Sarah Morgan - Brides of Penhally Bay - Vol 1

He nodded. ‘I agree. The medical emergencies are still going to have to come through us, but from the point of view of straightforward physical injury you could take a lot off us.’

He looked around the room, noting the two couches, the chairs and trolleys and screens, the bench along the side with pretty much the same equipment you would find in a practice nurse’s room or one of the cubicles in his A and E department, but for the most part that was all that would be necessary.

‘What about resuscitation equipment?’

‘Standard GP stuff for an isolated rural practice. We’ve got a defib and oxygen and a nebuliser, of course, and 12-lead ECG and heart monitor…’

She rattled off a list of things they had and things they wanted, leaving nothing out that he felt would be in any way useful or necessary, and he was impressed.

‘You’ve done your homework,’ he said softly, and she stopped and stared at him, giving an exasperated sigh.

‘Did you really think we’d get you over here to talk this through if we hadn’t? I want this to work, Ben. We need it. We’re too far from St Piran. Some of the injuries we see—if we had better facilities so we could just treat them here, at least initially…That journey must be horrendous if you’ve got a fracture. It’s not so much the distance as the roads—so narrow, so twisty, and lots of them are rough. The main road’s better, but reaching it—well, it doesn’t bear thinking about, not with something like a spinal injury or a nasty compound fracture. We have to fly some of our surfers out just for that reason, because they’d have to come to you, but for the others—well, it’s just crazy that we can’t do it. There’s certainly the demand.’

‘I’m sure. You know, if you weren’t about to be taking maternity leave, it would make sense for you to come and spend some time in the department. Catch up on your X-ray, diagnostic and plastering skills.’

‘I could do that anyway—well, not the X-ray, not until the baby’s born, but the rest. I’m going to be coming back to work—I can’t afford to stop—And don’t say it!’ she ordered, cutting him off before he could do more than open his mouth.

So he shut it again, shrugged his shoulders and smiled wryly. ‘So where are you going to site the X-ray machine?’ he asked. ‘Bearing in mind that the room needs screening on all six sides?’

‘Out on the end of the sea wall?’ she suggested, eyes twinkling, and he chuckled.

‘Nice one. Not very practical, though. Do you have a spare room?’

She laughed wryly. ‘Not so as you’d notice. In an ideal world, as Kate says, it would all be on the ground floor, but down in the old town like this it’s difficult. The sides of the cove are so steep, so all the houses are small and on top of one another. The only way around it would be to build it up out of the town, and that’s not where it’s needed.’

‘Unless you sited it up near the church, halfway between the old town and the beach. Handier for the tourists and all the people staying in the caravan park, and no harder for the people you serve who don’t live right in the centre and have to come by car anyway.’

‘Except that when we tried to sound them out we couldn’t get planning permission and, anyway, any site up there which they’d allow development on would have such stunning sea views it would be worth shedloads and we couldn’t afford it, so it’s academic. This is what we have, Ben. And there’s room to extend at the back—behind the stairwell there’s an area of garden which isn’t used for anything except sneaking out in breaks and having a quiet sit down out of earshot of the locals. And we’re so busy that that isn’t really an option in the summer, and in the winter—well, frankly it’s not very appealing, so really it’s dead space.’

‘Can I see?’

‘Sure.’

She led him downstairs, snagging her coat from the staffroom on the way, and they went out the front and round the side, between the boatyard and chandlery and the end of the surgery building. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing to an area that was behind the waiting room and stairs.

He nodded approval, running his eyes over it and measuring it by guesswork. ‘It’s ideal. It’s big enough to make a proper treatment area for suspected fractures and house the X-ray facilities, and you could put further accommodation on top—a plaster room, for instance, and somewhere for people to rest under observation. And you’d still have the existing room upstairs which you could use for other injuries, cuts and such like, jellyfish stings, weaver fish—you name it. Or you could relocate one of the consulting rooms currently downstairs upstairs to that area and use more of the downstairs space for those things, so you’ve got all your injuries together. And weren’t you talking about physio? That probably needs to be downstairs…’

She started to laugh, and he broke off and scrubbed a hand through his hair ruefully. ‘OK, so it’s not big enough for all that, and it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, but I don’t see what else you can do. If you want to do this properly, you’ll have to compromise. And you’ll have to sell it to the people who’ll be compromised.’

‘Except my father doesn’t want me involved, because I’m going to be on maternity leave. He thinks he should be doing it, but it’s not his area of expertise, and I really wanted to oversee it, to make sure it works,’ she said softly, the smile fading from her eyes and leaving a deep sadness in its place.

And Ben felt guilty—hugely, massively guilty—because all he’d done by taking Lucy back to his house and making love to her had been to cause her even more grief to add to the emotional minefield that was her life. ‘It’ll work, Lucy. I’m sure it will—and by the time you come back to work it’ll be ready for you to commission.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said, but she didn’t sound it.

She shivered, and he frowned and turned up her coat collar, tugging it closer round her. ‘You’re cold. Come on, let’s go back inside and jot some of this down, do a few doodles…’

‘I’ve done some. I’ll show you. And we can have tea.’

The universal panacea. He smiled. ‘That would be good. Come on.’

She led him back inside, shivering again and realising that she’d let herself get chilled. It wasn’t cold—in fact, it was incredibly mild overall—but the wind was blustery today and cut right through her.

‘Kate, is it OK to use your room still?’ she asked, leaning over the counter and smiling a greeting at the receptionist, Sue.

Kate put her hand over the receiver and nodded. ‘Sure. Go on up. Oh, and Dragan’s on his way in—he’s bringing Melinda. She’s been bitten by a dog. That’s why he’s been held up. He asked if you could see her. I think she needs suturing.’

‘Oh. Right. Can’t Dad see her, or Marco?’

‘No. Your father’s gone over to the house to meet the agent, and Marco’s got a clinic, so if you wouldn’t mind fitting her in?’

‘No, sure. Send them up. I’ll use the treatment room upstairs,’ she said, and felt the tension draining out of her at the news that her father had gone out and wasn’t about to pop out of the woodwork at any moment and cause a scene.

She headed for the stairs, still thinking about her father and not really conscious of the extra effort it took to mount them now that she was pregnant, but evidently Ben noticed because as she arrived at the door of the staffroom he asked, ‘How long are you planning to work?’

His voice had a firm edge to it and she looked up at him questioningly.

‘Today? Till six-thirty.’

‘In your pregnancy.’

‘Oh.’ So he was doing the proprietorial father bit, was he? ‘Till I have the baby,’ she said defiantly, and then, before he could argue, qualified it with, ‘Well, as long as I can, really. I’ll cut out house calls soon, especially if the weather gets bad, and I’ve already stopped doing night calls. That’s one of the advantages of being a pregnant woman in a practice of three single men—they’re so busy fussing over me and taking work off me I have to fight them for every last patient!’