Country Doctor, Spring Bride

The sparkle had gone as quickly as it had come, but she was totally composed as she announced for the benefit of anyone listening, ‘The wedding preparations are on hold at the moment. We’re spending some time apart, but I will bear in mind that you would like me to be married here when the occasion arises.’

As they sat down with their drinks he murmured. ‘Well done and very subtle. I’m proud of you. That took some pluck. It should give you some breathing space and delay any surmises about the wedding dress for the time being.’

She flashed him a watery smile. ‘Thanks for being with me. It did make it easier. At least I’ve been able to give a hint of things to come.’

‘You have indeed, and now relax for a while, Kate. What shall we talk about?’

The smile was still there. “Sydenham’s chorea?’

‘No. We’ve given that enough of an airing until I have some results on young Billy.’ He sighed. ‘It’s been a week of coming into contact with some very unfortunate people, but of course that’s the doctor’s lot.

‘I had an anxious young woman consult me who is fighting breast cancer and is facing a mastectomy. She’s considering having both breasts removed to give herself a better chance and wanted my opinion.’

‘What did you advise?’

‘That she see the oncologist and get an opinion from her. She is under the hospital and I don’t know enough about her case to tell her what to do, but I could see sense in what she was contemplating.’

‘It makes one’s own troubles seem small compared to that kind of problem, doesn’t it?’ Kate said sombrely.

‘Hmm. But they don’t go away because of it, do they?’

She glanced at him curiously. ‘You don’t come over as having problems Although I do sense that you are alone. Do you not have any family?’

‘If you mean am I married, or in any other kind of relationship, the answer is no.’

‘Amazing,’ said Kate, wondering why such an attractive man was on his own.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Daniel levelly, as he sipped his drink.

‘Just that lots of women would see you as their dream man.’

He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. ‘Really? Well, I’m sure that you won’t get any of those sorts of ideas. Though saying that, I know how the minds of people on the rebound can work.’

As she was about to voice an indignant protest he went on, ‘I’m afraid that my life is not an open book, like yours. Some of its pages will stay closed for ever. Both my parents are dead. I had a fantastic childhood and would have wanted the same for any children I might have. But we don’t always get what we want, do we?’

‘So are the closed pages about your parents?’ Kate asked, rather annoyed about his assumption that she could be some sort of desperate woman on the rebound.

‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘They are not, and I think we should be making a move. If you can lie in bed in the morning, I can’t.’

‘What about my interview?’ Kate asked nervously.

‘Leave it with me. After the house calls and before the late surgery would be a good time, but I’ll have to check with Miriam so that she will be available to join us. I don’t want to go over her head in this.’

As they walked home in the quiet night beneath a sky full of stars Daniel said, ‘Do you think you might find working at the practice a bit tame after a busy A and E department?’

‘I didn’t before,’ she told him. ‘General practice might move at a slower pace, yet it’s just as challenging in its own way.’

Kate couldn’t help but feel hopeful. But she told herself she wasn’t there yet. There was nothing to say that she was the only person he had in mind for the position, and what about Miriam? Would she want her on the staff?

That night she dreamt about the wedding dress. That she’d gone to the wardrobe and it was hanging there unused and unwanted. In the dream she’d cried out in dismay and Daniel had come dashing in to see what was wrong.

‘You said you’d taken it to the charity shop!’ she’d sobbed.

‘What? The wedding dress? I did!’ he’d cried, and when she looked again it had gone.

She must have been crying out in her sleep because his voice broke into the dream and she woke up. He was outside her door, asking if she was all right. Getting slowly out of bed, she padded across in her nightdress and opened the door.

‘I was dreaming,’ she told him. ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’

‘It can’t have been very pleasant from the sound of it.’

‘It was about the wedding dress. I dreamt it was in the wardrobe and I thought it had come back to haunt me.’

‘Well, we both know that’s crazy, don’t we?’ he said calmly. ‘Go back to bed and I’ll go down and make you a drink. What would you like? Tea, coffee, hot chocolate?’

‘Hot chocolate would be lovely,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I am really so sorry that I disturbed you.’

‘You didn’t. I was reading for a while. Otherwise I mightn’t have heard you. You’re not likely to put a cancelled wedding behind you without bad moments, you know. Just take it one day at a time.’

She nodded meekly. ‘Yes. I will.’

It would have been their visit to the pub that had triggered the dream, she thought when he’d gone downstairs. They’d passed the charity shop on the way and she’d been acutely aware that inside it was her wedding dress.

She gratefully accepted the hot chocolate Daniel soon brought up to her. About to leave, he asked from the doorway of her bedroom, ‘Has your mother been in touch today?’

‘Yes. She rang this morning and sends her regards.’

‘Any signs of her coming home?’

‘Not so far,’ she told him with a feeling that he might be asking for various reasons. One of them being that he would be happy to pass her and her problems back into her mother’s keeping.

‘So your gran is no better?’

‘Mum says she’s improving, but has quite a way to go yet.’

‘The main thing is that she’s recovering. It must be a relief for you both, and now, if you promise not to have any more strange dreams, I’ll go and get some sleep myself, and will see you in the morning.’

‘Thanks once again for putting up with me,’ she said, her blue eyes appealing.

‘Don’t mention it,’ he replied dryly, and went to try and forget her for a few hours.

The next morning he said to Miriam, ‘I’m thinking of interviewing Kate Barrington for the position of a third doctor in the practice, and I’d like you to be there.’

‘Really?’ she said stiffly. ‘Since when?’

‘Since I have found her to be an intelligent and knowledgeable young doctor. Do you have any objections?’

‘If it reduces my workload, no. She has worked here before, you know.’

‘Yes. So I believe. What was she like then?’

‘Young, enthusiastic. Eager to learn, I suppose.’

‘So why didn’t she stay?’

‘The pull of hospital health care where she has been employed until very recently, I believe.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ he agreed, ‘but I think that Kate has given up on that and wants to be more home-based. So how about I ask her to come in tomorrow after we’ve finished the home visits?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said in her usual flat tones, and went to start her day.

That was one hurdle crossed, he thought when she’d gone. He had not been sure of how Miriam would react, but it seemed as if Kate had been highly suitable when she’d worked in the practice before, so she was already halfway to being taken on. He just wished that she was of a similar age to Miriam and just as unexciting, then she wouldn’t take over his thoughts so much.

He rang her in his lunch-hour to tell her about the interview time. She’d still been asleep when he’d left, but now she was up and about and happy to know that things were moving.

‘What did Miriam say?’ she wanted to know.

‘She seemed to approve of the idea.’

‘Oh, good! I’ll keep my fingers crossed, then, and, Daniel, whether you offer me the position or not, thank you for being so good to me.’

There was a moment’s silence at the other end of the line and then he said stiltedly, ‘Yes, well, thanks for that. The truth of the matter is that I’ve felt I owed it to your mother to look after you. Ruth has been very kind to me. You are very fortunate to have her in your life.’

When he’d replaced the receiver Kate wondered why she felt as if she’d been warned off. There was no reason why she should, but the feeling was there nonetheless. Maybe it was why Daniel was alone. There was something of the ‘don’t butt into my life’ about him.

Yet he seemed to get on fine with her mother and the villagers seemed to all like him. Perhaps it was just her that he was wary of. But why? She certainly hadn’t got any designs on him. Her heart was bruised and aching from what Craig had done to her. Yet, she thought with wry amusement, Daniel was the only man whose underwear she had ever laundered, though he’d made it clear at the time that he’d rather she hadn’t.

She decided that tomorrow she wouldn’t put a foot wrong. If nothing else, she would get a smile out of Miriam.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN Kate arrived for the interview Daniel’s first thought was, Wow! The young doctor from A and E was out to make a statement, he decided. With hair brushed into a smooth gold bob, light make-up accentuating her delicately boned features, and dressed in a smart black trouser suit with a white silk shirt and black leather shoes with medium heels, she looked more like a young executive than a country GP. It would be interesting to observe Miriam’s reaction when she saw the prospective newcomer to the practice, he thought. As for himself, he just wished that Kate would stop weakening his resolve, though he had only himself to blame for that. He was the one who’d asked her to come for an interview in spite of not wanting to get too close to her.

But turning up looking so stunning wasn’t going to get her the job. It would depend on how knowledgeable she was about general practice work. How much she remembered from when she’d been employed in the practice before, and most of all how good a doctor she was, though he would only discover that when he saw her in action.

He knew she wouldn’t be short on enthusiasm. There had been nothing lukewarm about her interest in young Billy Giles, who had now been seen by the neurologist and pronounced to be suffering from Sydenham’s chorea.

Kate was that kind of person. He’d discovered in the short time he’d known her that there was nothing negative about her. The disposal of the wedding dress was proof of that, though he still wasn’t sure that she should have been in such a rush, and he hoped that whoever bought it wouldn’t be walking down the aisle of the village church in it.

When he glanced around Reception she was sitting there, waiting patiently for him to call her into his consulting room, but Miriam, who was usually back first from her house calls, hadn’t yet returned and he wasn’t going to start without her.

She arrived in due course. The interview commenced, and as it progressed Daniel knew he would be crazy not to take Kate into the practice. Her appointment would have to go through the usual channels with regard to admin, but he couldn’t foresee any problems there. She was bright, intelligent and should be no mean performer after working in A and E for quite some time.

Even Miriam was smiling. Though that could be for a variety of reasons, self-preservation being top of the list, and maybe she was pleased at the thought of another woman doctor in the practice. He still had concerns about his colleague and wished she would open up to him about whatever it was that was making her so unhappy. Maybe she would confide in their third member once she’d settled in.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he told Kate when it was over.

She was smiling. ‘In person, or through the post?’

‘As we are more or less living on top of each other at the moment, I think I can safely say it will be in person.’

He could have told her on the spot that he wanted her in the practice, but he had to make sure that Miriam’s smile was because she was in favour of Kate joining them, and that it wasn’t for any other reason.

‘Yes,’ she said when his landlady’s daughter had gone. ‘If you’re happy about taking Kate on, so am I.’

Still in her smart clothes, Kate was walking down the main street of the village about to do some food shopping while she was out. As she strolled along, uppermost in her mind was the interview that had just taken place, and when the window of the charity shop suddenly loomed up beside her she wasn’t prepared for what she was about to see.

Totally unmissable in the centre, with lover’s knots and pristine white satin arranged to the best of their ability by Mrs Burgess and her ladies, was her wedding dress.

She began to shake. All the bottled-up hurt and disappointment was hitting her with full force, and tears that so far hadn’t seen the light of day began to pour down her cheeks.

The shop closed at four o’clock each day when the staff went home to their own devices, so her grief was unobserved from inside. But to Daniel, driving past in answer to a phone call from a home for the elderly a couple of miles out of the village, there was no mistaking the slender figure in the black trouser suit standing in mute distress where someone might come across her at any moment.

He pulled up quickly and was out of the car in a flash. Taking her arm, he said gently, ‘Get inside, Kate. I’ll take you home. But I’ve got to answer a request for a home visit first. They’ve just been on the phone from Furzebank. One of their old folk is really poorly and they’re very concerned.’

She nodded, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and huddled down in the seat beside him as he drove off. When they reached the gates of a big stone house that had been converted into a home for the elderly, Daniel said in the same gentle tone, ‘Kate, I did warn you that it could be a bit hasty, sending your dress to the charity shop so soon after your return to the village.’

Still without speaking, she nodded again and he thought that the smiling and confident interviewee of not so long ago was red-eyed and hurting and the same concern that he’d felt when they’d walked home from the pub was there.

He wanted to comfort her, hold her close, tell her that one day a man would come along who would love her as she deserved to be loved. Someone who wasn’t wrapped around with memories of the past, and he, Daniel, would envy him.

He hadn’t held a woman in his arms since he’d lost Lucy. That way he was able to keep to the commitment he had promised himself, so he just patted her hand and said anxiously, ‘Promise me you won’t budge while I’m in the home. I’ll try not to be too long but can’t be sure.’

‘I’ll be here,’ she promised. ‘Don’t rush on my account, Daniel. Patients come before personal matters in the life of the GP during surgery hours.’ And when he glanced at her sharply she managed a smile. ‘I know I’m not a GP yet, but I’m hoping.’

It was Elizabeth Ackroyd, the oldest inmate of Furzebank, that he’d been summoned out to see, and when he saw her Daniel’s expression was grave. She had been a highly intelligent woman and still was to some degree in spite of her ninety years.

She had sacrificed the chance of marriage or a career to look after younger brothers and a sister when they’d lost their mother while only young, and she had outlived them all.

Elizabeth had been at Furzebank four years and until recently had been well and happy. Until an elderly widower that she had become very close to had died suddenly and the will to live had left her.

The first time Daniel had been called out to her, he hadn’t been able to find anything organically wrong with her. Helen, the sister-in-charge, had nodded her agreement, and told him that Elizabeth had said to her that she’d found the love of her life seventy years too late, and that she would die of a broken heart.

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