The Doctor's Destiny

by Meredith Webber

  She returned to work with a vigour that had been lacking recently, and an enthusiasm only slightly dimmed when the first doctor of the morning was Rory Forrester.

  ‘I thought you’d be settling Jason into school,’ she grumbled at him when he appeared, looking impossibly handsome for so early in the morning, as she finished taking over from the night sister.

  ‘Not at seven-thirty! Even Drusilla wouldn’t want him going off to school that early.’

  Rory smiled at her, which made the impossibly handsome thing even worse, so, ignoring her reactions to both his presence and the smile, she scowled at him.

  ‘Mr Cross is yours, I gather,’ she said, deciding a professional approach was the only way to handle any awkwardness. ‘Will you be running more tests on him today?’

  ‘Yes, but I wanted to see him first. It’s obvious he has a malfunction of his adrenal cortex, but I’d like to know what’s causing it. We’ll keep treating him for the adrenal crisis, and while he’s still unstable, the stress factor is very important. If you can manage to keep him on his own, with as little disruption as possible—no lights, no visitors except his wife and you’ll need to talk to her about not telling him anything that will upset him. The orders are on his chart—regular small meals, monitoring his fluid and food intake, his weight and his urine output.’

  He sighed.

  ‘He’s one of those patients we’ll probably be able to stabilise and who’d be able to continue leading a normal life, but with what’s happening in his family, stress is unavoidable, so in the end he’ll probably be in and out of here on a regular basis.’

  ‘Family problems?’ Alana asked, wondering how terrible they must be for someone with his own set to be sighing over them.

  ‘You can’t imagine! Have a talk to Mrs Cross when she comes in. Though I doubt even you could sort out her family.’

  What’s with this ‘even you’ stuff? Alana thought, but Rory was already moving towards Mr Cross’s room so, like a dutiful charge nurse, she followed.

  Mr Cross was stable, but confused about what had happened and not entirely happy about being in hospital.

  ‘It’s too much for my wife to be at home with all the mob. I should be there for her,’ he told Rory, while Alana wondered how high anxiety levels could rise before they qualified as stress.

  Rory spoke reassuringly to the man then took Alana’s arm to steer her out of the room.

  ‘Watch him closely and if you feel he’s getting over-anxious, contact Ted. We might have to think about tranquillisers of some kind, but I’d prefer not to while we’re still conducting tests.’

  He whisked away, leaving Alana with a warm patch of skin and a totally unacceptable feeling of desolation.

  But the day had begun and she had plenty of work to do, including introducing a fresh-faced young student to the computer.

  ‘Our ward secretary gets in at eight,’ she told the young man—Craig Crain, according to his ID. ‘She’ll help you out if you get into a muddle, but I think you’ll find it all pretty straightforward.’

  She was surprised he’d actually materialised, because the memo that students would be typing up some patient records had only been emailed to all the internal medicine wards over the weekend.

  Rory continued to prove he was no slouch in the organisation department, though the revived student rounds were taken by Ted, who explained that Rory was catching up on things he’d missed while introducing Jason to his new school.

  Jason’s induction into St Peter’s became the topic of ‘out of hospital’ conversation among the inhabitants of Near West, as most of them had, by now, met the teenager and were keen to know how he got on.

  ‘You’d think he’d been going there all his life,’ Gabi said to Alana when they met at the local shop on Friday afternoon. ‘He was telling me about the terrific tennis coach. His name was familiar but you know me, I don’t know a tennis racket from a water-ski. Is he any good?’

  ‘He’s fantastic. He’s the man I’d have recommended—not knowing he was working full time at the school. Jason’s very lucky to have him.’

  ‘He’s talented, or so he tells me,’ Gabi said, and Alana laughed.

  ‘I suppose it’s what they call the confidence of youth,’ Alana said. ‘Did we have it? In my mind, I was always so insecure I’d never have actually told anyone I was good at anything.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Gabi scoffed. ‘You just did your shy retiring violet impersonation, then came out of the court and whopped anyone foolish enough to play against you. And you loved to win.’

  ‘Only in sport,’ Alana argued. ‘I wouldn’t have been so spineless in my relationship with Brian if I’d carried that competitive urge into my love life.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be so spineless about letting those women take over Rory Forrester either,’ Gabi said, her attention seemingly focussed on choosing between two equally plump lettuces.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Alana demanded, removing one of the lettuces and plonking it back on the shelf. ‘And don’t you dare shrug as if it’s something that just popped out of your mouth. I’ve known you long enough, Gabi Graham, to know nothing just pops out of your mouth. Every word is weighed and measured and every sentence plotted to the last full stop.’

  Gabi shrugged anyway.

  ‘And I know you just as well,’ she reminded Alana, ‘so don’t tell me you’re not interested in him.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ Alana blustered, then, because the whole situation was so impossible she had to tell someone, she blurted out the rest of it. ‘And even if I was, Daisy says it can’t happen. She says it would be disastrous for Jason, and he’s got to be Rory’s first concern at the moment, and you know I like the kid, so he’s my concern as well.’

  Gabi’s wide brown eyes grew even wider at this gabble of information.

  She touched Alana’s arm.

  ‘Perhaps we need a coffee,’ she said. ‘Finish your shopping then I’ll shout.’

  Alana glanced at her watch, then pulled a mournful face.

  ‘It’s definitely what I need—girl-talk—but Jason’ll be home from school and he was having his first session with the tennis coach today and wanted a practice when he got home. I just ducked down because we’re out of juice. You can’t believe how much kids his size can put away.’

  She patted Gabi’s small neat bulge of pregnancy.

  ‘You stay right there, little one,’ she said. ‘It’s cheaper that way.’

  They parted, but as Gabi queued at the checkout she watched her friend stride briskly back towards Near West. Though Alana would never admit it, her relationship with Brian had left her wary and defensive of all men. Now, of all the unlikely people, Rory Forrester had penetrated those defences, but to what end?

  Even Gabi knew enough psychology to see how Jason, already forced to adjust to so many life changes, could be affected by a relationship between his uncle and the woman he saw as his own particular friend.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘KEEPING the drinks and snack foods for Jason is one thing,’ Alana complained to Gabi a week later, when they’d finally got together for their cup of coffee. At Alana’s flat, not the coffee-shop, because Jason was getting ready to go to a school social and had told Alana he’d need her there to check he looked OK. ‘But keeping up with him on the tennis court is becoming impossible. Alex plays. I might conscript him some time this weekend, and the pair of us can take Jason on.’

  ‘Doesn’t Rory play?’ Gabi asked, and Alana, knowing Gabi could read her too well, turned away.

  ‘Oh, love,’ Gabi said gently, reaching out to touch Alana lightly on the shoulder. ‘You do know how to complicate your life, don’t you?’

  Alana nodded, then shrugged.

  ‘It’s not as if I did it deliberately,’ she muttered, but Gabi was obviously putting herself into Alana’s place—imagining how she must feel.

  ‘How do you manage at work? You must see him every day. Feeling as you obviously do, h
ow do you handle it?’

  ‘I’m fantastic!’ Alana told her, smiling in spite of the dump-truck load of sadness in her chest. ‘You’ve no idea how efficient being lovesick can make you. I positively breeze through my work—that’s the keeping-busy remedy—then I nag at others to do better so they all argue and mutter at me—that’s the expend-your-emotions-on-something-else cure. The ward is running like a well-oiled machine, the patients have learned to lie straight in their beds—and I even got the window cleaners in, and you know how hard that is at Royal Westside. I think they spend most of their time cleaning the windows in the executive offices because there are so many secretaries in short skirts working on that floor.’

  ‘And Rory?’

  ‘He probably appreciates short-skirted secretaries as much as the next man,’ Alana replied, sounding as offhand as she could manage when, in fact, the situation between them had reached the stage where Alana sometimes wondered if lightning might suddenly crack and sizzle in the air between them with the tension in the atmosphere around them so tight. ‘And he’s almost certainly got clean windows.’

  She hesitated, then said quietly, ‘He’s probably got to get married, you know. Both Drusilla and Rosemary are hanging around in anticipation of that fact. If he had a normal job—one where he worked regular hours and could arrange stable supervision for Jason during those hours—then, even though he’s single, he’d probably win the custody case. But part of his job is being on call, and no judge is going to be happy about a thirteen-year-old left alone in a flat as often as it’s likely to happen.’

  ‘Custody?’ Gabi breathed the word. ‘I knew he was worrying about something—he was asking Alex last weekend who he might approach about lecturing work. But who’s fighting him for custody?’

  Alana hesitated. She shouldn’t have mentioned the problem, but Gabi was her best friend and if she didn’t talk to someone she’d explode.

  ‘Jason’s father. Apparently he remarried as soon as Alison died, possibly so he could put himself in the fore-front of the custody battle.’

  ‘But thirteen-year-olds are old enough to choose,’ Gabi protested. ‘Surely Jason would choose to live with Rory.’

  ‘He would—it’s what he wants, but it’s still up to the judge to decide if that choice means he’ll be living in a safe environment. Rory’s solicitors say that going in with a story that he’s going to be married very soon won’t be good enough, because the court will want to speak to the woman and gauge her relationship with Jason. If he goes the marriage route, it’s going to have to be with a particular woman—and either be already married to her or at least about to be. If he opts out of the marriage scenario altogether then loses Jason because he’s single…’

  ‘How do you know all this if you and Rory barely see each other outside work?’

  Alana sighed.

  ‘Rosemary kindly filled me in on some of it, then Rory—well, we do see each other all the time, really, because he comes down with Jason some evenings and calls for him at times when I’m here.’

  She paused then added defensively, ‘He has to talk to someone, and he knows I care about the kid.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Gabi said, ‘but it still seems weird to me that the father would even bother.’

  Not wanting to bring up Jason’s theory that money lay behind the claim, Alana skirted the issue.

  ‘I phoned a cousin of Brian’s—that’s how desperate I am—who works in the family court to find out about how these things are likely to be decided. It’s not good, Gabi.’

  ‘But it can’t be hopeless either,’ Gabi said, with the stout determination that had helped her survive and overcome a miscarriage and a separation from her husband. ‘What about a housekeeper? Someone living in who’s there when Rory’s called out?’

  ‘He’s thought of that, but it would mean getting a bigger flat or house, and even live-in housekeepers have days off. Anyway, when he mentioned it to Jason, it struck more rocks as Jason hated the idea, taking it as a lack of trust on Rory’s part that he thought Jason needed someone watching over him.’

  ‘Yes, at his age, I can see his point.’ Gabi nodded. ‘Teenage indestructibility! But there must be another answer.’

  ‘Must there?’ Alana said, getting up to answer a now recognisable knock on her front door. ‘This is Rory now,’ she said warningly to Gabi. ‘He’s come to take Jason to the social. Not a word.’

  ‘As if I would!’ Gabi’s protest was indignant, which didn’t mean she wouldn’t spill the beans in a trice if she thought it would achieve something.

  ‘Alana, help! I’ve put that stuff in my hair, and it’s all going to fall out. I’m going to be bald. I can’t go out bald. Bald, bald, bald!’

  Jason’s screeching eruption out of the bathroom held them all spellbound, and though Alana did step forward and put out her hand as if to stop him, he was now dancing around the room, clutching his head.

  ‘Stop! Stand still! Tell us what stuff.’

  Rory took control and his brisk orders did at least slow Jason’s panicky capering.

  ‘Some stuff—in a white bottle. It’s a defoliation thing—like Agent Orange,’ Jason wailed. ‘We were learning about that in history. They sprayed it on the trees in Vietnam in a war and all the leaves fell off, so it’s sure to happen to hair.’

  He turned accusing eyes on Alana and added, ‘Why would you have something like that beside the shower? I thought it was conditioner.’

  ‘There is no Agent Orange in my bathroom,’ Alana said firmly. ‘But even if there was, just what would you be doing, using it? Haven’t we had this conversation, Jason McAllister? What’s mine is yours anywhere in this flat except the bathroom, where what’s mine is mine! My toothbrush, my toothpaste, my shampoo, my exfoliating lotion, Jason. Ex-, not de-. It gets rid of old skin cells, not hair, but it’s gritty so I bet you feel as if there’s sand in your hair. Come here and let me look.’

  Gabi was surprised to see the teenager first quieten, then stop his bouncing around and finally, a picture of contrition, step obediently towards Alana and bend his head.

  ‘Ha! Grit. I’m taking samples and I’ll send them to the lab as proof positive you’ve been in my things.’

  She ruffled his hair and, as he straightened, she gave him a gentle shove.

  ‘Hurry back into the shower and rinse it out, then, just this once, you can use my conditioner, which is in the blue bottle on the shelf. And you’d better hurry or you’re going to be late.’

  But if Gabi was surprised by her friend’s placid handling of the situation, so too was Rory Forrester, by the look of him.

  He was staring at the doorway where Jason had disappeared, then he turned back to Alana and a worried frown gathered on his forehead, as if he wasn’t sure who she was.

  ‘What? What’s wrong?’ Alana felt the full impact of the frowning look. ‘Are you upset I yelled at him? Do you think he should get away with stuff like that? Daisy said to treat him like a person. If you’d used my shampoo I’d have yelled at you.’

  ‘You didn’t yell, you were just firm,’ Gabi said, and Alana had to smile. Since they’d been four, they’d been rushing to each other’s defence.

  But in spite of Gabi’s soothing words, Rory was still frowning, which was altering Alana’s usual response-to-Rory mechanisms. Exaggerating them somehow. So, instead of being a shaky, shivery, practically slavering but having to hide it mess, she was a defensive, shaky, shivery, practically slavering but having to hide it mess.

  ‘Well?’ she said—that was the defensive bit coming out.

  He shook his head and continued to look at her, and if anything the frown deepened, while his lips took on a grim, set line.

  ‘Jason will be a while. I’m going to pop over and see Daisy,’ he said, whipping out the door so quickly neither Alana nor Gabi had time to tell him Daisy would be at work.

  Although—Alana checked the time—maybe she wouldn’t have left yet.

  Jason finally reappeared,
his hair carefully arranged into a kind of roughness usually consistent with having just got out of bed. Then gelled into place, apparently, for when Alana touched it, the spiky bits pricked her fingers.

  She grinned at him.

  ‘For someone who complained about a bit of my exfoliating lotion in their hair, you’ve added plenty of foreign matter of your own.’

  ‘It’s the look,’ he told her. ‘You’ve got to get with it, man!’

  He cuffed Alana lightly on the upper arm—she’d learned to duck most of the time—then looked around. ‘Where’s Rory?’

  ‘He slipped over to see Daisy,’ Gabi told him, and Alana, who’d been studying him as she often did, picking out features which reminded her of Rory, saw his lips tighten in a way that rarely happened these days.

  ‘I’m getting myself sorted. I don’t need to see Daisy,’ he growled.

  ‘Why assume he’s gone to see Daisy about you, Mr I’m-the-centre-of-the-universe?’ Alana said. ‘Maybe he’s gone to see her for himself? As a friend, not a customer. He’s allowed to have friends.’

  Jason rolled his eyes.

  ‘Do they all have to be women?’

  Exactly, Alana thought, but she didn’t say it.

  ‘How are things upstairs?’ Gabi asked the question Alana always avoided. ‘I’m surprised one of those women hasn’t killed the other by now or Rory killed both of them. The flats aren’t really big enough for three adults to live comfortably together.’

  ‘Drusilla might have gone, but when Rosemary came, she decided she’d better stick it out. They’ve both got this idea Rory needs to be married, though it beats me why any man would want a woman in his life for ever. They’re nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Thanks, Jase,’ Alana said, and watched his ears go pink with embarrassment.

  ‘Not you,’ he assured her. ‘You’re more like a man. You don’t fuss over things, or try to boss me, or mother me, or make me talk about stuff.’ He smiled approvingly at Alana. ‘You’re like a mate!’

  Alana knew this was the highest compliment Jason could pay, and while her heart treasured it, it also ached with the knowledge that it was one more indication Daisy had been right in her reading of the situation. A shift in the dynamics of her relationship with Rory would obviously be, in Jason’s eyes, a betrayal of his friendship.