‘Yeah? Like you can?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Melanie’s death,’ she whispered. ‘Your dad’s death. You’ve never let it go. Harry, I’ve been thinking…’
‘Don’t,’ he said, startled.
‘No, don’t stop me.’ She gripped his hand, trying to convey urgency. ‘Harry, I’ve been watching you. For so long. You have no idea. All the time I’ve been hurting when Tom’s been out of control, you’ve been hurting as well, but it’s even worse. Because you don’t have love underlying it. You didn’t love Melanie. I saw you then. You were infatuated with glamorous and Melanie was surely glamorous. She was everything you thought you wanted in life, before you realised how shallow that sort of life was. And now…now you’re doing it again.’
‘I-’
But she was in no mood for interruptions. ‘You don’t love Emily either,’ she said wearily. ‘Don’t tell me you do. And she doesn’t love you. Emily’s in love with the idea of being married to the town doctor. She’s in love with the idea of weddings. But I would have married my Tom even if he’d had nothing-if he was nothing. You know what he said tonight? If I thought he was gambling again, why hadn’t I just walked out? But he’s a part of me. He hurts, I hurt. I love him so much. Like you love Lizzie.’
Silence. ‘May, you need to go to sleep,’ he said bleakly. ‘I don’t love Lizzie. I don’t love…’
‘Anyone?’
‘I…’
‘Start,’ she whispered. ‘Admit you and Emily are a mistake.’
‘You need to be asleep.’
‘And you need to be awake. I can’t say this to you again after tonight. You’re my boss. I work for you. Tomorrow I’ll go back to being your patient and then a nurse in your hospital. But tonight…when I’m drugged out of my mind I can’t be held responsible, I can say what I like. Lizzie and Phoebe…they light up this town. They light up your life. Don’t mess with it, Dr McKay.’ She swallowed. ‘There was this moment when I knew I was going to hit the tree… I thought…I thought I wasn’t going to have anything any more. To be any more. That it was finished. And, you know, I don’t think that I was angry with Tom. I thought…in that fleeting moment I thought that I hadn’t had enough of my Tom. Of my boys. Of life. You take hold of it, Harry McKay, and stop being such a coward.’
‘May…’
‘OK, enough.’ She bit her lip and smiled at him a little sheepishly as she finally released his hand. ‘I’ve said what I’ve been wanting to say for years, and it was only seeing that damned tree in front of my nose that gave me the courage to say it. So don’t wait for your own tree. And now…’ She closed her eyes. ‘Now maybe I could have that cocktail?’
Memo:
Ring vet and find out just what the gestation period for bassets really is.
Organise working life so we have two separate medical practices. Hers and mine.
Visit Emily’s-no, not Emily’s, Emily’s and my-house and see if I can bear living with pink Chantilly lace.
Chantilly lace or Lizzie…
Breakfast was a very strained affair, interrupted by Emily. Harry’s fiancée walked in when Harry had just bitten into his toast and marmalade, which he promptly dropped.
Emily stood at the back door, looking bright and breezy. She was wearing neatly fitted black trousers, a gorgeous white linen blouse and high white sandals. Her hair was swept up into a glamorous knot and she was wearing full make-up.
Lizzie was wearing faded pyjamas. She glanced up and thought, Emily.
Emily.
Why do I even bother? Why do I think about bothering? Sometimes there’s no sense even competing.
She couldn’t compete now-that was for sure. Luckily she was distracted, almost distracted enough not to register Emily’s presence. She was stooping over Phoebe’s basket. Phoebe had been restless in the night and Lizzie was worried about her. She tried not to look at Emily. She offered the big dog some toast, but Phoebe turned her nose away.
Trouble. If Phoebe wasn’t eating, there were major problems.
‘Hi, Emily,’ she said, hardly looking up. ‘Do you know anything about having puppies?’
But Emily wasn’t looking at Lizzie. After one scorching glance at the pyjama-clad girl on the floor, she turned to her fiancé-who was looking particularly fetching himself in boxer shorts and white cast and nothing else.
‘Are you living with Dr Darling?’ Emily demanded, and Harry scratched his bare chest and appeared to think about it. It was maybe a bit hard to deny, seeing Harry was in his boxers and Lizzie was in her pyjamas. It was seven-thirty in the morning.
‘What time did you arrive?’ he asked, as Emily sat down. In front of Lizzie’s toast. Lizzie thought about minding, but then decided she didn’t. Or not very much.
How could you tell if a dog as fat as Phoebe was in labour? She put her hand on her belly, but there weren’t any obvious contractions.
‘I drove home late last night,’ Emily was saying. ‘My uncle rang me in Melbourne and said you’d be desperate for nurses. He said May’s been hurt in a car accident.’
‘She’ll be OK.’
‘So she was hurt?’
‘A couple of fractures. Lacerations. She’ll live.’
There wasn’t a lot of warmth here, Lizzie thought. Ninety per cent of her attention was on her dog but she had enough left to lend an ear.
‘You’ll need me,’ Emily said, and Harry nodded.
‘We do.’ And then, belatedly, like he’d just realised he hadn’t said it, he added, ‘We missed you.’
But Emily had moved on. There hadn’t been a kiss, Lizzie thought. If she was Emily she’d have kissed Harry by now. Boy, would she have kissed him!
‘Have you set the date for our wedding yet?’ Emily was asking, and Lizzie turned her attention back to Phoebe. Maybe Emily was waiting until she wasn’t here to get personal, she decided, and maybe she’d stay right where she was. She didn’t want to think about Emily kissing Harry.
But they had their rights. They were engaged.
‘I might just go and ring the vet,’ Lizzie said. ‘If you’ll excuse me…’
Emily swivelled at that and stared down at her like she was some strange and foreign form of insect life. ‘Why aren’t you dressed?’ she demanded.
‘I’m in my pyjamas,’ Lizzie said carefully. ‘It’s seven-thirty in the morning.’
‘But Harry’s not dressed either.’
Lizzie sighed. ‘I haven’t been in bed with your fiancé, if that’s what you’re implying,’ she said tiredly. ‘I’ve been in bed with a basset until her squirming drove me demented. Now, if you don’t mind, I think we have a little obstetric emergency to cope with.’
‘Do you reckon the puppies are coming?’ Harry asked. He looked more interested in Phoebe than he was in Emily.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘I’ll take a look.’
‘Harry, we need to talk,’ Emily snapped, and Harry nodded. Reluctantly.
‘I guess we do.’
‘Outside.’
‘Fine.’
‘I’ll go and ring the vet,’ Lizzie told them. She cast Phoebe another worried look but the big dog had her head down on her paws and looked more miserable than distressed. Early stages, Lizzie decided.
‘Practise your breathing like we talked about,’ she told Phoebe. ‘I’ll go and find us some help.’
The vet was succinct and reassuring. ‘Don’t fret. Unless she’s clearly distressed, the best thing is to let her be. Tell you what. I’m going out to see a cow in labour now. That’ll take me half an hour or so. What if I pop in and do a house call on Phoebe after that?’
‘Would you? I don’t like to think of bringing her down to your surgery.’
‘Sure, of course I would.’ She could hear Kim’s grin down the phone. Kim was a young woman vet who Lizzie had decided early on could be a friend, and she knew the whole town was hanging out, waiting for these puppies. ‘I understand your problem. If I had the choice of loa
ding a cow into the back seat of your car and bringing her into surgery or loading Phoebe-maybe I’d choose the cow.’
That was all she could do for the moment for Phoebe. Phoebe seemed inclined to sleep, so Lizzie showered and dressed, trying rather self-consciously not to look any different from any other day. She decided finally to go really casual-just to show Emily she really didn’t give a damn. Old jeans. Casual sweatshirt, with white coat thrown on over the top. No make-up. Then she checked on Phoebe who still seemed to want to sleep-maybe she wasn’t in labour after all-and made her way over to the hospital. She may as well make herself useful while she waited for Kim’s house call.
The hospital was quiet. May was deeply asleep. The bruising had coloured drastically in the night, leaving her face almost Technicolored. Tom was seated beside her, holding her hand.
‘Have you been here all night?’ she demanded, and he shook his head.
‘Doc McKay made me go home. My parents are staying with the boys today, though, so I thought I’d stay with her a while.’
‘You know she’ll sleep.’
‘I just want to be here,’ Tom said in a cracked voice, his eyes not leaving May’s.
Lizzie thought suddenly with a fierce ache in her heart, That’s what I want. Some man to look at me when I’m black and blue and just love me…
No. Not some man.
Harry.
‘Emily’s back.’ Lizzie was barely in Lilly’s room before the teenager burst forth with her news. Word travelled fast in Birrini.
‘Mmm.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Read your chart and watch you eat a piece of toast.’
‘No, but-’
‘Eat,’ Lizzie told her, and Lillian took a mouthful and swallowed almost at once, she was so eager to continue her train of thought.
‘He can’t marry Emily.’
‘Why not?’
‘He kissed you.’
‘Yeah. Once. It hardly makes him unfaithful.’
‘No…but he kissed you as if he meant it.’
‘Eat.’
Another bite. ‘You love him, don’t you?’
‘If I do, it’s hardly your business.’
‘I think you should fight Emily for him.’
‘Oh, great. Pistols at dawn.’
There was a knock on the door and Lizzie turned away, almost in relief. A junior nurse stood there, clearly anxious.
‘Yes, Terri?’
‘There’s someone at the nurses’ station asking for you,’ the girl said. ‘I’ll stay here with Lilly if you like.’
‘Did someone say who someone was?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Just Edward. He said his name was Edward.’
CHAPTER TEN
THEY were all out there. In the nurses’ station. Lizzie walked toward the group clustered in the entrance and she felt an overriding compulsion to turn and flee.
Doctors don’t run from their problems, she told herself with something less than conviction. They face up to them.
And why would she want to flee from Edward?
Why indeed?
It really was Edward, all the way from Queensland. He was wearing one of the lovely Italian suits he’d had tailor-made in Milan last year. Edward was a very successful radiologist and he liked the world to acknowledge it. Just quietly. Indeed, if you’d accused him of smugness he’d have been horrified. Edward never boasted of his success, his privilege or his intelligence, all of which were extremely impressive. He was kind to people he perceived to be lesser beings and Lizzie had never been able to make him see that kindness itself was a form of being patronising.
So was patience, she thought. He’d been impressively patient with her and all it made her want to do was hit him.
‘Lizzie,’ he said, smiling as she made her way down the corridor toward him. He held out his hands. ‘If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed then Mohammed has decided he’d better come to the mountain.’
Oh, very oblique. She gave him a sickly smile. ‘A mountain, huh. I’m not that fat. Go see Phoebe if we’re talking about mountains.’ But she gave him her hands and he pulled her close and kissed her while Harry and Emily looked on with interest.
‘You didn’t tell us you were engaged.’ Emily was smiling her approval.
‘I told Harry.’ She collected herself and added, ‘Not that I am.’
‘I brought your ring with me,’ Edward said, and she gave an inward groan.
‘Edward-’
‘When are you coming home?’
‘The puppies haven’t been born yet. Speaking of which-’
‘We can transport them as soon as they’re born. I talked to the airline.’
‘We can’t transport them anywhere. I’ve promised a puppy to one of the local children. The puppy can’t leave its mother for eight weeks.’
‘Then we send the puppy back when it’s ready,’ Edward said with the patience he was famous for. ‘Problem solved.’
‘The puppies are due to be born any minute,’ Emily said, brightening perceptibly with this lessening of a perceived threat. ‘You could take all of them straight back to Queensland. Maybe even tomorrow.’
‘She’s my locum while we get married,’ Harry said, and Emily arched her eyebrows and smiled.
‘You haven’t set another date. I vote we get another locum.’
‘I like this one.’
‘Harry…’
‘I’ve got a broken leg.’ Harry stuck it out in front of him like show and tell. ‘I need help.’
‘So we hire someone else,’ Emily said.
‘Lizzie really needs to come home.’ Edward was back in patronising mode-already. Explaining things to someone who was a wee bit thick. ‘I thought the dog was about to deliver her pups any minute or I’d never have allowed her to stay.’
‘Hey,’ Lizzie broke in, incensed. ‘You’d never allow me-?’
‘When are you getting married?’ Emily asked, and Edward turned his full attention on Emily. Well, why not? You could see his reasoning in his face. Emily was looking exceedingly cute and Lizzie was looking a bit worse for wear. She’d never wear these clothes for Edward. He hated jeans. He hated sweatshirts.
But underneath…she was the same woman that he declared ten years ago he’d marry, and if there was one thing Edward didn’t do it was change his mind.
‘We’ll be married as soon as Lizzie agrees to a date,’ he told Emily. ‘My mother has it all planned.’
‘So has mine,’ Emily told him, warming to the theme closest to her heart. ‘Only Harry keeps being so difficult. I mean, if I have six bridesmaids then surely he can find six groomsmen.’
‘Mine’s the opposite problem.’ Edward dug his hands in his pockets-Careful, Lizzie thought, you’re spoiling the line of your suit-and flashed Lizzie a look of affection mixed with annoyance. ‘Lizzie doesn’t believe in bridesmaids.’
‘You don’t believe in bridesmaids?’ Harry said, looking up sharply.
‘All my friends hate chiffon,’ Lizzie told him. She was feeling as if things were getting away from her here. She made a huge effort. She’d been going out with Edward since medical school. Off and on. His devotion should surely be rewarded. Maybe she should start thinking seriously of marriage. ‘Maybe I could get Phoebe to carry the ring.’
‘She’d eat it,’ Harry said, and grinned.
It was the grin that did it every time. Right when she thought she had it together, out came that grin and she was lost.
There was no way she could marry Edward. Not when that grin existed in the world.
‘I’m sorry…’ she started, but there was another interruption. A woman, wearing stained overalls and Wellingtons, was standing at the hospital entrance, waving wildly. Kim. The vet.
And Lizzie’s thoughts flew straight back to Phoebe. It had been half an hour since she’d checked her. She shouldn’t have left. Kim had told her she’d go straight to the doctor’s quarters to check. What was she doing here?
‘What’s happening?’
Kim was standing in the entrance, reluctant to bring her filthy boots into the antiseptically clean hospital. ‘Didn’t you tell me Phoebe’s in your kitchen?’ she called.
‘Yes.’
‘I just went to check. The doors are shut but she’s not there. Her basket’s gone as well. Have you moved her somewhere else?’
Lizzie turned to Harry. ‘Did you…?’
But Harry was looking as puzzled as she was. ‘She was asleep by the stove ten minutes ago.’
‘It takes a crane to move her.’ Lizzie shook her head. ‘I need to-’
‘Lizzie, we need to talk,’ Edward said urgently, catching her arm, but she shrugged him off.
‘Medicine comes first, Edward, you know that. It’s the basis for our whole relationship. I have puppies to deliver-if I can find Phoebe. Talk to Emily about bridesmaids or something. Or how important it is to be a doctor’s partner.’
‘Liz…’
‘I’m sorry.’ She bit her lip, catching herself through her distress. ‘That was unfair. I’m just worried about Phoebe. If you’ll excuse me.’
And she left them staring after her as she headed for where her dog should have been.
She really was gone. Lizzie stared down at the corner by the stove where Phoebe had spent an ever-increasing amount of time over the past weeks. In those first days here the big basset had been frantic whenever Lizzie had left, as if somehow she’d sensed that Lizzie was her only contact with the beloved old lady who’d been her mistress. But gradually she’d settled. She liked Harry-she’d made that plain. She liked Lizzie. She liked the constant stream of locals who popped in to say hi and to Phoebe-sit. But gradually her girth had got the better of her and she’d subsided into her basket and watched the world with the increasingly introspective gaze of all expectant mums.
When Lizzie had lifted her off the bed in the middle of the night, she’d waddled out here. This morning Lizzie had looked at her and had thought Phoebe wouldn’t move until the puppies were born.
So where was she?
‘Maybe she’s gone outside to find somewhere more private.’ Kim was right behind her, sensing her fright. ‘Lizzie, dogs often do that. They decide for themselves where they’re going to pup.’
In Dr. Darling’s Care Page 16
