The Surgeon's Engagement Wish

by Alison Roberts

  Beth’s spirits slipped another notch and when she heard Jack groan it seemed as though he was reading her mind. But that was ridiculous.

  ‘Are you all right, Jack?’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a pain.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘In my chest. It’s OK, I’ve got my spray somewhere.’

  Beth’s knees protested as she straightened and the cramp in her abdomen tightened, but she was well distracted from her own discomfort.

  ‘Is it angina? Do you have a heart condition, Jack?’

  ‘Yeah…kind of. Nothing too serious.’

  ‘You’ve never had a heart attack?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How bad is this pain now? Is it the same as your usual angina?’

  ‘It’s just kind of gripping me.’

  ‘Whereabouts exactly?’ Beth had come around Willy’s head and didn’t even notice the spray from his blowhole wetting her hair as she saw Jack’s clenched fist against the centre of his chest. ‘Is it just in your chest?’

  ‘Goes down my arm a bit, too.’

  ‘Where’s your spray?’

  ‘In my pocket, I think.’ Jack fumbled with the zip on his jacket. ‘Damn it, my hands are so cold they won’t work properly.’

  ‘Here, let me.’ Beth unzipped the jacket. The small cylinder of GTN spray was easy to find in Jack’s back pocket. ‘Lift your tongue up,’ she directed Jack. Then she sprayed two squirts of the medication. ‘You sit down for a minute and rest.’

  Beth felt his pulse, which seemed quite steady and strong, but she was alarmed, nonetheless. Even if the pain went away with rest and medication, Jack needed a check-up to determine whether this was angina or a heart attack. And he certainly shouldn’t be standing around in the cold, let alone planning to battle the surf to help refloat the whales.

  Beth wasn’t surprised that Luke noticed what was going on. He was beside them less than a minute after Jack had sat down on the sand.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Jack’s got some angina. He’s just used his spray.’

  ‘Has that helped, Jack?’

  ‘Not yet. Maybe I should have some more.’

  ‘How are you feeling otherwise?’

  ‘Cold. A bit sick, I guess.’

  ‘Right. We’re going to send you into Ocean View to get checked. I’ll get a stretcher and we’ll get you up to the ambulance at the top of the hill.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I can walk.’ Jack glared at Luke. ‘There’s no way I’m getting carried off this beach in front of all these people.’

  ‘Hmm. How bad is this pain at the moment, Jack? On a scale of one to ten with ten, being the worst.’

  ‘Two.’

  Luke chuckled. ‘You wouldn’t be lying, would you, Jack?’

  ‘I’m not getting carried.’

  ‘Fine. We’ll walk as far as the car park. But you’ll let me support you and we’ll walk very slowly.’

  Beth scrambled to her feet again. ‘I can help.’

  Luke shook his head. ‘Look after your whale. I’ll find someone to come and take Jack’s place for you.’

  But it was Luke who came back to her a little while later.

  ‘He looks OK,’ he told Beth. ‘Another dose of GTN and some oxygen fixed the pain, but I’ve sent him in for an ECG anyway.’ He stooped to collect a half-bucket of water from the moat Beth had just refilled and dribbled it over Willy’s back. ‘There’s no one free to help you just now so I’ll stay unless I’m needed somewhere else.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Beth could think of nothing else to say and there wasn’t much point in dreaming up a conversation, was there? It probably wouldn’t be long before someone else wanted Luke’s attention.

  The silence was awkward and it was Luke who broke it.

  ‘I’m glad you came to Hereford, Beth.’

  ‘Really?’ Beth couldn’t help sounding surprised. ‘That wasn’t the impression I got. You looked horrified when you saw me in ED.’

  ‘I was surprised,’ Luke conceded. ‘For a second I thought I was seeing a ghost.’

  He smiled at Beth as he put the bucket down. Surely it was a trick of the artificial light that made the smile seem to wobble so precariously? But then Luke dipped his head, adding to the impression that something had saddened him immeasurably. He cleared his throat and the new cheeriness in his tone was definitely forced.

  ‘So…what do you think of Hereford so far, anyway?’

  ‘I love it.’

  ‘Yeah? It is a great place.’

  ‘I even went out yesterday to look at a couple of houses for sale.’

  ‘No kidding?’ Luke almost sounded pleased at the idea that Beth was planning to stay. She smiled and nodded as she stretched out her hand.

  ‘Can I have that bucket? I’ll go and get some more water.’

  It wasn’t far to go to fill the bucket now. A wave broke over Beth’s feet and the icy foam reached to her knees. She was shivering by the time she arrived back beside Willy.

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘What, that sort of hiccupping? Wasn’t he doing that before?’

  ‘No. He’s never made a noise like that.’ Beth put the bucket down and crouched to peer at the whale’s face. ‘Are you all right, Willy?’

  ‘Willy?’

  ‘Jack named him.’ Beth sighed. ‘I hope he’s going to be all right.’ ‘Who? Jack or Willy?

  ‘Both of them.’

  The new silence was quite long enough for Beth to fret about Willy’s condition. He probably still needed his mother to feed him. How long would he last without milk? He’d hardly moved for the last hour or more, come to think of it. Maybe one of the Department of Conservation officials would know enough about whales to be able to reassure her. Beth looked up to see if she could spot someone in one of the bright reflecting vests, but all she managed to do was catch sight of the blonde walking away from her group towards the car-parking area. Looking for Luke perhaps?

  Beth’s gaze automatically shifted. ‘Friend of yours, isn’t she?’

  Luke turned his head swiftly. ‘That’s Maree.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, she’s a good friend. She’s also the sister of my ex-brother-in-law.’

  Beth’s heart sank like a stone. ‘So you did get married, then?’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t. What on earth makes you say that?’

  Beth’s mouth opened and then closed again. Why had he said ‘of course’? Surely he couldn’t mean that if he hadn’t married her he wouldn’t want to marry anyone else. That was ridiculous.

  But it had sounded like that, hadn’t it?

  Luke saw her expression and completely misread it. ‘Oh…right. In-laws can get complicated, I guess. Maree’s brother was married to my sister.’ He looked away from Beth. ‘I never got married.’

  ‘Why not?’ The personal question popped out before Beth even thought of preventing it.

  ‘Never met the right person, I guess.’

  ‘Not for lack of trying, though.’ Beth’s smile was wry.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You had a different woman on your arm every time I saw you after we broke up, Luke. Right up until you moved to Wellington.’

  Even in the shadows Beth could see the way Luke’s face tightened angrily. He started pulling back the covering over Willy, which was starting to slip, with jerky movements.

  ‘What did you expect me to do when you cut me out of your life, Beth? Sit and mope? Turn into a monk?’

  He seemed to collect himself. ‘I was angry,’ he said more quietly. ‘Angry enough to try and prove that there were women out there who actually thought I was good enough for them.’

  A wave reached as far as Beth was crouching and the icy water soaked the seat of her jeans. She stood up hurriedly.

  ‘I never thought you weren’t good enough, Luke.’

  ‘That was the impression I certainly got.’

  Beth had to stoop suddenly to catch the bucket the retreating wave was stealing. The pain
in her side grabbed at her but she shook her head, denying the pain as well as Luke’s impression.

  ‘We were just too different, that’s all. Our values were too different.’

  ‘But we never disagreed about important things like values. We argued about silly things. Like that car I wanted to buy.’

  ‘The BMW?’

  ‘Yeah. What was so wrong with that?’

  ‘I told you at the time. I didn’t like that it was such a status symbol.’

  ‘It was a good, safe car. That was the reason I wanted it. To keep us safe. To keep you safe.’

  ‘So you said.’ Beth hated the way she was sounding. She didn’t want to argue with Luke. She didn’t want to go over such old ground like this. She was cold, tired and miserable, and there still didn’t seem to be an end in sight to this ordeal.

  ‘You hated my friends, too.’

  Make that both ordeals. The whale rescue and Luke’s dissection of their break-up.

  ‘Some of them were snobs,’ Beth said wearily. ‘If you weren’t climbing the same social ladder they were, you weren’t worth talking to. You fitted right in. I had no desire to be part of that set.’

  ‘Then why the hell did you go out with a doctor in the first place?’

  ‘I…I fell in love with you, that’s why.’ The words almost choked Beth. ‘I thought you might be different. A country boy who had worked very hard to get qualified. Someone who came from a background very different from mine. From a real family. I thought you might feel the same about the things that really matter.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Beth reached out to stroke Willy. ‘What I was just talking about,’ she said quietly. ‘Family.’

  Luke groaned. ‘Oh, come on! I value my family a hell of lot more than you value yours. I had to practically force you to introduce me. It was months before you would and they only lived across town, and when you did…’

  Someone said hello to Luke as they passed and someone else was shouting something about getting ropes to get the first whales ready for shifting, but Luke seemed to hear nothing but his own thoughts. When he spoke again after that pause, he sounded almost bewildered.

  ‘When you did finally take me to meet your parents—that was when things started to go so wrong between us, wasn’t it?’

  Beth couldn’t deny it. Not that she got the chance.

  ‘I’d set out to try and impress your parents for your sake but it backfired on me, didn’t it? That was when you decided I wasn’t up to scratch. Everything I did was somehow wrong after that. Even my career. You actually tried to talk me out of applying for the job I’d dreamed of getting.’

  ‘And you applied for it anyway.’

  They were at the crux of it all now. The final showdown. Beth was surprised to find so much of her anger still there.

  That anger had been why she had refused to consider going to Wellington with Luke. That job had represented every doubt she had been having about their future together. When he’d gone ahead and applied for it without even telling her, all those doubts had seemed justified and his determination to accept the position if it had been offered had been what had finally split them irrevocably.

  Beth had had the torment of hearing about his successful interviews from others and then watching him work out his notice in Auckland with the air of being about to move onto something much better.

  ‘Of course I did.’ Luke was still sounding bewildered. ‘I couldn’t understand why you were so against it. It was an astonishing position for anyone at my stage to even be considered for.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t have got that far if my father hadn’t been so impressed by you.’

  Luke shook his head. ‘I got the job on my own merits. Sure, the director of cardiac surgery in Wellington was an old friend of your father’s—’

  ‘His closest friend,’ Beth cut in.

  Luke ignored the interruption. ‘And maybe it helped my application get a second glance, but I competed on an even field with a lot of other applicants after that—applicants from all over the world, no less. I deserved that job, Beth. I earned it.’

  ‘Of course you did.’

  ‘And what the hell was so wrong with wanting to succeed? I would have had to have changed my entire career and lifestyle to make you happy then. Of course I wasn’t going to do that. For anyone. You were right. I was a country boy and I had worked bloody hard to get where I was.’

  He’d done it now, though, hadn’t he? Made a complete U-turn in his career and his lifestyle. Beth wanted so badly to ask why but Luke wanted an answer to his own question. And he deserved one because he seemed genuinely puzzled.

  Did Luke really have cause to look back and see her as being critical and destructive without adequate reason? If he did, it wasn’t entirely her fault. She’d tried to explain but she herself hadn’t really understood how crucial what had been missing from her own life had been. Her objections could have come across as being an inverted snobbery, but Luke hadn’t been willing to listen hard enough, had he? He’d overridden her objections with increasing impatience until that last, dreadful fight about the job he had intended to compete for. She had been right to take her own stand then, hadn’t she? Or had fear warped her perspective?

  Beth could see the operations manager walking towards them but Luke was still clearly waiting for an answer.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said finally. ‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting to succeed.’

  ‘So what was it, then, Beth?’ Luke’s tone was despairing. ‘What did I actually do that was so wrong?’

  Luke’s face seemed to have captured and condensed that whisper of gloom that had been doing the rounds of Boulder Bay beach and the sadness Beth could see brought tears to her eyes.

  She bit her lip and dropped her gaze. ‘I was scared,’ she admitted.

  ‘Scared of what?’

  Beth was unwilling to raise her face and look at Luke, but his gentle touch under her chin made hiding impossible.

  ‘What were you so scared of, Beth?’

  ‘That…that I’d chosen someone who was going to end up being just like my father.’

  The operations manager was beside Willy now. He looked from Beth to Luke and frowned.

  ‘Not interrupting something, am I?’

  ‘No.’ Luke’s shoulders slumped a little as he turned away from Beth. ‘What’s up, Jim? Nobody’s injured, are they?’

  ‘No. We’ve got enough water to start refloating. We’re probably more likely to get injuries now than at any other time, so I just wanted to make sure you knew what was happening.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Beth watched the two men walk away. Dawn was breaking finally and she could see beyond the pools of artificial light. She could see the rescuers with the whales closer to the water, waves breaking above their knees and the foam up past their waists. They were hanging onto their charges and seemed to be rocking them in the water. It was only now that Beth realised how the noise level had grown as instructions were shouted. Her conversation with Luke had been so intense she had been unaware of the shift into the next phase of the rescue effort.

  She wasn’t sure she was ready for this. Already physically challenged, that time with Luke had exhausted her emotionally. Had she ever really tried to look at things from Luke’s perspective? No wonder he was bitter.

  ‘It’s hopeless,’ she said aloud. ‘Isn’t it, Willy?’

  The sound from Willy was loud. Louder than any he’d made for hours. The answering cry from whale number fifteen was even louder. Willy wriggled and the ankle deep water was enough to let him move.

  ‘Oh!’ Beth grabbed the baby whale behind his fin. ‘Don’t move yet, Willy. It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right.’

  Someone Beth didn’t know came to help her hold onto Willy, and things seemed to start moving a lot faster on the beach from that point.

  A tractor and ropes were being used to move whales into deeper water and the sand and surf b
oiled with the movement of their huge tails. Beth did as she was told and struggled to keep her footing in the icy water and keep Willy upright and prevent his blowhole being swamped as each new wave surged in. Everywhere people were shouting and moving. Some even swam beside their whales.

  And everywhere Beth found herself watching for Luke, but she couldn’t find him and somehow that seemed perfectly appropriate.

  Luke was gone and there was really no point in dwelling on how much either of them had been to blame for what had happened in the past.

  The next wave actually lifted Beth from her feet and Willy moved away from her to tuck himself alongside whale number fifteen.

  ‘Come away,’ Beth’s new partner told her. ‘Don’t try and get between them. Look—they’re moving.’

  All the whales were moving now. They slipped into deeper water and gathered into a single group. Beth joined in the loud cheer that ran through the crowd. Surf splashed her face and mingled with tears that were flowing freely.

  Maybe it was finally over.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE noise was deafening.

  Clanging of metal against metal. People shouting. Outboard motors on inflatable boats revving as they patrolled the sea between the human wall and the pod of pilot whales now milling about in deep water. A helicopter overhead with cameras taking footage for a television news broadcast because it was finally light enough to see what was happening clearly.

  It would have taken many more decibels, however, to silence the words Luke could hear in his head.

  No wonder Beth had run from their relationship.

  Luke had never denied being ambitious. He’d even recognised it as being a stumbling block in his relationship with Beth when they’d started arguing about that job in Wellington. Right now he could also see it as arrogance.

  His refusal to contemplate compromise had seemed perfectly justifiable at the time. He would have been doing it for them both. His wife—and, eventually, his children—could only have benefited from his success and the more money and power and prestige he could have garnered, the better off they would all have been.

  Those ambitions were long gone, of course. Jodie’s illness and death had pulled an emotional rug from beneath Luke with enough of a jerk to send them flying. There was no way Beth could be afraid of him evolving into a clone of her father now, surely?