Mandy had already gotten used to the fact that everything in the world of Downton Abbey looked exactly like it did in the show. Dr. Clarkson and the hospital were no different. She had gotten an interview with him concerning the accounting position, and she got the job! The moment she said she had a degree, the job was hers. It was a lot easier to get a job in this time period rather than her own. She had to sit through six different interviews before she got her job at the law firm.
Mandy was given the tour by Dr. Clarkson, and Mrs. Crawley accompanied them. Mandy walked through the room full of patients, a few of them young men who eyed her as she walked by. Her nose smelled the sterilizer and alcohol. She was shown her work office. The room was small, had a single mahogany desk with a typewriter on it, as well as piles of files on the desk and stacked everywhere. Mandy gasped when she saw the mess. "Oh, gosh..."
"Now, here is our financial paperwork that needs to be sorted out," Dr. Clarkson said and put a hand on the mound of folders on the wooden desk. "Yes, I know, this place is a mess. Usually my right hand man and myself deal with the financial paperwork and running the finances of the hospital, but since we have been quite busy lately, we haven't been able to work on them for a few days. And as you can see, even after a few days, the paperwork piles up."
"So, it will be my job to sort out all the finances." She waved her hands, indicating the room. "Sort out all this."
"Yes." He took a folder off of the top of the stack and showed it to Mandy. She recognized the layout of the form from the law firm, but of course, the information on it was difference since this was a hospital. It looked like a form that detailed the cost of medication for a patient. "For example, this form tells us that this patient needs this medication, and this is the price of it. Of course, we order the medication and pay for the order, but the patient pays for the medication. We organize this folder with other forms alike to it, and when the patient has paid for the medication, we put it in a separate file with the other forms stating that the medication was paid off. There is another stack detailing ordering forms."
"I see," Mandy said and took the form. "I have my work cut out for me."
"Yes, indeed." He took another folder from a different stack and opened it and showed it to her. "These forms outline the amount the hospital needs to pay for new bedding, blankets, and things like that. It is your job now to calculate total cost of each expenditure and create a total amount for each category—bedding, food, furniture, medications, etc. This form, for example, shows the order of a doctor's stool needed in the patients' room and the cost of it. This will need to be stored with other order forms that have been paid off, and there is another stack with pending orders."
Mandy nodded. "I understand. It's not all that different from my last job, only I was dealing with people's bank accounts."
"Well, you will not be dealing with people's bank accounts, but you will be keeping track of their payments for their hospital stays and medication and so forth."
"Understood."
"Any questions so far?"
"Not yet. I'm sure that I will have some when I get started with the job."
"And you will, which is alright. Feel free to ask me, or my right-hand man George Buckle."
"Alright."
They exited Mandy's new office, and she cringed when she looked back into it as they left it. She would be spending her whole first few days of her job organizing that mess of a room. At least she would be able to stay busy.
Next up was her bedroom, which was up the stairs from the main hospital area. The three of them stepped into the room. It was a single room, wooden-floored with white walls and a single bed, which looked like the patients', on the far side next to the window. There was also a dresser on the other wall and a portrait of pink flowers on the wall. Aside from that, the room was rather drab.
"You can move in tonight if you would like since you'll be starting work tomorrow," Dr. Clarkson said.
"Alright. Thank you."
A man appeared in the doorway to the room and said, "Dr. Clarkson, you are needed downstairs."
"Alright, thank you, George." He turned to the two women. "I apologize, but I have to go."
"Go on," said Mrs. Crawley. "I'll show Mandy around the rest of the way."
"Thank you."
The older man left and Mrs. Crawley said, "So, what do you think of the room? It's not much, but..."
"It's perfect. I don't need much, anyway." She noticed Mrs. Crawley's uneasiness. "Really."
"I'm sorry. I would have loved to have you stay at our place, but Matthew was insistent."
Mandy's chest pinched, and she tried not to show it. "It's okay, Mrs. Crawley. It would be an inconvenience for me to stay at your house, given what has happened. I think Matthew would think so as well."
The woman eyed her, surprised. "Do you know why?"
Of course she did. "Well... I could tell that he wasn't comfortable with it—with a previous maid staying at his house. He seemed rather bothered by the idea."
"Oh, he wouldn't mind a maid staying. It's just that you are a rather pretty young lady. Any young man would have the same reaction."
Mandy saw the sparkle in her eye and knew exactly what she meant. Mrs. Crawley didn't need to know about Matthew's confession to her that night near the tree, though. She should change the subject. "So, I wouldn't have to worry about the medical things while I'm here, right? Like giving medicine, and other things?"
"Oh, no. Your job is the finances. You wouldn't need to handle medicine or tend to patients."
"Okay. I guess that's a relief. I'm a bit squeamish, and the thought of blood makes me a bit woozy. I'm glad to be working in an office that is a ways away from all that." She looked around the room. "So... I can move in tonight, then?"
"Oh, you can move in right now if you like. You can go get your things from my house and then come back and settle in. You can get started with organizing that mess of an office down there. I'm sure Dr. Clarkson wouldn't mind you getting a head start on all that."
"I would love to get a head start. I want to get my mind off of everything that's been going on."
"I don't blame you." She took a breath. "Well, I have some work to do, so would you mind if I left you now so you can get started on your new life?"
"Oh, yes, go on. Thank you, and Dr. Clarkson, for giving me the job on such short notice."
"Well, if you were honest in your interview with what you said regarding the praise that your supervisors have given you in your last job, then I believe we made the right decision."
Mrs. Crawley left. Mandy smiled, remembering the complements that she received from her previous boss—or current one if she went home at some point. She was the youngest working at the firm, and everyone was impressed by her work with some rather wealthy clients' financial dealings with the firm, and she only worked there for six months.
"Well, I guess I have to go and pack my things, which isn't that much."
Mandy left the hospital and walked on down the street in the sunlight, the wind catching her little orange tendrils, making them tickle her neck. She stopped at the shop Matthew bought her the hairpin at and saw gold necklaces and bracelets displayed in the window.
"If only I came into town on a different day..."
Maybe that wouldn't have helped. Matthew still could have seen her, but on a different occasion. Would he have fallen in love with her then as well? He probably would have, and she would be kicked out of Downton just under the premise that she got close to Matthew. Of course, Mary would start everything and convince everyone that Mandy had to go. It would have been a lost cause either way. At least she had a job now that she knew and that she had done before and is good at. She actually found herself excited to start as the hospital's new accountant.
~ ~ ~
Dr. Clarkson said that they had left those records lying in the office for a few days. Judging by the number of stacks on the desk, and in various other places in the office, like the sofa, it looked like they weren't organized for weeks. Given they were separated into categories, but they weren't filed in any proper manner. This hospital just needed an organizer alone to deal with the mess. She had that job, along with dealing with the hospital's finances.
"Gosh, what I wouldn't give for a computer to input all this data," Mandy said as she thumbed through another folder. "Or just a filing cabinet for crying out loud. How were they able to work around all this?"
"That is a very good question."
Mandy jumped a little at the sudden male voice and saw a man with brown hair, who looked around thirty-five, and wearing a white doctor's jacket, standing in the doorway to her office. "Oh."
"Sorry to startle you." He walked in, extending his hand, and said in a thick English accent, "I'm George Buckle. I'm sure Dr. Clarkson has told you about me."
"Yes, he has." She shook his soft, warm hand. "You're his right-hand man. I'm Mandy DeMont, and I'm the new accountant-slash-messy office organizer."
He chuckled. "Yeah... sorry about that. The hospital has been so busy, we just haven't had the time to organize everything. We create new forms and organize them in stacks, as you can see."
Mandy straightened out a stack of folders on the corner of her desk. "Do you have any extra filing cabinets, or anything like that lying around? Maybe we can buy a new one, and I can fill out a form saying that we ordered it."
"That's not a bad idea. It would just need to go in the furniture expenses stack, right here." He put a hand on a stack on the floor to his left. He laughed. "Golly, we really need to organize everything."
"Yes, we do. I'm still working on it, and my first day is almost up. I'll be working on this all week."
George was silent for a moment, folding his arms and looking around the room. "Well... if you wouldn't mind it, I could lend you a hand. I finished my work for the day, just as long as a patient or Dr. Clarkson doesn't need me."
Mandy noticed the hopeful glint in this relatively good-looking man's brown eyes. She glanced at his left hand on impulse and didn't notice a ring. Did she really want to risk another man making passes at her and maybe eventually falling for her and creating more problems? Maybe George wasn't like the other men she's associated with, though. He seemed really friendly, and the look in his eyes didn't express his attraction of her, just the desire to help her out.
"Alright," she said. "Thank you, Mr. Buckle."
"Call me George, Miss DeMont."
"Mandy. And thank you again."
"It's no trouble."
Trouble. She hoped there wouldn't be any more of that.
~ ~ ~
A week passed and Mandy's office was organized. Given, she had the folders placed on the floor against the left and right walls, but at least they were organized and not piled everywhere around the room and on her desk. This worked until she was able to get her three filing cabinets that the hospital ordered just for her. George had a hand in that. Like Anna, he became a quick friend to her. When he wasn't doing rounds, tending to patients or in meetings with Dr. Clarkson, Mrs. Crawley and other hospital staff, he was with her, talking with her and eating lunch with her. It was another one of those days.
"So, are you liking this job so far?" George asked, then took a bite of his sandwich as he sat in the sofa against the wall near the door and across from her desk. "Hopefully it hasn't been too difficult."
She took a bite of a red apple and munched on it as she looked over a form for a patient who still needed to make a payment on a rather expensive type of medicine. They had a day left and still had a hefty amount left to pay. "It's not, at least not compared to the job that I have at home. Had," she corrected herself. "I'm just glad it's just me, and I'm in my own office without out all my co-workers looking over my shoulder. Since I was the youngest at the law firm, people were trying to make sure I did everything right. My boss liked me, though, and thought I did well, but my co-workers were just... well, they didn't trust me as much."
"That's their loss, then. From what I've seen of you so far, you're great at the job and have dealt with our records magnificently."
"Thanks, George. Um..." She showed him the form. "So, if a patient hasn't fully paid for their medication, then what do you do?"
She extended it to him, and he took it and looked it over. "Huh. This chap has only a day left to pay twenty pounds. That's a lot for the poor folk around here."
"I know, so... what do you do in a situation like that?"
"We send them a letter reminding them that they need to pay the remaining balance. Dr. Clarkson said that he went through these forms last week, before you came, and sent out a notice to everyone who are close to their payment deadlines. If they don't pay, then we send them a notice that their deadline is up and we give them an option to extend their deadline, but there will be interest added to each day that is added."
Mandy nodded. "That's similar to what we did at my last job when people couldn't pay their lawyer fees on time. Can I see the document again?" He handed it to her and she looked at the name. "Forrest McHarper. Do you know if he lives here in town?"
"Yes, the McHarpers live here in town. Ferrest is the father of the family that runs a toy shop. He makes wooden toys for children and sells them in his shop. I've only met the man once when I went to his shop to buy my boy Johnny a little somethin'."
Mandy popped her head up, surprised. "You have a son? I didn't know that."
"Yes. Johnny just turned seven." Mandy glanced at his ring finger again, and he noticed. He held up his hand. "Yes, I'm not married. Never was. Johnny's mother handed him to me when he was only one year old, begging me to take him because she couldn't handle being a mother."
Mandy felt her heart sink. "Oh, my... I'm sorry, George."
He waved a hand. "Nah, it's alright. She's long gone in the north, and Johnny and this hospital are my life now. I admit, though, the hospital part of my life has become my favorite part, if you know what I mean."
She noticed the glint in his eyes, and her heart jumped. "George..." she began to chide him.
"I know, I know, but I'm not going to make any passes at you. I may think that you're the most beautiful girl I've seen in ages, aside from Johnny's mother, but I'm happy just sitting here working with you and eating lunch with you every day."
She smiled graciously at that, and somewhat awkwardly. "Thank you, George."
"Plus, judging by the dazed look you have on your face whenever I walk by your office during the day makes me think you have a man somewhere in your life. Am I correct?"
Mandy's pulse rose, and she immediately thought of both Thomas and Matthew. "Um... I... suppose you're right."
"I knew it. So, who's the lucky chap?"
Did she really want to discuss her love life with this man that she had only known for a week? "Um... he's just someone I met at my last job, that's all." And someone who proposed marriage to her.
"At Downton Abbey? Who was he? Someone from the upstairs or downstairs?"
"Um, well... downstairs."
"I see. Lucky man. If I didn't suspect that you had someone, I would have asked you to dinner at the pub."
Heat crept up Mandy's neck, and she looked back at the form she had in her hand, attempting to shake off his complements. She had gotten used to men making passes at her. She hoped that she wouldn't become too vain when she gets home and expects to get attention from the men and become disappointed when they don't give it back. "I'm flattered, George. So, about Mr. McHarper... will I have to send out a letter to him tomorrow?"
"Yes, that would be wise. Dr. Clarkson usually does that, but since we have you, you will be in charge of that as well."
Mandy blew air out of her mouth in exasperation. "Gosh... I think you guys need more than one accountant. There are too many little jobs that need tending to."
"I think so, too, but you can do it."
The two new friends finished their lunch as they looked over other forms. When George said his goodbyes and left to get back to his own work, Mandy sat back in her leather desk chair. She looked over Mr. McHarper's form again. Maybe instead of sending a form in the mail, she would go and give him his notice in person. It would be a lot quicker to do so. The village was small, so maybe, if Dr. Clarkson allowed it, she could do that with all the patients who reached their deadline. From what it looked like, most of them pay on time, so she wouldn't have to visit a lot of people.
"Alright, let's do that," she finalized and got back to work with calculating medicine orders.