He could do this. He could step back into…
‘It’s too soon, Fergus,’ she said gently but surely. ‘Molly’s been dead only these last few months. It’s too soon to even think you can create another family.’
‘It’s not replacing,’ he said, but for the life of him he couldn’t keep the uncertainty out of his voice. ‘Molly and Madison…they’re so different.’
‘Yes, but-’
‘I love you, Ginny,’ he said. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’
‘You see, that’s what I don’t want,’ she whispered. ‘Because I don’t think that I’m even ready for that. Yesterday I thought that maybe I could rejoin the human race. I could let myself get attached to Madison and the dogs and this community. But taking you on…’
‘What do you mean, taking me on?’ he asked, startled, and she managed a wavering smile.
‘You come with your own ghosts,’ she said. ‘If I didn’t have a mass of my own to deal with then maybe I could help you with yours.’
‘I’m not asking you to.’
‘No. But…Fergus, I’m not denying this love thing…this feeling we have for each other. The way you make me feel. But it scares me. Everything scares me. Come back to me in a year or so when I’ve learned what loving is again. When you’ve figured out what it means not being Molly’s dad any more.’
‘Ginny, I want you.’
‘I know. But we need to be sensible.’
‘I don’t feel like being sensible.’ He touched her cheek with the back of his hand and she moved into the touch like a magnet finding its north. He hesitated but he’d gone too far to stop. ‘Ginny, I’d like to marry you.’
It was a dumb proposal, he thought. He knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth and he saw her flinch.
‘Marrying me means taking on Madison as your daughter,’ she whispered. ‘Fergus, are you sure you can do that?’
‘Maybe…’
‘You see, there’s no maybe about it,’ she said, and suddenly she sounded angry. She rose, backing away from his touch as he rose with her. ‘This is a crazy conversation. You know it’s much too soon. We hardly know each other. We need to go home. Can you help?’
‘Of course I can help.’ But could he? This is what this is all about, he thought. Ginny had a brother and a child and three dogs. She couldn’t handle them on her own. Marriage to Ginny meant marriage to everything.
‘There’s a child booster seat in the back of my car,’ Ginny said, moving on, marriage proposal set aside. She hesitated. ‘Richard was uncomfortable in my little car on the way here. Can we put him in your truck?’
‘Fine.’ But it wasn’t fine. He wanted to spend more time here. He wanted to gather Ginny into his arms again and kiss her senseless and make her see… Reason?
‘Dogs first,’ she said. ‘Dr Reynard, I need your help.’
Maybe she’d seen where his thoughts were headed. Regardless, she’d called him Dr Reynard for a reason. He needed to be practical. Richard needed care. They both needed to move into professional mode.
They left Madison till last. The dogs were easy to load into the truck, as was the detritus from their picnic. Richard was harder. He woke up when Fergus touched his shoulder.
‘Time to go,’ he said softly, and Richard’s face clouded.
‘It’s never time to go,’ he muttered, and turned to look at the moon streaming over the lake. Fergus saw tears slipping down his gaunt face.
‘Hey, Richard,’ Ginny said, and slipped her hand into his. There was a moment’s pause. Fergus stepped back and left them together, letting the moment stretch out.
How to say goodbye to life?
But finally Richard gave a tiny, decisive nod and Fergus saw his grip tighten on Ginny’s hand.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Easier said than done. He had no strength left to stand. They slipped their arms under a shoulder apiece and somehow manoeuvred him into the front passenger seat of Fergus’s vehicle. He should be on a stretcher, Fergus thought, but he also knew it had been important that this night hadn’t involved stretchers.
It did involve oxygen, though, and it was a fiddle getting everything in the front of the truck.
‘Richard, you’re going to have to diet before we come back,’ Ginny told him, and that got a weary grin. But then he winced. He wouldn’t be in physical pain, Fergus knew. He’d been so careful at monitoring medication that he knew there could be little breakthrough. But there was more pain than merely physical.
‘Ginny,’ he whispered, and Ginny held his hand tight.
‘Can you put Madison in my car while I stay with Richard?’ she asked, and Fergus hesitated. Richard needed Ginny.
‘You drive Richard home in my truck,’ he said. ‘I’ll follow with Madison.’
‘If you’re sure,’ Ginny said. She looked down into her brother’s face. ‘Maybe we could drive right round the lake. Miriam will be at home to help you put Madison to bed. And she trusts you, even if she wakes up.’
She did, Fergus thought. She had no choice. She’d been thrust into a family she didn’t know and she had to take what was thrust at her.
Including him.
‘That’s fine,’ he said, and something must have shown in his face because Ginny hesitated.
‘I don’t like-’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, making his voice definite and motioning with his eyes for Ginny to say nothing more in Richard’s hearing. Richard needed this time so badly. There was so little time left.
‘Thanks, mate,’ Richard whispered, and Fergus wondered how much he guessed.
Hell.
So they left and all Fergus had to do was lift the sleeping Madison into his arms, carry her over to the car and lower her gently into the child seat…
But as he did so, she stirred. She hardly woke up, but she roused enough to know that she was being carried and she knew enough to make herself more secure.
She sighed, a weary sigh of a child who’d been through too much and had found no joy at the other side.
She lifted her arms, she twined them around his neck and she huddled tight.
As if she was finding her security. Any security.
He cradled her against him as he carried her to the car and she felt…she felt…
Don’t think it.
‘It’s OK, sweetheart,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I’m taking you home to bed. Home with Ginny and your daddy.’
‘Daddy,’ she whispered, and the word cut through him like a knife.
Molly…
Somehow he managed the short drive, but the knowledge that there was a child right behind him, as there’d been a child right behind him for the last six years except for three empty months made him feel…empty. Blank. Like he didn’t know how to go on.
He concentrated on the road ahead. Kangaroos jumped out of nowhere around here. He needed to concentrate.
‘I want my mummy,’ the little voice whispered from the back seat, and his heart clenched.
‘Ginny will be home.’
‘I want my mummy.’
No substitutes. He knew how she felt. God, he knew how she felt. That she wasn’t Molly…
He pulled into the farmyard and Miriam was on the back veranda, waiting for him.
‘Richard and Ginny are coming home the long way in my truck,’ he explained. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘Let’s get the bairn to bed,’ Miriam said, accepting things fast for what they were. ‘I’ll pull the sheets back. If you’ll just carry her in…’
‘Will you-?’ he began, but she’d already turned away.
He opened the car door and unclipped the child harness.
‘Bedtime,’ he whispered, and once again her arms wound round his neck and she clung.
He carried her up the stairs in silence. The whole night was silent. The dogs were in the back of his truck, being ferried around the lake. Miriam was out of sight, doing what had to be done.
Madison clung an
d sighed, and his heart twisted until he was sure it must break all over again. As it had broken the night he’d said goodbye to Molly.
How could he think…?
He couldn’t. He just…couldn’t.
Madison’s bed was waiting. Miriam was holding the sheets back.
‘I’ll change her into her pyjamas if she wakes up and needs to go the bathroom,’ she said. ‘But it won’t hurt her to sleep in what she’s in.’
She was in a tiny version of what Ginny was wearing. Soft fleecy pants and windcheater.
He gazed down at her tiny face and he saw a likeness to Ginny. Fleeting but there.
Family.
She snuggled her face into the pillow, and her arms came out, still almost in sleep. This was an involuntary movement, made maybe every night as a sleeping chid was carried to bed.
‘Cuddle night,’ she whispered, and he had no choice but to put his face down on hers, kiss her gently and give her a soft hug.
She hugged him back. She couldn’t be mistaking him for her mother now, he thought, dazed. He had a stubbly chin. He’d smell different. He’d feel different.
‘Daddy,’ she whispered, and settled back into sleep.
It was half an hour before Ginny arrived.
‘We drove right round the far side and watched the moon until Richard slept,’ Ginny told him, slipping silently from the truck and going around the back to release the dogs. ‘I’m sorry you had to wait.’
‘It’s OK,’ he said, but something about his voice must have changed.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. Let’s get Richard to bed.’
The next few minutes were taken up with the mechanics of getting one very ill man into bed, settled, rewired.
‘I’m setting up a subcutaneous line,’ Fergus told Ginny. He’d watched how much Richard had-or hadn’t-consumed during the evening and he knew he’d be getting really dehydrated very soon. Eating and drinking were now too much trouble.
They’d spoken about this to Richard. He wanted no heroic rescues or anything as intrusive as nasal gastric feeding, but dehydration had been explained to him and he’d agreed to fluids when the time came.
‘I’m with you on that one,’ Ginny said. ‘I talked to him about the need for it this afternoon and he said when you said he needed it then it was fine by him. You’re his doctor, Fergus.’
He was and he couldn’t walk away now. Over the next few days he’d be back here over and over again. But if he had a choice…
‘What’s changed?’ she said. With Richard settled, they’d walked down to his truck. Miriam sat up on the veranda, watching her charges, but she was out of earshot and even if she hadn’t been, Fergus knew that anything he said here would never be repeated.
This town knew everything about everyone already. There was no need for eavesdropping. Miriam probably knew already what he was about to say right now.
‘Ginny, I can’t…’
‘You can’t be with me,’ she whispered. ‘I know that. I told you.’
‘I thought-’
‘Fergus, you’re not thinking,’ she interrupted, and she laid her hand on his arm and pressed. ‘You’re hurting. You and I had a wonderful one-night stand. That night set things free for me in a way that I could never have imagined. But it didn’t set you free. And my freedom doesn’t mean I’m taking things further with you. You’re where I’ve been for years. Running from encumbrances. There’s no way I’ll load you with mine.’
‘But you-’
‘Fergus, I’m a package deal,’ she said softly, and she lifted his hand and held it against her face. ‘I think…I think you’re a wonderful man. A man I’d love to love. But there’s lots of things to love in this world and you’re only one of them.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ he said blankly, and she managed a shaky laugh.
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘It’s only Madison.’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘It’s nothing to do with Madison. You think you’d like to be with me if only you didn’t have to look at a child again. But you don’t really want to be with me. Not how…not how I want to be with you.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said miserably, and she smiled and reached up and kissed him lightly on the lips.
‘That’s because you haven’t had an epiphany,’ she whispered. ‘I hope one day you have it. For your sake. Somehow you’ve given it to me.’
‘An epiphany…’
‘I used to try and drive away pain by anger,’ she said. ‘Or work. Dive into medicine and don’t think of anything else, and when the world got too grim I’d go to the gym and kick-box.’
‘Kick-box?’ He stared and she grinned.
‘Didn’t know that about me, huh?’
‘N-no.’
‘Puts me in an altogether new light.’
‘Maybe,’ he said faintly, and her smile faded.
‘Look, it doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is that by loving you I realised that it works. I can love again. I can make this life work for me. I can be happy again, even if I’ve lost.’
‘Yeah, but-’
‘This isn’t about you,’ she said. ‘What I’m saying is about me. You look at Madison and you cringe inside and there’s no way you should put yourself in that position. We go back to being professional colleagues, Fergus. Maybe in a few years you’ll have your epiphany and maybe I’ll be sitting in my rocking chair with my knitting and my dogs and I’ll spend a little part of my pension on another rocking chair so you can sit beside me.’
‘Lie beside me,’ he growled, and she chuckled.
‘I’m betting you’ll be a very sexy octogenarian.’
‘Ginny-’
‘Enough.’ She kissed him again, lightly but with purpose. ‘We both know this isn’t going to happen now for us. Face it, Fergus, and move on. I love you but I don’t need you. I wish that could make the loneliness better for you but I don’t think anything can. Except maybe time. So give it to yourself, Fergus, love. Walk away.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RICHARD died eight days later.
Fergus had been back at the house many times in the interim, but he’d kept his visits relatively formal. With Ginny.
With Richard he’d established something that was as close to a friendship as could be made between people in such disparate circumstances.
‘You’ll look out for Ginny for me, mate,’ Richard had whispered in one of his last few moments of consciousness when Fergus had been by his side. Ginny had been out visiting one of the community’s new mums and had taken Madison with her. ‘She’s playing hardy but when the others died… She breaks up inside,’ Richard had told him.
Fergus knew what that felt like. He thought of a grief-stricken Ginny and thought if he only had the courage…
To take Ginny, to take three dogs, to take one little girl…
‘I’ll keep in touch with her,’ Fergus said. ‘Though I’m not sure…’
‘You don’t have to be sure it’ll lead anywhere,’ Richard whispered. ‘And you don’t have to be scared either. Take it from me, there’s nothing to be afraid of. You know, a few weeks ago I was terrified. But not now. I’ve been given this place. I’ve been given the gift of knowing I have a kid and Madison’s going to be great. Great for Ginny. Great for…’ He paused and his gaze turned inward, as it did increasingly. ‘Well, who knows who she’ll be great for. But, Fergus…watch out for her for me.’
‘I will,’ Fergus promised, and when Tony rang him at two in the morning to say it was over, he remembered his promise as he drove through the darkness.
To what?
To a deathbed.
In such circumstances it wasn’t even necessary for a doctor to attend. Richard had been in a coma for the last three days. His death had been inevitable. The local undertakers could come and do their job without him, and Fergus could sign the death certificate in the morning.
But not to go now was unthinkable.
He pulled into t
he yard and Tony was standing on the veranda, waiting for him.
‘I knew you’d come,’ he said in satisfaction. ‘Ginny said not to call you but-’
‘But I’d said call,’ Fergus said, almost roughly. In truth, he’d wanted to be here himself at the end, but time of death was totally unpredictable and Fergus was employed to take care of the needs of the entire community. Not just one man.
Or one man’s sister.
‘Was it OK at the end?’ he asked. There were deaths and deaths. He’d worked hard to make this one right. He’d rung a Sydney palliative care physician. He’d double-checked himself every way. Please…
‘He just slept into it,’ Tony reassured him. ‘If Ginny hadn’t been sitting with him, holding his hand, we wouldn’t have known exact time of death. He just slipped away.’
‘Ginny…’
‘She’s not here,’ Tony said. ‘She said she needed to be by herself for a bit. She left in the car a couple of minutes ago.’
Hell.
He needed to see the whole picture. He needed not to focus just on Ginny.
‘Madison?’
‘She’s sound asleep. We thought we wouldn’t wake her.’
‘No.’
‘You want me to call the undertaker?’
‘There’s time,’ Fergus said. He checked Richard’s body but it had been like Tony had said. He’d just slipped away, leaving his body like an outer husk of what had once been there. A peaceful death.
‘Can you stay on a bit longer?’ he asked Tony, and Tony smiled and shrugged.
‘We agreed this was a part of our regular shift work. Madison’s on the books as well as Richard. I’m on duty until seven.’
‘Ginny will be back by then.’
‘You’ll go and find her?’ Tony asked, and Fergus could see that he was troubled.
‘You think I should?’
‘I think you should,’ the big nurse told him. ‘Mate, I think you have to.’
She was in the boatshed. He’d guessed she would be, but even so it was a relief when he pulled into the clearing and saw her car.
The door of the boatshed was open. He pushed it wide and saw her. She was at the other door, sitting on the ramp which slid down into the water. She wasn’t moving. For a moment he thought she was in control, simply sitting staring out over the lake.
Rescue at Cradle Lake Page 15
