As
I wrote in "Sorry About That Neville" (press to see), the only doctors’
surgery in Woburn Sands serves
11,000 people and those people are spread over more than 20 square
miles. Many of the
elderly patients rely on volunteers performing a kind of taxi service. I did another surgery run on Thursday.
I
ferried six patients who were either going to see a doctor or the nurse. My
first passenger had a 10 o’clock appointment and my last was Ivy, whose
appointment was at 11:00. I
picked her up after I had collected Sarah,
whose time was 10:50. Ivy
was not happy.
“I
need to sit at the front,” she grumbled as she slid herself in a rather
ungainly manner on to the rear seat
“So
do I,” said Sarah, smugly, as she turned to look at Ivy with a self-satisfied
look on her face.
The
small car park at the surgery was full and so I dropped off the two women at
the door. Ivy was still
grumbling as I drove off to look for somewhere on the road to park.
By
the time I got into the waiting room, both women had been called and so I sat
on my own and waited, playing a game on my phone. After fifteen minutes, Sarah came out
and approaching me said, “Come on. Can
we go?”
“No,
we’ll have to wait for the other lady.”
“She’s
having physiotherapy,” said Sarah. “She’ll
be at least half an hour and I’m meeting my son at The Swan for lunch. Can we go please?”
Fifteen
minutes later, after dropping Sarah at The Swan, I was back in the waiting room
with no sign of Ivy.
Then
I saw her, walking very slowly towards me. As she approached, I smiled and said,
“Hi.” She was clearly still
in a grump as she ignored me and carried on shuffling towards the door. I caught up with her and asked if she
was ready for me to drive her home. She
just grunted and followed me to the car.
We
drove in silence. I thought
she would be happier now that she was sitting at the front but she seemed even
more sullen. We reached the
High Street and I turned left down the hill.
“Hey! Where are we going?” she
shouted.
“Lower
End,” I said. “Your house.”
“I
live in Russell Street.”
“What? Aren’t you Ivy?”
“No,
I’m Brenda.”
In
my defence, I’d never actually seen Ivy’s face. She had sat behind me in
the car and all I knew of her was that
she was a grey-haired, oldish woman with a walking stick - just like Brenda who,
by the way, didn’t appear very grateful for the unexpected, free lift she
was getting.
At
12:10, back in the surgery waiting room, I began to wonder if I could have
missed Ivy. She had now been
getting treatment for more than an hour. Perhaps
she had made her own way home while I was taking Sarah to the pub or Brenda to
Russell Street. I asked
about her at Reception and the women there told me that they hadn’t seen her.
At
12:40 I was getting hungry and irritable and demanded that the receptionist
ring the physiotherapist to ask how much longer Ivy would be.
The
receptionist had a brief conversation on the phone and then she gave me a sort
of apologetic, embarrassed smile. “She’s
been finished for more than half an hour and she’s sitting outside his room,
around the corner there.” She
pointed.
Ivy
was very chatty on the drive back to her house and told me all about the
physiotherapy she’d just had and how she was looking forward to a “cup of
coffee with a brandy, and a nice lie down”.
As
she started to get out of my car, she suddenly asked if I knew of a good
painter and decorator as she needed to get her windows done. I told her I did and that if she gave
me her phone number, I’d call her when I got home.
Neither
of us had a pen and so she went into the house to get one. The one o’clock news was just starting
on the radio as I sat in the car and waited.
At
1:10, I started to worry that something had happened to her. Perhaps the unusual exercise in the
surgery had injured her in some way. I
got out of the car, went to her front door and pushed but it was locked. I rang the bell several times
but she didn’t appear. Then,
I opened the letter flap in the door and shouted her name as loudly as I
could. At last, I heard
movement.
Ivy
opened the door looking ruffled and confused.
"Sorry about that," she said. "I shut my eyes for a minute and just dropped off. It's a pen we need, isn't it? I’ll get
one.”
“Oh, don’t rush, Ivy. There’s no hurry. I’ve got all day.”
