Questions Of Trust: A Medical Romance

by Archer, Sam

  Chloe passed Jake to the other woman – he’d got used to her over the last few days, as she’d popped round on a daily basis – and popped the bonnet. She found the spare wheel in its well, and was thankful to note that the tyre was in pristine condition. Chloe located the jack and wrench and hefted everything out on to the road.

  ‘What are you doing, dear?’ asked Mrs McFarland, bouncing Jake on her arm.

  ‘Changing your wheel.’

  Mrs McFarland looked astonished. ‘Don’t we need to call someone for that?’

  ‘Why?’ Chloe found a rock to jam behind the rear wheel. ‘I’ve done it before.’

  The hardest part, as always, was loosening the wheel nuts, and Chloe had to brace her foot against the wrench and piston her leg to get some movement. It was a warm day for spring, and by the time she was winding the jack she felt her shirt clinging to her back. Beside her Mrs McFarland watched in fascinated silence.

  At the end, Chloe stood up, wiping the sweat from her face with the back of her arm, her hands and jeans grimed with grease. ‘All done,’ she said. ‘But you’ll need to get all the tyres replaced soon, I’m afraid. They’re on their last legs by the look of them.’

  ‘You’re quite the resourceful girl, aren’t you?’ Mrs McFarland was gazing at her in frank admiration.

  Chloe hesitated. Mrs McFarland really shouldn’t be driving the car in a condition like that. ‘Come on. I’ll take you shopping.’

  ‘No, pet. It’s very kind of you to offer. But you’re busy. I don’t want to be a sponger. It’s a nice day, I can easily walk.’

  ‘Really, it’s no bother –’ But she could see the other woman meant what she said.

  ‘Come in for a cuppa, though? You look like you could do with one after all your hard work.’

  Chloe accepted gratefully. She left Jake in the other woman’s charge while she washed her hands and face in the bathroom of Margaret’s cottage. Afterwards she helped with the tea things and they sat in Mrs McFarland’s kitchen.

  ‘Settling in?’ asked Mrs McFarland.

  ‘Yes, I think I am, rather,’ said Chloe. She told her neighbour about the article she’d had accepted by the Gazette, though she refrained from mentioning the possibility of a regular column. Mrs McFarland would probably start a campaign to have every single person in town write to say how much they enjoyed her initial article just so that the editor would be impressed enough to commission the column, and it could all get embarrassing. As it was, the older woman was effusive in her praise.

  ‘To think! A famous writer, living next door to me!’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ smiled Chloe.

  ‘Oh, don’t put yourself down, dear,’ said Mrs McFarland. ‘The people who lived here before you were so dull, they were practically fossilised.’

  She went on to describe several of her circles of friends and told Chloe how excited they were at the prospect of meeting her. Chloe’s heart sank a little. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to cope with a whole bevy of ladies like Margaret McFarland.

  As the teapot emptied and the plate of biscuits became increasingly depleted, Chloe began to make moves to leave. She sensed that the other woman wanted to ask her something but was holding back. Figuring that if it was really important Mrs McFarland would come out with it at some point, Chloe thanked her for the tea and gathered up Jake.

  Mrs McFarland blurted: ‘He’s nice, that Dr Carlyle, isn’t he?’

  Chloe tried not to gape at her. Whatever she’d been expecting the older woman to say, it wasn’t that.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘Well... you know.’ For the first time there was an awkwardness about Mrs McFarland that was at odds with her usual chatty obstinacy. ‘He’s a nice man. Charming, friendly. Decent. And very good-looking.’

  Sighing heavily, Choe sat down again. ‘Margaret. Just what exactly are you implying?’

  ‘Implying? Nothing, nothing. Oh, my dear, I didn’t want to cause offence. It’s just...’

  Chloe didn’t help her, just sat gazing at her, waiting for her to find her voice. Mrs McFarland drew herself up as though about to take a plunge off a diving board.

  ‘It’s just that Connie Simkins saw the two of you, Dr Carlyle and yourself, chatting in the supermarket the other day. And you looked like you were getting on well, with your two wee bairns, and Connie thought what a nice-looking pair you made.’ She closed her mouth with a snap as though preventing the words from unsaying themselves.

  Chloe broke eye contact with the other woman, shook her head slowly in disbelief. ‘People have actually been saying things like that?’

  ‘Not people, dear,’ Mrs McFarland said hastily. ‘Just... Connie. And a couple of others of us.’ Chloe knew her feelings must be starting to show in her expression because Mrs McFarland’s eyes widened. ‘Look, it was bound to happen. It’s a small town. Dr Carlyle’s an eligible, unattached young man. You arrive, pretty, also young and... well, and on your own. Naturally people are going to start wondering.’

  Chloe pressed her palms together and touched her fingertips to her lips. She hardly knew where to start. At last she looked Mrs McFarland directly in the eye.

  ‘Margaret,’ she said. ‘I’d really rather you and your friends didn’t talk about me, speculate like this, behind my back.’

  ‘I didn’t mean any –’

  ‘I know you didn’t. You’ve been very welcoming, and a good friend to me. But I’m not looking for any relationship. Jake is my life now, and there isn’t room for anybody else. I certainly didn’t move to Pemberham looking for romance, or even a quick fling.’ Chloe felt her anger rising and fought it down. ‘Jake left a toy in Dr Carlyle’s consulting room, and the doctor found and returned it. That’s all we were talking about in the supermarket.’ Why was she justifying herself? What did it matter if a group of gossipy ladies invented stories about the new arrival in town? But Chloe realised it did matter. She was a professional person, hoping to develop a reputation as a journalist in Pemberham, and she didn’t need pigeonholing as the latest love interest of the handsome local doctor.

  Mrs McFarland looked appalled. She batted her palms against her forehead. ‘Oh, my word. I’ve been so foolish.’ The look of distress in her eyes made Chloe soften. ‘Please, please forgive me. I’m just an interfering old busybody. I should have kept my mouth shut. “Keep your mouth shut, and your mind open.” Isn’t that what they say? You’re absolutely right. It’s none of my business what you do.’

  Chloe sighed again, exasperated. ‘Margaret, no harm done. Don’t beat yourself up.’ She tried a smile on for size, found it easier than she’d thought. Mrs McFarland managed to return it.

  They changed the subject, and chatted for a few more minutes before Chloe gathered up Jake and took her leave, only a trace of awkwardness lingering in the air. It was only when she got back to her cottage that she fully realised what Margaret had said. It’s none of my business what you do. Did that mean the older woman still suspected her of being drawn to Dr Carlyle?

  Chloe decided against trying to work and settled instead for a vigorous spring clean of the cottage. As she threw herself into the tasks, she reflected that small-town life was going to be more complicated than she’d bargained for.

  ***

  With hindsight, and in the grip of a guilt so intense it felt suffocating, Chloe knew she should have consulted Dr Carlyle sooner.

  Nearly three weeks had passed since she and Jake had arrived, and their new life was shaping up nicely. The cottage was starting to feel like home, Jake had made friends with another little boy who lived a few streets away and whose mother Chloe had got to know in the local playground, and Chloe’s own work with the Pemberham Gazette was taking off. Her first article had proved enormously popular with the paper’s readers, and the editor, Mike Sellers, had just that week offered Chloe her own fortnightly column. Thus it was that Off The Beaten Track was born. She had the first draft already bashed out and was in th
e process of editing it.

  Jake had been subdued for the last few days. Listless and off his food, he’d been more clingy than usual, wanting to sit on Chloe’s lap when she was at her computer and proving reluctant to let her leave his room at night. She thought he might be missing some of his old friends from London, rudimentary though friendships were at his age.

  When he started digging in one ear she had a look down there as best she could, then at his throat. It looked reddened. She gave him children’s paracetamol and it seemed to perk him up for a few hours, but his fractiousness returned.

  On a Friday afternoon Chloe sat working while Jake had a nap in his room. She was jolted out of her musings by his wailing cry, and she raced through to find him sitting up in the dimness, clutching his neck. Drool soaked his arm and, she saw, the pillow on which he’d been resting his head.

  ‘Jake!’ she gasped, trying not to scare him with the terror that crept into her voice. She sat beside him, put her palm against his forehead. He was burning up. Through his tears he was trying to tell Chloe something but his voice was muffled, as though he had something in his mouth. His breath smelled bad, something she’d noticed earlier that day but had reacted to by brushing his teeth more diligently, and his breathing was laboured.

  Hoisting the little boy up onto her arm, and fighting down waves of panic, Chloe dashed through to the living room and snatched up her phone from where it was lying beside her laptop.

  The receptionist, whom Chloe recognised as the girl who’d been there the day she’d registered at the surgery, took down a few details, then asked Chloe to hold. Long seconds passed, dragging into a minute, two minutes. Jake slumped against Chloe’s shoulder, his eyes open but dull.

  When the receptionist came back on and said, ‘Mrs Edwards?’, Chloe had to swallow back her own tears before replying.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dr Carlyle says to bring Jake down to the surgery at once. Is that possible? Do you have a car?’

  ‘Yes.’ Chloe rang off, already snatching up her handbag and keys.

  The trip took her fifteen minutes. She parked on a double-yellow line, not caring about the consequences, and tumbled Jake out of the child seat and through the door of the surgery. The waiting room was packed, as doctors’ rooms tended to be on a Friday afternoon before the weekend, but the receptionist nodded to her immediately and picked up the phone.

  ‘You can go straight through, Mrs Edwards,’ she said.

  Chloe passed another woman coming out of Dr Carlyle’s door but barely acknowledged her. Inside, Tom Carlyle looked as he had that first day, casually professional, his sleeves rolled part of the way up his forearms. But his face this time was knitted in concern.

  ‘Jake,’ he said. ‘What’s up, buddy?’

  He reached out to take the boy. For a moment Chloe clung to him, reluctant to let him go. But she relented, even when her son whimpered and stretched back for her.

  Gently but insistently, Dr Carlyle laid Jake on the examination couch, tilting the head at an angle so that the boy was half sitting. The doctor smoothed a hand across Jake’s crimson, wet forehead.

  ‘Have you given him anything?’ He glanced at Chloe.

  She had to try twice before her mouth would come unstuck. ‘Paracetamol, this morning,’ she managed.

  Chloe watched, transfixed, as Dr Carlyle’s hands moved across her son’s throat, his face, his soft murmuring voice all the while reassuring the boy. He produced a flat orange stick with a cartoon of some sort on it and coaxed Jake into opening his mouth. Depressing the boy’s tongue and wielding a pencil torch deftly, the doctor peered down the boy’s throat.

  ‘Okay,’ he nodded, straightening. He patted Jake on the shoulder and winked at him. ‘Up you get.’ He looked Chloe straight in the eye.

  ‘We need to get him to hospital.’

  ‘What?’ Chloe was disorientated. This couldn’t be happening. Half an hour earlier they’d been at home together in the peace of the spring afternoon. Now… her boy needed hospitalising?

  Dr Carlyle was already reaching for his phone. ‘Jake has something called a quinsy. A peritonsillar abscess, to give it its full name. He needs an ear, nose and throat specialist to have a look at it, but it’ll almost certainly need draining.’

  ‘Surgery?’ She clutched Jake close.

  ‘Yes, but it’s straightforward. Very quick. It can be done with local anaesthetic, but as he’s just a little guy they’ll probably put him under for a few minutes.’

  ‘Will he… is it…’ The room seemed to Chloe to be spinning. Dr Carlyle had punched in numbers and was waiting. He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘It’s curable. He’ll be fine. Good thing you brought him in when you did, though. We’ve caught it just in time.’

  ‘Oh God. What would have happened if…’

  The doctor gave a slight shake of his head. ‘Don’t think about that now. You did the right thing. The main thing now is to get him to the ENTs. Hello?’ he said into the phone, suddenly, as someone came on the line. ‘Chris, it’s Tom Carlyle here. Got a very brave little boy who needs your help.’

  The next hours passed for Chloe in a fog of bewilderment, terror and, gradually, dawning relief. Dr Carlyle administered some more paracetamol to Jake while Chloe stripped him out of his clammy clothes. All at once the ambulance was there and she was bundling him into it and watching Dr Carlyle’s receding figure through the rear windows as the vehicle pulled away. The hospital was several miles out of town, a large district general facility with an elaborate façade. Jake began to cry as he was wheeled through the doors into the clinical-smelling corridor, and Chloe kept pace with the trolley, squeezing his hand.

  The ear, nose and throat surgeon was kindness itself and put Jake at his ease quickly. Chloe watched the procedure through the viewing panel in one side of the operating theatre. She felt her own throat choke at how small her son was, draped in green on the table, and winced as she saw the length of the mounted needle the surgeon introduced into his open, unconscious mouth.

  And at last it was over, Jake snoring in his bed in the children’s ward with Chloe sitting at his side, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest and the slow drip of the infusion set that snaked to his arm. He’d be on intravenous antibiotics for a few days, they’d said. Chloe had no intention of budging until he was ready to go home.

  She kept up her vigil for three days, dozing in the armchair next to his bed, feeding off meals brought round for the young patients themselves. Mrs McFarland came round with clean clothes, sweets, fruit, picture books and balloons, but was careful not to outstay her welcome, Chloe was grateful to note. After initial howls of pain from his sore throat, Jake gradually regained some of his usual cheerfulness, and by the end of the second day he was exploring the rest of the ward and shyly interacting with his fellow patients.

  At the end of the third day, Jake was awaiting his final dose of intravenous antibiotics before being discharged home. The doctors had pronounced themselves satisfied with his progress; the abscess had been drained, and it hadn’t recurred. Jake was having a nap, and Chloe, drained by fatigue, leaned back in her now-familiar armchair and closed her own eyes, relishing the peace and quiet of the late afternoon.

  After the initial shock and panic, she’d had time to find out about the condition Jake was suffering from. He’d most likely had a low-grade tonsillitis for several days which she’d thought was a simple sore throat. The abscess had developed and grown rapidly, and according to what she’d read and been told, it might have progressed to cause obstruction to Jake’s breathing.

  She might have lost her son.

  For the first time the realisation of what might have happened hit her, and it was like a physical blow driving her back into her chair.

  First Mark, and now Jake. She couldn’t have borne it.

  Chloe thought about Dr Carlyle’s words to her in the surgery: you did the right thing. He was right, and yet he was wrong. The right thing would have been to
bring Jake in earlier, when he first started feeling ill. Instead, not wanting to be a neurotic mother, especially aware that she was at risk of becoming one after what had happened to her husband, she’d dismissed her son’s symptoms as those of a minor illness.

  The ENT surgeon had said something similar to her after the operation. You saved your son’s life, Mrs Edwards. But she hadn’t. In truth, Tom Carlyle was the one who’d saved Jake. He could have refused to see the boy, recommending instead that Chloe continue to dose him with paracetamol and call back if there was no improvement. Or, Dr Carlyle might have misdiagnosed the abscess, labelling it as tonsillitis and prescribing a course of oral antibiotics which wouldn’t have done the trick. Instead, he’d seen Jake’s condition for what it was, and his prompt action had worked.

  Tom Carlyle had dropped in earlier that day, after his morning surgery. Chloe was gratified, and perversely not a little jealous, when Jake’s eyes lit up at the sight of the doctor. Dr Carlyle chatted with them both, took a quick glance at the charts at the foot of Jake’s bed, had a word with the ward sister.

  As he was making to leave, Chloe half rose from her chair. ‘Dr Carlyle.’

  He turned enquiringly.

  ‘I…’ She faltered, emotion surging within her, the accumulation of sleep deprivation and delayed stress almost pushing her back down into her seat. ‘Just – thank you. For what you did.’

  He grinned, eyebrows raised. ‘My job. But it’s a pleasure.’

  He gripped her hand, and was gone.

  Now, as Chloe relived the memory, she felt the pressure of his hand on hers again, and was surprised at how calloused his palm had felt, not at all how she’d expect a doctor’s hands to feel. Did he perhaps do carpentry or DIY work as a hobby? She knew nothing about him, other than that he had a nice manner, and a nice smile, and had saved her son’s life.

  Mentally she shook herself. He was still, when all was said and done, one of them. One of the breed who’d killed her husband. His diagnosis of Jake’s illness hadn’t been in any way miraculous. He had, as he’d acknowledged, been doing his job. Anything less would have been a failing on his part. She couldn’t forget that.