put the reception ledger to one side until it was needed again for evening surgery, Aidy was filling in time by sharpening pencils until she had seen the last patient out. Just then an anguished cry coming from behind the closed door of the surgery reached her ears. The cry was one of several that had been issued by the last patient she had sent through.
Aidy knew Beattie Rogers, was on chatting terms with her should they meet up in the street. She lived in the next road and the youngest of her four children was in the same class at school as Marion. She was a salt-of-the-earth sort, solid and reliable. Her husband worked for a local factory as a storeman. Like most people in these parts they hadn’t much, but Beattie kept the mildew and bugs down in her home as best she could, was a good mother to her children, a good wife to her reliable husband, and a helpful neighbour. She hadn’t needed to tell Aidy why she was paying a visit to the doctor as it was very apparent she’d done something to her arm. It was tightly bound by a piece of bloodied towelling and her face revealed the pain she was in.
Moments after Aidy heard Beattie’s last cry, she heard the surgery door open, footsteps came across the corridor, and Ty appeared. He looked frustrated.
Seeing Aidy was alone, he said, ‘Oh, Sister has already left on her visits then? I was hoping she hadn’t. You’ll have to do. Come through to the surgery.’
She arrived in the surgery to find Beattie Rogers seated at one side of the examination couch, her injured arm now unwrapped from the bloodied towel and laid across it. The gash on her arm was at least six inches long and half an inch deep. Ty had wrapped a rubber tourniquet tightly around her arm above her elbow, to stem the flow of blood. He was standing poised on the other side of the table, holding a suture needle threaded with thick cat gut.
He ordered Aidy, ‘Restrain Mrs Rogers to stop her pulling back her arm every time I try to start stitching.’ Then, to Beattie: ‘Would you please stop screaming every time I make an attempt?’
She was most apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor, really I am. I hate needles, you see. They terrify the life out of me. Every time I see it coming towards me, it sets me off. I know it’s going to hurt when you stick it into me … and me arm already hurts like the devil as it is.’
He snapped at her brusquely, ‘But not as much as it will should I have to amputate after septicaemia sets in – which it will if you don’t allow me to close the wound and disinfect it. I keep telling you to look the other way.’ He then snapped at Aidy, ‘Well, hold Mrs Rogers down then.’
She was weighing up the situation. If anyone was restraining her, she would automatically fight to free herself and had no doubt that was what Beattie would do, making it impossible for Ty to work away on her arm in any case. What Aidy felt she needed to do was to distract Beattie’s attention from what Ty was doing to her and on to something else. Hopefully, knowing the type of woman Beattie was, she knew just what would work. Engaging her in conversation! Rushing over to the back of Ty’s desk, Aidy grabbed his chair and pulled it over to set it before Beattie Rogers, so that she had to turn her head away from the doctor to look at Aidy.
Taking Beattie’s free hand in hers and squeezing it hard to get her initial attention, which thankfully she did, Aidy asked, ‘Did your Avril catch the measles when we had that epidemic a few weeks ago, Mrs Rogers, or was she one of those that escaped? Marion, George and Betty all went down with it together. What a nightmare! It wasn’t so bad at first when they were all too ill to do anything more than sleep, but then they started to recover and the boredom set in. How do you keep three youngsters entertained in their bedroom for a fortnight? That was the problem.’
For a moment Ty was annoyed that his receptionist seemed to be blatantly ignoring his instructions. Then, being the intelligent man he was, he realised what Aidy was attempting. She seemed to be succeeding, so without