by Lucy Clark
‘Sound like fun times.’ Harriette sat down in the seat next to her friend and sighed.
‘How are you coping?’
‘What?’ Could Tori read her expression that well? Could she see the feelings for Felix? How could the nurse possibly know what had transpired between the two doctors?
‘It can’t be easy saying goodbye to him.’
‘Eddie!’ Harriette breathed a sigh of relief. ‘No, it’s not easy but I raised a good boy and he knows to contact his neurotic mother the instant he lands.’
Tori looked at her quizzically for a moment. ‘What did you think I meant?’
‘Nothing. My mind was on the patients I’ve just seen at clinic.’ She waggled a finger near her head. ‘How are the wedding preparations going?’ She needed to change the subject and fast and what bride-to-be could resist talking about her up-and-coming wedding?
As Tori talked about her latest wedding drama Harriette silently chided herself for having misinterpreted the question. She needed to stop fixating on what had almost happened between herself and Felix.
‘Are you and Felix still planning to stop in at Darwin after the house calls?’ Tori’s question caught Harriette a little off guard and she knocked over a container full of pens at the mention of Felix.
‘What?’
‘The house calls? You told me you wanted to go to Darwin once you’ve done the house clinics. It does seem quite logical. You’re already going to be working your way up further into the Northern Territory so why not go a little further and show Felix and Chloe a bit of the closest capital city? I’m presuming Felix hasn’t been to Darwin before?’
‘Not that I know of.’ She shook her head, forgetting the planning she’d already made for their trip. ‘We leave the day after tomorrow.’ Harriette couldn’t keep the doom and gloom from her tone. She’d organised it while Eddie had been here and she’d been looking forward to helping Felix mend the fences with his father. Now...now she didn’t want to be cooped up in a car with Felix for an extended period of time. And after they’d finished in Darwin, they would be spending three days driving back to Meeraji Lake, stopping and doing district clinics on the way. If she’d thought they were living and working in close quarters now, then it would be nothing compared to the way they’d be forced together during the next week.
Tori chuckled. ‘Cheer up. It’s not as though it’s any great hardship being in such close quarters with Felix. He is one good-looking man...but nowhere near as good-looking as my fantastic fiancé, who is presently walking in the front doors.’ The nurse waved to Scotty and went to embrace him.
After offering a brief g’day to Scotty, Harriette headed to the wards to check on her patients, but even as she paid them the attention they deserved thoughts of Felix remained in the back of her mind. She decided to try and do some paperwork as that usually required her full concentration, but it didn’t work.
If only they hadn’t kissed! What had they been thinking? Well, that was the problem—they hadn’t been. They’d given in to temptation and now she had to pay the price, the price of being uncomfortable in his company. Harriette sat alone in her small office and buried her head in her hands as misery, discomfort and loneliness swamped her. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ she mumbled into the silent room.
She stopped her thoughts and shook her head. A week with Felix, in a car, driving from homestead to homestead and then ending up in Darwin for one night before starting the drive back to Meeraji Lake. It would be so confining, so uncomfortable and yet incredibly intimate. Thank goodness Chloe was going with them. At least the almost-four-year-old would break the tension...or so Harriette hoped. Getting through the next week was going to require her utmost concentration and professionalism because there was no way she was going to let Felix McLaren lure her into such a confused situation again.
Harriette straightened her shoulders, determination coursing through her. She could do this. She’d managed to navigate her way through situations far more difficult than this one. Then again, she hadn’t been faced with a man who made her heart race, her knees go weak and her body fill with desire just by smiling at her.
Her shoulders sagged. It was hopeless.
CHAPTER NINE
‘ARE WE THERE YET?’
Chloe’s voice from the back seat of the four-door utility truck made Harriette smile. She concentrated on driving while Felix turned and addressed the little girl. The rear of the vehicle was packed with everything they would need to hold travelling clinics for the next few days, along with clothes for the three of them and an entire bag of ‘stuff’ for Chloe, which she’d insisted upon bringing with her. Captain Gumleaf, of course, was sitting in the back with her, strapped into his own seatbelt to make sure he was safe.
‘It’s only ten minutes since you last asked.’ He grinned at her. ‘Would you like a drink?’
Chloe screwed up her nose. ‘Will I have to go to the toilet in the bush again?’
Harriette chuckled and looked in her rear-vision mirror, reflecting on the look of horror on Chloe’s face when they’d had to stop a few hours ago so the child could relieve herself behind one of the native shrubs that was scattered here and there along the way. To say Chloe hadn’t been impressed was an understatement. ‘There is a good chance that may happen, Chloe, depending on how much you drink.’
‘I don’t like doing that,’ Chloe stated and shook her head as Felix held out her drink bottle.
‘You’ve got to drink, Chloe.’ His tone was caring but insistent.
‘I don’t want to!’ She sat in her car seat and crossed her arms with determination, a frown on her face, her little lips puckered in defiance.
Harriette laughed again and Felix turned on her. ‘What’s so funny? She’s got to drink. Out here in the Australian outback, it’s imperative to remain hydrated, especially when in a car. The heat outside is—’
‘The car is air-conditioned, so we’re hardly at risk of overheating, and she’s already drunk quite a bit today. I don’t blame her about not wanting to urinate in the bushes. It’s far easier for you males than us females and, to make my final point, we’re only about forty-five minutes away from arriving at the first homestead. Once we’re there, she’ll eat and drink and urinate in a proper toilet.’ She looked over her shoulder and winked at Chloe. ‘Isn’t that right, princess?’ she stated rhetorically.
‘Proper loo,’ Chloe repeated, naturally translating the word into her English counterpart. She uncrossed her arms and clapped her hands. ‘Proper loo.’
‘At least she’s smiling, now,’ Harriette remarked as Felix scowled at her. ‘You look just like Chloe,’ she said, teasing him slightly. ‘All frowny and grumpy.’
‘I’m not grumpy,’ he stated. ‘I’m annoyed. There’s a difference.’ Without another word, he pressed the button for the CD to start playing, pleased that Erica had given them quite a few different children’s CDs for Chloe to listen to on the long drives.
‘I’ve already heard this one,’ she stated from the back.
‘And now you can hear it again,’ he retorted, seemingly annoyed with both the females. He waited a few minutes, until he could hear Chloe singing along with the song, then shifted in his seat so he was facing Harriette. ‘I don’t appreciate the way you’re constantly undermining my authority with Chloe,’ he remarked, doing his best to keep his tone level so Chloe couldn’t hear him. He’d noticed that the little girl often picked up on undercurrents between Harriette and himself and ended up having tantrums over it, as though thinking that if the two main adults in her life were misbehaving, it was perfectly all right for her to do so as well.
That was the way it had been in the house until they’d left for this trip. He wouldn’t say that he and Harriette had had tantrums, per se, but the atmosphere certainly hadn’t been one of relaxed joviality as it had been before they’d kis
sed. Harriette’s attitude had been one of polite indifference. She’d arranged to eat out at different friends’ houses, saying that she’d neglected her friends while Eddie had been here. That had meant cheese sandwiches for Chloe and a tin of soup for him as he hadn’t felt much like cooking. After Eddie’s gourmet cooking, his soup had tasted bland and unappetising and he’d kept glancing at the door every time he’d heard a sound, hoping it was Harriette coming home to spend some time with them.
She hadn’t. Not at least until rather late into the evening when he’d bathed Chloe and wrangled her to sleep. And when she had come in, she’d walked straight past him, murmured a polite goodnight and headed to her part of the house.
Felix knew Harriette had every right to go and see her friends—after all, the two of them were just colleagues, or at least that was the way she was making him feel. He’d thought they’d progressed past that, that they’d become friends as well. They had, he realised, until they’d kissed and everything had changed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she replied, bringing his thoughts back to the present. ‘I guess it’s the mother in me that takes over.’
‘I know you know more than I do, but how am I supposed to learn if you keep jumping in and contradicting what I say?’
‘I wasn’t contradicting—not really. I was...justifying and explaining to her. She has every right to say she doesn’t want to go to the toilet in the bushes, even though out here it’s almost considered a rite of passage.’ Harriette grinned, the ute still speeding along on the endlessly straight road with not a house in sight. ‘Still, I will do my best to refrain from appearing to undermine your authority because it is important for you to exert it.’
‘And you’ll try to back off? To let me at least attempt to deal with Chloe on my own?’
‘I’ll most certainly try and bite my tongue, but only on the condition that if you need help with Chloe, if you feel out of your depth, you’ll ask me for help or advice. I can’t promise I’ll always know what to do but we can work it out together.’
‘Can we?’ The two words were softer than the others and the tone in them had definitely changed. A prickle of apprehension washed over Harriette, and when she risked a glance at him again it was to find him watching her more intently than before. Clearly they weren’t talking about Chloe any more.
‘Of course we can,’ she remarked, keeping her tone as jovial as possible.
‘You like children, don’t you?’
For a second, she thought she’d misinterpreted what he was saying. Was this going to become a habit? Was she ever going to be able to figure him out, figure out his moods, or was she always going to be grabbing the wrong end of the stick? ‘Uh...of course I do.’
‘Would you like to have more?’
This time she turned her head and stared at him for a long moment. ‘Me? More children!’ He nodded. ‘No. No. No.’ She shook her head and returned her attention to the boring, very straight road. ‘I mean, could you imagine it? Having my kids over two decades apart? That’s a bit...strange.’ She laughed, then shook her head again. ‘It would be funny to see Eddie’s face when I told him I was having another child but—no. I’ve worked too hard for too long to finish my surgical training and I’m so close to being finished.’
‘You can have career and family, you know.’
‘Like you? How’s your career going since Chloe entered your life?’
Felix thought for a moment before agreeing. ‘Point taken.’ He eased back into the chair as they drove along and Harriette refocused her attention on the road. ‘What about men?’
‘Pardon?’ She stared at him again, wondering if she’d heard him correctly.
‘Have you ever had a serious relationship? I mean, apart from Eddie’s father.’
‘Uh...sort of. I’ve dated colleagues in the past and not really seriously until Eddie was in his teens.’
‘Fair enough, but none made you want to take a trip down the aisle? Have more kids?’
Harriette frowned as she drove along, pleased she had the protection of her sunglasses as she answered his questions. ‘I was serious about one guy. Eddie was seventeen, hanging out with his mates and being hormonally obnoxious.’
‘Eddie? Hormonally obnoxious?’ He chuckled.
‘Happens to all of us,’ she added, smiling at him.
‘So...the guy?’ Felix prompted when she remained silent for a moment.
‘Right. The guy. His name was Mark and he had moved to the country to work in the hospital for a few years. I was deciding whether or not to specialise in surgery and he just seemed to make my life so much richer. He supported me in my career, he was great with Eddie and everything seemed perfect.’
‘And then?’
‘And then he had articles published in a reputed journal and was offered a fellowship.’
‘Wait. Not Mark Masters?’
Harriette snorted with derision. ‘One and the same. Clearly you know him.’
‘I took over the fellowship from him.’
‘Of course you did.’ And there it was in a nutshell. Felix might be putting Chloe first, but his career still came second, which meant there really wasn’t any room in his life for Harriette. ‘All you career-climbing surgeons know each other.’
‘So I take it he left the country hospital for the high life?’
‘In the middle of his contract, leaving me short-staffed and overworked. Eddie was devastated.’
‘As were you, I’m sure.’
Harriette could only shrug, and before he could ask her any more personal questions she turned up the music a little and began singing along with Chloe.
‘Let me know if you’re becoming fatigued and I’ll take over,’ he offered ten minutes later.
‘It’s not long now and, besides, I’m used to driving long distances.’
‘How often are these clinics?’
Although they’d already been over this once, it was clear Felix needed to get a full grasp on the strange situation of taking the doctor to the patients rather than the other way around. ‘Once a month. Depending on how many clinics are being held, usually one of us goes out and the other stays in Meeraji Lake.’
‘But now that we’re both going, Tori and the rest of the staff are holding down the fort? What if an emergency comes in?’
‘Generally, because people know we’re holding district clinics, they’ll travel to the homestead where the clinic is being held. Usually it’s closer for them than coming into town.’
‘And these clinics are held because a lot of outback people can’t, or won’t, take time off to visit the doctor even when they’re sick?’
‘Yes. Outback Australians are made of sturdy stuff and sometimes they think they’re immortal. These clinics mean more people can be immunised, especially for things like tetanus, and have their concerns addressed without needing to take a day or two off work in order to drive to Meeraji Lake.’ She was starting to slow the vehicle down. He still couldn’t see anything around them apart from the odd tree and shrub and a lot of reddish-brown dirt so he wasn’t sure why she was slowing down.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked as she turned the vehicle onto what could only be described as a dirt track.
‘To the homestead. This is a shortcut.’
‘Shortcut? Are you sure that’s wise?’
Harriette laughed at him. ‘We can go the long way around and add another hour to our journey?’
‘No. No. This way is good.’ Felix held onto the hand grip above the passenger door as the utility truck made its way over ground that appeared to be flat but was in fact rather undulating. He checked Chloe in the back but she seemed perfectly fine with the new terrain. In fact, she was clapping her hands with joy at the bumps and giggling. ‘Great. She’s a daredevil, just like David.’
Harriet
te laughed again and continued navigating their way across country. Twenty minutes later, she turned onto a graded gravel road and soon after that she turned into what could only be described as a long dirt driveway, the sign at the turn-off to the homestead the only indication that this was the correct way.
‘You’ll have to jump out and open and close the gates for me,’ she told him, and as he did as she asked Harriette had to admit that the day’s driving adventures hadn’t been as bad as she’d initially thought. She’d anticipated that it would have been confining in the small cabin of the truck, that Felix’s scent would drive her crazy and that the close proximity would be distracting but, in actual fact, she’d enjoyed it. Her embarrassment at having been a fool in his arms a few days ago had decreased and she’d managed to return her spirits to her usual jovial self.
Harriette brought the vehicle to a stop outside the front of the homestead, a lot of cars already parked, people milling around ready and waiting for the afternoon clinic to begin.
‘What’s all this?’ Felix looked out of the window at the plethora of people.
‘Patients.’
‘I hadn’t expected this many. It’s like a week’s worth of clinic hours all in one hit.’
She grinned. ‘Busier than a major hospital, mate.’ She switched off the engine and removed the key from the ignition before jumping out of the car and waving to the owner of the homestead. Remembering their earlier conversation about how Felix needed to be the parent with Chloe, she left it up to him to get the child from the car and, instead, Harriette went to say hello to some of the locals she hadn’t yet met.
Surrounded by people, they unpacked their belongings from the ute and headed inside where their hosts had set up rooms for a makeshift clinic.
‘What do I do with Chloe?’ Felix asked as Harriette handed him a note pad and pen so he could write down notes on each patient. She was opening the medical kits and other equipment they’d brought with them, such as tongue depressors, gloves and an array of bandages.
