My Home From Home (ManxMan)

Chapter 14

"Alright, Mr and Mrs O'Donnell, will there be anything else I can do for you whilst you're here?" Henry asked as he stood up from his desk, prompting the older couple to follow suit.

"No, Doctor. Thank you for all your help." Mr O'Donnell said gratefully; in stark juxtaposition to his initial reaction to the idea of a new doctor.

"It's no trouble at all, sir. Just remember to take the cough syrup before bed and the paracetamol in the morning for the fever. Should the cough and fever persist, feel free to send for me and I can have a look. Drink plenty of fluids and do keep me posted should anything change, but other than that you should be fighting fit before you know it." Henry added a little reminder in his parting words, smiling politely as he watched the older couple leave towards the reception and out the door. "Goodbye now, and do feel better!"

    Henry relaxed his spine as soon as the couple was out the door, leaning nonchalantly against the wall as he glanced towards Mary with a knowing smile. Henry chuckled and shook his head; he was used to having difficult patients, and there was nothing like war to teach one that lesson. He had patients who would try to get up and go back onto the battlefield; he'd have patients who fought him after losing limbs or their ability to hear from the loud blasts of ammunition. And who else were they to fight; their quarrel was with the Lord, their quarrel was with the horrors of war. But the only people they had to take things out on were those who tried to help them; and for that even Henry couldn't fault them.

    His hands stuffed back into his pockets, Henry strolled back into his office, grabbing the file folder off of his desk with the name 'O'Donnell, Seamus' written in pen on the tab. Humming quietly to himself he walked up to the filing cabinet, thumbing through the alphabetised names and slipped Mr O'Donnell's file in right behind his wife's file. He pushed the drawer shut with a huff and stalked back towards his desk and sitting himself down once again, prying open the old medical encyclopaedia he had been skimming through priorly.

Henry was only about fifteen years old when he first began to take an interest in medicine; prompted by a visit to the local Aldringham Cottage Hospital with his Granny who was then the Duchess of Hertford. At first it was just because he begged her to take him to one of her Board of Trustee's meetings; at the time she was delighted that young Henry took an interest in the family's duties as one of the leaders of the county, but inside Henry was more interested in the doctor's duties rather than his Granny's.

    Aldringham was a village with only a mere thousand people, mostly centred around Aldringham Manor and its surroundings. Most of the people who lived there were farmers, worked in town, or were working for Aldringham Manor. The cottage hospital in the villagemay have been small compared to the hospitals in Oxford where Henry trained and the Kensington General Infirmary he'd worked at; but it was terribly busy in comparison to what Henry was realising little Fir Creek to be. And was it any wonder, with only a few hundred people living in this small, still growing coal mining village.

    Henry thumbed through his medical encyclopaedia brushing up on his general medical knowledge; one of his professors at Oxford stressed the vitality of brushing up on one's medical knowledge in order to ensure one could triage patients educatedly and accurately. Though Henry always liked to keep fresh on new medical journals and the sort, he couldn't help but feel like he was brushing up on things he already knew, solely because there was nothing else to do. The dispensary was stocked so there was no inventory to do; Lord only knew there were no patients at the time, no requests for house calls, no emergencies at the mine; he was practically begging to feel less utterly restless.

    He flipped the page feeling this indelible sensation deep within his gut; the feeling that someone was watching him. He glanced up and flinched ever so slightly; catching glimpse of an adorable little blond toddler stood right in front of him and staring at him curiously with his innocent hazel brown eyes.