Mrs Major’s hands and talking soothingly to her.
‘She’s going into a hypo, Polly. I’ll have to give her some IV dextrose, I think. What’s her blood sugar?’
‘One point five.’
‘I wonder if we can get it up with food?’ Matt suggested, eyeing the biscuits, but Mrs Major by now was beyond co-operating. ‘Polly, could you draw me up ten mls of twenty-per-cent dextrose?’ he asked over his shoulder, then, scooping the nearly comatose woman up in his arms, he laid her gently on the couch and rolled up her sleeve; putting a tourniquet around her upper arm, he started looking for a vein.
‘Can’t find one. They’re all contracted down—ah, here’s one.’ Taking the syringe from Polly, he inserted the needle, pulled back to check the positioning in the vein and then flicking off the tourniquet, slowly injected the glucose solution.
The effect was remarkable. Mrs Major groaned and rolled on to her side, complaining of nausea, and Polly grabbed a kidney dish and pushed it under her chin in the nick of time.
‘Well done, Pollyanna,’ Matt murmured, withdrawing the needle and dropping the used syringe into the yellow sharps bin. Mrs Major was groaning, and Matt laid his hand over the vein and pressed firmly.
‘Hello, there. How are you feeling?’
She attempted a smile. ‘Awful. I have been for days. I think maybe Nurse Barnes is right.’
Matt raised an eyebrow at Polly.
‘There is some possibility that Mrs Major is pregnant,’ Polly explained quietly. ‘Her blood pressure’s lower than usual, and she’s been nauseated in the mornings.’
Matt nodded. ‘Let’s just have a look at you, Mrs Major,’ he suggested, and helped her undo her skirt and slide it down to her hips. He checked her eyes and throat, the glands in her neck and under her arms, and listened to her chest before moving down to palpate her abdomen gently. ‘When did your last period start?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been trying to think. The day we finished putting in the central heating,’ she decided. ‘That was the end of September—twenty-seventh, something like that?’
Polly picked up a calendar. ‘That makes you ten days overdue, Mrs Major.’
Oh,’ she said, subdued.
‘Oh, Matt echoed. ‘Would it be bad news?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really—although I don’t know what James will say.’
Matt smiled. ‘If it’s simply a case of accelerating your plunge into parenthood, he’ll probably get used to it very quickly. If not, well, he’ll come round, I’m sure. I’m much more concerned about your physical well-being at the moment. Certainly there’s nothing else obviously wrong with you. Is your diabetes normally well controlled?’
‘Yes—well, it has been. It’s only recently that I’ve been feeling off-colour, but I really have tried to eat.’
‘You must—I know that sounds impossibly trite, but you know the importance of maintaining your intake of carbohydrates. Try eating crackers and drinking cold water with ice in it. Slices of apple are supposed to be very good, too. Get James to wait on you a bit.’ He grinned. ‘Do him good. Men have it far too easy during pregnancy—always assuming that’s what’s wrong with you! I suppose it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a sample of urine and run a pregnancy test, Polly. Can you sort that out?’
Polly nodded. Of course. Do you want Mrs Major to come back this afternoon if it’s positive?’
Matt shook his head. ‘I don’t think there’s any need. If you find you can’t eat, then we can arrange for you to go into hospital so that you can be consistently monitored and maintained. Hopefully it won’t come to that—I don’t think it will—but they may want to take over your ante-natal care.’
‘Aren’t there any pills you can give me?’
‘I’d rather not,’ he said, after a slight pause. ‘I’m never sure about them. Let’s give it a whirl without first. I’m sure you’ll be all right.’
He rose to his feet and limped to the door.
‘Oh!’ Mrs Major exclaimed ‘You’ve hurt yourself!’
He gave her a lopsided grin. ‘Polly beat me up,’ he said sorrowfully.
‘Ignore him,’ Polly advised, throwing him a black look and fighting down another blush.
He limped off down the corridor, chuckling quietly. Polly explained to the bemused patient that Matt had nearly been run off the road that morning.
‘Lucky for him you were there!’ Mrs Major said, and Polly smiled tightly. She was not a vindictive person, but this tetanus injection was beginning to sound attractive!
It was much later that Polly got her revenge, and it wasn’t at all as she had expected. She met up with Matt over lunch—a snack taken in Reception after he came back from doing house calls, while he explained what he wanted her to do during the ante-natal clinics. First she was to weigh each patient and take her blood pressure, then check her urine with the Multistix, entering the results on the co-op card as well as the patient’s notes. Then Matt wanted her present to chaperon during examinations, but not otherwise. There were six patients booked for the afternoon session, and he ran over the notes quickly with Polly. There was nothing unusual about any of them, except for one elderly primip, a thirty-five-year-old unmarried woman who had decided she wanted a child.
‘She shouldn’t be a problem,’ Matt said, ‘she’s very fit and healthy. She’s in a stable relationship but there’s no question of marriage, so don’t ask her, and for goodness’ sake don’t call her Mrs Harding. It’s Ms—on pain of death! On the other hand, this very married lady——’ he thrust some notes at Polly ‘—Sarah Goddard, has three children already. The last one was born in the car on the way to hospital, and she only just got there with the second. Going on her record, we’ve opted for a home delivery! She’s due at the beginning of January, but she probably won’t go to term. Right, I’ve got some letters to write and some results to sift through. I’ll see you at three on the dot. We’ve only got an hour, so we have to keep moving fairly rapidly. If anyone has a problem, we tend to run over and lose our tea break. I really don’t want to, especially as I’m on call tonight, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.’
He gave a wry smile, and Polly felt herself respond against her better judgement. He was such a tease, she thought, but such a nice person with it. She watched as he unfolded himself and limped cautiously towards the door.
‘Have you done anything about that leg yet?’ she asked, concerned despite herself.
He shook his head. ‘I can’t reach it to stitch it, but I think you’re right. I don’t suppose you’d like to do it now—that is, if I can trust you?’
Polly’s eyes widened. ‘Me?’ she mouthed.
‘You can suture, can’t you?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, but——’
‘But nothing. Please? Stephen and Mike are too busy, and I hate to see a good woman go to
