Questions of Trust A Medical Romance - By Sam Archer Page 0,22

another few minutes, all the while struggling to recognise the tightness in her chest for what it was. Words were Chloe’s stock-in-trade, the way she made her living, and she liked to be able to pin concepts and feelings down and define them in verbal terms. But this experience was proving hard to characterise. There was a strong physical component – a choking sensation, a rapid pulse, a tingling – but the name of the accompanying emotion was eluding her.

So what if Dr Carlyle – Tom, she really should get used to calling him, since everyone else did – was getting back together with his former wife? Wasn’t that usually considered a good thing, especially when there were children involved? Shouldn’t Chloe be happy for him? Or, more accurately, why should she care one way or the other, apart from feeling the natural benevolence a decent person would for an casual acquaintance’s good fortune?

Besides, Chloe herself might benefit if Tom and his ex reconciled. It would put an end to the speculation about her and Tom as two eligible, unattached people of a similar age, speculation which Chloe sensed was still rife in town despite her protest about it to Margaret McFarland. Chloe wouldn’t have to worry that every casual conversation between her and Tom on the playground or in the supermarket would be misinterpreted as evidence of attraction or a growing attachment between them.

Her musings continued after she’d gathered up Jake and returned to their own cottage, and they resumed later once he was tucked up in bed after supper and Chloe was at her laptop, writing up notes from her interview that afternoon with the residents of the estate. In Chloe’s experience, when she couldn’t let go of a topic it was usually because she’d made a mistake somewhere along the line, a mistake in her reasoning. Deciding she wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on her work while she was thus preoccupied, Chloe shut her laptop and closed her eyes.

And in a moment she had it. The mistake she’d made was that she’d been dishonest. Not dishonest with anyone else, but with herself.

She knew the name of the emotion she’d been experiencing after hearing about Rebecca Carlyle’s return. Had in fact been experiencing since she’d seen this glamorous woman walking up to Tom’s door.

The emotion was called jealousy.

Chapter Five

Since Tom had started working as a fully fledged general practitioner five years earlier, he’d come to realise that there were three types of working day. There were the busy days. There were the days on which you were so run off your feet you barely had time to draw breath.

And then there were days like today.

He’d arrived at work at eight, after dropping Kelly at nursery, to find his first patient, a young woman in the late stages of her first pregnancy, pale and distressed in the waiting room and complaining of pain in her upper abdomen. With difficulty and with the assistance of her distraught husband he’d manoeuvred her into his consulting room, where he’d conducted a speedy examination. Her blood pressure was sky high at 170 over 120, and there was protein in her urine. These signs, together with the swollen, pitted appearance of her ankles, pointed to one thing. Pre-eclampsia, a condition that potentially threatened the lives of both his patient and her unborn baby.

Calmly but briskly Tom made the arrangements, asking the receptionist to call for an ambulance and phoning the consultant obstetrician at the local hospital himself, all the while keeping his eye on the patient on his examination couch in case she showed incipient signs of a seizure. He’d consoled her and her husband as best he could, staying with them until the paramedics arrived to take her away.

By the time she was off to hospital, Tom had a backlog of six patients in the waiting room. He ran an eye over their notes. Two were entirely new, so he’d need to take time to get to know them. The other four had an assortment of longstanding conditions that wouldn’t be resolvable quickly: rheumatoid arthritis, congestive heart failure, psoriasis and recurrent depression.

And then the call came in from Tom’s colleague, Dr Ben Okoro. He’d been in a minor car accident on the way to work. He was unhurt, but the man who’d hit him had jumped a red light and the police were taking statements. Ben was going be a couple of hours late. Could he, Tom, cover Ben’s patients in