The Secret Within: A totally gripping psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist by Lucy Dawson

Author:Lucy Dawson [Dawson, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture

Twenty-Three

Julia

‘I don’t want this fight for you.’ Ewan stared at the whisky in his glass as he swirled it around slowly, sitting at the kitchen table to my right. ‘I don’t want this fight, for us. The kids are settling, I like the school, there are opportunities. We’ve got a beautiful house.’ He gestured around him. ‘Your work is going well. Do you really have to report him?’

‘You know I do.’

Ewan sighed.

‘We share patients. He’s been filming women semi-naked without their consent. I know he said it was to protect himself from litigation, but if that’s true, why didn’t he just tell them what he was doing? Or audiotape them? He’s abusing them! If a doctor had secretly filmed Cass half-naked, how would you?—’

‘Don’t!’ Ewan spoke through gritted teeth and with his eyes closed. ‘Please.’

I shut up. All I could hear was the low noise of the TV from the kids’ den and persistent rain against the dark and still-bare kitchen window. Ewan put his head in his hands.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said sincerely. ‘I don’t want this all over again for us either, but I can’t turn away.’

‘I know.’ His face was still hidden. ‘I just wish it didn’t always have to be you.’

‘It doesn’t,’ I said truthfully. ‘This sort of stuff is everyone’s fight.’ I thought about Eleni’s potential replacement asking me how letchy the department was just yesterday, what I’d blithely told her in my ignorance. ‘I don’t want to draw attention to myself all over again, but now I’ve seen it, I can’t pretend it’s someone else’s responsibility and let Nathan hide in plain sight. That patient told me. What sort of doctor – or woman – would it make me if I ignored her? I’d be no better than everyone at the Royal Grace who tried to ignore what I told them.’

Ewan looked up and eyeballed me steadily. ‘You’re going to do it tomorrow then?’

‘Yes. He’ll have taken the cameras down, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve got the images I emailed myself and sent to you. He can’t deny it.’

‘Who do you have to tell?’

‘The Medical Director at the Goldtree Hospital group. Nathan’s practice is affiliated to them and he does his private operations there, so it’s on their watch. It’s tricky though, because private hospitals aren’t regulated in the same way as NHS ones are. You’d be amazed how many of them don’t even offer patients the right to complain about their care. They should recognise that what Nathan is doing is a threat to patient safety, suspend and investigate him, but they don’t have to. It’s farcical, really.’

‘Hang on. They didn’t even act properly when you reported Richard Norris at the Royal Grace and he was endangering life in an NHS hospital.’ Ewan sat back in his chair. ‘You’re saying because this is a private hospital you could go through all of this for nothing?’

‘Potentially yes. People don’t like questioning “experts” like Nathan. They want to trust them; they don’t want to believe they’re up to no good.

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