LITMIR.BIZ

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took in the clawfoot iron bath with its brass tapware, separate shower and shelves piled with fluffy towels. ‘It’s beautiful.’

      ‘It is.’ Maggie smiled. ‘This was the master suite in the early days when the boys were little ones. Dr Cunningham senior couldn’t bear to stay in it after his wife died and then he decided he’d just stay in the Green Room. Oh…is that a car I can hear?’ She walked swiftly to the window and peered down. ‘It is. I’d better go and help. There was supposed to have been a nanny here already to be with the children but she got sick and that’s why you’re here. To cover Max at work so that he can stay home to look after them all.’

      Unsure of what she should do, Emma followed the housekeeper. Her head was spinning slightly with the tales of tragedy this family had experienced. What had happened to Max’s mother? she wondered. And how old had Max and his brother been when she died? She was also trying to do a bit of maths in her head. If Andy had died over a year ago and his ex-wife had already been pregnant, then this baby Alice had to be at least several months old now. Not a newborn.

      She could cope with that. For one night, it shouldn’t be any problem at all, even if this wasn’t exactly the kind of clinical situation that was part of her protective walls. As for Max—she had no idea how he was about to cope. He had years and years ahead of him as a guardian. Remembering the way he’d been cradling his head in his hands when he thought he was not being observed, Emma couldn’t believe that he’d magically changed his attitude to children in the last ten years and would be quite happy to be sharing his life with them from now on.

      ‘Where are they?’ Maggie opened the front door but there was no sign of a car. ‘Oh, no…they must have gone through to the clinic parking.’

      ‘There’s another car.’ Max was standing beside her.

      James Cunningham had come into the entrance foyer to see what was going on but Emma hung back, near the staircase, wondering if she should, in fact, go back upstairs for a while. How terrifying would it be for small children to arrive and be faced with so many strangers? Even if they’d met these members of their extended family it had apparently been more than a year ago and they would still be traumatised by the loss of their mother.

      Through the wide gap of the open front door, she could see a large people-carrier type van that had parked a little way away from the entrance to the house and someone was getting out of the driver’s seat. Max walked out into the snow that was still falling to greet the newcomer. But someone else was running towards the front door of the house from the opposite direction. A middle-aged woman who was looking very anxious.

      ‘Dr Cunningham? Is the clinic closed already?’

      ‘Surgery finished an hour ago, Jenny.’ But James was frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘It’s Terry. He’s got terrible chest pain and his spray isn’t helping. He wouldn’t let me call an ambulance. It was all I could do to persuade him to come and see you and he only did that because you’re right next door.’

      Behind Jenny, Emma could see that children were being helped out of the van. A boy who might be about six or seven. A smaller girl. The driver was opening the back hatch which looked to be full of luggage and items like a pram and cot. Max was unclipping a baby seat. Emma’s mouth went a little dry. Maybe this was going to be harder to cope with than she’d thought.

      James looked towards where his grandchildren were being ushered towards him. He turned his head to look in the other direction, presumably to the ‘west wing’ that housed his general practice clinic. His duty lay in both directions, with the professional one clearly more urgent than the personal.

      And, suddenly, Emma knew exactly how she could help everyone here, including herself. Years of honing her skills to be able to work to the best of her ability in unfamiliar places made it automatic to take charge but, as a bonus, it felt as if her protective walls were suddenly strengthening themselves around her and keeping her in her safe space. She walked towards the anxious woman.

      ‘I’m Dr Moretti,’ she told her. ‘I can help you.’

      Only a couple of minutes later, Emma was opening the door to the clinic with one of the keys on the ring James had given her.

      ‘There’s a twelve-lead ECG machine in the treatment room,’ he’d told her. ‘If it looks like an infarct, call an ambulance and then let me know.’

      ‘I can handle it,’ Emma had promised.

      Jenny and her husband, Terry, followed her into what was clearly a waiting room.

      ‘How’s the pain level, Terry? On a scale of zero to ten, with zero being no pain at all and ten being the worst you could imagine?’

      ‘Seven,’ Terry told her. ‘It’s like a knife in my chest. It’s hard to breathe, even.’

      ‘Let’s get you lying down so I can have a good look at you.’ Emma walked ahead, opening one door and then another. There was a small kitchen, a storeroom, a consulting room and…yes…what looked like a treatment room, well set up for minor procedures or more extensive assessments. She recognised the machine for taking a twelve-lead ECG, spotted an oxygen cylinder in the corner of the room and was relieved to see a defibrillator on another trolley. If Terry was having a heart attack and in any danger of an imminent cardiac arrest she had the means to deal with it. She also knew that one of the keys on the ring she was holding was to open a drug cabinet that James had told her was well stocked.

      On first impressions, Terry didn’t look like a man who was in the middle of having a heart attack. His colour was good, he wasn’t sweating and he seemed to be clutching the side of his chest rather than a more classic sign of pressing his hand to the centre. He’d also told her that he wasn’t feeling sick in any way but Emma wasn’t about to make assumptions. She helped her patient climb onto the bed and lifted the back so he wasn’t lying completely flat.

      ‘Let’s get that coat and jumper off and unbutton your shirt, Terry.’ Emma opened the drawer on the ECG trolley and took out electrodes. ‘So you’ve been getting angina for a while?’

      ‘Just a bit. And only when I’m doing too much.’

      ‘He’s taken up jogging,’ his wife told Emma. ‘I told him he’s going to kill himself but he’s determined to lose the weight.’

      ‘And you were jogging when the chest pain came on?’

      ‘No…’ Terry lifted his arm out of the way as Emma stuck the final electrodes on the left side of his chest. ‘I was getting the damned turkey out of the freezer in the barn.’

      ‘It was far too big to go in the freezer in the house.’ Jenny nodded. ‘And it takes days and days to thaw.’

      ‘It was like carrying a giant, slippery rock,’ Terry complained. ‘And then I started to drop it and almost tripped over something at the same time and it went flying.’ He gave a huff of something like laughter that turned into a groan. ‘So to speak… Anyway, it was when I bent down and picked the turkey up that the pain came on. By the time I got it into the laundry tub, I could hardly stand up.’

      ‘Does anything make it worse?’ Emma asked, still smiling at Terry’s attempt at humour. ‘Like taking a deep breath?’

      Terry tried to breathe in and groaned. ‘Yep…that really hurts.’

      ‘And you used your angina spray?’

      ‘Didn’t do a thing.’

      ‘Okay.’ Emma was becoming more confident that she wasn’t dealing with a critical cardiac event. ‘Keep really still for me for a few seconds, Terry. I’m going to do the ECG.’

      With the sheet of graph paper in her hand a short time later, Emma smiled at the anxious couple in front of her.

      ‘Good news,’ she told them.

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