Police Doctor

by Laura MacDonald

  ‘I’m also single,’ he said after a long silence.

  ‘I suppose you haven’t found the right girl yet?’ She gave a short laugh but his sombre expression didn’t change by so much as a flicker of an eyelid.

  ‘It hasn’t always been that way.’

  ‘Really?’ Suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to know about the conquests in his life after all and was beginning to wish she hadn’t asked.

  ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I was married once.’

  ‘Oh.’ She stared at him. No one had said anything about an ex-wife.

  ‘It was a long time ago. We were very young—I was still at medical school, actually.’

  ‘I had friends who married while still doing their training. It put a tremendous strain on the marriage and it didn’t last very long.’

  ‘I was married for two years,’ he said.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking, why did you split up? Couldn’t your wife put up with the long hours? Or was she training as well?’

  ‘No, she was nurse.’

  ‘So she should have known what your job entailed.’

  ‘My wife didn’t leave me,’ he said, and there was an edge now to his voice that was difficult to identify.

  ‘So you left her?’

  ‘No,’ he replied quietly. ‘She died, giving birth to our baby.’

  Adele stared at him in dismay, wishing the floor on her side of the Land Rover would open up and she could just disappear into a black hole. She had just assumed he was divorced, not widowed. How could she have been so insensitive?

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she managed to say at last. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘How could you have known?’ He gave a slight shrug. ‘It’s not the sort of information I volunteer at a first meeting.’

  ‘No, of course not, but I wish one of the others had told me and prevented me from putting my foot in it so terribly.’

  ‘Like I say, it all happened a long time ago, long before I came to Stourborne Abbas. I don’t suppose all the staff are even aware of it. Edward and Jeanette know, of course, and presumably Toby and Rachel, but I don’t know about the others.’

  She didn’t know what else to say but in desperation felt she couldn’t simply leave it there. ‘But your child…the baby?’

  ‘A little girl,’ he replied, and his voice had softened again. ‘She didn’t stand a chance, she was just too premature—a little scrap of a thing. I had her baptised and she was buried with her mother.’

  ‘That is just so sad.’ Adele felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘I really am very sorry, you know.’

  ‘It’s OK, really. You weren’t to know.’

  By this time they had reached Woolverton House and Casey drove into the courtyard. ‘Lunchtime, I think,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I’ll see you at two for afternoon surgery.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Adele nodded and made her way into the house, heading for the stairs, while Casey disappeared in the direction of his surgery. She was still reeling from all that he had told her. It somehow seemed inconceivable that he should have suffered so much tragedy.

  It wasn’t until later when she was eating her lunch that it occurred to her that while he had told her of his past life and his brief, tragic marriage he’d said nothing of the present and his relationship with Penny. If, as they’d agreed, they were coming clean over relationships, that seemed to her rather odd.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ADELE met Casey promptly at two o’clock for afternoon surgery during which there proved to be every bit as much variety and diversity as there had been in morning surgery. When they finished Casey had house calls and when Adele asked if he wanted her to accompany him he shook his head. ‘Not this time,’ he said. ‘I think you should spend some time in Reception, looking at the filing and appointment systems, and get one of the girls to show you the computer and the software that we use. I’ll see you later.’ With a wave of his hand he was gone, leaving a slightly bemused Adele standing at the reception desk.

  ‘Are you all right, Adele?’

  Adele turned and found Mary Kennington, the senior receptionist, peering at her over the desk.

  ‘Yes, I think so. Dr…er…Casey has just said that I should spend some time getting to know how the system works.’

  ‘Well, in that case you’d better come in here with us.’ Mary opened the door beside the desk and Adele went into the office area that housed the patient records and the administration files. The other two receptionists, Cheryl and Lizzie, were working at computers and they both looked up as Adele came in.

  ‘How’s your first day going?’ asked Cheryl.

  ‘Casey not worked you to death yet?’ said Lizzie with a grin.

  ‘I’ve just finished the day’s repeat prescriptions,’ Mary explained. ‘Maybe you’d like to start with seeing how we deal with them then we’ll go on to the appointments system.’

  Adele spent the next hour learning as much as she could about how the Woolverton House surgery worked. She was amazed at just how much there was to absorb and when she commented on it Mary suggested that she should come in each day for an hour or so until she was familiar with it all.

  ‘Did you go to the Procters’ with Casey?’ asked Lizzie a little later as Adele was studying the staff rosters.

  ‘I did indeed,’ she replied.

  ‘Nothing like chucking somebody in at the deep end,’ remarked Cheryl with a laugh. ‘What was wrong with Stevie, by the way?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Adele shook her head. ‘He wasn’t there. Apparently he’d made a miraculous recovery and gone out.’

  ‘After all the fuss his mother made,’ said Lizzie with a sigh. ‘She made it sound like a matter of life and death on the phone. She was more concerned about him than poor old Mick, or Maudie come to that.’

  ‘Maudie will use any excuse to see Casey,’ said Mary. ‘I think she’s got a soft spot for him.’

  ‘Maudie actually needed more antibiotics,’ said Adele.

  ‘Maudie always needs antibiotics,’ chorused Mary, Cheryl and Lizzie.

  ‘It’s something to do with the number of cigarettes she smokes,’ said Mary. ‘So what did you think of the Bowscombe Estate?’ she added.

  ‘Well, it seemed a pretty tough area,’ admitted Adele.

  ‘That’s putting it mildly.’ Lizzie pulled a face. ‘You wouldn’t catch me walking through there after dark, I can tell you.’

  ‘I’d think twice about walking there in daylight,’ said Mary.

  ‘Casey didn’t seem to give it a second thought,’ observed Adele. ‘In fact, he seemed to know a lot of people there—would they all be registered here?’

  ‘Well some of them are, but Casey probably knows the majority of them from wearing his other hat.’

  ‘His other hat?’ Adele frowned then it dawned on her what Mary meant. ‘Oh, you mean as a police surgeon?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Mary nodded. ‘A fair percentage of the population of the Bowscombe Estate spend half their time in police custody.’ She paused, eyeing Adele speculatively. ‘Are you going to be involved in that, Adele?’

  ‘I hope so. It’s an area of medicine that interests me a lot.’

  ‘Rather you than me after hearing about some of the things Casey has to deal with down at the police station.’ Cheryl gave a little shudder. At that moment the door opened and Penny came into Reception.

  ‘All finished?’ asked Mary.

  ‘Yes, thank goodness.’ Penny yawned and stretched then, catching sight of Adele, she said, ‘What about you?’

  It was Cheryl who answered on Adele’s behalf. ‘Well, she’s survived her first day with Casey which involved a visit to the Bowscombe Estate and the Procters, so I say if she can survive that she’ll survive anything.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Penny with a laugh.

  ‘Why don’t you call it a day?’ Mary turned to Adele. ‘I would say you’ve had quite enough to contend with for your first day.’

  ‘What abou
t Casey?’ asked Adele dubiously.

  ‘What about Casey?’ Mary raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Well, I don’t know if he wanted me to do anything else,’ Adele wrinkled her nose. ‘He said“See you later” when he went out.’

  ‘You leave Casey to me,’ said Penny.

  ‘Yes?’ said Adele doubtfully.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Penny firmly. ‘You’ve done quite enough for one day. Besides, I’m sure there must be things you want to do.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I could do with doing a bit of shopping and getting the flat straight. Which reminds me, was it you, Penny, who stocked up the fridge?’

  Penny shook her head, ‘No, sorry. I can’t lay claim to that. Maybe it was Rosie—she’s a little gem like that.’

  ‘Yes, maybe. I’ll have to see her and thank her.’

  Adele left Reception with her head buzzing with facts and figures. After collecting her jacket and bag, she left Woolverton House by the front entrance and stood for a moment on the steps, enjoying the warmth of the September afternoon. The supermarket was only a stone’s throw from the surgery and it didn’t take her long to load a trolley with food and other essentials. On her return there was no sign of Casey so, taking the advice of Penny and Mary, Adele made her way up to her flat. The next couple of hours she spent packing everything away and arranging the furniture and her possessions to her satisfaction, after which she lit several scented candles then began preparing the food she had bought for a meal.

  While the food was cooking she took a long, leisurely soak in the bath where she found herself going over the events of the day. She was feeling quite exhausted, not from what she’d actually been doing but from all she had been expected to take in. Idly she wondered if Casey was back from his house calls and if he, too, was feeling tired. Somehow she doubted it, deciding it probably took a lot to weary him. She wondered if he and Penny were spending the evening together. Maybe Penny was cooking for him in her flat or perhaps he was doing the cooking if his flat was the more spacious of the two. She frowned as she tried to picture them together, finding it almost impossible. Round, bubbly-natured Penny with her non-stop chatter and Casey who was…well, what was Casey like? Adele found herself hard-pressed to sum him up and in the end gave up the attempt.

  She wondered if they slept together and somehow found the idea almost as disturbing as learning about his wife. She’d been shocked and upset and terribly sad when he’d told her about the deaths of his wife and baby daughter but the thought of him sleeping with Penny disturbed her in another way, although she was unable to say why.

  She was beginning to regret telling him so much about Nigel, even though in doing so she had felt a little better about the whole thing. What had happened between her and Nigel was private. Why, she hadn’t even given the details to her friends or, with the exception of her sister Elaine, to her family, simply that they had decided to part. Somehow she’d doubted whether she could have coped with the utter humiliation if people had found out that Nigel had had someone else right from the beginning, and now she’d told a complete stranger all the gory details. Well, nearly all the details.

  She hadn’t told him about the terrible confrontation between herself and Nigel when she’d first realised that not only had Lucinda been there in the background of his life throughout the entire time they had been together, but that Lucinda had also been under the impression that they would shortly be married and that Nigel’s parents had purchased a home for the happy couple in Cheshire.

  Casey had observed that she would find it difficult to trust another man after such a betrayal and he was right. Adele had found herself wondering in the time since she and Nigel had parted whether she would ever trust anyone again.

  So lost had she become in her thoughts that it was with a little shock that when she moved she found that the bath water had grown cold. With a shiver she sat up, released the water then climbed out of the bath, wrapping a large fluffy bath sheet around her.

  She ate a solitary meal then, on an impulse no doubt prompted by her reflections on the past, decided to phone her sister. She smiled to herself as she heard the phone ringing at the other end and pictured her sister flapping about in the permanent state of chaos in which she seemed to live. Elaine was four years older than Adele and married with three children. Their mother Jennifer constantly held Elaine up to Adele as an example of motherhood and a state to which she herself should be aspiring. ‘But I’m a doctor, Mum,’ Adele had protested on more than one occasion. ‘It takes time and tremendous effort to become a doctor.’

  ‘That shouldn’t stop you from marrying and having children,’ had been her mother’s ready response. ‘My GP is married and she has twin daughters.’

  ‘She’s probably a few years older than me,’ Adele would reply wearily.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, Lainey,’ she said at the sound of her sister’s voice. ‘You sound harassed. Is this a bad time?’

  ‘Is there ever a good time in this house?’ Her sister sighed. ‘Hi, Del, how are you? How’s it going? Is it a nice place? What are the staff like? I’ve been thinking about you all day and wondering how you were getting on.’

  ‘I’m fine. Exhausted, but fine. The house is beautiful but I told you about that before, didn’t I, after the interview? And so far the staff seem very nice.’

  ‘What’s your flat like?’ demanded Elaine. ‘You didn’t see that before, did you?’

  ‘No, it was still occupied then. But I have to say it’s lovely. It’s a big studio flat but has its own bathroom and kitchen so there’s no sharing with anyone else, and the décor and furnishings are really very nice.’ She looked around as she spoke, admiring the room suffused in the soft golden light from the lighted candles.

  ‘And what about the staff?’ Elaine obviously wanted to know everything. ‘Have you made any friends?’

  ‘Well, it’s early days yet, of course, but they all seem OK. One girl in particular has gone out of her way to be friendly. Her name’s Penny, Penny Rudge—she’s one of the practice nurses and she also has one of the four flats above the practice.’

  ‘And the other doctors, are they all right? What about your trainer—Dr Flemming, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, you mean Dr Fletcher, Edward Fletcher—well, unfortunately there’s been a bit of a hiccup there. He isn’t able to be my trainer after all because he has heart trouble.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good start,’ said Elaine. ‘I hope they have someone else who can do it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, they have someone else all right.’

  ‘I didn’t like the way you said that. Who is he and what’s wrong with him?’

  Adele sighed. She knew there was no hiding anything from Elaine. Her sister had always had the ability to read her like a book. ‘His name is Casey—he’s one of the partners here. I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with him exactly—he’s just a bit different, that’s all.’

  ‘In what way different? You’ve got me curious now, Del.’

  ‘Well, he’s not a bit like Edward and, really, he’s nothing like your average GP.’

  ‘Well, go on. You can’t leave it there. How’s he different?’

  ‘I suppose he comes across as a bit of a rough diamond. For a start he wears leathers and does his house calls on a motorbike.’

  ‘Hmm, tell me more—he sounds intriguing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call him intriguing exactly…’

  ‘Is he good-looking?’

  ‘Not really—sort of tough-looking, the type you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley at night.’

  ‘Or the type you might want to accompany you in a dark alley at night.’ Elaine chuckled.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so if you put it like that.’

  ‘Is he spoken for?’

  ‘I think so, at least Penny Rudge told me that he and she have just started a relationship…but…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I don’t know. They just seem such
an unlikely couple that’s all. Penny’s all lively and bubbly…and Casey, well…Anyway, it’s none of my business. I guess I’ll just have to get along with my new trainer as best I can. The one good thing—’ her voice took on a brighter note ‘—is that Casey is also a police surgeon and he’s said I can go with him sometimes when he’s called out.’

  ‘You always were interested in police work, weren’t you?’ said Elaine. Not waiting for a reply, she went on, ‘Why do you call him Casey? Is that his first name?’

  ‘No, his surname—but everyone uses it. No one knows what his first name is, only that it begins with the letter H.’

  ‘It’ll be Horace,’ said Elaine. ‘Remember Horace Barrington at school. He hated his name—we all called him Barry. Oh, by the way, while I’m thinking of it, I saw that rat Nigel the other day in town.’

  Adele’s heart lurched painfully. ‘Did you?’ she said in a small voice, wishing it didn’t matter and at the same time hating herself that it still did.

  ‘Yes,’ said Elaine cheerfully. ‘He looked as miserable as sin. Serves him right—he’s probably found out that life with lovely Lucinda isn’t what he’d thought.’

  They talked on for a while and finished with Adele promising to ring their mother in the next couple of days and Elaine promising to ring Adele the next time. Once she’d hung up, tiredness seemed to get the better of her and she decided she may as well have an early night.

  She was asleep almost as soon as she closed her eyes.

  There was a bell ringing somewhere in Adele’s dream. It was shrill and persistent. She wanted to ignore it, didn’t want to wake from her deep, satisfying sleep. Maybe if she did nothing it would stop. But it didn’t stop, it went on and on until finally she awoke fully and realised it wasn’t in her dream at all—it was her phone ringing. For a moment she thought she was in her room at the hospital but there her pager had been beside her bed and had had a kinder, gentler tone than this one. She sat up in bed, thoroughly confused, struggling through the mists of sleep. And then she remembered. She was in the flat at Woolverton House and the phone that was ringing was on the bureau on the far side of the room. Turning her head, she looked at the illuminated display of her clock radio and saw that it was two-fifteen. Whoever could be calling her at that time? With a muttered exclamation she almost fell out of bed then knocked her knee against the edge of a chair as she stumbled across the room and switched on the light on the bureau. She lifted the receiver. ‘Hello?’she mumbled.