A Doctor's Christmas Family

by Meredith Webber

  “I haven’t changed, Bill,” she said gently. “I’m still just as hard to love.”

  “I’ve changed,” he told her, turning his head to press a kiss into her right palm. “I can handle a ‘hard to love’ woman, if that woman’s you, Esther.”

  He turned the other way and gave her left palm a matching kiss, in case she wanted to curl both hands into fists and keep the kisses forever.

  Just in case…

  Dear Reader,

  It’s funny how stories come together in a writer’s head. Living in Queensland, a northeastern state of Australia, I’ve grown up aware of the destructive force of cyclones, which build up speed and gather up moisture as they roar in over the Pacific Ocean. Our cyclone season runs through the summer months so it’s not unusual to have a cyclone strike close to Christmas. In fact, our most devastating cyclone in recent times struck Darwin on Christmas Eve, wiping out most of the town, and creating despair at what is normally a time of great happiness.

  I was researching cyclones for another story, when I heard a news item about an outbreak of dengue in North Queensland. I read about the measures put in place to control it, and from there it was but a short step on the research path to the Center for Disease Control in the U.S.A. and to reading about the wonderful work the various divisions of CDC do.

  All of this was in my head when my editor asked if I’d do a Christmas story, so it seemed natural to set it in a cyclone-ravaged city, depleted of its usual population, and held in the grip of an outbreak of deadly disease. Not really a Christmas story? Probably not, but isn’t that what Christmas is all about—a renewal of hope and a sharing of love?

  I hope you enjoy it, but more than that, I hope your Christmas is free of drama—cyclonic or otherwise and brings with it peace, hope and love.

  Meredith Webber

  A Doctor’s Christmas Family

  Meredith Webber

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  ESTHER SHAW stood on the footpath outside the multistorey building, checking the street number against the piece of paper she held in her hand. Dark, angry clouds boiled overhead, turning late afternoon into an early dusk. The hot, humid air was heavy with the threat of rain, and though the sodden earth and brimming creeks she’d witnessed as she’d walked threatened renewed disaster if it rained again, she wished it would come to bring even a temporary coolness.

  She looked up at the building. In a city virtually flattened by a vicious cyclone less than a fortnight earlier, it was amazing to see this solid structure standing so tall. This apartment block and the hospital stood like two monoliths in this area—symbols of man’s power over the forces of nature.

  True, the hospital had lost some sheets of roofing iron and windows had been blown in, but the architects, engineers and construction workers who’d built it had done their job well, making sure the hospital didn’t buckle under the pressure of the worst tropical cyclone the north Queensland city of Jamestown had ever experienced.

  The same building crew had built this apartment block—she’d learned that from the admin officer who’d given her the address—and had obviously done as good a job as the damage was only superficial.

  ‘Sorry you’ll have to bunk in with other people,’ the woman had said, ‘but anyone with a roof and at least a few walls left standing is taking in those left homeless and others, like you, who’ve come to help. The army evacuated most non-essential inhabitants of the city within a couple of days, more than ten thousand, but people keep trickling back. Even if they haven’t got a house, Jamestown is still home.’

  Esther had understood more about the calamity as she’d walked the five blocks from the hospital to the apartment building. Everywhere in the scene of devastation, crews of civilians and army personnel were loading debris onto trucks. Huge old palm trees were dying on the ground, their round bundles of roots suggesting the fierce winds had torn them right out of the earth. Telegraph poles, snapped in half, lay like giant matchsticks wherever they’d been flung. And everywhere tattered streamers of tinsel and torn, wet, mouldering decorations reminded her that Christmas was only three weeks away.

  Christmas! The season of loving and giving. The joyous season of the year.

  Not for Esther, it wasn’t—not any more. For her it was a time to be got through, a time to resist memories which, if she let them, would weaken, and ultimately, destroy her.

  If she let them.

  She thought instead of the people of Jamestown, whose Christmas plans had been swept away in a night of fury and terror less than a fortnight ago. How were they handling the advent of the festive season, when their houses were in ruins and their dreams and hopes dashed into the ground?

  Everywhere she looked were reminders of what the people of the city had suffered. Here and there a house, presumably built since the building code for cyclone-prone areas had become more stringent, stood as a reminder that these had once been suburban streets, where neighbours had gossiped while their children had played football or cricket in the now leafless park across the road.

  ‘The apartment is owned by the hospital so you’ll find most of the tenants are doctors or nurses,’ the admin woman had told Esther. ‘See the building manager in the ground-floor apartment, she’ll tell you where to go from there.’

  Anxious to get settled and more anxious to get rid of the suitcase she’d been towing behind her through the debris-littered streets, Esther dragged her suitcase up the ramp leading up to the front door.

  It opened automatically, relieving her of one worry. She knew from the information she’d studied on her flight north that large areas of the city were still without power, and carrying her case up any number of flights of steps had not been an appealing prospect.

  She was about to knock on the door of the ground-floor apartment when she noticed an envelope on the floor near her feet. FOR THE DOCTOR ARRIVING FROM BRISBANE it read, the message printed in bold black capitals. A piece of sticky tape on the top edge suggested it had once been stuck on the door, but no doubt the humidity, which was making Esther’s clothes wet and clammy, had negated the tape’s ability to stick.

  Hoping she was the only doctor arriving from Brisbane today—or at least the only one who’d been directed to this building—Esther opened the envelope and slid out the note.

  ‘Sorry not here,’ it read. ‘Son injured in clean-up work. Had to go to hospital. Mrs Jackson on fifth floor expecting you, she’ll be home all day.’

  Mrs Jackson!

  In spite of the heat and the suitcase and the heavy tiredness travelling had induced, Esther found a smile at the coincidence.

  She’d once been Mrs Jackson. Not that she’d called herself that—sticking to her maiden name for career purposes—but officially, that’s who she’d been—Mrs William Wyatt Jackson the Third.

  Or had it been the Fourth?

  Her mother-in-law—ex-mother-in-law—would have been able to tell her, but her ex-mother-in-law was on the other side of the ocean, ably running most of the social events in the exclusive enclave of wealth she inhabited in the lush, green countryside not far from Atlanta.

  Funny how most people in the world saw Washington as the centre of power in the universe, while for Esther, at least during her marriage to Bill, the real centre had been in that gracious, beautiful house in the rebel South!

  The elevator, summone
d while her mind floated like a lost balloon above the past, pinged its arrival, and the doors slid open. Esther dragged her suitcase inside, pressed the ‘5’ button, then, as if pricked by a sharp memory, the balloon burst, and the thoughts she’d been trying to avoid since she’d seen the name Jackson were there, in bold, black, block printing, in her head.

  She wondered where Bill was. Still in Atlanta? Had he kept their house? Probably. After all, it had been his home before their marriage. And he wasn’t a sentimental man, not one to be dwelling on the past. So he wouldn’t see her ghost as he walked through the rooms, or hear a baby crying piteously in the sleepless hours of the night.

  Did he think of her, as she did of him, so many times a day? Did he think of her occasionally?

  At all?

  Probably not, she decided. Bill’s main focus had always been his work. A brilliant and dedicated scientist, he’d been confused—really the only word—by the attraction that had flared between them. Not that confusion had stopped him doing something about it. Oh, no, he’d pursued that attraction as he pursued his viral mysteries, with a single-minded determination that had had them married within a month of meeting…

  The elevator doors once again slid open, indicating she’d arrived at her destination.

  But Bill wasn’t the kind of man to brood over the past. Too sensible, too pragmatic. He’d been like that in the lab. An experiment would go wrong, and while Esther would weep and wail and gnash her teeth, not quite literally, Bill would shrug, accept it and start all over again.

  The doors began to close, and Esther, realising she was lost in the twisting maze of memory, shook herself free of the past, jabbed the DOOR OPEN button and finally exited the elevator.

  There was only one door, directly opposite where she stood. The apartment apparently took up the whole floor.

  ‘Swish!’ she said out loud, because meeting new people always made her nervous, and when she was nervous she always talked to herself. ‘Must be the penthouse. No wonder they’ve room to take in strays.’

  The feeble conversation wasn’t making her feel any better so she knocked and breathed deeply, hoping to quell the racing heartbeats thudding in her chest.

  She’d spoken to other children raised in foster-homes, and knew they shared this strong feeling of apprehension and dread when meeting new people. Too often they’d stood in front of a stranger’s front door, clutching the case officer’s hand, hearts beating erratically as they’d prayed whoever opened the door was going to like them.

  Please, let these people like me, was a silent prayer that still echoed in Esther’s head when she met strangers, although she was now secure and confident enough to know it didn’t matter any more.

  ‘Tell that to my heart!’ she muttered, as she heard locks being turned, and knew the door was opening.

  But if her heart had been behaving erratically before the door opened, it was nothing to the pandemonium in its next reaction. It raced, then faltered, and just as Esther was sure she was going to pass out on the doorstep, the frosty tones of Mrs William Wyatt Jackson the Second—or was it the Third?—snapped her back to consciousness.

  ‘Do not faint on the doorstep, Esther,’ she ordered. ‘I couldn’t possibly do anything to help and it would be a very bad experience for Chloe to see a grown woman collapsing on the floor.’

  Enough awe of this woman remained embedded in Esther’s subconscious for her to obey, so she clutched at the doorjamb and remained, more or less, upright. She blinked her eyes to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, but Gwyneth Jackson remained clearly delineated in Esther’s field of vision after the blink. And she wasn’t sure you could hallucinate voices…

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Gwyneth was demanding. ‘If you’re hoping to see William, that’s too bad. He’s at work—he’s always at work. We’ve had a cyclone in case you didn’t know. The city’s in ruins.’

  The ‘Please, let them like me’ prayer had definitely not been answered the day Esther had first met Gwyneth Jackson, and nothing, she realised from the woman’s frosty tone, had changed since. Gwyneth had nurtured plans for her son to marry Marcie Regan, daughter of her oldest friend, and not only had a usurper upset these plans and stolen her son—but it had been a foreign usurper at that. Gwyneth had never been at pains to contain her disappointment, and the ‘plain speaking’ she claimed to admire had verged on outright rudeness.

  But Esther was no longer an insecure and easily cowed young doctor, head over heels in love with the woman’s son, and to prove it she unclamped her fingers from the doorjamb, wondering briefly if she’d left indentations in the wood, stiffened her spine and met Gwyneth’s cold blue eyes with fire in her own dark orbs.

  ‘I know about the cyclone. I’ve been sent here to help. I was told at the hospital I’ve been billeted here, but if it’s inconvenient, I’m sure they can find me somewhere else.’

  She may have sounded brave, but inside she was a mess. If Gwyneth was in Jamestown then there was every likelihood Bill was also in the region. This had struck Esther almost as soon as she’d set eyes on the woman, even before Gwyneth had confirmed it with words, because only some need to be with her darling William would have been enough to separate Gwyneth from her lovely home.

  But thinking about Bill, about the possibility of him being in the same country, let alone the same state—the same city—would have brought on a panic attack of such massive proportions, Esther refused to give it brain room.

  Not now, in front of his mother. Facing up to Gwyneth Jackson required every bit of mental fortitude Esther possessed—and then some. Divine intervention might help but she didn’t hold out much hope. It had never helped before. Angels might swoop from the sky to rescue other mortals from calamity, but Esther’s life had been remarkably free of angelic deliverance.

  ‘I doubt the hospital will be able to find you somewhere else,’ Gwyneth responded, not opening the door wide enough for it to be a hospitable gesture. ‘According to William every staff member with a roof over his or her head is billeting at least one person, some more than one if they’ve room. But it’s utterly unsuitable that you should be here. I’ll phone the hospital. They can send us someone else. Swap you over.’

  Like a parcel sent to the wrong address, or like returning something you didn’t like to the store, Esther thought, but before she could think of something to say—preferably something adult and effective—Gwyneth shut the door, leaving Esther and her suitcase in the hallway.

  Exhausted, as much by emotion as by the effort of getting to Jamestown following a frantic midnight plea from her boss in the epidemiology unit at the medical research lab, Esther sank down on the floor, rested her back against the wall and closed her eyes.

  Which was where Bill, emerging from the lift perhaps only seconds later, found her.

  ‘Esther?’

  Disbelief made his normally gruff voice much higher in tone, but the curl of an accent around the soft syllables of her name, sent almost forgotten tingles of excitement twitching along Esther’s nerves.

  She opened her eyes and stared up at the man she’d thought she’d never see again. He looked terrible! Exhaustion had left his skin grey beneath the stubble on his cheeks, while his eyes, darkly shadowed, were sunk deep under his dark brows, the blue irises dull in streaky, bloodshot whites.

  ‘Oh, Bill!’ She sighed his name, pushed to her feet and held out her arms, offering, with that universal gesture of support for anyone in trouble, the solace of a hug.

  ‘Poor man,’ she murmured, as his tall, well-muscled body slumped against hers, his arms closing around her back in such a natural gesture it was as if they’d never parted. ‘Has it been very dreadful? Don’t you have enough extra staff now to be getting some sleep? Are you taking the whole burden of this disaster on your own shoulders? Haven’t you learned yet to share the load?’

  Familiar scolds—she’d used them to him so often when work had been at crisis point, it was like an echo of time itself.

>   Familiar, too, was the feel of his body against hers. The way hers fitted so neatly to his despite a disparity in their heights.

  Then familiar responses, as if her body was still programmed to respond to his—

  The door opened, and Gwyneth’s horrified explosion of ‘William!’ broke them apart.

  Bill stepped back, looked down into Esther’s eyes and dredged from some inner resource a tired smile.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘You’re the epidemiologist Brisbane’s sent. To misquote Humphrey Bogart, Of all the epidemics in all the hospitals in all the world, you had to turn up here. I thought—I’d heard you were working in Africa.’

  Absurdly pleased Bill should know—or even have wanted to know—where she was working, Esther explained.

  ‘I’m not long back from Africa and Humphrey Bogart wasn’t pleased to see the woman he was talking about—I would have thought you’d at least be pleased to have some help.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, but he was frowning as he said it, so it didn’t carry much conviction.

  He continued to frown, while his mother was rattling on about impossibilities.

  Esther stopped being pleased about anything. She’d recovered sufficiently to know the situation was impossible of course she should find another billet—but the attitude of the Jacksons, both mother and son, had riled her, and being fighting mad was better than being thrust back into childhood terrors by Gwyneth, or remaining weak-kneed over seeing Bill again.

  And she definitely shouldn’t have hugged him no matter how heart-breakingly exhausted he’d looked!

  Esther turned to Gwyneth.

  ‘Did you phone the hospital? Is there somewhere else I can stay?’

  Gwyneth’s scowl told her the answer.

  ‘Apparently not,’ she said, the frost in her voice thick enough to chip off and add to drinks.

  ‘There’s no reason for you to stay somewhere else,’ Bill declared. ‘The admin people have more than enough to do without shifting billets around the place. Come on in, Esther. We’ve plenty of room.’