Page 35 of Beyond Repair
‘So the people that would “come running” are who?’
‘Oh, us lot, love,’ Gweneth said, indicating Russell, Dafydd, herself and Marney.
‘Oh, sorry, cariad, but count me out of that one,’ Dafydd told her. ‘My hip, see. Doesn’t take too kindly to running about.’
Sam rolled his eyes. ‘I need to speak to you,’ he told Katie, waving the others off impatiently.
‘So … the cavalry consists a middle-aged woman, a tiny non-verbal little girl, and an extremely camp gay man,’ he said, and Katie bit her lip.
‘Actually Gweneth can be quite scrappy,’ she retorted, feeling oddly protective of her practice and all its quirks. ‘And our practice nurse Aelwen – she’s dressing Howard Blethen’s leg ulcers at the mo, we’ll catch her up later – she might not look that aggressive but get her riled and she’s a force to be reckoned with, believe me.’
Sam spared her a quick withering glance before digging his mobile out of his pocket. Katie frowned: bossy and rude seemed to be his standard operating procedure. She decided to sit back down at her computer and see how long her visit list was (it was long and looked painful, she almost wished she hadn’t bothered) and ignore Sam, hoping he would take the hint and bugger off. Unfortunately in the background she could hear him talking about panic buttons and linking them into ‘the system’, whatever the heck that was.
Thankfully Gweneth popped her head round the door again to break the tension.
‘What’s occurring, love?’ she said. ‘Tea? Or are you off out?’
‘I’ll be going now, in a minute, Gwen,’ Katie said, snatching the patient summaries she had pulled up off the printer, and Gweneth gave Sam another big smile before scurrying out.
‘Exactly what time frame are we talking about with “now, in a minute”?’ Sam’s amused voice asked, and Katie turned to see that he was smiling again with his arms crossed over his chest, his irritation suppressed for now.
‘Well, W.R.,’ Russell said as he strolled through Katie’s door and hopped up onto her examination table, crossing his legs with a flourish. ‘For the standard Welshman, now in a minute can range from anything from immediate to several weeks’ time. We’re a difficult race to pin down time-wise.’
Chapter 18
An angel from heaven
‘Mrs Howell?’ Katie shouted, banging on the door for the third time. Sam was leaning against his truck, watching her with his arms crossed over his chest. Once she’d finished knocking, she bent down to shout through the letterbox – it was not her first rodeo as far as gaining access to this particular house went; normally either the TV was so loud that Mrs Howell would have been happily oblivious to a nuclear attack on South Wales, or the sheer volume of ‘stuff’ piled in her corridor and her living room simply blocked out all sound. Requests that she put in a key safe had been met with the same answer as those regarding cleaning out her house: it was always ‘now, in a minute, cariad’. And in Mrs Howell’s case this meant a firm ‘when hell freezes over’. Despite all the soundproofing, when Katie did lift the letterbox she could just about hear a reedy voice calling out from inside.
‘Hello? Is someone there? Help me, please.’ Mrs Howell sounded frightened and in pain.
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Howell, we’ll come in to help you now … in a minute.’ Katie’s words were met with a groan of pain, and she closed her eyes tight in frustration before straightening up and opening her bag to dig out her mobile.
‘Problem?’ Sam’s deep voice asked from beside her, causing her to jump about a foot in the air and spill half the stuff in her, admittedly already chaotic, bag onto the floor.
‘Dammit,’ Katie swore, her worry for Mrs Howell and her frustration making her unusually snappy. ‘I can’t get in and she’s in pain. I’m going to have to try to call her niece because I know for a fact Mrs Howell won’t have given a key to her neighbours: she thinks Mrs Jones in number forty-five is a Russian spy, and don’t even get me started on –’
Katie broke off and lifted her head from her bag at the loud crash from the front door. She stared up at Sam, open-mouthed.
‘Door’s open, doc,’ he said simply, stepping back from the thick oak now hanging off its hinges.
‘I … I … maybe we need to go over a few current UK laws, Rambo. Not sure what goes down in Somalia but –’
‘Hello? Is that you, Dr Katie, dear?’ Mrs Howell’s shaky voice echoed through the corridor.
‘You want to talk legalities or do you want to see to her?’
Katie shook her head; she’d worry about replacing the door later. As she stepped into the corridor the smell hit her and she tried not to breath through her nose. Mrs Howell had lived in this house all her life, and in her ninety-two years she had managed to accumulate a lot of stuff, all of which she seemed loath to part with; Katie had come across an electricity bill from 1937 on one visit. She was tempted to frame it – must have been one of the first of its kind. Now, the smell: that was a by-product of the overabundance of cats in residence. It was quite overpowering; Katie didn’t blame Sam for muttering, ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ and opting to stay outside.
She picked her way through the detritus towards where she had heard Mrs Howell’s voice, and the closer she got the more clearly she could make out a low whimpering sound. Cats darted around her legs as she pushed through to the sitting room down an extremely narrow passageway, rubbish and papers piled high either side. Once she finally made it through the sitting room door, she could see Mrs Howell, her face contorted in pain, lying on the floor in a small cleared area. It wasn’t big enough for her to lie fully flat, and she was propped up against the wall of papers.
‘I’m in a right pickle, Dr Katie,’ she said, attempting a shaky smile but failing miserably. ‘I fell and I couldn’t get up. My hip hurts dreadfully.’
‘It’ll be alright,’ soothed Katie, moving forward and trying to examine Mrs Howell in the small space.
‘Right,’ Katie said bracingly, after her awkward examination had revealed that Mrs Howell had likely fractured her hip. ‘I’m going to give you an injection to take the pain away and call an ambulance, okay?’ Mrs Howell’s eyes widened and Katie thought she might be going to argue, but after shifting slightly on the floor and giving another flinch in pain she nodded her head glumly.
Katie gave Mrs Howell the injection, then dug out her phone to call the ambulance. Whilst on the phone explaining the situation, she moved into the corridor to find Sam, indicating to Mrs Howell that she wouldn’t be long.
