Swallowbrook's Winter Bride by Abigail Gordon

back to see for himself if the love she’d had for him was still there. And much good it had done him, he thought grimly, with the memory of those desolate moments in the church porch surfacing once more .
    He was watching her in the car’s rear-view mirror, noting how gentle and reassuring she was with Toby, and as the turning for the hospital loomed up ahead the tight band of anxiety across his chest increased its stranglehold.
    When they arrived at Accident and Emergency he carried a drowsy Toby inside, with Libby close by his side. Two of the staff had been alerted by his phone call and were waiting for them, and once they’d been shown into a cubicle a doctor appeared.
    ‘I don’t recognise your youngster’s symptoms immediately,’ he told them when he’d examined Toby, ‘and I take it that neither of you are sure or you wouldn’t be here. If I had to make a guess I would say that whatever is wrong with him is allergy related, but we don’t rely on guesses so we’re going to admit him for a couple of days while we do some tests.’
    Turning to Libby, he said, ‘We have met before, haven’t we, Dr Hamilton, at some meeting or other? And this is your family, I take it?’
    ‘I’m afraid not,’ she told him with an anxious look at Toby, who was clinging to Nathan and looking really poorly. ‘This young patient is Dr Gallagher’s ward. We are both employed at the Swallowbrook Medical Practice and live next door to each other.’
    ‘Ah, I see,’ he said, and turned his attention to what Nathan was saying.
    ‘One of the reasons we’re here is because I’m in the process of adopting Toby,’ he explained, ‘and have not yet received his medical records from the practice where he and his parents were registered before they were involved in a tragic accident. So I felt that the hospital needed to see him before we began to treat him.’
    ‘Has he eaten anything that could have caused this? Or been near any plant life that could have a sting in its tail?’ the other man asked.
    ‘Not that we know of. He spent yesterday with my father and he doesn’t let Toby out of his sight.’
    ‘Hmm. So what do the two of you think it might be?’ he asked as they bent over the small figure on the bed.
    ‘I thought of urticaria,’ Libby told him. ‘When he is at his grandfather’s place Toby sometimes plays in a field nearby and if nettles are present he could have been stung by them.’
    ‘Yes, but there would have been tears if that was the case and Dad would have picked up on that,’ Nathan said sombrely. ‘If we are looking at plant life I think that it might be something he has eaten.’
    Looking down at Toby, he asked, ‘Did you play in the field yesterday?’ And got a drowsy nod for an answer.
    ‘And did you eat anything that you found there?’
    ‘Only the grapes,’ was the weak reply.
    ‘What kind of grapes were they, Toby?’
    ‘Black and shiny.’
    His next question cut into the tension in the room like a knife. ‘How many…er, grapes did you eat?’
    ‘Two. I spat the others out because I didn’t like them.’
    ‘That’s all right, then,’ Libby told him gently, and as the three doctors observed each other there was the same thought in their minds. Toby’s symptoms could be those of the poisonous plant belladonna, or deadly nightshade, as it was sometimes called due to the serious effects it could have if the berries were eaten.
    As Libby stroked his hot little brow gently the doctor took Nathan to one side. ‘It does sound as if your young one has been in contact with the so unsuitably named belladonna, or something similar. The vomiting will have brought some of it up, but I’m afraid that we will have to resort to water lavage if blood tests show the belladonna poison is present. Stomach washing out is an unpleasant prospect for anyone, especially a child, but that is what needs to be done immediately if our premonitions are correct.’
    The answer they were dreading was there