It was a worrying thought but she tried not to dwell on it as she got ready for work. She had been working at Winton Surgery for almost a month now and she loved her new job. She had been desperate to leave St Jude’s so she’d applied for the post of practice nurse at the busy Cheshire surgery as soon as she’d seen the advertisement. The fact that a self-contained flat over the surgery had come with the job had been an added bonus.
The price of accommodation in the town was horrendous and she doubted whether she would have been able to afford more than a bedsit on her salary. Now, as she finished pinning up her shoulder-length, red-gold hair and looked around the sunlit bedroom, she gave a little sigh of relief. At least she had somewhere decent for them to live when Hannah came home…
If Hannah came home, a small voice reminded her chillingly.
Beth’s eyes were sad as she picked up the photograph of her niece from the bedside table. The picture had been taken the previous year and Hannah looked so happy in it. She had been wearing a new dress at the time—bright blue cotton with big yellow daisies printed all over it—and she had looked so adorable with her mass of black curls and sparkling blue eyes.
It was hard to look at the photograph and realise how different the child looked now, but it helped to firm Beth’s resolve. She had been right to contact Adam Knight. She would phone him again as soon as she finished work, only this time she would make sure that he found the time to listen to what she had to say!
Beth left the flat and went down to the surgery. It was barely eight but she wasn’t surprised when she found Christopher Andrews, the junior partner, already at his desk. There had been a bit of a crisis the previous week when the senior partner, Jonathan Wright, had been rushed into hospital for emergency heart bypass surgery. Nobody had suspected that Jonathan had been ill because he had always seemed so full of life.
Beth had grown to admire the older doctor in the few weeks she had been working at the surgery, and had been saddened when he had been taken ill. Now she tapped on Chris’s door to see if he had any news about how Jonathan was faring.
‘What’s the latest on Jonathan?’ she asked when Chris beckoned her into the room. Chris was in his late thirties, unmarried and, according to Eileen Marshall, their receptionist, totally dedicated to his job. However, she couldn’t help noticing how tired he looked that day.
‘As well as can be expected was what I was told this morning when I phoned the hospital.’ Chris sighed as he tossed his spectacles onto the desk and rubbed his eyes. ‘Which could mean anything, couldn’t it?’
‘Hospital-speak for mind your own business,’ Beth teased. ‘I have to confess to using that very same phrase myself when I was on the coronary care unit.’
‘I’d forgotten that you worked there,’ Chris said, frowning. ‘It feels as though you’ve been here for ever, to be honest. You’ve fitted in so well that I can’t believe that you’ve worked here for only a few weeks.’
‘Coming up to a month now,’ she said, smiling at the compliment. ‘I’m almost a fully fledged member of the Winton team. Just two more weeks to go and hopefully I should get my wings!’
‘I think you can forget about being here on a trial basis. Jonathan was saying last week how pleased he is with your work.’ Chris sighed again. ‘I only hope that I won’t let him down. It’s going to be tough keeping on top of this job, especially when Jonathan is such a hard act to follow.’
‘Surely you’re going to need help?’ Beth said, frowning at the thought of Chris trying to cope on his own. The surgery was extremely busy and she couldn’t imagine him keeping up with all the work by himself.
‘I certainly am. I’m not Superman and I don’t mind admitting it! Fortunately, I believe reinforcements are on the way. When I last spoke to Mary, she told me that she had contacted her nephew and that he was flying home. Evidently, he has offered to cover until Jonathan is better.’
‘I didn’t know Jonathan and Mary had a nephew who’s a doctor,’ Beth exclaimed.
‘It’s been a while since he’s been back to England,’ Chris explained. ‘He’s been working for the WHO in Rwanda and before that he was in India, I believe. I met him only briefly when I first came here but we got on extremely well. He’s a nice chap, takes after Jonathan in that he’s totally committed to his work.’
‘He’d have to be if he’s been doing aid work on a long-term basis,’ she observed. ‘It takes a certain type of person to cope with that kind of work.’
‘It certainly does. It will be a big change for him, working here, but I’m delighted to know that I won’t be on my own for very much longer. It’s busy enough here even when we’re fully staffed!’
The words turned out to be prophetic because it was one of the busiest mornings Beth could recall since she had started at the surgery. Although she had enjoyed her job at St Jude’s, the sheer diversity of the work she did at the surgery meant that there was always something new to deal with each day, and that day was no exception.
She smiled to herself as she finished cleaning a particularly bad graze on a four-year-old’s knee. So far that morning she’d supervised a teenager who was learning to inject himself with insulin, treated a nasty ulcer on an octogenarian’s leg and taken copious amounts of blood for various tests. There was never a dull moment in general practice, it seemed!
‘Now, can you be a really brave boy and sit on the couch while I check that there’s no more gravel in your knee?’ she asked, smiling at little Michael Thomas, who had been brought into the surgery by his anxious grandmother after tripping over in the park.
Michael stared solemnly at her, tears still sparkling on his thick blond lashes. He’d been sobbing his heart out when he’d been brought into Beth’s room but he’d quietened down under her gentle ministrations. He gave a hesitant nod and she smiled reassuringly as she lifted him onto the couch.
‘What a brave boy you are!’ She turned to Mrs Thomas, his grandmother. ‘I think I’ve got all the gravel out but I just want to make certain before I put a dressing on Michael’s knee.’
‘That’s why I thought I should bring him here,’ the older lady explained. ‘My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be and I was afraid that I might not see all the little bits of dirt. It’s such a nasty cut, isn’t it? I only took my eyes off him for a second, too.’
‘You can’t watch a child all the time,’ Beth consoled her. ‘At this age they are always getting into mischief.’ She took a big magnifying glass from a drawer and showed it to Michael. ‘I’m going to use this to look through. It will help me see if there’s any more dirt in that cut.’
She held up the magnifying glass so that he could see through it and smiled when he chuckled at the distorted image of her face. He seemed more fascinated than afraid when she carefully examined his knee with the help of the glass.
‘Me see, me see!’ he demanded, leaning forward and threatening to topple off the couch in his eagerness to have a look.
Beth quickly steadied him then held the magnifying glass so that he could get a good view of the cut. ‘Can you see any more gravel in it, Michael?’ she asked, and he shook his head importantly.
‘No. All gone.’
‘Good. That’s what I wanted to hear. Now, sit back while I put a dressing over that poor knee. I’m sure Granny doesn’t want to have to take you home with a sore knee and a sore head if you fall off the couch.’
Mrs Thomas laughed. ‘I certainly don’t! My daughter-in-law won’t trust me to take him out again if I return him home looking like one of the walking