Page 8 of A Doctor's Promise
The patients.
Finn’s stomach dropped like he was riding a roller-coaster. Set out like a small classroom, with a desk at the front and rows of chairs facing it, the room held six people, alongside himself and Edie. Four of them with a good helping of wrinkles and grey hair—they must be the two patients he had read up on and their significant others—but the remaining two looked like a mother younger than him, and her daughter. Finn felt the walls spin around him and reached out for the desk to steady himself. This wasn’t what he signed up for. He assumed they would all be old. He silently chastised himself for his slip in façade and his unpreparedness and took a few deep breaths to steady his nerves.
“Good morning, everyone. I’m leading the clinical trial and the surgeon who will be carrying out the procedures, my name is Doctor Finn Cooper. This is Doctor Edie Fletcher, she will be your psychotherapist and go-to if you have questions.” Finn turned to look at Edie as he introduced her and the smile she gave him sent the room once again flying around in a whirlwind. He felt his spirits buoyed, like he could take on the world. “You’ve all got Macmillan nurses already, and you will remain in their care. The only new people—other than myself and Doctor Fletcher here—that you’ll be with are the theatre team, and you’ll be too unconscious to need to worry about them.”
He caught Edie’s face and realised his attempt at humour had fallen a bit short. He’d like to blame Edie, she had thrown him for six and now he was attempting to make people laugh when normally he avoided conscious patients at all costs, but he knew it was his own fault for letting her get to him like that. To his relief, one of the older gentlemen gave a small snort.
“Obviously you can meet them, in pre-theatre, if you’d like to. And the anaesthetist will need to meet you too, I suppose…” he stumbled over his words, heat rising up his neck.
Edie put a hand on his arm, warmth radiating through his sleeve.
“I think what Doctor Cooper is trying to say, is that you don’t need to worry any more than you already are,” Edie said, giving his arm a little squeeze and taking the reins. “It’ll be the two of us conducting the trial and you’ll not be faced with lots of strangers to get to know. You’re all in the unenviable position of having a tumour so rare that it only comes on our radar once or twice a year.Thatis enough for you all to feel united. I hope that you can get to know one another over the next hour, and maybe not feel so alone. Fi… um, Dr Cooper and I will stay here for you to ask any questions you may have.”
She shot him a look, her eyes smiling.
“Luckily he’s a much better surgeon than he is public speaker,” she winked at the group and garnered a proper laugh, unlike his.
Finn could see the people in the room visible relax as Edie had started talking.
No wonder she is reportedly so good at her job.
A low chatter rang around the group as they started to talk amongst themselves.
“Can I have a quick word?” Edie whispered in his ear.
“Now?” he whispered back.
Edie nodded.
“I just wanted to say thank you for offering up an olive branch of friendship to me on Friday. It meant a lot,” she said, looking into his eyes with an intensity that whisked away his breath and made him pull at his collar.
His own eyes darted to the carpet.
“Of course,” he replied, clearing his throat and trying to smile. “Like I said, you’ve opened my eyes to what it would be like to… well, you know? Friends it is.”
Edie took his hand in hers, her skin soft, two of her hands enveloping one of his perfectly. “Thank you.”
She turned then to talk to the people in the room and Finn puffed out a huge breath of air. The older gentleman who had laughed at Finn’s pathetic joke, caught his eye and winked at him. Finn bit back a smile. If his feelings were that obvious to a stranger then he was going to need to rein them in a bit, because Edie had made her own feelings more than clear just then. She wanted to be friends and no more, just as he had asked. Yet as Finn watched her move around the room with ease and poise, he wished more than anything that the wordfriendshad never left his lips because she was the first woman since his late wife to make his heart skip a beat.
Friends! Urgh.
Edie forced a smile on her face and turned away from Finn’s beautiful dark eyes to the waiting group of patients.
She’d read up on the three initial trial patients and was looking forward to working with them. In the role she’d left as psychotherapist in London, she had been working with palliative patients on their end of life path. This was different. There was a glimmer of hope shining, just out of reach, and Edie knew she had to manage people’s expectations as well as working with them to develop a plan for their possible death.
The three patients were very different from each other but she could spot them in the room in an instant. Their pale faces, sunken eyes, and thin frames should have given them away, but Edie had only noticed the look of hope in their eyes as they sat listening to Finn. She thought about the man who had set her world spinning. How could someone so powerful be so nervous about talking to a group of people? Certainly, her initial reaction to him was being papered over. Well, most of her initial reaction, the part where she thought of him as arrogant and mean. She still felt her cheeks heat and her pulse quicken when she saw him,thatreaction would probably always remain. Probably especially so now they were destined to remain as friends.
“Doctor Fletcher?” an older woman with a neat bob of silver grey hair and a twin set held out her hand to Edie. Edie shook it and said hi. “My husband and I were told we the first to join up to the trial. Coming up to fifty years we’ve been married. I all but thought he was going to be a goner. I just wanted to say thank you for what you’re offering, you and Doctor Cooper. We might make it to our gold anniversary yet.”
Her rheumy eyes started watering and a man who Edie presumed was her husband came up behind the older woman and gathered her hands up in his own.
“It’s okay, love,” he said, kissing her gently on the back of the hand before turning to Edie. “Hello, young lady. My name is Kenneth, although you probably already know that. Kenneth Bates, pleased to meet you.”
Edie smiled at him. “Doctor Fletcher, Edie. Glad to meet you too, Kenneth. I start my initial consultations tomorrow and I think you’re the second on my list.”
“My surgery is booked for two weeks’ time, so perhaps I am. I must say, I’m a bit daunted, but it looks like I’ll be in good hands.”
He raised his eyebrow mockingly and Edie followed his line of gaze to where Finn was standing at the edge of the room biting the side of his thumb.
