The Doctor’s Proposal

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Angus has advanced pulmonary fibrosis,’ Jake said gravely. ‘He can’t manage here alone any more.’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘Pulmonary fibrosis…does that mean you’re dying?’ Susie demanded, her already pale face blanching still further.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Angus said uneasily. ‘We all go some time.’

  ‘Not quite so soon as you’re preparing to shuffle off,’ Jake said bluntly. ‘I’ve told you. With physiotherapy and with oxygen and pain relief you could still have years. Especially if you agree to bypass surgery.’

  ‘I’ll not be wanting years. What would I do with years?’

  ‘You could grow bigger pumpkins,’ Susie said wildly. ‘Angus, I’ve only just met you. And you sound like my Rory. You’re his uncle. If you die then I’ve got nobody.’

  Gee, thanks very much, Kirsty thought, but she had enough sense to stay silent. And if she hadn’t had enough sense, Jake’s hand was suddenly on her arm, his pressure a warning. I know, she thought, annoyed, but then she glanced at his face and saw the tension and thought, This guy really cares.

  Did he care about her sister? Maybe not, but he certainly cared for the old man. He was a country doctor in the old-fashioned sense, she thought, a man who knew every aspect of his patients’ lives and who treated them holistically. Sure, he could set up an oxygen supply. He’d also plaster a broken leg or administer an antibiotic for an infection. But he looked at the whole picture, and he was looking at it now. Angus didn’t need medicine as much as he needed family, and Jake was fighting with everything he had to give him one.

  ‘Would you like us to stay?’ Susie was asking Angus, and Kirsty held her breath. For Susie to make such a decision seemed amazing. Her twin had made no decisions since Rory had died. Even the decision of what to put on in the morning was beyond her. A crippling side-effect of depression was indecision, and Susie had it in spades, yet here she was making an instantaneous decision all by herself.

  Which might have to be revoked.

  ‘We could only do that if Dr Cameron could deliver your baby,’ she said tentatively, and Dr Cameron grimaced.

  ‘I usually send my expectant mothers to Sydney two weeks before the birth.’

  ‘Why?’ Susie asked.

  ‘A lone medical practitioner doesn’t make for an ideal birthing situation,’ he told her. ‘If you needed a Caesarean, I’d need an anaesthetist.’

  Susie’s face cleared. ‘That’s easy. Kirsty can give an anaesthetic. Not that I’ll need it, mind. I intend to deliver this baby normally. Is that the only problem?’ She turned again to Angus. ‘Is it OK if we stay? We’re stuck, you see. I came out to Australia to find you, but I was too close to my due date and now no airline will take me home. So if you need someone to stay here and I need somewhere to stay…we could really work on this pumpkin.’

  Jake’s hand was still on her arm, Kirsty realised. And he was looking at her. Angus and Susie had turned back to Spike the Pumpkin, and there was time to think things through before they took this plan any further.

  How could she think when Jake’s hand was on her arm?

  She shook it off and he drew back, as if he hadn’t meant to get so familiar.

  Good. Or was it good?

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Jake asked cautiously, glancing at her arm and then turning deliberately to look at Susie and Angus. ‘This is happening so fast.’

  ‘Susie’s desperate for this.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘There was nothing,’ Kirsty told him. He needed to see, she thought. She needed to make him understand the mess her sister was in. ‘Rory was always really ambivalent about his background. He said he’d never got on with his parents and we knew his brother hated him. He arrived in America wanting to make a clean break and he did that by not talking about his background. The only person he ever mentioned was his Uncle Angus and that was only in passing-he’d never talk at length about him, and when Susie suggested maybe they come out here he was horrified. It was as if he’d decided that Susie was his family from now on, and that was that. Only then he died, and there was nothing. Just a blank nothing. Because there was no one else to grieve over him, it was almost as if Rory hadn’t existed. And now Susie’s found Rory’s Uncle Angus, and he’s lovely and he needs her and I’ll bet right now she’ll be thinking that Rory would want her to stay, and you can’t imagine how much of a blessing that must be.’ She broke off, tears threatening to spill. She wiped them away with an angry backhand swipe. ‘Anyway, you’ve done very well.’

  ‘For an Australian doctor,’ he said with a hint of teasing, and she flushed and swiped again.

  ‘I’m not crying,’ she said. ‘I don’t cry. It’s just…’

  ‘Hayfever,’ he said promptly. ‘Caused by pumpkins. Can I prescribe an antihistamine?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and gazed at Susie some more. Susie had abandoned the crutches and was seated on the rock wall abutting the vegetable garden. She was talking animatedly about manure. Angus was listening and nodding and asking questions.

  There were a few things to be considered. Medical things. It was up to her to consider them.

  ‘Can we deliver Susie’s baby here?’

  ‘It’s not perfect,’ he told her. ‘Normally I’d say no. But if we’re weighting up the pros and cons, I’d say the pros definitely outweigh the added cons. Wouldn’t you say so, Dr McMahon?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What sort of a doctor are you?’

  ‘An American one,’ she snapped, and he grinned.

  ‘Yeah, and a cute one. But don’t you guys all have specialties?’

  ‘I guess.’ She looked at him speculatively. ‘You’re a family doctor.’

  ‘A generalist,’ he agreed. ‘But with surgical training.’

  ‘Do you have an anaesthetist?’

  ‘Not now. Old Joe Gordon was an anaesthetist-a fine one-but he died on me six months ago.’

  ‘Which explains the overwork.’

  ‘Which explains the overwork. So how about you?’

  ‘I work in a hospice. A big one.’

  ‘You’re a palliative-care physician.’

  ‘Um…no.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘My basic training’s in anaesthesia,’ she confessed. ‘I specialise in pain management, hence the hospice work. You want a spinal block, I’m your man.’

  His face stilled. His eyes turned blank. She could see cogs start to whirr.

  ‘Let’s not get any ideas,’ she said hastily. ‘I’m here to look after my sister.’

  ‘How interested are you in pumpkins?’

  She glanced across at the bent heads and managed a smile.

  ‘Not very,’ she confessed. ‘They lack a little in the patient backchat department.’

  ‘Then maybe you’d help me out?’

  ‘How can I do that?’ She was still watching her sister. Susie was sitting on the wall with Angus. The sun was on her face and she and Angus were examining each pumpkin leaf in turn. ‘I need to be here with Susie. And with Angus. You said yourself that Angus couldn’t be left alone. Ditto Susie. So that leaves me…’

  ‘Stuck in a castle,’ he said, still smiling, and she wished suddenly that he wouldn’t.

  ‘I guess that’s terrific,’ she said, with what she hoped was cheerfulness. It didn’t quite come out that way. She looked dubiously across at her sister and realised that Susie and Angus were soul mates. They’d spend what remained of Susie’s pregnancy happily saving pumpkins.

  Maybe she could…um…read some books.

  ‘Maybe you could help me,’ Jake said again, and she turned from watching Susie and made herself concentrate.

  ‘How could I do that?’

  ‘I’m desperate.’

  ‘You don’t look desperate.’

  He smiled. ‘I have a way of hiding my desperation with insouciance.’

  ‘Insouciance, hey? Like ketchup but thicker.’

  His smil
e deepened. She loved it when he smiled like that. It made his eyes light up in a way that had her fascinated.

  Remember Robert, she told herself fiercely. Remember her parents, Rory, a life committed to medicine.

  Plus remember that this man was married. With kids. His girls…

  ‘So exactly how desperate are you?’ she tried cautiously, and his smile faded a little, as if he was weighing what he ought to tell her.

  ‘Pretty desperate.’

  ‘I can look after Angus.’

  ‘He needs a nurse here,’ Jake said slowly. ‘But I was thinking…’

  ‘Wow. Can I watch?’

  The smile appeared again. A truly excellent smile. Well worth working for.

  ‘Enough impertinence. I have an idea.’

  ‘Another!’

  ‘Shut up, you.’ He was grinning. There’d been lines of strain around his eyes since the first time she’d met him, and suddenly they were lightening. It made her feel good. Great even. She found she was grinning back, and she had to force herself to get back to the issue at hand.

  ‘Tell me your idea.’

  ‘My girls…’ he said cautiously, and she stopped feeling like smiling. Which was dopey. How could she be jealous of the family of someone she’d known for less than twenty-four hours?

  ‘Tell me about your girls,’ she managed.

  ‘I have a housekeeper.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said cautiously, and once again got that flash of laughter.

  ‘It is nice,’ he told her. ‘But it gets nicer. Margie Boyce is a trained nurse. She’s in her sixties but she’s very competent. She could come out here during the day and stay with Angus and Susie.’

  There were things here she wasn’t quite understanding. ‘You can manage without her?’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘What about your girls?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ he said patiently. ‘They could come, too.’

  ‘Your girls could come here?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What about your wife?’

  He sighed. ‘I don’t have a wife.’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘No wife.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But girls.’

  ‘You really are nosy.’

  ‘I am,’ she agreed, and beamed.

  Her smile seemed to take him aback. He dug his hands in his pockets and stared at her like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.

  She continued to smile, waiting.

  Hospice work was a hard training ground, Kirsty thought reflectively. She’d spent the last few years working with terminally ill patients, and one thing she’d learned fast was not to mess around trying to find the right way to frame a question. The people she worked with had little energy and less time. She worked to get things as right for them as she could in the little time she had available, and she didn’t do it by pussyfooting around hard questions.

  So maybe it made her nosy. What did she have to lose?

  ‘I’m divorced,’ Jake said grudgingly.

  She gave a grunt of what might be sympathy and went back to looking out at the garden. That was another trick she’d learned. Give people space.

  ‘So the girls are your daughters?’ she asked at last.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Both?’

  ‘They’re twins.’

  ‘Twins are great,’ she said, and smiled.

  He gave her a sideways look. Hmm. She stopped smiling, looking away, and he dug his hands deeper into his pockets. She thought that was the end of information but instead he started speaking again, carefully, as if explaining something distasteful.

  ‘Laurel and I met at med school,’ he said flatly, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should be saying it, but now he’d started he wanted to get it over with fast. ‘I became a surgeon, she was a radiologist, and I’m not even sure why we married now. I’m guessing we were too busy with our careers to look at anyone else. We were both hugely ambitious-fast movers in the career stakes-and our eventual marriage seemed more an excuse for a party than anything else. A party where we asked the right people. But suddenly Laurel was pregnant.’

  ‘Not planned?’ she queried gently, and he winced.

  ‘Of course not planned. As far as Laurel was concerned, it was a disaster. She only agreed to continue the pregnancy on the understanding that we’d use childcare from day one.’ He hesitated. ‘And maybe I agreed with her. I was an only child with no concept of babies. But then…then Alice and Penelope were born.’

  ‘And became people,’ she said gently.

  He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t expected such understanding. ‘I fell for them,’ he conceded. ‘My girls. But the reality of life with twins appalled Laurel. She hated everything about our new life, and she hated what the twins were doing to me. She issued an ultimatum-that we get a live-in nanny or she’d leave. That I return to the life we had pre-kids. So I was forced to choose. Laurel or the twins. But, of course, she knew my response even before she ever issued the ultimatum. The girls are just…too important to abandon to someone else’s full-time care. So that was the end of our marriage. Laurel took off overseas with a neurosurgeon when the twins were six months old and she hasn’t been back. So much for marriage.’

  Ouch. That almost deserved being up there with other life lessons, Kirsty thought. All the reasons why it was dumb to get involved.

  ‘So what did you do?’ she probed gently.

  ‘I moved to the country,’ he said, almost defiantly. ‘My career in Sydney was high-powered. I knew I’d see little of the twins if I stayed there and I had some romantic notion that life as a country doctor would leave me heaps of time with the kids. Pull a few hayseeds from ears, admire the cows, play with my babies…’

  ‘It hasn’t worked out quite like that, huh?’

  ‘Well, no. But the problem is that I love it. The people are great. Alice and Penelope are loved by the whole community. They might not have as much of me as I’d hoped, but they have huge compensations.’

  ‘And you? Do you have compensations?’

  ‘Now we’re getting too personal,’ he said, stiffening as if she’d suddenly propositioned him. ‘I don’t do personal. The only reason I’m telling you this is because of Margie Boyce. As I said, Margie’s a housekeeper-cum-nurse. She also acts as my babysitter. She’s married to Ben, who was a gardener here before his arthritis got bad. Ben and Angus are old friends. What I’ve suggested to Angus in the past is that he has Margie and Ben stay with him, but of course he won’t agree. He knows Margie looks after my girls so I’d need to find someone else, and the thought of Margie fussing over him when he wants to die is unbearable. But now…’ Jake looked thoughtfully over to the two heads discussing pumpkins. ‘If we tell Angus that a condition of Susie staying here is that Margie comes out to care for her during the day…bringing the girls with him… He may well agree.’

  She thought that through. It sounded OK. ‘That’d leave me doing nothing,’ she said slowly.

  ‘That’d leave you working with me,’ he said bluntly, and gave her a sheepish smile. ‘I’ve nobly worked it all out to stop you being bored.’

  She tried to look indignant-and failed. She needed to be honest, she decided. She’d been kicking her heels in Sydney for the last month, waiting to see whether Susie went into premature labour, and by the end of that time she’d been climbing walls. Dolphin Bay was a tiny coastal village, and exploration would here be limited. She’d be bored to snores here, too.

  ‘I don’t think I can work here,’ she said cautiously. ‘Don’t I need registration and medical insurance and stuff?’

  ‘This is classified as a remote community. Really remote. That means the government is grateful for whoever it can get.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s still late afternoon yesterday in the States. If you give me a list of your qualifications and a contact number for the hospital you’ve
been working in, I can get you accreditation to work right now. As in right now!’

  ‘You really want me,’ she said, awed, and he grinned.

  ‘I really want you.’ Then he hesitated. ‘As a doctor.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said demurely. ‘What else would you mean? But…to bring everyone here… What will Angus say to that?’

  ‘I’ll give it to Angus as a fait accompli,’ Jake told her. ‘You intend to work with me. He wants Susie to stay here, but Susie can’t stay unless Margie stays here with her. Margie can’t stay here unless the twins come, too, and Ben as well.

  ‘This place has been like a tomb,’ Jake went on, his smile disappearing as he tried to make her see how seriously he’d really thought this through. ‘Since Deirdre died, Angus has locked himself away and waited to die as well. But he has so much to live for, if only he can see it. If I can throw open the doors, bring in his old friend, Ben, Margie to care for him, the twins to fill the castle with giggles and play-dough-and Susie and a new little baby to give him family again… Don’t you think that might equal any anti-depressant, Dr McMahon? For Susie as well as Angus? What do you think?’

  He was anxious, she thought incredulously. He was watching her and there was much more than a trace of anxiety behind the smile. He was waiting for her approval.

  He didn’t have to wait, she thought, throwing any remaining caution to the wind.

  She was going into country practice.

  He had her approval in spades.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AT TWO that afternoon Kirsty was sitting beside Jake on her way to her first house-call, feeling bulldozed.

  Back at the castle were Susie, Angus, Ben and Margie Boyce, Alice, Penelope and Boris. Maybe they were feeling equally bulldozed, but they certainly seemed happy. Susie and Angus had gone reluctantly to have an afternoon nap. Margie Boyce was baking. Jake’s freckled and pigtailed four-year-olds were waiting to lick bowls, Boris was under the kitchen table, waiting for things to drop, and Ben was having a quiet dig in Angus’s parsnip patch.

  ‘How long did it take to work all that out?’ Kirsty demanded, and Jake gave a self-satisfied smile and turned his car onto a dirt track leading away from the town.