Saving Dr Gregory. Caroline Anderson
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is pregnant,’ Polly explained quietly. ‘Her blood pressure’s lower than usual, and she’s been nauseated in the mornings.’
Matt nodded. ‘Let’s just have a look at you, Mrs Major,’ he suggested, and helped her undo her skirt and slide it down to her hips. He checked her eyes and throat, the glands in her neck and under her arms, and listened to her chest before moving down to palpate her abdomen gently. ‘When did your last period start?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been trying to think. The day we finished putting in the central heating,’ she decided. ‘That was the end of September—twenty-seventh, something like that?’
Polly picked up a calendar. ‘That makes you ten days overdue, Mrs Major.’
Oh,’ she said, subdued.
‘Oh, Matt echoed. ‘Would it be bad news?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really—although I don’t know what James will say.’
Matt smiled. ‘If it’s simply a case of accelerating your plunge into parenthood, he’ll probably get used to it very quickly. If not, well, he’ll come round, I’m sure. I’m much more concerned about your physical well-being at the moment. Certainly there’s nothing else obviously wrong with you. Is your diabetes normally well controlled?’
‘Yes—well, it has been. It’s only recently that I’ve been feeling off-colour, but I really have tried to eat.’
‘You must—I know that sounds impossibly trite, but you know the importance of maintaining your intake of carbohydrates. Try eating crackers and drinking cold water with ice in it. Slices of apple are supposed to be very good, too. Get James to wait on you a bit.’ He grinned. ‘Do him good. Men have it far too easy during pregnancy—always assuming that’s what’s wrong with you! I suppose it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a sample of urine and run a pregnancy test, Polly. Can you sort that out?’
Polly nodded. Of course. Do you want Mrs Major to come back this afternoon if it’s positive?’
Matt shook his head. ‘I don’t think there’s any need. If you find you can’t eat, then we can arrange for you to go into hospital so that you can be consistently monitored and maintained. Hopefully it won’t come to that—I don’t think it will—but they may want to take over your ante-natal care.’
‘Aren’t there any pills you can give me?’
‘I’d rather not,’ he said, after a slight pause. ‘I’m never sure about them. Let’s give it a whirl without first. I’m sure you’ll be all right.’
He rose to his feet and limped to the door.
‘Oh!’ Mrs Major exclaimed ‘You’ve hurt yourself!’
He gave her a lopsided grin. ‘Polly beat me up,’ he said sorrowfully.
‘Ignore him,’ Polly advised, throwing him a black look and fighting down another blush.
He limped off down the corridor, chuckling quietly. Polly explained to the bemused patient that Matt had nearly been run off the road that morning.
‘Lucky for him you were there!’ Mrs Major said, and Polly smiled tightly. She was not a vindictive person, but this tetanus injection was beginning to sound attractive!
It was much later that Polly got her revenge, and it wasn’t at all as she had expected. She met up with Matt over lunch—a snack taken in Reception after he came back from doing house calls, while he explained what he wanted her to do during the ante-natal clinics. First she was to weigh each patient and take her blood pressure, then check her urine with the Multistix, entering the results on the co-op card as well as the patient’s notes. Then Matt wanted her present to chaperon during examinations, but not otherwise. There were six patients booked for the afternoon session, and he ran over the notes quickly with Polly. There was nothing unusual about any of them, except for one elderly primip, a thirty-five-year-old unmarried woman who had decided she wanted a child.
‘She shouldn’t be a problem,’ Matt said, ‘she’s very fit and healthy. She’s in a stable relationship but there’s no question of marriage, so don’t ask her, and for goodness’ sake don’t call her Mrs Harding. It’s Ms—on pain of death! On the other hand, this very married lady——’ he thrust some notes at Polly ‘—Sarah Goddard, has three children already. The last one was born in the car on the way to hospital, and she only just got there with the second. Going on her record, we’ve opted for a home delivery! She’s due at the beginning of January, but she probably won’t go to term. Right, I’ve got some letters to write and some results to sift through. I’ll see you at three on the dot. We’ve only got an hour, so we have to keep moving fairly rapidly. If anyone has a problem, we tend to run over and lose our tea break. I really don’t want to, especially as I’m on call tonight, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.’
He gave a wry smile, and Polly felt herself respond against her better judgement. He was such a tease, she thought, but such a nice person with it. She watched as he unfolded himself and limped cautiously towards the door.
‘Have you done anything about that leg yet?’ she asked, concerned despite herself.
He shook his head. ‘I can’t reach it to stitch it, but I think you’re right. I don’t suppose you’d like to do it now—that is, if I can trust you?’
Polly’s eyes widened. ‘Me?’ she mouthed.
‘You can suture, can’t you?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, but——’
‘But nothing. Please? Stephen and Mike are too busy, and I hate to see a good woman go to waste——’
Polly stood up and stalked past him. ‘Come on, then,’ she threw over her shoulder, and went into his consulting room.
‘Take your trousers off and lie down,’ she instructed, scrubbing up her hands and sorting out the lignocaine injection and the tetanus booster.
‘I get a feeling of déjà vu,’ he commented, kicking off his shoes and removing his trousers.
‘Just shut up and lie down,’ she said irritably. She didn’t like the way he made her feel, not one bit. She was never irritable—never. He brought out a side of her she didn’t even know existed, and it was a side she didn’t think she liked. However, he seemed to hit all the wrong buttons all the time.
She picked up the lignocaine syringe and got Matt to check it.
‘Don’t mix them up,’ he warned, a thread of laughter in his voice.
‘Serve you right if I did,’ Polly replied, and resisted the urge to plunge the needle into his leg unnecessarily hard. After injecting the local anaesthetic into the area around the wound and disposing of the syringe, she picked up the other and asked, ‘Where do you want the tetanus booster—gluteus maximus?’
He rolled over sharply, eyes laughing. ‘No way! I want to be able to sit down. Here will do. I’m going to be limping anyway.’ He pointed to his thigh and watched as Polly slapped his leg, swabbed it and injected it with practised ease.
‘Not bad,’ he said mildly, ‘but was it necessary to slap me first?’
‘Technically, no, spiritually, yes,’ Polly replied, dropping the syringe into the sharps bin. ‘Right, let’s get you sewn up, Dr Gregory.’
He rolled on to his stomach, propped his chin on his folded hands and mumbled something.
‘What?’
‘I said I’m sorry. I should have told you who I was, but I was enjoying your ministrations and I was afraid you’d flounder if you knew who I was. I didn’t mean to tease you at first, and in the surgery…’
‘… it was just too good an opportunity to miss. I know. Right, hold still. Is it numb?’
At his nod, she removed the butterfly plaster,