Rescued by the Single Dad Doc

by Marion Lennox

  The children’s fear was appallingly obvious. As the tension escalated, the screen showed Charles hauling Kit towards the car. Kit was sobbing in terror, pulling back. Henry and Marcus were looking stunned, terrified. Henry was flinging himself at Tom. Tom was lifting Henry aside to try and reach Kit.

  And then came Tuffy. The little dog gripped Charles’s shoe, but even on the small screen it was obvious that Charles’s foot was uninjured. All Charles had to do was shake him off, but he did no such thing.

  The kick was vicious, ruthless, sickening, and the scruffy little dog went flying. There was a moment of appalling stillness while the dog lay on the gravel. Then he staggered to his feet and lurched away, tail tucked under his legs.

  The boys ran after him. Charles yelled.

  The video stopped.

  They were left with silence.

  ‘If anyone dares to say the boys are lost through negligence, I’ll personally post this to any online forum I can think of,’ Rachel said in a shaky voice. ‘Tom, I’d go into debt to hire banners over Sydney Harbour if that’s what it takes. You’re not to blame.’

  But he was past listening. He was still staring at the blank screen, as if he could make himself see what was happening to the boys now.

  ‘They’ll twist it,’ he said savagely. ‘Even with this... The lawyers they employ... The bottom line is that I’m single, I’m not related to them. I can’t give them the care they can.’

  ‘If you call what they’re offering care...’ she said and she closed her eyes. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay, what?’ His voice was defeated. Hopeless.

  ‘Okay, you don’t need to be single any more,’ she told him. ‘If it’s what you want, if it’d make a difference... You took responsibility for the boys so maybe...’ She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I can, too.’

  He stared at her incredulously. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That I might help. That I might even share. If you and the boys need it so much. Maybe...even if we were to be married...’

  And where had that come from? The words hung like some sort of threatening sword.

  Married? Was she nuts?

  And he hardly reacted. Maybe he was beyond it. Maybe all he saw at the moment was defeat.

  ‘Tom...’ Had he even heard what she’d said?

  ‘You’re going to be a radiologist,’ he said dully.

  Help.

  She was so confused she scarcely knew what she was putting on the table, but at some level something in her brain was saying it made sense. She was heading down an emotional rabbit hole here, deep and dark, and she had no idea what lay at the end, but the compulsion to help this man, this family, was almost overwhelming.

  ‘I don’t need to be a radiologist,’ she managed. ‘I need to keep your boys safe.’

  ‘Is that a reason for marriage?’

  ‘Hey, it is.’ The police sergeant was ostensibly focused on the radio, but he must have been listening in on their conversation as well. He’d visibly brightened. ‘This is the first piece of decent listening I’ve done all night. Take her at her word, Doc. The boys’ll have a mum and dad and we’ll have two permanent docs for the town. More with that scholarship thing. Shallow Bay won’t know itself.’

  But Tom was shaking his head, looking bewildered. As if he was trying to clear enough room in his mind to answer.

  ‘Rachel, no,’ he said at last. ‘It’s an extraordinary offer and I don’t have the headspace to figure it out, but I do know... You’ve said you didn’t want to be yet another of my “rescues” and you were right. I might care for you—a lot. I also know—even if you don’t—that you making this video, focusing on the boys, wasn’t you accepting responsibility, it was you caring. As was what you said right now. But you don’t know it, Rachel. You don’t know what love is and without it...’ He raked his hair with his fingers, grim and desperate. ‘You can’t not let me close because it reeks of rescue and then offer the same thing yourself. You just...can’t.’

  ‘But you married Claire without love,’ she said, struggling to figure it out herself. ‘Surely that was a decision made for convenience? Wouldn’t marrying me be the same?’

  And that broke through the desolation. He turned and stared at her as if she was something from another planet.

  ‘You think I married Claire without love?’

  ‘You said...’

  ‘I said she was my friend. No, I didn’t want her in the way that I want you, Rachel—and don’t look like that. You must know how much I’m starting to want you—your body, your warmth, your love. But there it is again. The love word. Claire was my friend from childhood and I loved her. I also loved her boys from the moment they were born. I was their playmate, their big brother, their pseudo uncle, and if you think not being their dad means I don’t love them...’

  ‘But you married Claire for sensible reasons.’

  ‘I did,’ he agreed. ‘But love was behind it. Yes, need was there. Claire needed me, the boys needed me, but if I hadn’t loved them I’d be little better than Charles and Marjorie.’ He groaned. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not making sense even to myself.’

  ‘I don’t think either of us are making sense,’ she managed. ‘Maybe...maybe we could talk about it later. When we’ve found them.’

  ‘Let’s not,’ he said heavily. ‘Right now, loving’s killing me. Loving someone who doesn’t love back...’ He closed his eyes again. ‘Enough. I’m sorry.’

  And then the radio crackled into life again and one form of tension was replaced with another. They strained to hear, but it was only someone reporting in.

  They went back to waiting. Her stupid offer disappeared into the ether. It was just that, she thought. Stupid. All that mattered was that the boys were found.

  Outside, the rain fell as steady drizzle. Somewhere in the hills were three small boys. And creeks that would be turning to rivers. And cliffs, and cold, and fear...

  And Rachel sat and watched Tom without touching, and waited, and let responsibility and care and love churn into a chaotic, frightening morass in her mind.

  * * *

  And then, at three minutes past two—not that she was watching the clock or anything—the radio crackled again. ‘Sergeant?’

  ‘Here.’ The policeman was suddenly sitting upright. There was something about the word, the voice, the tone.

  ‘We think we’ve got ’em,’ the voice said. ‘Check the screen.’

  The cop swivelled to a computer beside the radio. It’d been showing thermal images of the mountainside all night, taken from the helicopter. Almost before the cop turned, Rachel and Tom were on their feet, staring as well.

  They saw search coordinates. Weird, grainy images of bushland.

  ‘Coming around now,’ the voice said above the sound of the chopper. And they watched as the coordinates changed, as the chopper flew lower.

  And then they saw... Three blurred figures, tiny, beneath the canopy. White, almost ghostlike. Moving while the rest of the scene was still. Jumping?

  ‘Not roos,’ the voice said. ‘Never seen a roo jump up and down in the one spot. Bit of a clearing a couple of hundred yards ahead. Not big enough to land but we’ll send Michelle down on a rope and direct the rest of the searchers in. No promises, but the way the three of them are moving... I reckon we’ll have three soggy, tired but well kids coming home in no time.’

  The chopper hovered a little longer and they could see the tiny figures waving, trying to attract attention.

  And then the chopper moved away, to reach the clearing. The scene was once again thick bush.

  ‘Oh, Tom...’ Rachel managed but Tom was no longer with her.

  He’d headed for the bathroom and closed the door.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE BOYS WERE brought home in a patrol car just before three. Rachel stayed only long enough to see the
m sandwich-hugged in Tom’s arms. Rose appeared from next door and started fussing about baths and blankets. Rachel watched tears, hugs—love?—and then edged herself out of the picture.

  She was an outsider looking in. Wasn’t that the way it always was?

  ‘Tuffy?’ she said to one of the policemen who’d brought the boys home, and he looked at her blankly.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The little dog the boys were chasing.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. He, too, was looking at the hugging tableau through eyes that were suspiciously moist. Every person here—and there were many, crowded inside or around the front yard—was soaking up this happy ending. ‘There was a dog. The kids had it, but when the chopper flew low it took off into the bush again. The kids were upset about it, but it didn’t come when they called and we weren’t about to hang around. A couple of the locals said they’d head up there tomorrow to do a search if he doesn’t come home himself. I guess he’ll come home when he’s hungry.’

  So Tuffy wasn’t messing with this happy ending, but as Rachel made her way back to her cottage he was still very much on her radar.

  Along with everything else that had been said this night.

  Loving someone who doesn’t love back...

  That one line kept reverberating, somehow intensifying what she’d just seen. Tom, crouching before the fire, holding as much of his boys as he could. The boys, hugging back. Rose, standing beside them, weeping with relief and joy. The searchers, mud-stained, weary, battered from a night of bashing through undergrowth but staying around, soaking in this happy ending. Even the cops with tears in their eyes.

  Loving someone who doesn’t love back...

  And Tom...loved her?

  How could he possibly? He’d known her for little more than a month. She’d hardly let him near. Had he so little control of his emotions that he’d let himself fall for someone like her?

  Someone who so carefully never loved back?

  Emotions were threatening to overwhelm her. She was fighting them back with every tool at her disposal, tools carefully built and squirreled away during a lifetime of emotional emptiness.

  They weren’t working. Tom. The boys.

  And there was a gap.

  Tuffy.

  Back home, she showered—somehow she still seemed to be covered in stickiness from the birthday party—and headed for bed. She shoved her head under the pillow, trying to blot out the emotions of the day. They wouldn’t be blotted. Where was the Rachel she’d fought so hard to become? Where was her armour? It was nowhere, and neither was sleep.

  At five she was sitting at her kitchen table, staring into a mug of cold tea. At the first hint of dawn, she turned to stare out at the mountains behind the town.

  Tom. The boys.

  Tuffy.

  A ragged little rescue dog. Hurt. Missing a leg. Would he be able to find his way home?

  She checked her phone photos and saw the video again, Tuffy flying in to defend his boys against Charles. Boys he loved.

  ‘That’s anthropomorphism,’ she told herself. ‘Giving dogs feelings that humans have.’

  Would she have bitten Charles?

  ‘That’s anthropomorphism backward,’ she said out loud. And then there was another question slamming at her. ‘So what am I asking? Can’t I love as much as Tuffy?’

  There was that word again. Love.

  Tom. The boys.

  Tuffy.

  She glanced out of the window. The house next door was in darkness. She guessed Tom and his boys would all be in his big bed, huddled close. He couldn’t leave them.

  Her mind went back to the screen shot they’d watched as the helicopter had hovered over the boys. She could still see it. Three white shadows in a sea of unlit bushland. Three spots of heat.

  She couldn’t remember another heat spot, but then Tuffy was much, much smaller. What she could recall, though, were the numbers at the edge of the screen.

  A photographic memory had always been her blessing, one of her few advantages in her struggle to gain a medical degree. She called on it now. She could still see those numbers. Coordinates.

  She wrote them down and then flicked onto her phone. An internet search found a mapping app. She inserted the numbers and there it was, the exact place the boys had been found.

  And the app showed her as well. She could see where she was as a little blue blob, with a blue line showing the distance of the blue blob to the coordinates.

  Two kilometres. Not so far, but through thick bush...

  What was she thinking?

  Do nothing foolish, she told herself. There was a mantra given to every trainee doctor, written in stone.

  Do not put yourself in danger when rendering assistance.

  It wasn’t just self-preservation, their first-year lecturer had thundered—and he’d been a pretty impressive thunderer. A doctor who put herself in danger escalated the situation to a whole new level, meaning those who came after could be facing a far bigger threat.

  But Tuffy was up there somewhere.

  She didn’t know the bush.

  She picked up her cold cup of tea and drank it while she forced her mind towards logic rather than emotion. Be sensible. Think it through.

  She had the coordinates. The boys had reached this place, therefore it had to be somewhere she could reach if she was prepared to bush-bash. She had her phone with her app. All she had to do was keep herself—her dot—on the blue line. If it got too hard she could turn back. Her blue line would bring her home.

  How could there be danger?

  And could she be any use?

  Dawn was breaking—just. Tom was stuck where he was. The searchers from the night before would still be solidly asleep. Meanwhile, Tuffy was alone.

  Would he stay close to where the boys had been? Maybe he would, she thought, but surely not for long. By the time anyone else came to help, Tuffy could be anywhere.

  He still could be anywhere.

  She wouldn’t think that.

  Decision made, she hauled on jeans, windcheater, trainers, plus a rain jacket because it was still drizzling.

  She tucked her phone safely in her pocket. Her portable charger was also zipped in. She grabbed a bottle of water and, thinking of a fearful little dog, she added a packet of bacon. What else did she need to rescue one scared, kicked dog?

  Luck, she decided. Hope that he’d stayed where he’d last seen the boys.

  And if she didn’t find him?

  Others will come up later, she told herself. I’m not the only one who cares.

  Cares?

  Loves?

  ‘Quit it with the questions,’ she said out loud. ‘Just go find a dog.’

  * * *

  Tom stirred within a tangle of arms and legs. Every one of the sleeping kids needed at least some contact. He couldn’t move.

  The night had wrecked him. He felt drained, empty, devoid of anything except relief that he had them here. They’d arrived home distraught, still frantic about Tuffy, but so exhausted they’d simply slept.

  He had to let them sleep now. He was wide awake, but the moment he moved he felt them cling again. He was their security, their rock, their home.

  Tuffy was still out there, a heartache that was yet to be faced. According to a weeping Marcus, the boys had eventually found him before becoming lost themselves. Apparently he’d been bleeding, his back leg damaged, and he’d panicked at the sound of the helicopter.

  ‘We wanted to stay and catch him,’ Marcus had sobbed. ‘But he wouldn’t come and the lady said we had to come home.’

  Home. There was that word again.

  ‘We’ll find him in the morning,’ he’d promised but it was already morning and there was no way he could move. Before they’d left, a few of the locals had agreed to meet at ten and set off to
search. It was more than he could expect but ten... That was five hours away.

  Then, through his window, he saw the light flicker on in Rachel’s cottage. He’d tried to put away the emotions she’d shown the night before, the desolation and confusion he’d seen on her face. He had no time for it, he told himself, but it stayed with him still.

  The light he could see was her kitchen window. Curtained. He could see no shape.

  Was she thinking over the events of the night before? Calling herself a fool for having offered to marry him? Accepting his explanation that sensible didn’t come into it?

  They were so different. How could he possibly expect love from someone who’d never had it?

  If it was just him, maybe he could take a chance, he thought bleakly. The way he felt about Rachel had taken him by surprise. There was no sense to it. He wanted her, simple as that.

  But the boys... A practical stepmother? A woman who operated by rules instead of heart?

  Like Charles and Marjorie?

  She wasn’t like that, he told himself. She could never be like that. But still...

  And then Rachel’s porch light came on and a shadowy figure slipped out.

  Rachel.

  The weak dawn light was filtering through the grey. He couldn’t see her clearly, but she had a torch and she was heading away from the house. Towards the bush.

  What the...?

  His phone was on his bedside table. He manoeuvred Henry’s head a little so he could reach it, finding Rachel on his contact list. Her voice, when she answered, was a little breathless, as if she’d been rushing.

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He was whispering, keeping still, knowing he couldn’t wake the boys.

  ‘You can see me?’

  She’d just reached the edge of the clearing. ‘Through the bedroom window. Yes.’

  Astonishingly, the figure out there turned and waved. ‘Wish me luck, then. I’m off on a Tuffy hunt.’

  ‘Rachel!’ He couldn’t hide the urgency. The boys stirred. He lowered his voice again, but it was an effort. ‘Are you...? Don’t even think about it. We’ll be searching for you.’