It was to a
very successful organization that Staff Nurse Dani Carew joined on a bitter
cold January morning along with another new nurse named Patricia Clerembeax.
It was four
years to the day after Dr Claire Lutchford nee Andrews, took over the
Shallowfield Surgery and in that short time she and her business partner Olivia
Shenton had transformed it into the Dancingdean Heath Centre, which had
continued to grow in stature which necessitated the expansion of staff numbers.
However while things had been going well for Claire and
Olivia in the four years they had been running the Dancingdean Heath Center in
Shallowfield, it had been quite a different story in those four years for Dani,
she had had a succession of loser boyfriends and had decided she was better off
on her own.
The final straw came when she overheard her then Doctor boyfriend
bragging about their sex life to a group of colleagues which was when she applied for a new job.
She was a Staff nurse at the Royal Downshire Hospital in
Purplemere and moving to Shallowfield to work in a Health Centre was as
everyone told her a step down, but she didn’t care she desperately needed a new
start.
It was just before Christmas
when Dani moved into Flat 4, of East Cliff Lodge, overlooking the picturesque
Teardrop Lake.
The view of the water from her flat was spectacular with its distinctive
teardrop shape which gave the lake its name, surrounded by the ancient woodland
of the Dancingdean Forest.
It was a modest body of water as lakes go, just over two miles long and
almost a mile at its widest point, it really was a thing of beauty and was both
idyllic and peaceful.
There was little or no noise
pollution and although the lake was used there were no speed boats or jet skis
only rowing boats, canoes, dinghies and skiffs.
Fortunately Dani
was not the only new starter at the health centre or the only newbie to the
area.
Patricia
Clerembeax who was the new palliative care nurse, moved into number 2 a couple
of days before her.
Both Dani’s
and Patricia’s moves had been purely out of choice because they were looking
for a change and not like many in their profession who had moves forced upon them
due to cost cutting measures.
As they both
moved in before Christmas and weren’t due to start work until the New Year and
as they were neighbours the two new girls gravitated towards each other and
became firm friends.
Chantelle Grimwood, who lived in
number 1, also worked at the health centre, as a Doctor and she and her husband
Richard volunteered to show the new girls around and help them get their
bearings and settle in.
They were
both dreading that first Christmas in a new place without anyone to cuddle up
to, and they thought that all that time on their own would drive them crazy.
But they
needn’t have worried for a second as Chantelle soon introduced them around to
all the mad people they would be working with and they had so many invitations
throughout December that they didn’t have a minute to think about being lonely,
even in the quieter moments because they were too exhausted.
After a very
enjoyable first Christmas in her new home Dani was really pleased that she wasn’t starting
the new job on her own and she knew Patricia felt the same way.
They both slotted right in at the Heath Centre and they soon found that
the rest of the staff were just as friendly as the ones they had already met were.
Dani loved
her job from the first moment she walked through the doors and she loved living
on the Lake even more.
Her New Year’s Resolution was to adopt a healthier approach to life and
walked a circuit of the lake every morning except on the weekends, on Saturdays
she split her time between housework and exploring the forest as well as any
one of a
number of places of interest, two Folly’s, a Watch tower, Olwen’s Chapel, a waterfall, brooks,
streams, a 16th Century Bridge and lovers leap, and Sundays after she’d
attended church in the morning she watched old films on TV in the afternoon,
after all she was 30 by then and couldn’t handle too much excitement.
Apart from
enjoying the Lake and its environs she was fast becoming a regular part of
Church life in Shallowfield and could often be heard in full voice in the
church choir.
Dani Carew
was a very pretty woman with honey coloured hair, she was five feet five inches
tall, trim and well-toned and she was originally from Purplemere but she was a
very girlie girl.
She had just
turned thirty and had resigned herself to the fact that now she had reached
that milestone she was never going meet anyone better than the losers she
managed to attract while she was in her prime.
Apart from needing to be shown the inner workings of the practice, the
processes and procedures, Dani also needed a guided tour of the area.
District nursing being part of her remit after all, so she needed to
familiarise herself with the district.
First of all she bought herself an ordinance survey map of the
Finchbottom Vale, between the Dancingdean
forest and the Pepperstock Hills, which encompassed her territory.
The problem was that she couldn’t read a map, or even fold or unfold
one.
She didn’t have a satnav in the car which would have helped to get her
from A to B but that wasn’t an option so she had to think of another way to map
out the district in her head.
Fortunately the other newbie Patricia
Clerembeax suggested they get together, it was obvious really because they were both
equally clueless about the area so between them they could get their baring’s
enough to avoid any major faux pas.
They were both based at the Health Centre for the first two months and it
took that long driving around in their spare time to crack it enough for them
to be let loose on an unsuspecting Finchbottom Vale.
The district
nursing team had a number of regular home visit, terminally ill or housebound
patients or those recuperating after surgery and they soon built up a good
rapport with them.
As Dani’s
background was as a Staff Nurse on a surgical ward in Royal Downshire Hospital she
found going out and about in the community very liberating.
She enjoyed
her time in the Health Centre well enough handling the clinics and such like
but Dani
really liked being a district nurse and
in her first six months at the Dancingdean Health Centre she became a valuable
member on the team.
When she was
first put on the visitors list, one of Dani’s first patients was 31 year old Richard Lambert, a
cancer survivor.
Richard
lived alone in the small country village of Shallowfield and he turned out to
be one of her favourite patients on her visiting rounds but he was also more of
a challenging one.
Richard Lambert had survived his cancer but in spite
of having had the brain tumour successfully removed and after all the following
treatment leading to him subsequently being given the all clear, he was
clinically depressed.
Having been
assigned to the Lamberts, she began from the first day to try and bring him out
of his self but it was to no avail.
What Dani didn’t know was that the reason for his
depression was that he had been left impotent since the surgery and as a result
he never left the house.
His wife Sarah was as supportive as she could have
been but she had confided to Dani very early on that she was close to breaking
point.
With Richard
unable to leave home Sarah was the breadwinner which she did without complaint,
but there were days when she didn’t want to go home and those days became more
and more frequent until she finally gave up and left him and moved to Abbeyvale.
So for two
months he was completely on his own so she spent longer with him each
successive visit and he looked forward to her visits more and more.
Dani tried to
make the most of her visits and lift his spirits but all she actually achieved
was to make the fatal mistake of falling for him.
It was the
first time she had let her guard down since she left Purplemere where Dani had had a succession
of loser boyfriends and had decided she was better off on her own.
The final straw came when she overheard her then Doctor boyfriend
bragging about their sex life to a group of colleagues and now she was doing it again, but she hoped not
with another loser.
But there was
no future in a relationship in which one of the parties refused to leave the
house but she was clueless as to how she could rectify the situation.
She was
fairly sure that he was attracted to her, she had caught him looking at her
legs and bum enough times, but that might not be enough.
However by the
end of June a decision made at the heath centre forced her hand.
On Friday
morning when Dani reported for work at the Health Centre she was told that
Richard Lambert was being taken off her list and that day would be her last.
“Who’s
taking over?” she asked
“No one” she
was told “We’ve done all we can for him, there are plenty of patients who actually
want our help”
As she drove
to his house she decided it was time for decisive action.
It was mid-afternoon
when Dani opened the back door and walked in the house.
“Hello” she
called
“In the
lounge” Richard called back
“Ah there
you are” Dani said
“Hi” Richard
said laying on the sofa watching something mind numbing on the TV
“Budge over”
She said and sat on the edge of the sofa beside him
“I have
news”
“What news?”
he asked
“Today is my
last visit”
“What?” he
said with alarm
“They think
you’re a lost cause” she said
“And what do
you think?” he asked quietly
“I disagree”
she said and leant in and kissed him slowly and deliberately.
It took him
by surprise but he soon got the message and by the end of the kiss he certainly
wasn’t impotent, not that Dani was aware of that.
But she was
aware of his level of participation in the kissing so she stood up and said
“It’s going
to be a nice day tomorrow, so if you want any more of that you’ll need to meet
me at Shoe Buckle Falls at noon”
“But…” he
began as she reached the door “don’t go”
“Tomorrow at
noon” she called back “Don’t be late”
She was up
early on Saturday morning and finished her housework so she had time to get
herself ready and make the best of herself, Dani was a very pretty woman with
honey coloured hair, and she looked at her reflection, all five feet five
inches of a trim and well-toned girlie girl in a summer dress, nodded her
acceptance of what she saw and then she headed towards Shoe Buckle Falls, so named, so
legend had it, after a 17th century fugitive Cavalier who was
pursued into the forest by parliamentarian soldiers but disappeared in the
vicinity of the falls and all they ever found of him was his shoe buckle.
The falls were not grand or spectacular but they were nice enough.
The water tumbled and spilled over the rocks, gathering briefly in deep
pools and then tumbling down again to the next pool.
It was dark beneath the ancient trees and refreshingly cool as the misty
spray settled on her.
Dani sat and soaked her feet in one of the deepest pools.
She sat
there for ten minutes and began to feel very foolish
“Why on
earth would he come” she tough to herself “it was only one kiss, your good, but
you’re not that good”
She took her
feet from the water and dried them before slipping her footwear back on and
stood up to go home and watch an old movie.
“Hello” a
voice said and startled her
“Mission
accomplished” she said as she turned around and saw Richard standing there.
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