Doctor on Loan

by Marion Lennox

  ‘You do. There’s a couple of problems, too,’ Glenys told her. There was no urgency in her tone, though. Once again Hugo marvelled that people were being kept waiting for a dog, but no one seemed the least worried. Glenys was smiling at Mandy as if she were smiling at a patient—with just as much concern. ‘All fixable, then?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Mandy whispered.

  ‘I know so. Tell them ten minutes, Glenys.’ Christie nodded dismissal to her charge nurse—she did have to move fast here—and then motioned for Mandy to look at the X-rays. ‘See? There and there. Look at the crack across the pelvis. That break will be OK. It’s not shattered or out of position and it should heal itself.’ She motioned to the femur. ‘This bone here, however, is completely fractured and it’s what’s causing the problem. It’s why he doesn’t want to use his hind legs. He can’t use one and the other has gone out in sympathy.’

  ‘Will he live?’

  ‘I’m sure he will.’ Christie shot a look at Hugo, a calculating look he didn’t quite like. ‘Especially as we have a trained anaesthetist on the island.’

  ‘What, me?’ Hugo raised his eyebrows in disbelief. He was looking at the X-ray and saw clearly what Christie was seeing—the shattered femoral head. There was no possibility that such a shattering could be repaired. In a human it’d require an artificial joint.

  Did they make artificial joints for dogs?

  ‘Do you know of any other anaesthetists lurking around here?’ Christie’s eyes sparkled with mischief, and she smiled across at Mandy. ‘Dr Tallent’s been wondering how best to pay for all the wonderful care we’ve been giving him. This is just the ticket.’

  Then her hand reached out to tilt Mandy’s chin so that the teenager’s eyes met hers, and Christie’s smile died. There were some questions that needed to be asked. ‘Where does your mother think you are now, Mandy?’ she said softly. ‘What have you told her?’

  ‘I…’ Mandy looked up at Christie, and Hugo could see that the girl didn’t have the capacity to lie. ‘She thinks I’m at school.’

  ‘Did she ask how Scrubbit was this morning?’

  ‘No.’ Mandy shook her head. ‘She doesn’t care. I guess she thinks he’s dead.’

  ‘If Scrubbit comes home better, there’ll be no fuss?’

  ‘No…except I can’t pay,’ Mandy told her, truthful but trustful. Her tone was almost defiant. She’d had her back to the wall before, and she was expecting a fight.

  ‘I told you, that’s no matter,’ Christie assured her, with a calmness Hugo found extraordinary. He’d never met a doctor who would do this. ‘But let’s see if we can get over this without fuss. Your mum will have kittens if she finds you’re not at school. What if I ring Miss O’Shea, and explain what’s going on?’

  She checked her watch. ‘It’s only ten now. You can appear in class and Miss O’Shea will cover for you.’ Helen O’Shea, the principal of the island school, was a friend, and Christie knew she’d be on their side.

  ‘But I don’t want to leave Scrubbit…’

  ‘Scrubbit is fine. He’s not in shock. I’ll give him something for the pain, I’ll put in a drip to keep his fluids up and then we’ll leave him to sleep. To wait won’t hurt him at all—in fact, it’ll be better if he’s well hydrated before surgery.’

  She smiled again, and her hand touched Mandy’s shoulder. ‘It’s fine, Mandy. I promise. I need to run a people surgery now, and Dr Tallent needs to read up on small dog anaesthesia. We won’t operate until this afternoon. Do you want to come back after school and watch?’

  Mandy took a deep breath. ‘Can I?’

  ‘If you want to become a vet one day, it’s a good beginning.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mandy sounded stunned. ‘As if Mum would ever let me do vet training. Fat chance. But…’ She collected herself, returning to the subject of Scrubbit. ‘What will you do? Operating, I mean. How will you set the bone?’

  ‘We’ll remove the femoral head,’ Christie told her, adult to adult. She motioned to the X-ray. ‘That’s this part here. We don’t have a choice. See these shards of bone? Whatever hit him, it hit him hard. He’s very lucky it’s not worse. The bone’s shattered and he’ll never walk on it as it is, but we can remove it by taking it off here. In humans we’d put in a false joint, but in small dogs it’s mostly left so a false fibrous joint will develop. The leg will be stiff but he’ll be able to use it. You’ll still love him if he has a limp, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course I will.’ Mandy reached down and hugged her pet, her thin shoulders sagging in relief. ‘I thought he’d die.’

  ‘He won’t die,’ Christie promised. Her eyes creased in mischief again in a look Hugo was starting to know, and she looked over to where he was standing. ‘After all, we have a specialist anaesthetist right on hand. What dog could ask for more?’

  What, indeed?

  Hugo left Christie to her queue of patients, then returned to the cottage and asked Stan to show him the veterinary texts. After all, refusal was out of the question—especially since Christie had inferred that speeding cars rushing down to the harbour to rescue him had been the cause of Scrubbit’s injury.

  He felt totally bemused. In fact, he was starting feel so bemused it was hard for him to open his mouth in front of the lady. This island’s medical arrangements were stunning.

  Stan, however, wasn’t even vaguely surprised by Christie’s plans. ‘Sure,’ he said easily. ‘No worries. We’ve operated on everything here from a seal with a damaged flipper to a kid’s pet frog.’ He grinned. ‘To tell you the truth, the frog died. Didn’t get the anaesthetic dose right. I messed that one up, so let’s see if you can do better.’

  He hauled out the texts, found the relevant sections and they spent a couple of hours going through dosages and procedures and animal anatomy, with Stan enjoying himself enormously.

  Stan Flemming had been one intelligent doctor, Hugo decided at the end of their time together. As a result of the stroke, his mind wandered a bit—he repeated himself or stopped talking mid-sentence, thinking he’d finished—but he was acute enough to be of enormous help. Hugo asked the right questions and Stan either knew the answers or knew where to find them. By midday Hugo was almost feeling he could face one dog anaesthetic.

  Finally, as well read as possible, and feeling mutually pleased with themselves, they took Stan’s old roadster from the shed and tootled down to the harbour. There they spent half an hour inspecting boat damage.

  Even that wasn’t enough to depress Hugo, and the unusual company gave Stan a new lease of life. As did the fact that Hugo couldn’t walk any faster than he could.

  ‘You’ve got no idea what it’s like to have company in crippledom,’ he told Hugo, pleased. ‘You’re wonkier than I am, boy.’ And in the face of that it was hard for Hugo even to bewail his injured knee.

  Finally they headed home via the tiny Briman Island shopping centre. And for some strange reason, Hugo felt great.

  Knee pain, a broken boat and the prospect of operating on a dog should have put Hugo in a black mood for a week, but not now.

  Why not?

  Maybe it was the prospect of Christie coming home for lunch. Maybe…

  She did.

  Christie slipped home just after one o’clock, bright and cheerful and still feeling the effects of her abnormal amount of sleep. Or something. It must be that, she told herself, not the thought that Hugo was waiting…

  She usually made lunch herself, but to her surprise a meal was already waiting for her. A pile of sandwiches had been cut from slabs of fresh bread from the island bakehouse, filled with…what?

  Smoked salmon and avocado, for heaven’s sake!

  And Stan and Hugo were beaming at her as if the pair of them had won the pools. They looked like conspirators, Christie thought, and the lightness in her heart grew and grew.

  ‘These are not my normal cheese sandwiches,’ she announced, eyeing the pile with suspicion and trying hard not to think about housekeeping funds—and the fact
that they’d have an extra mouth to feed for a while. This looked expensive! Then, unable to help herself, she lifted a sandwich and bit. ‘Yum!’ The ‘yum’ was definitely muffled.

  ‘It didn’t come out of our housekeeping,’ Stan told her, guessing her unuttered worry. ‘Doris nearly had kittens when Hugo walked in and started buying up big. She had smoked salmon and caviar and avocados left from the Pierces’ party last week. She thought she’d be stuck with it because they underestimated the cost and refused to take it, but Hugo bought the lot.’

  ‘Caviar?’ Christie stared.

  ‘He bought it for dinner.’ Stan chuckled, pointing a finger at Hugo. ‘Couldn’t stop him. He reckons it’s to celebrate the dog’s operation. Seems the lad has more money than sense.’

  ‘Or the lad’s incredibly grateful he can eat anything at all,’ Hugo declared, helping himself to his third sandwich. ‘Do have another, Dr Flemming. You deserve it.’

  So Christie did, sinking down to sit at the kitchen table with her grandpa and this amazing man—this man who twinkled at her and grinned and made her feel like she’d never felt in her life before. Like…a woman?

  Which was nonsense. It was because he was kind, she told herself crossly. And intelligent and intuitive and—

  ‘I’ve been talking to Ben,’ she said, cutting her thoughts off at the pass. They were heading in dangerous directions. ‘I’ve let him go home.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ Hugo’s twinkle died, but the warmth was still behind his eyes. He cared, Christie thought. He cared deeply abut the boy who’d saved his life, and she knew enough of the high powered life of city specialists to know that this was the exception rather than a rule. A man with warmth, who’d give the time required…

  ‘His father told me what you’d done,’ she said softly, and the warmth she’d been feeling ever since she’d walked into Ben’s ward was unmistakable.

  ‘What, half killed him?’ Hugo demanded.

  ‘Not that.’ She turned to Stan to explain. ‘I walked into the ward, expecting the same withdrawn, traumatised Ben of yesterday, and I found him surrounded by his mates. His whole class had come to visit.’

  ‘I…’ Hugo was looking embarrassed, concentrating on his sandwich.

  ‘And Helen O’Shea told me whose idea it was. Hugo’s. She said Hugo rang her last night—while I was sleeping, I guess—and told her that hero appreciation would be the best thing possible for Ben. It might mean making Hugo look dumber than he really was, but Hugo told her he didn’t mind playing the part.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  But Christie wasn’t brooking interruptions. ‘Ellie, our local reporter, has been in,’ she told her grandfather, and she was unstoppable. She was still joyful and she was aching to talk about it. ‘Hugo told Ellie he wouldn’t be alive if it hadn’t been for Ben, and Ben’s parents must be fantastic to have produced a kid with such skills. Hugo said it as if he didn’t know Ben’s mum was dead. And Ellie got all choked up, and she’s sending the story on to the mainland papers because she knows Ben’s mum would have been so proud—’

  ‘Have another sandwich,’ Hugo said, but he was ignored.

  ‘And Hugo himself,’ Christie continued, ‘told Ben he was the bravest kid he’d ever met, and he said it was almost like there must have been someone in the water, helping him, and he must have a guardian angel. And Ben’s been thinking it over, and do you know what he asked? He said, “Do you really think my mum would be proud?” And I got all choked up too, and said, “Absolutely. Of course.” And then he asked, “Do you think she’s really still with me?” It was too much for me,’ Christie admitted. ‘I left him to his mates and had to go wash my face for ten minutes.’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t—’ Hugo was clearly embarrassed down to his borrowed socks, but Christie wasn’t letting him off the hook yet.

  ‘When I met Ben’s dad in the corridor,’ she went on, still talking to her grandfather but all her attention on Hugo, ‘he was almost as chuffed as Ben, and he said that it’s like they’ve been given Sue back. Just a bit. He and Ben both feel that Ben couldn’t have done it alone and she’s with them and she always will be. And he reckons the burden Ben’s been carrying for so long has been lifted—just like that.’

  Christie took a deep breath and forced her eyes to meet Hugo’s across the table. Hers were shining with unshed tears. ‘If you knew how hard I’ve worked with that boy,’ she told him. ‘We both have, Grandpa and I, trying to make him see that he couldn’t carry his mum’s death as his burden for ever. And one intuitive, sensitive discussion with you and you’ve done the thing. Hugo Tallent, you might be the world’s worst sailor, but I could kiss you.’

  He laid down his sandwich. Now this was hopeful.

  ‘So what’s stopping you?’ he demanded, smiling his gorgeous, heart-stopping smile which almost had Christie wilting where she sat. ‘Not me. I’d like it a lot.’

  ‘I’ll kiss Grandpa instead,’ she managed, and reached over and kissed Stan on the nose. And then, for good measure and because she was feeling like she’d burst if she didn’t, somehow she leaned sideways and kissed Hugo, too. Just lightly, fleetingly, a feather touch on the lips, before she sank back onto her chair and looked down at her pile of squashed sandwiches.

  ‘Whoops…’

  The emotion in the room dissolved as she choked on laughter—and then she looked back up and caught the look in Hugo’s eyes and the tension zoomed in again. Because the warmth in his eyes told her that he hadn’t objected to her kiss one bit, and he wouldn’t mind extending the experience indefinitely.

  And suddenly Christie wasn’t at all sure that she didn’t want it herself. What would it be like to be kissed—properly kissed—by this man?

  Good grief! Get a grip, Christie Flemming…

  She buried herself in her smoked salmon sandwich with a fierceness that would have been more reasonable if she hadn’t eaten for a week, but Hugo’s eyes stayed on her, thoughtful. And she was so aware…

  Lunch continued—somehow. Stan told her about the trip to the harbour and their boat inspection and their veterinary training session, and she listened but she didn’t let her eyes meet Hugo’s again.

  It was too dangerous by far.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AFTER lunch, Christie saw ten more patients, most of whom, she suspected, just wanted to talk about the excitement of the near-drowning. How did she think it would affect dear Ben? What was this new doctor like? She worked her way through them all. It seemed to take for ever, and there was hardly a real medical problem among them.

  Finally she saw off Mr Gregg and his recalcitrant piles, filed her notes and bade her receptionist farewell. Then she was free to think about Scrubbit-the-dog.

  And Hugo.

  She was feeling really, really odd. Hugo had been in her thoughts all day. Every time she thought about him she felt light and bubbly, like a teenager about to go on her first date.

  Which was nonsense, she told herself fiercely. In a few days he’d be gone. He’d return to practising his medicine in Brisbane, she’d work on, and that would be that. And then…Never the twain shall meet.

  ‘And that’s fine,’ she said fiercely as she took herself through to the rear of the hospital. She used a small back room for animal surgery—using the main hospital theatre for dog operations was maybe a bit too much. ‘Hugo leaving is fine by me,’ she told herself. ‘Of course it is. What else could it be?’

  But she still felt light.

  After all, never the twain shall meet was all very well for the future, but it didn’t include the appointment in ten minutes’ time when they operated on a dog together!

  ‘Tell me again why we can’t insert an artificial joint?’

  White-coated and ready for operating, Hugo found himself feeling not a little ridiculous. Christie had gone to an inordinate amount of trouble for one small dog. The tiny theatrette was set up as well as a hospital theatre, and it looked absurd to see one sad pooch as their patient.

 
If they were going to all this trouble then a hip replacement had to be possible. Hugo had given the anaesthetic for any number of hip-replacement operations in his time. He rechecked the X-ray, remembered the X-rays he’d seen of human patients and thought that it would be no more complicated.

  ‘Wouldn’t an artificial joint be more useful?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ Christie said briefly. She was sorting her tray, ready for surgery. In a human theatre she’d have had nurses on hand, but her nurses were busy enough as it was and here she was very lucky to have Hugo. But this was just as complicated as human surgery, if not more so, because the joint was so much smaller. And also because the number of canine hip operations Christie had done—or even seen—in her medical training was approximately nil.

  ‘So why don’t we use one?’ Hugo asked helpfully. The idea of a neat hip replacement in such a nice dog appealed enormously.

  ‘Have you any idea how much a replacement human hip costs?’

  ‘I…’ He looked blank. Hmm. ‘Well, no,’ he had to admit. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You’ve never been told—because human hip replacements are subsidised by the government, and the government doesn’t pay for dog hips. I’m covering the cost of medication and throwing in my labour, but I can’t run to hip joints.’

  ‘I see.’ He did see. Sort of.

  ‘Plus the fact that it’d take days to get a prosthesis here—much less made to fit.’ Christie’s brows drew together in concentration and Hugo knew she was focussing almost totally on the task ahead. But still she found room to answer him.

  ‘Think of the complications,’ she said. ‘All dogs are different sizes. We’d need a stainless-steel prosthesis for the femoral head, and we’d also need a high-density polypropylene socket made to fit for the acetabulum. So…’ She glanced up at him. ‘Where do you suppose I’d get that made on a tropical island fifty miles from the mainland?’

  ‘It’d take a specialist kind of hobby whittler,’ Hugo agreed, smiling. He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘OK, OK. In the absence of cottage industries making dog prostheses, you know best. Where do you get this knowledge, by the way?’