Crescendo

tone had a grateful ring to it. He was a man of sixty, short, broad with a quiet face and observant eyes, and although he had a rather attractive young partner who was a distinctly eligible bachelor, the patients for miles around would always rather have Dr Farmer. He had that authority his young partner lacked. He had seen illness for so many years and could diagnose it in a glance at times.

She hesitated before asking her question because it was going to hurt to ask and even more to hear the answer although she already knew it. She had to hear it, though. It had to be said aloud.

'I lost the baby, didn't I?'

'Yes,' he said gently, and he didn't touch her, but he was watching her closely with sympathy and at­tention.

She bent her head, her mouth trembling. 'How long is it?'

'Since it happened?' he interpreted gently.

She nodded.

'A year.'

She looked up, shocked. 'A year? That long?'

He smiled at her. 'I'm afraid so.'

'Why?' she asked shakily.

He understood the question. 'The mind has ways of defending itself. You needed to get away, so you went.'

She laughed unevenly. 'You make it sound so simple!'

'It is,' he agreed. 'You hid, Marina. A lot of people want to do it and sometimes they can't find the way, but you did. You just went back in time to a nicer place.'

She wondered how long she would have stayed there if Gideon hadn't come to force her out of it. She remembered now the arguments between him and Grandie, and Gideon saying: 'I know it's a risk, but it's one I've got to take.'

She winced and turned her head away as though that would make the memories leave, but they hung there, heavy as clouds of incense, obscuring her mind.

'There are some tests I want you to take,' the doc­tor told her. 'You'll have to go into a hospital to have them, I'm afraid.'

She nodded, indifferent to that.

'You don't need to worry.' He was reassuring her because he thought the shadows in her face were caused by worry. 'You had some pretty extensive testing after it first happened. Your concussion left no brain damage. But just in case anything has de­veloped since, I'd like you to have an encephalo­gram reading. A routine check, nothing more. It would be best to have a thorough check-up at the same time in other departments.'

She nodded again, her eyes on her twisting hands.

'I'll leave you some pills for that headache,' he added. 'How bad is it?'

She sighed. 'Not too bad. Just an ache.'

'Where?' he asked. 'At the front? The temples?'

She nodded, and he laid a cool hand on her brow as though he could feel the pain throbbing there and was testing the strength of it.

'How bad was the accident?' she asked suddenly.

He took his hand away and looked gravely at her. 'No lasting damage was done.'

She laughed at that and his face grew more grave, seeing the wildness in her eyes, the anger.

'You came off quite lightly,' he assured her. 'No­body walks under a car and gets away scot-free.'

He opened a screwtop jar and took out two pills, shook them into her palm and gave her some water to drink with them. 'I'll leave the pills with your grandfather,' he told her. 'Take two every six hours while you're awake for as long as the headache per­sists, and if it gets any worse, call me at once. Or if any other symptoms appear—dizziness, sickness, a loss of balance. 'You don't have any of those?'

All of them, she thought, but not in the sense you mean. Aloud, she said, 'No, I'm fine. Just this head­ache.'