She’d never had a name plate before. She couldn’t resist the temptation to take a few pictures with her phone, making sure to get a selfie pointing at the letters inset in brass. She immediately sent the picture to her dad, and then to her mother, remembering with a twinge how they weren’t sharing a home now so, wherever they were, they wouldn’t be discussing the photo together. She fired pictures off to her brothers too, knowing they’d be too busy for much more than a thumbs-up emoji in response. She wouldn’t hold her breath for actual replies. When you’re the youngest in a family of super-achievers a name plate probably isn’t all that special.
The sound of footsteps behind her made her start.
‘Right! That’s your ID, lanyard, and…’ the surgery receptionist, Gracie, was saying, handing her the items, ‘…your morning tea.’ She didn’t look much older than thirty and her dominant traits seemed to swing between a helpful, if clipped, efficiency and a slightly scatty interfering nature that might, Alice worried, become annoying.
Alice slipped her phone into her blazer’s deep pocket and took the steaming cup which was fashioned in crooked ceramic with a lustrous brown glaze and hand-painted letters. ‘Oh, my name’s on the mug as well?’
‘I bought a pottery wheel cheap off Amazon and now we’ve all got matching mugs,’ Gracie told her. ‘Well, sort of matching. It’s hard to get them all the exact same.’
‘Wow!’ Alice didn’t know what else to say as she turned it in her hands, pondered how she’d safely drink from the wrinkly lip without spilling on her clothes.
‘I knew you’d be pleased! Anyway, I plumped for skimmed milk, no sugar, correct?’
‘How did you know?’ Alice passed her new lanyard over her head.
Gracie only raised an eyebrow as if to suggest all general practitioners took their tea the same way. ‘Passcode for your office is one two three four. Got that?’
‘Uh, OK. Great.’ Alice wondered if she should be affronted or relieved that Gracie clearly understood the pressures of remembering these things. She suppressed a shudder as the memories returned of all those hospital door codes and floor codes and elevator codes she’d been made to memorise over the years and how painfully often she’d found herself on an urgent store-cupboard run and utterly unable to recall the digits and she’d have to find someone to ask, slowing her shift down when she had so much important stuff to be getting on with.
‘Dr Millen’s is four three two one, and the records room is zero nine nine nine. If you forget, tell me.’
‘Should be easy enough.’
Gracie was looking at her expectantly. ‘Are you planning on seeing your patients oot here in the waiting room?’
‘Oh, right.’ Alice jumped to it and input her door code, letting herself inside.
Everything in the office was new, much like the rest of the surgery building, which had been renovated only a few years ago. Desk, computer, phone, swing chair, examination bench and lamp. Nothing seemed to have been used before, and there was that familiar warm plastic smell combined with the sting of hospital detergent.
Gracie flicked the overhead lights on and Alice found herself drawing to a halt, wanting to scrunch her eyes closed at the familiar flickering and throbbing of institutional strip lighting, barely perceptible to some but, for the sensitive Alice at least, ever present in whatever setting she worked. It made her want to pull the office blinds open and rely on the weak winter morning light, but with the entire building on ground level and people walking past in the carpark outside, that wasn’t going to be an option when she had patients to see.
‘Do you think anyone will mind if I buy a couple of floor lamps, and a desk lamp, maybe?’ she asked Gracie, who told her she could do whatever she liked, it was her room, and Dr Millen wouldn’t even notice, frankly.
A tiny flicker of excitement accompanied the thought of this place flooded with soft light. Light on her own terms. A luxury in this job. It would have to wait for pay day, though.
‘Where is Dr Millen?’ asked Alice. ‘I was hoping to meet him properly before work started.’
Gracie was arranging folders on Alice’s desk and pulling out her chair, indicating for her to sit, which she did. ‘House call in the Garten valley estate. Won’t be long.’
That meant she was on her own, for now at least. Probably for the best, so she could familiarise herself with all the new systems without being observed. Not that Gracie showed any signs of leaving.
‘Drink up,’ the receptionist told her, leaning over the desk to turn the computer on. ‘Login’s on your lanyard. So, how’s your flat? Settled in OK?’
Alice obediently sipped from her mug before having a go at getting into the surgery system. ‘Yeah, it’s OK, I suppose.’
‘You’re in number eighteen, along the vennel, aren’t you?’
Alice nodded, a little thrown by the screen denying her access, as well as the creeping realisation that Gracie might be the eyes and ears of this town. Gracie had to intervene, re-typing Alice’s details for her. This time it worked, no problem.
Alice rolled her eyes. ‘Ugh, sorry.’
‘You’re renting through Carenza McDowell’s property agency, aren’t you? Have you met her yet?’
‘Uh, no, I haven’t,’ Alice said, not sure why this was important, and trying to concentrate on the appointments calendar that was populating on screen.
‘That woman’s a martyr to her hammer toes.’ This was said with a tap at the side of her nose as if that somehow erased the rules on patient confidentiality. ‘But if there’s anything even remotely wrong with that flat, you go straight to Carenza. Don’t bother with her minions at her office. OK?’
‘Got it.’
