But, eager to get a response herself, Callie also sent an email, in case the reporter was in the habit of checking those from home.
Next, Callie called the hospital to check on David Morris; she was surprised to hear that he had been sent home.
“I didn’t know he’d regained consciousness,” Callie told the ward sister.
“Yes, he came round quite quickly. We’d have liked him to stay under observation a while longer but as he said there was someone at home to look after him and he was keen to go, we let him. I gave him a head injury information sheet, of course, and told him to come back if he experienced any symptoms from his concussion.” The nurse was obviously keen to cover her back with her patient’s GP, not realising that Callie wasn’t really calling in that role. As far as she was aware, he lived alone, so she was surprised that he had told the ward sister that there was someone there to look after him. He must have been really keen to get out.
“Thank you for telling me, sister. I’ll contact him and see if he needs a visit.” Of course, generally speaking, GPs don’t visit patients unless asked to do so, and often not even then, but Callie thought she could make an exception in this case. After all, it was only just gone seven in the evening, so she might just be calling in on her way home to check on him as the hospital had informed her that he had been discharged. She didn’t need to tell him that she had contacted the hospital rather than vice versa.
* * *
There was a slight chill in the air as Callie walked along All Saints’ Street. Morris’s home was just off the narrow road, up one of the twittens that ran between All Saints’ and Tackleway. These twittens, or narrow lanes, allowed foot access to cottages built on small bits of land sold off from people’s gardens. Many of these homes dated back to the nineteenth century and were little more than two rooms with bathrooms added wherever they could be fitted in at a later time. The addresses of the houses in the twittens and their numbering were often eccentric and it always took new postmen, and new doctors, a while to find their way round. Callie hadn’t been to this particular address before but she had been in many others nearby and was fairly confident she could find it from the lower road.
Finally standing in front of a door that had no number on it, but was in the right place to be number 15b, and which was in need of more than a lick of paint, Callie knocked.
“Yes?” a man called, before the door opened an inch or two and someone, a man, Callie thought, peered out.
“Mr Morris?” Callie asked. “It’s Dr Hughes. Your doctor.”
The door opened a little wider and Callie could see that it was indeed Morris.
“I didn’t call a doctor.”
“No, the hospital told me you had decided to go home and asked if I could visit to check you were okay.”
It wasn’t the exact truth, but it could be, Callie told herself as she put on her best concerned face.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“I’m sure you think you are,” Callie countered. “But if I could just run through the concussion tests, we’ll all feel a lot more reassured.”
He seemed to realise that she wasn’t going to take no for an answer and stood back to let her in. It was a tight squeeze getting past him into the tiny living room that the door opened into.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
He wasn’t joking, it looked like a bomb had gone off in the room leaving clothes, newspapers, takeaway cartons and empty beer cans littered around the place and all covered with a fine layer of cigarette ash.
Morris grabbed an overflowing ashtray and shoved it in the sink. He didn’t have to move much in order to do it, the kitchen was just a corner of the room fitted with a mini cooker and fridge as well as the sink, which was full of water and dirty dishes, and now also had cigarette ends floating in there.
Callie tried not to show her disgust as she put her doctor’s case on the floor and opened it, taking out an ophthalmoscope. Morris picked up a dark green packet of cigarettes that was lying on the table and chucked it into the kitchen. It was a bit late to try and cover up his smoking habit, Callie thought, as the evidence was all around him, hanging in the air.
“Right, if you could sit down, Mr Morris?”
He did as she asked and she looked in one eye, and then the other, flashing the light into them to check for a pupil reaction.
“You know the hospital only said you could go home because you told them there was someone here to look after you,” Callie said.
“I hate hospitals.”
“Yes, well, I can’t say that I blame you, but that was a nasty knock on the head you got and we all need to be sure there’s no lasting damage.”
“I’m fine,” he said again.
“Do you remember what happened?” she asked.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and pulled some crumpled pizza boxes out from underneath his bottom. He chucked them in the general direction of the overflowing waste bin.
“Not clearly,” he answered, hedging
