Chapter 15 #2
‘He’s great.’ Louie’s voice was full of the same enthusiasm reflected in his face.
‘Joe cares so much about the patients and there’s such a lot I can learn from him, which he wants to share.
He gives all of us in the department every opportunity to learn and progress.
He doesn’t seem to have any kind of ego at all, which is incredibly rare for a consultant, in my experience.
I feel like I absolutely landed on my feet securing a role in his department.
Are you finding working at St Piran’s similar to the other hospitals you’ve worked in? ’
Hope hesitated for a moment, not because she wasn’t certain of the response she wanted to give Louie – she loved the role she’d been lucky enough to secure and got on well with all her colleagues – but she felt suddenly bereft at the change of subject.
She’d enjoyed hearing him talk about what it was like to work with Joe and it was as though she’d had a window into her biological father’s world for a moment that she hadn’t been ready to close.
Shaking off the feeling as best she could, Hope smiled.
‘Working at the hospital is great, but I think I said the first time we met that what I like even better is the community midwifery. Quite a few of the team work across both the hospital and the unit in Port Agnes, like me, but I know which one I’d pick, if I had to. ’
‘What was it you said you liked so much about working in the community? Getting to know your patients better?’ He was studying her face as he waited for her to respond; clearly genuinely interested in the answer, instead of just making small talk.
‘Yes, it’s the opportunity it gives me to support women both during their pregnancy and in the days afterwards, rather than just at the birth.
We have some mothers-to-be who have their antenatal appointments at the hospital, but most of them see midwives in the community and only come to the hospital to give birth.
I like seeing the whole story from beginning to end.
’ She smiled at the thought. ‘There’s something magical about that. ’
‘It sounds like it and I guess that ties back to the reason you wanted to come here, to understand your own story from beginning to end too.’ He shook his head, looking as though he wished he could stuff the words back down his throat.
‘God, I’m so sorry. I can’t seem to switch off the psychotherapist in me, even when no one has asked him to show up. ’
Hope laughed, grateful his admission had lightened the tension, because even though it felt as though she wanted to confide in Louie, he was dangerously close to people who had more right to know the truth than he did.
She’d already said far more than she’d planned to, and she was annoyed at herself.
The last thing she wanted was her story getting out, unless she was the one to tell it, but Louie’s words had eased her guilt at having said so much.
He’d admitted that he couldn’t stop the psychotherapist within him coming out, and that was probably the reason why she’d said so much more to him than she’d intended to.
She could let herself off the hook for that and, even though she’d put words and truths out there that she’d intended to keep to herself, no one could possibly put two and two together to join the dots and realise that Joe was her biological father.
He didn’t even know he’d fathered a child, so how could anyone else work it out?
Maybe that meant it was actually a good thing she’d been as open as she had with Louie, instead of it being something to fear and beat herself up about.
She’d needed to tell her story to someone who’d never heard it before, to try and make sense of it, and that’s what talking to Louie had given her.
Perhaps it could even be her chance to ask another question, to someone neutral, who might be able to help her work out a solution to the dilemma she’d been struggling with for weeks. It was now or never.
‘Well, seeing as the psychotherapist version of you has turned up uninvited, I was wondering if he might have a view on something I’ve been mulling over.’
‘He seems to have a view on pretty much everything.’ Louie pulled a face. ‘It’s no good, I can’t keep talking about myself in the third person, in case it turns out I can’t stop. I really don’t want to be one of those kinds of people!’
‘Probably a good call. I don’t want to take advice from someone like that.’
‘Ah, this is where the uninvited psychotherapist might not be as useful as you’re hoping.
’ Louie gave a brief shrug. ‘Even though I do have an opinion on most things, in my professional role I don’t actually give advice.
My role is to help people see the options open to them and provide the tools for them to make their own decisions and solve their own problems. That’s the theory anyway. ’
‘I completely get that and actually it sounds like exactly what I need. The thing is, I’ve been stuck in this decision, not knowing which way to go.
’ Hope didn’t look at him, instead heaping another spoonful of chorizo al vino on to her plate.
She didn’t want to risk him reading anything into her expression about just how big a decision this was.
‘I’m going to ask this from a bit of a different perspective, though.
So that it doesn’t feel like I’m asking you for advice about what I should do, but more to give me a picture of how my decisions might affect other people. ’
‘Okay, if I think I can say anything remotely useful, I will.’ He waited patiently as she steeled herself to ask the question. Not at all sure what she wanted the answer to be.