been delayed until the early hours of this morning then he might have been able to tackle all this before surgery began.
He dropped his briefcase on the floor and said something rather impolite underneath his breath as he quickly divided the pile into two.
‘Sorry?’ said Jenny McDavid, his practice manager, whose comfortable, plump appearance belied her briskly efficient manner. She had followed him into the room with a long list of telephone message for Purbrook Surgery’s most popular doctor. ‘What was that you said, Dr Hughes?’
‘Unrepeatable,’ growled Callum, his craggy face lighting up as one of the receptionists came into the surgery, bearing an enormous cup of steaming coffee. ‘Oh, thanks, Judy,’ he murmured gratefully. ‘Just what I need! I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a biscuit?’
‘I bought you a Danish from the bakery on my way into work,’ dimpled Judy, her expression as eager as a teenager’s instead of a grandmother of two. ‘In case you missed breakfast. As you so often do, Doctor!’ she remonstrated gently. ‘I’ll go and get it!’ And she sped out of the office to return minutes later with a succulent concoction, glistening with lemon syrup and studded with nuts and raisins.
‘Mmm,’ said Callum ecstatically, as he bit into it. ‘Thanks, Judy!’ he called after the receptionist’s retreating form.
Jenny shook her head with a look of mock bewilderment. ‘I just don’t know how you do it, Callum Hughes,’ she told him sternly. ‘I really don’t.’
‘Do what?’ he queried, an innocent smile lightening his face as he lowered his large frame into the chair with surprising grace for so tall a man.
‘Have every woman in this practice eating out of your hand—’
‘Surely it’s me eating out of her hand!’ he joked, holding the pastry aloft.
‘Running around after you,’ continued Jenny, trying her best to sound severe but failing spectacularly when confronted by the distracting dazzle of his green eyes. ‘Buying your meals and doing your shopping,’ she continued. ‘And collecting your shirts from the dry-cleaners—’
‘But I’m a busy man!’ he protested.
‘And they are busy women!’ she retorted. ‘With homes and families of their own to run.’
‘On what grounds are you objecting, Jenny?’ he asked mildly, as he fixed her with a stare from his narrowed green eyes. ‘Am I exploiting them? Well, am I?’
Jenny pursed her lips as she silently acknowledged the ridiculously over-generous bonuses he gave to each staff member every Christmas. She had to admit that most of them would have run round after him if he had just given them one of his heart-warming smiles! ‘No, you’re not exploiting them,’ she agreed reluctantly, ‘but...’
Callum’s green eyes twinkled mischievously. ‘But?’
‘It’s about time you found yourself a wife, Callum Hughes!’ Jenny declared boldly.
Callum clutched dramatically at his throat with an expression of horror. ‘Don’t allow anyone with feminist principles hear you say that, Mrs McDavid!’ he declared. ‘The implication being that the principal duty of a wife is to run around after her husband—’
‘And isn’t it?’ asked Jenny cynically.
He shook his dark head and overlong strands of hair tickled his suntanned neck, reminding him that he really should have found the time to have a haircut before coming back to work. ‘Not at all.’ He shook his dark head. ‘Marriage should be an equal partnership.’
‘You really believe that?’
‘I really do,’ he agreed solemnly, though that irrepressible glint was still lurking in the depths of his green eyes.
‘Then no wonder you’ve remained single all this time,’ sighed Jenny as she stared into his craggily handsome face, thinking that if ever Dr Hughes did get around to marrying the woman who finally won him over would be fortunate indeed. She glanced down at the list in her hand. ‘Here are your messages.’
‘Anything urgent?’
She shook her head as she scanned the list. ‘Not really. We dealt with all the most pressing stuff. And—oh.’ Her face became slightly wary, as if she was the bearer of bad news. ‘Mr Petersham, the general surgeon from St Saviour’s, rang to say that he had operated on Emma Miles. He spoke to Dr Davenport—’
She halted in mid-flow as Callum lifted one hand for silence and with the other punched out the extension number of his partner. But she wasn’t offended by his occasionally peremptory approach—Callum Hughes was such a brilliant doctor that he could get away with murder, she thought.
‘David?’ said Callum. ‘Sorry to disturb you, but I’ve just got back and I believe you spoke to Mike Petersham at St Saviour’s?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ came the voice of his partner.
‘And?’ But the strained quality of those three words told Callum that the prognosis was bleak, as he had feared.
‘He wanted you to know that your suspected diagnosis of carcinoma of the stomach was correct,’ said David reluctantly. ‘He has operated and done just about everything he can, but it doesn’t look very good. I’m terribly sorry, Callum. I know how close you are to Emma and her family.’
Callum went through the motions of thanking his colleague, then put the phone down and shook his dark head as if in denial. Two deep frown marks furrowed deep lines on his forehead. ‘Damn!’ he protested on a groan, reflecting—not for the first time—how fundamentally unfair life could be. ‘Damn and damn and damn!’
‘Bad?’ said Jenny.
The practice manager was too intelligent not to know everything that was going on in the various surgeries. She was also the soul of discretion. ‘Worse than bad,’ grated Callum, feeling raw with the pain of such unwelcome knowledge. ‘Emma is far too young and beautiful to have contracted something like this. Is she still in hospital?’
Jenny nodded. ‘She is—on Poplar Ward. Will you go and see her?’
‘Of course I will,’ he sighed, as he thought of Emma’s youth and determination and beauty. He felt like raging against an uncaring God, but that would do her no good. Nor him. Nor the rest of his patients, some of whom would infuriate him with their insignificant little problems which were nothing compared to what Emma was going to have to endure during the next however many months she had left to live.
He made a mental note to ask Judy or one of the other receptionists to buy him a bunch of flowers to take with him. Or maybe she would prefer a book?
‘That’s probably the most pressing thing,’ Jenny continued gently. ‘The library at the hospital rang to say that they’ve managed to trace that new paper on asthma you wanted. Oh, and your new registrar rang up to say that she’s looking forward to her first morning with you. That’s this morning,’ she added helpfully.
Callum narrowed his eyes, briefly disconcerted by hearing the hospital term which sounded so out of place in his surgery. ‘My new what?’ he demanded.
