LITMIR.BIZ

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‘And you’ve changed, too. You’ve smiled a lot more since she came to the village.’

      Dragan raised an eyebrow. ‘My name’s pronounced Dragahn, not Dragon.’

      Lizzie laughed. ‘You know what I mean. Mum adores you but she worries that you’re a little too quiet. Too serious.’

      ‘But if I started roaring around on a motorbike or bought a Maserati like Marco had, or wore trendy clothes and had my ear pierced, everyone would say I was having a midlife crisis,’ Dragan said with a smile.

      ‘I think,’ Lizzie said, ‘if you started roaring round on a motorbike, you’d have all the teenage girls in the village mooning over you.’

      He laughed it off. ‘Flattery. At thirty-five, I’m practically double their age. Much too old.’ Then he sobered. ‘Before we go in to see Stella—how is she really, Lizzie?’

      Lizzie grimaced. ‘Up and down. Sometimes she’s bright and interested in what’s going on. Other days, it takes her an hour to get dressed, she can barely walk from the sitting room to the kitchen, and you can hardly understand a word she says.’

      Dragan nodded. ‘I had the consultant’s report through yesterday.’ It was the reason he was doing a house call today—to discuss it with Lizzie and Stella, knowing that Stella would find it hard to get down into the village and Lizzie simply couldn’t drop everything and ferry her mother about. ‘It annoys me when these consultants think they have to write in medical jargon all the time. Especially when they’re sending their report to a patient. I know they have to be accurate because they worry about lawsuits, but this is ridiculous.’ He shook his head in exasperation. ‘I swear they’d call a spade “an implement for displacing an admixture of organic remains”.’

      ‘I did look some of it up,’ Lizzie admitted. ‘But “hypophonia” was beyond me.’

      ‘It means the voice is very quiet—“phonia” refers to the voice and “hypo” means “under”. Literally, under-voicing. Stella’s pronouncing her words properly, not slurring them, or they would have called it “dysphonia”. It’s the volume that’s the problem,’ Dragan explained.

      ‘And “retropulsion”?’

      ‘Movement backwards. They’re concerned about how easy Stella finds it to walk or move about. That was the test where they asked her to walk forwards and backwards along a line, yes?’

      Lizzie nodded, looking worried. ‘The consultant said that I should think about Mum’s care needs. But we’ve had the occupational therapy team out and they said there wasn’t much more that they could do. They’ve put grab rails in her bedroom and the bathroom and a seat on the bath, and they’ve raised the level of her chair so she can get out of it more easily.’ She bit her lip. ‘I don’t want her going into a home. She’s my mum and I want to look after her.’

      ‘Nobody’s saying she has to go into a home,’ Dragan said gently. ‘But I did notice what the psychologist said in the report about the mood swings—as you know, depression’s common in Parkinson’s.’

      ‘But she’s not going mad.’

      ‘Of course she’s not,’ Dragan said. ‘That bit about perceptual problems means she doesn’t necessarily see things how they really are. Which can be a strain on you.’

      ‘I’m fine,’ Lizzie said.

      He wasn’t so sure. Lizzie’s smile was a little too bright for his liking. ‘I think that the odd bit of respite care might help you both. A morning at a day centre once a week, where Stella would get a chance to make some new friends and have some outside interests and have some fun—and it would give you a break, too, a few hours where you don’t have to worry about your mum as well as everything else.’

      ‘I’m fine,’ Lizzie repeated, shaking her head. ‘No need to worry about me.’

      ‘You’ve got a lot on your plate, Lizzie—and, yes, you do it brilliantly, but even Wonder Woman would have days when she struggled with your workload,’ Dragan said softly. ‘Running a business—and not just any old business either, because you do the rescue work with the dogs as well as the boarding kennels—plus bringing up Tina on your own and being a full-time carer to your mum…It’s an awful lot to ask of someone.’

      ‘I manage.’

      ‘I know. You more than manage. But I also want you to know that you don’t have to do it all on your own. The help’s there whenever you need it. I’m not going to push you into something you don’t want, but I also don’t want to see you struggle when you don’t have to.’ He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Don’t be too proud.’

      ‘Are you bringing Bramble in? Mum’d like to see her.’

      He noticed the change of subject, but he realised that now wasn’t the right time to push Lizzie. He’d deliberately parked in the shade—as he always did when he took Bramble on house calls—but some of his patients liked to see the dog, including Stella Chamberlain. And there was evidence that petting an animal helped to lower blood pressure and increase the general well-being of patients. His ready agreement to Lizzie’s suggestion had nothing to do with the fact that he loved having a dog again and hated being parted from Bramble.

      Much.

      ‘Come on, girl.’ He opened the boot of his estate car, and lifted the dog out so she wouldn’t bang her injured leg. He knew he was being overprotective, but the leg had been slow to heal and he didn’t want to take any risks.

      Stella was delighted to see Bramble and made a huge fuss of her. Though Dragan could see that she was having one of her ‘off’ days—she was definitely struggling to get out of the chair, despite the fact the legs had been raised, and by the end of every sentence her voice was so soft that he could barely hear her. She listened intently to what he had to say about the consultant’s report and the changes in her medication to help with the stiffness in her gait and her memory lapses, but Stella, like Lizzie, completely rejected the idea of day care.

      ‘I’m not spending my days stuck in a home with a load of daft old bats. This is where I live, and this is where I’m staying,’ Stella said, lifting her chin.

      ‘You won’t be stuck anywhere. It’s a…’ He struggled to think of something that might entice Stella. ‘A bit like a coffee morning where you sit and chat, or you have someone to give a demonstration of something and you all have a go afterwards.’

      ‘I don’t want to sit and chat with people I don’t know,’ Stella insisted.

      Time to back off. ‘It’s just a suggestion. Nobody’s going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do,’ Dragan reassured her.

      ‘Good. Because I’m not going.’

      Maybe he’d talk to Melinda, Dragan thought. Not about Stella’s condition—he would never break patient confidentiality—but she was good with people. She’d got Tina to open up to her, confide her dreams of becoming a vet, and had then talked to George about giving the teenager some work experience at the practice. Perhaps Melinda would have some ideas about how to persuade Stella and Lizzie that a weekly session of day care could help them both. Because, the way things were going here, he could see Lizzie ending up having a breakdown.

      ‘Remember, call me any time you need to,’ he said to Lizzie as he lifted Bramble back into the car. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’

      ‘I will.’

      Though he knew she wouldn’t. She’d straighten her backbone and just carry on.

      He took his leave, then headed out to see his next patient.

      CHAPTER TWO

      DRAGAN had been home half an hour when the doorbell rang. Bramble barked—just in case he’d missed the fact someone was on the doorstep—and pattered behind him as he opened the door.

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