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

‘I’ll think about it, I promise.’ It was the second time Gwen had mentioned the murder mystery evening and Drew had absolutely no intention of attending, but something else he’d learned over the years was that outright refusals, with no feasible excuse, could be considered rude.

He didn’t want to go, but he needed to come up with a believable reason so that it wouldn’t hurt Gwen’s feelings, because he really didn’t want to do that either.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Drew. Same time, same place, same order.’

‘I’m such a bore, aren’t I?’ Drew stiffened, it wouldn’t be the first time someone had used that word to describe him, but Gwen was shaking her head.

‘Not at all. Everything feels right with the world once I’ve seen you and taken your order.

I like having things in life I can rely on.

’ Gwen smiled again and he wished he could believe her, but he’d been told he was boring and weird plenty of times before – as well as other names he preferred not to think about.

The worst had been the people who said one thing to his face and another entirely behind his back.

That was another reason he liked his job, the dead never passed comment about the kind of person they thought he was.

He respected them, regardless of their background, their past, or how they’d come to find themselves on his table.

And they returned the compliment, by always being honest. After all, the dead couldn’t lie.

* * *

Drew spent most of his work time at the hospital.

Even when he was working with the coroner’s office and the police, postmortems often took place in the hospital mortuary, but he worked elsewhere when the need arose.

His responsibilities for St Piran’s included lab work, undertaking analyses of samples to diagnose illnesses and direct treatment, but the majority of Drew’s time was spent performing postmortems ordered by doctors after in-hospital deaths, with the permission of the family.

The purpose was to find out more about how their loved one had died, providing the answers they needed and contributing to medical research into a range of diseases.

It was the desire to understand more about the progress of cancer, and how it affected the body, that had first made him want to become a pathologist. Drew was an only child, but he shouldn’t have been.

His elder sister, Flora, had died of a glioblastoma at the age of eleven, when Drew had been just eight years old.

Flora’s death had cast a long shadow, not just over Drew’s childhood, but the entire family.

He missed her even now; she’d understood him in a way that no one else had ever seemed to do, before or since.

He wanted to be able to contribute to a greater comprehension of not just the illness that had killed her, but every illness that took someone away from the people they loved.

The desire to contribute to the field of forensics had come later; the result of his mother’s death, a second family tragedy he still wasn’t sure had ever really been resolved, even more than a decade after it had happened.

Hospital pathologists split their time over a range of pathology services, but the breadth of Drew’s training and expertise made him the natural choice to undertake postmortems, answering questions that couldn’t be answered in any other way.

When he’d joined St Piran’s, he’d been told he’d be expected to develop a specialism which complemented those of others within his team.

Despite all the pathologists on the team being given the option to carry out hospital postmortems and some of the non-suspicious deaths referred by the coroner’s office, Drew’s unique range of skills and experience meant that undertaking postmortems had naturally come to take up more of his time and they’d fast become his specialism.

The diversity of his role meant that no two days were ever the same, which might seem an odd choice for someone who valued order and certainty as much as he did, but he couldn’t imagine ever wanting to do anything else.

‘We’re going to be busy today.’ Saskia, his assistant, pulled a face as he came into the mortuary.

‘One of the consultants from the emergency department has asked if we can review a patient who died in the early hours of this morning. He was on ACE inhibitors, and they suspect it’s a stroke that took him, but despite him being on treatment for high blood pressure some of the family seem very shocked by his death.

His blood pressure was raised, but only just enough to have the lowest level of medication prescribed.

They want to rule out any adverse reaction to the medication, and make sure there was nothing else at play.

It would be really interesting if we didn’t find any of the ACE inhibitors in his system, but found something else instead… ’

Sometimes Saskia had far too much imagination, but that was no bad thing in their line of work.

She’d be well suited to forensics, and occasionally he worried that she might move on from the hospital.

He relied on Saskia and he could trust her, but most of all they were used to one another.

She didn’t try to engage him in chatter about their personal lives, probably because she’d worked out that he didn’t really have one, and that he found it hard to know what to say in response to any updates she might give on hers.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care, or even that he wasn’t interested, he just didn’t know what to say in response.

They’d quickly come to understand one another and form a good working relationship, despite the lack of small talk.

Saskia’s official title was anatomical pathology technologist, but Drew preferred to think of her as invaluable.

She did so much of the preparatory work that made his job easier and a lot of the liaison with other staff and departments.

‘We’re also waiting on a decision from the coroner’s office about a potentially unexplained death in Port Tremellien.

’ Drew didn’t miss the rise of Saskia’s eyebrows as he spoke; his words had already piqued her interest. ‘She was brought in overnight and they’re reviewing her medical records, but it looks likely we’ll have to add her to the list too. ’

‘I would say we might need coffee, but I know you better than that, and I’ve got no doubt you have a packet of wine gums ready to help you through the day.

’ Saskia smiled and Drew shrugged in response.

He couldn’t help wondering what Saskia made of him.

They rubbed along well together, and she always seemed as happy to work alongside him as he was to have her assisting.

They both had the option to work with other people, but Saskia never chose to do so.

She didn’t look the way someone would expect a mortuary assistant to look; he knew the stereotypes better than anyone, and Saskia didn’t fit any of them.

She was young and pretty, and clearly cared a lot about her appearance.

It wasn’t that Drew didn’t care about the way he looked, but no one could have accused him of following the latest fashions.

He didn’t care about clothes, but he dressed in the kind of classical way that would have been impossible to assign to any particular trend.

The things he wore were well made and expensive, but he only ever updated his wardrobe when things needed replacing.

‘You know me, I’m easily pleased.’ Drew’s voice gave away the hint of a Scottish accent, but a private education had softened it to a point where his roots weren’t obvious.

That was something else he was glad about.

It resulted in far fewer questions about how his life had taken him from one end of the UK to the other.

He didn’t want to get into the story with complete strangers; he didn’t want to get into the story with anyone.

‘Listen, I’m not knocking your addiction to wine gums.’ Saskia’s smile was broad and genuine. ‘If a few more people were addicted to them instead of other substances, we wouldn’t be nearly so busy.’

‘That’s true.’ Drew nodded, his thoughts turning to the postmortem he’d performed over the weekend.

The man’s addictions had cost him his life, the state of his liver confirming that drink had been a problem for him for a very long time.

Somewhere along the line the man had become reliant on alcohol, needing it to get through the day, and addiction was something Drew had witnessed at close quarters.

There was nothing he could do directly to help a deceased person by the time he was examining them, but he hoped the work he did might eventually contribute to finding solutions for all kinds of diseases, including addiction.

It was a thought that allowed him to continue keeping his own demons at bay.