Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
Fliss had already left by the time Ottilie arrived at the surgery. Lavender was back at her post on reception, making frantic phone calls and clearly struggling to hold back tears.
‘Ottilie!’ She looked up from a call she’d just ended. ‘Thank God you’re here!’
‘What do you need me to do?’ Ottilie asked briskly, shrugging off her coat and dropping it and her bag on the nearest empty chair.
‘I’m trying to cancel as many non-urgents as I can. I won’t be able to get them all, and some will still turn up, but we’ll just have to deal with that when they do.’
‘If they’re within my remit, I might be able to see some of those. What about the urgent appointments?’
‘We’ve got a locum doctor on his way from the agency, but it’s going to be at least an hour before he gets here. But he won’t be up to speed with any of our patients, so we still need to cut this afternoon’s clinic to make it as small as we can because he’ll obviously take a bit longer with everyone than Fliss does.’
‘Right.’ Ottilie went to look over Lavender’s shoulder at the clinic lists. ‘I’ll start cutting some of mine so it will make room for some of Fliss’s to go on my list.’
‘Why don’t I phone yours and you go through Fliss’s to see who’s on there and who you’re qualified to look at?’
‘OK, that makes more sense.’
Lavender pressed print on a list while Ottilie went over to the printer to wait for it. Her head was in a whirl, but there was no time to reflect on the madness of the morning’s sudden handbrake turn, or to get any real detail from Lavender about what had happened. All she knew was that Fliss had had to run to Charles’s house and that whatever had made her go must be very bad for Fliss to abandon her clinic. Lavender must have known more, but until they’d sorted this situation, it would have to wait.
They spent the next hour phoning as many people as they could get hold of to ask them not to come to the clinic or to change their appointment or to see Ottilie instead of Fliss, and by the time they’d finished, Ottilie was starving, having abandoned her sandwich in the rush back down from Hilltop Farm. She hadn’t had a drink that day either, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it. And there was still no time to find out exactly what had happened that morning, because patients had started to arrive and Ottilie had to either see them or help Lavender explain why they couldn’t be seen.
People demanded to know what the reason was, and as Lavender and Ottilie assumed Fliss wouldn’t want the villagers knowing her personal business – and because they didn’t know all that much themselves – they couldn’t tell them, and the secrecy hardly helped. It wasn’t until someone had rushed in wanting to know why there had been an ambulance outside Charles’s cottage all morning that Ottilie realised the cat would soon be out of the bag whether Fliss liked it or not.
It was a relief to finally close for lunch, though lunch itself was to be a sombre affair. Without Fliss’s larger-than-life presence and the banter they usually all shared, Lavender and Ottilie ate the food she’d left in the fridge when she’d thought she’d be there with them. Lavender took a moment to fill Ottilie in on the drama that had unfolded while she’d been up at Hilltop Farm.
‘It all happened so quickly,’ Lavender said as she made a pot of tea. ‘One minute it’s business as usual, Fliss laughing and joking about trying to book a holiday to Austria and almost booking Australia instead, and the next she’s running out, white as a sheet.’
‘And you don’t know what’s wrong with Charles?’
‘No, but it must be bad for her to take off like that. I’ve tried to call her but I’m getting no reply.’
‘So what did she say exactly?’
‘That he was being rushed to hospital and she didn’t think she’d be back today. I’m guessing she had a good idea what was wrong with him or she wouldn’t have been so certain about that. I really hope she returns my calls later because I don’t know what to do about tomorrow’s sessions.’
‘So who’s this locum? I thought he was meant to be here by now?’
‘I didn’t book him so it must have been Fliss at some point. I’ve no idea when she sorted it out – must have been from wherever she is with Charles. First I knew of it was a call from the agency to say he’d been booked and was on his way.’
‘Do you think that means she’s expecting to be off longer than just today?’
Lavender stirred the tea and then slotted the lid on the pot. ‘I never thought of that. I suppose it’s a good guess. I wish we knew.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be in touch as soon as she can.’
‘Do you think we ought to phone the hospital?’
‘Which one? Depending on what’s wrong with him he might be at any number of centres.’
‘I suppose so. I hate feeling so helpless. I’m not even sure we’re doing the right thing keeping the surgery running. Do you think we ought to close?’ Lavender asked.
‘But what about the patients?’
‘Well, if they’re urgent we can see them, but we can’t do a lot else, can we?’
‘But the locum can. He’d be able to refer on and prescribe when he gets here.’
‘ If he gets here. That was hours ago and there’s still no sign.’
‘Could you call the agency?’
Lavender brought the teapot to the table and sat down. ‘I was in such a tizzy when they phoned that I didn’t take a number for them. I couldn’t even tell you what the agency is called – totally gone out of my head.’
‘Let’s see how this afternoon pans out. I think all we can do now is tread water until help comes or until Fliss calls to tell us what she wants us to do. I’m sorry I’m not more help, but I’ve never been in this situation myself.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘I know, but still…’
The doorbell to the front door of the surgery rang down the hallway. Thimblebury surgery occupied an adapted house complete with a front door and tiny garden. Lavender always locked up for lunch so the staff could sit together and not be disturbed, and usually she refused to answer the doorbell if it went during that time. But today she leaped up.
‘Might be our locum,’ she said, hurrying out of the kitchen.
A few moments later Ottilie heard voices travelling down the hallway. Lavender was talking to a man and he was inside. It was a safe bet that she’d been right – their temporary doctor had arrived at last.
The door to the kitchen opened.
‘Ottilie, this is Dr Stokes…’
Ottilie stood up and offered her hand.
‘Call me Simon,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you, Ottilie.’
‘Ottilie’s our nurse,’ Lavender said.
He looked from one to the other. ‘Your nurse…like the only nurse? Surely there’s more than you two here?’
‘It’s a very small surgery,’ Ottilie said. ‘There are other people who come and go – a community midwife and mental health team and such, but for the most part, it’s just us and Fliss. Don’t usually need anyone else.’
‘Blimey!’
Simon rubbed a hand over close-cropped black hair. His brown eyes were so dark they were almost black too. Ottilie would have put him at around her own age, perhaps slightly more towards forty. His features were even and pleasing, and they had a kindness about them that shone out the moment they crinkled into a smile. His skin was a warm tone, but covered in freckles that made Ottilie think he might have come from somewhere hot and sunny.
‘I don’t know whether to be impressed or pitying.’
‘Oh, you can pity us today,’ Lavender said. ‘It’s been one hell of a morning. I thought they’d assigned you first thing? They’d told me at nine you’d be here within the hour.’
‘No…’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps they’d assigned someone else first who couldn’t make it for whatever reason. I’ve literally just had a call and then driven straight out.’
‘Where have you had to come from?’ Ottilie asked.
‘Liverpool.’
‘That’s a fair drive.’
‘You don’t sound Scouse,’ Lavender said.
‘I’m not.’ He smiled but didn’t offer anything else.
‘So are you only with us today?’ Lavender continued.
‘I’ve been told I’ll be here for the rest of the week at least. I’ve booked a hotel not far outside the village.’
‘Ah, so you won’t have to commute from Liverpool every day,’ Ottilie said. She shared a look of concern with Lavender. She guessed they were thinking the same thing: that things must be very bad if Fliss planned to be off for the rest of the week.
‘Have you done GP work before?’ Lavender asked.
At this he offered a disguised but unmistakably exasperated look.
‘Sorry,’ Lavender said. ‘Of course you have or you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Don’t mind us,’ Ottilie said. ‘We’re usually better than this, but it’s been a stressful morning and we’re worried about our own GP. She was called home for some emergency and we think it must be very bad.’
‘Understandable,’ he said. ‘So, do you want to show me where I’ll be working from and get me this afternoon’s list?’
‘We’re not ready to start yet,’ Ottilie said. ‘We’ve got ten minutes or so until lunch is over.’
He stared at her as if she’d spontaneously grown a second head.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t get my head around actual breaks when I got here either. There’s tea in the pot if you’d like one.’
‘That’s kind, but I think I ought to get my bearings before you start letting patients in. If you could show me where the treatment room is…’
‘Yes, of course…’ Lavender glanced at Ottilie before turning back to him. ‘I’ll bring a drink through to you.’
‘I don’t need one, thank you.’
‘But there’s?—’
‘No thank you,’ he insisted. ‘And I don’t drink tea or coffee anyway. For the past year it’s been boiled water, but that’s another story,’ he said as he followed Lavender out of the kitchen.
Ottilie tried to catch the rest of the conversation, her interest piqued by his last statement, but it was too muffled once they were beyond the heavy kitchen door for her to make it out. But she wasn’t curious for long – at least, not about Dr Stokes. Her mind went back to their own, their much-loved Fliss. She hoped everything was all right there, but she was very much afraid that it wasn’t.
She unlocked her phone and dialled Fliss’s number. It was in vain, because there was no answer. She’d expected as much, but, not knowing what else to do, it had seemed worth a try. Poor Charles and poor Fliss. Fliss joked about him all the time and pretended he drove her mad, but for all her banter, she adored him. Ottilie wished for the best, as if she could manifest it, because she knew what it was like to lose a husband too soon, and she wouldn’t wish that on her friend, not for anything.