All The Care In The World

‘Unrepeatable,’ growled Callum, his craggy face lighting up as one of the receptionists came into the surgery, bearing an enormous cup of steaming coffee. ‘Oh, thanks, Judy,’ he murmured gratefully. ‘Just what I need! I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a biscuit?’

‘I bought you a Danish from the bakery on my way into work,’ dimpled Judy, her expression as eager as a teenager’s instead of a grandmother of two. ‘In case you missed breakfast. As you so often do, Doctor!’ she remonstrated gently. ‘I’ll go and get it!’ And she sped out of the office to return minutes later with a succulent concoction, glistening with lemon syrup and studded with nuts and raisins.

‘Mmm,’ said Callum ecstatically, as he bit into it. ‘Thanks, Judy!’ he called after the receptionist’s retreating form.

Jenny shook her head with a look of mock bewilderment. ‘I just don’t know how you do it, Callum Hughes,’ she told him sternly. ‘I really don’t.’

‘Do what?’ he queried, an innocent smile lightening his face as he lowered his large frame into the chair with surprising grace for so tall a man.

‘Have every woman in this practice eating out of your hand—’

‘Surely it’s me eating out of her hand!’ he joked, holding the pastry aloft.

‘Running around after you,’ continued Jenny, trying her best to sound severe but failing spectacularly when confronted by the distracting dazzle of his green eyes. ‘Buying your meals and doing your shopping,’ she continued. ‘And collecting your shirts from the dry-cleaners—’

‘But I’m a busy man!’ he protested.

‘And they are busy women!’ she retorted. ‘With homes and families of their own to run.’

‘On what grounds are you objecting, Jenny?’ he asked mildly, as he fixed her with a stare from his narrowed green eyes. ‘Am I exploiting them? Well, am I?’

Jenny pursed her lips as she silently acknowledged the ridiculously over-generous bonuses he gave to each staff member every Christmas. She had to admit that most of them would have run round after him if he had just given them one of his heart-warming smiles! ‘No, you’re not exploiting them,’ she agreed reluctantly, ‘but...’

Callum’s green eyes twinkled mischievously. ‘But?’

‘It’s about time you found yourself a wife, Callum Hughes!’ Jenny declared boldly.

Callum clutched dramatically at his throat with an expression of horror. ‘Don’t allow anyone with feminist principles hear you say that, Mrs McDavid!’ he declared. ‘The implication being that the principal duty of a wife is to run around after her husband—’

‘And isn’t it?’ asked Jenny cynically.

He shook his dark head and overlong strands of hair tickled his suntanned neck, reminding him that he really should have found the time to have a haircut before coming back to work. ‘Not at all.’ He shook his dark head. ‘Marriage should be an equal partnership.’

‘You really believe that?’

‘I really do,’ he agreed solemnly, though that irrepressible glint was still lurking in the depths of his green eyes.

‘Then no wonder you’ve remained single all this time,’ sighed Jenny as she stared into his craggily handsome face, thinking that if ever Dr Hughes did get around to marrying the woman who finally won him over would be fortunate indeed. She glanced down at the list in her hand. ‘Here are your messages.’

‘Anything urgent?’

She shook her head as she scanned the list. ‘Not really. We dealt with all the most pressing stuff. And—oh.’ Her face became slightly wary, as if she was the bearer of bad news. ‘Mr Petersham, the general surgeon from St Saviour’s, rang to say that he had operated on Emma Miles. He spoke to Dr Davenport—’

She halted in mid-flow as Callum lifted one hand for silence and with the other punched out the extension number of his partner. But she wasn’t offended by his occasionally peremptory approach—Callum Hughes was such a brilliant doctor that he could get away with murder, she thought.

‘David?’ said Callum. ‘Sorry to disturb you, but I’ve just got back and I believe you spoke to Mike Petersham at St Saviour’s?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ came the voice of his partner.

‘And?’ But the strained quality of those three words told Callum that the prognosis was bleak, as he had feared.

‘He wanted you to know that your suspected diagnosis of carcinoma of the stomach was correct,’ said David reluctantly. ‘He has operated and done just about everything he can, but it doesn’t look very good. I’m terribly sorry, Callum. I know how close you are to Emma and her family.’

Callum went through the motions of thanking his colleague, then put the phone down and shook his dark head as if in denial. Two deep frown marks furrowed deep lines on his forehead. ‘Damn!’ he protested on a groan, reflecting—not for the first time—how fundamentally unfair life could be. ‘Damn and damn and damn!’

‘Bad?’ said Jenny.

The practice manager was too intelligent not to know everything that was going on in the various surgeries. She was also the soul of discretion. ‘Worse than bad,’ grated Callum, feeling raw with the pain of such unwelcome knowledge. ‘Emma is far too young and beautiful to have contracted something like this. Is she still in hospital?’

Jenny nodded. ‘She is—on Poplar Ward. Will you go and see her?’

‘Of course I will,’ he sighed, as he thought of Emma’s youth and determination and beauty. He felt like raging against an uncaring God, but that would do her no good. Nor him. Nor the rest of his patients, some of whom would infuriate him with their insignificant little problems which were nothing compared to what Emma was going to have to endure during the next however many months she had left to live.

He made a mental note to ask Judy or one of the other receptionists to buy him a bunch of flowers to take with him. Or maybe she would prefer a book?

‘That’s probably the most pressing thing,’ Jenny continued gently. ‘The library at the hospital rang to say that they’ve managed to trace that new paper on asthma you wanted. Oh, and your new registrar rang up to say that she’s looking forward to her first morning with you. That’s this morning,’ she added helpfully.

Callum narrowed his eyes, briefly disconcerted by hearing the hospital term which sounded so out of place in his surgery. ‘My new what?’ he demanded.

‘Your registrar,’ explained Jenny patiently. ‘Your new GP registrar—’

‘You mean my trainee?’

‘Oh, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud, Callum! That’s their brand-new title! You must move with the times, you know!’ reprimanded Jenny tartly, until she realised that he was teasing her yet again. ‘Why did they chance the title from GP Trainee to GP Registrar?’ she asked him curiously. ‘Do you know?’

‘Patients thought that the word “trainee’ meant that they were still students,’ he answered, ‘instead of fully qualified doctors who were about to add another three years of experience while they trained to become general practitioners.’

Jenny nodded, something in the tone of his voice making her question him further. ‘And was that the only reason?’

Callum shrugged his massively broad shoulders as he began to pull the first pile of paperwork towards him. ‘I think a lot of junior doctors were also a little unhappy with the word “trainee”,’ he mused.

‘They said that it made them sound like a would-be chef or butcher, instead of a highly qualified individual with over seven years’ doctoring underneath their belts! This puts them on a par with their hospital colleagues and stops them feeling like the poor relations of medicine.’

‘And is that the case?’ asked Jenny in surprise.

Callum nodded. ‘Oh, undoubtedly. General practice has suffered from intellectual rubbishing by hospital staff for much too long now. And it’s time that we stood up and showed the world that we’re proud to be general practitioners.’

‘Yes, Dr Hughes,’ said Jenny, hiding a smile which bordered on the wistful. It was such a waste, she thought fleetingly, that a man as good-looking and as gorgeous as Dr Callum Hughes should channel all his passion and his energy into his job!

‘Anyway, she’ll be here at about eleven,’ she continued equably. ‘I told her to arrive later than we would usually expect—explained that you were just back from holidays and that you’d have a lot of catching up to do. I said it was probably best to come after surgery on her first morning, rather than throwing her straight in at the deep end. I do hope that’s all right?’

Callum was frowning at a rather bolshie letter from a consultant who had recently moved into the area. Though his surgical reputation was good, he clearly wasn’t the world’s greatest diplomat! ‘Hmm? Yes, that’s fine, Jenny,’ he said absently, and then, as he heard the practice manager head towards the door, he lifted his head and said, ‘What’s her name, by the way?’

‘It’s Nancy,’ said Jenny. ‘Nancy Greenwood.’

‘Pretty name,’ he commented, with a smile.

‘Yes,’ agreed Jenny, wondering why fate didn’t lend a hand by sending Dr Hughes a single doctor instead of one who was married! ‘You met her when she asked to be transferred from the Southbury scheme. Remember?’