’t suppose you could come and have a look at this, could you? It’s Mrs Brown. She’s had a leg ulcer under treatment for months, and it’s just stubbornly refused to heal, and I think I can see something in the bottom of it.’

  ‘Something?’ he said, getting up and following her across to her room. ‘What sort of something? Hello, Mrs Brown, I gather you’ve got an ulcer that doesn’t seem to want to get better.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You take a look. Sister Pierce reckons she can see something in it, though I can’t imagine what, unless a little splinter of metal broke off the supermarket trolley, but it didn’t bleed—just hurt like the dickens.’

  Patrick bent over and shone a little torch onto the ulcer, and there was a distinct metallic gleam at the base.

  ‘Seems so silly,’ Mrs Brown went on. ‘It was only a little knock with a trolley, and it’s been going on for months now, and I didn’t have anything like this much trouble when I broke the blessed thing.’

  Patrick straightened up slowly. ‘You broke it?’

  ‘Yes, five years ago. Had it pinned and plated.’

  Patrick chuckled. ‘I think that’s your answer, then. I think the trolley’s hit the skin over one of the screws. Maybe you ought to go back to the consultant and have the screws out—is there a record in the notes?’

  Jane nodded. ‘Yes—here it is. I didn’t notice it—how silly of me.’

  ‘Well, it was a long time ago, dear. I forgot about it myself,’ Mrs Brown said kindly. ‘So, will he be able to take them out?’

  ‘I’m sure he will. I’ll give him a ring. Stay here, and I’ll do it from this phone. I might need to ask you questions.’

  The consultant was busy, but his secretary took a note of all the details and agreed it would need seeing to as a matter of urgency. ‘I’ll get him to contact Mrs Brown direct and make an appointment,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Mrs Brown when he relayed that, ‘at least my husband won’t be able to say I’ve gone screwy any more, will he?’

  She was still wheezing and chuckling when Patrick went back to his room. He shook his head, amazed at her cheerfulness and how well she’d taken it. If only Connie could be so brave and philosophical, but he guessed she had more at stake than Mrs Brown.

  Still, she had to go and face the music some time. He caught up with her later in the sitting room, after Edward was in bed.

  ‘Connie, about seeing your consultant—’ he began, but she wasn’t having any of it.

  ‘Patrick, mind your own business,’ she said harshly. ‘It’s nothing to do with you, savvy? It’s my arm—’

  ‘Connie, for heaven’
s sake, I’m only trying to help! It needs following up! Quite obviously it’s not healing without residual damage, and if you need nothing else you need a programme of intensive physio to minimise the long-term effects of that damage—’

  ‘There is no permanent damage! Why can’t you get that into your head? It’s getting better, Patrick! It is—it’s just taking time.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Connie, it’s not just time. It’s worse than that, and you know it.’

  She swallowed convulsively, and he felt a real heel, but she had to face it, had to go and see her specialist and deal with it. ‘Connie, you do know it, and that’s the trouble, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know it, and you don’t know it either. You’re just jumping to conclusions and telling me what to do. Well, let me tell you something,’ she said, poking him in the chest with her left index finger, ‘you’re not my doctor, and you can’t tell me what to do. You can tell me how to do my job with Edward, fine, but when it comes to my health and my arm, that’s my business, and it’s nothing to do with you, and I don’t want to hear what you think!’

  And with that she ran out, slamming the door behind her. He heard her footsteps drumming up the stairs, then her bedroom door shut with a defiant crash.

  Patrick followed her with a sigh. All the slamming was bound to have woken up Edward, and no doubt he was going to have to deal with it. He went into the boy’s room and found him lying there wide-eyed.

  ‘Is Connie cross with me?’ he asked in a strangled whisper.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and patted Edward’s hand. ‘No, little sprog, she’s cross with me. I tried to tell her what to do, and she didn’t like it.’

  ‘Oh. Will she go away?’

  He sighed and hugged the little boy. ‘No, I don’t think so. Even if she does, I won’t. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for ever, whatever happens about the other people in our lives. Can you bear it?’

  Edward’s little arms tightened around his neck, but he didn’t say a word. Patrick hugged him tighter, choked by the child’s fearful eyes and hideous insecurity. Damn Marina for doing this to him, he thought, and that was followed by a wave of guilt for leaving him with her and assuming that just because she was his mother, he’d be all right.

  How wrong he’d been!

  And he was wrong to have bullied Connie. He hadn’t seen the X-rays, he didn’t know the exact extent of the damage, and he couldn’t tell how much or how little progress she was making.

  Only she knew all of that, and she was right—it was her business, not his.

  Oh, hell.

  ‘I tell you what, little guy, in the morning we’ll make Connie breakfast in bed and take it in there to say I’m sorry for upsetting her, OK? Will you help me do that?’

  Edward’s little head nodded against his shoulder. ‘OK,’ he whispered.

  Connie was woken by a tap on the door. She’d had a restless, unhappy night, plagued by guilt and tormented by the fear of what she was going to have to do, and the last thing she wanted was to face anyone.

  Then she heard Edward’s little voice.

  She sat up, shoved her pillows up the bed and told him to come in. He came, bearing a plate of toast and marmalade in wobbly hands, tongue wedged in the corner of his mouth, eyes fixed on the toast that was just beginning to slide perilously close to the edge of the plate.

  She leaned over and corrected the slope in the nick of time, and smiled at him. ‘Is that for me?’ she asked, less than enthused. What she really wanted was a cup of tea, but she wasn’t going to tell him that!

  ‘Yes—and Daddy says, have you forgiven him, an’ he’s got a tea tray if you have.’

  Her heart melted. ‘Of course I’ve forgiven him. Actually, I’d like to see him. Is he there?’

  ‘He is,’ said a gruff voice, sleep-roughened and sexy and very, very dear. She felt a huge lump in her throat and swallowed it.

  ‘Come in, Patrick.’

  He came in, set the tray down and looked at her with a rueful grin. ‘I’m sorry, Connie. I was way out of line. Forgive me?’

  She smiled back and reached out a hand, drawing him down onto the edge of the bed. ‘Of course I do. Actually, I was going to tell you that you’re right, of course. I do need to go. Could you find someone else to have Edward one day next week, if I can get an appointment?’

  ‘Of course—except that I don’t really know where to start in the village. Do you think you could find someone?’

  She nodded. ‘There’s a child-minder. She’s lovely—she was at school with me, and she’s really nice. Edward, if I can get hold of Penny, would you mind going to her for the day and doing some painting and things while I go to London? I have to see my doctor about my arm, and I can’t really take you with me all that way. It would be awfully boring for you.’

  Edward looked thoughtful. ‘Is she nice?’ he asked. When Connie said, yes, she was very nice, he added, ‘You are coming back, aren’t you?’

  Connie’s eyes filled. ‘Oh, sweetheart, of course I’m coming back. It’s just for the day. Did you think I wouldn’t?’

  He shrugged his little shoulders in a gesture far too old for him. ‘Maybe.’

  She used her good arm to help him up onto the bed, tucked him in beside her and passed him a piece of toast. ‘I’m coming back. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Right, that’s that settled. Patrick, I would do almost anything for a cup of tea,’ she said with a smile, and he handed her a steaming mug.

  ‘Here. Mind, it’s—’

  ‘Hot,’ she finished for him. ‘Thank you, Mummy.’

  ‘He’s Daddy,’ Edward said, confused, and she laughed.

  ‘He’s just mothering me,’ she explained, and then wondered if Edward actually knew what mothering was, and what it was supposed to be like, and she could have cried for him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘SO, HOW is it?’

  The consultant waited expectantly for Connie to fill her in, and for the first time she had to tell the absolute truth.

  ‘It—hurts,’ she said. ‘The median nerve particularly seems to be affected. I’m getting tingling and pins and needles and aching at night, especially, and because the radial nerve is a little bit the same I’ve been trying to kid myself the cast is tight and pressing on the carpal tunnel, but I know it’s junk.’

  The consultant nodded. ‘OK. Well, the X-rays show a good degree of union, which is very satisfactory after only nine weeks, so I think we’ll have the cast off and then I’ll have a look and see how it really is.’

  Connie nodded, and went out to the plaster room. She was dreading having the cast off, in a way, because the truth would be out then, and she wouldn’t be able to lie to herself any longer.

  She gritted her teeth and watched as the saw whizzed up the cast and the nurse cracked the two halves away, and then could have wept at the shrivelled, scaly, skinny little limb that was exposed.

  ‘Right, let’s give that a little wash and put some hand cream on it, and you’ll soon feel better,’ the nurse said comfortingly. She was right. The hot water felt wonderful, and for the first time in weeks her hand felt really clean.

  The nurse was gentle massaging in the cream, but it still felt really strange, partly, she supposed, because the nerve supply to the skin was disrupted. It was like going to the dentist and having an injection—you could feel things, vaguely, but it all felt very weird.

  ‘Right, how’s that?’

  ‘Lovely. Thank you,’ she managed, and looked at it. It didn’t seem too odd, strangely. Still a bit thin, of course, but a lot better for the wash and brush up. At least the incisions had healed cleanly.

  She went back and waited for the consultant, and after a few agonising minutes she was called in. Her palms were prickling, her mouth felt dry and her heart was pounding. So much hung on it, on whether the consultant felt it could improve or not, given sufficient time.

  ‘Let’s have a look then,’ the woman said with
a smile. ‘Right, I want to you stretch it out for me. I know it feels odd, after having your elbow bent for so long, but do the best you can. That’s great. Can you rotate your hand? Well done. How did it feel?’

  Connie was breaking out in a sweat. ‘OK. I feel very nervous.’

  ‘It’s all very vulnerable, isn’t it? Well, I think orthopaedically it looks good. I think we just need to examine the nerves now. Lay your hand down on here for me, and let’s see what you can feel and what you can do.’

  The consultant ran through a whole series of pinpricks, scratches, resisted movements against her fingers, making Connie pull up and push down against her, bending her digits, pinching with thumb and index finger, gripping and so forth.

  Then, finally, she sat back and met Connie’s eyes. ‘Well, I have to say it’s not looking good at the moment. We felt that at the time, though, didn’t we? The nerve damage was quite extensive, and we were hoping for a significant improvement, but I have to say I was hoping for a better result by now. How do you feel about that?’

  Connie looked away, blinking back the tears. ‘Well, I think I knew it was coming,’ she confessed. ‘It’s just—will I ever be able to go back to surgery? Is it still too early to tell?’

  The consultant tapped a pen thoughtfully for a moment. Connie thought she was probably wondering how hard she could hit her all at once. That was what she would have been doing in her place.

  ‘I would say, on balance, that the likelihood of a complete recovery is now extremely remote. That doesn’t mean it won’t continue to improve. I think it probably will, and I would like you to have a scan so we can determine if there’s any surgical intervention that might improve things, particularly in the median nerve. But, generally speaking, I would say that after this long we would have hoped for more improvement.’

  ‘That’s a no, isn’t it?’ Connie said flatly.

  The consultant nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I’m afraid it probably is. I think we need the scan results before we can be completely sure, and I want you to see the physio and get a programme of exercises, and then I want to see you again in four weeks. We’ll talk about it more then.’