In Dr. Darling’s Care

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Me, too.’

  It was still…more. They were grinning at each other like fools. It was ridiculous, Lizzie thought desperately. What she was feeling was really, really ridiculous.

  But she couldn’t help what she was feeling.

  ‘Are you still on duty?’

  Lizzie had run a shortened version of the evening clinic-or not so short as everyone was talking about the race and everyone wanted to quiz her about the kiss-and by the time she returned to the hospital it was almost eight. She found May carefully changing the dressing on old Mrs Scotter’s leg. Mavis Scotter had cut it a week ago-chopping wood, of all things-and by the time she’d come to see Lizzie it had been an infected mess. The old lady’s skin was so parchment-thin that they’d be lucky if it healed without a skin graft, but they were doing their best.

  The dressing had to be changed. But May shouldn’t be doing it.

  ‘Am I imagining things or have you been on duty for over twelve hours-plus, you had barely eight hours off last night?’

  ‘You’re imagining things,’ May told her, and Lizzie looked more closely at the normally cheerful nurse.

  ‘May?’

  ‘Yes?’ May smiled brightly at Mrs Scotter. ‘The leg’s going really well, Mavis. And did you hear about our Dr Darling kissing Dr McKay?’

  ‘Stop changing the subject,’ Lizzie told her, but the nurse kept on.

  ‘Where’s Dr McKay now?’ May asked.

  ‘Phoebe-sitting, I hope. And resting his leg. Which is what you should be doing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Resting.’

  ‘I need to-’

  ‘I’ll finish Mavis’s leg.’ Lizzie smiled at the old lady. ‘That’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, dear.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ May said, but Lizzie wasn’t listening.

  ‘There are other nurses available to relieve you.’ Refusing to take no for an answer, Lizzie lifted the crêpe from May’s hands and started winding. ‘I’ve seen the roster. Emily leaving hasn’t made us that short-handed.’

  ‘No, but…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I’d kind of like the overtime,’ May confessed. ‘And I’m not tired. I’m really not.’

  Lizzie looked at her. Really looked at her. Not tired? Ha! There were shadows under her eyes and the normally effervescent nurse looked strained to breaking point.

  Why hadn’t she noticed that?

  There was an easy answer to that. She’d been caught up in her own emotional turmoil.

  But it wasn’t the time to press for reasons now. Not with Mavis hanging on every word and her wound still half-dressed.

  ‘Ring one of the relieving nurses,’ she told May gently. ‘Do it now. I’ll finish here. Go home.’

  ‘But-’

  ‘Or go and sit in the nurses’ station and put your feet up until I get there,’ she told her. ‘But you’re officially off duty. I’m taking over. Go.’

  At least it was something to talk about. Something she needed to talk about, rather than facing this tension that was between them. Lizzie finished the dressing, went out to discover a relief nurse already on duty and May gone, and went through to the doctor’s quarters to find Harry cooking steak and chips.

  ‘If you were any longer I’d have shared the steak with Phoebe instead of you,’ he told her. He was back on crutches-or rather he was using one crutch and one leg while he stood supervising the steak. And he had his frilly apron on again, which for some stupid reason had the capacity to make her want to melt into a puddle of sheer, stupid desire.

  How could she want a man who wore a frilly pink apron?

  How could she not want him? She wanted him with a fierceness that was threatening to overpower her!

  Boy, should she take a cold shower.

  Instead, she talked about May. Somehow.

  ‘She carries a load and a half,’ Harry told her, nicely deflected as she helped him carry his steak and chips to the table. ‘She thinks the world of her Tom, but he has a weakness for gambling. He got himself into a real mess a couple of years back. I arranged for him to go to counselling in Melbourne-he did a full residential course to try and kick the habit and he’s pretty much controlled, but he’s confessed to me that he’s struggling. If May’s looking grim then my guess is that that’s what it’ll be. She’ll have just received a bank statement. I’ll go out and talk to him tomorrow.’

  Lizzie ate a few chips and thought about it. ‘Um…what business is it of yours?’ she asked at last.

  ‘He’s my patient.’

  ‘But this is gambling. Not medicine.’

  ‘You don’t think that gambling is a medical problem?’

  ‘I don’t see much of it in the emergency department where I work,’ she admitted. ‘I’d have thought it was more to do with Social Services or family counselling.’

  ‘There’s no Social Services counselling available in Birrini-and even if there was, Tom wouldn’t go. Not in the first instance. Not without my intervention.’

  ‘So you take it on board…’

  ‘I don’t have a choice,’ he said gently. ‘If Tom becomes obsessed with gambling again…well, you’re telling me May’s looking exhausted already. She starts taking on more shifts to make things pay. Her health suffers. She works long hours and the kids suffer. Tom gets more and more isolated. I’ve seen suicides as a result of problem gambling and that is very much my business.’

  ‘But-’

  ‘Medicine’s not just bodies,’ he told her. He was watching her, his eyes strangely questioning. Challenging. ‘It’s about the whole person. The whole family. I’m a family doctor, Lizzie. I believe I’m a good one. I didn’t want to come here but now I’m here I wouldn’t swap it for anywhere else. And…’ He paused as if thinking about it but then obviously decided to go ahead anyway. ‘I believe you’d make a fine family doctor, too,’ he told her. ‘If you could find the courage.’

  ‘The courage…’

  ‘You’d like to work here,’ he said gently. ‘You had one disaster-’

  ‘And that’s where I’m stopping.’

  ‘Stay here,’ he told her. ‘There’s no stopping. You’re a family doctor and you know you are.’

  Silence. She’d started eating her steak, but now she laid her knife and fork down. And looked across the table at him.

  He looked straight back at her, his eyes calm and steady.

  ‘You kissed me,’ she said, and his gaze didn’t waver.

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with this.’

  Like hell it didn’t. ‘I see.’ She bit her lip. ‘So you’re offering a professional partnership here.’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘There’s no “of course” about it,’ she snapped, and speared a chip with her fork so savagely it went flying off the plate and landed on Phoebe’s nose. Phoebe looked stunned. She surveyed the chip from all angles, decided that to refuse it would be denying the gods, ate it with care and then put her nose skywards in the hope of another gift from heaven.

  ‘See what you’ve made me do?’ Lizzie demanded, furious. ‘Phoebe’s a pregnant mum and she’s on a pregnant mum diet.’

  ‘Hey, you fed her the chip.’

  ‘You made me.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right.’

  This was a ridiculous conversation. She refused to continue. She went back to demolishing her chips with a ferocity born of anger. One after another. Eat and get out of here…

  ‘It’s only a job,’ he said at last, and got a king-sized glare for his pains.

  ‘So why did you kiss me?’

  ‘If I remember rightly, it was you who kissed me.’

  ‘You know very well that it was you…’ She faltered at that. No. He didn’t know very well it had been him. It had been both of them. What she’d felt had been a coming-together of a man and a woman that had packed a lethal punch. She’d never felt anything like that. Not even with Edward.

  Edward. Now, there was a steadying t
hought. Edward was enough to steady anyone, she thought miserably, and he was a good note to end this conversation on.

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ she told Harry, standing up and taking her half finished plate to the sink. Phoebe’s tail started rotating like a miniature-or maybe not so miniature-helicopter. ‘Forget it, kid,’ she told the dog. ‘You need vitamins. Not fat.’

  ‘Why can’t you stay here?’ Harry looked interested-no more-and the urge to throw the plate of leftovers right at his unfeeling head was almost overwhelming. ‘Because you kissed me?’

  ‘You kissed me. And no!’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because I’m engaged to be married,’ she told him. ‘Just like you. You have your Emily right here in Birrini and I have my Edward. In Queensland. As soon as Phoebe’s pups are born, that’s where I’m heading. Where I belong. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.’

  There was a long silence. Her words had changed things. The silence was almost overwhelming.

  But why had her words changed things? she thought sadly. All she’d done had been to put things on an equal footing. Harry was engaged. So was she. He could take it and lump it. At least it gave her some pride. At least it let her meet his gaze and tilt her chin and not feel as if she was melting…

  Who was she kidding? She was definitely melting.

  Maybe he could see it. His eyes were speculative. His eyes saw too much for their own good.

  ‘The hospital’s quiet,’ he said at last. ‘There’s no work. What do you have to do?’

  ‘Lots of things.’

  ‘Like?’

  This was crazy. She’d had enough. ‘I need to go into my bedroom and watch my toenails grow,’ she snapped. ‘Anything. But I’m not staying here with you a moment longer than I need to.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Memo:

  I have no business even questioning Lizzie’s engagement. I have no business even thinking of it.

  I have no business thinking about her kiss. Her body. The way she curved into me…

  I have no business thinking of anyone.

  Maybe I can stay single for ever. Memo to me: Get a life. Alone.

  IT WAS an interminable two weeks.

  Given any other circumstances, Lizzie could have enjoyed herself enormously. She loved this little hospital. The locals had adopted her as their own. They pampered her already pampered pooch. They brought her gifts. They showed in every way they could that she was entirely welcome, and that Harry’s suggestion that she should stay wasn’t his plan alone. Everyone in the town thought it was a great idea.

  She should tell everyone that she was engaged to Edward, she thought. She’d been surprised that Harry had kept it to himself. But he’d never mentioned it. He’d never asked her why she didn’t wear a ring. Even when the phone went late at night and it was obviously Edward, he made no comment. He’d hand the phone to her, his face expressionless, and find some reason to leave the room.

  She should tell him…

  She should tell Edward…

  Tell them what? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was increasingly confused. All Harry had to do was walk into the room and her confusion levels rose to fever pitch, where she couldn’t think logically at all.

  She loved this place.

  She loved…Harry?

  Nonsense. That was nonsense. Emily was out there house-hunting or doing whatever women did when their wedding was delayed, but soon she’d be back and the bridesmaids would take their place and Harry would be married.

  So she had no business even thinking of Harry like that.

  So instead she tried her best to concentrate on the other parts of Birrini life that she was growing to love. Which was easy enough as Birrini was wrapping itself around her heart, insidious in its sweetness.

  Lillian was growing healthier by the minute. She still hated to eat-that was going to take months to cure. She still couldn’t be trusted not to bring the food straight up again. It had become such a habit now that the sensation of a full stomach was completely alien to her.

  But Harry had her working now-gently, though, and not with the frenetic over-activity she’d been building up to for the last couple of years. Every morning she’d do schoolwork set by her teachers, and in the afternoons either her mother or one of a roster of hospital volunteers drove her to the local kindergarten where she gave art lessons.

  Harry’s suggestion to work at the kindergarten had been met with joy. The only stipulation was that if she needed to go to the bathroom, someone had to bring her back to the hospital. To be accompanied by a nurse. She hated the stipulation, but she was starting to accept her condition enough not to rail against it.

  And her art lessons were fantastic. She put her heart and her soul into them. For two hours every afternoon she forgot all about her stomach or her looks or food. She simply was. Even her father was grudgingly beginning to concede that maybe Harry’s and Lizzie’s combined treatment was starting to work. Maybe he could be proud of his kid if she turned into an art teacher.

  And every evening Joey wandered past, and the two heads bent over the lesson plans she had for her littlies the next day.

  It was deeply satisfying-country medicine at its best.

  And Amy… The little girl who’d been a cowering mess two weeks ago was practically transformed. Every afternoon after school a gaggle of little girls with Amy at their centre arrived to visit Lizzie’s great basset.

  ‘When are the puppies due?’ Lizzie was asked over and over, and the vet was consulted as well. The dates on the calendar were being ticked off and never had babies been more anticipated.

  Amy was radiant.

  Whenever she saw her, Lizzie looked at her with pleasure, and then she caught Harry looking at her looking at Amy-and tried hard to school her face into some sort of dispassionate doctor-patient assessment.

  It didn’t work. She loved what was happening here and she couldn’t disguise it.

  It didn’t make one whit of difference, though. She had to leave. She had to move on.

  ‘So have these babies and we’ll get out of here,’ she told Phoebe, and the big dog heaved her pregnant self into a position where she could nuzzle her mistress’s nose. Lizzie hugged her and thought, At least I have Phoebe.

  There was no sign of Emily.

  ‘She’s taken leave,’ Harry said shortly when she ventured to ask, and Lizzie knew better than to push further. May might have helped-May was never backward about asking questions-but May was still preoccupied, shadowed and worried.

  ‘I’ve pushed May’s husband but I’m still worried,’ Harry admitted during one of those moments that Lizzie worked so hard to prevent. Times when they were alone. But this one had been unavoidable. Lizzie, on instructions from the orthopaedic surgeons, was removing the staples from his wound and preparing to put a fibreglass cast on his leg.

  It felt so strange. Wrong. Too intimate for words. There was no way she could keep professional detachment here. Since that first night when she’d rubbed his leg she’d had one of the nurses do it for her. It seemed too intensely personal. It seemed too intensely personal now-to be working on his leg while he lay on the bed and looked up at her-but there was no way they could avoid it. To send him to Melbourne to get a cast fitted was ridiculous when she had all the skills.

  ‘You’ve pushed Tom?’ She was concentrating-really hard-on the staples. They were lifting cleanly away, dropping with a clink, clink, clink into the kidney dish under her hand.

  ‘He says he’s not gambling,’ Harry told her, and she could tell by the tension in his voice that he was finding this situation as difficult as she was. But he was focusing on Tom. There was no choice.

  ‘Most problem gamblers deny it.’

  ‘I believe him.’

  Lizzie nodded. She removed the last of the staples. ‘This is looking really good, Harry. Your surgeon’s done a great job. You’ll hardly have a scar.’

  ‘I don’t mind a scar,’ he growled
. ‘I wouldn’t have a leg if it wasn’t for you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have run into me in the first place.’

  ‘No. I might have run into a ruddy great truck going like a bat out of hell. I might have been a squashed puddle in the middle of the road instead of a workable doctor with a scar in the middle of my leg.’

  ‘So you’re grateful to me?’ Her eyes flashed laughter and to her amazement she found he was smiling back. His smile never ceased to amaze her. What his smile did to her…

  ‘You don’t know how much,’ he told her.

  Which sent her straight back to the defence of silence.

  Where was Emily? Lizzie knew she phoned occasionally-occasionally she’d heard Harry take a short, terse call-but there seemed little other contact. Anyone would think he didn’t want to get married, she thought. A good doctor-a family doctor-would press the point.

  She wasn’t Harry’s family doctor. She was caring for his leg and if she let herself care for any other part of him then she was in major trouble.

  Tom. Concentrate on Tom.

  ‘So if Tom’s not gambling, what’s wrong with May?’

  ‘Tom doesn’t know. He’s worried about her, too. She’s not sleeping and she keeps taking on more and more shifts when she doesn’t need to. I’ve put a stop to it-told her five shifts a week maximum-but then I find she’s taken on a bit of private nursing. Old Ern Porteous should be in the nursing home but he won’t go. The district nurse calls on him twice a day but he really needs more than that. His family’s paying May to spend two hours there after each shift.’

  ‘She’s raising three small boys. She’ll kill herself.’

  ‘Yeah. But she won’t admit to me that anything’s wrong. Or to Tom.’

  ‘Nor to me,’ Lizzie admitted. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘We can’t force the truth from her,’ Harry told her. ‘If Tom really is gambling… They’re both proud people.’

  ‘But if they’re self-destructing…’

  ‘We’re only doctors,’ Harry said heavily. ‘There’s only so much we can do. The rest is up to them.’

  ‘It hurts,’ Lizzie said slowly, and he nodded.