The Marriage Gamble

by Meredith Webber

  ‘Running scared, Jacinta?’ he teased, and more delicious colour washed into her cheeks.

  ‘Why should I be?’ she demanded, tilting her chin towards him but unable to hide an uncertainty in her velvety brown eyes.

  He leaned towards her, but before he had time to take the subject further raucous voices on the stairs alerted all the staff to the possibility of an all-hands-on-deck crisis.

  Three men erupted into the waiting room, pushing the door open so violently that Carmel, who’d gone across to unlock it while Mike spoke to Jacinta, was flung to the ground.

  ‘Get them off me, stop them, keep them away from me!’

  The central figure in the group danced madly around the room, flinging his arms around his head and flapping his hands as if to ward off a swarm of bees.

  ‘Get them away! Stop them! For…’

  The language deteriorated and Mike stepped in front of Jacinta who’d tried to hurry, oblivious to the potential danger, towards the man.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked one of the two companions.

  ‘Something he took. He hasn’t injected but we don’t know what else he had. He was OK at breakfast then we took a walk downtown and suddenly this. He says they’re flying piranhas, trying to eat his flesh.’

  Mike had grabbed the man as his friend explained, but he was effortlessly flung backward by the manic strength of the hallucinating addict. Then the two friends caught the man and somehow got him to a chair while Mike turned to Jacinta, who’d helped Carmel up and seen her safely back to the security of the office.

  ‘What do we keep that might calm him?’

  ‘Hallucinations are most common with narcotics, opiates, morphine, derivatives or synthetic agonist compounds. Naloxone hydrochloride—we keep that in the drug safe in the office—would work as an antidote on any of those, but if it’s not a narcotic—’

  ‘What harm could it do?’

  Jacinta tried to think—were there contra-indications? Long term, yes, but as a quick fix until they got the man to hospital?

  ‘None,’ she said, ‘but giving it to him is going to be the problem.’

  Mike watched as the man, who’d escaped the custody of his mates, climbed onto one of the newly covered chairs and went capering up and down the room, stepping from one to the next, balancing so precariously he could fall at any minute.

  ‘Get it ready and I’ll try,’ he told Jacinta. ‘Mark’s here now. With him and the two friends, we should be able to manage.’

  She hurried across to the office where Carmel had already opened the drug safe.

  ‘I’ve phoned for the ambulance. They’re on their way, but with peak-hour traffic it could take a while.’

  Jacinta paused to thank her, then found all she needed. She took a swab, the filled syringe and gloves across to Mark, who was talking quietly to the traumatised man, trying to convince him that a quick jab of a needle would get rid of the voracious fish.

  As Jacinta approached, Mike put out his arm, slowly and carefully so he didn’t startle the patient, and tucked Jacinta behind him.

  ‘I can look after myself!’ she hissed at his broad back, but he ignored her, continuing to talk to the man until he quietened and eventually stepped down off the chair and slumped into it instead.

  Mike seized the moment—and the syringe—thrusting the sharp point of the needle into the man’s skin, injecting the fluid and withdrawing it, almost before the confused individual had time to realise what was happening.

  ‘You didn’t put on gloves,’ Jacinta muttered at Mike. ‘That’s a stupid risk to take.’

  ‘Would you have?’ Mike demanded, ushering her away from the man while his friends again took over as custodians. ‘And missed that fraction of a second when you could safely inject?’

  Jacinta knew she wouldn’t have, but wasn’t going to admit it. Any more than she was going to admit how well Mike had handled the situation. Or that the more she saw of him, the more impressed she was.

  With his doctoring, that was.

  She stomped off to her consulting room, furious with herself that she was letting a man—any man—so dominate her thoughts.

  Not any more! she promised herself. Not for one second longer.

  Patients would soon be arriving, and she had test results to check and file, letters to write to specialists, a dozen little tasks to do. All of which were more important than thinking about Mike Trent and the confusion he was causing in her body, mind and spirit.

  ‘Well, that wasn’t too bad, was it?’

  The same Mike Trent Jacinta had spent all day trying to ignore apparently thought a day when only one addict ran amok in the waiting room was reason for celebration. He and Mark were leaning on the reception counter, chatting to the office girls and the clinic nurses, who were slumped in chairs and sipping at glasses of wine, provided in honour of one of their birthdays. Carmel wasn’t slumped, neither was she sipping wine, but she was there—and smiling sycophantically at Mike.

  Jacinta walked past the two men and into the reception area, returning files to the long shelves of patient records, discreetly hidden from public view by a false wall at the back of the reception area.

  ‘We don’t get many problems like that fellow, though we seem to be seeing an increasing number of addicts,’ Mark said. ‘No doubt due to Jacinta’s good works.’

  ‘We’ve really no way of weeding them out,’ Carmel complained. ‘It’s one of the reasons I think the clinic should close.’

  Jacinta paused in her task and held her breath. They’d all seen her walk in so it wasn’t as if she was eavesdropping, but she was too tired to get into an argument over the clinic right now.

  ‘I know when you set it up, Mike,’ Carmel continued—she’d finally dropped the Dr Trent—’you intended the service for workers in the city who couldn’t access medical services after hours, but now that your suburban clinics are open both early and late, most people can get to a doctor either before or after work. So we’re losing those decent kinds of patients and all we’re gaining in their place are the no-hopers.’

  ‘We still see a fair number of city office and shop workers,’ Mark protested, but it was a half-hearted effort. Knowing the job was only a stop-gap for him, Jacinta understood his lack of commitment.

  She shoved the last of the files away, and came out from behind the wall.

  Mike must have been waiting for her to reappear, for he cocked one eyebrow at her and allowed a small flicker of a smile to play about his lips as he said, ‘Any comment?’

  ‘Why should there be?’ she snapped at him, but before she could say more, Carmel was complaining about her presence near the filing shelves.

  ‘You know the girls do all the filing, Jacinta. You doctors don’t seem to understand the system—you put the files just anywhere.’

  Jacinta thought about telling her that as she wasn’t colour blind, could count and knew her alphabet, she was just as capable as ‘the girls’ to handle filing, but she knew her anger had been caused by the closing-the-clinic comment, not the filing remark, so she merely nodded and escaped back to her consulting room.

  She had another worry to consume her now. Although the staff usually celebrated each other’s birthdays with a quick drink after work, they were always gone by seven-thirty when the ‘Optional Extras’ meetings got under way. But tonight she had an uneasy feeling Carmel would stay as long as Mike was here, so she’d find out about the meetings and add another black mark to Jacinta’s record.

  Though, with Mike here, tacitly giving consent…

  Shame that she could even think of using him as protective colouring was only fleeting. No! If Mike Trent approved the use of the clinic, Carmel could hardly object. Perhaps having dinner with him wasn’t such a bad idea. It would give her the opportunity to get formal permission for the meetings to continue.

  She sighed and rested her chin on her hands, staring blankly at the door that hid the man from view. Committed though she was to the survival of t
he clinic, she also knew, deep down, that she was making excuses to spend time with him.

  ‘You’re mad!’ she muttered to herself. ‘He’s so far out of your league you might as well exist on different planets. And as he’s not for you, why exacerbate what’s already a very inconvenient attraction, by spending time alone with him?’

  And though she asked herself the question out loud, it was a tiny inner voice that answered.

  Because you want to know how the dream ended?

  ‘Balderdash!’

  She used the word, gleaned from her fascination with Regency novels, forcefully, but it lacked its usual punch. Was there something else that would convince her wayward body that dining with Mike Trent was like playing on the rim of an active volcano?

  Bloody hell?

  She tried it out loud as Mike walked into the room.

  ‘Am I so unwelcome?’ he asked, and she knew from the twinkle in his eyes that he was laughing at her.

  ‘No,’ she grumbled, then recognised the dishonesty of her reply. ‘Yes, actually, you are. You’re messing up my life.’

  ‘I’m messing up your life?’

  In other circumstances, his incredulity might have been funny—but not today.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ she snapped at him, then found she couldn’t go on. Which was just as well for he wouldn’t have taken any notice. He had already launched into his own complaint.

  ‘Do you think I want to be down here, wrestling with drug addicts, while my senior staff email me every second of the day, demanding to know when I’ll be back? It’s all very well for you to say I should see for myself, but a business this size doesn’t run itself, you know. Someone has to be at the helm, making decisions, forward planning, spreading the financial risk—’

  ‘Considering the money, not the people!’

  Aware there were staff still in the clinic, Jacinta had left her chair to walk around behind him and shut the door, and now she’d paused, not a foot from him, to deliver her dart.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders.

  ‘One of the people is getting a darned sight too much consideration,’ he growled, then the lips she’d fantasised about came down on hers in precisely the way they had in the dream, and he tucked her close to his long, hard body, just as he had in the dream, and—

  Someone knocked on the door?

  That hadn’t happened in the dream, though it had usually stopped just as abruptly.

  ‘I’m leaving now, Mike.’ Carmel’s honeyed words carried clearly through the door. ‘You’re sure I can’t get you anything before I go?’

  ‘You have to open it and talk to her,’ Jacinta muttered at him, peeling herself from his body and trying to still the trembling in her knees.

  But as he turned to the door and opened it, her gaze followed him, riveted to him as she tried to work out why he’d kissed her—and whether it had had as tumultuous an effect on him as it had on her.

  The low murmur of his voice and Carmel’s trilling laugh came through to her, but nothing made any sense any more, so Jacinta was still standing, as if she’d taken root on the spot, when he shut the door and turned to face her.

  ‘I suppose if I kiss you again someone else will interrupt. What time do all your lame ducks start arriving?’

  If he kisses me again, I’ll probably faint—that was Jacinta’s first thought, but she pulled herself together sufficiently to protest at his derogatory remark.

  ‘Most of the members of “Optional Extras” are service providers or their staff, or government employees working in youth-related fields. They are not lame ducks.’

  ‘But they’ll probably arrive, won’t they?’ Mike persisted, as if he really wanted to kiss her again.

  Jacinta forced herself to think of the elegant blonde who’d called him ‘darling’ on Saturday night.

  ‘I don’t see that it matters,’ she said crossly. ‘Any more than I can understand why you’d even want to kiss a little brown mouse like me when you’ve got that very kissable blonde at your disposal. I’m not here for your amusement, you know.’

  Mike shook his head and looked gravely down at her.

  ‘If there’s anything even vaguely amusing in this situation, I have yet to find it,’ he grumbled. ‘And, believe me, this kissing thing is just as puzzling to me as it must be to you. As you said, there’s Jaclyn…’

  His voice trailed away and he edged closer, and though Jacinta knew exactly what was about to happen—after all, she’d dreamed it just this way—she didn’t move, except to tilt her chin so when Mike’s lips claimed hers, she was ready. She slipped her hands around his shoulders and clung on for support, kissing him as thoroughly as he was kissing her—taking herself into uncharted territory, way beyond the boundaries of the dream.

  Of any dream!

  ‘Jacinta, your pizzas are here.’

  This time Mark’s voice interrupted, and she broke away from Mike, grabbed her handbag from the bottom drawer of her desk and was about to rush out the door when Mike’s hand grasped her shoulder.

  ‘We are having dinner together later?’ he said, his voice so husky she could feel it stroke across her skin.

  Too confused to speak, she nodded, then, as she fled out the door, regretted the movement. Having dinner with him was equivalent to abandoning the rim of the volcano by leaping into the inferno.

  Not a good idea.

  Mike watched her pay a pizza delivery youth, then deposit the boxes on a table at the back of the waiting room. Mark was pulling chairs into a circle. Did he stay on because he was as committed to the street kids as Jacinta was, or because he fancied her?

  He only worked part time—maybe he liked the free feed!

  What Mark did or didn’t do was none of his business, Mike reminded himself, but that didn’t stop him scowling at the younger man, who’d just patted Jacinta on her neat little backside.

  Fortunately, people began arriving, greeting Jacinta and Mark, grabbing a slice of pizza before settling down on chairs. Mike was surprised to see quite senior government employees taking their places beside kids like Dean and Will. A vaguely familiar older woman—maybe Jacinta’s mother—had come in with Will and Dean, and Mike, from his vantage point near the consulting-room door, studied her.

  ‘You can join us if you wish.’

  Jacinta’s clear voice rose above the buzz of conversation, and Mike, who’d been considering how attractive Jacinta would still be in middle age, was startled into movement.

  ‘Everyone,’ Jacinta continued, ‘the gentleman up the back is Dr Mike Trent, head of Trent Clinics, here to see what nefarious plots we’re hatching in his waiting room.’

  General laughter greeted this remark, and a couple of men and women he knew from government committee work turned to greet him. Then everyone settled down, Jacinta called the meeting to order and discussion began.

  ‘I can’t believe we’ve achieved so much in such a short time,’ the woman sitting beside Mike whispered, while one speaker was sorting through his notes for some figures he’d apparently lost. ‘Only a couple of months ago we were all doing our own thing. It was like applying Band-Aids to a burst blood vessel. I’m Bonnie Curtis, by the way. I run Teen Scene.’

  ‘The group that’s setting up the new permanent accommodation house? I’ve seen it on television and read of it in the papers.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Bonnie said cheerfully. ‘It’ll be up and running in a couple of weeks, with young Fizzy, Will, Dean, a girl named Charis and a youngster called Jarrod—he’s at night school tonight—moving in as the first boarders. Looking around here at the paint job Jacinta did over the weekend, I feel a bit guilty. She’s the one who got the “Kids Helping Kids” group going, and I had them all helping me paint on Sunday.’

  The ‘Kids Helping Kids’ remark rang no bells, so Mike was about to ask about funding for the house where the young people would live when the speaker found his notes and started explaining the figures.

  These more or less answered the
question Mike hadn’t asked. A group that raised money to be spent specifically on projects for young people had paid for the house. The government would subsidise the wages of two house-parents, and the ‘boarders’ would all pay a portion of their youth allowance towards their board and keep.

  Discussions on security of the premises followed, then the talk moved on to shelters and the need for them to be more adaptable to the needs of the young people who used them.

  ‘I hadn’t realised there were so many interconnected problems,’ he whispered to Bonnie, as a young woman expressed a concern about the hours shelters could open.

  ‘Been living too long in the fleshpots of Forest Glen?’ she murmured.

  He smiled at her.

  ‘I’m certainly out of touch,’ he admitted, though he did wonder how everyone in the world seemed to know about his life and lifestyle while he knew so little about what was happening back here where it had all begun.

  He was still considering this conundrum when the meeting finished. Mark collected the empty pizza boxes and took them out to the rubbish. Mike decided Carmel must know about the meetings as the smell of pizza wouldn’t disappear overnight, but before he had time to follow up this thought Jacinta came towards him and he shifted his attention to her.

  So it was disconcerting when she walked straight past him to give the woman he’d noticed with the boys a quick kiss.

  There was a murmured conversation, too low for Mike to catch, but if he thought his ‘date’ was going to introduce him to her relative, he was doomed to disappointment. Mrs Ford was already heading for the stairs with Will and Dean—who’d earlier come over to shake his hand—walking on either side of her.

  ‘I guessed that was your mother. What does she do in all this?’ he asked, when Jacinta appeared by his side.

  ‘Care?’ she said, a teasing glint in her eye.

  ‘Actually,’ she relented, ‘she’s one of those much-maligned creatures, a social worker. She only works part time these days. But she does care, and she’s also very knowledgeable about long-term consequences of decisions I tend to take without thinking.’

  Mike wanted to ask for a ‘for instance’, but he also wanted to kiss her again. As that didn’t seem a very good idea, he suggested they depart. ‘After all, I’ve been here since seven-thirty this morning, which makes it a fourteen-hour day—longer than I can afford to pay me.’