‘She was fine,’ Bob continued. ‘Adam said she ate a huge lunch—latish like. They cracked a bottle of champagne and Grace had three glasses. And then she felt a bit wobbly so she went for a lie-down. Adam was a bit concerned, so he popped in after dinner. He found her…’ His voice broke off in distress.
Blake lifted the wrinkled eyelids. Grace’s pupils were dilated and unresponsive. Nothing.
‘Is it her heart?’ Bob whispered, his face almost as ashen as Grace’s. ‘Hell…Grace… We thought Grace’d live for ever.’
So had everyone, Nell thought, feeling sick. She’d asked the old lady to take her out to sea. She’d done this to her!
‘Had she taken her diabetic tablets?’ Blake demanded across their grim thoughts, and Bob frowned.
‘Diabetic tablets?’
But Henry knew. ‘Yeah, she did,’ he volunteered. ‘Adam said to tell you that. He said they were late having lunch and with the champagne and everything she thought she should take two.’
‘Two,’ Blake said, his face clearing like magic. ‘Nell, would you—?’
But Nell was already scrambling for the blood-sugar monitor. She handed it to Blake, and her heart was lifting. Two… Thank you, God. Oh, thank you. Wordlessly Blake took a pin-prick of blood. Seconds later he had the answer—and it was great!
‘She’s having a hypo,’ he told them, unable to conceal his delight, already finding a vein. ‘Her blood sugar’s way down. It’s almost zero.’
‘You’re kidding.’ Bob and Henry had enough medical training to realise what that meant. ‘Hell,’ Henry said, staring down at Grace’s limp form. ‘You mean if we’d just given her juice… But…’ His face clouded again. ‘We couldn’t. She was unconscious. Doc, she looks…she looks almost dead. Is it too late?’
‘She’s not and it certainly isn’t,’ Blake said firmly. ‘Though she’s obviously past a cure by a glass of juice. But I’m betting if we give her an injection of glucose she’ll be back to normal in no time. Watch.’
And that was the way it was. Almost at the prick of the needle, Grace stirred and woke. It was one of medicine’s nicest miracle cures, Nell thought, almost delirious with relief. Not a heart attack. Only a hypo. She closed her eyes and sat down in a nearby chair, her professional detachment flying straight out the window. Oh, Grace…
‘I… Where…?’ It was a faint whisper, echoing gloriously through the examination cubicle. The old lady was confused and upset, but she was already coherent, and Blake took her hand and held it. Hard.
‘You’ve had a diabetic hypo,’ he told her, his voice gentle but steady. ‘You remember? It’s the thing I’m always warning you against. Taking two tablets indeed…’
Grace’s eyes creased in confusion, but Blake’s eyes were sure and reassuring. Finally she searched the room and her eyes found Nell. ‘It’s Nell,’ she said, her voice wondering.
Nell thought, She recognises me. All this and she still recognises me. But she hardly knows me. ‘You scared the life out of us,’ she managed. ‘Oh, Grace…’
‘I never meant to. Oh, girl, I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t you be sorry.’ Nell found her feet and found her smile and stooped to hug Grace. ‘Don’t you dare be sorry. After all you’ve done today… You deserve to do whatever you want.’
‘Except kill yourself with neglect,’ Blake growled, trying to keep his own emotions under control. ‘OK, Grace. We’ll organise you a meal. We’ll keep your blood sugar monitored all night and you’re not going home until it’s steady.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve had enough trouble with the fishing community for one day.’
Grace was recovered enough to grin. ‘No. How can you say that? You just got to sit on a ledge while we risked life and limb.’
‘Yeah? A ledge made of crumbling sandstone…’
‘It’s the women who’re the toughest,’ Grace said serenely, and for some reason her old eyes rested on Nell’s with something that looked astonishingly like affection. And caring.
‘Says who?’ Blake’s relief at the outcome was making him feel fantastic. With Nell safe by his side…
Now why had he thought that?
‘Let’s get you into the ward,’ he growled, and he found all of them were looking at him in astonishment.
‘Do you need to sound grumpy?’ Grace shook her head. ‘And I’m not staying here. Bob, take me home.’
‘Bob, wheel her into the ward.’ Blake had himself together again—almost. He lifted his syringe. ‘You need a meal and then a sleep, with us monitoring your blood sugar at regular intervals, and you’re not going home until I’m convinced you’re settled.’ He held the sharp needle against the light, and then looked at Grace, considering. ‘So…do you want to go quietly, or do you want to suffer the consequences?’
And Grace laughed and held up her hands in mock surrender. ‘OK, Dr Sutherland,’ she conceded. ‘You’re the boss.’
‘That’s just the way I like it,’ Blake said, and Nell grinned. She did like a happy ending. Especially this one.
‘It’s time you went home to bed, too,’ Blake told her. ‘I’ll stay and do my ward rounds.’
‘I’ll do them with you.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘You know damned well there’s a need,’ she said severely. ‘Grace, this man’s avoiding me. What do you make of that?’
‘I think any man who avoids a girl in nightwear as gorgeous as yours needs his head read,’ Grace said stoutly, recovering by the minute.
Her nightwear… ‘Oh, help.’ Then Nell grinned and did a pirouette right there and then. God was in his heaven, and all was right with Nell’s world.
Grace smiled, and this time there was no mistaking her affection. ‘It makes a change from a white coat,’ she told her.
There was that. ‘It does indeed,’ Nell agreed. And then, before he could guess what she intended, Nell tucked her hand in Blake’s. ‘Come on, Dr, Sutherland. Let’s get on with it.’ She smiled at Bob and Henry, and then at Grace, encompassing them all in her happiness. ‘Dr Sutherland and I are going to do his ward rounds and then he’s going to tell me his life story. What do you think of that?’
Grace smiled. ‘I think Dr Sutherland had better be careful.’ She hesitated. ‘Looks like the days of a lone medico are over. By the look of the pair of you, in thirty years Nell could be as entangled in the concerns of this town as I am.’ And her smile said she thought that was no bad fate at all.
Not like Blake. His hand in Nell’s was suddenly rigid. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Don’t fight against the tide,’ Grace told him, still smiling. ‘There’s nought you can do about it—and would you really want to try?’
Yes!
But for now he had no choice. Nell’s hand lay in his, she was waiting and he had no choice but to get on with it. It was either that or pick her up bodily and put her out of the door. That was maybe an appealing option, he thought grimly, but she was smiling at him, too.
Fight against the tide? Some things were just impossible.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS over an hour later before Nell had Blake where she wanted him—back in the kitchen with a pot of coffee between them. ‘Now,’ she said severely, and he shook his head.
‘Now I need to finish my coffee and go to bed. I’d imagine you do, too.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. I slept all afternoon and I’m not tired, so stop prevaricating. It’s your turn to talk, Dr Sutherland. I told you the “How Nell Was a Dope” story with all the gory details. Now you tell me “Why Blake Swore Off Relationships For Ever”. I’m listening.’
He didn’t want to. He drank his coffee too fast and then rose from the table. Nell’s hand reached out and caught his, pulling him back.
‘No,’ she said severely. ‘Sit.’
He managed a smile at that. ‘Hey, I’m not Ernest.’
‘No. But sit, all the same.’ She didn’t release his hand, and he stared down at their intertwined fingers. Her hand
felt warm and strong. Despite his wish to stay uninvolved with this amazing woman, the story she’d told him flooded back.
What sort of people had her grandparents been? he wondered. He remembered the old lady—fiercely independent and almost paranoid with pride. It had taken every inch of his skill to persuade her to allow nurses into her home for those last few months. He hadn’t warmed to her at all.
And now… Letting his hand rest in Nell’s, he felt an almost overwhelming longing for the old lady to still be alive. So he could go and shout at her—ask her what the hell she thought she’d been doing to allow Nell to have that sort of dreadful, barren childhood.
If she’d been adopted she’d have been loved to bits, he thought. Anyone would love her. She deserved to be loved.
If she’d been loved in childhood she wouldn’t be in this mess, he thought bitterly, and then the thought came out of left field.
He wouldn’t be in this mess!
‘Hey, it’s not that bad,’ she murmured, and his eyes flew to hers.
‘What?’
‘You look angry. Does sharing your past make you cross?’
‘No, I…’
‘You are going to tell me—aren’t you?’
Blake took a deep breath. ‘There’s nothing to tell. I was married and now I’m not. Sylvia’s dead.’
‘I know that. Em said your wife was killed in a car crash.’
‘That’s right. End of story. So what else do you want to know?’
‘Why Em says the mention of her name makes you clam up. Why you can’t talk about her. Why it still hurts so damned much.’
‘She was killed.’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t explain it,’ she said as if he was being deliberately obtuse. ‘After three years she should be fading to a beloved memory. She shouldn’t be stabbing you with pain. Stopping you living to the full.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘So explain. Make me understand.’
He glared. ‘You need to be in bed.’
And she glared back. Desperate measures were called for. How had she made him do what she wanted in the past? Yeah, right.
Nell grinned and felt for the top button of her bathrobe. ‘Blake Sutherland, you have two minutes,’ she said, exasperated. ‘And then I’m starting to strip.’ She undid her top button, her eyes daring him. ‘One button at a time. All the way.’
Good grief! He eyed her uneasily. Make a joke, he told himself desperately. Hell, how else could he cope? ‘Is this the line you try on patients who are reluctant to tell you their problems?’
‘All the time,’ she said serenely, and he almost choked.
‘I don’t believe you.’
Her fingers moved to the next button. ‘Try me.’
‘I’ll head back to the hospital.’
‘I’ll follow you to the hospital,’ she said. ‘Stark naked.’
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘No?’ Her green eyes sparked with mischief, and she undid the next button. ‘Are you sure?’
And then she undid the next…
Blake didn’t depend in the least on her good sense—or her sense of decency, he decided. Her good sense should have prevented her trying to go out through the harbour mouth this morning, and she’d risked drowning instead. Compared to that, a naked display in the grounds of the hospital would be nothing.
Despite himself, his lips twitched. She saw, and she smiled encouragingly.
‘You should know I don’t threaten what I can’t deliver. So tell me.’
‘You’re incorrigible.’
She chuckled. ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me. Incorrigible. I like it.’
‘Nell…’
‘Just tell me.’
He sighed. He sighed again but her look was stern.
‘Come on.’
And there was no choice. Tentatively he tried, but it hurt. It hurt even to say the name. ‘Sylvia…’
Nell sighed, exasperated. ‘Your wife’s name was Sylvia. I know that. What else?’
‘She was a mistake.’
‘Well, join the club,’ Nell said without rancour. ‘You and Sylvia. Me and Richard. I bet Richard was the biggest disaster, though.’
‘Not necessarily. In fact, not even remotely.’
He still seemed reluctant to continue so Nell prodded some more. ‘So let me guess. She was a nymphomaniac who insisted on sleeping naked?’
He couldn’t help it. His mouth twisted into a smile, and Nell smiled with him. ‘That’s better,’ she approved. ‘Tell me more.’
‘I…’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, just do it,’ she snapped, losing patience. ‘Now.’
And he cast her one last long look—and started to talk.
‘Sylvia was another doctor,’ he said, and his tone was different now. Dispassionate. It was as if what he was talking about concerned someone else—not him. ‘We met in final year—at a hospital Christmas celebration. She was gorgeous, intelligent, funny… In fact, she was everything I thought I wanted in a wife.’
‘I see.’ There was a tiny bit of Nell that didn’t like this, but surely it was illogical. What he thought of his dead wife had nothing to do with her—did it?
‘I’d been a swot,’ he told her, his voice still expressionless. ‘Like you, I was a scholarship kid. If I didn’t do well, I lost my funding, so I’d been head down, butt up in my books for years. It was Christmas. I’d just passed my final exams, I raised my head from my books and almost had it knocked off by Sylvia.’
‘You fell for her?’
‘Hook, line and sinker.’ He shrugged, and smiled a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘So much so that I asked her to marry me.’
‘And she did?’
‘No.’ He shook his head, and his gaze fell to the wedding ring on his finger. ‘Not then.’
‘Why not?’
‘Sylvia was having too much fun. She was so smart…’ He shook his head again. ‘She’d hardly had to study. Exams were something the rest of us fretted about, but not Sylvia. If she couldn’t get away with her extraordinary intelligence she charmed her way through them. And she seemed to hardly need sleep.’
He shrugged. ‘Anyway, as soon as the Christmas break was over and we settled back to work I could see the whole affair was stupid. Doomed. I wanted to do my surgical training so I needed to sleep and to study, and she didn’t. She thought I was boring. So… We graduated, I took up surgery and she took off for Europe. I expected never to see her again.’
‘Poor dear.’ Nell smiled with mock sympathy. She could imagine Blake as a recently graduated doctor, and she could also envisage what life must have been like for him then. Medical students might be too busy for a love life, but absurdly good-looking fully qualified young doctors as Blake must have been most definitely were not. ‘I can’t actually see you broken-hearted and bereft.’
He glanced up at that and met her dancing eyes, and he managed a grin himself.
‘Well, no. Not really.’
She chuckled. ‘You hardly have the look of a man who’d go unnoticed by the female population in general. After leaving the rigours of medical school behind you, I bet you went from girl to girl.’
‘Hardly that. But…’ His grin faded. ‘OK, I had a good time, but I never felt settled. Even when I finished my surgical training, it was like Sylvia had left a shadow—a ghost I couldn’t exorcise. After a while I left Sydney and took up a consultant’s post at Niribil in Western Australia. Niribil’s about the size of Blairglen. I did general surgery rather than vascular surgery but I enjoyed the country. I enjoyed a smaller, familiar practice where everyone knew everyone.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And then Sylvia came home.’
‘I see.’
‘I bet you don’t.’ His voice was suddenly savage. ‘She was different. More fragile somehow. Brittle. But still breathtakingly lovely. She was on my doorstep when I got home from hospital one night, and she said simply that she’d missed me dreadfull
y and if I still wanted to, we’d be married. Straight away.’
‘So you were?’
‘Well, what would you have done?’ Blake closed his eyes in remembered pain. ‘Hell, I’d asked her more than once. I’d said if ever she changed her mind I was still there for her. And she was still lovely.’
‘But?’
‘Yeah, there’s a but,’ he said grimly. ‘Of course. I should have waited. It had been years since we’d been together, and we needed time. She didn’t give us time, and when I discovered what was wrong we were well and truly married. She was up to her neck in substance abuse.’
‘Oh, no…’
‘She’d thought she was so clever,’ he said grimly. ‘Apparently it had started before she finished medical school. Uppers to get her through the exams, tranquillisers to get her to sleep and then a frightening progression to the heavy stuff. When we’d thought she was just naturally bouncy she was really as high as a kite. Much of this, though, I didn’t find out until later.’
‘How much later?’
‘After she was dead.’
Nell drew in her breath. ‘Oh, Blake…’ Then she went on gently, ‘Do you want to tell me? I won’t insist.’
There was a moment’s pause. And then he shrugged. ‘Why not? Why not tell you everything? I’ve come this far.’ He took a deep breath. ‘As soon as she arrived, Sylvia applied for a registrar’s job at Niribil. There was no hesitation in employing her. After all, I knew her qualifications were sound. In view of the fact that I vouched for her—and that I was marrying her—the hospital board didn’t even bother to check her employment record in Europe. If they had…’
‘If they had?’
‘Then they’d have found out she had two malpractice suits coming up against her. Major ones. For gross negligence. Which was why she’d fled back to Australia.’ He chewed his bottom lip. ‘Anyway…’
‘Anyway?’
‘Anyway, we married,’ he said grimly. ‘And I started worrying almost straight away. You can’t live with someone for long without suspecting things aren’t OK. But I didn’t know for sure, and I didn’t say anything. After all, how could I be so crass as to suggest my wife was a drug addict?’
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