Love is a four letter word or is it more than that or is love as some philosophers say it is ‘the thread that holds the world together’ whatever the definition for love can it explain why a 15-year-old marriage could come crashing like a pack of cards all for a nurses attempt to save her patient: her apoplectic stroke patient.
Nursing was more than a passion for Catherine, she was a natural even before she met her husband as a young nurse, and anyone who encountered Catherine could tell that she was a natural caregiver at heart.
She was in her early twenties, agile, spry and the best nursing staff for the third year in a row when she met the best doctor in the region. Sir Bernard was the chief medical director of the government hospital situated in the country’s capital and as they say, one thing led to the other and they were married for what seems like an incident-free one and half decade.
Well up until a patient from the past popped into the hospital, extremely weakened by the debilitating effect of brain cancer and stroke but still very witty and charming.
Desmond, a fellow medical practitioner who had a fling with a younger Catherine several decades ago.
On the day she walked into his room on her regular ward round, Catherine tried to do a cardiopulmonary resuscitation procedure on a “former love interest” at least that is what it looked like for a casual observer. The build-up to this day had begun the day he was wheeled into the hospital with a request to be treated by Catherine.
Like a log of wood soaked in fuel suddenly lit by a match, the attraction had started, and the romance had continued this time between patient and nurse.
It’s only a few who would guess who walked in on the activity on a vibrating bed: Sir Bernard the bespectacled elderly spouse, when asked all Catherine could mutter was ‘I didn’t think, I didn’t know I still loved him, maybe it would be said she cheated because of love: the love for an old flame.