Page 62 of A Helpin g Hand for the Village Nurse

‘How do you even get this much water out?’ Ottilie asked, struggling to see through her own tears.

‘Stay with us at our place while it dries out,’ Geoff added. ‘And don’t make excuses – we insist.’

Ottilie really didn’t want to. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the kindness of him, and of his sister Stacey, but she wanted her own house. Lonely as it might be, unfamiliar and anxiety-triggering, it was still hers. Everything she needed was there: her life, her history, her past and future were all there. It was where she needed to be, especially now.

‘I have to get to work,’ she said, her voice curiously calm, as if the events of the day thus far belonged to someone else’s life. But she didn’t know what else to do, how else to react when nothing about this would compute.

‘You can’t go to work today. Nobody will be getting to the surgery today anyway.’

‘Fliss will be expecting me. I have to go.’

Ottilie looked down at herself. She was going to have to go inside again to get her uniform, but at least that was upstairs in the bedroom. She could wade through the water in the hallway, do what she needed to do and get out again. She had to get to work; she couldn’t let Fliss down and, besides, it was easier to bury herself in her job and not think about what she had waiting at home. Perhaps she’d return to find the water had receded, and then all she’d have to do is wait for it to dry and then clean up. Was that how it worked? She’d seen endless news reports about flooded families over the years, but apart from a tut of sympathy she’d never really taken a lot of notice. She certainly hadn’t considered how to deal with the same happening to her – she’d never needed to.

Geoff and Magnus watched as she went back down the path. One of them called to her, but she wasn’t listening.

With a splash, she dashed through the water at the foot of the stairs and then ran up them, soaking the carpet along the landing as she went. Into the bedroom, grabbed her uniform from a hanger and back down with it bundled in her arms. She glanced at her car – there was probably no point in trying to take that, looking at the roads, it might be easier to walk than run the risk of deeper water flooding her engine. So she shut the door and, for what it was worth, locked it, and then gave Magnus and Geoff a tight smile.

‘It’s fine. I’m fine. You don’t need to worry. I’ll sort it all out later when I’ve finished work.’

She was far from fine, but what else could she say?

‘Ottilie!’ Lavender was at the door of the surgery when she arrived. They hadn’t yet opened up. ‘We didn’t think you’d be coming in.’

‘Why not?’

Lavender shot her a look of pure disbelief, glanced down at where water sloshed around their feet, and then back at her. ‘The whole village is under water and your house is in a dip.’

‘It’s under water too, but what’s the point in me being there? I can’t do anything about it; I might as well be working.’

‘I’m not sure we’re going to be able to run clinics today,’ Lavender said. ‘I’m just about to see what the damage is.’

‘Has Fliss been flooded too?’

‘Her house is a bit higher; I don’t think she’s fared too badly compared to some. Garden’s waterlogged and it’s come through the kitchen floor a bit, but she thinks it will dry out. Cellar’s taken the brunt of it, but she says they’re designed to do that so she’s not worried.’

‘I never thought about that.’ Ottilie wondered whether she’d been too quick to celebrate the fact she didn’t have a cellar. If that had taken all the floodwater, as it had in Fliss’s case, she might have been better off. But there was no point in dwelling on that now.

Lavender pushed the door open, creating a slight current. The water was in here but only as deep as the soles of Ottilie’s boots, so perhaps they’d be able to siphon it out somehow during the course of the day, as long as there was no more rain, that was, and as long as the river started to recede enough so it could swallow back some of what it had spat out.

‘What are we going to do about the patients?’ Ottilie asked.

‘Fliss is on her way in. We’ll have an emergency meeting and decide what to do when she’s assessed the damage. It might be that we can somehow soldier on.’

‘We could move people upstairs and see them?’

‘We could, though it’s not very well equipped and we’d have to move some of the stuff we store up there. Might be a bit musty too, seeing as we don’t use that floor all that much.’

‘It would mean we don’t have to turn people away.’

‘Let’s see what Fliss says when she gets here.’

Ottilie and Lavender went through to the surgery kitchen, water sploshing around their feet. Ottilie was getting sick of the smell – the same here as at her house, of silt and mud and old, rotting vegetation. It seemed to hang in the air like a cloud, thick enough to chop through.

‘Weren’t there any warnings about this?’ Ottilie asked as she bent to pick up some soggy paperwork floating on the surface of the water and spread it out on the table.

‘No. Wouldn’t be the first time the environment agency has been caught on the back foot, but I think there’ll be hell to pay this time. Fliss, for one thing, won’t be letting this go without saying something to someone in charge. If she gets her way, heads will roll.’ Lavender gave Ottilie a pained look. ‘Is it very bad at your place?’

‘Bad enough.’ Ottilie was exhausted already, simply from looking around at what seemed like an endless mess that they had no prospect of ever getting clean. So much for a refreshing sleep on Stacey’s sofa. Where did they start? The village as a whole, not just her; where did they even begin getting back to normal? And everyone seemed so matter-of-fact about it, where she felt as if what had been left of her world was caving in.

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