Читать книгу The Case of the Misplaced Models - Tessa Barding - Страница 5

There was light seeping under the door gap of my small operating room. Nothing was supposed to seep out of my operating room, not at 6.45 in the morning and definitely not without me inside.

I yanked the door open.

The room was dark except for the light above the operating table on which a young man sat, right leg stretched out before him, left one dangling from the table. He had taken off his trousers that lay, neatly folded, on the small chair next to the basin. A pair of well-worn Dr. Martens boots lay underneath it. He was looking at an ugly gash on his thigh with a frown, fingers tapping against the surgical stapler sitting next to him.

‘May I ask what you intend to do with that thing?’

He raised his head by a mere fraction but didn’t bother turning around. ‘This needs to be taken care of.’ He gestured towards his wound.

‘It certainly does. Why aren’t you at a proper A&E department?’

‘Because the next A&E department is inconveniently located.’

‘And this place isn’t?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Breaking into a practice isn’t an inconvenience?’

‘Your security system is easy to bypass, and the door itself requires only the most basic of lock picking skills. It’s more like opening a closed door.’ He twisted his upper body around to look at me. ‘Dr Watson, I presume?’

‘Says so on my name badge, doesn’t it. Now, let me have a look at that.’

I walked across the room and stood at the other side of the table, facing the patient. Seen from up close and in the merciless white light from above he turned out to be older than I had first thought him to be, maybe in his early thirties. He seemed in good physical shape. His outstretched leg showed the lean musculature of a long distance runner, there were no signs of malnourishment or neglect and at first glance no signs of drug abuse either. His speech was neither slurred nor did he speak with exaggerated enunciation, and, when I looked at his face, I found his eyes to be clear and focussed with a normal pupil reflex.

‘Aren’t you going to call the police?’

‘Have you stolen anything? Helped yourself to a dose of narcotics?’

‘No.’

‘Have you destroyed anything on your way in? Damaged the door? The security system? Other than bypassing it, I mean.’

‘No.’

‘So the way I see it, you’re just another patient arriving a tad early.’

He shot me a surprised look.

‘Are you always that easy?’

‘Easy?’

‘About having your practice broken into?’

Of course I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. I had told Robbie again and again it was about time we had the old security system replaced and that the lock on the main door was a joke. Our team had doubled in size, with Tim and Sheila having joined the year before, and we now had four fully stocked treatment rooms plus my operating room. It was only a matter of time before somebody other than this guy broke in, and not just to staple his own leg together.

Fact was, I was angry at myself for having forgotten my gym shoes at home – thus missing my morning workout; my landlord had given me notice because his daughter needed the flat; and this guy here was cute. Not twinky-innocent cute, but tall-lanky cute with sharp features and a pronounced chin. I liked tall and lanky.

‘Well, didn’t you just tell me your entering didn’t qualify as breaking in?’ I bent over his leg to take a closer look at the wound. It was a long, shallow cut that didn’t look as if it had been caused by a knife. More of a tear, really. ‘May I ask where you got that? And please don’t tell me you cut yourself shaving.’

‘I got stuck.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I looked up. ‘Will you need a tetanus shot?’

‘No, I’m all good.’

‘Good. Let’s get started then.’ I held out my hand. ‘Stapler, please.’

I put the stapler where it belonged and walked up to the cupboard to take out what instruments I would need and prepared a tray, slipped into a disposable surgery coat, donned mask and hat, and started scrubbing my hands and forearms.

Behind me, I heard my patient shift and grunt. When I turned around, I found him stretched out on his back, eyeing me suspiciously.

‘You’re not going to perform open-heart surgery, are you?’

‘What?’

He made a vague gesture. ‘Mask, coat and all.’

‘Well, I don’t intend to sneeze on you but it is a rather long wound. I’ll have to clean it and then stitch you up. Better safe than sorry.’ With one foot I pulled up my stool and sat down. ‘Careful now,’ I warned when I had adjusted the height of the table, ‘this will hurt.’

He nodded his assent and I rinsed the wound carefully before cleaning it. Wherever he had got stuck, it had better been worth it, for the souvenir would remain with him for the rest of his life. Even cleaned up the injury looked ugly, and it would require more than the eight stitches I had thought it would take. With the exception of one single hiss at the very beginning of the treatment, not a sound came from him and I looked up to see if he had lost consciousness – happens more often than you’d believe, and it’s usually not the members of the so-called weaker sex who faint – but his eyes were fixed on me.

‘No anaesthetic,’ he said when I reached for the syringe.

‘You sure? That’ll be some eleven or twelve stitches. You certain you want to do this to yourself?’

‘It’ll be fine. I’ll live.’

I looked at him with raised eyebrows, but when he nodded again and closed his eyes, I shrugged and got to work. He lay perfectly still, fingers interlaced above his diaphragm, inhaling through his nose, exhaling through his mouth. Impressive.

‘Done,’ I finally said, satisfied with my work. He would keep a scar, obviously, but if it ended up an ugly scar, my stitches couldn’t be blamed.

He sat up and inspected his thigh.

‘Well done,’ he approved. ‘Looks better than anything I could have done with the stapler.’

‘Thank you. All these years of training weren’t for nothing then.’

He gave me a weak smile and moved as if to swing his legs over the edge of the table.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘This needs to be bandaged. You’re not leaving like this.’

He huffed but stayed where he was while I removed gloves, mask, and hat and binned them, along with the coat.

‘Do I need to tell you about aftercare?’ I asked after I had bandaged his leg.

He shook his head.

‘Want me to prescribe you some painkillers?’

Another resolute shake of the head, but when he got off the operating table to reach for his trousers, he had to lean against the sideboard for balance.

I rushed to steady him. The last thing I needed was an unnamed burglar fainting in my operating room.

‘Are you certain you want nothing prescribed?’

‘Painkillers,’ he informed me, ‘are deceivers. They cloud your mind and make you believe everything’s just fine when in truth, it is not. And this will lead to a very wrong assessment of your current capabilities. I prefer to stay sharp and not let drugs lull me into false security.’

I shrugged. ‘Your choice, your pain.’

He scowled at me, all but shook my hand off his arm and snatched his trousers off the chair to pull them on again. For a fleeting moment I considered helping him with his boots but decided against it. Let the stubborn git look after himself. I cleaned up my work area, rinsed the instruments I had used and put them into the steriliser. When I was done I turned around, half expecting the room to be empty but he was still there, leaning against the door.

‘What, you still here?’

‘Did you expect me to sneak off?’

‘Given the fact that you sneaked in, well, the idea came to mind.’

‘You wound me, Dr Watson.’ He dug in his pocket and pulled out a few banknotes. ‘What do you normally charge for the repair work you’ve just done?’

‘Repair work?’ I straightened and frowned at him. ‘That, my dear boy, was a tad more than mere repair work. Must I remind you that you were about to use the stapler? Imagine what that would have looked like. Apart from the bloodbath, that is.’

‘Well, treatment then. What do you normally charge for treatment such as this?’

‘Normally my patients make an appointment and everything goes its normal and proper NHS way. But I don’t assume you’re inclined to provide me with your personal details.’

‘You assume correctly. But you are right, I would have made a mess of my leg and it would not be right to run off without payment. So,’ he flicked through his bills, ‘how much?’

I pursed my lips. ‘You know what,’ I said slowly, knowing I would question my sanity later for what I was about to say. ‘Consider it my Good Samaritan deed for this week and promise me you’ll come back if anything is amiss.

‘Here’s my card.’ I reached for the small tray that sat next to the computer, fished for one of my cards and scribbled my mobile number on the back. ‘If you experience unusual pain, if anything feels wrong–’

‘I promise to be a good boy and give you a ring,’ he finished the sentence for me and took my card, cast a fleeting glance over it and put it into his pocket, along with the banknotes. Giving me a mock salute, he turned to go. ‘I’ll let myself out. You’ll have your day to prepare, Doctor, and I’ve taken up quite enough of your time.’

‘Oh no. You will not deprive me of the pleasure of seeing you out myself. Besides, we’re about to open in,’ I checked my watch, ‘20 minutes. Chances are good our receptionist will show up any minute.’

As if on cue, somebody knocked on the door.

‘Come,’ I called, and Jen’s round face appeared in the door.

‘Oh,’ she said when she saw I wasn’t alone. ‘If I had known you had a patient scheduled in the middle of the night, I would gladly have got up an hour earlier.’

I groaned inwardly. Such a ray of sunshine, our Jen.

‘It was an emergency,’ my patient said, flashing her a boyish grin. ‘I had an accident and your surgery was the closest I could find. I was grateful Dr Watson agreed to take a look and patch me up.’

‘Well, lucky for you the good doctor has chosen to make one of his rare early appearances.’ She shot me a venomous look. Must have detected my bike then. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it inside but it had been pouring when I had arrived here. ‘Come along with me now, laddie, so we can get the paperwork sorted.’

Laddie? I was never sure whether it was a good or a bad sign when she got Scottish.

‘There is no paperwork to sort out,’ he said and adopted the look of a puppy well aware it had done something wrong. ‘I’m a private patient, you see, and Dr Watson and I have agreed I would settle the account when I come for the check-up.’

Had we? I raised an eyebrow but the puppy look seemed to have the desired effect. Jen’s features softened.

‘A private patient then. Very well, Mr, uh–’

‘Holmes,’ he said with another charming smile. ‘The name’s Sherlock Holmes.’

I all but snorted. Sherlock Holmes? Well, it was certainly original, I’d have to give him that. I had treated a lot of ‘John Smiths’ back in the day.

Jen didn’t seem to find anything funny about his name.

‘Fine then, Mr Holmes. If you have an agreement with Dr Watson, I’m sure all is in order.’

‘It is, Jen,’ I hastened to assure her. ‘I’ll write up a report, no worries.’

‘Holmes’ flashed Jen another smile and, after wishing her a pleasant day, limped towards the main door. I followed him with my eyes until the door closed behind him and turned to find Jen giving me a hard stare.

‘What?’

‘Pretty, huh?’

‘What is?’

‘He is.’

‘Yes.’ I saw no reason to deny it. The team knew I was gay. It wasn’t something I shouted from the rooftops, but I didn’t lie about it, either.

‘Sure you didn’t show up early because of him?’

‘Jen, please. I was here early because I wanted to go through the revised budget when I heard him at the main door.’ No need to tell her about the break-in. ‘Couldn’t very well send him away, so I decided to stitch him up.’

She didn’t look convinced, but I wasn’t going to explain myself to our ill-tempered receptionist.

‘And now if you’ll excuse me, dearest, I will take a look at said budget. My first patient isn’t due before 8.30, right?’

‘Do you seriously expect me to memorise all of your appointments, Dr Watson?’

‘No, of course not.’ I looked over my shoulder to check if I had put everything where it belonged, and when I was convinced that, yes, the operating room was neat enough for the three small operations I had scheduled for today, I made for my office.