…to the coffee place near the hospital. We meant nothing by it, other than to say thank you.

There were no ulterior motives.

It was just a way of expressing our gratitude.

After all, he pulled out all the stops to get Ivy the IVIG.

When Imogen was sick, if her doctor went above and beyond (which she often did) we would send flowers and a note of thanks. It was accepted gracefully and I felt good that I was able to do something nice for someone who had helped.

When Ivy is in the hospital (or any of us for that matter) I always buy some chocolates and a card to thank the nurses and the staff for their kindness. As a nurse, I know, you don’t get thanked very often but when you are, it makes all those bad days worth it.

My mother taught me to always say thank you.

Anyway, the paed phoned and told me that he was not going to accept the coffee card. It made him feel uncomfortable, he said and so he would return it the next time Ivy had an appointment.

Return a thank you gift.

Okay, I can see it from his point of view, he gets paid for it, he likes his job, he doesn’t want to feel as though he owes us any special favours because we gave him a gift. Not that we would ever expect that, nor was it our intention.

It’s okay.

Except it’s not.

It hurts to have an act of kindness thrown back in your face.

We had to think long and hard about what to do for him.

Flowers just won’t cut it. (He’s a he after all ).

We have given him wine before (which he had no problem with).

We know he likes coffee, so we went about organising to have the card made up. The little coffee house only accepted cash, so no  credit card over the phone. Nothing so easy.

As Ivy and I were in the hospital, David had to go in before work to pay for (the now useless) gift. Which he did, because we wanted to say thanks. It was important to us.

I guess we never thought he would reject it.

I feel as though we have overstepped some awful boundary.

I am embarrassed and weirdly hurt.

What do you think? Did we do the wrong thing?