‘Sam, be a love and see if your grandfather wants anything, would you? Tell him I’ll be up in a minute.’
‘I went last time. Get Felix to go.’
‘Felix is doing his maths homework.’
‘OK, OK.’
‘And stop sighing.’
Sam sighed. Cat leaned on the kitchen table and took a deep breath. It had been a difficult day. She had told the partners at the practice that she was leaving, though not until the new year. When she had explained why, both had told her she was mad and that the whole new enterprise was both unethical and doomed to failure. The surgery had been overflowing with people who could have treated themselves or gone to a pharmacist, but one small child had been brought in with a temperature of almost 104. It had measles, the mother had a new baby, and did not ‘believe in’ vaccines. The child was now critically ill in Bevham General and the baby might well have caught the disease too. With luck and appropriate, emergency treatment, both should recover, but it was not a given. And her father was at home, ill, though with what she was not sure, refusing to see any other doctor, cantankerous and difficult. Kieron, having had to let him in and make him comfortable until she had returned, had opted out. He had cheerfully, willingly, taken on Cat’s children and treated them as his own. Her father was another matter. Cat did not blame him in the least. But he was seriously ill, he had nowhere else to go, and …
‘Blood is thicker than water,’ she said aloud, and went to pour a glass of wine. A rack of lamb was in the fridge and the steamer was stacked with freshly prepared vegetables, a pan with peeled potatoes in water. She felt a spurt of guilt at having sent Sam upstairs, when he had already done all this, and unasked.
‘He wants you.’
‘Sam … thanks for getting all this ready.’
‘I can’t cook it.’
‘Time you learned. But for now, this is great. What did he say he wanted?’
‘You. Now. Kieron in tonight?’
‘Yes. Supper at half eight.’
‘That’s hours.’
‘Don’t start making a pile of toast to be going on with. Bag of crisps and that’s it, or you won’t want your supper. And take off your jacket or you won’t feel the benefit of it when you go out.’ He dodged the flying dishcloth and took his crisps off into the den.
Richard was a poor colour and thin in the face, puffy under his eyes. She could hear the sandpaper sound of his breathing from the doorway,
‘I’m going to take your temp and listen to your chest.’
‘I need the lavatory but I’m not feeling steady enough on my own.’
‘Sam would have helped you, Dad.’
‘And you won’t?’
‘Of course I will. I just meant there was no need to send him away. Come on.’ She turned back the bedclothes.
He was very hot, his skin dry. When he got back into bed sweat was running down his face.
His temperature was too high, and, ignoring his arguments, she listened to his chest carefully.
‘Any pain?’
‘No.’
‘Sure?’
‘I’m tired. Ache a bit. It’s influenza obviously, Catherine. Get me some paracetamol and a whisky and I’ll sleep it off.’
‘Paracetamol yes, whisky no, and you have pneumonia, Dad. You should be in hospital.’
‘Rubbish. If everyone with a touch of pneumonia took up a bed …’
‘All the same.’
‘I am staying here, you’re a competent doctor, more experience than whatever junior houseman I’d be blessed with. It’ll be viral. I don’t need antibiotics.’
‘Hmm. I’m going to send a sputum sample off to the lab in the morning and then we’ll know. You should eat something … egg whisked in milk with a spoonful of sugar.’
He snorted. ‘Nutritious. Easy to digest. I’ll get you a jug of iced water as well. Hopefully, your temperature will go down with the meds and you should sleep. I’ll leave your door open tonight.’
‘Will you kindly stop treating me like a small, mentally defective child?’
‘What I can’t fathom is how you drove up through France, crossed the Channel, drove here with a sky-high fever without collapsing.’
He turned his head away.
Kieron sent a message to say he would be very late, and Felix had taken himself to bed with his book. So she and Sam ate together, without much conversation. When she tried to bring him gently round to talking about his future he blocked her, and retreated to the den after filling the dishwasher.
Cat slipped into Richard’s room. He was asleep, his breathing poor, but he was cooler. She touched his forehead which was clammy and put the bedclothes back over him but he threw them off again. She had never nursed him. She could rarely remember him being ill other than having the occasional cold. Her mother had been the same, and toughness gave no quarter for those less robust. As children they had been sent to school through most ailments other than a clearly infectious rash. ‘You’ll feel better when you get there and if you don’t they’ll ring me.’ In those days, though, school rarely rang. You were put on a hard camp bed with a single blanket and a bucket beside you in case you were sick, and the school secretary looked in on you with brisk, cheerful encouragement now and again.
She smiled now, remembering the smell of Dettol and floor polish and the feel of the rough grey blanket under her chin.
She stood for several minutes looking at Richard, listening to his breathing, feeling nothing but a detached, medical concern. He had behaved in a way that had shaken her and made her feel ashamed. She also felt that she not only did not know him, but never had.
When Kieron came in she was asleep and he did not disturb her. What woke her was the sound of Richard coughing, retching, struggling to get his breath.
It took forty-five minutes for the ambulance to arrive.