She tidied the notes into a pile and opened the first one to find a note written in his precise handwriting. Logging on to the computer, she typed it into the electronic records and filed the hard copy, wondering for the thousandth time why the doctor insisted on hard copies as well as the digital files. Maybe it was his age, she thought. He belonged to a generation for which computers and storage clouds were newfangled and therefore untrustworthy. It didn’t matter how often she explained it all to him, Dr Moncrieff wanted things done his way.
A man entered reception and approached the desk, the worried look of a recent diagnosis on his face.
‘Good morning, sir. Can I help you?’ He looked vaguely familiar but he hadn’t seen the doctor before.
He smiled the thin smile of one condemned and said, ‘I hope so. I have an appointment at ten thirty.’ He pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket. ‘Here’s my referral. Ray Dreyfus for Dr Moncrieff.’
He looked a little ruffled, as if he’d been rushing, and the referral letter he passed to her was creased and had a coffee stain on it.
‘Sorry,’ he said, looking at it in her hands. ‘I hope it’s still all right.’
Clare smiled one of her real smiles; not the encouraging smile, the comforting smile, or the smile saved for the dying which was a smile that at the same time creased the area between her eyebrows.
‘Not a problem,’ she said. ‘Coffee cups have a way of leaving their mark.’
Ray laughed. It was a nervous chuckle rather than a full-throated laugh and Clare felt sorry for him.
‘Dr Moncrieff is the best there is,’ she heard herself saying, although in reality she had no idea if she was right; he might have a higher mortality rate than others for all she knew, but she wanted to believe she worked for one of the best and so she sounded confident when she said it.
‘Yes. He comes highly recommended,’ said Ray before lapsing into silence. It was as if mentioning the doctor’s name had reminded him of why he was there. Clare was pleased to see that at least he allowed himself the comfort of a sofa rather than one of the hard chairs to fill in his paperwork.
‘I thought I was going to be late,’ he said as he stood and handed it back to her. ‘My train was delayed, and I had no idea how long it would take to get here from the station.’ He ran a hand through his hair and then patted it down as he spoke, as if expecting it to be sticking out at odd angles from the stress of the journey.
‘My train was delayed too.’
Ray looked at her, wide-eyed. ‘A Milton Keynes train?’
‘Yes. Same one?’
‘Yes. A suicide on the line. Terrible thing to happen.’
Clare noticed the patient had started sweating.
‘Take a seat, Mr Dreyfus. Can I get you a glass of water?’
‘No, thank you. I’ll be fine.’ He sat and took a few deep breaths, his head resting against the back of the sofa.
The intercom buzzed and Dr Moncrieff asked her to step into his room.
He was a good-looking man, even though he was well into his sixties. Tall, upright, his grey hair neatly cut, his tie always matched by the handkerchief in his top pocket. He inspired trust and confidence in his patients, even though Clare knew he couldn’t save them all.
‘Ah, Clare. Finally.’
‘Yes, doctor. Sorry. As I said in my message, there was a delay on the line this morning.’
‘Very unfortunate.’ He handed her the file he’d been writing in. ‘I haven’t had my coffee yet.’
And thank you for your concern over the incident on the train, she thought to herself.
‘I’ll make it now. And your next appointment is here. Mr Dreyfus.’
She swept out, hands clenched. How was it that he was such a competent doctor and yet he couldn’t work the coffee machine? Or wouldn’t. She put in more sugar than the half teaspoon he liked and took it in to him with the new patient’s file, pausing long enough to see him take his first sip and grimace slightly before asking her to send the patient in.
‘You can go in now, Mr Dreyfus.’ She watched him walk, stiff-backed, through the door to the executioner. Or his saviour. They could never be sure before the first appointment. His referral suggested prostate cancer. There had been tests. Now a second opinion was sought as to whether surgery was an option. Clare sighed. Cancer was such a terrible disease, eating away at you sometimes for years before it offered up any symptoms, before it alerted you to its deadly presence. She herself had regular mammograms and Pap smears, and visited her GP for blood tests designed to discover minute changes in her blood that might be due to some silent danger.
She hadn’t always been so cautious, but since working for a urologist, she knew life was delicate, that you could be struck down at any moment. It had caused many of her panic attacks. She had learned with the help of her therapist to manage them, by and large, but the anxiety still lurked. She and the counsellor had discussed many a time her determination to face her death anxiety by working for a doctor. She said she felt somehow inoculated from her own fate if she faced it in others day in, day out. If she could make the last weeks or months of others’ lives even a little bit more pleasant by way of an encouraging smile or a kind word, perhaps death would leave her alone.
A suicide. She’d known it, of course, but Mr Dreyfus said it so nonchalantly as if these things happened every day,
