AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘No.’ The girl stared at her. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m perfectly healthy. Mum’s just a nag.’
Anna sat back down and started to talk to Katy, asking questions about her eating history and questioning her on her attitude to her weight. ‘How often do you go to the gym, Katy?’
The girl shrugged. ‘Dunno. Most days, I suppose. For about two hours.’
Anna nodded. ‘That’s quite a lot. It’s great to exercise, you’re right about that, but we probably need to reduce it slightly and look at your eating patterns.’
She spent some time discussing normal eating, diet and exercise, as well as the physical consequences of an eating disorder.
‘I want you to try and eat three meals a day, and would you keep a food diary for me and come and see me again?’
She knew that eating disorders could be extremely difficult to treat but she sensed that in Katy’s case the problem was relatively new, which meant that she might be successful in preventing the problem becoming entrenched.
Katy shrugged. ‘I suppose so. As long as Mum doesn’t come, too. She thinks she understands me.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s tragic.’
Anna suppressed a smile. Far be it from adults to understand teenagers. A sudden inspiration struck. ‘Katy, you know everyone in the village…’
The girl shrugged. ‘I’ve lived here all my life,’ she said gloomily, ‘so I certainly should do.’
‘Dr McKenna and I are thinking of setting up a clinic for teenagers, and some input from you as to what would work and what wouldn’t would be really helpful.’ Anna gave a small smile. ‘We’d hate to be seen as “tragic”.’
Katy stared at her and a ghost of a smile crossed her face. ‘If Dr McKenna is involved, it might be cool.’
Anna ground her teeth. Great. The man was going to be proved right again. If she hadn’t been so convinced that the teenage clinic was the right thing for the practice, she might have buried the idea.
As it was, her encounter with Katy made her determined to get the clinic off the ground.
She made a mental note to herself to sort it out at the earliest opportunity and carried on with her surgery.
She’d just seen her third patient when there was a tap on her door and Sam entered.
Her heart skipped in her chest.
Annoyance and another emotion which she chose not to examine made her voice cooler than she’d intended. ‘For future reference I’d like to know if you intend to be late for surgery.’
‘I took an emergency call this morning. A fact I would have shared with you if you hadn’t been so desperate to avoid me.’
‘I wasn’t desperate.’
He gave a humourless laugh and closed her door firmly behind him. ‘Then you’re the lucky one. I was so desperate after last night that my body refused to go to sleep.’
Her heart hit her ribcage. ‘I don’t want to talk about last night.’
‘Fine. We’ll try it your way to start with. Pretend it didn’t happen. If that doesn’t work then we’ll try it my way. Agreed?’
She stared at him. ‘What’s your way?’
‘We’re trying it your way first. When that fails to work, I’ll tell you mine.’
Her heat skipped a beat. ‘You’ve got patients piling up outside your surgery, McKenna. You may want to do something about it.’
‘In a momen
t. I’m just checking you’re free at lunch-time.’
She glared at him. ‘I’ve already told you, I don’t take a lunch-break. And I certainly don’t go on dates at lunch-time.’
He strolled across the room, planted both hands on her desk and locked his gaze with hers. ‘Firstly, I didn’t mention taking a break and, secondly, I didn’t say anything about a date.’
