Heartbeat (Medical Romance)

by Ramsay, Anna

  'You've got a very important job to return to. And you're especially needed at the Hanoverian because of your training and experience. Same with Ross.' Jenni relaxed and leaned against him, feeling his hand smooth her wayward hair. His voice was so gentle, so reassuring and calm. You couldn't not respond to a man like this.

  He talked on, persuasive, reassuring. 'You've both of you done your bit for Africa. McDonnell's a talented and creative man and he must go back to the UK to continue experimenting with new techniques and advances in eye surgery. Besides,' added Paul cunningly, knowing of old how to stoke the blaze and bring the fire back into Jenni's sad eyes, 'it's pretty dreadful here when the rainy season starts. You'd be fed up in no time.'

  ‘No way!’ Jenni stomped off in a strop and left him to his late supper.

  She avoided the track down to the village, memories of that kidnapping still haunting the night, making her slow thoughtful way round the outskirts of the Mission, trailing between commiphora bushes whose tortured branches snatched at her skirt, snagging threads of her lilac cotton sweater as she brushed past the green bayonets of sansevieria.

  Faintly there came to her ears from somewhere within the Mission, the sounds of Ross's jazz music, indecently exuberant, wild and exciting. Music to be carried away by, taken out of yourself. Not suiting her mood at all.

  And indeed why should it? Ross didn't care about leaving. Least of all did he care about leaving Jenni Westcott.

  'What's more,' complained Jenni aloud, 'he thinks that I think he's a terrible man! And he also thinks I'm nuts about Paul. And Paul doesn't want me to stay here, so it's clear as the nose on my face that he doesn't want me to be Mrs P. Hume. Which is just as well, since I find I'm not in love with him after all, and I couldn't marry anyone I wasn't head over heels for ...

  'Perhaps God wants me to be a nun!' she speculated interestedly. 'Perhaps this moment is a turning point in my life and I'm getting The Call.' Carried away by sheer imagination and her own strong sense of drama, Jenni lifted her overawed face to the pale light of the sickle moon. 'Do you want me to take the veil, 0 Lord?' she intoned in a churchy voice. 'Am I to go into a convent?'

  'Sounds a bit drastic,' drawled a voice from behind her. 'What's brought this on all of a sudden?'

  Jenni stood rooted to the spot. She'd have bitten out her tongue rather than have Ross McDonnell overhear her dramatic posturing. 'None of your business,' she stuttered, 'I—er—I was just remembering some lines from a play I was in at school. Black Narcissus—that was it,' she plunged on inventively.

  Ross came closer and oh, heaven! he put an arm around her and turned her to face him, lifting her chin so that the moonlight painted her pouting features and closed eyelids. He was so tall—too tall. Jenni automatically raised herself on tiptoe in certain anticipation of what was to come. Ross had both arms round her now, and his face came down to hers, blocking out the moon's magic. Her left arm sneaked up and round to the nape of his neck, her right arm slid under his and clasped that broad, hard-muscled back, feeling the heat of his body beneath her spread fingers. Jenni's only conscious thought was what the hell, it may be the only chance you get, girl, so make the most of it!

  Ross laughed a deep throaty chuckle at such willing compliancy and proceeded to take thorough and protracted advantage.

  Now there wasn't a rational thought left in Jenni's head. She was vaguely conscious of seeing stars, but they had a peculiar floating quality and she couldn't have told whether they existed within her dizzy head or for real in the velvet-black sky. She'd been kissed many times before, but never with such devastating effect. Her heartbeats throbbed like the native drums. Her body strained to get ever more impossibly close to this man who fascinated and confused her. She put all she'd got into this momentous kiss—incredulous that her old tormentor seemed equally enthusiastic!

  At length, when the need to breathe became life-threatening, he relaxed hold of her and said teasingly, 'Some nun you'd make! I doubt if a girl like you has still got the basic qualification.'

  Jenni was an expert flirt. ‘That’s for me to know,’ she murmured provocatively, ‘and you to find out, Dr McDonnell. I might be saving myself for the right man.’

  ‘And you knew you'd find him here …’

  He had been watching from the dispensary window, had seen her marching moodily off into the night. Lately he was experiencing a new unease about Jenni Westcott. What had happened to the sunny, self-possessed nurse whose delicious appearance had filled him with all sorts of reservations when she arrived at the Mbusa Wa Bwino, simply throbbing with Good Intention. Lately there'd been fewer smiles, and in her eloquent eyes he had recognised a new and grave maturity which only Africa could have put there. And a sadness, speculated the doctor, as she realised Paul Hume was never going to propose marriage.

  Experience had turned Ross into a cynical man. Love hurts, doesn't it. Miss Westcott! he mused with chill sympathy. Believe me, I should know.

  She'd probably always been the one to love and leave. A girl so appealing would not be accustomed to rejection.

  Back in his quarters Ross had reluctantly switched off one of Sydney Bechet's greatest jazz tracks and decided he'd better trail this reckless young woman. At the best of times she seemed to lack a proper sense of self-preservation.

  Jenni stepped back from him, her silence mutinous. He was right, and yet unbearably wrong. Much as she longed to tell him she loved him, pride and common sense would not set her tongue free. Not when he was amusing himself with her in a moment of rare boredom.

  Ross felt suddenly angry with this tough-acting girl for being so vulnerable. So her frivolous reason for coming to Tanzania had gone wrong, and she was disheartened. Matt's adoration was evidently no compensation. She wanted only Paul. Spoiled little brat!

  Anger flared and Ross's hand lashed out and gripped her upper arm, the fingers pressing flesh against bone. He shook her to make her answer him. There must have been many other men in her life: why mope around for the one man she couldn't have? He'd be quite prepared to take her mind off Paul, make himself a substitute for that impossible love.

  The hell I will! Ross glowered, and set his jaw. I come first with a woman or not at all. He shook her again so violently Jenni almost bit her tongue. 'Let go of me!' she spat, her temper leaping into force nine. 'You're contemptible, Ross McDonnell! I shall be thankful when you're gone from here. Go and make love to your Sylvia!'

  'Whoops!' exclaimed Ross. 'My wife would have something to say about that ...'

  Chapter Eight

  Running Wild was the name of his favourite Bechet track, and running wild was the way Jenni had bolted from him. Ross's amused gaze tracked her till he was quite sure she was making for the safety of the Mission. Then he began to follow at a leisurely stroll. Who would have believed she would be quite so devastated to discover he had been married? And as for Nurse Westcott’s exotic imagination linking him with Sylvia Anstey ...

  A grin spread over the sardonic features. He'd guessed the winsome Miss Westcott was short-sighted, but this was ridiculous. Could she really still be in the dark about Sylvia's romantic inclinations?

  Yes, technically he was married. But Stef had swept him out of her life. He had vowed never to trust a woman again—especially that wayward redhead with the hot imagination.

  Ross strolled round to the far side of the Clinic and leaned against the verandah outside the children's ward. He didn't like to stray too far out of sight and sound of the hospital knowing that at any time he might be called. There were no bleeps out here at the Mission Hospital.

  Since he had come to Africa whole days would pass when he didn't think about Stef. That was a definite improvement. He could guess what she'd say about his making love to another woman. She wouldn't give a damn; she'd be relieved. Probably start watching the letterbox for the divorce papers to plop on to the mat. He'd vowed bitterly that he would never set her free to marry that creep, Ryman. And he'd honestly believed he would never change his
mind or fall in love again. Had thought himself too single-minded to be at risk. After all, wasn't that why Stef had gone off with her new man? A four-year marriage to a workaholic surgeon, she told him bitterly when finally she left, was no marriage at all.

  Breathlessly, in the safety of her room, Jenni was chiding herself for being no end of a fool. But the man was so physically compelling that even a sensible girl – a girl with her head screwed on and other intentions - couldn't resist him. In fact she'd joined in the action as if she was his number one fan!

  ‘You idiot!’ she groaned aloud, reliving every thrilling second of it.

  In the speckled mirror she gasped at the sight of her face, the sensitive skin all red and chafed from his harsh stubble. Hypnotised by her reflection, she traced with her fingertips the places where Ross's mouth had been and her colour deepened to a glowing crimson. Hadn't she suspected there was a wife somewhere? And what about poor Sylvia?

  The no-good heartless philanderer!

  Sunday mornings brought not just the nearby villagers but families in a colourful array of tribal robes and Western dress, converging on the Mbusa Wa Bwino from all parts of the surrounding bush. The little church could not hold them all, so an exuberant African Mass was celebrated outside in the sunshine.

  This joyful occasion formed the high spot of everyone's week, with much clapping and chanting and swaying to the rhythm of maraccas and leopard-skin drums, children's voices shrilling above the chanting of the adults, a moment of reverent near-silence broken by the squalling of babies.

  And afterwards the thwack of leather on wood as a cricket match in the compound got under way, Dr Ross and Father Thomas each captaining his high-spirited team of players to the applause or groans of their enthusiastic crowd of supporters.

  Jenni liked to sit in the shade of the church door, a thick quarto pad on her knee and a stick of charcoal smudging her busy fingers. A loving huddle of heavy-breathing children leaned against her chair, affectionately stroking her hair, tugging the yellow folds of the native kanga she proudly donned for an off-duty Sunday, fascinated by the magic of her swift sketches.

  'I plait your hair for you, Jennee? My turn today — you promised, Jennee,' wheedled a teenage girl wearing one of the white SCF teeshirts Paul had brought back from his last trip to Dar.

  Jenni goodnaturedly submitted to having her Titian locks painfully transformed into a halo of small plaits. She was trying to draw one of the village elders, a gaunt-featured grandfather smoking an aluminium pipe made out of a twist of metal off an old Land Rover, tobacco ash sprinkling the front of his best Sunday robe. 'Draw me, Jenn-ee, draw me next!' the little ones pleaded, a tricky request when they couldn’t sit still for more than a few seconds.

  Her glances would irresistibly stray to the man she had been avoiding eye-contact with since the night of that revelation, her ears finely tuned to the wavelength of his voice.

  ‘Try pitching him a few on the leg-stump,' he was exhorting his bowler. Then, 'Good grief—he's going to knock the ball out of shape!' after a spectacular hit by N'gambo.

  Paul was umpire, running a joky commentary on the voice-trumpet Jenni had fashioned out of a rolled triangle of cardboard sneaked from one of the many boxes of candles stored in readiness for when the generator failed. 'And now we've got Father Thomas dancing down the wicket to drive the slow bowler back over his head for ... yes, it's a straight six—and my goodness, I'd better move that Land Rover before Father Thomas does any more damage!' Cheers from the crowd and a roar as the stumps flew and Father Thomas, his splendid teeth flashing in a broad white grin, handed over the one precious cricket bat to a skinny eleven-year-old in a check shirt and grey shorts a size too big.

  Jenni peeped back at her favourite sketch, drawn soon after she had arrived at the Mission: it showed Ross, seated on the edge of a wooden chair outside the Clinic entrance, wearing nothing but a pair of brief shorts revealing an expanse of sun-bronzed muscle-packed leg. A small boy was patiently holding up a mirror for the doctor to see his own reflection as he shaved in honour of Sunday.

  Ten more days! Jenni shivered beneath the hot sun and her charcoal stick trembled in mid-air. 'Hold still, miss!' protested her hairdresser.

  Ten more days and Ross would be gone. Impossible to imagine the Clinic without him.

  But an African doctor, trained at the Royal Free Hospital in London and with several years' general experience under his belt, was coming to take permanent charge of all medical work.

  That night after supper, doctor and priest smoked cigars together in a rare moment of quiet companionship. Jenni curled up in a wicker chair almost hidden behind one of the ceiling-high Kentia palms, pretending to read a two-year old copy of Hello. She overheard Ross remark to Paul that working here in the bush had been the finest experience of his life. Superb training for coping with anything life might throw at you, he added with a wry grin, tapping cigar ash into the potted palm and narrowly missing an eavesdropping ear.

  'But as you well know, Paul—because you and I have attempted to thrash this one out before—introducing Western medicine is bound to affect the African culture. Therefore,' the forceful voice continued, 'it's profoundly important that European doctors and nurses are aware of the implications.'

  Jenni pulled a face and wished she had a better view of these two tall and charismatic men, so similarly dressed in their jeans and dark sweaters, so different in temperament and personal style. 'Oh yes, it's all very creditable coming out here teaching basic health education and hygiene, improved nutrition, the importance of clean drinking water and family planning. No, hold on, Paul, let me get this off my chest ...

  'Apparently beneficial—and all credit to Sylvia, Jenni and all of us for working all the hours God sends. We haven't come here with the intention of bulldozing over all those native customs and traditions. Yet without realising it we may be doing exactly that!' His cigar stabbed the air in emphasis. 'I'm mighty relieved James Matayo is coming to take my place. He'll do a far better job and with greater sensitivity than I, with the best will in the world, can ever hope to.'

  Jenni was intensely interested to hear this. Ross's reasons for coming here to Africa—and his reasons for leaving—were less puzzling now. He had worked to relieve suffering, taught his specialist skills to more inexperienced surgeons, and now must leave before his own enthusiasm for medicine sought to change a way of life that must be preserved intact.

  'You know well enough you are preaching to the converted, Ross.' The priest had been listening with close and sympathetic attention, long fingers massaging bearded chin. Now he was nodding his head in total agreement. 'That's why I held out for them to replace you with a long-term appointment, and an African doctor as the sine qua non.' He gave a short laugh. 'Next one to go will be me, Ross. I am dispensable, and for all the reasons you quote. I shall be replaced within the next couple of years — and by a local man.’

  ‘Father Thomas, perhaps?’

  ‘No, I think not, good chap though he is. The Bishop wants him to take over a smaller set-up and get that experience under his belt.'

  There was a pause … then Ross's voice again, pitched low and private. 'So, tell me your plans, Paul. Once you're married, will you two go back to the UK?'

  From behind the potted palm came a gasp - and a thump as Hello hit the ground. Jenni leaned down to pick up her copy and completely missed Paul's reply. Ross's astonishing question had blocked her ears to all other sound but the confident ‘once you're married.’

  A thousand bees buzzed inside her skull, then all of a sudden turned into butterflies which tickled the back of her throat before fluttering down to her stomach, leaving her queasy with shock.

  Paul's intention must surely be to pop the question just before she left for London! It would have to be very quietly done. He wouldn't want to make a big scene of it, dear Paul. And he'd be well aware that one look at her ecstatic face and the Mission workers would guess his time here was coming to an end.

 
With such a heavy weight on her mind, Jenni needed to be alone. She muttered to the others about an early night and simulated one of her hippopotamus yawns.

  By skulking behind a parked Land Rover she managed to avoid Matt Blarney as he came whistling out of the Clinic carrying a torch and a sheaf of papers. Matt would urge her to stay up late, and Jenni just didn't want to get involved in an argument and hurt his feelings with her indifference.

  As soon as Matt was out of sight she sped to her room while the coast was clear.

  As she rubbed moisturiser into her face and set about undoing all those plaits in readiness for the early morning start, strangely it wasn't her future husband who dominated her thoughts but the steel-spined Ross McDonnell with his uncompromising manner and heavy-lidded eagle stare.

  Jenni wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, but he'd scared her from the first. Good-looking housemen with smooth manners and predictable lines in chat—that was what she'd been used to and that was what she could handle with one arm tied behind her back. Dr McDonnell was a very different proposition.

  You needed to be pretty grown-up to tangle with a man like that! she frowned, brushing her hair till it frizzed about her troubled head in a great bush of tiny waves. I wonder what his wife is like?

  She swallowed her malaria tablet, then slithered between coarse linen sheets and rearranged the mosquito netting so there were no gaps.

  Spreading her hair out on the pillow, she hoped it would calm itself down before morning—along with her pounding heartbeat. Well, she hadn't given Ross's secret away. It was none of her business if he had up to now chosen to conceal the one thing that, as far as Jenni was concerned, put him on a whole new unattainable plane.