The Country Doctor's Daughter

by Gill Sanderson

  ‘Just decide if I’m really needed. Then I’ll come if necessary.’

  ‘That’s no problem at all, but am I insured?’

  There was a smile in his voice as he replied, ‘In fact, you are insured. I arranged it this morning.’

  ‘Right. I’ll be there in half an hour. What’s the address?’

  She realised that she felt a bit excited at the prospect of acting like a real doctor, not someone reacting to an emergency. It would be another step forward. She dressed in what she thought was a suitable doctor’s outfit. Then she fetched her doctor’s bag. It was brand-new, she had bought it, stocked it before coming to France. It was so different from the army medical kit she used to have. There were no dressings for gunshot wounds for a start!

  She felt quite pleased with herself as she walked the small distance to the address she had been given. She was helping Luc. And she felt confident.

  Madame Ducasse was worried about her son Etienne. She was a widow, he was her only son, he was a sickly boy but also difficult, and was Madame Blackman sure that she was a doctor and not just a nurse? Etienne really needed a doctor. And she was not sure how he would react to a lady examining him. She herself, his mother, had not been able to see what was the matter. She had such trouble with him…

  ‘Where is he?’ interrupted Kelly.

  She followed the still explaining Madame Ducasse up the stairs, already half-convinced that the only thing wrong with Etienne was his mother. But when she opened the bedroom door and heard the laboured breathing, she knew she was wrong. Etienne was not faking.

  ‘Hi, Etienne, I’m Dr Blackman. Now, tell me what happened.’

  ‘Nothing happened. This just sort of started.’ Etienne was a poor liar.

  ‘I need to examine your son,’ Kelly told Mrs Ducasse. ‘Please wait downstairs, I will speak to you later.’

  Mrs Ducasse obviously didn’t think this a good idea. But Kelly had years of experience to draw on. In a sickroom, what she wanted she got. Mrs Ducasse left. Kelly looked at her patient, sized him up.

  ‘Possibly I won’t have to tell your mother all the details,’ she said, ‘but you have to tell me. Now, what happened?’

  A short but typical story. On his way to school Etienne had been mixing with older boys his mother thought he shouldn’t be mixing with in a place he shouldn’t have been either. A derelict house. There had been some horseplay, some pushing, and Etienne had fallen onto his side. And it hurt. So he had come straight home.

  ‘Let’s have a look at you,’ Kelly said. ‘I’ll listen to your chest first.’

  The wheeze was getting worse. There was no sound from one side of the chest. Kelly realised the lung had deflated. Fingertip gently, she felt Etienne’s ribs. There! One was broken.

  She knew what had happened, she had dealt with this often. It was a common injury among soldiers thrown about when an armoured vehicle was attacked and crashed.

  Etienne had a pneumothorax. A broken rib had punctured the lung wall so that air was escaping out of the lung into the pleural cavity—the space between the chest wall and the lung lining. If not treated, the consequences could be serious.

  She went out of the bedroom and phoned Luc. ‘Luc, the patient has a broken rib and a pneumothorax.’

  Silence for a minute at the other end of the line. ‘So much for jumping to conclusions and diagnosing by phone,’ he said. ‘I should have known better.’

  ‘Having met Madame Ducasse, I think that your diagnosis was very reasonable. Luc, I can handle this but ideally Etienne should be in hospital for a couple of days. If you like, I’ll aspirate the chest and put a temporary drain in. I have the kit.’

  ‘Good idea. I’ll arrange for him to be picked up by ambulance and brought here. Dr Blackman, welcome to the practice.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to join it.’

  She walked back home a little later feeling more contented than she had been for a while. Life was looking up!

  It was weird, how much her mood changed when she got back to the cottage, started thinking about the afternoon. She was not the steely, competent doctor she had just been. Kelly hadn’t felt this way in years—not since she was a teenager. Sort of fluttery, and agitated.

  It had taken a special visit to the village shop to buy the ingredients. And then there was the tussle with the oven of the gas stove. She hadn’t done much cooking in this oven, And no baking at all. A good thing that she had overbought ingredients. Two batches of scones had to be thrown to the birds before she got them exactly right. But then she thought her mother would be proud of them. And with Breton butter, cream and jam…well, the French weren’t the only people who could bake well.

  She moved a dozen times from living room to terrace, rearranging things, checking that all was well, looking again at herself in the big mirror. Was her hair all right? Her make-up not smudged? Most important, were the scones still okay?

  And that settled it. She was being ridiculous! What could go wrong with a scone once it was baked?

  There was no problem with a dress. She only had the one so she had to wear it again. But she wrapped a red silk scarf loosely round her neck.

  There was a knock on the door, exactly at three. She made herself move to answer it in a normal way.

  Her heart thumped when she saw him on the doorstep. It hadn’t done that for quite a while. She knew that later she’d have to ask herself why. He was dressed differently this time but still obviously with some care. A lightweight blue summer jacket over a white shirt. No tie again—well, it was high summer. And the whiteness of his shirt emphasised his tanned, muscular neck.

  ‘Luc—it’s good to see you.’

  ‘It’s good to see you too. You obviously feel better. No flowers today, but I did bring a present. I must add it’s not from me.’

  He handed her a parcel, carefully wrapped in gold paper. ‘With the compliments and thanks of Madame La Salle, the headmistress of L’École Élémentaire de Merveille.’

  ‘A surprise present! Can I open it now? I haven’t had a surprise present in years.’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Well, come through to the terrace and I’ll do it there.’ She felt excited, like a child.

  First, the gold paper, then a stout cardboard box and tissue paper. And finally…‘How lovely! It’s a bottle of champagne.

  ‘But you deserve it as much as me. In fact, you did more than me. It’s too early to drink now but perhaps one evening we could…’ Her voice faltered as she realised what she was saying. ‘Perhaps we could drink it together.’

  He had obviously noted her sudden embarrassment but pretended not to. ‘That would be very pleasant. But now I have another gift—a letter.’ He handed her a rather bulky envelope.

  Kelly opened it, took out a large sheet of paper and smiled when she saw what was on it. ‘Luc, this is lovely too! It’s a letter from the girls we helped. Perhaps with a little assistance here and there. I’ve never had a letter in red crayon before. They thank me for helping them and say that now they all want to be doctors. And they’ve drawn me a picture.’

  She handed him the letter. ‘A nice letter but with just a little bit of artistic license.’ He grinned. ‘I don’t remember the flames being anything like as high.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m going to pin it on the kitchen wall.’

  She found herself curiously at home with Luc. She didn’t feel threatened, or angry or depressed. She liked being with him and it was just the man himself. Of course, there was a faint frisson of sexual excitement—the first she had felt for months now. But that wasn’t the main cause of her pleasure. Not yet, a tiny voice inside her whispered. But she ignored it.

  ‘I’ll fetch the tea now,’ she said. ‘Sit here and enjoy the sun. I won’t be a moment.’ In fact, she needed a moment alone to get control over her thoughts and feelings. She seemed to be making some kind of progress—but progress to where? She couldn’t quite tell her mood—was she afraid or excited?

>   She now knew she was definitely attracted to Luc. It was exciting—but look where excitement had got her before. Too involved with Gary.

  Gary had been the great love of her life—in effect, the only love of her life. She had offered her love to him without question, and when he’d rejected her she’d had no experience to draw on to help her. She was left with just one idea. She would never allow herself to be drawn into this kind of situation again. Love wasn’t for her.

  Was that true? She’d have to think. Not now. Now was the time for tea.

  The Blackman scones were considered a great success. ‘As good as any Frenchwoman could bake,’ Luc announced, ‘if she tried, that is.’

  ‘French women don’t bake,’ Kelly pointed out. ‘Like me, they go to the boulangerie for cakes.’

  ‘That is true. But I have to say that the scones were…enhanced by the addition of Breton cream and butter and French jam.’

  ‘Point taken,’ said Kelly. How long had it been since she’d had a gentle, joking conversation like this? ‘Do have another one,’ she said.

  For a while there was little conversation. They drank tea, finished the scones; he told her the French names of a couple of birds that were singing in the garden. Both knew that something had grown between them, a feeling that neither of them fully understood. A feeling that had to be acknowledged.

  Finally she cleared away the tea-tray, refusing his offer of help. When she came back to the terrace she pushed the table to one side, moved her chair so that they were sitting side by side. For a while she didn’t want to be sitting opposite him, where they would have to look into each other’s eyes.

  ‘Will Dr Cameron be visiting soon?’ Luc asked, apparently casually. ‘You’ll be made very welcome, of course, but Joe will be missed in the surgery.’

  ‘He said he’d come over before he went to New Zealand. I think he wants to check in on me before he flies halfway round the world.’

  ‘He is a good friend, he spoke very highly of you,’ Luc commented.

  ‘I’ve known Joe Cameron a long time,’ she said. ‘When I was young he was a neighbour. He was still in the army then but when he was home I’d go to his house and he’d coach me for my science exams. Knowing him was one reason why I wanted to be a doctor. And once I’d been accepted at medical school I joined the army, just like Joe had done. They sponsored me through my course.’

  ‘And you’re proud of that. I can tell.’

  ‘Yes. I am proud.’

  She knew he must have more questions, wondered how he would put them. As ever, it was with delicacy.

  ‘Yesterday I noticed that you had a scar on your leg. Did you get that on active service? Please, if you don’t want to talk about it, that is fine. We can talk about something else.’

  ‘I don’t mind talking about it,’ she said. ‘I can now live quite happily with the memories and feelings that I used to try to suppress. They’re part of my life, I accept them.’

  She paused a moment, she knew she was taking a bold step. ‘And…for some reason I want you to know all the details.’

  He reached across, stroked the back of her hand, which was resting on the arm of her chair. Just a slight touch of his fingertips, but it brought her much pleasure.

  ‘Tell me what you can,’ he said, ‘I want to…know you.’

  ‘Right. First thing is, the leg injury is largely unimportant. It was a piece of shrapnel, a white-hot chunk of metal from a mortar shell that tore away a lump of flesh. No bone damage and now I’ve got complete movement and strength in the leg. No pain, just a scar. I got off lightly.’

  ‘Lightly? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Lightly compared to what else I saw. I was in the Middle East, an army surgeon. A badly injured soldier’s chance of survival is a hundred per cent greater if he receives treatment in the first hour after being injured. So I was working with a team, in a tent, in temperatures you can only think of in nightmares, with the wind howling and blowing sand into everything. And we were it. No relief team. We were on call night and day. More than once I worked a twenty-four-hour shift. Then I had to stop because I just couldn’t see straight.’

  ‘For how long did you do this?’

  ‘For as long as I was needed. We had all served well past the normal tour of duty weeks past. But what do you do if there’s no one to replace you?’

  ‘You weren’t offered special treatment because you were a woman?’

  ‘Any man who offered it would regret it,’ Kelly snarled.

  ‘I could have guessed you’d say that. Tell me more. Will you tell me what finally happened? What was the last thing you just couldn’t take?’

  ‘Why d’you think something finally happened?’ She tried to make her voice casual, but she knew she didn’t succeed.

  ‘Kelly, I’m a doctor, as concerned with the mind as the body. It’s obvious something happened to you. But you only have to tell me if you wish.’

  There had been such a time. It had been the hardest bit, the time when finally, ultimately, she’d had to give up. Her body, her mind—more than both of these, her spirit just could not take any more. And the shrapnel in her leg hadn’t helped.

  ‘Finally, there was one day. There was a bit of a push on, the enemy were getting too close. I operated on seventeen injured men that day. Five of them died. Then, just for five minutes, we came under enemy fire.’

  ‘Not an experience that many doctors can claim.’

  She shrugged. ‘It was a risk of the job. At the time it affected me, but now that’s all over. There was an explosion outside the tent, probably a mortar bomb, and I found myself sitting on the floor with blood streaming from my leg. It didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. But I got carried out and I was on a helicopter half an hour later, headed for base camp.’

  She paused a moment, thought about what she had just told him. It was a story she had told too many times before and usually ended with her in tears. But not any more. She felt perfectly calm. Now it was just a distant memory. She had come through it. She knew that.

  ‘And then?’ Luc persisted gently.

  ‘Well, my leg was treated. No great problem. Like I said, it’s completely cured now. But there was something else broken, my spirit. In the First World War they called it shell shock. Now it has a more professional name—PTSD. Posttraumatic stress disorder. It’s not fashionable because there’s no apparent injury. No eyes missing, no amputated limbs, no visible scars. But it’s there all right. And so I was invalided out of the army a year ago. No stain on my record—in fact, I might even get a medal.’

  ‘And you were placed under the care of Dr Cameron?’

  ‘I was. I suspect he pulled a few strings to get charge of me, but I’m glad he did. I was a year under his care and now I’m completely cured. No more nightmares, no more depression, no more hallucinations. No more shaking hands and body.’

  ‘I know of PTSD. And, believe me, Kelly, I know it is an injury that can hurt as much as any physical complaint. And like so many physical complaints, it can be cured.’

  It wasn’t at all what she had expected. But it seemed perfectly proper when Luc stretched his arm round her, eased her to him so her head was resting on his shoulder.

  ‘I too have been in battle,’ he said. ‘And in battle I have seen men huddle together for comfort. So, for a moment, we will be two soldiers and try to forget the troubles round us.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said. But what was she doing? His arm was round her, she had her head tucked into the bend of his arm and shoulder, she could feel the warmth of his body, smell the delicate cologne that he must use. And somewhere there was a pulse, she could sense rather than feel the steady beat. And she liked it! She felt relaxed, comforted, at peace with the world. She hadn’t been this way with a man for so long. And why this man? She hardly knew him.

  ‘You say that you were a soldier too?’ she asked, half drowsily. ‘When was that?’

  ‘Before I studied medicine, when I was a young man, I spent so
me time in the French army. As a soldier, you understand, not a doctor in any way. I was a medical orderly. I was sent to Africa with a small contingent of men on what was called a peace-keeping operation. A peace-keeping mission! That was a joke!’

  He paused, and she could feel the alteration in his mood, could hear the slight agitation in his voice.

  ‘I’m disturbing you, I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Can you forget it for now?’

  ‘You make it easier for me to forget, Kelly. But I want you to know that I too have suffered a little of what you felt. I can sympathise. Unlike you, though, I was not helping injured men. Mostly I was standing by and watching people kill each other for no apparent reason. Our orders were not to interfere unless attacked, we couldn’t be seen to take sides. So we did little or nothing.’

  She wasn’t relaxed and at peace now, she was fascinated, wanted to know more. ‘How did you cope? Did you get PTSD too?’

  He shrugged. ‘The mission was soon over, we were brought back to France. I left the army and found some peace in work. I started my medical course. Studying was hard but it helped. And now when I look back at those times it is with sadness—but the realisation that I had done all I could. You have to learn to accept what you cannot change and find your own peace.’

  Something struck her. ‘Luc, are you telling me this as some kind of therapy? Trying to make me feel better? I told you, I’m cured.’ She didn’t know whether she was pleased or angry at what he was trying to do.

  He shook his head. ‘Talking about it might be therapy. But it is therapy for me, not you. Every now and again I need to take out my memories, examine them, decide that they are past, dealt with. Then I can lead my happy life again.’

  ‘So I’m helping you?’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said. And…he kissed her.

  He leaned over and kissed her, just a gentle kiss, a bare touching of his lips on hers. The kind of kiss you might give to a baby on its cheek. But she decided she loved it.

  She was shocked, of course. This was the last thing she had expected to happen. Then she was more shocked as he moved backwards, to end the kiss. She wasn’t ready for that yet! She liked it! So she put her hand round his neck and pulled his head down to hers, felt his surprise, his tiny resistance, and then the delight as he kissed her again. This time with much more passion. Delicate still. But no one had ever kissed a baby like this. Perhaps if she leaned back a little more he might…