Dr Mathieson's Daughter

by Maggie Kingsley

  ‘Could you give me some help, Sister Halden?’

  She turned to see Richard Connery gazing enquiringly at her, and managed to smile. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve a Mr Lawrence in 6 who appears to have fractured his right arm. He’s obviously in a great deal of pain, but he’s also very frightened, and I thought it might help if he had a nurse standing by while I examined him.’

  She nodded, and wished with all her heart that Floella could have heard him. The staff nurse still believed that the only help the junior doctor required was the sharp imprint of her shoe on his backside as she booted him from A and E, but even a week ago it would never have occurred to Richard to consider the mental state of a patient. He was learning, she thought with relief. At long last, he was learning.

  And he was certainly right about his patient. The young man in cubicle 2 was obviously terrified. His hands were shaking, there were beads of sweat on his forehead and Jane thought that if he hadn’t been sitting down he would have fainted.

  ‘I hear you’ve been in the wars, Mr Lawrence?’ she said with her most encouraging smile.

  The young man nodded convulsively. ‘I was painting my sitting-room ceiling and fell off the stepladder. Stupid—really stupid.’

  And not true, she thought with a slight frown.

  Oh, his right forearm was definitely fractured. Not only was it very swollen and tender, it was also hanging at an odd angle, but it was equally obvious that he couldn’t possibly have done it when he’d been painting a ceiling.

  For a start, his clothes were all wrong. Nobody painted a ceiling while wearing a pair of smart grey trousers and a pale beige sweater, and there wasn’t a trace of paint on his clothes or on his hands. Either he was a remarkably neat painter, or he’d washed and changed before coming into A and E, and how anyone could have done that with a fractured arm was beyond her.

  ‘So he didn’t do it painting,’ Richard said dismissively when she voiced her doubts after he’d given the young man some painkillers and sent him off to X-Ray. ‘What difference does it make? His arm’s clearly fractured, and surely our job is to treat that, not to question how he did it?’

  He was right. It was none of their business how the young man had fractured his arm, but as she walked over to the whiteboard to put an asterisk by Mr Lawrence’s name to indicate he hadn’t yet been discharged she couldn’t deny she would dearly liked to have known.

  ‘You’re looking very pensive, Jane,’ Charlie remarked, almost bumping into her as he came out of cubicle 6. ‘Something bothering you?’

  ‘Curiosity, that’s all.’ She smiled. ‘I’m simply eaten up with curiosity.’

  ‘Well, you know what they say,’ he replied. ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’

  ‘Yes, but satisfaction brought it back,’ she pointed out, her grey eyes sparkling. ‘Unfortunately, in this particular case, I don’t think I’m going to be satisfied.’ Her gaze swept over his blue suit, crisp white shirt and crimson tie. ‘You’re looking very smart today, Charlie. Going somewhere after work?’

  ‘I’m picking up my girlfriend from the railway station. She’s got a whole fortnight off work and she’s going to spend it in London with me.’

  ‘Oh, I am pleased for you,’ she said, and meant it. The SHO had been looking a bit down recently, and she knew it was because he was missing his girlfriend.

  ‘Actually, there was something I’d like to ask you,’ Charlie continued. ‘I don’t know London very well yet, and I wondered if you could recommend a nice restaurant I could take her to.’

  She frowned. ‘Have you a price limit?’

  He shook his head and grinned. ‘For Barbara, the sky’s the limit.’

  ‘Lucky girl.’ She laughed. ‘In that case, take her to Brambles.’

  He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and wrote it down. ‘Is it a nice place—I mean really nice? You see…’ a deep flush of colour appeared on his cheeks ‘…if all goes well, I’m planning on asking Barbara to marry me.’

  ‘Charlie, I’d marry you myself if you took me to Brambles!’

  He roared with laughter, and she did, too, and neither of them noticed Elliot watching them from across the treatment room, his face like thunder.

  Charlie Gordon had a nerve. Stringing along some poor girl back in his home town and trying to chat up another. And the annoying thing was that Jane seemed to be responding to him.

  Dammit, look at the way she was smiling up at him. He couldn’t ever remember a time when she’d smiled at him like that. Oh, she smiled, of course, but now that he came to think of it there always seemed to be an odd mixture of scepticism and wariness in her amusement.

  Well, she should have reserved some of that wariness for Charlie Gordon, he thought angrily. She should have kept all of it for the SHO, and he was going to tell her so whether she gave him another flea in his ear or not.

  But not right now, he realised with frustration as one of their receptionists escorted a woman and a young boy in a wheelchair into the treatment room.

  ‘The kid’s eight years old, and his mother reckons he’s drunk,’ the receptionist told him under her breath.

  ‘I don’t know where he got it from, Doctor,’ the child’s mother declared, clearly torn between fury and concern. ‘We don’t have any alcohol in the house. Both my husband and I aren’t drinkers, except on rare occasions—birthdays, Christmas, times like that—but as soon as I saw him I knew he was drunk—’

  ‘Your son isn’t drunk, Mrs Fraser,’ Elliot interrupted. ‘Now, if you’d like to go through to one of our private waiting rooms with Staff Nurse Lazear—’

  ‘But I want to stay with him,’ Mrs Fraser protested. ‘If he’s not drunk, what’s wrong with him?’

  ‘You’ll know as soon as we do,’ he said soothingly.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Mrs Fraser, your son is in the very best of hands,’ Jane said reassuringly as Floella began to lead the woman away, ‘and there’s really nothing you can do here.’

  Reluctantly the mother allowed Floella to usher her away, and Jane raised her eyebrows at Elliot questioningly. ‘Drugs?’

  He shook his head. ‘Solvent abuse. Look at the sores around his lips, how flushed he is, and don’t you smell something familiar?’

  Jane leant down, sniffed, then drew back. ‘Cleaning fluid. He’s been sniffing cleaning fluid?’

  Elliot nodded grimly. ‘OK, get me an ECG reading and BP. Solvents can sensitise the heart to the effects of adrenaline and the last thing we want is for him to have a heart attack. Keep him lying on his side, too,’ he continued. ‘If he’s sick, as I suspect he probably shortly will be, he might suffocate on his own vomit.’

  The boy’s ECG and BP were as normal as they could be under the circumstances, and there was nothing more they could do for him. What he needed now was constant monitoring, and Intensive Care was the best place for that, but as the boy was wheeled away Jane noticed Elliot’s eyes following him.

  ‘Something worrying you?’ she asked. ‘Something you think we might have missed?’

  He sighed and shook his head. ‘I was just thinking that they’re getting younger and younger, aren’t they?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ she replied.

  ‘I was also thinking that it could be Nicole in a couple of years’ time.’

  ‘It won’t be,’ she said reassuringly. ‘She’ll have more sense. You’ll make sure she has more sense.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he murmured with a slightly crooked smile, ‘but it’s such a dangerous world for kids out there now, Jane. When you and I were young, the biggest thing our parents had to worry about was us being knocked down by a car, but now…’

  ‘You’ll take care of her—you’re already doing it,’ she said firmly.

  And he was. OK, so things weren’t exactly perfect yet by any means. Nicole was still far too withdrawn, too nervous in his presence, and he still had trouble relaxing with her, but it would come, she knew it would.


  ‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ he declared. ‘You’ve been a real godsend, Jane.’

  It was what Gussie had said, only considerably more sarcastically, she remembered, and she shook her head as she binned her latex gloves. ‘I only did what anyone else would have done in the circumstances.’

  ‘No, you did more,’ Elliot insisted, putting out his hand to stop her as she turned to go. ‘If you hadn’t been there, willing to prop me up, to put up with me and all my hangups and insecurities, I don’t know what I would have done.’

  There was warmth in his eyes, warmth that made her heart skip a beat, but she managed to reply lightly, ‘It’s what friends are for, Elliot.’

  He smiled, but as he continued to stare down at her the smile slowly disappeared. Disappeared, to be replaced by a look of confusion and puzzlement. Until he was gazing at her as though he’d never actually seen her before, and every alarm bell known to mankind went off in her head.

  ‘I’d better get on,’ she said, taking a step back from him. ‘We’re mobbed as usual out in the waiting room, and it isn’t going to get any emptier if we stand around here talking.’

  ‘No, it won’t, but, Jane—’

  ‘I think Flo’s wanting me,’ she lied, and before he could say anything else she wheeled swiftly round on her heel and walked away.

  What in the world are you doing? she thought as she strode down the treatment room, all too aware that his eyes were following her. You’re in love with the guy. You’ve been in love with him for the last two years, and now that he seems to be actually realising you’re a woman and not simply sexless Jane, you’ve just run a mile. Have you got rocks in your head, or something? I thought this was what you wanted.

  And it was, but it wasn’t, she realised. Oh, she wanted him to fall in love with her, of course she did. She wanted him to clasp her in his arms and declare his everlasting love for her. But that was just the problem. Elliot didn’t do everlasting. Elliot’s idea of everlasting was a couple of months. And was that what she wanted—two months of being loved, followed by a lifetime of loss?

  Deliberately she shook her head. She didn’t want that. She couldn’t handle that. It was better to keep him at arms’ length than to go through that.

  And it should be easy for her to do, she told herself as the doors of the treatment room opened and a woman in her early thirties appeared, chalk-white and walking gingerly. She’d spent two years successfully keeping her feelings hidden from him. She could keep on doing it. She had to.

  ‘Elliot, Charlie—I need one of you now!’ she called as the woman suddenly crumpled to the floor, clutching her stomach in obvious agony.

  It was Elliot who came. Elliot who helped her carry the woman into a cubicle and get her on to the examination trolley.

  ‘I’m sorry…so sorry,’ the woman gasped, ‘but I think…I think I’m going to be sick!’

  Jane got the bowl under her chin in time.

  ‘Better now?’ she asked gently, when the woman finally slumped back onto the trolley, ashen and exhausted.

  ‘No, I’m not better,’ the woman exclaimed, tears slowly beginning to trickle down her cheeks. ‘I’m pregnant—ten weeks pregnant—and I think I’m losing my baby.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Elliot asked as Jane swiftly began to strip off the woman’s tights and skirt.

  ‘Sally. Sally Thomson. My husband and I have been trying for six years to have a baby, and I can’t lose it—I just can’t!’

  ‘Let’s not jump the gun,’ Elliot said soothingly. ‘Can you tell me where the pain is?’

  ‘Here,’ Sally Thompson sobbed, pointing to the lower left side of her stomach. ‘I’ve had a bit of diarrhoea, too, and…and I’m bleeding. It’s a miscarriage, isn’t it? I’m having a miscarriage.’

  ‘Did you feel the pain before you started to bleed, or after?’ Elliot asked as Jane took the woman’s blood pressure.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Sally said, wiping a hand across her tear-stained face.

  ‘The pain you felt. Was it there before you started to bleed or did it begin afterwards?’ Elliot repeated.

  Sally Thompson frowned in concentration. ‘It was painful first.’

  Elliot’s eyes met Jane’s. Not a miscarriage, then. In a miscarriage pain always followed the bleeding. What Sally Thompson was suffering from was infinitely sadder than a miscarriage. She had an ectopic pregnancy. Instead of the fertilised egg implanting itself in her uterus, it was growing in one of her Fallopian tubes, and if it wasn’t removed immediately the consequences could be disastrous.

  ‘I’ll page Gynae,’ Elliot murmured, and was gone in a second.

  ‘Am I losing the baby, Nurse?’ Mrs Thompson asked, gripping Jane’s hand convulsively.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ she said gently.

  There was no point in telling the woman any more. She was devastated enough already, without having to find out the very real possibility that the damage to her Fallopian tube might mean it would be even more difficult for her to conceive again in the future.

  ‘Don’t you just wish some days that you’d stayed in bed?’ Floella said ruefully when the clock on the treatment-room wall finally showed the end of what had proved to be a very long and weary shift. ‘In fact, some days I wish I’d listened to my mother and become a secretary.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Jane smiled. ‘And you’d have been bored out of your skull in three months.’

  Floella laughed. ‘Probably. It’s just…sometimes…Well, you know what I mean.’

  Jane did. She loved her job. Could never imagine doing anything else even when the days were rough, and heartbreaking, but today…Today she would be glad to go home and put her feet up.

  But not right away, she realised when she went into the staffroom to collect her coat and bag and found Richard sitting there, looking downright miserable.

  Don’t ask, she told herself. Just take your bag and go. But she knew that she wouldn’t, and with a deep sigh she went over to him and sat down.

  ‘Want to talk about it?’

  ‘It’s not your problem.’

  Why did people always say that when in reality they desperately wanted somebody to listen? she wondered ruefully, and with an effort she fixed what she hoped was her most encouraging and sympathetic smile to her lips. ‘Don’t you think I should be the best judge of that? Come on. Tell me.’

  ‘It’s Mr Lawrence.’

  ‘Lawrence?’ she echoed. ‘I’m sorry, do I know him?’

  ‘He’s the guy who told us he’d been painting and fallen off his stepladder.’

  ‘I remember now.’ She nodded. ‘Was there a problem with his arm—wasn’t it fractured after all?’

  ‘Oh, it was fractured all right,’ Richard exclaimed bitterly, ‘but the trouble is that the fracture was at least a year old. Well healed but at an angle.’

  Jane’s heart sank. She knew what was coming, she just knew she did, but she had to ask. ‘And Mr Lawrence?’

  ‘Gone. Did a runner as soon as the X-rays were taken. He was a drug addict, wasn’t he? I was conned by a drug addict.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Oh, God, I feel so stupid!’ the junior doctor exclaimed. ‘Why don’t you just tell me I’m an idiot, a prat? I deserve it!’

  She shook her head and smiled. ‘Richard, everyone’s been outsmarted by a drug addict at least once in their career. Hannah Blake—the junior doctor we had before you—was conned by one as well, so don’t think you’re the first and you most certainly won’t be the last. Druggies are clever. They have to be to get what they want, and I have to say, passing off an old fracture as a new one in order to get some painkillers is pretty smart.’

  ‘Jane…’ His cheeks darkened. ‘You don’t mind if I call you Jane, do you?’

  Her smile deepened. ‘I’ve been hoping you would for ages. Every time you called for Sister Halden, it took me a couple of seconds to realise you meant me.’

  He didn’t smile. Instead,
he bit his lip. ‘I don’t know how you can be so kind. I’ve been so awful to you—to all the nurses. I never intended to be like that. I don’t know why I was—’

  ‘Forget it. It’s all water under the bridge now.’ He didn’t look convinced. He also didn’t look any happier, and though she knew it would mean a rush to get home for Nicole on time, she forced herself to say, ‘Is there something else bothering you, Richard?’

  He stared down at his hands, then up at her again. ‘I don’t think I’ve got what it takes to be a doctor.’

  ‘Of course you have,’ she protested. ‘Look, that drug addict you treated—’

  ‘It’s not just him,’ he interrupted. ‘It’s…Jane, I’ve always wanted to be a doctor. Even when I was at school I wanted to be a doctor, and when I went to med school I decided that A and E was going to be my speciality, but I’m so scared all the time. Scared I’m going to do the wrong thing, scared I’m going to miss something.’

  ‘Richard, everyone feels like that—truly they do,’ she said gently, ‘and I think you’re being way too hard on yourself. How long have you been with us now?’

  ‘Almost two months.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She nodded. ‘Graduating from med school doesn’t mean you’re a doctor. It means you’ve just started out on the long road to becoming one and, believe me, you’ll never stop learning.’

  ‘I guess.’

  He looked so miserable, and suddenly so very young, that she quickly did a mental review of the contents of Elliot’s fridge and made up her mind.

  ‘Look, why don’t you come round to the flat tonight for dinner? Sometimes it helps to talk about your fears and worries, rather than letting them fester away inside you. Or perhaps you’d prefer to talk to Elliot about it,’ she added hurriedly as he stared at her, open-mouthed.

  ‘Oh, God, no!’ he blurted out. ‘I’d much rather talk to you. Dr Mathieson…He’s…well, he’s a bit overpowering, don’t you think?’

  ‘Is he?’ Jane said in surprise. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever found that, but, then, I’ve known Elliot for more than two years so I guess I’ve got used to him. So, would you like to drop by tonight? I can offer you chicken curry and a sympathetic ear, if that’s any use to you.’