Bachelor Cure

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Very wise.’

  ‘So you will stay?’ Tess grinned down at her grandfather and then back to him. ‘I’ve bought a can of dog food for Strop, and for us I have everything Grandpa ordered. Apple sauce. Butternut pumpkin. Roast potatoes and fresh peas, with lemon meringue pie to follow…’

  ‘Lemon meringue pie…’ Both men were now staring at her, their faces reflecting disbelief, and Strop was looking just plain hopeful. Bother the dog food!

  ‘Hey, I’m not just a pretty face.’ And then Tess relented and chuckled. ‘Well, to be honest, Mrs Thompson made the pie for me, but the rest is mine. Do stay, Mike. We’d both like you to.’

  He hesitated, but he was lost. Lemon meringue pie… Lemon meringue pie and Tessa… And Strop would break his heart if he hauled him away from these smells.

  ‘Stan only needs a social visit,’ he said slowly. ‘I guess I can drop in tomorrow.’

  He couldn’t.

  At eleven the next morning he finally arrived at Stan Harper’s farm-and Stan was dead.

  ‘It must have been a massive infarct,’ Tessa said softly. It was Monday morning. She stood back from the autopsy table and looked across at Mike. She’d insisted on doing this. There was no way she was letting him do the autopsy on his own. ‘There’s no doubt,’ she told him now.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Time of death, late on Saturday night?’

  ‘How about late afternoon Saturday,’ he said heavily, and Tess winced. ‘No. There’s no way we can say that.’

  ‘There’s no way we can say it was definitely later.’

  ‘OK.’ Tess crossed to the sink and started washing, watching him out of the corner of her eye. ‘I’ll accept that. It might have happened late Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘When I should have been there.’

  ‘By the look of this damage, there’s no way you could have helped, even if you had been there,’ she told him. ‘The artery’s completely blocked. You know as well as I do that this wasn’t a minor, recoverable heart attack. If he’d been in the best-equipped hospital in the world, I doubt he’d have been saved.’

  ‘But there were no signs… Apart from the pain, which we couldn’t pinpoint. The electrocardiograph was normal. I tried to get him to go to Melbourne and see a specialist but he wouldn’t.’

  ‘That was his choice.’ Tessa’s voice was flat and devoid of emotion. Her eyes were calmly watchful.

  ‘I should have insisted.’

  ‘And he would have refused.’

  ‘At least I should have been there.’

  Here it was. The crux of the whole matter.

  ‘Are you saying if you’d been there you might have saved him?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ He turned his face away and stared sightlessly at the bare wall. ‘Who can say? He’d run himself down. He wasn’t eating. If I’d spent more time there…bullied him into eating…’

  ‘Instead of spending time with me,’ she said softly.

  ‘That did have something to do with it.’

  ‘The fact that I’m taking so much of your workload that you have more time than ever before has nothing to do with it? The fact that if I hadn’t been here, sharing your work, you might never have had time to pay any social visits at all?’

  But he wasn’t listening. ‘I should have been there on Saturday evening,’ he said solidly. ‘I shouldn’t have stayed on with you and your grandfather. I knew Stan was expecting me.’

  ‘He wasn’t expecting you. You’d called when you could. It was only because I’ve been able to give you free time that you’ve been able to go at all.’ Tess sighed.

  ‘Mike, Stan may well have been dead already if you’d arrived on Saturday afternoon-or he might even have been fine and then died after you left. There’s no sign of previous scarring here. Apart from the chest pain, which you couldn’t pin down on examination, there was no sign of such a massive problem. This was an act of God, Mike. It has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘I should have been there.’

  Silence. Tess dried her hands and pulled off her lab coat. Then she crossed the floor and took his hands in hers. He stared sightlessly down at her, his heart bleak.

  ‘Mike, is this our disaster?’ she asked softly.

  ‘What…?’

  ‘Will you hold this against us?’

  He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t.

  ‘I should have been there,’ he repeated dully. How could he say anything else? It was all he could think. He’d let Stan down. He’d broken his vow. He’d known this would happen.

  ‘Do you really believe that if you didn’t love me then Stan would still be alive?’

  But he couldn’t answer. His face was cold and bleak and hard, and it reflected how he felt.

  ‘I don’t know, Tess,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t know. All I know is that-’

  ‘That you want me to go away?’

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them he knew what he had to say.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he said.

  Silence.

  ‘I knew this would happen,’ Tess said softly-finally-and the pain in her voice was clear for him to hear. ‘Aren’t you pleased now that you didn’t make another vow? Aren’t you pleased we’re not married?’

  She walked slowly out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHAT followed was an interminable month when Mike tried to pick up the threads of his life where he’d left off.

  There were two sides to his life, he decided. Pre-Tess and post-Tess.

  Pre-Tess had been bleak and hard. Post-Tess was just impossible.

  He worked on two levels. On the surface he was efficient and calm and under control, but underneath he was so churned up he was wondering just how on earth he could cope.

  Maybe it would get better in time, he told himself over and over. Maybe he’d get used to Tessa around the place and he’d stop wanting her in his bed at night. Strop was back on his pillow, and that was all the company he could allow himself!

  Maybe if he stopped seeing her every time he turned around it might solve his problems.

  That wasn’t going to happen. Tess was settling further into valley life every day she worked here. She soon carved herself out a routine, coming in to do clinics every morning and taking her share of house calls in the afternoons.

  Often she took Henry with her on her house calls. They purchased a reliable little truck between them, and the sight of the old man and the flame-headed young lady doctor, beetling around the valley roads, soon became a familiar sight.

  ‘I don’t know how you managed without her,’ Mike was told over and over, and only he knew that he’d managed a darn sight better without her than with her. He was tearing himself in two!

  ‘We were fine by ourselves,’ he told Strop, but Strop’s big, mournful eyes looked more mournful than ever, and his tail didn’t wag at all. He hadn’t minded sharing his Mike with Tess-and Tess was a dab hand with a can opener.

  Mike’s pain couldn’t go unnoticed, especially by Tessa.

  ‘You’re being a dope,’ she told him bluntly, six weeks after Stan’s death. It was eleven at night. She’d come in to see a patient she’d admitted to hospital that afternoon, and came past the kitchen door to find him cooking himself bacon and eggs again. ‘You’ll kill yourself on that diet, and you’re still working too hard.’ She stood in the doorway and glared. ‘You know damn well I want more work, Mike Llewellyn. Give it to me.’

  ‘You can’t work full time and look after Henry.’

  ‘Henry’s getting better every day. He’s almost independent now.’ She hesitated and then walked all the way in, sitting down at the table while he cooked. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m leaving, if that’s what you’re hoping. Mike, I’m not going away. If anything, I’m getting closer. Henry and I have decided to sell the farm.’

  ‘Sell the farm!’ That rattled him.

  ‘We love it but we don’t need sixty acres,’ she
told him. ‘And, living out there, I’m too far from the hospital. It was Grandpa’s idea. There’s a great little place down by the river just half a mile from here. Grandpa’s been to see it and he loves it.’

  ‘But he loves his farm.’

  ‘So do we both. But we love being together more. This way we can stay together. Just me and Grandpa and Doris the pig…’

  ‘And the eight porky babies?’ He couldn’t help himself. Mike’s eyes twinkled and Tess twinkled right back.

  ‘Come out and see our babies some time. They’re what you might call good-dooers. Even Doris is feeling the strain. We may keep little Mike-or rather big Mike-but that’s about the limit.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Mike…’

  ‘Yes?’

  Tess hesitated and then sighed. ‘You’re still blaming me for Stan’s death-right?’

  ‘No. I’m blaming me.’

  ‘That’s worse.’

  ‘It can’t be helped,’ he said stiffly. ‘It’s the way it is.’

  ‘So you’re intending to stay solitary for the rest of your life? And keeping on working just as hard as you can?’

  ‘That’s the plan.’

  ‘Well, it’s a really stupid plan,’ she burst out. ‘Just crazy. Do you think your mother would thank you for doing it? For grudging me every piece of work I can get my hands on and for turning your back on a really magnificent love life? What with me and Grandpa and Doris and Strop, who could ask for more? And for running yourself into the ground because you’re so damned miserable you’ve stopped looking after yourself?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she snapped. ‘You should be eating three solid meals a day, with a nice family routine. Like with me and Grandpa and our appendages. Even with a couple of kids.’ Tess flushed and then managed a smile. ‘Well, if Doris can have little Mikes, I don’t see why I can’t. And as for living on bacon and eggs…’

  ‘I like bacon and eggs.’ Mike flipped his egg out on top of his bacon and stared down at it. Then he shoved the whole plate away. Suddenly he didn’t feel like anything at all.

  And Tessa’s voice suddenly lost its aggressiveness. ‘You’re OK, aren’t you, Mike?’ Her face creased in sudden concern. ‘You’re not sickening for something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you’re not dying of a broken heart?’ Her words were flippant, but her face was still worried. ‘Mike, are you losing weight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I reckon you are,’ Tess said slowly. Her eyes narrowed as she checked him out. ‘In fact, I’m sure you are. And don’t tell me. You don’t really feel like that eggs and bacon.’

  The plate lay before them, untouched. Mike hauled it back before him and picked up his knife and fork. ‘Yeah. I do. OK?’

  ‘So eat.’

  ‘I’ll eat when you leave.’

  ‘I’m not leaving until I see you eat.’

  ‘Tess…’

  ‘Mike, is there something really wrong here? There is, isn’t there?’ All of a sudden Tess looked really worried. ‘Mike, tell me-’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong,’ he said explosively. ‘I’ve just got a bit of a belly ache. That’s all.’

  ‘And tonight’s the first time you’ve had it?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘OK.’ Tess held her hands up in mock surrender. ‘I know when I’m not wanted. But if it really has been going on for longer… If there’s something wrong…’

  ‘There isn’t.’

  ‘If there is…and you won’t talk to me about it…’ Tess hesitated. ‘Or even take a few days off and see someone in Melbourne… Well, a man would be fool-wouldn’t he?’

  There was nothing wrong.

  Tess left. Mike abandoned his eggs and bacon and took himself back to his apartment, but Tessa’s words kept playing in his head. A man’d be a fool…

  There’s nothing wrong, he told himself harshly, blocking off the thought of a few faint worries. There was no need to talk to Tessa or anyone else about this. It was just a nagging gut ache, that was all, and it was caused by nervous tension. There. The diagnosis was easy. He’d got himself in an emotional state over a woman and it was physically taking its toll.

  He just needed time to sort himself out, he figured. He needed to divorce himself from what he was feeling for Tessa and then he’d be fine. He took some antacid and managed to eat and hold down a dry piece of toast. Then he said goodnight to Strop and went to bed.

  That was at midnight. By dawn he was sicker than he’d ever been in his life.

  ‘Have you seen Dr Llewellyn?’

  Tess had been in the hospital for a whole five minutes before she was hit by the question. It was Horrible Hannah, about to go off night duty. Tess met Bill Fetson, coming on duty, in the hall and Hannah met them both.

  ‘Mrs Carter’s drip packed up about an hour ago and I need orders,’ the nurse told them. ‘I rang Dr Llewellyn’s apartment but he’s not answering. He must have gone out on a call but he’s not answering his mobile phone either.’

  ‘Maybe he’s out of range,’ Bill said. Then he frowned. ‘But he knows where the phone cuts out. If he’s going to be out of range then he rings first and tells us where he can be contacted.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t think it as important any more,’ Tess said. ‘Now that I can be contacted, he has back-up.’

  ‘He doesn’t like us contacting you.’ Hannah shrugged. ‘But I guess that must be it. Or he’s somewhere where the lines are down. That’s quite a storm outside.’

  It was. The wind had been rising all night and now it was screaming around the sides of the building in the full blast of the onset of winter. A storm like this would be bound to bring the odd telephone wire down. Tess frowned but forced herself relax.

  ‘OK, let’s not worry,’ she said-but she was worrying. ‘I’ll check Mrs Carter for you.’

  She did and she ended up doing a full round of Mike’s patients. There must be an emergency to keep him away, they decided, but there was nothing they could do until he contacted the hospital.

  Tess had a house call of her own. She should leave now, but instead she made her way back to the nurses’ station. Hannah was still there, having decided she didn’t want to walk home until the worst of the weather had abated, and so was Bill.

  ‘So, where is he?’ she asked, and Bill shook his head.

  ‘Beats me.’

  ‘Has anyone checked his apartment?’

  ‘Hannah’s rung him more than once and there’s no answer,’ Bill told her. ‘And I had Hannah walk down and check while I rang-just in case there’s a fault in the line. There’s not. From this side of his door you can hear it ringing inside. Oh, and Strop’s inside. You can hear him snuffling at the door. Mike must have decided to leave him indoors because of the weather. Mike has to be out.’

  ‘Yes, but…’ Tess hesitated, her face creasing in worry. ‘It’s just… Bill, last night Mike didn’t look well. He was off his food.’

  Bill stilled. They looked at each other for a long, long minute. Outside, the wind blew more fiercely.

  ‘Bill, what are we waiting for?’ Tess said at last, and in her heart there was suddenly a lurch of real fear. ‘Let’s check.’

  Strop met them as they unlocked the door and he was frantic with worry. He saw them inside and launched himself at the bathroom door, barking in a frenzy.

  By the time they reached the bathroom they were expecting something bad, and they found it.

  Mike was stretched out, unconscious, on the bathroom floor.

  Mike surfaced to the Horrible Hannah.

  For a long moment he couldn’t figure out where he was. He lay absolutely still and let the room come into focus. It didn’t completely. It spun, but as he stared upwards the spinning slowed.

  And then Hannah was looking down at him.

  ‘Oh, Dr Llewellyn. Oh, Mike!’ There was no mistaking it. For the first time in his life, Mike heard real emotion in Hannah’s voic
e. Joy. ‘You’re awake. Oh, don’t you dare shut your eyes. I’m fetching Tess.’

  Tess… Hannah was calling Tess Tess?

  It was all too much to work out, and there seemed no need. He was so damned tired. He couldn’t help it. Try as he may he couldn’t obey Hannah’s order. His eyes closed all by themselves, and he slept.

  The next time he opened his eyes Tess was there. And she was crying.

  He’d nearly died, and it took him days to figure out why he hadn’t. Days while Strop lay as devoted watchdog under his bed and his body slowly recovered from its shock.

  ‘You had a massive bleed from a duodenal ulcer,’ Tess told him, in a voice that still shook. ‘I’ve never seen so much blood. We put five units of plasma aboard before we started operating, and once we’d cross-matched we had donors coming in from all over the valley. We needed them all.’

  Operating… That was another thing he couldn’t work out. Somehow he’d been operated on, and he’d been operated on here.

  ‘You were operated on by me,’ Tess said when he was finally well enough to ask the right questions. ‘And don’t ask me how I did it because I don’t know and I never, ever want to do such a thing again. You’re trained in general surgery but, apart from my basic medical training, I’m not.’

  ‘So how…?’

  But Tess shook her head, and her voice trembled. She reached out and took his hand in hers, and it wasn’t just her voice that was trembling. ‘Please, Mike, don’t ask. I can’t think about it.’

  It was up to Bill to tell him, and it was two days after the operation before he was well enough to take it all in.

  ‘It was a bloody miracle,’ Bill growled, as he changed Mike’s dressings with hands that were amazingly tender for such a big man. ‘I’d written you off myself. As soon as I saw you on the floor and saw the blood…well, I was all for calling the undertaker. If it hadn’t been for Tess, you’d be pushing up daisies by now.’

  ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘We couldn’t evacuate you,’ Bill told him. ‘The weather was foul and no helicopter could get in, even if there had been enough time to get you to a major hospital or get a surgeon flown in here. Which there wasn’t. And here you were, losing blood like a stuck pig. Tessa was pouring in plasma but it wasn’t nearly enough. You were dying under her hands. So she said…she said she was going in.’