Chapter 36 – Woman Scorned
"I think that when you leave this biscuit-tin town behind things will seem very different!" Edith rose from my visitor's chair.
The morning, the morning of my last day in Portwenn as the GP, had started with a bang. As surgery opened a flood of patients, those with real or imagined symptoms, queued up. People I had seen often or not at all in the past years came to "see the Doc." Most were clearly malingering and just wanted to "pop by for a chat." I sneered at them as they paraded into the waiting room, where Pauline had become hyper efficient.
It was a mighty shame that Pauline Lamb hadn't showed more of this energy and drive over the years or our relationship would be far more productive. But first I had to deal with Edith Montgomery. She was NOT amused that I had bolted yesterday and escaped from her sexual clutches in Exeter.
She told me that she accepted my apology, though I offered none. "I'm not angry with you," she went on. "Just maybe disappointed."
"I had my reasons," I replied.
"Reasons… or symptoms?
I could have answered at length, but I didn't want to. I really just wanted her to leave. "Leaving a hotel is not a medical condition." What was a medical condition was erotomania and Edith clearly had it. She was obviously fixated on me, poor fool that I was. I once accused Louisa of having erotomania and she had slapped me. I know now that it was my insecurities that caused my nervousness so in a bizarre way it had also exposed my feelings for her.
Edith leaned towards me. "You conquered your blood phobia, but now you have a fear of intimacy."
If she only knew how I'd imagined her in my bedroom early this morning she'd be delighted I was very certain. As I looked at her in her tailored business suit she seemed as far from the night demon who'd visited in in my fevered imagination in the wee hours as was possible. Yet if I told her of my dream I felt she run over and lock the door and do an impromptu strip tease. I banished that thought with distaste.
I looked at her and was very uncomfortable with her assumptions. Our couplings, hard to call them love making, so long ago in medical school were mechanical - not much emotion there I now realized. At the time I was only too glad to have found a partner, but that faded when she left for Canada.
It took years for me to come to terms with her departure but what I had thought was love was not. It was biology controlling my mind, and I was no more responsible for my actions with her than a dog in heat. That was the dim past and I was not about to get involved that way with her.
I decided to be honest. "Or… maybe I just didn't want to be with you."
Edith shook her head. "No. Don't think so," she said clinically. "I think it runs much deeper."
"It really doesn't," I said. The woman was insufferable and I regarded her with even greater distaste.
She was not to be deterred. "I helped you beat the haemophobia. I can help you beat this too." Edith grinned a little there and it set my teeth on edge. Then she bored in more. "You just need to show a little backbone, Ellingham." Her smile got bigger and she leaned forward confidently. "I'll see you in London."
Clearly Edith felt her plans were delayed and not derailed. I was beginning to think that I'd have to move to a ranch in Patagonia to get rid of her, and even then she might show up on my doorstep.
She stood and gave me a knowing smile and ended our tete a tete with the crack about Portwenn as a biscuit-tin town. She left in a swirl of bouncing orange hair, bright blue eyes, and a bouncy gait.
Looking at her retreating back she had no idea I was thinking that if I plunged a scalpel into her, I wasn't certain that even that would dent her self-confidence. As the door closed behind her, I thought of sneaking to the kitchen for a snort of whiskey, yet thankfully it was already packed away or I might return to the drunken fool I became after the blood-phobia hit in London.
Yet I knew exactly what carton the whiskey was in as I was tempted last night, sometime around two-seventeen in the morning to be exact. I sighed and would have gone for the bottle but for my dedication to my patients, whether they were sick or not, now flooding into the cottage where Pauline was organizing them into ranks and files.
I squared my shoulders, put my professional scowl in place, tugged the suit coat down to rid it of wrinkles and shouted, "First patient!" Let the games begin.