spotted an oxygen cylinder in the corner of the room and was relieved to see a defibrillator on another trolley. If Terry was having a heart attack and in any danger of an imminent cardiac arrest she had the means to deal with it. She also knew that one of the keys on the ring she was holding was to open a drug cabinet that James had told her was well stocked.
On first impressions, Terry didn’t look like a man who was in the middle of having a heart attack. His colour was good, he wasn’t sweating and he seemed to be clutching the side of his chest rather than a more classic sign of pressing his hand to the centre. He’d also told her that he wasn’t feeling sick in any way but Emma wasn’t about to make assumptions. She helped her patient climb onto the bed and lifted the back so he wasn’t lying completely flat.
‘Let’s get that coat and jumper off and unbutton your shirt, Terry.’ Emma opened the drawer on the ECG trolley and took out electrodes. ‘So you’ve been getting angina for a while?’
‘Just a bit. And only when I’m doing too much.’
‘He’s taken up jogging,’ his wife told Emma. ‘I told him he’s going to kill himself but he’s determined to lose the weight.’
‘And you were jogging when the chest pain came on?’
‘No...’ Terry lifted his arm out of the way as Emma stuck the final electrodes on the left side of his chest. ‘I was getting the damned turkey out of the freezer in the barn.’
‘It was far too big to go in the freezer in the house.’ Jenny nodded. ‘And it takes days and days to thaw.’
‘It was like carrying a giant, slippery rock,’ Terry complained. ‘And then I started to drop it and almost tripped over something at the same time and it went flying.’ He gave a huff of something like laughter that turned into a groan. ‘So to speak... Anyway, it was when I bent down and picked the turkey up that the pain came on. By the time I got it into the laundry tub, I could hardly stand up.’
‘Does anything make it worse?’ Emma asked, still smiling at Terry’s attempt at humour. ‘Like taking a deep breath?’
Terry tried to breathe in and groaned. ‘Yep...that really hurts.’
‘And you used your angina spray?’
‘Didn’t do a thing.’
‘Okay.’ Emma was becoming more confident that she wasn’t dealing with a critical cardiac event. ‘Keep really still for me for a few seconds, Terry. I’m going to do the ECG.’
With the sheet of graph paper in her hand a short time later, Emma smiled at the anxious couple in front of her.
‘Good news,’ she told them. ‘This all looks absolutely normal. There’s no sign of your pain being due to angina and certainly no indication that you’re having a heart attack.’
‘Oh...’ Jenny started to cry. ‘I was so worried.’
‘What is it, then?’ Terry asked.
Emma handed Jenny the box of tissues. ‘I suspect you pulled a muscle between your ribs while you were wrestling with that frozen turkey,’ she told him. She put her hand on the left side of his chest. ‘Tell me if this hurts...’
Jenny stayed by the head of the bed, watched the thorough examination her husband was receiving and listened to the advice about cold and heat packs and using anti-inflammatory medication.
‘Are you sure it’s not a heart attack?’ she asked.
‘Quite sure.’ Emma smiled. ‘But you did the right thing in getting it checked out. I’m going to take your blood pressure while you’re here too, Terry.’
‘Imagine if it had been a heart attack.’ Jenny reached for another tissue. ‘Right before Christmas. I know it’s terrible at any time of year but there’s something about Christmas, isn’t there?’
‘Mmm...’ Emma stuck the earpieces of a stethoscope into place as a hint for Jenny to stop talking. She didn’t need a reminder of how much worse it was to have a tragedy at Christmas time. She placed the disc of the stethoscope over the artery in Terry’s elbow as she pumped up the blood pressure cuff.
Jenny hadn’t taken the hint. ‘It’s like the poor Cunninghams. Ruined Christmas forever for those poor boys. They used to call it “the Cunninghams’ Christmas Curse” in these parts.’
Emma knew she shouldn’t encourage gossip but it wasn’t as if she’d asked a question aloud. Her startled glance had been enough to prompt Jenny to continue.
‘Their poor mother,’ she said sadly. ‘Fought off the cancer for such a long time and all she wanted was one last Christmas with her little boys but they didn’t even get the decorations up.’ She lowered her voice. ‘And they’ve never been put up again, from what I heard. Not in that house...’
Emma let the pressure out of the cuff slowly. Concentrating on the figures as she heard a pulse begin and then disappear again didn’t stop part of her brain absorbing the information she’d just been given. What a sad house this must have been for Max—especially that first Christmas without his mother.
‘Your blood pressure is on the high end of normal,’ she told Terry. ‘Are you on any medication for that?’
‘Yes. Dr Cunningham looks after me well, don’t you worry about that. Can I get dressed again now?’
‘And then there was last year.’ Jenny handed her husband his jumper as he finished buttoning up his shirt. ‘Losing poor Andy like that. It shouldn’t have happened at all, but to have it happen in December. Another Christmas funeral...’ She clicked her tongue. ‘And now...those children... What sort of Christmas is this going to be for those poor wee mites?’
Terry’s head popped out of the jumper’s neck. ‘That’s enough, Jen,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sure Dr Moretti isn’t interested in hearing all this gossip.’
‘It’s not gossip,’ Jenny said defensively. ‘We care about each other in Upper Barnsley, that’s all. Especially our closest neighbours.’ She smiled at Emma. ‘Are you here to help Dr Cunningham, then? It’s about time he had another doctor to help him in this clinic. Young Max is brilliant but he’s always been one for an exciting life. He doesn’t want to leave that big emergency department at the hospital.’
‘I’m actually here to help at the hospital,’ Emma told them. ‘But, right now, I’m going to go and show Dr Cunningham your ECG, Terry, and let him know that you’re okay.’ She held the door open for the couple. ‘Have you got plenty of anti-inflammatories at home?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Jenny nodded. ‘And don’t go bothering Dr Cunningham with my Terry’s problems right now. I suspect he’s got enough of his own...’
‘You need to follow the directions on the tin for how many scoops. Level scoops, like this...’ Maggie scooped the formula and showed Max how to level it off with the back of a knife. ‘Put it into the bottle of warm water. Attach the nipple and ring and cap like this...and then shake it.’
Maybe baby Alice could smell the milk being prepared and she was sick of waiting. Or maybe she didn’t like the unfamiliar male arms that were holding her right now. Whatever the reason, her unhappy whimpers were steadily increasing into shrieks that were pulling the tense knots in Max’s gut tighter by the second.
‘Are you sure you can’t stay, Maggie?’
‘I’m sorry, Max, but it’s impossible. I’ve got my daughter, Ruth, arriving and she’s nearly eight months pregnant and on her own. She’ll be exhausted after that long drive up from Cornwall and I haven’t had proper time with her since that bastard of a boyfriend walked out on her a few weeks ago. We’ve got a lot of talking to do about how she’s going to cope.’ Maggie took the cap off the bottle