Free Tread Softly by Wendy Perriam Page A

ties, except the one to her: she his wife, his love, his enchanting little princess.
    Safe in his arms, she stretched out full-length on the carpet and closed her eyes, barely registering the knock on the door.
    â€˜Mrs Pearson ! Are you all right? What happened? Did you fall?’
    â€˜No, I’m … fine.’ Scarlet-cheeked, Lorna heaved herself to her feet. Didn’t it just have to be Nurse Ingrid, a humourless harridan who had already caught her talking to a potted plant earlier in the week?
    â€˜Let me help you back to bed. Good gracious! You’re extremely hot. Has someone taken your temperature? No? I’ll do it then. You stay there and rest. I’ll be back in a second.’
    She was, with a thermometer and an air of agitation.
    â€˜It is rather high, Mrs Pearson,’ she said, shaking down the thermometer. ‘We’d better let Mr Hughes know. Fortunately he’s just along the corridor, seeing another patient.’
    â€˜Another emergency, no doubt,’ the Monster gloated. ‘I expect all his patients develop fever and delirium.’
    Lorna kept her eyes on the get-well cards clustered on the window-sill. She had friends. They cared. Clare had even sent a bouquet of pink tulips (miraculously spring-like in midwinter), although the poor things were drooping in the heat.
    â€˜Watch out! – here he comes, the strutting little quack. I wouldn’t trust him an inch. Remember those scandals about botched operations and mix-ups with the –’
    â€˜Good afternoon, Mrs Pearson. I hear you’re not so well.’
    â€˜Er, no.’
    â€˜How’s the foot feeling?’
    â€˜It’s been hurting a lot more today.’
    â€˜Have you a cough?
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Or any problem with your waterworks?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜We’d better take the dressing off. Nurse!’
    Lorna could hardly bear to watch as Ingrid unwound the crêpe bandage, revealing a disgusting layer of other, blackened, bandages encrusted with dried blood, which had to be prised off with hot water. The gauze pad beneath was sticking to the wounds and proved even more painful to remove. But the sight of her foot was the real shock. It resembled some grotesque exhibit in a sensationalist avant-garde art show – hugely swollen, with the black stitches standing out against the deep puce of the flesh, and yellowish pus oozing from two red and puffy toes.
    Clearly Mr Hughes was no happier than she was. ‘I think this might have been brought to my attention a little sooner,’ he remarked, his irritation evident despite the measured words. ‘And Mrs Pearson’s temperature chart doesn’t appear to have been filled in for the last couple of days.’ His raised eyebrows signalled further reproof, although he was graciousness itself as he turned to speak to her. ‘I’m afraid it is a bit infected, Mrs Pearson.’
    â€˜A bit? ’ the Monster spluttered. ‘The whole thing’s a mass of gangrene!’
    â€˜So I think we’d better keep you here a few more days.’
    Her first thought was for Ralph. Already he was pushed to meet the deadline on the Staplehurst job and had to fight his way across London to see her every evening on top of a hard day’s work. Last night he had looked washed out and did admit he wasn’t feeling well. Perhaps it was just the pressures: letters piling up unopened, invoices not sent out, and clients annoyed at getting the answering-machine instead of her personal attention. If she told him she had to stay in hospital when he needed her so desperately at home he might –
    â€˜Nurse, take a swab from those toes,’ Mr Hughes instructed. ‘And get the RMO to put a drip up. We’ll give Mrs Pearson some intravenous flucloxacillin. Keep her on bed-rest, with the foot elevated, and I want a four-hourly check on her temperature and pulse. I’ll look in again first thing