Page 5 of Mending Hearts at the Cornish Country Hospital (The Cornish Country Hospital #6)

Drew never tired of the journey to work.

If he lived anywhere else, he might have missed the Scottish scenery even more than he did, but if anywhere could rival the beauty of the place he’d left behind it was Cornwall.

His house was on the road between Port Kara and Port Agnes, not quite in either village, although his postal address put him in Port Agnes.

It meant his nearest neighbours were far enough away for them to have to make the effort to see one another, which thankfully they never did.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like people, he did, but he was choosy about who he spent his time with.

Drew wasn’t the sort of person who could become fast friends with just anyone.

He’d always valued quantity over quality, and he had a handful of good friends he’d met over the years, from university to previous jobs, but they were spread all over the country and he didn’t get to see them very often.

It didn’t bother him as much as he suspected it should.

His job could be all-consuming, but sometimes he did feel as though there was something missing, he just wasn’t sure what it was.

Maybe it was family, but he hadn’t had that for a long time, so he should be used to it by now.

The journey to the hospital always helped him to get into the right headspace for work.

Usually he walked or cycled, but there were days when he drove.

The winding country road between home and hospital gave snapshots of spectacular views of the sea and soaring cliffs on one side, and countryside on the other.

There were high banks in places, typical of the Cornish landscape, which sometimes obscured the view, but even glimpses of such wonderful scenery were enough to make him look forward to the journey.

The first thing Drew did when he got to work was to visit the hospital shop.

Today was no different and he placed the two newspapers he’d just bought inside his messenger bag, putting the wine gums into a side pocket.

He made the same purchase every time, and on the days he wasn’t working at the hospital, he’d buy the same papers and a packet of wine gums from a little shop almost a mile away from his house.

It was part of his day, a sense of routine, that got it off on the right footing.

Whatever else the day might bring, he knew those papers were there, folded the way he liked them, always side by side, never one inside the other.

At any point in the day, no matter how difficult it had been, he could stop for a moment and take a wine gum from the packet, knowing exactly how it would taste and how the texture of the familiar sweet would feel in his mouth.

It was strange how something so simple could be comforting, but he needed that one certainty in a job like his.

‘Did you do anything nice at the weekend?’ Gwen, who ran the hospital shop, asked just as he’d been about to turn and leave. He’d already thanked her for serving him, and wished her a nice day, so he hadn’t been expecting any follow-up small talk.

‘I was working, so I wouldn’t say nice exactly, but it was interesting.’

‘Was it for the hospital or the coroner’s office?

’ Gwen was the sort of person who had a way of finding things out.

Drew didn’t usually share the details of his life with anyone.

He preferred to keep himself to himself, and he wasn’t in the habit of telling everyone he met that he split his time between working for St Piran’s as a hospital pathologist, and as a Home Office-registered forensic pathologist supporting the work of the police and the coroner’s office.

It meant he was in the position of being able to undertake postmortems following suspicious deaths, including where a crime may have been committed, as well as working within the hospital pathology team.

Occasionally, as Gwen had discovered during one of their conversations, he could also be called out to the scene of a crime.

Most pathologists specialised in one field or the other, but not Drew.

There were personal reasons why both fields were important to him, and the extra study it took to qualify for each specialism hadn’t felt like a barrier to him, it was a bonus.

Studying made him happy. He liked the sense of being grounded and completely certain of the information set out in front of him.

Facts made him feel safe and, unlike people, textbooks seldom lied, at least not on purpose.

‘I was working with the police.’ Drew’s tone was matter of fact.

Cases where there might have been a murder hadn’t always been easy for him to face, but it was a skill he’d developed over the years.

He’d needed to get to that point if he was going to be able to help the deceased person, when the only way left of helping them was to discover the truth.

If he thought too much about the person behind the body, he might unravel, and there were almost always people relying on him to discover what had really happened to their lost loved one.

The saddest cases were those where there was no one other than the police or the coroner waiting for the outcome, no family or friends who cared about the cause of death.

Drew always cared enough to do his best work; after all, he’d been the one waiting on news like that in the past. But he couldn’t think about who that person had been before, or he’d lose his objectivity.

‘I bet it was that body washed up on Polzeath beach.’ Gwen didn’t wait for him to answer, which was just as well as he’d had no intention of doing so. ‘It’s so sad. It said in the paper that he was only thirty-two. That’s so young.’

‘I can’t talk about the case I was working on, but you’re right, thirty-two is young for someone to lose their life.

’ Drew shrugged. It was a statement of fact, rather than something that particularly touched him.

The man whose body had been washed up on the beach was five years younger than him, but all that mattered to Drew was that he’d been able to establish the cause of death, which along with some CCTV evidence the police had obtained, meant the coroner would almost certainly conclude it was an accidental drowning, due in no small part to the man’s intoxication.

Drew hoped the outcome would give the family closure and some comfort too.

Achieving that was the part of the job he would have described as enjoyable, but it wasn’t the kind of occupation that sat comfortably with a word like that.

Instead, Drew changed the subject, asking the kind of question he knew he was meant to ask, even if he had no idea what he was supposed to do with the answer. ‘How about you? How was your weekend?’

‘We had a dance competition in Padstow and came third.’ Gwen smiled, and Drew tried to work out what her expression meant. Was she pleased to have been beaten by two other competitors? She seemed to be, so he returned her smile and nodded.

‘That was a good result, I take it.’

‘There were twenty other pairs in the contest, so, yes, we were thrilled.’ That was one of the things he liked about Gwen, she was upfront and happy to spell things out for him when he was struggling with the nuances of the conversation, without taking any kind of offence.

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you, although rumour has it that the female half of the pair who came second has been heating up more than casseroles for one of the judges since his wife died eighteen months ago. So we should probably have come second.’ Gwen frowned for a moment and then broke into a broad smile.

‘Still, good luck to them; whatever kind of dumplings she’s serving up to him, I hope they’re having fun together.

They deserve it after both losing their other halves to bloody cancer. ’

‘I’m sure they do.’ Drew was desperately trying to think of a way to end the conversation without seeming rude.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t pleased for Gwen, or even the rival dancer and the judge she was seeing, despite the fact he had no idea who they were.

Drew just had no idea how to prolong the conversation, or even if it was appropriate to do so.

It was a tightrope he seemed to be permanently balanced on, and he still got it wrong far more often than he wanted to.

It was another reason he liked his job; it was the perfect excuse to break off from conversations when he had no idea how else to finish them.

The funny thing was it was only small talk he struggled with; the important conversations didn’t faze him nearly so much.

He could present complex reports at court cases and respond to whatever questions were thrown at him.

With his closest friends he could get into deep and meaningful conversations about all kinds of topics, but the social niceties of casual conversation with strangers or acquaintances felt so much harder.

‘I’d better get going, I’ve got a tissue collection first thing, for a patient who died this morning.

His family want to try and take something positive from his death, so they’ve given permission for us to take samples for research. ’

‘I wish more people understood what you did, Drew. I bet there’s a lot more to it than anyone thinks.

’ Gwen leant forward conspiratorially and gestured towards the poster on the noticeboard behind her.

‘Although if you’re up for going to the Friends of St Piran’s murder mystery evening, just promise you’ll be on my team and I’ll keep you in wine gums for a month.

Third place in the dance competition might be okay, but I’d kill for a win at the Friends of St Piran’s murder mystery night!

’ She was still laughing when he replied.