Page 9 of Welcome to the Cornish Country Hospital

‘I need to get up.’ Connie was struggling to move and the nurse who’d appeared at the side of her bed looked absolutely horrified.

‘Oh no, not yet. You can’t get out of bed until the physio comes to see you and it’ll be at least three days, probably longer after the surgery you’ve had, before they work with you on transferring to a chair.’ The nurse, who looked young enough to be Connie’s granddaughter, smiled, but it did nothing to quell the panic rising in her throat.

‘You don’t understand; I need to go and speak to someone. To ask her to give back something I should never have given her. I thought I was going to die, you see, otherwise I’d never have done it. Please.’ Her head felt fuzzy, like someone had stuffed it full of cotton wool, but it wasn’t as if she was talking complete gobbledegook, so why the nurse couldn’t seem to understand the urgency of the situation was beyond her.

‘It’s okay, Connie, you’re safe now.’ The young nurse had adopted what she obviously thought was a reassuring tone, but she’d also pressed the buzzer by Connie’s bed to summon more help. ‘You’re perfectly stable and I can promise you you’re not going to die. There’s plenty of time to sort out whatever it is you’re worrying about, but if you keep trying to get up you could really hurt yourself.’

‘A lot more people could get hurt if I don’t. Richard can’t see that letter; I’ve got to get it back.’ Connie couldn’t seem to make her understand. The plan, when she’d come down to Port Kara, if you could call it a plan, had been to try and find Richard. To stand with him, face to face, and work out whether handing over the letter was a good idea, or the most stupid idea anyone had had since Anne Boleyn had decided that flirting with Henry VIII would be her path to happiness. Now the consequences of Richard reading the letter seemed almost as disastrous. Connie had only written it down in the first place because she’d known he wouldn’t listen to everything she needed to say once he found out the truth, and a letter could be read again at a later date. But if she’d been certain she wanted him to know the contents of the letter, she could have just posted it. The same way that if she’d been sure she wanted her niece to know the truth, she could have sent Darcy a letter, or even an email, telling her everything, instead of sealing the envelope with her name on it and hiding it inside the treasure chest that had fascinated her niece since she was a child. But now not only was Richard’s letter out there, in the hands of a doctor who might already be planning to forward it on to him, but she’d also told her to contact Darcy and explain to her niece exactly where the secrets she’d buried for so long were hidden. Which meant it was going to take a lot more than a young nurse to stop Connie getting out of bed now.

‘You’ve got to try and stay calm.’ The nurse let go of a long sigh as her colleague came to the other side of the bed. ‘Thanks for your help, Helen. Connie’s very agitated and I’ve told her that trying to get out of bed too soon is dangerous and could cause her a serious injury.’

‘Chloe’s right.’ Helen was probably a good twenty years older than the other nurse. She had the dark blue uniform of a sister and a firm hand against Connie’s shoulder. She looked like she’d been around the block and back again, and she’d probably seen it all before. ‘Now why on earth would you be wanting to get out of bed when you know it could do you a lot of harm?’

‘I gave the doctor a letter, to pass on if anything happened to me, and I need to get it back.’ Connie was getting frantic now. No one was listening.

‘But nothing has happened to you, so there’d be no need for the letter to be passed on.’ Helen made it all sound so simple, but Connie knew that people didn’t always follow even the simplest of instructions. She’d seen it time and time again, with some of her students at the university.

‘What if she misunderstood and thought I wanted her to pass the letter on regardless? I need to tell her to give it back to me, or at the very least get rid of it.’ Connie was finding it difficult to breathe. Maybe that was the nurse’s plan, to keep forcing her to explain the problem over and over again until she ran out of the energy to fight any more. ‘Let me get out of this bed. Now!’

‘I can’t do that and you need to calm down before you start upsetting the other patients.’ Helen had a hand against Connie’s shoulder again, pushing her firmly but gently back down onto the bed. ‘But if you tell me who you gave the letter to, I’ll see what I can do to help.’

‘She said her name was Danni; she came out to the crash and they told me when I got here that she saved my life.’ Connie was almost beginning to wish she hadn’t, because once this secret got out, it could never be buried again.

‘That’s Danni Carter, one of the doctors from A&E. She came up to see you when you were down having your second op.’

‘Oh, thank God.’ Connie finally stopped pushing against Helen’s hand and relaxed back against the pillows. ‘Did she leave the letter?’

‘No, but she said she’d come back when she was next on shift and I can try and get a message to her if you like? Whatever is in this letter must be pretty important if you’re willing to risk getting hurt to try and retrieve it.’ If Helen was hoping to find out the details, she was going to be disappointed. There were already too many people who knew more than Connie wanted them to.

‘Can you tell her I need to see her as soon as possible and that whatever she does, not to give the letter to anyone but me?’

Chloe exchanged a look with Helen, making it clear her interest was piqued too. But this was Connie’s life, not some sort of soap opera.

‘And have you got some paper I could use, please? If I’m stuck in this bed, there are some other letters I could spend the time writing.’

‘They’ll be bringing round the hospital trolley in about twenty minutes; they usually have cards and notepaper on there.’ Helen suddenly sounded a bit sniffy, as if Connie’s reluctance to let her and Chloe in on the details of the letter had somehow offended her. ‘And if you promise not to try and get up again, I’ll get a message to Dr Carter.’

‘I promise and thank you.’ Connie breathed out, finally allowing her body to relax just a little bit, all the while keeping her eyes trained on the entrance to the ward. As soon as that hospital trolley arrived, she was going to buy every scrap of writing paper they had.

* * *

Connie was like a cat on hot bricks. Every time one of the nurses came along, she expected it to be Helen with the news that she’d been in touch with Danni, or even better that she was holding the letter in her hand. But so far there’d been no sign of her.

Half an hour after she’d last seen Helen, Connie heard laughter drifting from some of the bays further down the ward and, five minutes after that, a woman came into Connie’s bay pushing a trolley laden with newspapers, magazines and the sort of treats that no doctor could possibly recommend.

‘Hello, my love, it looks like you’ve been through the mill.’ The woman pushing the trolley smiled and Connie had the feeling they’d met somewhere before, but in the fuzziness of her brain she couldn’t recall where. Or maybe she just had one of those faces. After all, Connie hadn’t been to Cornwall, let along Port Kara, in decades.

‘I was in the bus crash.’ Connie blinked a few times, determined not to cry. But every time she’d closed her eyes since the accident, it was like she was back inside the bus. The terrible sounds of screams as it careered out of control. She couldn’t claim her whole life had flashed in front of her, but she’d been certain she was going to die and the only thing that had flashed in front of her was the faces of the people she owed an explanation to. The thought that she could so easily have missed the opportunity scuppered any chance she might have had of holding back the tears.

‘Don’t upset yourself. I know you’ve been through a horrible experience, but you’re safe now and it’s going to be okay.’ The woman abandoned her trolley and moved closer to the bed. ‘What’s your name, my love? I’m Gwen.’

‘Connie.’ She blinked again. Crying in front of anyone, let alone a stranger, wasn’t the sort of thing she did. Connie prided herself on being professional and resilient, stoic even. She’d had to be. There’d never been anyone around for her to lean on, especially since her sister had died.

‘Well, Connie, the thing you’ve got to do now is take care of yourself to make sure you get better as soon as possible. Treat yourself to all the little things you don’t normally do, or have time for. You look to me like someone who keeps yourself very busy. What do you do for work?’

The question took Connie by surprise. More often than not lately, people would just assume she was retired. ‘I’m a university lecturer.’

‘Now that does sound demanding, and I bet it’s been a while since you’ve had the chance to read just for pleasure? But the one upside of being in hospital is that now you have.’ Gwen turned back towards her trolley, pulling it closer to the bed. ‘There’s plenty of reading material on here, but I’m happy to go to the library in the village if there’s something else you’d like? They’ve got audiobooks too and I’ve got a portable CD player and headphones you’re welcome to borrow. I’ve really got back into reading since I retired from midwifery and I’m working my way through the classics.’

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