Normally Hugo didn’t mind working alone-he even liked it-but his radio was telling him a quarter of the state was under threat from fire. That meant relief medical teams wouldn’t be forthcoming even in an emergency. There was only him-but now at least there was Rachel as well.
But if the road cleared just for a few hours…
She’d be out of here, he thought grimly. She had a husband and the world’s stupidest dog and a city career. She was a fine doctor-hell, she had the skills he desperately needed in a partner-but she’d be out of here.
The road was still cut, though, he thought, and as far he could see that was the only bright spot on his horizon. He had a captive worker and she’d said she’d work.
A captive worker…
He thought of Rachel as he’d last seen her. In those crazy pyjamas. His mouth twitched and his bleakness lifted a little. She was here. She had said she’d work. Now, as long as Christine had fitted her out in some sensible clothes…
He pulled into the driveway, looked down at the list of things he still had to do this morning and went to find his colleague.
He walked through the screen door and stopped dead.
Good grief!
Rachel was sitting at the kitchen table, helping Myra pod peas. She’d obviously reclaimed Penelope. Penelope and Digger were lying side by side under the table looking extraordinarily pleased with each other, but that wasn’t where Hugo’s attention was caught and held.
Rachel was only five-four or so-a good eight inches shorter than he was-but what she lacked in height she made up for in impact. This morning in his pyjamas she’d looked amazing. But now…
She was wearing bright yellow leggings that stopped at mid-calf, and a white overshirt that looked as if it had been splashed by daubs of yellow paint. Her shirt was rolled up, businesslike, but there was nothing businesslike in the way it was unbuttoned to show enough cleavage to be interesting. Very interesting! So interesting he could hardly take his eyes away.
What else? He could scarcely take her in. Apart from the cleavage… Her riot of shining brown curls was caught back with a wide yellow ribbon and her feet were ensconced in gold and white trainers.
‘Christine never gave you those clothes,’ he said faintly, and she chuckled.
‘Good guess. Mrs Sanderson’s a darling and she has such taste. I returned the clothes Christine brought me. I’m very grateful but they just weren’t me.’ She held up a shoe and admired it. ‘And gold and white trainers…how practical are these?’
‘Very practical,’ he said weakly, and she grinned. She rose and looked expectantly out to the car.
‘Are we heading out to the nursing home now?’
‘You’re not wearing that outfit to the nursing home?’
‘Why ever not?’
‘I’m thinking of their hearts. I don’t think I’m carrying enough anginine,’ he said, and she chuckled again. She had the nicest chuckle…
‘You’re telling me the oldies won’t like my clothes?’
‘I have no idea,’ he managed. ‘I do know they’ll never have seen anything like it in their lives.’ He looked down at her amazing shoes. ‘You don’t think gold and white in this ash might be just a little impractical?’
‘They’ll wash. I’m not putting Doris’s sandals back on for quids. They may be sensible but I don’t do sensible.’
‘So I see.’
The oldies not only loved Rachel’s clothes-they loved Rachel.
In this heat and smoke-filled atmosphere, the ills of a group of sixty frail retirees could be depended on to keep Hugo busy for half a day, but only a couple of problems were serious. Hugo expected to do the tricky stuff himself while Rachel took a routine clinic, but Rachel had no sooner been introduced to the sitting room in general, and the nurse in charge in particular, than she balked.
‘Tell me why you’re staying?’
‘I have a couple of bed-bound patients I’ll check before I go.’
‘You’re telling me that I can’t check them? That you don’t think I’m competent?’
‘No, but-’
‘Then you’re not needed anywhere else?’
‘Of course he is.’ Don, the nursing-home charge nurse, a beefy, bearded giant, was clearly amused by the strange tension between the two. And the way Hugo kept glancing at his colleague as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘I’ve had a call from the hospital already saying there’s another couple of firefighters need looking at, and they’ve just admitted Harry Peters’s kid, who fell off the back of the fire truck and broke his arm. They want you back there, Hugo.’
‘I can’t just leave you here,’ Hugo said, frowning at the jonquil-yellow apparition in front of him.
‘Why not?’ The jonquil-yellow apparition raised herself up on her jonquil-yellow toes and glared. ‘Are you saying you’re a better doctor than I am?’
‘No, but-’
‘Then take me to the patients you’re worried about, talk me through what needs to be done and then get out of here. No more buts. You’re wasting time, Dr McInnes.’
Wasting time?
No one had ever accused Hugo McInnes of wasting time. Ever. It was all he could do not to gasp.
‘Go on, then.’ Don was clearly intrigued and enjoying himself. ‘What are you waiting for, Hugo?’
He hardly knew.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS harder work than she’d thought it would be.
Rachel had been working in an emergency department for the last four years, coping with emergencies. These weren’t emergencies. She had to scour her brain for the things she’d learned in basic training-how to dress and treat leg ulcers, how to look after a man who was suffering long-term effects of the cortisone he’d taken after suffering rheumatoid arthritis for forty years, how to ease the passing of an old lady-ninety-eight, her bed card said, but she was still able to smile and grasp Rachel’s hand in greeting-a lady who might only have days left to live.
Rachel had asked Hugo to let her do this, so he had left her to it. She hadn’t realised until he’d gone that it had been quite an act of faith. Of trust.
‘I’ll come back and collect you at lunchtime,’ he’d told her, and had gone off to see to his town patients and his firefighters. He was needed.
So was she. She couldn’t think about Hugo. She had enough to concentrate on herself.
But the oldies were lovely. They helped her all the way. Don was at her side, and everyone knew the routine.
‘Dr Hugo uses that sort of dressing,’ she was told by a patient, the very elderly Mrs Collins, before Don could open his mouth. She cast him a sideways grin and started wrapping Mrs Collins’s ulcer with the dressing the old lady had pointed at.
‘Do I get the feeling this place would run on its own if we weren’t here?’ she asked. 86
‘We learn to be self-sufficient,’ Don told her. ‘There’s days when Hugo can’t come.’
‘When he’s on holidays?’
‘When there are emergencies in the town he can’t come,’ Don told her. ‘Only then. Our Dr McInnes doesn’t do holidays.’
‘What, never?’
‘He last took a holiday three years ago.’ Don bent and helped her adjust the dressing. Mrs Collins, eighty-nine and very, very interested in this yellow doctor, was listening avidly as she was treated. ‘I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word holiday. Christine takes Toby to New York to visit his grandmother during school holidays-paid for by Hugo-and that’s it.’
‘It sounds a pretty dreary life.’
‘It’s a better life now than when he was married,’ Don said bluntly. ‘Some marriages are the pits.’
Hmm. ‘Should you be saying this to me?’ Rachel raised her eyebrows at the bearded nurse and Don grinned.
‘Nope. But if we can’t gossip, what’s the use of living? Isn’t that right, Mrs Collins?’
‘That’s dead right.’ Sheila Collins’s old eyes perused Rachel and suddenly she leaned over and grabbed her hand.
She held it up.
‘You’re married yourself?’ she demanded, and Rachel met her look square on.
‘Yes.’
‘Not separated or anything?’
‘No.’
‘So when this fire is over and the road’s cleared, you’ll go back to your husband.’
There was only one answer to that. ‘Of course I will.’
The old lady’s look was steady. News must travel fast in this town. Everyone was really well informed. Frighteningly well informed. ‘They say you were fighting with your husband at the dog show. They say he’s a creep and a bully. And he left our Kim for dead.’
‘No one here knows my husband,’ Rachel said steadily.
‘First impressions…’
There were places Rachel wasn’t prepared to go. No one needed explanations. ‘No one here knows him,’ she said again.
‘Stay out of her space, Sheila,’ Don said sternly. ‘Or you just might get iodine on those legs.’
Sheila’s eyes narrowed. She stared at Rachel for a moment longer and then gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Oh, sure. I guess it’d serve me right if I do. But it’s not just me who’s curious. She wants to know about our Dr McInnes as much as we want to know about her.’
‘Then tell her.’ Don was in his fifties or maybe a little older. He looked contented, Rachel thought. He looked like a nurse who’d spent his life caring for people in a small town-and who was content to do so for as long as he could.
The feeling was suddenly…nice. Living in Cowral would be a good life, she thought. She’d never considered country medical practice. Maybe she…
Maybe after…
No.
‘Our Dr Hugo made a bad marriage,’ Sheila told her, and Rachel forced herself to concentrate. Not that that was very hard. Sheila was right. She really did want to know.
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t have much of a home life, our Doc Hugo,’ Sheila said. ‘His mother was a right little cow-only after what she could get. She lit out for the city as soon as she could and we never saw her again. But Hugo used to come down here. Old Dr McInnes had been here for as long as anyone can remember, and whenever his mother wanted to get rid of him-which was often-Hugo used to come down to stay. He loved his grandpa. Then the old man had a stroke soon after Hugo qualified as a doctor, and Hugo came for good. I don’t think he had much choice. He came because he loved the old man and then he was sort of stuck.’
So he hadn’t come through choice…
‘He was really unsettled at first.’ Don took over the tale then. They were a pair, Rachel thought-the nurse who looked like he’d be more at home on a logging truck than in a nursing home, and the ancient lady whose bright eyes gleamed with intelligence. And…mischief? ‘The old man was ill for a couple of years,’ Don continued, with only a sideways glance and a twinkle to show he knew exactly what Rachel was thinking. ‘Hugo was here, helping him. It must have been a huge shock after practising medicine in Sydney.’
‘But then he met Beth,’ the old lady chipped in. ‘Christine and Beth. They came down here to paint. Their parents were divorced. Their father had a fishing shack here so living was cheap. They had nothing to bless themselves with, but they thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. Their mother has a studio in New York and that’s how they dressed-like they’d just walked off the streets of Manhattan. They complained because no one knew how to make decent coffee.’
‘They were exotic and they were gorgeous,’ Don added. ‘They were also really, really expensive. Their paintings were incomprehensible and pretty soon they latched onto the idea that one of them should marry our doctor.’
‘And of course he was so bored that he fell for it,’ Sheila told her. This was a story told in tandem. The fact that there seemed to be some urgency about it was strange, but that was the way Rachel was hearing it. Maybe it was the way she was meant to be hearing it. ‘He was feeling trapped by the needs of this community-by the needs of his grandfather. Beth was gorgeous and reminded him of a life he’d left behind. And after his parents’ example I don’t think he knew what a decent marriage was. So he married her. And had Toby.’
‘Damned stupid…’ Don shook his head. He looked sideways at Rachel as if figuring out how much to tell-and then obviously decided that, unprofessional or not, he was going to tell anyway. ‘It was never going to work. Beth married Hugo for all the wrong reasons and personally I don’t think Hugo knew the right reasons to marry, either. Neither of them really knew what marriage was. Beth filled that house with all that weird stuff. She spent a fortune but still it didn’t make her happy. She left him twice. Then, when she found she was pregnant, she walked out for ever. She wanted an abortion but he hated the idea. She compromised by leaving him. No, I know it doesn’t make sense but, then, Beth didn’t make sense to herself. She wasn’t living with Hugo when Toby was born. She was living with some painter up in Sydney.’
‘But still bleeding him dry,’ Sheila added.
‘And then she died.’ Don looked sick at the memory. ‘She had eclampsia. Apparently she and the guy she was living with were drinking too much. She didn’t care about the baby-but it wasn’t Toby who ended up suffering. She ignored the symptoms until she was far gone. Toby was born by Caesarean section but it was too late and that left our Hugo feeling dreadful. Guilt. He hadn’t tried to make her come home. And Christine made the guilt worse.’
‘Christine,’ Rachel whispered.
‘Of course, Christine.’ Don shrugged. ‘She stays on in this town because that’s where she owns a house but she hates the place. Her paintings don’t sell. She spends any money she gets on stupid things. You’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t so damned…superior. She’s got no money of her own. She lives here and she won’t let anyone forget Beth. She makes Hugo’s guilt worse. ‘‘My Beth’’, she keeps saying as she shoves that shrine of a house down their throats. ‘‘We must never forget Toby’s mother.’’ The fact that they fought like cat and dog when Beth was alive…’
‘She wants to marry Hugo.’ Sheila was totally absorbed in her tale. Her ulcers were almost completely bandaged now but the old lady had a captive audience until they were finished and she wasn’t letting go. ‘And little by little she’s wearing him down. Hugo has to let Toby spend time with Christine. It’s the only contact the kid has with his mother’s family. And she guilts him into keeping that house just as it was…’
Enough, Rachel thought, beginning to feel just a little desperate. The bandages were in place. This was entirely improper-doctor gossiping about another doctor with that doctor’s patients and a nurse. Rachel rose to her feet and tried to look determined.
‘I’m sure I need to see someone else.’
‘No matter who you see they’ll tell you the same thing,’ Sheila retorted. ‘Our Dr McInnes is being railroaded into marriage with another like the first. And she’s not even a decent artist. What she does is horrible.’
Rachel was left wondering what was horrible. The thought of such a marriage-or Christine’s artwork?
Maybe she knew.
‘How did it go?’
Hugo collected her half an hour after he’d said he would. He’d been delayed by a minor crisis, he told her, but the look on his face told Rachel it hadn’t been minor. He looked strained past endurance.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, but he shook his head. Whatever it was, he didn’t intend to share it.
‘How did you manage at the nursing home?’ he asked, changing the subject with more bluntness than tact.
She hesitated but his face was shuttered. This was a man accustomed to working on his own, she thought. He carried the responsibility for this town’s health on his shoulders alone.
She could share but only as much as he wished her to share, and maybe it wasn’t fair to push when she was here for such a short time.
So she concentrated on now. On the present.
‘I love your oldies,’ she told him. ‘I now know not only their me
dical histories but also the history of everyone in Cowral.’
He managed a smile at that. ‘Including mine?’
‘Of course, including yours.’ She settled into the passenger seat of his comfortable old family sedan and smiled across at him. She wanted him to smile. She wanted to take that look of strain away from around his eyes. ‘How can you doubt it?’
‘So…’ He grimaced. ‘Have they worked out your love life yet?’
‘Mine?’ She raised her eyebrows at that. ‘I don’t have a love life.’
‘You have a husband.’
‘That’s right,’ she said, and somehow kept her voice steady as he looked across at her.
‘A husband. A love life. They’re not the same thing?’
Were they? Once they were. A long time ago…
‘Where are we going now?’ she asked. He wasn’t the only one who could change the subject. It was high time to move on from what was suddenly dangerous ground.
‘I’ll drop you at home for lunch and a rest while I-’
‘While you keep working.’
‘That’s the plan.’
She shook her head. ‘Nope. As plans go, it sucks.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I slept this morning while you worked. I’ve done a whole three hours’ work while you, I suspect, have done about six. So why is it that now I get to be bored while you play doctor?’
He thought about it. ‘You don’t have to be bored. You could take Penelope for a walk.’
‘I walked my feet off last night. I don’t intend to walk anywhere for six months.’
‘Then what do you want to do?’
‘Have lunch now and then do something useful,’ she said promptly. ‘If I’m trapped in your house for the whole afternoon I might be forced to do something dire-like strip the brocade wallpaper from the living room.’
It had been the wrong thing to say. His face sort of set.
‘Whoops,’ Rachel said, not sounding in the least contrite. ‘Don’t tell me you like brocade.’
‘I’m very grateful to Christine,’ he said stiffly, which was a strange answer to a question that had hardly been asked.
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