Page 4 of Where Do We Go From Here?
Harry would go crazy hillwalking here, she thinks. He’d absolutely love it.
She imagines how he’d be cajoling her to go walking right now, this minute.
At the realisation of how dangerous it is to follow this line ofreasoning, she raises one eyebrow and swallows, catching herself, freezing out the thought through sheer willpower.No, she tells herself.Harry’s not here. Not in person or spirit. And that’s the whole bloody point.
She turns and heads towards the cabin.
TWO
HARRY (PART 1)
We met when I was twenty-three. Harry was almost two years older than me but looked, if anything, a bit younger.
Funnily – and this is the thing that got us talking – we were both in our final months of training, Harry to be a teacher and me to be a nurse.
They’d sent him to one of the worst schools in Maidstone and, that morning, one of the more difficult kids had stabbed his hand with a chisel.
As for me, it was my first day in A&E. I was meant to be shadowing a friendly nurse called Nigel, but his mum had been admitted to Cardiology that morning, so he’d vanished upstairs to attend to her.
Once the doctor had confirmed that nothing important had been damaged by the chisel, I was left alone to disinfect, close and bandage the wound.
‘Sorry, I’m still a student,’ I informed him, as I started to irrigate the gash in his hand. ‘But I think I can probably cope. I am in my final year, so you probably won’t die today.’
‘I’m in my final year, too,’ he said. ‘Teacher training. I thought I could cope as well, but look at me now…’ He nodded towards his hand.
‘He really got you, didn’t he? It’s deep.’
‘Are you going to have to stitch it?’ he asked.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘My sewing’s brilliant. I made this entire outfit myself. I just have to decide whether to do you with cross-stitch or zigzag.’
He didn’t look reassured by my humour, so I added: ‘Not really. We use these sticky clip things now, you’ll be fine.’
He was still looking a bit green so I tried humour again. ‘Someone needs to be more careful with his DIY.’
‘Never did like woodwork,’ he said. ‘Now we know why. It’s dangerous.’
Once I’d pulled the wound closed and stuck a clip on to hold it together, I started to wrap a bandage around it. The patient, now visibly perking up, joked by repeatedly trying to shake my hand. ‘Harry,’ he said, each time the bandage came round to his palm. ‘Harry Rawling. How do you do?’
‘Are you always like this?’ I asked, jerking his hand back into position.
‘I am,’ he said, grinning.
‘Then I’m not surprised he stabbed you,’ I said. ‘Hold still!’
‘Harsh,’ Harry said. ‘But fair.’
Once I’d finished, I went off in search of Nigel. I didn’t know if I could send young Harry back out into the world or if some paperwork needed to be done. But I couldn’t find Nigel anywhere and, not wanting to get him into trouble for spending time with his mum, I didn’t dare ask the locum. So instead, I pulled the curtain around us and hoped no one would spot Nigel’s absence.
‘Cosy!’ Harry commented with a sloppy grin. ‘Intimate, even.’
‘Don’t get any ideas,’ I admonished.
To pass the time I pulled a bag of M&Ms from my pocketand offered him one. ‘You still look a bit green,’ I lied. ‘The sugar will do you good.’
‘The sugar will do me good,’ Harry repeated. ‘Now that’s not something you hear often in a medical situation.’ He peered into the bag. ‘Do different colours have different… um … medicinal qualities? Which one do you think I need most?’
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘They’re all the same.’
