The Gospel According to Gaviscon – Paperback

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GAVISCON

One man. One sachet. Twenty-eight years of emotional indigestion.

At 03:17 on a Wednesday morning, Danny Cairns cured war.

Nobody noticed.

Mainly because he was sitting in the staff room of Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and somebody was microwaving haddock. There are limits to what humanity can reasonably absorb at three in the morning.

Danny is sixty, an ICU nurse, a lifelong Glaswegian, and a man whose emotional availability has been described as technically present. He’s exceptionally good at keeping critically ill patients alive and spectacularly bad at discussing his own feelings.

Then, somewhere between chronic heartburn, a questionable coffee and another NHS night shift, Danny discovers that Gaviscon might hold the secret to human survival.

Not by getting rid of life’s problems. Just by stopping the bastards coming back up.

He posts his theory online.

Unfortunately, the internet notices.

Soon, his ridiculous Raft Doctrine is spreading across hospitals, confusing management, inspiring strangers and attracting the sort of attention normally reserved for minor religious figures and people who’ve accidentally insulted Taylor Swift.

And then a message arrives from Australia.

Aileen Forsyth.

Twenty-eight years ago, Danny walked out of her flat after a night neither of them quite forgot. He didn’t stay for coffee. He didn’t make a phone call. He didn’t go back.

He’s been emotionally digesting that particular decision ever since.

Now she’s married, living in Perth, and somehow still capable of making a sixty-year-old Scottish nurse behave like an absolute fanny.

What follows is a gloriously inconvenient collision of old love, decent marriages, missed opportunities, NHS bureaucracy, questionable life advice and the terrifying possibility that growing older doesn’t necessarily mean growing up.

Funny, tender, irreverent and occasionally devastating, The Gospel According to Gaviscon is a Scottish love story for people who know that life rarely works out as planned, that being fine is not the same as being happy, and that sometimes the most important thing you can do is stop running away.

A novella about love, regret, second chances and the strange things that keep us afloat.

Warning: May cause laughter, unexpected emotional discomfort and an overwhelming desire to telephone somebody you haven’t spoken to since 1998.

No actual wars were cured during the writing of this book. NHS management remains under investigation.