‘Am I having a heart attack?’ she asked tremulously. ‘I’ve got these awful pains, and my husband thinks it could be a myocardial….’ She looked helplessly at the small man.
‘Myocardial infarction,’ he said rather smugly.
The woman’s voice had started to rise on the edge of panic, her mouth trembling, and Frankie put a reassuring hand on her arm, trying to calm her patient and reduce her stress levels. As usual, she found herself using well-worn platitudes, which nevertheless were soothing in their familiarity, comforting phrases that the woman would have known all her life.
‘It’s Mrs Jepson, isn’t it?’ she said kindly. ‘Now, please, don’t worry—I want you to try and relax. We’re going to run a series of tests that will help to tell us what’s causing these pains. It could be a variety of things and we mustn’t jump to conclusions. But you’re in the right place to find these things out.’
The small man nodded sagely. ‘That’s what I told her, Doctor. I said it could also be indigestion—she had chips and sausages just an hour ago, and an apple pie, didn’t you, love?’
‘So you are Mr Jepson?’ asked Corey, attaching a monitor to the woman’s arm that ran a trace of the patient’s blood oxygen sats and blood pressure on a screen.
‘I am indeed,’ said the man. ‘We were going to the cinema—just paid for the tickets as a matter of fact when she was took bad.’
‘This came on quite suddenly, then?’ asked Frankie, watching the screen monitor.
The woman shifted restlessly. ‘Well, I’ve not been feeling quite myself for a few days—had this horrible pain near my heart.’ She indicated an area in the centre of her chest. ‘But it’s got worse and worse this evening.’
Mr Jepson looked at her indignantly. ‘You never said, Norma. I didn’t know you’d been feeling off…’
‘Didn’t want to worry you,’ his wife said, rather sullenly.
‘Well, your blood pressure’s OK,’ said Frankie. ‘Have you had an operation lately, or an injury that’s kept you in bed?’
Mrs Jepson shook her head, and her husband leaned forward eagerly. ‘You thinking of a blood clot on the lungs, Doctor? Could it be that?’
His wife gave a start of horror and Frankie’s eyes met Corey’s in a brief exasperated glance. Mr Jepson seemed intent on alarming his wife as much as possible, and making a nervous patient even more apprehensive. If he wanted to send his wife’s blood pressure sky high, he was going the best way about it, thought Frankie, hiding her irritation by smiling winningly at him.
‘We’ll be some time examining your wife, so why don’t you go and have a coffee from the machine in the waiting room while you can? When you come back, we may have more news to tell you.’
The man looked hesitant. ‘Surely it’s better that I stay and keep Norma calm?’
‘It’ll be best to sit with your wife when we’ve finished our assessment. These cubicles are small and it gets a little crowded in here, as you can see…’
The man stumped off unwillingly, only turning back at the door to comment to his wife, ‘If it’s a heart attack, you’ll be in here for days, you know.’
Norma looked mournfully at Frankie. ‘We were going on holiday next week—looks like we’ll have to cancel it if I’m going to be here for ages.’
‘You may be feeling much better soon,’ said Corey brightly. ‘Wait until we’ve had the results of your blood tests…’
‘And we’ll run a cardiac trace to check your heart,’ added Frankie.
The phone rang at the main nurses’ station and Corey left to answer it. Frankie leant forward to listen to the woman’s chest through her stethoscope. When she put the stethoscope on the area of skin below her breasts, Mrs Jepson flinched.
‘Don’t touch me there—it’s absolute agony, that!’ she gasped.
Frankie looked more closely at the area she’d just touched and frowned. ‘Did you know you’ve got a rash here…quite a distinctive rash?’
‘There wasn’t anything there yesterday.’
Frankie pulled the overhead light so that it focussed on the red weal across the woman’s chest. ‘You know, Mrs Jepson,’ she said slowly, ‘I think that this could be a clue to the mystery of your pain.’
Mrs Jepson gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘It’s my heart, isn’t it?’ she said in a quiet voice, as if bracing herself for very bad news. ‘Have you heard something odd through that instrument?’
‘Your heart and chest sounded fine—it’s what I can see that’s quite illuminating. You’ve got a band of blistery little spots across your chest, which have probably just come out. Does it feel itchy?’
‘A little. It’s painful when you touch that area, and there’s a horrible pain deep into the chest….’
The door opened behind Frankie and a deep voice said, ‘Was someone wanting a heart trace in here?’
Frankie glanced towards the tall figure who’d entered the cubicle, then her mouth dropped as she did a double-take at the tall man with rimless glasses and russet hair who stood in front of her. Was she imagining things or was it really the familiar figure of Jack Herrick?
‘My God…Jack!’ she exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
Jack stared back at Frankie, also stunned. ‘I might ask you the same thing,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you were working at the infirmary…’
‘I have been for six months…You must be the new registrar that Corey told me about.’
Mrs Jepson looked from one doctor to the other, interest making her forget her discomfort for the moment.
‘You two old friends, then?’ she asked.
Jack smiled apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Jepson. As you can see, we’re both a bit surprised to see each other. And yes, we go back quite a long way. Now, first things first—I believe you’ve been having chest pains…’
‘I’d like you to take a look at this rash, Dr Herrick,’ said Frankie, her mind still buzzing with the surprise of seeing him. ‘I’d be interested to know what you think.’
He inspected the reddened area closely for a moment, then looked across at Frankie. ‘Not much doubt about it—a good example of Herpes zoster, I would say.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Mrs Jepson.
‘I suppose you had chickenpox when you were a child?’
She looked puzzled. ‘Yes. All my brothers and sisters had it at the same time—Mum nearly went mad!’
‘Then your past has come back to haunt you, I think. The virus has been reactivated, and all the signs point to it being shingles…’
‘Shingles?’ repeated Mrs Jepson, gazing at both doctors in astonishment.
‘That’s right,’ said Frankie. ‘The pain in your body is caused by the shingles. In fact, the virus is affecting the nerve endings—that’s why it’s so sore. The rash often doesn’t appear for a few days.’
The woman lay back on the pillows. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Is that all it is?’
Frankie smiled. ‘It’s not very nice, I’m afraid, but it’s better than having a heart attack! Mind you, I still think we need to run these tests on you. We don’t want to assume that just because you’ve got shingles there aren’t any other problems.’
‘That’s one thing my Bert never thought of!’ Mrs Jepson looked rather triumphantly at Frankie and Jack, clearly pleased