Chapter 7
Her first morning in her new job and Alice had slept badly. Typical.
She’d jolted awake just after six that Monday morning in the pitch darkness of her strange new surroundings, having dreamt she was stuck on the Friday night on-call shift with six wards and a hundred and fifty patients to oversee.
Dream-Alice had been hunching over a desk with a phone pressed to each ear while colleagues barked orders at her or begged for her help, and all the while her bleeper was going off non-stop.
She’d been one sweaty, breathless second away from snapping and running screaming from the hospital when she had jolted awake.
Not the most auspicious beginning to her first day.
Now, however, she was standing staring at her name on her very own consulting room door.
Dr Alice Hargreave
She’d never had a name plate before. She couldn’t resist the temptation to take a few pictures with her phone, making sure to get a selfie pointing at the letters inset in brass.
She immediately sent the picture to her dad, and then to her mother, remembering with a twinge how they weren’t sharing a home now so, wherever they were, they wouldn’t be discussing the photo together.
She fired pictures off to her brothers too, knowing they’d be too busy for much more than a thumbs-up emoji in response.
She wouldn’t hold her breath for actual replies.
When you’re the youngest in a family of super-achievers a name plate probably isn’t all that special.
The sound of footsteps behind her made her start.
‘Right! That’s your ID, lanyard, and…’ the surgery receptionist, Gracie, was saying, handing her the items, ‘…your morning tea.’ She didn’t look much older than thirty and her dominant traits seemed to swing between a helpful, if clipped, efficiency and a slightly scatty interfering nature that might, Alice worried, become annoying.
Alice slipped her phone into her blazer’s deep pocket and took the steaming cup which was fashioned in crooked ceramic with a lustrous brown glaze and hand-painted letters. ‘Oh, my name’s on the mug as well?’
‘I bought a pottery wheel cheap off and now we’ve all got matching mugs,’ Gracie told her. ‘Well, sort of matching. It’s hard to get them all the exact same.’
‘Wow!’ Alice didn’t know what else to say as she turned it in her hands, pondered how she’d safely drink from the wrinkly lip without spilling on her clothes.
‘I knew you’d be pleased! Anyway, I plumped for skimmed milk, no sugar, correct?’
‘How did you know?’ Alice passed her new lanyard over her head.
Gracie only raised an eyebrow as if to suggest all general practitioners took their tea the same way. ‘Passcode for your office is one two three four. Got that?’
‘Uh, OK. Great.’ Alice wondered if she should be affronted or relieved that Gracie clearly understood the pressures of remembering these things.
She suppressed a shudder as the memories returned of all those hospital door codes and floor codes and elevator codes she’d been made to memorise over the years and how painfully often she’d found herself on an urgent store-cupboard run and utterly unable to recall the digits and she’d have to find someone to ask, slowing her shift down when she had so much important stuff to be getting on with.
‘Dr Millen’s is four three two one, and the records room is zero nine nine nine. If you forget, tell me.’
‘Should be easy enough.’
Gracie was looking at her expectantly. ‘Are you planning on seeing your patients oot here in the waiting room?’
‘Oh, right.’ Alice jumped to it and input her door code, letting herself inside.
Everything in the office was new, much like the rest of the surgery building, which had been renovated only a few years ago.
Desk, computer, phone, swing chair, examination bench and lamp.
Nothing seemed to have been used before, and there was that familiar warm plastic smell combined with the sting of hospital detergent.
Gracie flicked the overhead lights on and Alice found herself drawing to a halt, wanting to scrunch her eyes closed at the familiar flickering and throbbing of institutional strip lighting, barely perceptible to some but, for the sensitive Alice at least, ever present in whatever setting she worked.
It made her want to pull the office blinds open and rely on the weak winter morning light, but with the entire building on ground level and people walking past in the carpark outside, that wasn’t going to be an option when she had patients to see.
‘Do you think anyone will mind if I buy a couple of floor lamps, and a desk lamp, maybe?’ she asked Gracie, who told her she could do whatever she liked, it was her room, and Dr Millen wouldn’t even notice, frankly.
A tiny flicker of excitement accompanied the thought of this place flooded with soft light. Light on her own terms. A luxury in this job. It would have to wait for pay day, though.
‘Where is Dr Millen?’ asked Alice. ‘I was hoping to meet him properly before work started.’
Gracie was arranging folders on Alice’s desk and pulling out her chair, indicating for her to sit, which she did. ‘House call in the Garten valley estate. Won’t be long.’
That meant she was on her own, for now at least. Probably for the best, so she could familiarise herself with all the new systems without being observed. Not that Gracie showed any signs of leaving.
‘Drink up,’ the receptionist told her, leaning over the desk to turn the computer on. ‘Login’s on your lanyard. So, how’s your flat? Settled in OK?’
Alice obediently sipped from her mug before having a go at getting into the surgery system. ‘Yeah, it’s OK, I suppose.’
‘You’re in number eighteen, along the vennel, aren’t you?’
Alice nodded, a little thrown by the screen denying her access, as well as the creeping realisation that Gracie might be the eyes and ears of this town. Gracie had to intervene, re-typing Alice’s details for her. This time it worked, no problem.
Alice rolled her eyes. ‘Ugh, sorry.’
‘You’re renting through Carenza McDowell’s property agency, aren’t you? Have you met her yet?’
‘Uh, no, I haven’t,’ Alice said, not sure why this was important, and trying to concentrate on the appointments calendar that was populating on screen.
‘That woman’s a martyr to her hammer toes.’ This was said with a tap at the side of her nose as if that somehow erased the rules on patient confidentiality. ‘But if there’s anything even remotely wrong with that flat, you go straight to Carenza. Don’t bother with her minions at her office. OK?’
‘Got it.’
‘And don’t mind if she seems a wee bit fearsome; so would you be if you owned half the properties in town and had to cram feet like that into three hundred quid Louboutins every day. Toes like plaited pastry, that one. And you live alone, don’t you? Didn’t move up here with… anyone special?’
Alice felt intuitively that making eye contact would only greenlight more of Gracie’s prying. She moved the mouse cursor around the screen. ‘I live alone, yeah. Are these all my appointments?’ she tried, hoping to divert the woman away from the topic of her living arrangements.
‘Just the six patients. To break you in.’
Six still seemed an awful lot for a first day, even though Alice had worked in A&E and could triage and admit that many people in an hour.
‘I might also have to send your way any emergency appointments that crop up as the morning goes on. And there’s a meeting at half five you have to go to, about the social prescribing project? Dr Millen mentioned it in your interview?’
Alice shook her head. She hadn’t heard a thing about any project.
‘Ach, he’ll fill you in about it soon enough. And I’ve put together some notes about your stroke clinic,’ Gracie added briskly. ‘You’ll need to read them in advance. That’s on the second Tuesday of the month. Three o’clock.’
‘I’m in charge of that?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘All right.’ The beating in her chest now seemed amplified in her ears but Alice smiled through it.
‘If you need anything in clinic, ask Dr Millen. He’s your supervisor and won’t mind being called in for second opinions or to run something by him.
Just ring through to his room.’ Gracie pointed a stiletto nail in a fiery orange gel finish at the number two button on the desk phone’s keypad.
‘Or you could just knock on the wall.’ Gracie didn’t laugh so Alice wasn’t sure if this was really a joke. ‘Did you bring your lunch?’
Alice felt herself at risk of conversational whiplash. ‘Just brought a salad. I had to ring the deli to have them bring me some shopping and…’ She faltered to a stop, unsure why she hadn’t just said yes.
‘The staff fridge is under my desk in reception.’ Gracie had her hand out. Alice surrendered her bento box to her.
‘Laura’s deli, was it? That one’s a devil for other women’s boyfriends.
Keep an eye on her if you’re ever winchin’ a local lad.
’ This was said with absolute matter-of-fact seriousness, and as if she’d know what ‘winchin’ even meant.
‘She isn’t registered here, mind. Goes to some surgery in another town.
Skerrybridge, I think. No idea why, when we’re so conveniently on her doorstep. ’
Alice had an inkling why Laura (who’d seemed perfectly nice when she’d arrived at her flat with her bike basket filled with her fresh fruit and veg) might prefer a surgery where she could be safe from gossip, but she didn’t say as much. Gracie was pressing on with her orientation anyway.
‘Your first patient’s at half nine, as you can see. Ten minutes each. You know the drill. You’ll see their appointment notes here.’ Gracie tapped the computer screen, indicating the first patient. Alice clicked the mouse and some words appeared.
Itchy rash on underboob area and upper back since three weeks, tested allergic to cocoa eight years ago but that hasn’t stopped her wolfing the chocolate buttons!!
‘These are your notes?’ Alice asked, a little queasy at the intrusion. She imagined they were all like that.
There was something preening and proud in Gracie’s look. ‘If I happen to have helpful intel, I’ll add it to your appointment notes, since you don’t know the locals.’
‘I’m not sure that’s entirely…’
‘Practice Nurse comes in on Fridays and Saturday mornings.’
Gracie was turning to leave, carrying Alice’s lunch away with her, only stopping at the doorway to add, ‘And Pigeon Fergus is your ten o’clock. He’s to sit on paper at all times, even in the waiting room. I’ll bring in the vacuum cleaner when he leaves.’
‘Uh… Sorry?’
‘Pigeon fancier,’ Gracie said as though the rest should be obvious to Alice. It wasn’t. ‘Mites. It’s all in my appointment notes.’
‘Ah, OK. Got it.’ Alice had already made a mental note to tell this woman absolutely nothing about herself from now on.
‘And your ten past eleven, Mrs McAlpine, will try smuggling that chihuahua in in her handbag, but don’t you mind about that. I’ll make sure to head her and her dog off at the reception doors. Her precious wee Bo-Jangles is to stay tied to the bike racks outside.’
‘Right.’ Alice tapped a finger to her fringe, throwing her a goodbye salute, wishing she could be alone again with her sinking feelings. ‘Thank you.’
Gracie was pulling the door closed, announcing to a waiting room growing with chatter, ‘The new doctor will be ready for you soon. Mind it’s only one medical issue per appointment. No sneaking in any acne or dry scalp problems, just because she’s new. I’m looking at you, Niall McNeil!’
The door sealed closed.
Left alone at her desk, Alice sat back and blew out a long breath. What kind of a place had she come to?