A Familiar Stranger

The little girl nodded slowly. ‘My rabbit,’ she said.

Janna turned to the mother. ‘Could you ring the people looking after her, so Julie can reassure herself? Perhaps that really is all that’s wrong.’

‘Oh, dear, I feel so silly,’ Mrs Harvey said apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean to waste your time, but she did look so pale.’

‘She is pale, and I don’t mind you calling me out. You did entirely the right thing, Mrs Harvey,’ Janna soothed the young mother. ‘We never mind coming out to a child with tummyache or earache. However, this time I really think it’s probably nothing much to worry about. Just keep an eye on her, and if you’re still worried give me a ring later on and I’ll get the doctor to pop in and have a look at her before tonight, OK?’

With a smile and a wave to the wan little girl on the sofa, Janna left them and went to old Mrs Buchan.

She came to the door in her nightdress and dressing-gown, looking faintly surprised. ‘It’s you, hen—I wondered who was calling in the middle of the night. Come away in—it’s awful late, but I dare say we could ha’ a wee dish o’ tea.’

‘Mrs Buchan, it’s lunchtime,’ Janna told her gently. ‘See, the sun’s high in the sky.’

She squinted over Janna’s shoulder, her brow creased in confusion, and then her eyes filled and she turned away. ‘So it is. Come away in anyway, hen, it’s nice tae see you just the same.’

Janna followed her in, shaking her head slightly. Poor old thing, if only she hadn’t started to lose her mental faculties she would be fine on her own, because her body was still fit, honed by the harsh life and fresh air. The little croft was simple but spotless, and as Janna followed her into the kitchen she wasn’t surprised to see freshly baked bread out on the side.

‘Had to bake ma own bread—the shop didnae have any.’

At four o’clock on a Monday morning, Janna reasoned, they probably wouldn’t have had.

‘Mind,’ she added, ‘Moira was cross wi’ me because I woke her up from a wee nap—fancy that, Janna, having a nap in the shop in the middle of the afternoon!’

‘I thought it was night-time, though?’

Her brow creased. ‘So Moira said.’

‘You’re getting in more and more of a muddle, aren’t you, Betty?’ Janna said kindly.

Old Mrs Buchan sighed shakily. ‘I never seem to be able to work out the time—I’ve one of those clocks wi’ twenty-four hours, but I cannae work out the time on it. And in the summer the nights are so short, and I seem to doze in the day. Everything just gets in a grand old muddle, and then I make a nuisance of mysel’ and folks get angry——’ She broke off, biting her lip, and Janna put her arm round the slender shoulders and gave her a hug.

‘Don’t fret, Betty. You’re not a nuisance, pet. I think I’ll have a word with Dr McGregor and see if you should have something to help you sleep at night—that way perhaps you’d get back into a pattern of sleeping at night and being awake in the day, and it would help you to work out what the time was.’

She chatted for a few more minutes with the lonely old lady over a cup of tea, then headed back to her house to grab a late bite of lunch and check her phone for messages.

There was a note from Finn in his jagged, powerful scrawl.

Dinner tonight at the hotel at seven. I’ll pick you up at ten to. Be here, please. Finn.

The ‘please’ was underlined about a dozen times, and Janna’s heart sank. Evidently he meant to talk to her.

She checked her answerphone, found a call she needed to make to an elderly patient at Inverbeg, and set off again.

‘Mac’ McDougall was an old man, housebound, and supported by a team of carers and auxiliaries, and Janna had already visited him that morning. He was restless, however, and had apparently pulled his catheter out.

‘What’ve you been up to, my darling?’ she asked cheerfully as she prepared the necessary equipment.

‘Are you cross wi’ me, Sister?’ he croaked.

‘No, Mac, you’ve just been a bit silly. You must leave it in, otherwise you wet the bed. Let me see you, now.’

She peeled back the bedclothes and found his pyjamas were soaked and so was the bed. First things first, she thought, and stripped him out of his wet things, washed him down and started on the catheter. Once he was leakproof, she decided, she’d tackle the bed.

Inserting a new catheter was a job Janna did often, and she wouldn’t have minded at all except that Mac was rather difficult to deal with and refused to keep still, bending up his legs and rolling over so that Janna had to start again twice before she managed to insert it and fill the balloon with saline to keep it in place—not that the balloon had stopped him pulling the last one out.

She could see that his urethra was a little sore as a result, and so she had used plenty of anaesthetic jelly on the new catheter; by her third attempt it must have been numb enough not to worry him any more. However, she was feeling harassed, the procedure had taken far longer than it should have done, and she was worried about little Julie Harvey.

‘There—now, please, Mac, leave it alone, my dear.’ She taped the end of the catheter firmly to his thigh, so he couldn’t get hold of it too easily, and then helped him into dry pyjamas, remade the bed in double-quick time and popped him back in.

Already it was nearly four, and as she had to pass the house she called in on the Harveys.

‘Oh, she’s much better now she’s found out that the rabbit’s OK,’ Mrs Harvey said blithely. ‘She’s gone down to the beach with the other two.’

For some reason Janna didn’t feel reassured. ‘Call me if you’re unhappy or the pain comes back,’ she repeated, and went back to the Nurse’s House.

One last maternity check, she thought, and then she was off duty and could get ready for dinner with Finn. The young woman she had to visit was eight months pregnant with her third child, and Janna was trying to persuade her to go to Inverness or Fort William the following week, to be on the safe side. Her first two labours had been protracted, and without the prompt attention of the maternity staff at Inverness could have had a much less happy outcome.

However, against all advice, Lindsay Baird had decided to have this baby at home. Dr MacWhirter’s opinion on the subject had been pithy in the extreme, and his parting shot to Janna on Friday had been, ‘Well, at least I don’t have to be responsible for the Baird delivery now!’

Janna, however, was, in her capacity as community nurse and midwife. If Lindsay refused to go to hospital and had the baby at home, technically Janna was absolved if anything went wrong. Morally, however, she knew she had to do everything in her power to get the woman to listen, even if it mean worrying her to death with what might go wrong in order to make her take advice.

She arrived at the house and found Lindsay lying in the garden on a sun-lounger, enjoying the warm summer sunshine while the children played in the sand-pit beside her. She greeted Janna with a wave. ‘Hi—grab a seat.’

‘I will—fancy a drink?’

‘Oh, love one. The kettle’s hot.’

Janna made a pot of tea and took it out to the garden. Lindsay was one of her contemporaries, and Janna knew her well. It helped, because it meant that she could take a more frank approach.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve come to your senses?’ she asked bluntly as she poured the tea.

Linday shook her head. ‘Janna, I really want a normal, natural birth. I’m sure the others were so traumatic because I wasn’t at home. If I was here, and relaxed, it could all be so different.’

‘Lindsay, that’s hogwash. Of course being relaxed helps, but it won’t increase the diameter of your pelvic outlet. You’re small, your husband’s big, and you suffer a degree of pelvic disproportion every time. When was your last scan?’

Lindsay sighed. ‘Three weeks ago, and they said it was almost as big as it could get.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Well, then, nothing. Janna, I want to have my baby at home!’

‘Even it if means risking its life?’

‘Janna, don’t be melodramatic! I’ll be fine, I know I will. I’m confident.’

‘Did anybody ever tell you you were stubborn?’ Janna asked mildly, giving up for now.

‘Me?’ Lindsay snorted. ‘Never. Tell me, how’s Finn? We missed MacWhirter’s party on Friday, so I didn’t see him. Is he still as gorgeous as ever?’