‘Don’t do it, Bernadette.’His voice was low and insistent now.‘Stick to ‘no’.Enjoy your day.Go chill before Nina’s big day tomorrow.’
‘Nope, I’m not leaving you to deal with that when I’m perfectly able to come in and have no other plans.But I think you just cost yourself another packet of biscuits,’ Bernadette chuckled, giving him no further opportunity to object.‘I’ll see you soon.’
Her toast popped as she hung up, and she grabbed some butter and jam from the fridge, her status now flipped from ‘aimless’ to ‘woman in a hurry’.
What did this say about her life, she wondered as she scraped the knife across the toast, that the only real option to pass the time today was to go into work.That was a claxon alarm signalling something she’d been contemplating more and more over the last few months – she needed something more in her daily existence.Needed to be fulfilled.Content.Busy.Challenged.Excited.And right now, FaceTimes with Jack just weren’t enough to tick those boxes.She missed him and she wanted more.
How many times did she tell Nina and Stuart that if they weren’t happy about something, they had to change it?Well, it was high time that she took her own advice, even if that meant getting over her understandable fears of commitment, of change, of relinquishing independence, of trusting her judgement.On the day she’d left Kenneth, she’d sworn to herself that she would never give up anything for a man again – not her independence, her financial autonomy, her freedom or even a permanent place in the other side of her bed.
But maybe it was time to admit that she’d had enough of living alone and snatching happiness where she could.She loved Jack.He loved her.She was sure she’d got it right this time.If that meant making changes to be with him, then maybe it was time to do something about it.He was only going to be here for one day on this trip, so she was going to have to make a decision and implement it.And no, there was nothing traditional about the little idea that had been tugging at her heart for the last few weeks, but perhaps that was a good thing.Wasn’t it?
Tomorrow, after all the celebrations were done, she was seriously considering asking Jack Donovan to marry her.Maybe.Perhaps.Possibly.
But tonight, she had to lay Kenneth’s ghost to rest once and for all.
2
MARGE DRUMMOND
‘Here you go, Marge,’ the nurse said, as she put down a plate of toast and a mug of tea on the table that stretched across her bed.‘Jeanie was about to bring it in, but I didn’t want to involve her in our conspiracy.’
Marge Drummond managed a grateful smile that widened as Charge Nurse Yvie Danton glanced around her, as if checking for cameras, then pulled a mini jar of strawberry jam from the pocket of her scrubs trousers.
‘And I managed to get this.Swiped it from my Carlo’s restaurant when I stopped in for coffee this morning.If he finds out about this treacherous act of theft and cancels our wedding, you’ll have it on your conscience.’
‘It’ll be worth it,’ Marge croaked.Her voice hadn’t returned to normal since her surgery and the complications afterwards that had forced the medical team to put her on a ventilator for three days.That had all happened a few weeks before, and it had been touch-and-go, but she’d made it.This time.
‘How are you feeling today, Marge?’Yvie asked, after a quick glance at the clipboard at the end of her bed.‘Did you sleep?’
Marge managed a hoarse whisper.‘I feel like all I do is sleep.’
‘Well, maybe we can get you into the chair and take you for a grand sightseeing tour of the corridors on this floor of Glasgow Central Hospital today.I’m on with Jeanie today and then Keli is coming in on the late shift, so if one of us manages to get a break we’ll come sneak you out.’
Marge had already learned that Yvie and Keli were best friends both in and out of work, and that they both adored Jeanie, the assistant on the ward.
‘Did I hear my name getting mentioned there?You’d better be saying I’m the engine that keeps this place going or I’ll be contacting my union.’Right on cue, Jeanie, the nursing assistant, chief caterer, master gossiper and oracle of all knowledge and scandal within the walls of Glasgow Central Hospital, popped her head in the door.
Marge used all her lung power to get out a breathy, ‘Morning, Jeanie.That’s exactly what we were saying.’
‘Aye, just as well or I’d be grassing her in about the extra jam she sneaks you every morning.Don’t think I don’t know everything that goes on in here.’
‘I’ve no idea how she knows that,’ Yvie said, deadpan.‘I think she’s got this whole place bugged.’
Marge felt her cheek muscles muster up her best attempt at a grin, but even the short conversation had left her exhausted.The banter, the sarcasm, the humour and the kindness of these women had kept her going every day of the last four weeks that she’d been in here and she was beyond grateful for it.The NHS had its very own mountain of problems, but the staff on this ward showed her every day why the people in the health service were the very best of it.
But even with the company of these gems, early morning was her least favourite time of the day, because that’s when she woke up and saw yet again that this was her reality now.It wasn’t all just a bad dream.Or a dreaded premonition of hard times to come.The worst times were already here.
As someone who had never smoked a day in her life, she still raged at the unfairness of her diagnosis.Lung cancer.A rare kind.The surgery had been the third operation to remove a section of her lung and more lymph nodes, but when they’d opened her up, they’d seen that the cancer in her lung was far more advanced than they’d realised.Worse, tests had shown that it had spread to her bones, to her brain, to every bloody place.So that was it.They’d thrown everything at it, but despite the surgeries, chemo, radiotherapy, the bastard disease wasn’t giving up its grip.The next move wouldn’t take her back to her much-loved home in the west end of the city that she’d lived in since her twenties.It had been a little cottage flat back then, but after she’d married Ian they’d bought the property upstairs and converted it into a lovely semi-detached home in a building that had been built back in the days before this hospital even existed.No.She wasn’t going back there.They’d be moving her soon, but it would be down to the palliative care ward, just as soon as they had a free bed.This was end days.But even though the hours of nothingness stretched in front of her, she was still grateful for every moment, every conversation, every laugh these women gave her.
Jeanie was inside the room now, wiping down the bedside table, plumping Marge’s pillows, straightening her sheets, working around Yvie, who was going through the well-practised routine of taking Marge’s statistics and marking them on the chart.The pride they took in their work was in every action they carried out while Jeanie chatted.‘I bet this isn’t quite the same as the swanky place that you worked in, Marge, was it?’
The corners of Marge’s mouth turned up as she shook her head.No.This was nothing like the Royal Scottish Private Hospital, the institute on the other side of the city where she’d worked for the best part of thirty years as secretary to Kenneth Manson, one of the best surgeons of their generation.She’d actually known Kenneth for even longer than that, as they’d run in the same circles before he’d poached her from her role of secretary to Sir Lester Kelaney, President of the Scottish Society of Surgeons, to work for him instead.
She’d been in awe of Kenneth Manson back then, well aware of his genius and his charisma and immune to his legendary arrogance, so when he’d finally attained his own private practice at the Royal Scottish Private Hospital, she hadn’t hesitated to take up his offer of a position at the desk outside his office.From there, she’d managed every aspect of his work life, ignored the foibles of his personal life, appreciated his surgical excellence, and admired his rise through the hierarchy of Scottish medicine, right up until the day, five years ago, when he hadn’t shown up for his 7a.m.surgery.Marge had known immediately that something was wrong.Kenneth Manson, she’d learned over the years, had many, many flaws – but he never missed a surgery.
Kenneth’s death, just a few years after his divorce from the wonderful Bernadette, a woman he didn’t deserve, was both tragically sudden and a great loss to the medical community.It had also given her the impetus to retire, something he wouldn’t even hear of while he was alive.‘I couldn’t do it without you, Marge.Don’t make me start again with someone new.No one else would put up with me,’ he’d say, with all the suave, self-deprecating charm that made him one of the most well-respected men in the city.And probably one of the most manipulative too – but weren’t most successful men like that?Of course, she’d given in to him and stayed at her desk.
Neither of them would ever have predicted that he’d give up on life first.The irony of the cardiac surgeon who didn’t see his own heart attack coming.They did say that doctors made the worst patients and in Marge’s experience that was true.
