‘I COULD have been a doctor if it hadn’t been for you,’ the man growled, aiming a clumsy backhanded swipe.
Even as he ducked with automatic ease Quinn’s heart sank when he realised just how drunk his father was. He knew his aim wasn’t as deadly when he was this drunk but he also knew all too well that the familiar complaint signalled the start of his descent into the latest depressive cycle of his illness.
If only he could find a way to make him take his medication regularly, everything would be different. Perhaps then he wouldn’t keep losing his job and they wouldn’t have to keep moving to escape the debts that soon mounted up at every stop. Sometimes he felt as if he was going to be overwhelmed by the chaos surrounding his life. It was hard to remember whether it had ever been any different, even when his mother had still been with them.
He glanced at the clock as he settled a blanket over the muttering figure now slumped on the settee and stifled a sigh with the realisation that he was going to be late, again…and on his first day in a new school. He’d actually been looking forward to it—the prospect of a fresh circle of people who didn’t yet know anything about him and might accept him for who he was rather than where he came from.
Well, who cared where he came from? he thought with a pugnacious lift of his chin as he retrieved his backpack and let himself out of the ramshackle door. He had a goal and the only way to achieve it was to work. He didn’t know whether the idea had been planted with his father’s first words as soon as he had been born, but it had been firmly lodged in his brain for as long as he could remember. He was determined that he was going to succeed where his father had failed. If he never did anything else with his life, he was going to become a doctor, come what may.
The first step on that arduous road was to pass those all-important exams at the end of the school year, and that wouldn’t happen if he missed any more lessons. At least he’d been lucky in one thing with their latest move—the school he was due to start at today had a good reputation for the number of pupils going on to further education. The headmaster had even boasted that there were several others in his class intending to apply for places at medical school, including one very bright girl…
‘Come in, Mr Stratton. Take a seat,’ Quinn invited, taking a surreptitious glance at the time. He would have finished morning surgery by now if the gentleman in front of him hadn’t been added to the list at the last moment.
This was already turning out to be the sort of day that he’d rather forget. He’d had less than three hours’ sleep last night and he couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten. This morning’s list had seemed to go on for ever. In his exhausted state, the patients had appeared as one long parade with nothing better to do with their time than whine about their self-inflicted miseries, none of which could be cured by the magic pill they expected him to produce out of a hat.
And now, to top it off, there was George Stratton to contend with—in all likelihood, another complete waste of time.
‘What can I do for you, Mr Stratton?’
‘Nothing,’ snapped the stubborn, self-opinionated curmudgeon. ‘I wouldn’t be here at all if the wife hadn’t made the appointment. Waste of time.’
Quinn stifled a sigh, mentally taking his hat off to the woman who’d been putting up with this man for the last thirty or more years. Sometimes, patients like George Stratton and the gaggle that had preceded him today made him wonder why he’d worked so hard to become a doctor.
‘Well, since you’re here, how about letting me give you a ten-thousand-mile-service?’ he suggested, forcing a smile to his face as he got out of his seat and reached for his stethoscope and sphygmomanometer.
He hardly needed either of them. He could see at first glance that the man hadn’t followed a single word of his advice the last time he’d been dragged in here by his wife. He was still forty or fifty pounds overweight and was probably still smoking and refusing to see that he needed to start taking regular exercise. About the only thing he could be sure of was that his wife would be making certain that he was taking his blood-pressure medication regularly.
George Stratton grudgingly complied with requests to take deep breaths while Quinn listened to his chest. He even managed to stay still long enough to have the cuff inflated around his arm, but the results were every bit as bad as Quinn had expected. In spite of the heavy-duty drugs, his blood pressure was absolutely sky-high.
‘Mr Stratton,’ he began wearily, propping his hips back on the edge of his desk while he tried vainly to find some way to make the man see sense, ‘have you done anything about losing weight? Or doing exercise?’
‘I’ve seen what’s on that damn diet,’ he countered belligerently. ‘You put the wife on it and she’s hardly eating enough to keep a sparrow alive.’
‘But it’s helped her to lose almost all her excess weight and her blood pressure’s almost normal for the first time in years,’ Quinn pointed out patiently, knowing he was wasting his time repeating the information that the diet was individually formulated to provide all the nutrition each patient needed. He’d already been through that, several times.
Anyway, Iona Stratton was one of the shining success stories of the six months since he’d moved to the practice in Rookmere. She’d known just how much damage her excess weight could have been doing to her whole body, and how it had not only been hindering her everyday life but could even shorten it through heart disease. Unfortunately, she’d tried most commercial diets and had failed to make any headway. She’d immediately grasped at the chance to join the new self-help group he’d set up and had never looked back.
‘I’m not starving myself for anybody,’ he growled. ‘If I want kippers for my tea, I shall have them—same as my father and my grandfather. It didn’t do them any harm. They didn’t go on any newfangled diets to live long healthy lives.’
‘Both of them also lived very active lives—not a sedentary office job like yours,’ Quinn reminded him patiently, having heard this argument before. He silently quoted the old aphorism ‘There’s none so blind as them that will not see’ and wondered if he’d ever win with this man. ‘Besides, Iona’s worried about you.’
‘She wouldn’t be a woman if she wasn’t worrying about something—or nagging a man,’ he declared chauvinistically, heaving himself to his feet. ‘I came here. You’ve checked me over and tried to ram your diet down my throat again. That’s an end of it. Next time she rings to make an appointment for me, tell her not to waste both our times, because I won’t be coming.’
‘Mr Stratton,’ Quinn began, more concerned than ever when he saw the colour of the man’s face after just that little exertion. ‘I really think you ought—’
He got no further.
His patient had started to turn back when he’d spoken but had suddenly gasped, almost as if he’d been struck and winded. His eyes had widened with a combination of shock and panic then had abruptly closed as he slumped heavily to the floor.
In two strides Quinn was at the door and had flung it open.
‘Joan!’ he shouted to the receptionist even as he rolled his unconscious patient over and began to check his vital signs. ‘Emergency! Phone for an ambulance!’ Thank goodness George had been the last patient of the morning or that would have caused pandemonium in the waiting room.
There was no discernible pulse and he’d stopped breathing.
‘Damn!’ he muttered in time with his double-fisted blow over the man’s heart, then began rhythmic compressions. ‘You were asking for a heart attack,’ he said between gritted teeth, mentally keeping count. ‘And, boy, did you get it!’
‘Ambulance is on its way, Quinn,’ Joan Morris announced from the doorway. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘Oh, my God! George!’ shrieked Iona, and flew to his side.
Quinn realised that the poor woman must have heard his shout from the waiting room, but before he could do more than curse the fact that she was being confronted by such a sight, she’d dropped to her knees on the other side of her husband.
‘I’ll breathe for him,’ she announced fiercely, startling him by positioning herself in exactly the right spot as though she’d practised for years. ‘Tell me when.’
They swiftly established a rhythm while Quinn directed Joan to wheel over the trolley set up with the practice’s brand-new defibrillator and ECG monitor. He’d used the ECG as a routine diagnostic tool several times since he’d taken delivery of it just a few days ago but hadn’t expected to need it in such an acute situation. As for the defibrillator…
‘I’ll take over here,’ Ana Rodriguez, his part-time practice nurse said at his elbow, smoothly positioning her hands over George’s chest as soon as Quinn lifted his away. Quinn had a momentary qualm about her doing such a strenuous task when she was so obviously pregnant, then reminded himself how eminently sensible she was. She wouldn’t willingly do anything to risk her baby.
Swiftly, he peeled the gel pads off their backing and flipped them into position on his patient’s chest.
‘Charging to two hundred,’ he announced as soon as he had the paddles ready, grateful that he’d insisted that all members of staff have a familiarisation session with the new equipment when it had arrived. Joan had anticipated his needs as confidently as though she had been setting up for an ECG all her life, applying the self-adhesive leads in exactly the right places.
‘Hands away, everybody, and don’t touch his body while I shock him,’ he ordered.
He paused just long enough to check that they’d all complied before he applied the paddles and released the charge.
He heard Iona stifle a gasp when her husband’s body arched painfully with the shock, and spared a brief thought for the trauma she was going through.
The reading on the ECG showed an ominous flat line.
Automatically, he checked that the leads and connections had been properly made and that the gain was turned up on the monitor. It was still a flat line.
‘Asystole,’ Ana muttered. ‘You’ll defibrillate again?’
She’d made it sound like a question, but there wasn’t really any question in his mind. If there was any chance that the diagnosis might be ventricular fibrillation…
‘Recharging to two hundred,’ he announced. ‘Hands clear.’
The body convulsed again but the result was the same.
‘No change,’ Ana confirmed grimly, as she recommenced compressions. ‘Still in asystole.’
‘Charging to three hundred and sixty,’ Quinn said, stupidly noticing that his knees were hurting on the ultra-appropriate, eminently cleanable, far-too-hard floor. He’d almost lost track of how long he’d been kneeling there, totally concentrating on trying to save the man’s life in spite of George’s apparent death wish.
Again the lifeless body arched with every appearance of agony but this time…
‘VF!’ Ana exclaimed and Quinn grunted an acknowledgement. Ventricular fibrillation was nothing to sound so happy about—with his heart fluttering wildly out of rhythm, the man was still only half a step away from death. But at least it was better than no activity at all.
‘Joan, are you happy to take over from Ana?’ he asked as he prepared the paddles again. ‘Ana, I need to give him IV adrenaline. One milligram. And have atropine, lignocaine and bicarb ready, too. We need to get an IV line in quickly?’
He had to wait a moment while she hurried to fetch them, every second seeming like a lifetime while he toyed with the advisability of inserting an oropharyngeal airway to ventilate his patient with oxygen. Then he saw the way his middle-aged receptionist and his patient’s wife had risen to the challenge of keeping the essential CPR rhythm going and realised that their need to feel that they were doing something to help took precedence over technology.
‘Here.’ Ana held out the IV giving set, a whole series of sterile disposable syringes lined up in a kidney bowl.
‘Thanks,’ he muttered distractedly, while a voice inside his head was urging him to hurry.
For just a moment a cold finger of panic ran down his spine when he feared he wasn’t going to be able to find a vein in the flabby arm, but then he was in and within seconds she had passed him the syringe with the prepared dose of adrenaline and he pressed the plunger all the way home.
Then it was time for the defibrillator again.
‘Charged to three sixty…Hands clear!’ Even as he applied the paddles his eyes were fixed on the ECG. Would the adrenaline make the difference? Would the charge manage to shock George’s heart out of its ineffectual quivering and into strong, life-sustaining beats this time?
‘Normal sinus rhythm!’ Ana announced triumphantly, a beaming smile completely replacing the worry of the last few minutes.
Iona sat back on her heels and burst into tears, her noisy sobs almost masking the sound of the approaching ambulance siren.
Quinn checked his patient’s vital signs again and allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction, knowing that at least he’d managed to give the stubborn man a second chance to change his ways.
This was why, he thought as he watched the ambulance speed on its way towards the hospital a little while later. This feeling of fulfilment was why he’d gone through all those years of training.
‘If only I didn’t feel so damn tired,’ he muttered, as he went back into the practice to have a few words with Joan and Ana. He realised that they were probably feeling just as euphoric as he was, but it was important to let them know just how much he’d appreciated their assistance when it had mattered.
Then he was going home to get his head down for at least an hour. If he didn’t get some sleep soon, he was going to be no use to anyone.
‘Oh, Quinn! Thank goodness you didn’t go straight home!’ Joan exclaimed, almost before the door had swung closed behind him. ‘I’ve just had Molly Beech on the phone. You know, the housekeeper at the Barton.’
‘Of course I know Molly. She was one of the first patients through my door when I came here as locum for Dr Jordan, and one of the first to sign up for the slimming classes. What’s happened to her?’
He was concerned. Molly was another one who had done well in the slimming classes—in her case, the impetus to lose weight being that she needed to improve her odds under a general anaesthetic. If she’d had a setback now, it could put her surgery back and that could have disastrous consequences.
‘No. It’s not Molly. It’s Herself up at the Barton,’ Joan explained, uncharacteristically flustered. ‘Molly went in to tell her that her lunch was ready and found her looking very poorly.’
Herself?
Quinn didn’t smile. Constance Adamson had already been called that, and in just that reverential tone, before he’d left to go to medical school over sixteen years ago.
‘She’s not registered with the practice, is she?’ He knew damn well that she wasn’t. A local general practitioner would be far too common. Nothing but a Harley Street specialist would be good enough for the Barton’s mistress.
‘No, she’s not,’ Joan confirmed with a steely glint in her eye as she slid his bag towards him across the top of the reception desk. ‘But that won’t stop you going up there to see if she needs help, not when Molly asked you to.’
‘All right, Joan. Smooth your feathers down. I’m going,’ he soothed as he took the bag from her. ‘Let Molly know I’m on my way.’
‘I already did,’ she gloated slyly. ‘She’s leaving the front door open, so you can walk straight in.’
On the drive over to the Barton, Quinn couldn’t help thinking about the irony of the situation.
Obviously, he was already lining up the various scenarios that could have caused a woman of Constance Adamson’s age to collapse, preparing himself to deal with those he could treat and organise help for those he couldn’t. At the same time, he was marvelling at the fact that he was actually going to be walking in through the front door when the last time he’d approached it, it had been firmly closed in his face.
‘What a difference sixteen years makes,’ he muttered, as he grabbed his bag and crunched his way across the neatly raked gravel. The ornate wooden door yawned widely at the top of the shallow steps. ‘From persona non grata to command performance.’
He stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind him, deliberately blocking the memories of the last time he’d caught a glimpse inside this cavernous entrance hall. He certainly wasn’t going to allow himself to wonder if Faith was here.
‘Hello?’ he called, glancing towards the grand staircase curving up towards the bedrooms. ‘Molly? Where are you?’
‘In here, Doctor.’ The familiar silvery grey head appeared around the corner at the end of the hall. ‘She’s in the drawing room.’
Quickly, he followed her, only realising which room he was entering when the memories burst over him like an avalanche.
This was the room with the French doors that opened out onto the balustraded terrace and gardens with the stunning views over half a county; the room with the polished wooden floor, sumptuous draperies and luxurious furniture where a beautiful grand piano took pride of place; the room where Faith had written her first composition after the first time the two of them had—
‘I came in to tell her that her lunch was ready,’ Molly said, interrupting a memory that he’d never been able to forget, no matter how hard he’d tried over the years. ‘I could tell she was in a lot of pain, so I rang the surgery straight away.’
‘Who is her usual doctor? Do you know?’ Quinn bent over the woman he’d only ever spoken to once in his life—the day she’d told him that Faith didn’t want to see him again—and deliberately switched off his emotions.
Had she had a heart attack, too? What were the chances that he’d have to deal with two of them in a week in a relatively rural practice, let alone two in the space of a morning?
‘She sees some high and mighty chap in Harley Street,’ Molly said, confirming what Joan had told him. ‘I don’t know his name, but I could find it in her desk. Is it important?’
She was slumped into the corner of the high-backed chair and she looked dreadful…barely alive. Her skin was pale and waxen and her eyes, the dark blue eyes that she’d bequeathed to her daughter, were sunken and shadowed, hidden behind tissue-thin lids.
‘Mrs Adamson? Can you hear me? I’m just going to check you over to see if I can find out what’s the matter.’ Her pulse was faint and thready and felt as if it would hardly be strong enough to keep a mouse alive. Her breathing was shallow and irregular, as if it was just too much effort for her to cope with.
‘Molly, could you ask someone to get the oxygen cylinder from my car?’ He held out the keys. At least he could help her body with its fight for life. ‘It’s in the—’
‘Don’t bother,’ the autocratic voice rasped, a mere shadow of its former self. ‘I won’t be here long enough to need it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Quinn demanded sharply, several scenarios jostling in his head. It seemed unlikely that Constance Adamson would have deliberately taken an overdose of drugs—she just wasn’t the sort. Did she take digitalis for a heart problem? Had she delayed too long before she’d slipped the tablet under her tongue? Was it some sort of interaction between two different drugs, accidentally taken together?
‘I’m dying,’ she said flatly, as though disdaining wasting any breath on beating about the bush.
‘No!’ Molly exclaimed, clearly shocked. ‘It’s just a bug. You must have picked up a bug when you went away to see Faith’s concert. I noticed you were looking poorly when you came home. You’ll soon be better when the doctor gives you some antibiotics and then—’
‘Molly…No…’ The words were barely above a hoarse whisper but they silenced the frantic babble of the housekeeper’s attempt at denial. ‘It’s cancer.’
She finally opened her eyes and focused intently on Quinn.
He shivered in spite of the warmth of the room. There was something very strange about the way she was looking at him, lingering over each feature almost as if she was deliberately committing his dark hair, green eyes and stubborn jaw to memory—as if she didn’t want to forget what he looked like.
‘Inoperable?’ he asked, hardly needing her answering nod.
Behind him he could hear Molly trying to stifle her sobs but all his concentration was on the woman in front of him, indomitable even when she had less strength than a newborn kitten.
‘How long have they given you?’ he asked, and was jolted by the flash of spirit in her eyes.
‘They gave me a month or two…six months ago,’ she said with a touch of pride. ‘But I’d just discovered…that there were things I still had to do…Things I had to put right…if I could.’
‘And have you done them?’ he challenged, shocked to discover that he could admire the woman he’d disliked for so many years. How could he not when she’d fought death for a stay of execution and won so much extra time?
‘As much as I can,’ she wheezed. ‘The rest of it is out of my hands…and, anyway, I’ve run out of time.’ She coughed weakly and he found himself sliding a supporting arm around her shoulders to see if that would ease her breathing a little.
It took several minutes before she opened her eyes again, this time to look across at Molly.
‘I’m sorry…old friend…’ she whispered. ‘I wanted to spare you…but I couldn’t stay in the hospice…I wanted…I needed to come home…to die at the Barton.’
By the time she’d finished speaking she was visibly struggling for her next breath and he was convinced that each would be her last. Then she opened her eyes again and he could see that she was still fighting the inevitable.
‘Do something…for me…’ she breathed weakly, her blue gaze fierce in her colourless face.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked quietly, wondering if she was finally going to give in and allow him to administer pain relief and running a mental checklist of the relative merits of what he carried in his bag. This near to her, he could already smell death hovering close by. If it weren’t for her fierce determination, she would already be gone. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Promise me…’ She was fading fast, now, her words all but inaudible even though he leaned as near as possible. ‘Promise…you won’t take no for an answer…this time.’
‘What…?’ Before he could complete the question, she glared at him.
‘Promise!’ she hissed with the last of her strength.
‘I promise,’ he said, and she slumped against him, her body under the elegant clothes so thin that she was little more than skin and bones.
He had no idea what he’d given his word to, and he had no chance to ask her. It was almost as if his promise had been the last thing she’d wanted to fight for because as soon as he’d given it, she’d lapsed into unconsciousness.
Even though it was unlikely that she knew he was there, he sat beside her, holding her hand for the little time that remained of her life. He knew he had other places he needed to be and sleep he needed to catch up on, but somehow they faded into insignificance against the strange need he had to be with the woman who’d helped to break his heart so long ago.
‘Goodbye,’ he murmured, when her heart finally beat for the last time, wishing strangely that he could have known her better. Gutsy was far too earthy a word to describe such an elegant woman, but it certainly suited her spirit and he couldn’t help but admire her.
He sighed heavily as his exhaustion descended on him with a vengeance. There was so much he had to do, not least contact the coroner to notify him of Constance Adamson’s death. Thank goodness Joan had been able to contact Andrew to take over his home visits this afternoon. At least none of his other patients had been neglected while he’d been at the Barton.
‘Oh, Doctor, I didn’t know,’ Molly sobbed. ‘I promise you, I had no idea that she was so sick or I would have—’
‘Shh, Molly. Shh!’ he soothed, wrapping a comforting arm around her shaking shoulders. ‘There was nothing you could have done. This was obviously the way she wanted things…and she always wanted things to be done her way, didn’t she?’
‘You’re right there.’ Molly gave a watery chuckle that soon dissolved into tears again. ‘Oh, Doctor, what am I going to tell Faith? How am I going to tell her that her mother was dying and I didn’t know?’
‘You’ll tell her exactly that,’ he said firmly. ‘If Herself had wanted everyone to know, she’d have told them, wouldn’t she?’ He fought a silent battle with himself, subduing the strange mixture of antipathy and excitement at the thought of speaking to Faith after so many years to add, ‘I could tell her, if you want me to.’
‘Oh, no, Doctor, I couldn’t ask you to do that,’ she objected, visibly drawing herself together as she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘I know you used to live around here, and you’ve done very well for yourself, being a doctor and all, but I couldn’t let a stranger tell Faith about her mother. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘A stranger…’ he muttered aloud into the seclusion of his car as he drove away a short while later, following the ambulance down the driveway. ‘I hadn’t realised just how successful she’d been at keeping her relationship with one of the lower orders a secret.’ The year they’d had together, working towards the exams that would take them both to medical school, had been so special to him that he’d barely noticed the rest of the world. Nothing had existed outside his studies and spending time with Faith. Even his father’s deepening depression and drunken rages had paled into insignificance against the way he’d felt when they’d been together.
And yet, in essence, wasn’t that what they were to each other these days…strangers?
Granted, they hadn’t seen each other in sixteen years, but once upon a time they’d thought they’d known each other well enough to make plans to marry and spend the rest of their lives together. Then, just weeks before they had been due to take up their coveted places, Faith had walked away without a backward glance, so he obviously hadn’t known her as well as he’d thought. The girl he’d thought he’d been in love with and who had seemed to return his love every bit as passionately would never have done such a thing.
He reversed into his reserved parking space and just sat there for a moment, trying to get his thoughts in order. He still had several hours of paperwork to do after this morning’s surgery and he needed to catch up on what Andrew had found when he’d covered the home visits this afternoon. And he wouldn’t be able to do any of that effectively if his thoughts were taken up with old memories of Faith.
She was part of his past—one of the more painful parts of his past—and that was where she would stay. He’d gone on with his life, he reminded himself doggedly. He was successful and busy and fulfilled, and if he sometimes delayed going home at night because he couldn’t face the emptiness of staring at four blank walls…well, even that was something he’d become accustomed to over the years.
The thing he’d never become accustomed to was the dreams.
Sometimes he would go months, even years, without one. Then out of the blue he’d wake up in the darkness drenched in sweat while his heart pounded with the effort of racing after something he could never catch; something that was always just out of his sight in the surrounding darkness, but something so precious that his sleeping self was willing to pursue until he finally caught it.
In the light of day he would never admit that it was probably Faith and the love he’d thought they’d shared that he was trying to find. If he were to admit it, he would also have to admit that it was something he was never going to achieve, and that would mean that he was condemned to dream of her for ever.