The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

came over. Some wanted to shake her hand, others just to look at her – seemingly – and she understood for sure that her family’s name had resonance here. People knew her for reasons other than just this clinic.

‘Oh no, I’m not anyone,’ she heard Holly bluster as her hand was reached for too, her curly red hair touched like it contained magical powers. ‘Oh, well yes . . . how do you do . . . uh-huh . . . Okay yes, you can stroke my hair . . . Yes, hola.’

Tara laughed as the crowd swarmed around, mobbing them. Even Jimmy found himself caught up in it, mothers cooing over his limpid eyes – so like his father’s – children showing him their toys, pointing at his trainers.

‘We’ve got some supplies for you,’ Tara said in her best Spanish, when the numbers finally subsided. ‘I’d have called ahead, but I didn’t want you to go to any trouble and start laying on some kind of welcome.’ She could only imagine what they might have done with forewarning.

‘Tara, you are so good to us,’ Yorleny said in halting English, so that Holly and Dev could listen too.

‘It’s the very least I can do. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring more. But I will next time, definitely,’ she promised, knowing she would be back again soon. She’d cut off her own nose to spite her face by refusing to come back here for so long. She had let Alex Carter drive her out as though this country wasn’t big enough for the both of them. But of course it was.

‘Do you mind if I have a look around? I’d like to see what you’ve got and what you don’t. I can write up a sort of inventory for what to bring next time.’

‘Tara, this is your clinic, you do not need to ask.’ She looked at Holly and Dev. ‘You are doctors too, yes?’

‘That’s right. I do trauma. My husband is a radiographer. X-rays,’ Holly said, enunciating every word with comic effect.

A gleam came into the clinical director’s eyes and Tara knew what she was thinking. There had to be fifty patients in the waiting area, and so far she’d counted only four doctors in white coats, including Yorleny, the clinical director. ‘Then perhaps . . .’

‘We’ve got a free hour or so, if you’d like some help?’ Tara offered on all their behalf. ‘And actually, we’ve brought a couple of ultrasound scanners for the pregnant mothers, so Dev could set them up for you?’ She looked over at him.

‘Sure,’ Dev shrugged, easy-going as always.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Yorleny said, looking amazed.

‘Just point us where to go. We can work out the rest.’

An hour passed in what seemed like fifteen minutes. Tara and Holly were set up in adjoining rooms and between them they assessed and cleaned wounds and scrapes, took temperatures and palpated swollen stomachs, measured blood pressure, took bloods, administered inoculations and gave out iron tablets . . . It was like being medical students again, going back to basics and dealing with the business of life, not death, of connecting with patients without the high-octane drama that characterized their roles back home. It was all a long way from her intensive care unit, where everything flashed and beeped and there was more machinery to see than patient. She felt in her element here.

Jimmy had been tasked with tidying the toy crates and putting the right bits of jigsaw back in the right boxes. Dev had moved on from setting up and explaining the Dopplers to seemingly running his own obstetric clinic as he scanned the expectant mothers himself, giving them printouts of their foetuses and explaining what they were seeing. Jed was unpacking the boxes and stacking the shelves – and seemingly repairing them, too.

‘Jed, where are the gauze swabs we brought?’ she asked him, popping her head out of her room. He was working in the cupboard opposite, down on his hands and knees and hammering something into the back wall.

‘Down the corridor, in the office second door on the left,’ he said, his voice muffled. ‘Beside the speculums. I’ll get them for you.’

‘No, don’t worry. It’ll only take me a sec,’ she said, patting his shoulder as she passed. She saw Holly holding up her fingers and getting a young boy to follow them as she went past her door. She was smiling, her eyes bright. No sugar required. She never looked like that on the A&E ward.

Tara found the office and knocked. There was no reply, so she went in. Jed had stacked the supplies conscientiously so that all the labels were facing forwards.

She took two boxes, her gaze falling to the view outside the window as she closed the cupboard. It had begun raining. She could see the patch of scrubland at the back where the local kids played football around the thick tufts of grass, heavy-headed trees bowing low as the cloudburst passed over with casual, familiar ferocity. Two women were walking with bags in their hands, not bothering to run; they knew the rain would be gone within another few minutes, that there was nowhere actually to run to. She could see Jed’s Jeep parked up in the lot, surrounded now by several other trucks. She frowned. They were all clustered together, like sheep huddling for warmth. She made a mental note to have parking lines painted – something else to go on her list – but she would have thought logic would dictate where and how to park?

She walked back up the corridor.

‘Jed.’ She waited for him to crawl backwards from the cramped space. He looked up at her, flushed; he was far too big a man to fit into something of that size. ‘You might want to ask around and see if some people can move their trucks? We’re a bit hemmed in.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ He frowned, seeming puzzled.

‘It’s not a problem, but I reckon we’ll be good to go in ten minutes or so, that’s all. It’s a holiday after all, and remember we’ve promised Jimmy a swim in a waterfall.’

‘Sure.’

She