Part One Hundred And Seventy Eight
On Sunday the eleventh of June, Karen went over to see Yvonne. Karen privately thought that she didn't get enough time to spend with her friends, she and her job being irrevocably joined at the hip, at least this was how it sometimes felt. It saddened Karen to think that her relationship with Yvonne had come to such an abrupt end, but she supposed that that was just one of those things. She and Yvonne sat out by the pool as the weather was fine, watching Bell as she sniffed her way around the garden.
After taking a swig of the ice cold gin and tonic that Yvonne had poured for her, Karen said, "Have you seen anything of Jo lately?" "No," Yvonne replied as she lit a cigarette. "I've seen the judge though, about a month ago, and looking like everyone he loved had died in some hideous car accident." "John? Are you sure?" Karen asked in surprise. "Oh, yeah," Yvonne clarified. "He must have been staying with George, because I came across him walking Mimi in the park, when he should definitely have been at work." "That really doesn't sound like John," Karen said sounding utterly mystified. "I mean, I can understand his having gone through some catastrophe that he for some reason chose not to tell me about. But the skiving off work just isn't like him." "He was sat on the bench, not taking a blind bit of notice of his dog, and I walked up to him without him even seeing me. It was a bit weird really." "Not so long ago, he came to see me, because he thinks that Jo has a drink problem." "Oh, shit," Yvonne said with obvious sympathy. "Is he sure?" "Yes, I think so. The point is, that if Jo does have a problem with alcohol, she's the very last person who would seek help for it. She'll hide away from it and us until it's really too late." "Yeah, and do you remember what happened during Barbara's trial? Jo cried off the second day because she came to court with the mother of all hangovers. It must have been bad for her to go home in the middle of the day." "I'd forgotten about that," Said Karen with dismay. "George covered up for her that time, but neither her nor the judge will be able to do that for ever. The thing with a profession like theirs, or yours, is that it's constant pressure from morning till night with absolutely no peace in the middle of it." "That certainly sounds just like Larkhall," Karen said with a rueful smile. "But you're right. The question is, what do we do about it?" "What can we do?" Yvonne replied with a shrug. "They know where we are, all three of them do. What we absolutely can't do is to try and offer help when at the moment, it clearly isn't wanted, not by Jo anyway. I'd be mortified if I was going through something like that and a few well-meaning friends tried to take away the one crutch I thought I had. Jo isn't stupid, so she'll eventually come to the realisation that what she's doing really isn't good for her. What she then decides to do about it has to be her decision, or it hasn't got a cat in hell's chance of working." "Did you ever think of becoming a nurse?" Karen asked with a smile at Yvonne's vehemence. "Not really," Yvonne said with a smile. "I think all the red tape and lack of progress would drive me insane." "Yet you just about managed to keep G wing on an even keel often enough, without most of the screws noticing a thing." "That's different," Yvonne said with a slight grin, hearing a lot of fond pride in Karen's words. "In somewhere like Larkhall, the order or disorder of any particular wing, can mean the difference between a full on riot and a quiet life, and if you're really unlucky, it can mean the difference between life and death." "And you suppose that the NHS isn't like that too?" Karen replied, lighting herself a cigarette. "When you're short-staffed because the pay is crap, and you've got a full ward of very sick people, and far too many relatives demanding answers that you just can't give them, plus god-like consultants and even more arrogant registrars, it really can be on a par with Larkhall, I promise you."
"Have you ever thought of going back?" Yvonne asked into the resulting silence. "Not recently I haven't. I remember, just after Maxi Pervis killed herself, I told Mark that I'd left the NHS because I was sick and tired of people needlessly dying on me. Yet I was working in a prison where precisely the same thing was happening. I have thought about it sometimes, when I've been doing my refresher courses to keep on top of things, but never seriously. I like what I'm doing at the moment. In a few years, well, who knows what the future will bring. As one patient once said to me when I was preparing him for surgery, we could all be dead tomorrow and it could all have been for nothing."