Chapter 23 – The Letter
I'd just returned from Routledge's smelly cottage, after Auntie Joan called me in a panic to check on Louisa. The foolish woman had been moving a sofa for God's sake! Since her blood pressure was normal, I could only diagnose overwork and recommend – no order her – to reduce her work days from five to three. Not that one extremely stubborn female would listen to my advice, medical or otherwise!
Louisa's blood pressure may have been normal, but mine was not. I'd trotted up Fore Street at full steam, fearing the worst. With that adrenaline rush, and the harsh words that I had with Louisa and Joan, my pulse was pounding, my vest and boxers were soaked in sweat, and my attitude was black. Foolish women! God I hate it when I get called for help that is not needed. One of the major detriments of this stupid sodding village is there are those who think I am here as the GP to service every single little bump and pimple, yet when major medical advice is required they totally ignore it! Idiots all!
I thumped my medical case onto the counter and picked up the mail Pauline had dropped onto the desk. The one with the Imperial College crest and address jumped into my hands, I slit it open and in one gulp read the contents.
As I suspected they would, the selection officer was most interested in interviewing me. I quickly folded the letter back into thirds and tucked it into my desk, as an old man in a wheelchair entered pushed by an equally elderly woman into my consulting room.
I pushed the excitement I felt about the Imperial letter into a handy compartment in my head and dealt with the patient.
Mr. McLynn was less than forthcoming about his impairments, and I found his wife to be officious, obfuscating, and rude. Both seemed to be hiding something – something not related to the examination for a medical parking permit. They quickly flew away, with the man screaming about how I was a sadist. If I'd wanted to hurt the man, I could have done it in any number of ways that would be far less obvious then jamming a neurological pin into the palm of his hand. McLynn gave as good as he got as it took me some moments to swallow the hot bile that rushed towards my mouth at the sight of only a few drops of blood from the puncture.
Imperial wanted me to be a surgeon again, yet just a few drops of blood almost made me vomit.
Before I could consider the exquisite irony, Mr. Sands who was head of the school Board of Governors came to tell me there was a meeting Thursday to consider the applicants for a head teacher, given that Mr. Strain was still under treatment for his porphyria. It turned out that Strain also had an underlying persecution complex that was complicating his recovery – so he was well out of the head teacher's job.
Sands told me that there were three candidates for the head teacher; Louisa and two others. He was shocked when I told him I'd not vote for Louisa, as she was pregnant.
"You can't say that!" he shouted back at me. "It's illegal! You can't disqualify someone because she's expecting!"
"I have said it."
Louisa had just proven that if she couldn't even set up a new cottage, there was no way at all that she'd be able to be both head teacher and a mother. Carrying the baby inside her was vastly different from caring for the baby after the birth.
Sands stormed out, no happier than when he'd come in. The cheek of the man to assume that I'd support Louisa merely because of our liaison! Did no one understand that because I once… loved her… I'd treat her less factually? That I would let emotion govern my actions? The calculating surgeon's eye in me would not die that easily, if ever. Facts were facts. If Louisa was the best candidate, in spite of her current circumstances, that was one thing. But I'd not seen so yet.
Next in was Sally, the secretary from the school, and she was asking about hay fever, but the rash on her pudgy neck drew my attention like a magnet. But like a lot of my erstwhile patients, she scurried off like a cockroach when I wanted to examine her.
Blasted people. All of them! I opened the desk drawer and read the letter from Imperial slowly and completely. Although I had quickly grasped the contents before, I read it twice through. It seemed both genuine and desirable.
So far my experiments with raw beef liver, a bloody steak, and my own fingers had been less than fruitful in conquering the haemophobia. In many ways I viewed the case as Edmund Hillary must have looked on Mt. Everest – hard, icy and implacable. Everest was considered not climbable; too tall, too tough, not enough air.
I considered picking up a scalpel, and after swabbing my fingertip with disinfectant, slicing my middle finger. If I was to go to Imperial, I had to climb my own Everest. But something caught my eye. The drawer in the desk was still open, and there sat the small thermal copy of Louisa's first ultrasound. The scan showed a medial semi-section of the foetal head with a tiny bridgeless nose and a fuzzy hand in front.
The scan was from about the twenty-seventh week, so the major organs were all well-formed, merely awaiting further maturation and development. Fat stores would be almost non-existent, and the skin would be red and almost transparent, ripe with blood vessels. Louisa's face came to mind. Would our baby look like her, or me, or more likely some combination of us?
Poor child. It would be marked by the blasted Ellingham genes for the rest of its days. Just like me.
The baby will be here in Portwenn with its mother. But where would I be? Would I be here in the village tormented by Louisa each time I saw her, or would I be in London, a surgeon once again? The letter from Imperial was both salvation and sentence. But whether I was in Portwenn or London my personal torment would not likely end.
Seeing Louisa, just knowing she was here, and pregnant with our baby, was maddening. I was so worried about her health, and the baby… My words to her today were harsh. Too rude. Far too Doctor Martin Ellingham-like to be considered helpful or useful. There she is trying to cope in the smelly old cottage while I sit here painfully at a loss to close the gap. But she said to me that she would take care of it.
I sadly looked at the ultra-sound. The letter went back in the drawer and I called out, "Next patient!"