Doctor on Loan

by Marion Lennox

  And Hugo was a fine doctor. It stood out a mile. As they talked over the patients they had in the hospital, discussing their treatment, he made her feel as she had during training, as if medicine was wonderful and exciting and new and interesting. Not the hard slog she now knew it to be.

  She ate four pieces of toast and drank three cups of coffee without thinking, and then suddenly realised it was nine o’clock. Reluctantly she rose to leave. It had to end some time. Surgery was at ten, and she had to do a round…

  ‘But check my leg first,’ Hugo said as she stacked away their dishes. ‘I need to be out of this dratted wheelchair and your grandpa is threatening to chain me in without your clearance. I have things to do. I can’t be staying here.’

  ‘You can’t leave the island,’ she told him—a trifle too quickly—and he shook his head.

  ‘No.’ He smiled, and his eyes met here. ‘Believe it or not, I’m growing more resigned by the minute.’ Then, ignoring her flush, or maybe his smile deepened because of it, he turned back to Stan. ‘I need to make arrangements for my father’s boat. I did some telephoning last night and if it’s OK with you, sir, and you, Christie, I’ll stay on until Friday.’

  Friday. It was only Monday now. Despite herself, Christie couldn’t stop a little frisson of pleasure building from within.

  She pushed it down firmly. This was nonsense. What was the likes of her doing with such a thought? She was the island doctor, and the island doctor led a very straight and narrow life.

  Allowing herself to be distracted would only lead to unhappiness. For everyone.

  ‘That’s…that’s fine,’ she managed. ‘Isn’t it, Grandpa?’

  ‘Mary-anne says there’s a bed-and-breakfast establishment on the other side of the island where I can stay,’ he told them. ‘I can’t stay in the hospital.’

  ‘You can stay here,’ Stan declared before Christie could say a word. ‘Can’t he, Christie? We have a spare room.’

  ‘That’s very kind…’

  ‘It’s not kind in the least.’ Grandpa was in charge, and he was enjoying himself. ‘It’s a commercial proposition. You can pay by making us toast every morning.’ He chuckled. ‘And by talking to us about life outside the island. Sometimes the pair of us go nuts with boredom.’

  Did he? Christie flashed a concerned glance at her grandfather. He never said he was bored.

  She was sometimes bored herself—unutterably bored. Or maybe not bored as much as lonely.

  But not now. ‘Well, thank you. It’d be a real pleasure,’ Hugo was saying, his slow, lazy smile directed at Christie. ‘I can’t tell you how much. Hey, if I haul these trousers off, can you check my knee, Dr Flemming? And then you can take me off the invalid list.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  HUGO’S knee, as far as dislocated knees went, seemed fine. Christie’s urge was to take him back up to the hospital and check it, but Hugo Tallent, having found himself invited to stay in their cottage, was intent on just that.

  ‘Nope. I’m staying put. As far as hospitals go, I like being on the doctor’s end of the stethoscope. If you show me my bedroom now, we’ll go from there.’

  It shouldn’t have made any difference where she examined him, Christie thought crossly as she unbandaged his leg and checked the mass of bruising around his knee. This was just a knee for heaven’s sake. It was only marginally attached to a man, and she was a doctor treating a knee.

  So why the sight of Hugo lying back on his bed, wearing only his boxer shorts and his big fisherman’s jersey, had the effect of unnerving her completely she didn’t know.

  And she didn’t want to know, she thought breathlessly. His smile was growing by the minute. He guessed what she was thinking—and she couldn’t begin to think in that direction.

  But she was!

  ‘What’s the story?’ He might have checked the knee himself but he seemed content to leave it to her, lying back on the pillows and wincing as she gently prodded the damaged ligaments. But still the laughter remained, and somehow she stayed in doctor mode. She lifted his foot and held his lower leg, moving it gently to the extent of its rotation and watching his face as she did.

  There was nothing except general discomfort.

  ‘You’re not being exceptionally brave?’ she asked.

  ‘Meaning do I feel like yelling so loudly that you’d hear me on the mainland but am I fighting it down because I’m hero material through and through?’ He grinned. ‘Lady, if I’m in agony I’ll let you know.’

  ‘So how much pain are you in?’

  ‘It hurts as if I have a really nasty sprain but there’s no sharp jabbing. And I can feel everywhere you’re touching. I checked my own toes this morning. It seems you got it back fast enough for me not to have suffered nerve damage, and there’s nothing wrong now except a few torn ligaments and bruised muscles. Time alone will heal that.’

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’ Christie smiled, and then thought better of it. Smiling at this man was dangerous because he smiled back, and when he did…

  Whew!

  ‘Put your clothes back on,’ she said, more brusquely than was necessary. ‘I’m going to the hospital now. I’d imagine you can do without your wheelchair but Grandpa has any number of walking sticks you can borrow. Keep your leg up as much as possible.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Hugo sat up, bare-legged and bare-footed and very, very male, and he was still laughing at her. ‘You don’t have a taxi on this island, I suppose?’

  ‘In your dreams.’ Then she relented and managed a smile. ‘Why on earth would we need a taxi? The island’s five miles wide and seven miles long. Walking’s good, Dr Tallent.’

  ‘Not with this knee.’

  ‘So where so you want to go?’

  ‘Down to the harbour,’ he told her. ‘I want to see the damage to my father’s boat.’

  She hesitated, and then shrugged. What was the harm, after all? There was nowhere he could run if he stole it.

  ‘My grandfather’s car is in the shed. It’s old but it goes, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind lending it to you. Especially if…’ Again she hesitated, but this man was good. He was a mind-reader.

  ‘Especially if I took him with me?’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled gratefully at him. He saw things, did Hugo Tallent. He knew the hardest thing for Stan now was the forced inactivity—the change from being a work-driven general practitioner to an invalid all in one hit.

  ‘It’d be my pleasure.’ And then he hesitated as a soft knock echoed through the cottage. ‘Uh-oh. Visitors. I’d best get my trousers on. I’m hardly fit for company.’

  ‘No,’ Christie agreed wholeheartedly. The sooner this man’s body was covered, the happier she’d be. ‘No, Dr Tallent, you’re not.’

  It was work.

  Christie emerged from Hugo’s bedroom to find that her grandfather had already opened the front door. Mandy King was standing on the doorstep. Tall and gawky, Mandy was seventeen years old and shy as a rabbit. Her blonde hair was dragged into two unbecoming pigtails and her shorts and T-shirt were old and stained. She looked every inch a tomboy, but with the promise of beauty to come.

  And it would come. Christie knew her well and had sympathised with the girl since babyhood. Mandy’s mother was petitely beautiful, and she agonised over her awkward daughter. Half the reason Mandy looked like she did, Christie suspected, was to annoy her picture-perfect mama. There was no way she could reach the standards her mother expected, so she refused to try.

  But the girl wasn’t concerned about her parents now. She stood, dishevelled and tear-stained, on the doctors’ front step, and in her arms she cradled a scruffy, rat-faced terrier.

  ‘What’s the problem, Mandy?’ Stan demanded as Christie appeared. Stan had delivered this girl, as he’d delivered most of the islanders under forty. He shot a look at Christie and stood back so she could see. ‘What’s up with Scrubbit?’

  It wasn’t unusual that Stan knew Scrubbit-the-dog. The whole island kne
w Scrubbit. When Mandy’s mother had refused to allow Mandy, then aged twelve, to keep the tiny stray, Mandy had gone on a hunger strike that was still the talk of the island.

  Mandy’s mother was strong-willed, but Mandy had been stronger. After five days without eating or drinking, Mandy had collapsed, and the island doctors had finally intervened.

  ‘She keeps the dog or you lose your daughter,’ Mandy’s mother had been told by Dr Stan, and that had been Mandy’s first major triumph over the appalling Gloria. But now Mandy was very much a child alone.

  ‘Bring him in, Mandy,’ Christie told her, looking down at the dog in concern. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He can’t walk.’ Mandy gulped and her hold on her pet tightened. ‘The night before last—that was the night Ben was nearly drowned and I was down at the harbour with the rest of the kids. Scrubbit was with me, but he disappeared. Yesterday I searched and searched and I finally found him cowering under the wharf. But he can’t walk. I called him out from under where he was hiding, and he sort of dragged himself out to meet me. I think his back legs are paralysed.’

  Christie frowned. The little dog was less than six years old. This wasn’t old age.

  ‘Let me take him.’ She stepped forward, lifting Scrubbit carefully from Mandy’s arms and setting him on the kitchen table. This was a kitchen table-cum-operating table. With the breakfast things removed, one good dose of disinfectant and the thing was transformed.

  So what was wrong? The dog definitely couldn’t stand. As Christie set him down, his hindquarters sank. He obviously had strength in his forelegs—he was pushing himself up as if he were sitting, but this was no normal sitting position. His hind legs were useless.

  But he made no sound as Christie gently examined him. The small terrier gazed up at the people around him, his intelligent eyes pain-filled but trusting. Do with me what you want, his body language said. I’m in your hands.

  ‘Mum says he’ll have to be put down and she told Dad to do it.’ Mandy gulped back her tears. ‘I read my medical books and couldn’t find anything to do for him. Nothing. I wanted to bring him to you last night, but Mum said you had too many medical emergencies and if I came near you she’d drown him straight off. And I can’t pay. But I can’t bear…I can’t bear…’

  It was too much. She sank onto a chair and buried her face in her hands. She’d been awake all night with her injured pet, she’d been up the night before with the drama at the harbour, and she was close to breaking.

  ‘Hey.’ The growly voice by the door was enough to make even Mandy look up. Dressed again in his fisherman’s clothes, Hugo looked stunningly male—stunningly competent—in fact, so plain stunning he made Christie blink. ‘What’s happening?’ he demanded.

  ‘We have a sick dog,’ Christie said briefly, shoving away these strange and unwanted sensations. Honestly, put one attractive male in her orbit and she was behaving like a schoolgirl! And she had to be a doctor. Or a vet…

  She blocked Hugo firmly out, running her hands over the dog’s fur and carefully examining each of his limbs. ‘Don’t worry about payment, Mandy,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t charge friends.’ As if he understood, Scrubbit looked up with melting eyes and Christie found her heart reaching out to him. Please…

  ‘Don’t you have a vet on the island?’ Hugo asked curiously, and Christie shook her head.

  ‘I’m the acting vet.’

  That startled him. ‘Do you have training?’

  ‘I have textbooks and no choice,’ she said briefly, her attention all on the dog. Hugo was still distracting—very distracting—but now was hardly the time to be distracted. ‘His back legs hurt when you touch them, Mandy,’ she told the worried teenager. ‘Watch his face. He reacts. His front legs seem fine, though. Grandpa, can you pass me my stethoscope, please?’

  Stan was before her. He’d been fumbling in a side drawer and produced it almost as she asked, acting as if it wasn’t at all unusual for his granddaughter to be treating animals on the kitchen table. It was as if it was an everyday occurrence.

  And Hugo could only stare, stunned by the tableau before him. This wasn’t the sort of medicine he was accustomed to. There was complete silence in the room while Christie listened to her patient’s heart. The whole room seemed to listen.

  ‘His heart’s OK, Mandy,’ Christie told her. ‘He’s a strong little dog. Just hold him still while I take his temperature.’ Stan handed her a thermometer and Hugo raised his brows as he saw where she put it.

  ‘I trust that’s not your normal people thermometer?’ he asked dryly, and his question made Christie smile.

  ‘Nope. I have an animal kit.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ He frowned, thinking it through. ‘You mean you do a lot of this?’

  ‘Someone has to do it,’ she told him. She motioned to Mandy. ‘Mandy here has aspirations to be a vet—she’s clever enough and one day she’ll get there—but until that happens it’s me. If not me, then who?’

  Who, indeed? Hugo frowned as he waited for the results. This girl—this island doctor—had so much on her shoulders. The more he saw the less he understood how she coped. Now she withdrew the thermometer and glanced down at the results.

  ‘Better and better,’ she told Mandy, sending her a reassuring smile. ‘That’s almost normal. If he’s been in shock it seems he’s over it now.’

  ‘I cuddled him all night,’ Mandy whispered. ‘Really carefully though, so I didn’t move any bones. I packed him with hot-water bottles and took him to bed with me, though Mum didn’t know.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Christie told her. ‘Warmth was the best thing you could give him last night. It may well have saved his life.’

  ‘But what’s wrong with him?’

  ‘I think he’s been hit by a car.’

  ‘But…’ Mandy stared. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Look at his pads.’ She rolled the little dog gently over onto his back and held up a pad for inspection. The nails were almost shredded.

  ‘It’s a tell-tale sign,’ she told them. ‘When animals are hit they grab at the road. The night before last, with the drama in the harbour, cars were speeding all over the island. I think Scrubbit had an argument with a car and came off second best.’

  ‘But…If he’s paralysed…’ Mandy gave a shattered sob, as if Christie had just told her the worst possible news. ‘It’ll be his spine. Mum says he’ll have to be put down and she’s probably right.’ She raised tear-drenched eyes to Christie. ‘I love him, but I don’t want him to drag himself around for the rest of his life.’

  Brave kid, Hugo thought. The whole scenario had him fascinated. This was about as far out of his circle as a city specialist as it was possible to be—and he wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

  ‘Let’s not give up hope just yet,’ Christie told her. ‘If you had him with you all last night you’ll be able to tell me a bit more. Is he able to urinate, do you know?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mandy gulped. ‘This morning early…He seemed to be getting more and more upset and I guessed what might be wrong—he’s never, ever gone inside the house. So I carried him down to the garden and he went. I had to hold him up.’ She tilted her chin proudly. ‘And he let me! He didn’t cock his leg, though.’

  ‘That’s great news,’ Christie said warmly. ‘The best. It reduces the chance of internal injury no end. If he’s using the muscles down there it also lessens the likelihood of spinal injury. Our next step is to take him up to the hospital and give him an X-ray.’

  ‘Does the government know you use your X-ray equipment for dogs?’ Hugo demanded, startled, and Christie shot him a look that said Butt out right now.

  ‘No, Dr Tallent, it doesn’t. Unless you plan to tell them?’

  ‘I…’ He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘No. Heaven forbid.’

  ‘Very wise,’ she said severely, ‘otherwise I’ll need to double your medical bill and charge you three times the insurance rebate for your hospital room. Plus charge you r
ent for your stay here. The islanders help fund their hospital, it’s used for their needs, and if one island dog doesn’t fit into the islander needs category then I don’t know what does.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Scrubbit keeps the island rat population down. As far as I’m concerned, that’s eradicating a major health risk, and Scrubbit therefore gets his X-ray. Free.’

  ‘What reason did you use when you X-rayed Eva Rannikin’s goat?’ Mandy asked cheekily, her fear receding a little, and Christie chuckled. Great, she thought. To see Mandy smile again was worth every spoke Hugo could thrust in her wheel.

  ‘Weed control,’ she said smartly. ‘Same thing. Brutus-the-goat is murder on thistles, and thistles cause no end of scratches to my patients.’ Her smile died. ‘OK, guys, we’re wasting time here.’ She lifted Scrubbit gently into her arms. ‘Coming, Mandy?’

  ‘Can I come, too?’ Hugo asked. He wouldn’t miss this for quids. ‘But…aren’t you booked for morning surgery?’

  ‘The islanders know trauma takes precedence over everything else,’ Christie said serenely. ‘Unless there’s something more life-threatening, a road-accident victim comes first. Even if it’s Scrubbit.’

  This whole scenario was amazing! Hugo thought. Stranger and stranger. Christie drove the short way to the hospital to keep Scrubbit from being shaken further. Once there, Hugo accompanied them to the hospital’s X-ray department. He was limping, but coping fine on one of Stan’s walking sticks.

  To his astonishment, the nurses didn’t blink at the sight of a dog being brought into the hospital. Scrubbit was X-rayed from every conceivable angle without a protest from anyone, and finally one of the nurses—Glenys—poked her nose around the door to find out what was happening.

  ‘What’s the diagnosis, Doc?’

  ‘Broken pelvis and femur,’ Christie said, holding the film to the light. ‘Which is great news. I was afraid it might be his spine, but there’s no sign of vertebral damage. Do I have a surgery waiting?’