The Doctor’s Special Touch

by Marion Lennox

  She was being assessed, Ally decided as she petrissaged Hilda’s leathery skin. These four were a representative sample of the town’s elders, and she knew that if she made them happy it was tantamount to having a certificate saying, ‘Dr Ally is respectable.’

  She was incredibly grateful, but as she eased their knots of tension, warmed their muscles and made them relax so deeply that sleep that night was almost assured, her mind kept wandering to Darcy.

  To the feel of him. To his smile. To the look of confusion in his eyes as he’d asked her out and she’d refused.

  He’d looked confused.

  Did he realise what he did to her? she wondered. And decided he couldn’t. He mustn’t. She was here with a goal, and that goal certainly didn’t involve the local doctor. To give up all she’d given up, and then calmly walk into a relationship with a doctor who practised medicine in this town-who lived in her grandfather’s house… No.

  Should she have even come back here? Who knew? But as she bade an effusive Hilda goodbye, having first booked her another appointment for the same time next week, she knew the reception she was getting was mostly because of her background. People were eager to help, and they’d be eager to help her mother as well.

  She bit her lip. How long?

  Maybe not so long. She counted her takings and thought maybe it wouldn’t be very long at all before she could rent somewhere decent and hire someone during the day for the times when her mother couldn’t be alone.

  She walked upstairs, conscious of the fact that she was bone weary. Five long massages in an afternoon was probably one too many, but the thought of how much she’d earned more than made up for aching muscles.

  At least she had food. The revellers of the morning had left plates of leftovers. Betty had offered to throw them out and Ally had said-with dignity-that she’d dispose of them herself.

  Which was just what she was doing, she thought, collapsing into her window chair and wrapping herself around a cold sausage roll. It wasn’t great but it was food and it was free.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Go away,’ she told it, but it kept ringing. Maybe it was someone wanting an appointment so she heaved herself out of her chair-with a groan-and answered.

  ‘Ally.’

  ‘Darcy.’ She was straight into defence mode and he heard it.

  ‘There’s no need to put up the armour.’

  ‘Isn’t there?’

  ‘No. I saw your light go out downstairs.’

  ‘It happens,’ she said cautiously. ‘At the end of the day I turn my light off. I bet you do, too.’

  ‘So, have you rethought dinner?’

  She eyed the receiver. She eyed her sausage roll-and took another bite. Three fast chews and it was down.

  ‘I’ve eaten,’ she told him.

  ‘You’ve eaten dinner?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Your light only went out three minutes ago.’

  ‘I’m a fast eater. Good night, Darcy.’

  ‘This is crazy. There’s a great little place around the headland-part of the Nautilus Resort. They have a five-star menu.’

  She eyed another congealed sausage roll. ‘I’m eating five-star food right now.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Nope. I’m eating premium beef in a crisp wrap of melt-in-the-mouth pastry.’ She looked at the ketchup container in the middle of the plate where sausage rolls had been dunked this morning. The sauce had bits of broken sausage roll floating in its murky depths.

  She lifted another roll and dunked.

  ‘With gourmet sauce on the side,’ she told him. ‘It’s magnificent.’

  ‘You cooked that in three minutes?’

  ‘Not only am I the world’s best masseuse,’ she said modestly, ‘but I cook a mean five-star dinner.’

  ‘Want to share?’

  ‘Cook your own.’

  ‘I shared mine last night.’

  Enough. This was getting way too familiar for comfort. And way too…enticing?

  ‘Leave it, Darcy,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to take this relationship any further than the professional.’

  ‘Professional colleagues share meals.’

  ‘Not these two,’ she told him, and put down the phone before he could say another word. She crossed back to the window and looked out-just to see if the lights were on in the surgery next door. They weren’t. But Darcy was leaning against his car. He had his cell phone in his hand and he was looking up at her window.

  When he saw her he smiled.

  She hauled down the blind like he was as assassin. Drat the man, what was he doing?

  He was unequalising her equilibrium, she told herself crossly. She had her future mapped and it was going to work. It had to work. Without Darcy.

  ‘Have another gourmet beef roll in crispy pastry with fine jus on the side,’ she told herself crossly. She dunked her cold sausage roll in ketchup again, slid down onto her bed and decided she’d sulk for the rest of the night. There was nothing else to do.

  Sulking was all very well, but it wasn’t exactly time-consuming.

  For the last few nights-ever since she’d arrived in town-Ally had worked feverishly to get her rooms in order. Now her rooms were in order.

  What was left to do?

  She should have gone to the library and found herself a book, she thought. Where was television when you needed it?

  She had three massage manuals and nothing else.

  Massage manuals palled after a while.

  Darcy must be long gone. She risked another glance out the window. His car was no longer there. His surgery was in darkness.

  Good. Great.

  It was eight at night. She could just…

  What? Go to the pub?

  She could go down to the refuge, she thought suddenly. She hadn’t seen any of the commune people all day. They’d be totally disorientated. For years they’d have been doing exactly what Jerry ordered, and now the future was theirs to do with as they wished. The concept would be terrifying.

  Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to see whether any of them would like a gentle shoulder and neck massage before they slept. Maybe she could even talk to them about Jerry.

  It wasn’t her business, she told herself, but, then, it was she who’d pulled the rug from under them. She’d been the catalyst in Jerry’s arrest.

  Jerry was still in town. She’d spoken briefly to the police sergeant that morning. With outstanding warrants in three Australian states, plus one outstanding warrant in the U.S., there was some discussion as to where to take him. It had been decided he was to stay in Tambrine Creek until it was sorted.

  For the people in the refuge, the fact that Jerry was still so near would be even more disorientating, she thought, remembering the chaos when she’d been twelve and the arrests had started for the first time.

  She remembered her mother’s reaction. Her tearing, aching sense of loyalty to someone who deserved none of it. Her distress that had spiralled downward.

  Ouch. Don’t go there, she told herself. Think of something else.

  Do something.

  She could just walk down to the refuge, she told herself. It wouldn’t hurt. Five minutes. Just poke your nose in and make sure everything’s OK, then get yourself back to minding your own business.

  She’d expected the marine refuge to be peaceful. There’d been welfare officers and reporters with them all day, she knew. They’d be exhausted. They might even be in bed.

  She entered-and was met by turmoil.

  There was a little girl retching on the kitchenette floor. Marigold? She’d been discharged from hospital only hours ago, she thought, stunned. Darcy had released Marigold and David into their mothers’ care.

  A little boy was writhing and moaning on the couch by the window. Penny was bending over him. From the bedroom came the high, thin wail of another child in distress.

  What on earth was happening?

  Triage. Marigold was sobbing and retching and crum
pling to the floor and she was four years old. That was where Ally went first.

  She lifted the child to the sink, though by the look of the floor it was hardly worth it. Marigold retched until she could retch no more, then slumped backward into her arms.

  ‘Mummy,’ she whimpered.

  Marigold was Lorraine’s child. Ally looked around. Penny was still bending over…David? Yes, David. She was holding a bucket, and David needed it.

  ‘Where’s Lorraine?’ Ally asked, and Penny gave her a despairing glance before turning back to her son.

  ‘In the bedroom. She’s ill, too. The kids have got stomach cramps and Lorraine’s as bad.’

  Ally looked down at David. He was ill but he was still strong enough to hold up his head.

  He could be left to his mother.

  Still cradling the whimpering Marigold, Ally walked through to the kids’ bunk room.

  Two of the kids were sitting up in bed, bemused, as if they were wondering what all the fuss was about. Another child was bent over another bucket, and Lorraine was clutching her stomach as if she’d like to join him.

  ‘What the…?’

  ‘It must be food poisoning.’ Cornelia, the refuge caretaker, appeared at her shoulder with a suddenness that made her jump. ‘One of the guys-Greg-has cramps as well. I’ve been trying to ring Dr Rochester but he’s been out of town. He was just back in calling range when a local farmer rang to say he’d caught his hand in a post-driver, and Dr Rochester had to go out again.’

  Ally sorted the urgent from the dross. Darcy wasn’t coming. All the other information was superfluous. ‘Are they sending someone from the hospital?’

  ‘There’s no one to send. Unless they call in emergency staff, and they’ll only do that in an emergency.’

  Oh, great. Define emergency.

  Why should she define anything? Ally asked herself, savage at the way medical need was being thrust at her. She was a massage therapist. She wasn’t a doctor. She should have ripped up her registration long ago.

  No.

  She was a doctor whether she liked it or not, she acknowledged. She knew what was life-threatening.

  The child she was holding was ill already. Released from hospital today, a dose of food poisoning could dehydrate her to the point of death.

  Define emergency? She had.

  ‘What have they eaten?’ she snapped.

  Cornelia was a middle-aged woman who was slow at the best of times. She took her time to think. While she did, Ally stared around at the kids and at Lorraine.

  The little boy was in distress, but he didn’t look limp. He was wailing and his mother was trying to comfort him. She wasn’t in a position to do much. Marigold made a feeble gesture that she wanted to go to her mother but Lorraine was clutching her stomach in a gesture that told Ally she was feeling as dreadful as her children.

  ‘Mummy’s not well either,’ Ally told her, firming her hold. ‘You must all have tummyaches. It’s just as well I’m a doctor.’

  What was she saying? Admitting that she was a doctor for the second time in two days?

  Help. Her decisions as to her future were being eroded by the second. But Marigold needed reassurance more than anything.

  ‘What did you guys eat today?’ she asked, and Marigold managed to answer before Cornelia answered for her.

  ‘Everything,’ she whispered. ‘We ate everything.’

  ‘The baker put on a huge spread for your party,’ Cornelia said, finally getting it together. ‘There was so much food, and many of the locals contributed more. There was lots left, so they brought it here. We had sausage rolls, hot dogs, cream puffs, éclairs, lamingtons, sponge cakes…’

  Marigold cringed and Ally took a deep breath. Sausage rolls. Hot dogs. Sure, they could hold bacteria. If they did then she could well be writhing on the floor in a few hours herself, but it was much more likely that bacteria had nothing to do with this.

  She remembered the food Jerry had decreed they eat all those years ago. Why would he have changed? He wouldn’t, she thought. He’d have access to all their pensions but any spare money would be his to do with as he wished.

  Every single one of these people was seriously malnourished. That was why the chickenpox had hit so hard.

  So they’d been starved for years-and then given a feast of hot dogs, cream puffs, éclairs. As much as they could eat.

  Still holding Marigold, she knelt before Lorraine so she was right in her field of vision. The little boy could see her, too.

  ‘Lorraine.’

  Lorraine looked up, her face desperate. ‘Someone’s poisoned us,’ she whimpered.

  Great. Marigold jerked in her arms. The child might be only four years old but she knew what the word ‘poison’ meant.

  Terror.

  ‘No,’ Ally said strongly. She might be wrong, but she doubted it, and even if she was… What these people needed most was reassurance. They’d been thrust out of their way of life, put at the mercy of the townspeople who Jerry would have taught them to fear.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ she told Lorraine, in a voice that was stronger than the one she’d used with Marigold. ‘It’s my guess that you’ve been eating the same food for years. Rice and a tiny bit of free-range chicken and the vegetables you’ve grown yourselves. Nothing else. You’ve eaten the same thing day after day after day, and then today you’ve been given a feast. You’ve had pastry and sweets and butter and rich, fatty meat, and you’ve all eaten too much, too fast for your stomachs to handle.’ She gestured to the children who weren’t ill. ‘It’s a miracle that all of you aren’t vomiting. I’ll give you injections of Maxolon-that’ll stop the vomiting-and I’ll set up a drip for Marigold as I’m worried that she’ll go back to being dehydrated. Maybe David needs a drip, too. But I’m afraid there’s not much else I can do. Your bodies are just going to have to get rid of what they can’t handle.’

  Lorraine groaned. She clutched her stomach again and then she sat back and gazed up at Ally in disbelief.

  ‘I ate six lamingtons,’ she managed, and groaned again.

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Ally smiled, but Marigold’s hands were clutching her around her neck and she felt her little body go rigid as once more she started to retch.

  ‘Can you ring the hospital again?’ she asked Cornelia. She was thinking through the options as she spoke. She could take Marigold to the hospital but all of them needed supervision. It would be easier if she settled them here. Also, it’d be much less traumatic than to try and transport people who were already so ill. ‘I want a nurse down here,’ she said. ‘I want saline drips and Maxolon. Enough for half a dozen patients. Tell them what’s happening.’

  ‘They won’t send a nurse,’ Cornelia muttered, glancing out with disbelief to the state of a kitchen Ally suspected she was usually deeply proud of. Not now. ‘I told you. They don’t have spare staff.’

  ‘They’ll have people they can call on in an emergency,’ Ally told her. ‘This is an emergency.’

  ‘But Dr Rochester-’

  ‘Dr Rochester is out of town. He’s not here and I am, so you’ll just have to be content with Dr Westruther.’

  Then she added a rider under her breath before she reached for the phone herself to make the call Cornelia was so reluctant to make.

  ‘And you’ll have to be content with Dr Westruther, whether Dr Westruther likes it or whether she doesn’t.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  DARCY walked into the refuge and stopped dead.

  Ally was scrubbing the kitchenette floor.

  The sitting room was deserted. A fire still crackled in the grate, but the only other sign of life was Ally’s backside. It was an unmistakable backside. Her trousers were stretched tight over what was really a very nice posterior. The sleeves of her windcheater were hauled up almost to her shoulders. Her blonde hair was escaping from the twist she’d had it in earlier in the day, and it was wisping forward.

  She had a scrubbing brush and a bucket of steaming water, and she was scrubb
ing as if her life depended on it.

  The place stank. That was the only sign that anything was wrong.

  Darcy had brought Will Daly down to the hospital to be told there was drama at the refuge, but Will had lost too much blood to leave. He’d had to cross-match and set up a transfusion and it had been half an hour before he’d been able to find out for himself what was happening.

  ‘Ally,’ he said-tentatively-and she turned. When she saw who it was, she sat back on her heels and she glared.

  It was some glare.

  ‘I might have known,’ she said with loathing. ‘I have two square feet of kitchen floor-space left to scrub and, hooray, here comes the cavalry. The great Dr Rochester, arriving just when he’s most needed. What a hero.’

  ‘Steady on,’ he said, trying not to smile. ‘Are things OK?’

  ‘Fine. No thanks to you.’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Doing something nice and clean?’ she demanded with gentle mockery. ‘A squashed finger, I hear. I bet someone else scrubbed the floor.’

  ‘His wife,’ he admitted.

  ‘How is he?’ she asked, sarcasm fading.

  ‘Bad. But I’d say it’s mostly repairable bone damage. Not nerve as far as I can tell. It’s Will Daly. He says he knows you.’

  ‘I went to school with Will.’ She brushed her wispy hair behind her ears. ‘He always beat me at marbles. So he’ll be OK?’

  ‘He has all major feeling. He’ll need an orthopaedic surgeon.’ He smiled. ‘If he’s lucky, his skill at marbles will hardly be impaired.’

  ‘Good.’ She managed a smile in return but she was looking distracted. ‘You’ll send him to Melbourne?’

  ‘I’ve arranged for him to be taken to St Margaret’s tomorrow. They have the best orthopaedic unit and Robert can go with him.’

  ‘The guy with the face?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Darcy strolled over and looked down at her shining floor. ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘He didn’t join in the feast,’ Ally told him. ‘The pain relief you’ve given him is so welcome that all he’s done is sleep.’

  Darcy’s smile grew a trifle rueful. ‘I guess we should be thankful for small mercies.’ He gazed down at her for a moment. She looked almost unreal. Sitting on the floor with her scrubbing brush, looking like…