Caroline Anderson - Saving Dr Gregory

‘Here,’ she said, and grasping his ankle firmly, she lifted his well-muscled but lacerated lower leg and propped it across the seat of the chair. ‘Stand still. You don’t need to see, I do,’ she told him frankly, and then examined the area without touching it for a few seconds. Because he had been exercising, the blood vessels were all dilated and so the scratches were bleeding freely. However, there only seemed to be one serious wound.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, peering over his shoulder again.

‘Stop squirming around,’ she chided. ‘You’ve got hawthorns in it, and a nasty cut. I’ll clean it up and lift out the thorns with tweezers, but you really ought to have stitches in the cut, I think. You’ll have to keep still.’

‘Yes, Nurse,’ he said in a mock-submissive voice, and Polly’s mouth twitched into a smile.

She cleaned the area as gently as possible, and then after warning him, swabbed the cuts with antiseptic.

He winced and his leg muscles clenched involuntarily. Polly apologised and carried on swabbing. ‘It could have been worse.’ she told him, ‘you might have sat in the hedge.’

His choked laugh was cut off abruptly when she swabbed him again.

‘You haven’t asked if I’ve got AIDS,’ he said through gritted teeth, and Polly straightened for a second and looked him dead in the eye.

‘I should think not! I would imagine, as you’re an intelligent person, that you would have had the grace to tell me. You’re far more likely to have Hepatitis B——’

‘Sorry, all clear. I’ve had my jabs.’

‘Tetanus?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Not recently.’

‘Well, you must. Go to the doctor today and have a booster.’ She bent her head over his leg again. ‘You don’t know what you could have picked up from these thorns. Infected animals could have brushed against them or anything.’

‘Unlikely,’ he murmured, watching with interest as she removed the tweezers from the cup of boiling water and dipped them in the antiseptic to cool them. ‘I’m probably in more danger from those things.’

‘That’s the most sterile I can get them at this sort of notice. Sorry,’ she added as he flinched again. ‘You look as if you’ve had a run-in with a porcupine. There,’ she laid the tweezers aside and swabbed the cut again, then wiped it dry. ‘I’ll put a butterfly plaster on it for now, but I really would recommend that you go to your doctor.’

Polly pressed the plaster in place, covering it with a sterile gauze dressing, and stood back to admire her handiwork. ‘You’ll do. I must get on. Can I give you a lift home?’

‘Please, if you’ve got time. Are you going through Longridge?’

‘I work there. That’s no trouble.’

She picked up her coat, and handed him his tracksuit bottoms. ‘I’m afraid they’re ruined,’ she said apologetically.

He shrugged. ‘They were ancient anyway.’ He hobbled out to the car, commenting as he went that his leg felt much better without the thorns.

She drove carefully into town, following his directions and dropping him in front of a lovely cottage, set back from the road behind a low wall in a quiet little lane just off the town centre.

‘Take care, now, and do go to the doctors’ with that. I’m sure they’d rather see you before it goes septic,’ she said cheerfully.

‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said with a laugh, leaning down through the passenger door to throw her a cheeky grin. ‘Thank you…?’

‘Polly,’ she supplied.

‘Thank you, Polly. You’re a gem.’

She blushed. ‘Rubbish. I’ll see you,’ she mumbled.

The grin widened. ‘Yes, you will. Go carefully, Pollyanna.’

She pulled away, and glancing back in her rearview mirror, she saw him give a jaunty wave before turning to hobble into his house. Nice man, she thought, even if he did call her Pollyanna. She wondered what his name was, and if she would see him again …

Polly arrived at the surgery in good time for her first clinic, but not in time to turn out her shelves. Oh, well, there was always the evening. She could stay late—goodness knew, there was precious little else for her to do as she didn’t know anybody yet.

She hung her coat in the little cloakroom and studied herself in the mirror for a moment. There was a liveliness in her gentle brown eyes that hadn’t been there earlier this morning, and a soft touch of colour on her cheekbones, the remains of the blush put there by her intriguing encounter. With a little smile, she tidied her lively nut-brown curls and added a dash of soft pink lipstick before going into Reception.

‘Morning, Angela, morning, Sue,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Anything exciting I should know about?’

‘Other than that Dr Gregory is back today? Not really,’ Angela told her. ‘Here’s your surgery list—they’re mainly inoculations and routine dressings. Mrs Major’s in for a diabetic check, and there are one or two to have stitches out. That’s this morning, then this afternoon you’re working with Dr Gregory on the ante-natal clinic. He’ll talk to you about that when he comes in. Sue’s got your notes out for this morning. Here,’ Angela handed her a pile of patients’ envelopes, and headed for the door.

‘Dr Haynes wants to dictate some letters before surgery starts. Must fly. Help yourself to coffee.’

The practice manager-cum-medical secretary ran lightly up the stairs to the senior partner’s surgery, and left Polly sorting through the notes. Sue, the receptionist, was on the phone, and Polly was alone when the surgery door was pushed open and her jogger limped in and came round to the door into Reception.

‘Hello again,’ he said, his warm toffee voice touched with humour. He was wearing a light grey suit and tortoiseshell specs, and looked even more like the boy next door.

What a nice smile, Polly thought, and returned it with interest. ‘Hello. I’m glad you decided to take my advice. If you can hang on a minute, I’ll see who can fit you in.’

‘Actually, it’s you I wanted to see——’

‘Oh, no,’ Polly replied, ‘you really ought to be seen by a doctor——’

His lips twitched. ‘Nonsense. All I need is a tetanus booster, as you so thoughtfully pointed out when you were tactfully trying to discover if I had AIDS——’

‘I did no such thing! You brought that up! I would never dream——’

‘You should, Pollyanna. You can’t be too careful.’

Polly pretended to scowl at him. ‘Don’t be absurd. Look at you! Unless you’ve had a contaminated blood transfusion——’

‘I could be a haemophiliac’

Polly shook her head firmly. ‘No. I’ve seen your legs. No haemophiliac has knees like that, with straight, strong joints—and anyway, you would have bled to death on my kitchen floor.’

‘There could be worse fates,’ he joked.

‘Not for my kitchen floor!’ Polly replied laughingly. ‘Now come on, out of here, please. If you go round to the window I’ll get the receptionist to make you an appointment with one of the doctors. Who do you usually see?’

‘I have more to do with Gregory than the others,’ he replied, still lounging in the doorway, an engaging smile playing around his nicely sculptured lips, his blue eyes behind his tortoiseshell specs twinkling merrily.

Polly was at a loss. How could she get him out of the reception area into the waiting-room? Short of picking him up—and he was much too big for that? probably a shade under six feet, but she knew from her contact with him that morning that every inch of him was solid bone and muscle, and at five feet three in her shoes she didn’t stand a snow-flake’s … sighing, she turned away to the desk.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘but Dr Gregory has been away on holiday and he’s rather booked up this morning.’