Questions of Trust A Medical Romance - By Sam Archer Page 0,10

for the phone.

Mark was a strong-willed man, as solicitors tended to be. Chloe too was stubborn, which was one of the things that made her an effective journalist. When the two of them disagreed over something, it was like two bison bashing their heads together. This time, whether because his resistance was weakened by the pain he was in or whether he conceded deep down that Chloe was right, Mark gave in. Chloe dialled.

After an interminable wait she was put through to an operator, who put her on hold. Mark, Chloe and Jake lived in a townhouse in the north London suburb of Belsize Park. The local doctors’ surgery was a short walk away down the hill, but it was closed now, at nine p.m., and there was an emergency out-of-hours service operating.

At last a voice answered. It wasn’t the doctor but a clerk of some sort who asked Chloe to describe the symptoms her husband was experiencing. Chloe did so, as patiently as she could. Again she was put on hold.

Chloe glanced at Mark. He was sitting with the heel of his hand pressed to his forehead, his eyes closed.

Finally the doctor came on the line. Chloe didn’t recognise his voice and realised he must be a locum, a temporary doctor filling in on night duty. His manner was abrupt from the outset. When Chloe reported her husband’s main complaint as a headache, she could almost see the look of incredulity on the doctor’s face at the other end of the phone.

‘He needs to take paracetamol.’

‘He’s done that,’ she said.

‘Ibuprofen, then.’

‘That hasn’t worked, either. Plus, this isn’t a one-off. He’s had these headaches for weeks now, and this particular one all day.’

Chloe pushed and pushed, as if she were pinning down a politician she was interviewing and who was evading her questions. Eventually, out of resignation, it seemed, the doctor agreed to come out and visit Mark.

He arrived ninety minutes later, a fussy, irritable man in his fifties. After asking Mark a series of brusque questions – did he have high blood pressure, did he smoke or drink, had he been under a lot of emotional pressure lately – he conducted a physical examination that looked cursory even to Chloe’s untrained eye.

Straightening at the end and putting his instruments away in his bag, he said, ‘You have a migraine.’

‘Migraine?’ Chloe spoke up. ‘He’s never had them before.’

The doctor turned to peer at her over his glasses. ‘They can come on at any age.’

Chloe thought she’d read somewhere that it was unusual for a man of Mark’s age, thirty-three, to develop migraines for the first time, but didn’t say so. ‘Isn’t the pain normally pulsating?’ she asked. ‘Mark’s described a sharp stabbing.’

‘My dear lady,’ the doctor said, an edge sharpening his voice, ‘I can assure you I have had years of experience as a general practitioner. I recognise a migraine when I see one. It’s painful, it’s highly unpleasant… but it’s not life threatening.’ He scribbled something on a prescription pad and plucked the sheet off. ‘A codeine-based painkiller. It’ll take the worst of the discomfort away until the headache disappears of its own accord. They’ll come back, most likely. Speak to your regular doctor about possible preventative treatments.’

And with that he left.

Chloe sat beside him on the sofa, her palm smoothing his hair, her brow furrowed with concern. Mark’s face was pale, sweat springing in tiny beads on his forehead.

‘Is it still bad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you be all right to stay here with Jake for a few minutes? While I go to the chemist?’

He nodded.

There was an all-night pharmacy fifteen minutes’ walk from the house. Chloe returned to find Mark’s features contorted in a grimace of agony, an expression he tried to suppress as she walked in.

Mark took the pills, pronounced the pain a little easier after ten minutes, and went to bed.

He never woke up.

As the summer morning light slanted through a crack in the curtains, Chloe, lying beside her husband, stretched an arm across his chest, felt him cold and unresponsive. She sat up in panic, saw his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted.

No rise and fall of his chest.

She called his name, slapped her fingers against his cheeks, shook him increasingly frantically. Then she backed across the bed, groping behind her for the phone on the bedside table, her stare fixed on her motionless husband, her knuckles crammed into her mouth to stifle the scream that was building in her chest.

The coroner’s report was straightforward. The immediate cause