A Wife Worth Waiting For

by Maggie Kingsley

  ‘How so?’ he said.

  ‘She wanted us to sanction a home birth for her.’

  ‘She wanted…’ Hugh gazed heavenwards in disbelief. ‘Of all the crackpot, completely insane…I’ll have a word with her husband,’ he continued grimly. ‘I’ll terrify the living day-lights out of Geordie with a list of all the things that could happen to both Ellie and the baby if things go wrong, and that should put the kibosh on the idea.’

  ‘I told her she should think of all the things that could go wrong, too, and she told me I was too much like you,’ Alex declared, then her lips curved. ‘And she didn’t mean it as a compliment.’

  ‘I bet she didn’t,’ Hugh said ruefully, and Alex laughed.

  ‘I suppose—if I can be fair,’ Alex observed, ‘I can see why she’s not overly keen to go into hospital. Maternity wards have become increasingly hi-tech over the past ten years, and a recent poll has suggested that some women are feeling dehumanised by the experience.’

  ‘I know, but if Ellie was my wife I’d tie her to the hospital bed myself if the doctors said it was in her best interests to be there.’

  He undoubtedly would, she thought, with a wry, inward chuckle.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘Donna Ferguson must be wondering what’s happened to you.’

  ‘She must, but before you go I want you to read this first,’ Hugh said, retrieving a sheet of paper from his desk and holding it out to her. ‘It’s the results of Donna Ferguson’s serum transferrin saturation test.’

  Alex took the paper from him, read through it quickly, and a delighted smile lit up her face.

  ‘Fifty-two per cent. Her iron levels are fifty-two per cent higher than they should be, so she does have haemochromatosis.’

  He nodded. ‘We have a result, and it’s all down to you.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she protested. ‘All I did was make a suggestion, and my suggestion could just as easily have been wrong.’

  ‘That’s two you’ve won for us since you’ve been here,’ Hugh said. ‘Lady Soutar and Donna Ferguson. Actually, three if you count Ewan Allen, and I would definitely count him.’

  ‘Donna was a lucky guess, Lady Soutar I won over because she loves bikes, and you saved Ewan’s foot,’ she said firmly. ‘And anyway, medicine isn’t a competition, Hugh,’ she added as he tried to interrupt. ‘We’re here to help people, not to score points off one another. It’s teamwork.’

  ‘And we make a good team, don’t we?’ he said. ‘Malcolm, and me, and you.’

  His eyes were fixed on her, and she laughed.

  ‘Is this part of your commercial for working in Kilbreckan?’ she said, and he smiled.

  ‘Is it succeeding?’ he said.

  ‘Maybe—perhaps,’ she said, and his smile widened.

  ‘One day at a time, Alex, one day at a time,’ he said, but as she turned to leave he added quickly, ‘Look, why don’t you stay, see Donna with me? It seems only fair as you suggested what might be wrong with her.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said.

  Donna clearly didn’t care one way or the other when she walked wearily in and sat down. In fact, she had a very obvious And what are you going to say is wrong with me, today? expression on her face, an expression which changed to one of complete disbelief when Hugh told her what the blood tests had revealed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ she declared, ‘but I honestly don’t see how I can have this haemochr…haemach—’

  ‘Haemochromatosis,’ Hugh finished for her. ‘It is rather a large word, but all it really means is your body is absorbing too much iron from the food you’re eating.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s a big word, or a little one,’ Donna exclaimed. ‘If this disease is an inherited thing, I can’t possibly have it because my mother didn’t, and my father hasn’t.’

  ‘Your father certainly hasn’t,’ Hugh agreed, ‘but your mother must have but she died before she could develop it.’

  ‘I…I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,’ Donna declared, and Alex leant towards her quickly.

  ‘The reason it’s taken us so long to discover what’s wrong with you is that haemochromatosis often doesn’t usually show up in women until they hit the menopause,’ she said. ‘While you were menstruating—having a period every month—you lost all the excess iron you were absorbing every month, but once you reached the menopause, you stopped bleeding, and that’s when the iron started to build up in your body.’

  ‘But I thought having a lot of iron in your body was good,’ Donna said uncertainly. ‘A friend of mine’s anaemic, and I know how dangerous that can be, but—’

  ‘While anaemia is certainly bad for you,’ Hugh interrupted, ‘having too much iron in your body is equally serious because the excess ends up being stored in your liver, heart and pancreas, and over a period of time this excess iron can seriously damage those organs if it isn’t removed.’

  Donna swallowed. ‘You’re saying I’m going to die.’

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ Hugh exclaimed. ‘But it does mean we’ll have to take blood from you regularly. The procedure is called a phlebotomy, and is very similar to what would happen if you were a blood donor. To begin with I’ll probably have to take a pint of blood from you twice a week, but in a year or so, once your iron levels have returned to normal, I think we’ll only need to perform the procedure four times a year.’

  She hadn’t heard him. Alex could see from the look on Donna’s face that all the woman had taken in had been the words ‘damaged organs’.

  ‘Donna, haemochromatosis isn’t a life-threatening condition if you follow our instructions,’ she exclaimed. ‘It will be inconvenient for you, having to give blood regularly, and there’ll be some things you’ll have to cut back on in your diet like red meat, cereals, beans and pasta because they contain iron, but if you’re careful you should be able to live a virtually normal life.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Donna flared. ‘You’ve not just been told that if you don’t get on top of this disease, you’re going to damage vital parts of your body, and then you’ll die.’

  ‘Donna, I know how you feel,’ Alex began, and the woman shook her head vehemently, tears welling in her eyes.

  ‘No, you don’t, you can’t possibly,’ she exclaimed. ‘I have daughters, Doctor. What if I’ve passed this thing on to them?’

  ‘We can test them—’

  ‘And that’s supposed to make everything all right, is it?’ Donna protested. ‘I don’t want them to need to be tested. I don’t want to have blood taken from me twice a week forever more. I don’t want to have this disease at all.’

  ‘I know you don’t,’ Alex declared. ‘Look, I know being told you have haemochromatosis has knocked you for six—’

  ‘How do you know?’ Donna interrupted, tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. ‘You’ve probably never had a day’s illness in your life, so don’t tell me you understand, because you don’t.’

  Alex glanced helplessly across at Hugh. He was sitting back in his seat, watching her, his face completely unreadable. She could help Donna, she knew she could, but she had always kept what was wrong with her a secret, felt it was private, her business, and her business alone.

  ‘Donna…’

  ‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ the woman replied, wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘I know you’re trying to be kind, but the last thing I want is somebody telling me they understand when you and I both know that you can’t, not ever.’

  Alex straightened in her seat.

  ‘Actually, I can understand,’ she said. ‘Not about haemochromatosis, but four years ago I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s a type of cancer,’ she continued as Donna gazed at her blankly, ‘and I had to have chemotherapy and radiotherapy. It wasn’t pleasant, and I don’t know whether the cancer will come back or not, but I’m still here, taking one day at a time, and that’s what you’ll have to do.’

  ‘But…’ Donna Ferguson gazed at he
r in amazement ‘…you look so…so normal, so healthy.’

  ‘Because I am—touch wood,’ Alex said, meeting Hugh’s gaze, and he gave her a tiny way-to-go smile. ‘And you will be, too, Donna, if you do what Dr Hugh says.’

  ‘And what Dr Hugh says,’ he declared, getting to his feet, ‘is that there’s no time like the present for your first phlebotomy.’

  As Hugh had explained, it was a painless, if time-consuming procedure, and, though Donna clearly felt a little shaky and light-headed after it was over, she also looked less stressed when she left.

  ‘I’m going to have to tell Chrissie and Malcolm now, aren’t I?’ Alex said ruefully when she and Hugh were alone. ‘Because by tonight half of Kilbreckan is going to know I have Hodgkin’s.’

  ‘Not half,’ Hugh observed. ‘A quarter, I’d say, and probably a half by tomorrow morning.’ He caught and held her gaze. ‘Are you sorry about what you did?’

  Alex said nothing for a moment, then frowned slightly.

  ‘It was odd telling her, almost as though I was talking about someone else, but, if I helped, it was worth it.’

  ‘Oh, it helped, all right,’ he replied, ‘but it took a lot of guts to do what you did, and I’m proud of you.’

  ‘Hey, after baring my skinny legs to the world, telling Donna about my illness was a breeze,’ she said, laughing a little shakily, and Hugh shook his head.

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’ He looked down, and grinned. ‘And your legs aren’t skinny. They’re svelte, slender, lithe, and I’d better stop now…’

  She gazed at him severely. ‘If my skinny legs turn you on, then you need therapy.’

  ‘No, I just need you,’ he said, and saw her eyes become a little hesitant, a little uncertain.

  ‘Hugh…’

  ‘I’m going too fast for you, aren’t I?’

  ‘Just a bit.’ She nodded.

  He wondered how she would react if he told her how he really felt. That when she’d told him about her Hodgkin’s his heart had filled with such pain at the thought of what she’d been through, such anger at Jonathan for leaving her, and all he’d wanted to do was wrap his arms around her, to keep her safe, for always.

  She’d said she was scared, but he was scared, too. Not of her illness. If it came back he’d be there, at her side, fighting it with her, taking her to every expert there was in the country, trying every possible treatment. What he was scared of was that she might still walk away. She’d given him no promise that she would stay on here, hadn’t even said she wouldn’t take part in the Lisbon to Dakar rally. All she had said was she would try to believe, try to trust him, whereas he…

  He knew he was falling in love with her, had been gradually, unsuspectingly, falling in love with her since she’d first walked into his life.

  Take it slowly, Hugh, he told himself. If you don’t take it slowly, you’ll lose her, but he wasn’t a patient man by nature, and the thought of her leaving…

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  He glanced down to see Alex staring up at him with a puzzled frown, and forced himself to smile.

  ‘Just thinking,’ he said, and she laughed.

  ‘Dangerous occupation, thinking,’ she said, and he shook his head.

  ‘It depends on what you’re thinking about,’ he said, and saw a faint blush appear on her cheeks.

  She’d obviously misunderstood him, imagined he was thinking about them making love, but it was better if she misunderstood him, at least for now. He’d told her she had to take life one day at a time, but he was going to have to do the same, or he knew there was a very real danger he would lose her completely.

  But not immediately, he thought, when he drove her home that evening, and Alex got out of the car, then stopped dead.

  ‘My bike,’ she said, anguish plain in her voice. ‘Hugh, where’s my bike?’

  Sgt Tulloch came quickly, but he sighed after Alex had given him all the details.

  ‘You said you didn’t lock the back wheel of your bike last night?’

  ‘I always do—I mean I normally do,’ Alex replied, ‘but I was a bit preoccupied last night.’

  With the Nolans, and then with me, Hugh thought, and knew Alex was thinking the same as she glanced at him.

  ‘Can you think of anyone who’s been showing a great interest in your bike recently?’ the policeman continued. ‘Or someone who might have a grudge against you, could have taken your bike out of spite?’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone I’ve antagonised,’ Alex began. ‘Most of the people I see are patients, and—’

  ‘There was the biker you wouldn’t give a prescription to,’ Hugh interrupted. ‘Though taking your bike because you wouldn’t give him a prescription for tranquillisers seems a bit extreme.’

  ‘There’s a black market for tranquillisers in the city,’ Sgt Tulloch observed, reopening his notebook, ‘plus Dr Lorimer’s bike could bring a tidy sum if the buyer was prepared to ask no questions. Where did this biker say he was camping?’

  Alex gave him as much information as she could, but Sgt Tulloch didn’t look optimistic when she’d finished.

  ‘I’ve got to be honest, Doctor, and say the chances of you getting your bike back are small. The people who take bikes are either joy riders who generally smash them up pretty badly, or people stealing to sell on.’

  ‘But you’ll put a trace out for it?’ Hugh said, and Sgt Tulloch nodded.

  ‘I’ll do it right away, and notify the other cops in the area, but…’

  ‘I shouldn’t hold my breath,’ Alex finished for him, then bit her lip. ‘That’ll teach me to forget to lock it. Hopefully, my insurance will cover it, but it’s going to make getting out to home visits pretty difficult.’

  ‘Neil has an old Yamaha in his garage,’ Hugh said after Sgt Tulloch had gone. ‘It’s not the fastest bike in the world but I’m sure he’d let you borrow it if I asked.’

  ‘That would be great,’ she murmured. ‘Thanks.’

  She was clearly upset but, as Hugh put his arm round her and gave her a hug, he had to work hard to keep his features schooled into an expression of sympathy. Selfishly—completely selfishly—all he could think was that unless her insurance company paid out—and with luck they would drag their heels as she’d left the bike unsecured—there was no way Alex was going to be able to put her life on the line by taking part in the Lisbon to Dakar rally.

  Dear lord, but just the thought of her doing it had been enough to send cold shivers down his spine, he realised, as he ushered her into the house and now—hopefully—she wouldn’t be able to. What he had to do now was to convince her to stay here with him and that, he suspected, was going to be a considerably harder task.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ALL you have to do is believe, Hugh had said, Alex thought as she smiled at Donna Ferguson who was on her way out of Hugh’s consulting room after one of her twice-weekly phlebotomy sessions, and the woman beamed back. All you have to do is to start looking forward, and not back, he’d insisted as she noticed Rory Murray sitting in the waiting room, and the plumber threw her a cheeky grin, and she shook her head at him, but couldn’t help but grin back.

  It had been three weeks since she’d told Donna about her Hodgkin’s, and by the end of the first week everyone in Kilbreckan and the surrounding area had known, and yet, after the initial I would never have thought there was anything wrong with you, Doctor nobody seemed to feel the need to mention it at all.

  ‘People simply see it as another facet of you, along with your red hair and green eyes,’ Hugh said, when she’d asked him about it. ‘You can bet your boots everyone tore off to look it up in their home medical books—particularly Sybil Gordon—but now they know what Hodgkin’s is, it’s no big deal for them. You’re just you, Alex.’

  He’d been right, she realised, as she put the file of the last patient she’d seen in Chrissie’s in-tray. Even the receptionist and her husband had treated her no differently. Malcolm had given her a hug, and Chrissie had said if there
was ever anything she could do to let her know, but they hadn’t crowded her, overwhelmed her with sympathy, or made her feel they were earmarking wreaths and buying black clothes. To them she was clearly just the same person as she’d been before, and it felt wonderful.

  ‘And how is my favourite locum this morning?’ a familiar deep voice murmured, and she turned with a smile.

  ‘Just fine, thank you,’ she replied. ‘And how is my esteemed boss?’

  ‘Feeling distinctly deprived,’ Hugh said with a mock mournful look.

  She threw him a warning glance. Chrissie might be on the phone in her office, but the surgery walls weren’t thick, and Rory wasn’t the only patient in the waiting room. Mrs MacDonald and her three-and-a-half-year-old twins were there, too.

  ‘I don’t know how you can possibly be feeling deprived,’ she said, feeling her cheeks heat. ‘Not after last night.’

  ‘Ah, but as I told you,’ Hugh said, his grey eyes dancing, ‘I’m a hearty eater, and it must be at least three hours since I last kissed you.’

  ‘And it will be at least another six hours before you can kiss me again,’ she said, trying to look serious and failing completely.

  ‘Bored with me already, are you?’ He grinned.

  No, not bored, she thought. In fact, sometimes it overwhelmed her when she realised how quickly he’d become a part of her life, how important that part was, and how easily Kilbreckan had come to feel like home. If it should all go wrong, if it should all suddenly shatter around her…

  ‘Of course I’m not bored,’ she said, suddenly realising that he was waiting for her to answer and that the laughter in his face had been replaced by a frown.

  ‘You have that look on your face.’

  ‘I don’t have a bored look on my face,’ she protested, and he sighed.

  ‘Not a bored look, but that look which tells me you’re thinking about the past, and I don’t like that look.’

  ‘Hugh, I wasn’t—’

  ‘Hugh—Alex.’ Chrissie beamed as she came through from her office, clutching a piece of paper. ‘There’s a letter in from the hospital about Lady Soutar’s endoscopy. Do you want to read the results before you see your next patients?’