In Dr. Darling’s Care

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Ah…’

  The theatre-collectively Lizzie and May-held its breath.

  ‘Ah?’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Colour.’

  Colour. She knew what he meant.

  OK, for many men one damaged testicle didn’t mean infertility, but often it did. To condemn an eleven-year-old to a lifetime prospect of never becoming a dad…

  ‘It’s even better than your leg,’ she said in quiet satisfaction, and he cast a startled glance up at her.

  ‘Hey. We’re talking infertility here. That’s a darn sight less important than losing a leg.’

  ‘Is it?’ She frowned, still concentrating on her dials.

  Harry appeared to think about it. He was starting to stitch, fastening the testis to the wall of the scrotum so it couldn’t twist again.

  ‘I reckon.’ He told her. ‘Babies or leg? No choice really.’

  ‘I bet Emily wouldn’t think so,’ May retorted, and Harry gave a rueful grin.

  ‘That’s because it’s not Emily’s leg.’

  ‘You wouldn’t give up your leg for a baby?’ Lizzie asked curiously.

  ‘Well, I might have to,’ he conceded. ‘I mean, if you held up a living, breathing baby called Alphonse and you said to me, “Your leg or the baby gets it,” then maybe I’d concede a leg.’

  ‘Gee, that’s good of you.’

  ‘Alphonse would have to be a very nice baby as well.’

  ‘Emily wants six babies,’ May volunteered, and Harry nearly dropped his needle. He caught himself and concentrated harder, and Lizzie grinned.

  ‘That’s not a good thing to drop on an operating surgeon, Sister,’ she told May. ‘We could have him faint in Theatre and then where would we be?’

  ‘He’s just doing needlework now,’ May retorted but she looked a little abashed. ‘I could do that.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ Harry said. He stitched some more. ‘Six babies?’ he asked cautiously, and May nodded.

  ‘That’s what she said. Though I concede that maybe I shouldn’t be the one to break it to you. I think you need to speak to your bride.’

  ‘Phoebe’s likely to have six babies or maybe even more,’ Lizzie volunteered. All of a sudden the grey tinge on Harry’s face had become more pronounced and she was starting to worry. He should be in bed. All she could do was lighten things up and hope.

  ‘Can we award six art prizes?’ May asked. Like Lizzie, she’d seen the strain descend on Harry’s face and she was prepared to take a lead.

  ‘Nope. I’ll leave the other five with our Dr McKay. If Emily wants six babies, that’s five of Phoebe’s and if he and Emily try really hard and read all the proper instruction manuals then maybe they can make one all of their own. Their own little Alphonse who they won’t even have to sacrifice a leg to obtain.’

  He should smile, she thought. The laughter should come back. But it wasn’t appearing.

  ‘Dressing,’ he said curtly, and May handed him what he needed with a curious sideways glance at Lizzie.

  They’d stepped over a boundary. They knew it. But neither of them knew exactly what that boundary was.

  With the anaesthetic reversed and Terry slowly and drowsily coming around to the land of the living, and with his parents reassured, it was time to call it quits. Harry made his way through to the doctor’s quarters, leaning heavily on his elbow crutches, and Lizzie followed in concern.

  ‘Let me help you get into bed,’ she said, but he shook his head.

  ‘I can do it.’

  ‘I’m a doctor, remember?’ she said gently. ‘You’re not going to do a Terry on me, are you?’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘If I leave you alone you’re just going to flop down on your bed and sleep just as you are-aren’t you?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I can see it in your face.’

  ‘You can see too damned much,’ he said enigmatically, but she was already holding the bedroom door for him.

  ‘In. Now. Sit on the bed and let me help you undress.’

  ‘I can-’

  ‘You can’t. Sit. Submit to being cared for. Now.’

  It shouldn’t be personal.

  She was a doctor, and he, for the moment, was a patient. How many times in her medical practice had she helped a patient undress? Hundreds, she thought.

  It was stupid to avoid this. Harry knew it too. He left his boxers on-a man had some pride-but he let her slip the rest of his clothes from his body and pull on a pyjama jacket. Then he slid back onto the sheets with a sigh of relief and watched as she examined his leg.

  ‘Is it hurting?’

  ‘Like hell,’ he admitted.

  ‘You shouldn’t have been on it.’

  ‘I hardly had a choice.’

  No. Terry would have been in real trouble without him.

  ‘Can you bear for me to give it a rub?’ she told him. ‘I swear I’ll be gentle.’

  ‘It doesn’t need it.’

  ‘You know it does,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t do all that heroic leg manipulation in the pouring rain only to have my patient die of deep vein thrombosis.’

  ‘I’m not intending to develop DVT.’

  ‘Not if you let me massage it,’ she said demurely. ‘Come on, Dr McKay. Let the nice doctor do her job. I promise you it’ll barely tickle.’

  ‘Liar,’ he said, and she chuckled.

  ‘Be brave, then,’ she told him. ‘If you’re very good I’ll see if I can find you a jelly bean from the kids’ ward as a reward.’

  Under the bandages the leg still looked swollen and painful. Lizzie laid the last of the bandages aside and winced.

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Hey, who has to be brave here?’

  ‘Sorry.’ She pulled up a chair and sat, making a careful assessment of the wound.

  The leg had been broken two thirds of the distance from knee to ankle. The plate and pin had been inserted through a neat incision that would heal really well.

  ‘You’ll be as good as new in no time,’ she said appreciatively. ‘That’s a very nice scar.’

  ‘Why, thank you.’ He had his hands linked behind his head and was staring up at the ceiling.

  ‘If it hurts you, I’ll stop,’ she said gently, and he glared.

  ‘I’m not scared.’

  ‘I’d be scared if I were you,’ she told him. ‘Letting me practise my massage skills on you. I’d be scared out of my wits.’

  But she didn’t hurt him.

  Lizzie had watched the physiotherapists in the orthopaedic wards enough to do no harm now, and to achieve what she wanted. Carefully, skilfully she massaged the swollen leg, keeping well clear of the wound itself. She left the back-slab on, slipping her slender fingers under when she wanted to gain purchase. She didn’t want to encourage movement at this stage. She simply wanted to facilitate the blood supply through the bruised and damaged blood vessels. And ease the hurt.

  She took her time. Slowly stroking. Kneading. Over and over, gently and soothingly, taking all the time in the world.

  She didn’t speak, and he didn’t seem to want to either. She simply moved her fingers carefully over his bruised leg, letting him lie back on the pillows with his thoughts going where they willed.

  And somehow-some time-the tension faded from Harry’s face. The lines of pain and the tinge of grey eased and faded.

  It felt good, she decided. Great. Maybe she should have been a masseuse instead of a doctor. To have the capacity to wipe away pain.

  From this man’s face…

  He was just a patient, she told herself. Just a patient.

  ‘You work in Emergency up north?’ he asked, and the question was a jolt all by itself. She had been far away, but she hadn’t been thinking of work. She hadn’t been thinking of home.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Nine to five?’

  ‘Eight to four or four to midnight or midnight to eight,’ she told him, still massaging the tightness of his calf muscles.

  ‘And you walk
away afterwards?’

  ‘There’s not a lot of follow-up in emergency medicine.’ She shrugged. ‘Sometimes I get involved. I can’t help it. But not often.’

  ‘You don’t like getting involved?’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  He was watching her, those deep eyes calmly speculative. It seemed he’d relaxed at last, and as he relaxed he could think about her. She wasn’t sure she liked it.

  ‘Why don’t you like getting involved?’

  Lizzie sighed. She looked at him but his eyes were nonjudgmental. They were asking a question. She could tell him to butt out of what wasn’t his business, but all of a sudden…It wouldn’t hurt to tell him. This hurtful thing.

  ‘When I was a newly qualified doctor I did a stint in family practice,’ she told him. She was concentrating on his leg again, carefully not looking at him. ‘I had a kid come to me with depression. She was fifteen years old. About the same age as Lillian. Anyway, I was a know-it-all, just graduated family doctor. I read up all the literature on antidepressants. I practised my counselling skills. I tried family therapy with Patti as well as her parents. All the things we were taught as bright little potential doctors.’ She bit her lip and the fingers massaging Harry’s leg stilled. Remembering hurt.

  ‘And?’ he said softly, but by the sound of his tone he knew what was coming.

  ‘You know,’ she told him. ‘It’s not hard to guess. Patti was trying so hard to please me. “Of course I feel better,” she told me. “I feel great.” The night after she told me that she took a massive overdose of every medicine she could find in the house and she was dead before anyone found her.’

  ‘Tough,’ Harry murmured, and Lizzie swallowed.

  ‘It was. So, you see, I’m not all that clever. I figured that playing expert is a fool’s game. So now I see patients at the coalface-in Emergency. I patch them up as best I can and then I refer them on to people who really know their stuff.’

  ‘You think Patti would still be alive if you hadn’t treated her?’

  ‘If she’d seen a skilled psychiatrist…’

  ‘Would she have gone to see a psychiatrist?’ Harry’s eyes were resting on her face, unsettling her with what he seemed to be seeing. ‘Lillian won’t see a psychiatrist. She refuses, and her parents back her up. Do you think I should refuse to treat her because of that?’

  ‘No, I-’

  ‘There are all sorts of people in Birrini who should be seeing specialists,’ he continued. ‘They’re not. They don’t want to take the trip to the city. Or they don’t trust people they don’t know. They make the decision to keep their lives in my hands. And if I occasionally lose one of those lives…’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘I do,’ he said wearily. ‘Of course I do. I had an old man die three weeks ago because he refused to go to Melbourne for bypass surgery. I tried to keep him alive here, but I didn’t have the skills. Does that make me want to walk away?’

  She flushed. ‘You think I’m a coward?’

  ‘I know you’re not.’

  Silence.

  The silence went on and on. And in that silence something built. Something intangible. Something neither of them recognised, but it was there for all that.

  ‘It’s a sensible job you have up north, isn’t it?’ he asked at last, and she nodded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you have a sensible boyfriend?’

  She flushed at that. ‘I do, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Is that who you’re running from?’

  ‘I’m not running.’

  ‘I can pick running from a mile off.’

  ‘You were running,’ she said softly, ‘when I first met you.’

  ‘Well, you stopped that.’ There was a moment’s pause and then he added, ‘Maybe I can stop you running.’

  ‘Now, what do you mean by that?’ she said, with more asperity than she’d intended. She lifted the bandages and started wrapping the leg again. She was thoroughly unnerved and it took real concentration to keep her hands steady and not jolt the leg.

  ‘I could very much use a partner here in Birrini.’

  ‘What-another family doctor?’

  ‘The place is screaming for two doctors. Times like tonight. To not have an anaesthetist…’

  ‘I live in Queensland,’ she said flatly, trying to suppress a quiver of sheer panic running through her. Work here? With this man?

  ‘But you don’t want to be in Queensland.’

  ‘I do.’ She fastened off the bandage and rose. She should go. This conversation was far too intimate. Far too…threatening?

  But she had to ask.

  ‘Why are you in Birrini?’ It had her fascinated. This man was a surgeon and a good one. Why was he stuck in such a remote spot?

  ‘I love Birrini.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My father was a fisherman,’ he told her. ‘I spent my life here, by the sea.’

  She nodded. It fitted. He looked weathered, she thought. The look of the sea was in his eyes.

  ‘Yet you did surgery,’ she said, thinking it through. ‘Surely if you were intending to come home to practise, you would have done family medicine-become a generalist rather than specialising.’

  ‘I didn’t want to come home.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She should let him sleep. The bedside lamp was all the light there was in the house. He was deeply relaxed, lying back on his pillows, and she knew suddenly there was never going to be a better time to question this man. To find out what made him run.

  ‘All the time I was a kid here…’ he said, and his voice was almost dreamlike. He was drifting to sleep and his voice was slurred. But still he kept on. ‘I wanted to see the world. I thought Birrini was so narrow. My parents were really happy here, but I almost despised them. There had to be a great big wonderful world out there, so as soon as I graduated from high school I was out of here and I never looked back.’

  ‘What happened?’ she asked. She was almost unable to breathe. This night-this time-was weirdly personal. She felt as if she was probing into places she had no business being. But she couldn’t stop.

  ‘I was such a success,’ he said wearily. ‘High-powered city surgeon. Fantastic. I came down here every few months. To visit. To show off.’

  ‘Oh, Harry, I’m sure-’

  ‘Don’t stop me,’ he told her.

  ‘I don’t want to upset you.’

  ‘It’s not you doing the upsetting.’ He fell silent for so long that she thought he was sleeping, but as she moved to turn away his hand reached out and grasped her wrist.

  ‘I was engaged,’ he told her. ‘To Melanie. Before Emily.’

  ‘I knew that,’ she whispered. ‘Lillian said she was killed.’

  ‘She was. We came down for the weekend.’ His voice was suddenly dragged down with exhaustion, but she sensed it wasn’t his leg that was making him tired. This was some bone-deep weariness that had been with him for years. ‘Melanie was driving her new toy-an open-topped roadster. All the horsepower in the world. Melanie was another surgeon, and money was the least of our problems. And Melanie…she was…well, Melanie was really something. Smart, ambitious, beautiful. I thought I was so in love.’

  ‘You weren’t?’

  He shrugged. ‘Love? What the hell would I know about love? I was stupid. We were stupid. Anyway, she was so proud of her new car. And my dad…he was always so kind. So kind. He asked her to take him for a ride in it. My dad, who didn’t know one end of a car from another and couldn’t care less about them. So Melanie took him out on the coast road. You’ve seen the bends. She was showing off. City doctor showing the country hick what it’s all about. They went off the road about a mile from town and hit the rocks twenty metres below.’

  ‘Oh, Harry…’

  ‘Melanie died instantly,’ he said, and his weariness was palpable. Bleak and unforgiving. ‘My father had massive internal injuries. Maybe if we’d had another doctor here…maybe… But
there was only me. There were no facilities. I couldn’t operate on my own and he died being transported to Melbourne.’

  He was still grasping her wrist. Lizzie stared down at their linked hands and slowly she sank down onto the chair she’d just risen from and took his hand in both of hers.

  ‘So you decided to be sensible.’

  ‘Of course I did.’ His eyes were closed but his free hand came up to stroke the back of hers. So there was a linking of four hands. She needed it. She needed every vestige of warmth she could get.

  ‘My mother was still here. Of course. I couldn’t leave her. I came back here and applied to open the hospital. It had been shut for years because they couldn’t get a doctor. I settled down and worked my butt off.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She died last year. She never got over my father’s death.’

  ‘And neither did you?’

  ‘No.’ There it was, in all its bleakness. The truth.

  ‘So where does that leave Emily?’

  ‘Emily?’

  ‘Your fiancée,’ Lizzie said gently, and Harry flinched. She felt it in his hands. She saw it in his face.

  ‘I think I’ve been stupid,’ he told her. ‘Again. For different reasons but still stupid. Six bridesmaids.’

  ‘It’s a lot of bridesmaids,’ she agreed, and received the first trace of a smile in return.

  ‘A veritable horde.’

  ‘Scary.’

  ‘Very scary.’

  She smiled. Enough. All she wanted to do for now-for some reason she couldn’t figure out even to herself-was to stay sitting here. Holding this man’s hand. Lighting the bleakness of his night.

  But she had things to do. She needed to check on Lillian. She needed to…needed to…

  She needed to leave.

  ‘You ought to sleep,’ she told him, and slowly, reluctantly she extricated her fingers from his. She rose and stood looking down at him. ‘Do you want anything for the pain?’

  ‘I don’t have pain.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  He smiled again, that wry self-deprecating smile she was coming to know. ‘I’m fine, thank you, Dr Darling.’

  The way he said it… The softness in his voice…