Something in the Water - By Trevor Baxendale

The late Bob Strong. That’s what they called him.

He’d been late all his life. Late for school, late for university lectures, late for dates. He’d even managed to be late when he was on a promise with Nurse Carrick, the lovely, gorgeous, drop-dead sexy Lucy Carrick. One flat tyre had robbed him of the night of his life and ever since then his hot and lustful affair with Juicy Lucy had been conducted entirely in his own imagination.

And so now here he was, late for surgery (again) and still lost in idle fantasies about Lucy.

He scrambled out of the car, grabbed his briefcase, then ran in through the sliding doors of the Trynsel Medical Centre. The waiting room, he noted with dismay, was already full of people coughing. Coughing quite badly, actually. Lots of tissues held to mouths and that curious, ripe smell of bacteria-rich mucus membranes. ‘It’s going to be a long day,’ he thought. ‘Just as well, with me being this late.’

‘Morning Dr Bob,’ called Letitia Bird, the receptionist. She was smiling, but it was a cruel smile. She enjoyed nothing more than seeing Bob arrive late and flustered. She’d had plenty of opportunities. Bob knew Letty fancied Trynsel’s senior doctor and practice manager, Iuean Davis, and held all the other GPs in complete contempt. That raised them only one level up from the rest of humanity, which she held in complete and utter contempt.

‘Slept in again?’ Letty asked pointedly.

‘Of course not.’ Bob tried to flatten down the sticky-up hair on the back of his head. ‘It was the traffic. Backed right the way up the Caerphilly Road.’

Letty’s reply was little more than a slight pursing of her razor-thin lips. If you say so.

‘Ah! There he is,’ boomed a familiar Welsh baritone. ‘The luckiest bloody Englishman in Wales!’

Bob turned to see Iuean Davis approaching with an envelope. ‘In my hand I have a piece of paper …’ he began, and then laughed. ‘Actually, two pieces. Tickets to the RBS Six Nations match between England and Wales, no less. That’s one for you … and one for me, if my powers of mathematics haven’t bloody well deserted me.’

Bob stopped in his tracks, genuinely touched. ‘Iuean, that’s fantastic … Gosh, how much do I owe you?’

‘Nothing! My treat. Actually I got them free from an old college mate, but I’m not telling you that. And anyway, there’s always a down side, mind: it’s at the Millennium Stadium, so if the English beat us I will charge you for the ticket, and the bloody bus fare to boot.’

Bob grinned, clapped Iuean on the shoulder and thanked him again. ‘Look, I’ll catch you later, Iuean. I’m running a bit behind schedule.’

‘Fashionably late, Bob, fashionably late …’ Iuean swept imperiously by, waving the tickets in the air.

Bob collapsed into his surgery room and shut the door behind him. Then he threw his briefcase down on the floor by his desk and slumped into his chair. He sat for a minute and tried to get his breath back. He was feeling pretty grim this morning, he had to admit. He hadn’t drunk all that much the night before, so he hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. Come to think of it, he could feel the start of a sore throat developing.

Bob switched his laptop on and waited for it to request a password. His first patient was due in – he checked his watch – minus five minutes. Damn.

The intercom buzzed. ‘Are you ready for Miss Harden, Dr Bob?’ asked Letty with pointed innocence.

Saskia Harden! Bob felt his pulse quicken and his face start to blush. What the hell was she doing here? Quickly he brought up his diary on the laptop. Bloody hellfire! How could he have forgotten she was coming in this morning? Too much time thinking about Juicy Lucy Carrick, that’s how.

‘Yes, of course,’ Bob lied. ‘Send her right in.’

He tried to calm his hair down again – it seemed to be spring-loaded this morning – and then neatened up the papers and pens on his desk as best he could. One of the pens slipped out from beneath his fingers, skidded across the desk and rolled onto the floor. Bob leapt out of his seat, intending to circle the desk to retrieve it. But he tripped over his briefcase and stumbled sideways just as the door started to open.

Trying to save the situation, Bob converted his fall into an attempt to look as though he was leaning nonchalantly on his