by Fiona Lowe
Chippy smiled in the way only greyhounds can.
She crossed the waiting room and was collecting her mail from her pigeonhole when she heard, ‘What the hell is that thing doing in here?’
She flinched at the raised, curt male voice and knew that Chippy would be shivering in his basket. Clutching her folders to her chest like a shield, she marched back into the waiting room. A tall guy with indecently glossy brown hair stood in the middle of the waiting room.
Two things instantly told her he was from out of town. Number one: she’d never met him. Number two: he was wearing a crisp white shirt with a tie that looked to be silk. It sat at his taut, freshly shaven throat in a wide Windsor knot that fitted perfectly against the collar with no hint of a gap or a glimpse of a top button. The tie was red and it contrasted dramatically with the dark grey pinstriped suit.
No one in Turraburra ever wore a suit unless they were attending a funeral, and even then no man in the district ever looked this neat, tailored, or gorgeous in a suit.
Gorgeous or not, his loud and curt voice had Chippy shrinking into his basket with fear. Her spine stiffened. Working hard at keeping calm and showing no fear, she said quietly, ‘I could ask you the same question.’
His chestnut-brown brows arrowed down fast into a dark V, forming a deep crease above the bridge of his nose. He looked taken aback. ‘I’m supposed to be here.’
She thought she heard him mutter, ‘Worse luck,’ as he quickly shoved a large hand with neatly trimmed nails out towards her. The abrupt action had every part of her urging her to step back for safety. Stop it. It’s okay. With great effort she glued her feet to the floor and stayed put but she didn’t take her gaze off his wide hand.
‘Noah Jackson,’ he said briskly. ‘Senior surgical registrar at Melbourne Victoria Hospital.’
She instantly recognised his name. She’d rung her friend Ally about him when she’d first heard he was meant to be coming but Ally had felt that there was no way he’d ever come to work at Turraburra. At the time it had made total sense because no surgery was done here anymore, and she’d thought there had just been a mistake. So why was he standing in the clinic waiting room, filling it with his impressive height and breadth?
She realised he was giving her an odd look and his hand was now hovering between them. Slowly, she let her right hand fall from across her chest. ‘Lilia Cartwright. Midwife.’
His palm slid against hers—warm and smooth—and then his long, strong fingers gripped the back of her hand. It was a firm, fast, no-nonsense handshake and it was over quickly, but the memory of the pressure lingered on her skin. She didn’t want to think about it. Not that it was awful, it was far from that, but the firm pressure of hands on her skin wasn’t something she dwelled on. Ever.
She pulled her hand back across her chest and concentrated on why Noah Jackson was there. ‘Has the Turraburra hospital board come into some money? Are they reopening the operating theatre?’
His full lips flattened into a grim line. ‘I’m not that lucky.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I haven’t come here as a surgeon.’
His words punched the air with the pop and fizz of barely restrained politeness, which matched his tight expression. Was he upset? Perhaps he’d come to Turraburra for a funeral after all. Her eyes flicked over his suit and, despite not wanting to, she noticed how well it fitted his body. How his trousers highlighted his narrow hips and sat flat against his abdomen. How the tailored jacket emphasised his broad shoulders.
Not safe, Lily. She swallowed and found her voice. ‘What have you come as, then?’
He threw out his left arm, gesticulating towards the door. ‘I’m this poor excuse of a town’s doctor for the next month.’
‘No.’ The word shot out automatically—deep and disbelieving—driven from her mouth in defence of her beloved town. In defence of the patients.
Turraburra needed a general practitioner, not a surgeon. The character traits required to become a surgeon—a driven personality, arrogance and high self-belief, along with viewing every patient in terms of ‘cutting out the problem’—were so far removed from a perfect match for Turraburra that it was laughable. What on earth was going on at the Melbourne Victoria that made them send a surgical registrar to be a locum GP? Heaven help them all.
His shoulders, already square, vibrated with tension and his brown eyes flashed with flecks of gold. ‘Believe me, Ms Cartwright,’ he said coldly, ‘if I had things my way, I wouldn’t be seen dead working here, but the powers that be have other plans. Neither of us has a choice.’
His antagonism slammed into her like storm waves pounding against the pier. She acknowledged that she deserved some of his hostility because her heartfelt, shock-driven ‘No’ had been impolite and unwelcoming. It had unwittingly put in her a position she avoided—that of making men angry. When it came to men in general she worked hard at going through life very much under their radar. The less she was noticed the better, and she certainly didn’t actively set out to make them angry.
She sucked in a breath. ‘I’m just surprised the Melbourne Victoria’s sent a surgeon to us, but, as you so succinctly pointed out, neither of us has a choice.’ She forced herself to smile, but it felt tight around the edges. ‘Welcome to Turraburra, Dr Jackson.’
He gave a half grunting, half huffing sound and swung his critical gaze back to Chippy. ‘Get the dog out of here. It doesn’t belong in a medical clinic.’
All her guilt about her own rudeness vanished and along with it her usual protective guard. ‘Chippy is the clinic’s therapy dog. He stays.’
Noah stared at the tall, willowy woman in front of him whose fingers had a death grip on a set of bright pink folders. Her pale cheeks had two bright spots of colour on them that matched her files and her sky-blue eyes sparked with the silver flash of a fencing foil. He was still smarting from her definite and decisive ‘No’. He might not want to work in this godforsaken place but who was she to judge him before he’d even started? ‘What the hell is a therapy dog?’
‘He provides some normalcy in the clinic,’ she said, her tone clipped.
‘Normalcy?’ He gave a harsh laugh, remembering his mother’s struggle to maintain any semblance of a normal life after her diagnosis. Remembering all the hours they’d spent in numerous medical practices’ waiting rooms, not dissimilar to this one, seeking a cure that had never come. ‘This is a medical clinic. It exists for sick people so there’s nothing normal about it. And talking about normal, that dog looks far from it.’
She pursed her lips and he noticed how they peaked in a very kissable bow before flushing a deep and enticing red. Usually, seeing something sexy like that on a woman was enough for him to turn on the charm but no way in hell was he was doing that with this prickly woman with the fault-finding gaze.
‘Chippy’s a greyhound,’ she snapped. ‘They’re supposed to be svelte animals.’
‘Is that what you call it?’ His laugh came out in a snort. ‘It looks anorexic to me and what’s with the collar? Is he descended from the tsars?’
He knew he was being obnoxious but there was something about Lilia Cartwright and her holier-than-thou tone that brought out the worst in him. Or was it the fact he’d spent the night sleeping on the world’s most uncomfortable bed and when he’d finally fallen asleep the harsh and incessant screeching of sulphur-crested cockatoos at dawn had woken him. God, he hated the country.
‘Have you quite finished?’ she said, her voice so cool he expected icicles to form on her ash-blonde hair. ‘Chippy calms agitated patients and the elderly at the nursing home adore him. Some of them don’t have anyone in their lives they can lavish affection on and Chippy is more than happy to be the recipient of that love. Medical studies have shown that a companion pet lowers blood pressure and eases emotional distress. Like I said, he absolutely stays.’
An irrational urge filled him to kick something and to kick it hard. He had the craziest feeling he was back in kindergarte
n and being timed out on the mat for bad behaviour. ‘If there’s even one complaint or one flea bite, the mutt goes.’
Her brows rose in a perfect arc of condescension. ‘In relative terms, Dr Jackson, you’re here for a blink of an eye. Chippy will far outstay you.’
The blink of an eye? Who was she kidding? ‘I’m here for seven hundred and twenty very long hours.’
Her blue eyes rounded. ‘You actually counted them?’
He shrugged. ‘It seemed appropriate at three a.m. when the hiss of fighting possums wearing bovver boots on my roof kept me awake.’
She laughed and unexpected dimples appeared in her cheeks. For a brief moment he glimpsed what she might look like if she ever relaxed. It tempted him to join her in laughter but then her tension-filled aura slammed back in place, shutting out any attempts at a connection.
He crossed his arms. ‘It wasn’t funny.’
‘I happen to know you could just have easily been kept awake by fighting possums in the leafy suburbs of Melbourne.’
Were they comrades-in-arms? Both victims of the vagaries of the Melbourne Victoria Hospital that had insisted on sending them to the back of beyond? A bubble of conciliation rose to the top of his dislike for her. ‘So you’ve been forced down here too?’
She shook her head so quickly that her thick and tight French braid swung across her shoulder. ‘Turraburra is my home. Melbourne was just a grimy pitstop I was forced to endure when I studied midwifery.’
He thought about his sun-filled apartment in leafy Kew, overlooking Yarra Bend Park. ‘My Melbourne’s not grimy.’
Again, one brow quirked up in disapproval. ‘My Turraburra’s not a poor excuse for a town.’
‘Well, at least we agree on our disagreement.’
‘Do you plan to be grumpy for the entire time you’re here?’
Her directness both annoyed and amused him. ‘Pretty much.’
One corner of her mouth twitched. ‘I guess forewarned is forearmed.’ She turned to go and then spun back. ‘Oh, and a word to the wise, that is, of course, if you’re capable of taking advice on board. I suggest you do things Karen’s way. She’s run this clinic for fifteen years and outstayed a myriad of medical staff.’
He bit off an acidic retort. He hadn’t even met a patient yet but if this last fifteen minutes with Ms Lilia Cartwright, Midwife, was anything to go by, it was going to be a hellishly long and difficult seven hundred and nineteen hours and forty-five minutes in Turraburra.
CHAPTER TWO
‘I’M HOME!’ LILY CALLED loudly over the blare of the TV so her grandfather had a chance of hearing her.
A thin arm shot up above the top of the couch and waved at her. ‘Marshmallow and I are watching re-runs of the doctor. Makes me realise you don’t see many phone boxes around any more, do you?’
Lily kissed him affectionately on the top of his head and stroked the sleeping cat as Chippy settled across her grandfather’s feet. ‘Until the mobile phone reception improves, I think Turraburra’s phone box is safe.’
‘I just hope I’m still alive by the time the national broadband scheme’s rolled out. The internet was so dodgy today it took me three goes before I could check my footy tipping site.’
‘A definite tragedy,’ she said wryly. Her grandfather loved all sports but at this time of year, with only a few games before the Australian Rules football finals started, he took it all very seriously. ‘Did you get down to the community centre today?’
He grunted.
‘Gramps?’ A ripple of anxiety wove through her that he might have driven to the centre.
Just recently, due to some episodes of numbness in his feet, she’d reluctantly told him it wasn’t safe for him to drive. Given how independent he was, he’d been seriously unhappy with that proclamation. It had taken quite some time to convince him but he’d finally seemed to come round and together they’d chosen a mobility scooter. Even at eighty-five, he’d insisted on getting a red one because everyone knew red went faster.
It was perfect for getting around Turraburra and, as she’d pointed out to him, he didn’t drive out of town much anyway. But despite all the logic behind the decision, the ‘gopher’, as he called it, had stayed in the garage. Lily was waiting for him to get sick of walking everywhere and start using it.
‘I took the gopher,’ he said grumpily. ‘Happy?’
‘I’m happy you went to your class at the centre.’
‘Well, I couldn’t let Muriel loose on the computer. She’d muck up all the settings and, besides, it was my day to teach the oldies how to edit photos.’
She pressed her lips together so she didn’t laugh, knowing from experience it didn’t go down well. He might be in his eighties but his mind was as sharp as a tack and he was young at heart, even if his body was starting to fail him. She ached when she thought of how much he hated that. Losing the car had been a bitter blow.
The ‘oldies’ he referred to were a group of frail elderly folk from the retirement home. Many were younger than him and made him look positively spry. He was interested in anything and everything and involved in the life of the town. He loved keeping abreast of all the latest technology, loved his top-of-the-range digital camera and he kept busy every day. His passion and enthusiasm for life often made her feel that hers was pale and listless in comparison.
He was her family and she loved him dearly. She owed him more than she could ever repay.
‘Muriel sent over a casserole for dinner,’ he said, rising to his feet.
‘That was kind of her.’ Muriel and Gramps had a very close friendship and got along very well as long as she didn’t touch his computer and he didn’t try to organise her pantry into some semblance of order.
He walked towards the kitchen. ‘She heard about the Hawker and De’Bortolli babies and knew you’d be tired. No new arrivals today?’
Lily thought about the tall, dark, ill-tempered surgical registrar who’d strode into her work world earlier in the day.
You forgot good looking.
No. Handsome belongs to someone who smiles.
Really? Trent smiled a lot and look how well that turned out.
She pulled her mind back fast from that thought because the key to her mental health was to never think about Trent. Ever. ‘A new doctor’s arrived in town.’
His rheumy, pale blue eyes lit up. ‘Male or female?’
‘Sorry, Gramps. I know how you like to flirt with the female doctors but this one’s a difficult bloke.’ She couldn’t stop the sigh that followed.
His face pulled down in a worried frown. ‘Has he done something?’
Since the nightmare of her relationship with Trent, Gramps had been overprotective of her, and she moved to reassure him. ‘No, nothing like that and I’m stronger now. I don’t take any crap from anyone any more. I just know he’s not a natural fit for Turraburra.’
‘We’re all entitled to one bad day—give the poor guy a minute to settle in. You and Karen will have him trained up in the Turraburra ways in no time flat.’
I wish. ‘I’m not so sure about that, Gramps. In fact, the only thing I have any confidence about at all is that it’s going to be a seriously long month.’
Noah stood on the town beach, gulping in great lung-fuls of salt air like it was the last drop of oxygen on the planet. Not that he believed in any of that positive-ions nonsense but he was desperate to banish the scent of air freshener with a urine chaser from his nostrils. From his clothes. From his skin.
His heart rate thundered hard and fast like it did after a long run, only this time its pounding had nothing to do with exercise and everything to do with anxiety. Slowing his breathing, he pulled in some long, controlled deep breaths and shucked off the cloak of claustrophobia that had come out of nowhere, engulfing him ten minutes earlier. It had been years since something like that had happened and as a result he’d thought he’d conquered it, but all it had taken was two hours at the Turraburra nursing home. God, he hated this town.
He’d arrived at the clinic at eight to be told by the efficient Karen that Tuesday mornings meant rounds at the nursing home. He’d crossed the grounds of the hospital where the bright spring daffodils had mocked him with their cheery and optimistic colour. He hadn’t felt the slightest bit cheery. The nurse in charge of the nursing home had given him a bundle of patient histories and a stack of drug sheets, which had immediately put paid to his plan of dashing in and dashing out.
Apparently, it had been three weeks since there’d been a doctor in Turraburra and his morning was consumed by that added complication. The first hour had passed relatively quickly by reviewing patient histories. After that, things had gone downhill fast as he’d examined each elderly patient. Men who’d once stood tall and strong now lay hunched, droop-faced and dribbling, rendered rigid by post-stroke muscle contractions. Women had stared at him with blank eyes—eyes that had reminded him of his mother’s. Eyes that had told him they knew he could do nothing for them.
God, he hated that most. It was the reason he’d pursued surgery—at least when he operated on someone, he usually made a difference. He had the capacity to heal, to change lives, but today, in the nursing home, he hadn’t been able to do any of that. All he’d been able to do had been to write prescriptions, suggest physiotherapy and recommend protein shakes. The memories of his mother’s long and traumatic suffering had jeered at the idea that any of it added to their quality of life.
He’d just finished examining the last patient when the aroma of cabbage and beef, the scent of pure soap and lavender water and the pervading and cloying smell of liberally used air freshener had closed in on him. He’d suddenly found it very hard to breathe. He’d fled fast—desperate for fresh air—and in the process he’d rudely rejected the offer of tea and biscuits from the nurses.
