Graham left them soon after.
‘There’s a spot of fishing calling,’ he told them, and smiled. ‘As long as you don’t need me?’
‘We don’t need you,’ Nate said and as the old man left, the ancient dog at his heels, Nate smiled at Gemma like a conspirator.
‘You don’t know how good it is to tell him that,’ he told her. ‘Just knowing he doesn’t have to carry his mobile phone, he’ll be able to spend the morning on the river with the knowledge that if there’s an emergency I have you. I won’t have to call him back.’
So they were depending on her already. It felt…strange. Like fine gossamer threads of netting were gently settling on her shoulders. Holding her whether she willed it or not.
And then Mrs McCurdle, the woman who ‘did’ for them, bustled into the kitchen. She enveloped Mia in her overpowering maternal bosom. Nate gave Gemma a sideways grin and ushered her out, giving her the sensation that they were making their escape. Maybe it wasn’t just Gemma who felt like she was being trapped. Mrs McCurdle, burbling on about the doctor’s new wee baby, obviously made Nate feel exactly the same.
‘She’s a good soul,’ Nate told her as they made their way through to the hospital. ‘But a little bit of her goes a long way.’
‘I can see that.’
But his thoughts had moved onto medicine. ‘Let’s see to your nephew. To Cady.’
She didn’t have to ring Jacob. Nate was every bit as good as his word. Not only did he have the skills but he also had the technology to back him up.
Cady was just waking when they reached him but he wasn’t the least bit scared. The experience of the crèche had left him unafraid of new people, and Nate had a team of skilful and kindly nurses who were just great with Cady.
Nate was great himself. He wheeled the equipment he needed into the ward and set about testing Cady’s blood-sugar level, explaining what he was doing to Cady every step of the way. So much so that Cady hardly noticed the pinprick on his finger as Nate took blood. Nate had him press the buttons on the machine and he was so interested in the technology he didn’t even think of being frightened.
And they had what they needed within minutes. ‘His sugar levels have been high for at least three months,’ Nate told Gemma, showing her the readout. ‘Look. The buildup on his blood cells is running over nine.’
And she hadn’t noticed…
‘It’s hard to notice changes when you see them every day.’ Nate looked at her face and guessed at once what she was feeling. ‘You’re not to blame yourself.’
‘How can I help it? If I’d seen-’
‘There’s no long-term damage done. We have his sugar down to twelve already.’ He looked at Cady who was studying the slip of test paper that held his blood and looking at the screen showing his results. His bright little face said he was already trying to figure out how things worked. ‘It’s my guess that he’ll be giving himself injections and testing himself in no time.’
‘He’s only four.’
But Nate was still watching Cady and he shook his head. ‘Maybe he is only four but this is Cady’s medical condition, Gemma,’ he said gently. ‘His. And the sooner he owns it the better. If you take responsibility for it then Cady doesn’t need to and there’ll be rebellion in the future. Sure, he’s small, but just as soon as he can conquer a skill-like giving himself an injection or deciding that a food’s bad for him-then you let him do the deciding. It’s the only way for him to cope with his future. To feel like he’s in control.’
Gemma thought back to her sister. To the dreadful fights between mother and daughter from the moment of Fiona’s diagnosis, over and over again. The shouting matches. ‘You can’t eat that,’ her mother had decreed, terrified at what had been happening to her favourite daughter. ‘What’s your blood sugar?’
Fiona had loathed it, nearly always eating exactly what she shouldn’t have.
Maybe if she’d been treated differently…
Who could tell? All that Gemma knew was that Nate’s gentle words made sense. For now she’d go with him.
‘Fine.’
‘Now, let’s work on an insulin regime,’ Nate told her, moving right on. ‘Cady’s growing stronger by the minute.’ The night on the saline drip had worked wonders.
‘You think he’ll be fine?’
‘I’m sure he’ll be fine. Why wouldn’t he be?’
Cady might be improving but he was still a very tired little boy. He was awake for barely half an hour before his eyes were closing again and Gemma tucked him back into bed. Which left her free.
But Nate wasn’t free. Out the hospital window she could see people arriving at the clinic to see him. He had a full day’s consulting before him.
‘Let me help,’ she urged.
He shook his head. ‘Not today.’
‘I can.’
‘I’m very sure you can.’ His tone was gentle-full of caring-and it had the capacity to unsettle her in a way she didn’t fully understand. ‘But you’re still suffering from the shock of last night and I don’t want you. Tomorrow I’ll set you to work but today is declared a Gemma-holiday.’
A Gemma-holiday. She’d never heard of such a thing. There had been so much on her shoulders lately she hadn’t known which way to turn. And sleep… She’d slept more last night than she’d slept for a month and here was this man urging her to have more.
‘I don’t need-’
‘You do need.’ Nate took her shoulders and propelled her to the glass doors opening onto the veranda. ‘There’s a hammock down by the river which is my very favourite spot in the whole world. Go find it, Dr Campbell. And use it.’
‘But-’
‘No buts. You get yourself rested and recovered. Now.’ He gave her a gentle push toward the edge of the veranda-and then walked inside and closed the door firmly behind her.
She was free to wander as she willed.
The sensation was so novel Gemma could hardly take it in. How long had it been since she’d had some time to herself? Years.
Dazed, she wandered down to the river, and there was Nate’s hammock. It was slung between two trees right at the water’s edge. The sun was dappling through the leaves of the huge eucalypts and the water was rippling between boulders, making a lullaby all by itself. The setting was just perfect. She could see why it was Nate’s favourite place.
She could see Nate here.
But he wasn’t here. He was working. As she should be working. She always worked.
But what had Nate said? It’s a Gemma-holiday.
‘I shouldn’t,’ she told herself. But she did. The sun was warm on her face, the river was rippling and gurgling, there were kookaburras chortling in the gums overhead…
Cady was sleeping. Cady was recovering. Mia was being well cared for by the redoubtable Mrs McCurdle.
God was in his heaven. All was right with her world. For now.
She climbed into the hammock and looked up through the eucalypts at the sky above. And slept.
‘Will it be my lot in life, ad infinitum, to wake you up?’
She opened her eyes. Nate’s face was six inches away from hers and he was laughing at her. ‘Hey, sleepyhead, it’s almost dinnertime.’
Dinnertime.
Dinnertime! She sat up with such a jolt that the hammock veered crazily sideways. She would have fallen but Nate reached out and caught her shoulders, steadying her. And when she was steady he didn’t pull his hands away.
‘Are you OK?’
Was she OK? She thought about it. She was warm and sleepy and incredibly comfortable-and Nate was holding her as if he cared. Was she OK? Yes. A whole lot more than OK.
‘I’m fine.’ She pulled back a little but he didn’t release her.
‘We were starting to get worried.’
‘Worried?’ She sounded dazed. It was the feel of his hands, she thought. It made her feel…well, dazed.
‘I checked at lunchtime and found you sleeping, but I couldn’t believe you’d keep sleepi
ng this long. If your car wasn’t still parked outside I would have thought you’d bolted back to Sydney.’
She looked at him, astonished. ‘Are you kidding? How could I have left Cady?’
‘No.’ His eyes were still inches from hers. Questioning her with no need for words. ‘No, I guess you wouldn’t do that.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
Nate’s gaze was still probing. ‘And yet you’d leave Mia?’
‘Mia is your baby. Not mine.’ She pulled away from him then and sat up. The hammock swung wildly again and she had to shove her feet down fast to hold herself steady. She missed his hands. They were good hands, she thought inconsequentially. Big. Warm and strong and capable. Doctor’s hands.
She was being ridiculous.
And he was watching her as if he could read her mind.
‘I shouldn’t have gone to sleep,’ she said quickly-too quickly-and he smiled, with the indulgence of an adult giving a child a treat.
‘Of course you should. Your nephew has slept the day away and I’ve a feeling his aunt needed the sleep even more. If Cady hadn’t collapsed I think you would have collapsed in his stead. How long have you been burning the candle at both ends?’
She thought about it. ‘I guess… There has been so much to do. Since Fiona died. And Mia isn’t a restful baby-as you’ll no doubt find out.’
‘She looks pretty restful to me.’
‘Yeah. And how long have you stayed with her?’
‘Hours and hours.’ He gave her a look of pure unsullied virtue which made her smile.
‘Yeah, right.’
But he was moving on. ‘Do you want a hospital tour before dinner? We have time.’
‘Um…’ She looked down at her rumpled self. ‘I guess. Though I’m not exactly looking my professional best.’
‘You look pretty good to me.’
There it was again. That jolt. It was a stab of warmth that had her understanding exactly why Fiona had chosen him to be the father of her child.
‘Yeah, right.’ She didn’t meet his eyes-just scuffed her trainers on the grass and looked up toward the hospital. ‘OK. Lead the way.’ He looked every inch the doctor and she looked every inch the poor relation.
So what else was new?
Fiona had made her feel like an also-ran from the moment of her birth. She should be used to it by now.
‘It’s a casual sort of hospital,’ he told her, and there it was again-the reading of minds that she was starting to dread. ‘No specialists with bow-ties need apply. The people here are farmers and they don’t look for sophistication. They look for caring-and it seems to me that caring’s what you have in spades.’
Of course. Caring was what she was principally good at.
Caring…
It went on and on for ever.
Once on her tour of inspection, however, Gemma forgot her concerns about her appearance. She forgot everything except the hospital, and the hospital was great.
The doctor who’d built it all those years ago had suffered delusions of grandeur and had built a hospital that could have accommodated three times the number of beds they had.
‘We’re accredited for twenty patients,’ Nate told her as she exclaimed at the size of the place. ‘And no one can say we’re crowded.’
They certainly weren’t. The wards were double or single and they were roomy, comfortably furnished and ever so slightly over the top.
‘There were chandeliers here when my uncle arrived,’ Nate told her. ‘He got rid of them because of the dust-and because the local farmers thought they’d died and gone to heaven. They’d have a minor operation and wake up to this-and damn near arrest on the spot.’
‘I can imagine.’ Gemma looked up at the high pressed ceilings with their ornate cornices and beautifully moulded plasterwork and shook her head in disbelief. ‘All you need is a few Michelangelo friezes and you could be in the Sistine Chapel.’
‘Maybe we could have a working bee and paint a few.’ Nate was grinning down at her. Life was a constant joke to him, Gemma thought with just a trace of anger. Then his smile caught her and she had to smile back. Sort of.
‘A working bee to paint the ceilings…’ She smiled. ‘What a great idea. Can I help? I paint a really mean elephant. From the rear.’
‘I’ll bet you do.’
And they were grinning at each other like fools and it took Mrs Draper-an elderly lady with gout-harrumphing from her bed to haul them back to order.
Over the top or not, the hospital was run as a well-oiled machine. The staff greeted Gemma with interest, chatting to Nate with real friendliness. There was nothing of the distance between nurses and doctors she saw in the big city hospitals.
And the patients were the same. Nate greeted them with ease and introduced them to Gemma in turn. They chatted, they checked Gemma out with a curiosity she saw would instantly turn to gossip the moment they left, and in the end she was left feeling as if the place consisted of one big family.
‘That’s what country practice is all about,’ Nate told her as she exclaimed over the sensation. ‘Do you want to give us a go?’
And at the end of the tour she felt her doubts dissipating. This could work. It could.
‘Yes, please.’
‘That’s great.’ His smile was so intimate it warmed parts of her she hadn’t begun to realise were cold.
‘Fantastic,’ he told her. ‘Let’s go to dinner.’
Dinner was lovely. Sitting in the huge kitchen, listening to Graham and Nate gossip over the events of the day, Gemma felt more and more at home. Mrs McCurdle had left them the king of all casseroles. Mia was gurgling sleepily in her cot, the dog was asleep again before the fire and it felt like family. And family was something Gemma hadn’t felt for a very long time.
‘Gemma?’
Nate was talking to her, she realised, and she had to blink to haul herself back to reality. She’d been floating in a fuzzy little dream where country practice, Cady and Mia-and Nate-were all mixed up in a rosy future.
She looked at him blankly. ‘Sorry?’
‘Penny for your thoughts.’
She blinked at that. ‘You don’t want to hear them.’
‘I bet I do.’
She smiled but she shook her head. ‘No way.’ If he couldn’t guess, she wasn’t telling him. ‘Was there something you wanted?’
He hesitated and she could see what he was thinking that maybe now wasn’t the time to ask. He wanted a favour, she decided, and he was wondering whether she was up to it.
But she’d slept all day and she felt terrific.
‘Go on. Ask. I can always refuse.’
His brows rose at that and she thought, Great-he’s not the only one who can read minds. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Nate Ethan.
She’d disconcerted him and it showed. When he spoke again his voice had lost some of its certainty. ‘I was wondering…’
‘You were wondering what?’
And out it came. ‘OK. I was wondering whether you’d cover me tonight.’
She thought about it. ‘Medically?’
‘Certainly medically.’ He smiled that endearing smile that would obtain anything he wanted. ‘Graham’s involved with the local repertory society-he’s playing the Major-General in their production of The Pirates of Penzance and it’s their dress rehearsal tonight.’
‘The Major-General?’ Gemma twinkled across the table at Graham. How wonderful. She could really see him in the role, waving his walking sticks at the pirates and the world in general and thumbing his nose at his disabilities. ‘That’s fantastic.’ She turned back to Nate. ‘So don’t tell me. You need to go, too, because you’re the Pirate King.’
‘No.’
Her nose wrinkled in disappointment. ‘That’s a pity.’ She had a great vision of him bare-chested and piratical, complete with cutlass and sword. The thought was enough to make her blink. ‘You’d make a wonderful pirate.’
He didn’t know how to take that one. ‘Thank
s very much.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ she said expansively. The food, the warmth and the overall sense of security were getting to her, making her feel fantastic. ‘But if you’re not the pirate…’
‘I’m not in the play.’
‘Oh?’
‘Both of us can’t be,’ he said-as if she was a bit simple not to have thought it through. ‘Until now Graham and I haven’t been able to go out together. There’s always been the need to cover.’
‘But now?’
‘Now there’s you.’
Right. She was here. And she might as well work. Why not? ‘And you want to go out?’
‘If I can.’ There was a knock on the door. ‘Whoops. There’s Donna now.’
Donna. Right. Donna-the-girlfriend.
‘Donna and I were supposed to spend yesterday evening at the Jazzfest,’ Nate told her. ‘She was a bit upset when I was called away.’
‘I imagine she was.’ She tried not to mind. Why should she mind? Donna and Nate were nothing to her.
Were they?
‘Anyway, there’s a party on tonight for a couple of our friends who are getting married this weekend.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Starting about now.’
He hadn’t gone to answer the door and there was no need. Donna had let herself in. She stood in the doorway looking fabulous in a beige silk pantsuit that must have set her back half a year’s salary. She looked gorgeous!
And Gemma felt just like she always did when someone like this was around. Someone like Donna. Someone like Fiona. She felt frumpy and frazzled and like she was middle-aged already. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight.
‘Are you ready, love? Have you asked her?’ Donna didn’t bother to greet either Graham or Gemma, and Graham shoved his plate away with unnecessary force. As if he was suddenly faced with something distasteful.
‘If you’ll excuse me, I need to be going. I’ll be home at about eleven, Gemma.’
Which left Nate and Donna and Gemma. And one sleeping baby.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Nate asked politely. ‘There shouldn’t be any problems. We’ve gone through every patient’s history so there shouldn’t be any surprises, but if you’re worried give me a call.’ He motioned to his cellphone. ‘I wear my phone on my belt.’
To the Doctor: A Daughter Page 7
