Like Doctor, Like Son Read online

  “We need to give DJ a whole blood transfusion, but because he’s Rhesus negative we’re having difficulty matching his blood group. Are you a match, Faith, or is DJ’s father?”

  For a moment Quinn was startled by the man’s assumption that Faith was DJ’s mother. Couldn’t he see that she was far too young?

  “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,” Quinn began. “She’s not DJ’s—”

  “His father’s a match,” Faith announced, shocking him into silence. She bit her lip, as though wishing she could take the words back, then turned to look at Quinn.

  “I didn’t want you to find out this way,” she whispered, her lips almost bloodless.

  Dear Reader,

  We can all look back and wonder how different our lives would have been, but how many of us have wondered what we would do, what we would say, if we were to come face to face with the person who had once meant everything to us?

  For Quinn Jamison, being deserted by the girl he loved just before they left to begin their medical training together had made his career all the more important to him. But that didn’t mean that he’d forgotten her, or that he wouldn’t like a chance to find out why she’d treated him that way.

  In Faith’s case, her decision to leave had been made because she’d known his involvement with her would prevent him from following his career, and would eventually destroy their love. But although she’d gone on to be successful, she’d never forgotten him.

  When their paths cross again, she hopes that nothing will change—after all, they are different people now. But the guilt she’s carried with her all those years won’t let her rest until she finally tells him the truth.

  I hope you enjoy Quinn and Faith’s story and look forward to hearing your comments.

  Happy reading!

  Josie

  Like Doctor, Like Son

  Josie Metcalfe

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘I COULD have been a doctor if it hadn’t been for you,’ the man growled, aiming a clumsy backhanded swipe.

  Even as he ducked with automatic ease Quinn’s heart sank when he realised just how drunk his father was. He knew his aim wasn’t as deadly when he was this drunk but he also knew all too well that the familiar complaint signalled the start of his descent into the latest depressive cycle of his illness.

  If only he could find a way to make him take his medication regularly, everything would be different. Perhaps then he wouldn’t keep losing his job and they wouldn’t have to keep moving to escape the debts that soon mounted up at every stop. Sometimes he felt as if he was going to be overwhelmed by the chaos surrounding his life. It was hard to remember whether it had ever been any different, even when his mother had still been with them.

  He glanced at the clock as he settled a blanket over the muttering figure now slumped on the settee and stifled a sigh with the realisation that he was going to be late, again…and on his first day in a new school. He’d actually been looking forward to it—the prospect of a fresh circle of people who didn’t yet know anything about him and might accept him for who he was rather than where he came from.

  Well, who cared where he came from? he thought with a pugnacious lift of his chin as he retrieved his backpack and let himself out of the ramshackle door. He had a goal and the only way to achieve it was to work. He didn’t know whether the idea had been planted with his father’s first words as soon as he had been born, but it had been firmly lodged in his brain for as long as he could remember. He was determined that he was going to succeed where his father had failed. If he never did anything else with his life, he was going to become a doctor, come what may.

  The first step on that arduous road was to pass those all-important exams at the end of the school year, and that wouldn’t happen if he missed any more lessons. At least he’d been lucky in one thing with their latest move—the school he was due to start at today had a good reputation for the number of pupils going on to further education. The headmaster had even boasted that there were several others in his class intending to apply for places at medical school, including one very bright girl…

  ‘Come in, Mr Stratton. Take a seat,’ Quinn invited, taking a surreptitious glance at the time. He would have finished morning surgery by now if the gentleman in front of him hadn’t been added to the list at the last moment.

  This was already turning out to be the sort of day that he’d rather forget. He’d had less than three hours’ sleep last night and he couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten. This morning’s list had seemed to go on for ever. In his exhausted state, the patients had appeared as one long parade with nothing better to do with their time than whine about their self-inflicted miseries, none of which could be cured by the magic pill they expected him to produce out of a hat.

  And now, to top it off, there was George Stratton to contend with—in all likelihood, another complete waste of time.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Stratton?’

  ‘Nothing,’ snapped the stubborn, self-opinionated curmudgeon. ‘I wouldn’t be here at all if the wife hadn’t made the appointment. Waste of time.’

  Quinn stifled a sigh, mentally taking his hat off to the woman who’d been putting up with this man for the last thirty or more years. Sometimes, patients like George Stratton and the gaggle that had preceded him today made him wonder why he’d worked so hard to become a doctor.

  ‘Well, since you’re here, how about letting me give you a ten-thousand-mile-service?’ he suggested, forcing a smile to his face as he got out of his seat and reached for his stethoscope and sphygmomanometer.

  He hardly needed either of them. He could see at first glance that the man hadn’t followed a single word of his advice the last time he’d been dragged in here by his wife. He was still forty or fifty pounds overweight and was probably still smoking and refusing to see that he needed to start taking regular exercise. About the only thing he could be sure of was that his wife would be making certain that he was taking his blood-pressure medication regularly.

  George Stratton grudgingly complied with requests to take deep breaths while Quinn listened to his chest. He even managed to stay still long enough to have the cuff inflated around his arm, but the results were every bit as bad as Quinn had expected. In spite of the heavy-duty drugs, his blood pressure was absolutely sky-high.

  ‘Mr Stratton,’ he began wearily, propping his hips back on the edge of his desk while he tried vainly to find some way to make the man see sense, ‘have you done anything about losing weight? Or doing exercise?’

  ‘I’ve seen what’s on that damn diet,’ he countered belligerently. ‘You put the wife on it and she’s hardly eating enough to keep a sparrow alive.’

  ‘But it’s helped her to lose almost all her excess weight and her blood pressure’s almost normal for the first time in years,’ Quinn pointed out patiently, knowing he was wasting his time repeating the information that the diet was individually formulated to provide all the nutrition each patient needed. He’d already been through that, several times.

  Anyway, Iona Stratton was one of the shining success stories of the six months since he’d moved to the practice in Rookmere. She’d known just how much damage her excess weight could have been doing to her whole body, and how it had not only been hindering her everyday life but could even shorten it through heart disease. Unfortunately, she’d tried most commercial diets and had failed to make any headway. She’d immediately grasped
at the chance to join the new self-help group he’d set up and had never looked back.

  ‘I’m not starving myself for anybody,’ he growled. ‘If I want kippers for my tea, I shall have them—same as my father and my grandfather. It didn’t do them any harm. They didn’t go on any newfangled diets to live long healthy lives.’

  ‘Both of them also lived very active lives—not a sedentary office job like yours,’ Quinn reminded him patiently, having heard this argument before. He silently quoted the old aphorism ‘There’s none so blind as them that will not see’ and wondered if he’d ever win with this man. ‘Besides, Iona’s worried about you.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be a woman if she wasn’t worrying about something—or nagging a man,’ he declared chauvinistically, heaving himself to his feet. ‘I came here. You’ve checked me over and tried to ram your diet down my throat again. That’s an end of it. Next time she rings to make an appointment for me, tell her not to waste both our times, because I won’t be coming.’

  ‘Mr Stratton,’ Quinn began, more concerned than ever when he saw the colour of the man’s face after just that little exertion. ‘I really think you ought—’

  He got no further.

  His patient had started to turn back when he’d spoken but had suddenly gasped, almost as if he’d been struck and winded. His eyes had widened with a combination of shock and panic then had abruptly closed as he slumped heavily to the floor.

  In two strides Quinn was at the door and had flung it open.

  ‘Joan!’ he shouted to the receptionist even as he rolled his unconscious patient over and began to check his vital signs. ‘Emergency! Phone for an ambulance!’ Thank goodness George had been the last patient of the morning or that would have caused pandemonium in the waiting room.

  There was no discernible pulse and he’d stopped breathing.

  ‘Damn!’ he muttered in time with his double-fisted blow over the man’s heart, then began rhythmic compressions. ‘You were asking for a heart attack,’ he said between gritted teeth, mentally keeping count. ‘And, boy, did you get it!’

  ‘Ambulance is on its way, Quinn,’ Joan Morris announced from the doorway. ‘What can I do to help?’

  ‘Oh, my God! George!’ shrieked Iona, and flew to his side.

  Quinn realised that the poor woman must have heard his shout from the waiting room, but before he could do more than curse the fact that she was being confronted by such a sight, she’d dropped to her knees on the other side of her husband.

  ‘I’ll breathe for him,’ she announced fiercely, startling him by positioning herself in exactly the right spot as though she’d practised for years. ‘Tell me when.’

  They swiftly established a rhythm while Quinn directed Joan to wheel over the trolley set up with the practice’s brand-new defibrillator and ECG monitor. He’d used the ECG as a routine diagnostic tool several times since he’d taken delivery of it just a few days ago but hadn’t expected to need it in such an acute situation. As for the defibrillator…

  ‘I’ll take over here,’ Ana Rodriguez, his part-time practice nurse said at his elbow, smoothly positioning her hands over George’s chest as soon as Quinn lifted his away. Quinn had a momentary qualm about her doing such a strenuous task when she was so obviously pregnant, then reminded himself how eminently sensible she was. She wouldn’t willingly do anything to risk her baby.

  Swiftly, he peeled the gel pads off their backing and flipped them into position on his patient’s chest.

  ‘Charging to two hundred,’ he announced as soon as he had the paddles ready, grateful that he’d insisted that all members of staff have a familiarisation session with the new equipment when it had arrived. Joan had anticipated his needs as confidently as though she had been setting up for an ECG all her life, applying the self-adhesive leads in exactly the right places.

  ‘Hands away, everybody, and don’t touch his body while I shock him,’ he ordered.

  He paused just long enough to check that they’d all complied before he applied the paddles and released the charge.

  He heard Iona stifle a gasp when her husband’s body arched painfully with the shock, and spared a brief thought for the trauma she was going through.

  The reading on the ECG showed an ominous flat line.

  Automatically, he checked that the leads and connections had been properly made and that the gain was turned up on the monitor. It was still a flat line.

  ‘Asystole,’ Ana muttered. ‘You’ll defibrillate again?’

  She’d made it sound like a question, but there wasn’t really any question in his mind. If there was any chance that the diagnosis might be ventricular fibrillation…

  ‘Recharging to two hundred,’ he announced. ‘Hands clear.’

  The body convulsed again but the result was the same.

  ‘No change,’ Ana confirmed grimly, as she recommenced compressions. ‘Still in asystole.’

  ‘Charging to three hundred and sixty,’ Quinn said, stupidly noticing that his knees were hurting on the ultra-appropriate, eminently cleanable, far-too-hard floor. He’d almost lost track of how long he’d been kneeling there, totally concentrating on trying to save the man’s life in spite of George’s apparent death wish.

  Again the lifeless body arched with every appearance of agony but this time…

  ‘VF!’ Ana exclaimed and Quinn grunted an acknowledgement. Ventricular fibrillation was nothing to sound so happy about—with his heart fluttering wildly out of rhythm, the man was still only half a step away from death. But at least it was better than no activity at all.

  ‘Joan, are you happy to take over from Ana?’ he asked as he prepared the paddles again. ‘Ana, I need to give him IV adrenaline. One milligram. And have atropine, lignocaine and bicarb ready, too. We need to get an IV line in quickly?’

  He had to wait a moment while she hurried to fetch them, every second seeming like a lifetime while he toyed with the advisability of inserting an oropharyngeal airway to ventilate his patient with oxygen. Then he saw the way his middle-aged receptionist and his patient’s wife had risen to the challenge of keeping the essential CPR rhythm going and realised that their need to feel that they were doing something to help took precedence over technology.

  ‘Here.’ Ana held out the IV giving set, a whole series of sterile disposable syringes lined up in a kidney bowl.

  ‘Thanks,’ he muttered distractedly, while a voice inside his head was urging him to hurry.

  For just a moment a cold finger of panic ran down his spine when he feared he wasn’t going to be able to find a vein in the flabby arm, but then he was in and within seconds she had passed him the syringe with the prepared dose of adrenaline and he pressed the plunger all the way home.

  Then it was time for the defibrillator again.

  ‘Charged to three sixty…Hands clear!’ Even as he applied the paddles his eyes were fixed on the ECG. Would the adrenaline make the difference? Would the charge manage to shock George’s heart out of its ineffectual quivering and into strong, life-sustaining beats this time?

  ‘Normal sinus rhythm!’ Ana announced triumphantly, a beaming smile completely replacing the worry of the last few minutes.

  Iona sat back on her heels and burst into tears, her noisy sobs almost masking the sound of the approaching ambulance siren.

  Quinn checked his patient’s vital signs again and allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction, knowing that at least he’d managed to give the stubborn man a second chance to change his ways.

  This was why, he thought as he watched the ambulance speed on its way towards the hospital a little while later. This feeling of fulfilment was why he’d gone through all those years of training.

  ‘If only I didn’t feel so damn tired,’ he muttered, as he went back into the practice to have a few words with Joan and Ana. He realised that they were probably feeling just as euphoric as he was, but it was important to let them know just how much he’d appreciated their assistance when it had mattered.

&nb
sp; Then he was going home to get his head down for at least an hour. If he didn’t get some sleep soon, he was going to be no use to anyone.

  ‘Oh, Quinn! Thank goodness you didn’t go straight home!’ Joan exclaimed, almost before the door had swung closed behind him. ‘I’ve just had Molly Beech on the phone. You know, the housekeeper at the Barton.’

  ‘Of course I know Molly. She was one of the first patients through my door when I came here as locum for Dr Jordan, and one of the first to sign up for the slimming classes. What’s happened to her?’

  He was concerned. Molly was another one who had done well in the slimming classes—in her case, the impetus to lose weight being that she needed to improve her odds under a general anaesthetic. If she’d had a setback now, it could put her surgery back and that could have disastrous consequences.

  ‘No. It’s not Molly. It’s Herself up at the Barton,’ Joan explained, uncharacteristically flustered. ‘Molly went in to tell her that her lunch was ready and found her looking very poorly.’

  Herself?

  Quinn didn’t smile. Constance Adamson had already been called that, and in just that reverential tone, before he’d left to go to medical school over sixteen years ago.

  ‘She’s not registered with the practice, is she?’ He knew damn well that she wasn’t. A local general practitioner would be far too common. Nothing but a Harley Street specialist would be good enough for the Barton’s mistress.

  ‘No, she’s not,’ Joan confirmed with a steely glint in her eye as she slid his bag towards him across the top of the reception desk. ‘But that won’t stop you going up there to see if she needs help, not when Molly asked you to.’

  ‘All right, Joan. Smooth your feathers down. I’m going,’ he soothed as he took the bag from her. ‘Let Molly know I’m on my way.’

  ‘I already did,’ she gloated slyly. ‘She’s leaving the front door open, so you can walk straight in.’

  On the drive over to the Barton, Quinn couldn’t help thinking about the irony of the situation.