to ask you about that, if it’s all right with you?’
‘There is...nothing.’ The sudden look of hostility in Mercy’s eyes spoke far louder than her words.
‘I’m sure there isn’t. But can we ask, all the same?’
Charlotte leaned towards Mercy, a look of gentle encouragement on her face, and Mercy shrugged.
‘Okay, then. Well, you seemed not to hear or see me for a little while. Has that happened to you before?’
Mercy’s gaze flipped sullenly from Charlotte to Edward, then back again.
‘It doesn’t make you a bad person, Mercy. A little boy in my son’s class at school has the same thing.’
‘He does?’
‘Mmm-hmm. The doctors can stop it, though. Dr Edward could stop it.’
‘Can you?’ Mercy’s gaze fixed on Edward.
‘Yes.’ He wondered whether he should say more and decided not to. Charlotte would fill in any of the details that she thought were necessary.
‘We’ll have to do some tests.’
Apparently a quick wrinkle of the nose was enough to help describe a blood test to rule anything else out, and an EEG which would pick up any unusual electrical activity in Mercy’s brain.
‘They’re okay. They don’t hurt.’
‘And you can cure it?’
‘Of course. If it’s what we think it might be, then it might well just stop all of its own accord when you get a bit older. In the meantime we can stop it.’ Charlotte reached forward, taking Mercy’s hand. ‘But Dr Edward needs to know all about this first, so he can do the right thing.’
Mercy hesitated. ‘Some people say that this is a bad spirit...’
‘No. It’s nothing like that, Mercy. Trust me. Sometimes we just...skip a beat for a few moments.’ Mercy looked unconvinced, and Charlotte tried again. ‘Dr Edward told you that he could make your arm better, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he did, right?’ She waited for Mercy’s nod. ‘Then ask him if this has anything to do with bad spirits.’
Mercy seemed disinclined to ask a second time, but Edward answered anyway. ‘It’s nothing to do with anything like that, I promise you. It’s an illness, and we can make you well with medicine.’
Mercy nodded. ‘I do skip a beat sometimes.’
‘How often? How many times every day?’ Edward leaned forward.
‘Three or four. Sometimes more.’
Charlotte nodded, as if that was just the right number of times to ‘skip a beat’ every day. ‘And how long has this been happening?’
Mercy shrugged. ‘Always.’
‘Mmm...’ Charlotte seemed to approve of that, too, although Edward couldn’t see its significance. ‘So is it all right if we do the tests, then? Like I said, they won’t hurt.’
‘Yes, Nurse Efie.’
A quick nod of her head and she turned to Edward. ‘Blood test?’
‘It’s what I’d do.’ He couldn’t resist teasing her, just a little. ‘Want me to go and fetch a kit for you?’
She rolled her eyes at him to conceal her smile. ‘No. I’ll go.’
* * *
‘Nurse Efie, eh?’ Edward leaned against the railings of the hospital’s roof garden, the breeze rearranging his hair into the maverick version of his usual clean-cut style. ‘So come on, then. What’s mine?’
‘I didn’t ask. You can find out for yourself. Mercy will tell you.’ Charlotte took a sip of her coffee. ‘She really likes you. Says that you’re kind.’
‘Does she?’ The idea seemed to surprise him.
‘So what’s wrong with being kind?’ She grinned up at him.
‘Nothing. I try to be kind. I’m not as good with people as you are, though.’
‘I think you underestimate yourself. Didn’t you see her face when you walked into her room this morning?’
Either Edward didn’t have an answer to that, or he wasn’t sharing. ‘So what made you cotton on to the name thing?’
‘The mother of one of my patients told me, years ago. Apparently it’s quite important which day you were born on in some parts of Africa. I just gave her the information about when Isaac was born to see if she’d pick up on it.’
Edward nodded. ‘I’ll have to find out a bit more about that...’
‘Poor old Archie. He’s not going to have his name changed, is he?’
‘I don’t think so. It would probably confuse him. Cats are all instinct and not much brain.’ He took another sip of coffee. ‘So I’ve put a call in to the Head of Neurology. Is there anything else I should know? I’m wondering whether there’s any connection between the seizures that Mercy’s been having and the burst eardrum?’
‘I don’t think so. We mainly just talked, but Mercy said that after her parents died she lived with an uncle. I think that was when she was beaten, because she said that her aunt made her deaf.’
Edward shook his head, staring at his coffee. ‘Someone would have had to hit her pretty hard.’
‘Yes. But she was having the seizures before then. So hopefully the two things are unconnected and the seizures aren’t a result of brain damage.’
She looked up at Edward and he blinked quickly. Took a swig of his coffee, and then wiped his eye.
‘Something in your eye?’
‘No. Yes, probably.’ Whatever it was it seemed to be a source of embarrassment.
‘Want me to take a look?’
‘I think I’ll manage.’ He took another mouthful of coffee. ‘These kids... We have to do something...’
Charlotte laid her hand on his arm. Tried not to think about the way the hard muscle flexed at her touch and to convince herself that this was simple reassurance. ‘You are doing something. You’ve given her back the use of her arm. She knows that, and she says that she’s going to exercise every day.’
‘It’s not enough.’
‘It’s what we can do.’
If the other nurses at the clinic could see them now. Edward, impassioned and almost weeping over a patient. Charlotte, resorting to reason and logic. It was so unexpected as to be almost bizarre.
