eyes gleamed at her perceptiveness. ‘Precisely,’ he observed, his voice equally thoughtful.
Their answer came soon enough. Once Mrs Anderson had been gently persuaded into the house and into a dressing-gown Callum was able to assess his patient properly.
Only when he had concluded his examination did Callum turn to Nancy. ‘Mrs Anderson is wheezy and has a slight cough and temperature. Do you want to have a shot at a diagnosis?’
‘Could it be a chest infection?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Which would make her more than usually confused?’
He nodded. ‘I think so. I’m going to admit her to the medical ward at St Saviour’s—that’s if they have a bed!’
They did, although Callum had to sweet-talk the admitting team into allocating them one.
‘Hospital beds are like gold dust these days,’ he complained as he talked Nancy through the admission procedure, before setting off for the surgery.
A moment’s peace and quiet seemed equally elusive, thought Nancy with a touch of amusement.
‘Coping OK so far?’ he asked her, as they buckled themselves back into the car.
‘So far,’ she grinned, wondering what had caused his grumpiness earlier but then dismissing the thought because when he was being sunny and helpful like this she could have stuck to his side like glue all day.
THE house was in darkness, and it was seven forty-five before Nancy finally fumbled around in her briefcase for her house keys. She pushed open the front door of the modern glass and steel townhouse she called home and listened for the sound of her husband.
Silence.
She felt a moment’s disloyalty for the rush of relief she experienced as she closed the door behind her and switched on the light.
‘Steve?’ she called, more out of habit than anything else, as a soft light illuminated the spacious hall.
She checked the answerphone but there were no messages so she went upstairs and changed out of the rather formal navy suit, which Steve had bought for her, into jeans and a big, floppy sweater. Then she came back down, made some tea and sat at the kitchen table, drinking it, while she decided whether it was worth cooking supper.
Steve was so unpredictable, that was the trouble. Sometimes—usually when she had pulled all the stops out with an exotic new recipe and bought candles and flowers—he would moan that he had eaten an enormous business lunch and that he simply wasn’t hungry.
At other times—and this always seemed to coincide with Nancy being too dog-tired from working to even think about food—he would complain that she never seemed able to provide the same creature comforts as the wives of his partners. Women who, from Steve’s glowing descriptions, seemed to embody all the qualities which made up the ideal wife. They cooked, they cleaned, they sewed and they gardened, and—apparently—achieved a blissful state of contentment from all these activities.
In other words, thought Nancy, trying to subdue a trace of bitterness as she slipped at her tea, wives without children who did no work outside the home.
She yawned as she thought back over her first afternoon in practice. It had been hard work. Non-stop, in fact. After visits and a baby clinic, which had run over time, they’d had what had seemed like an endless evening surgery, composed mostly of patients complaining of sore throats.
Then the medical registrar from St Saviour’s had rung to say that a chest X-ray on Mrs Anderson had confirmed Nancy’s and Callum’s diagnosis of a chest infection, and that they were going to start her on a regime of intravenous antibiotics.
It was after one of the receptionists had rung through to ask if Callum could squeeze an extra patient onto the end of his already long evening surgery that Nancy had turned on him and said, half in amusement and half in exasperation, ‘Is it always like this?’
He’d looked up from scrubbing his hands, which the last patient—a baby—had been sick over. ‘Like what?’
‘Busy!’
‘Busy?’ He’d pulled an expressive face as he’d dried his hands on a paper towel and thought back to how it had been just before Christmas. ‘This is a doddle, Nancy. Just you wait until a flu bug sweeps the community and then you’ll understand the meaning of busy!’
‘I can’t wait,’ Nancy had said faintly, but his remark had brought home to her that, contrary to what their hospital colleagues might have imagined, general practice was certainly not a relaxed way to idle away the day!
Nancy leaned her elbows dreamily on the table as her mind drifted over everything they had accomplished during that busy afternoon. Because, despite the unaccustomedly frantic pace, it had also been one of the most interesting days of her medical career so far.
Or was that simply because Callum Hughes was such an astute and sympathetic teacher... ?
She opened up the textbook which Callum had loaned her and began to read about red eye in general practice, becoming so engrossed in the subject that she didn’t hear the front door open and close—didn’t hear anything, in fact, until a slight movement arrested her attention and she looked up to find Steve standing in the doorway, watching her.
‘Hello,’ said Nancy, her eyes sweeping over his face in an attempt to try and gauge what kind of mood he was in.
His eyes were glittering hectically as he stared at the book she was reading and then let his gaze move slowly around the kitchen. ‘And what’s for supper?’ he asked carefully, in an oddly controlled voice which immediately told Nancy that he had been drinking, even if she hadn’t been able to smell it on his breath from the other side of the kitchen.
Seeing from the wall clock that it was now gone nine, she closed the textbook and smiled brightly, ‘To be honest, I hadn’t really given it a thought—’
‘I can see that!’ he sneered, opening the fridge door and taking out a bottle of white wine. ‘Too busy with your precious textbooks again.’
‘But, Steve, you weren’t even at home,’ she said, putting on her most reasonable voice, ‘so what was the point of preparing something when I wasn’t even sure you’d want it?’
‘I called you earlier,’ he responded icily, as he began to twist the corkscrew into the bottle, ‘and you were out.’
‘But there were no messages on the answerphone!’ Nancy pointed out in confusion. ‘I looked!’
Steve’s eyes glittered dangerously. ‘So you’ve been checking up on me, have you?’
‘No,’ answered Nancy steadily. ‘Why should I want to do that?’
He shrugged. ‘You tell me,’ came the slightly threatening reply.
His handsome face looked ugly—bloated and red with drink—and Nancy was aware that she was handling this all wrong and that by sounding so defensive it was giving him the opportunity to attack her.
‘Are
