In Dr. Darling’s Care

by Marion Lennox

  The poor wee doggie was growing huger by the minute. The Birrini population had discovered that Phoebe was the reason Lizzie had come here, so it was a communal responsibility to see her content.

  ‘I reckon she’s having quads,’ Lizzie muttered, and May looked at her, startled.

  ‘Who, Emily?’

  ‘Phoebe.’

  ‘Your mind’s not running on the one track, then, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither is mine,’ May admitted, giving her a sideways glance that was more than a little calculating. ‘It’s running in all sorts of directions.’ She grinned and picked up a bundle of linen behind her. ‘Well, I’ll be off to make up a bed for his lordship. But you know the way my mind’s suddenly heading?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Two weeks without Emily.’ May’s grin broadened. ‘Two weeks without Emily and our Dr McKay is stuck with you and Phoebe and the quads. Very interesting is all I can say. Very interesting indeed.’

  Which was nonsense. Lizzie was left staring after her. She wasn’t making sense.

  Nothing was making sense.

  ‘I’ll go and visit Lillian,’ she told herself. Lillian, the anorexic kid in Room Four, was practically the only one of her patients who wasn’t self-treating. She dug her hands deep into the pockets of the white coat which May had kindly taken up for her and thought, At least with Lillian I feel like a doctor.

  She was here for medicine. Harry McKay was a patient.

  So there was no reason at all that she should all of a sudden be suffering from goose-bumps.

  He was fine. He was terrific.

  The ambulance boys wheeled Harry’s chair into the hospital entrance and Lizzie had to pinch herself to believe it was the same man. His leg was stuck out on a support in front, but he was shrugging off his helpers and propelling himself forward, looking about him like a man who’d been away from home for months.

  Lizzie didn’t move. Not yet. She stood where she was behind the desk in the nurses’ station, taking in the sight of him before he saw her.

  He was wearing jeans cut off at the knees. A sweatshirt. Trainers. Not the ones she’d hauled off in the mud but ones that were considerably cleaner.

  He wasn’t wearing a cast but a back-slab with bandages to keep it in place. He must be securely plated and pinned, then. But…not enough to be on crutches yet?

  What else? She should be behaving like a doctor, concentrating on things like his leg and the fact that he looked healthy. But she was distracted.

  She’d never seen his hair completely dry, she thought inconsequentially. Deeply black, it looked soft and thick and curly and…nice?

  The whole package looked nice, she decided. He was laughing up at something one of the paramedics had said and his whole face was lit with his laughter. There was something about this man that had the capacity to light the darkness…

  Now she was being stupid. Teenage crush stupid. She gave herself a mental slap to the right ear and stepped forward.

  ‘Welcome home, Dr McKay.’

  His laughter faded. His wheelchair stopped dead and he stared up at her.

  ‘Lizzie,’ he said softly. ‘Lizzie. So I didn’t imagine…’

  His voice trailed off and she frowned. He hadn’t imagined what?

  Professional. She needed to be professional. Doctor receiving a patient transferring from paramedics.

  Right. Another mental slap.

  ‘Do you have Dr McKay’s notes?’ she asked the senior of the two ambulance officers, and the uniformed paramedic shook his head.

  ‘I have the notes,’ Harry said. ‘They’re in my bag. I’ll show them to you later if you need to see them.’

  ‘Of course I need to see them. You’re my patient.’

  ‘I’m not a patient.’

  The paramedic rolled his eyes at her and winked. ‘You’ll have your hands full with this one, I reckon. Straitjackets and enemas and bedpans, I reckon.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She smiled. ‘I can manage that. Meanwhile, can you take Dr McKay into Room Five?’

  ‘I’m not going into a ward,’ Harry snapped. ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘But…’ Lizzie blinked. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  There was only one answer to that. ‘Because I’m in your home.’

  His eyes narrowed, creasing again into the beginnings of a smile. ‘So you’re in my home. You’re not in my bed, I hope?’

  ‘Well, no…’

  ‘Then what’s the problem? There are two bedrooms.’

  ‘All your gear’s been moved out. May said it was over at the house you share with Emily.’

  ‘I don’t share a house with Emily.’

  ‘I mean…well, after you’re married…’ She was tripping over her tongue here and the two paramedics were looking on with increasing interest.

  ‘After I’m married then maybe I’ll move out of my house. Not before.’

  ‘None of your personal things are there.’

  ‘Only because Emily’s brothers moved them the day before the wedding. Before I could stop them. I’ll send Jim over to bring back what I need.’

  Lizzie shook her head. She was really confused.

  She needed to focus.

  ‘I share your house with Phoebe,’ she said, desperately trying to think through reasons why he couldn’t share a house with her. Reasons that were logical and not the reasons that were filling her head with panic. ‘Phoebe would have to be the worst type of dog for a man in a wheelchair.’

  ‘I’m only in a wheelchair on sufferance to stop these people getting sued if I fall flat on my face. I’m weight-bearing.’

  ‘With sticks.’

  ‘With sticks,’ he conceded.

  ‘Phoebe eats sticks.’

  ‘They’re aluminium.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s smart enough to know the difference.’

  Silence. ‘Don’t you want me to live with you?’ he asked, his voice suddenly dangerous, and she blinked.

  ‘Um… No?’

  ‘Why? Am I so dangerous?’

  Dangerous, she thought wildly. Yes. The description was apt. That twinkle was definitely dangerous.

  ‘I’m not a threat,’ he continued, and she knew he definitely was.

  But she wasn’t telling him so. ‘I didn’t say you were,’ she said with asperity. ‘Phoebe’s nearly killed you once. I’m worried that the next time she might finish you off completely.’

  ‘So you’ve warned me. You’ve done your best. Now let me go home.’

  ‘You need to stay in hospital.’

  ‘No. I need to stay with you.’

  They had quite an audience now. May had come out of the ward behind Lizzie and was watching in appreciative silence. The ambulance officers were, frankly, enjoying themselves. Even Lillian, the wraith-like teenager who lay in her bed each day and said nothing to anyone, was peering around her door in interest.

  ‘Go on, love,’ the older of the ambulance officers said. ‘Let him live with you.’ He grinned at the pair of them. ‘I dare say he’s housetrained by now.’

  ‘And you did say you weren’t sleeping in his bed,’ the other one added. ‘That’s got to make it all right.’

  ‘It’d be better fun if she was,’ May offered, and Lizzie winced.

  ‘Will you lot just butt out?’

  ‘Why should they?’ For heaven’s sake, Harry looked as if he was enjoying himself. He caught sight of Lillian peeping around the door and he smiled. ‘What you reckon, Lill? Do you think Dr Darling should let me live with her?’

  They all looked up. Lillian. The girl was almost pathologically shy. Lizzie had spent the last six days working to gain her confidence, but there was a long way to go. She’d retreat, Lizzie thought. She’d blush and stammer and disappear.

  But amazingly Lillian held her ground.

  ‘I don’t think you should refuse to share a house with Dr McKay,’ she told Lizzie in a voice that was so near the tone that Lizzie had
used with her that morning that she blinked in astonishment. ‘You might destroy his self-confidence if you do. Self-confidence is a very fragile thing. It’s more important even than legs.’

  There. Lillian blushed to the roots of her hair but she didn’t retreat. She met Lizzie’s eyes and there was a hint of defiance-even a hint of laughter-in the girl’s face. Amazing.

  And after that impressive little lecture there was nowhere for Lizzie to go at all.

  So what was a girl to do? She threw her hands in the air and she surrendered.

  ‘Fine,’ she told them. ‘Don’t stay in the hospital, then. See if I care. I dare say those notes under your arm say bed-rest and bedpans for six weeks.’

  ‘They do not.’

  ‘Are you intending to let me see them?’

  He grinned. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well, then…’

  ‘Well, then, let’s move on.’ Harry looked up to the ambulance officers and he smiled. ‘We’ll let you boys go. As you can see, Dr Darling is in charge of my future treatment.’ Then he turned back to Lizzie.

  ‘OK, Dr Darling,’ he told her. ‘I’m ready. Would you like to take me home?’

  ‘What’s this?’

  Harry pushed himself through the swing doors separating hospital from doctor’s quarters and stopped dead.

  When Lizzie had walked into this place a week ago she’d found it had been spartan to the point of coldness. The place had been designed for functionality rather than beauty.

  It wasn’t any more, though. Lizzie looked down at the man in the wheelchair, noted his look of incredulity and thought, Whoops. There was only one thing to do here. Move straight to the offensive.

  ‘It was horrible,’ she told him.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Your decor. It was horrible.’

  He stared some more and appeared to consider what she’d said. ‘You know, if you invited me to stay in your home I wouldn’t have thought the first thing I’d say to you about it was that the decor was horrible,’ he remarked thoughtfully.

  ‘You might if it was awful.’

  ‘I mightn’t if it was rude. As it is. As you are.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you liked it?’

  ‘It mightn’t have been much,’ he said, his tone wounded, ‘but it was home.’

  She cast him a suspicious look. She didn’t know him well enough yet to know whether he was joking. He stared at her, deadpan, and she still didn’t know.

  ‘Oh, come on. It’s not your decor. It’s some hospital administrator’s idea of decor. This is much better.’ She paused, suddenly doubtful. Maybe some people liked beige walls. ‘Isn’t it?’

  And thankfully he decided to concede. ‘It is,’ he said slowly, wheeling himself forward so he can see. ‘It’s…amazing.’

  It was. Relieved, Lizzie gazed about her, smugly satisfied by what she’d achieved in six short days.

  ‘How on earth did you get this done?’

  ‘Miss Morrison came in to get her flu shot,’ she said.

  He stared. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Miss Morrison, Birrini’s third-grade teacher.’

  ‘I know who Susan Morrison is.’

  ‘Then you’ll know she has lists.’

  ‘I know.’ Harry uttered a groan, obviously remembering. Susan Morrison’s lists were the bane of any doctor’s life. She believed in getting her money’s worth at each consultation. She’d save up complaints until she had a list full of her problems-and sometimes those of her students for good measure-and then book in for a short consultation and expect the doctor to solve everything in one hit. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Lizzie told him, feeling immeasurably better now that the accusation had gone out of his tone. ‘I like Sue Morrison. Old school, but nice. Anyway, she was having a whinge so I thought I’d whinge right back.’

  Lizzie was feeling really strange here and the easiest thing to do was concentrate on patients. Neutral ground. Medicine. After all, that was the only thing she had in common with this man. Wasn’t it?

  ‘You whinged right back?’ He sounded bemused.

  ‘I told her how cold it was in Birrini and how much I was missing Queensland and how awful this apartment is. How…beige.’

  ‘I like beige.’

  ‘Really?’ She gave a dramatic shudder. ‘Beige is awful.’

  ‘Awful?’

  ‘There wasn’t one single picture on the wall,’ she said accusingly, and he looked around him in increasing wonder.

  ‘There is now.’

  ‘Well, of course. Miss Morrison decided right there and then that she’d fix things for me. So she marched back to her third-graders and announced the Great Queensland Painting Competition. She had each of them draw their impression of Northern Queensland.’ Lizzie paused for breath as she gazed around the apartment. It looked great, she thought as she surveyed the once beige walls plastered with posters. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t they wonderful?’

  He had to agree, she thought. How could he not? The pictures were as varied as the kids who’d drawn them. There were huge yellow suns, palm trees, stick-figure surfers sweeping shorewards on crests of blue, blue waves. There were crocodiles and octopuses and crowds on beaches and fun fairs and yachts and…

  And summer.

  ‘It warms me up just to look at them,’ she told him, deeply satisfied. ‘And, as well as that, it’s fixed another thing on Miss Morrison’s list.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  He was starting to sound off balance, Lizzie thought. Good. He had her off balance just looking at her. It was about time the tables were turned. ‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Amy Dunstan is eight years old and she’s being bullied.’

  Harry frowned at that. ‘I know Amy,’ he told her. ‘Her family’s had a really tough time.’

  ‘I gathered that. Miss Morrison told me. It must be so dreadful to lose a child to meningitis.’

  ‘It happened two years ago.’ Harry had parked his chair under the table and was still staring at the posters. But he was obviously thinking of the Dunstans. ‘Scott died just before the family moved here. They came here to try and break with the past. Break with shadows.’

  ‘It hasn’t worked,’ Lizzie said bluntly. ‘Scott was a year older than Amy and that house is set up as a shrine to him. Still. Two years on.’

  ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘Of course I’ve been there. Amy’s problems were on Miss Morrison’s list. I had to do something.’

  ‘She asked you to do a house call?’

  ‘No, but I just happened to be walking Phoebe past the Dunstans’ and she needed a drink of water.’

  ‘You just happened…Where is Phoebe?’ he asked, fascinated, but she shook her head.

  ‘Don’t you want to know about Amy?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course I want to know about Amy.’

  ‘Well.’ Lizzie beamed. She was deeply satisfied at the way things were working out here and she couldn’t quite keep the smugness from her face. ‘We-Amy’s mother and I-talked about Amy’s lack of self-esteem and the way it seems to be the cause of the bullying. Kids are cruel and they’ll always pick on someone who’s down already. That’s what Miss Morrison thinks and as Miss Morrison’s been teaching for thirty years I dare say she’s right.’

  ‘I dare say.’

  She cast him a suspicious look. His tone was too bland. But she decided to overlook it. This once.

  ‘Well, she is. I’m sure. Oh, Harry, the Dunstan house is appalling. You walk in and there’s this huge picture of Scott right in the entrance hall. There are pictures of him right through the house with candles that seem to be lit all the time. It’s awful. Like a funeral parlour, only worse. Mrs Dunstan can’t talk about him without crying.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I don’t see…’

  ‘There’s not a single picture of Amy,’ she told him, and her tone was accusing.

  Which was hardly fair.

  ‘Isn’t there?’ Harry’s smile had faded com
pletely now. ‘I haven’t seen it-the family has never invited me in-but I can imagine. I know the family is in distress but what to do about it…’

  ‘I did something about it.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘I told her she had two children,’ Lizzie said bluntly. ‘I said if she didn’t want to lose Amy as well as Scott then she needed to think about her daughter for a bit as well as her son.’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘It sounds easy.’ Lizzie hesitated, then shrugged and crossed to the kitchenette to fill the kettle. ‘You want some coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  It was easier with her back to him. She didn’t feel so self-conscious. So aware that he might be judging her.

  ‘I showed Mary Dunstan the figures of adolescent depression linked to suicide,’ she told him, and was aware of a deep silence behind her.

  ‘You told her…’

  ‘Someone had to.’ Lizzie turned and faced him. ‘I told her any eight-year-old living in that house would figure the only way to get love and attention was to be dead. I asked Mary if that’s what she and her husband intended Amy to believe.’

  ‘My God, Lizzie…’

  ‘I was horrible,’ Lizzie said with a faintly embarrassed laugh. ‘But someone had to be. Anyway, I talked for ages and Mary had a bit of a cry but I told her that wasn’t any use either and then I offered them a puppy.’

  ‘A puppy.’ He sounded stunned. ‘Not…one of Phoebe’s?’

  ‘Of course one of Phoebe’s.’ She was more sure of herself now. Going to the home of one of Harry’s patients and putting her oar in where she wasn’t sure she was welcome had seemed a bit…intrusive? But surely he couldn’t object to this.

  ‘Actually, I didn’t give the puppy to Amy straight away,’ she admitted. ‘I told her mother she was going to win it in my drawing competition. If she agreed. By the way, that’s Amy’s picture up there.’ She pointed over the sink to a vast painting of a kid on a surfboard. ‘Isn’t it good?’