by Annie O'Neil
Just the look on his face was enough to tell her he hadn’t.
“Maybe you’ve had an article in the...what’s the local paper?”
“The Dunregan Chronicle.”
“I’m asking, not telling,” she reminded him when his tone lurched from informational to confrontational. “Have you had anything published? An article? An interview?”
“No, I’ve been a bit busy burying my father, amongst other things,” Brodie snapped, instantly regretting it.
Quit shooting the messenger, idiot!
He gave Kali an apologetic glance. “I thought the ever-reliable gossip circuit on the island would cover all of my bases. Which it did. Just not in the way I’d thought.”
“Look. If it’s all right, I’m going to stop you there,” Kali jumped in apologetically. “I’m really sorry to hear about your father. Now—not that the nuts and bolts of how this island works aren’t interesting—I really need to get a handle on how things work right here.” Kali flicked her thumb toward the front of the clinic. “If you’re happy to meet me after the clinic’s shut I’d love to hear all about it. Your work in Africa,” she qualified quickly. “It sounds fascinating.”
“It was an unbelievable experience. I’ll never forget it.”
Wow! The first person who’d actually seemed interested!
“So...” She gave her shoulders a wriggle, as if to regroup.
A wriggle inside his shirt, with more than a hint of shoulder slipping in and then out of the stretched neckline. A tug of attraction sent his thoughts careening off to a whole other part of his—er—brain? Another time, another place?
Focus, man! The poor woman’s trying to speak with you.
“If I was in your shoes I wouldn’t want me here either. It’s your practice! But I’m here to help, not hinder.”
He nodded. Wise beyond her years. Those green eyes of her held untold stories. He’d been wrong to think otherwise.
“Can we shake on it?” She thrust her hand forward, chin jutted upwards. Not in defiance, more in anticipation of a problem.
He put his hand forward—the one he hadn’t burned—for a sound one-two shake.
“Are we good?”
“Yes, ma’am?” He affected an American accent and gave her a jaunty salute.
Her eyes narrowed a bit.
Okay, fine. He blew that one.
“We’re good. I’ll steer clear of tea duty.”
She furrowed her brow at him in response.
Quit being such a jerk. Like she said, she’s here to help!
She shifted past him in the corridor, leaving the slightest hint of jasmine in her wake. “I should probably go introduce myself up front.”
“Yes—yeah. On you go. Caitlyn’s my niece and is about as much of a newcomer to the clinic as you are.”
“Excellent.” Kali gave him a polite smile. “She and I can forge into unknown territory together, then. And don’t worry about the tea. I’m more of a coffee girl.”
Her tone was bright, non-confrontational.
“We’ve not given you much of a welcome, have we?”
Kali rocked back on her heels with a squelch, not looking entirely sure how to respond until she saw the edges of Brodie’s lips tweak up into a slow but generous grin.
“Ailsa’s great!” Kali shot back with her own cheeky grin. Adding, “I’ve yet to make a decision on the boss man...”
“He’s a real piece of work.” Brodie was laughing now. “But he’s good at his job.”
“I don’t doubt that for a minute.”
And he could see she meant it. He was a good doctor. A little shy on bedside manner, but—
“Oh, and as for that hand of yours—you probably don’t need a bandage, but it might be a good idea to put some topical sulfonamide antibacterial cream on there. Although, as you probably know, some new studies suggest it might actually lengthen the healing time.”
Brodie gave a grin as Kali shrugged off her own advice before tacking on, “I’m sure you know what’s best, Old Timer...” as she pushed through the swinging door into the front of the clinic.
Kali gave as good as she got. Just as well, given his zigzagging moods.
Brodie put his hand to the door to talk Caitlyn and Kali through their intro but stopped at his aunt’s less than subtle clearing of her throat.
“And what can I help you with on this fine day, my dear Auntie?”
“You’re not thinking of going in there and looming over Caitlyn, are you?”
“No.”
Yes.
“Give the girl a chance. She’s only just out of school and she doesn’t need her uncle hovering over her every step of the way.”
“What? Do you think I might accidentally breathe too much in the reception area and frighten away even more patients?”
“Brodie McClellan.” Ailsa wagged a finger at him. “You’d best think twice about pushing so hard against the support system you have. Caitlyn’s here until she starts university in September—but after that... Only a few months for you to make your peace with everyone. Including...” she steeled her gaze at him “...Dr. O’Shea. She’s here to help, might I remind you?”
“Help for something that’s not actually a problem?”
“You know what I mean, Brodie. C’mon.” She gave his shoulder a consoling rub. “You can’t blame folk for being nervous. And besides, you’re only fresh back. It’ll give you time to settle back in. Mend a couple of fences while you’re at it.”
She gave him her oft-used Auntie Knows Best stare.
He could do as she suggested. Of course he could. Or he could go back home and pack his bag and head back on another Doctors Without Borders assignment until Kali was gone.
A hit of protectiveness for his father’s surgery took hold.
Unexpected.
Or was it curiosity about Kali?
Interesting.
He leaned against the wall and gave his aunt his best I’ll-give-it-a-try face.
“So, after all the miraculous recoveries of the bumper-to-bumper patients we normally have over the past couple of weeks, do you think they’ll come flooding back now that we have Kali here?”
“Most likely.”
His aunt had never been one to mince words.
“So what am I meant to do? Just twiddle my thumbs whilst Kali sees to folk?”
“I suspect she’ll need some help. You would be showing her the good side of yourself if you were to talk her through a patient’s history. Give her backup support if she needed it. Prove to her you’re the lovable thirty-two-year-old I’ve had the pleasure of knowing all my life instead of that fusty old curmudgeon you showed her this morning. I’ll tell you, Brodie—I didn’t much like seeing that side of you. It’s not very fetching.”
“Fine.” He pressed back from the wall with a foot. “Maybe it’d be best if I just leave well enough alone. Let you two run the show and I’ll—I don’t know—I’ll build that boat I always had a mind to craft.”
The words were out before he could stem them.
“You mean the one your father always wanted to build with you?” Ailsa nodded at the memory, completely unfazed by his burst of temper. “That’s one promise you could make good on. Or you could put all of that energy you’ve got winging around inside of you helping out the new doctor who’s come all the way up here to get you out of a right sorry old pickle. Then make good on the other promise you made to your father.”
They both knew what she meant.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“That’s not what I meant, nor your father and you know it, Broderick Andrew McClellan.”
Brodie had to hand it to her. Whipping out all three of his names—that was fighting talk for Ailsa.
She pursed her lips at him for added measure, clearly refusing to rise—or lower herself—to his level of self-pity. And frankly he was bored with it himself. He’d never been one for sulky self-indulgence. Or standing around idly doing nothing.
He had twiddling his thumbs down to a fine art now. Not to mention a wind farm’s worth of energy to burn. He gave the wall a good thump with the sole of his boot.
Ailsa turned away, tsking as she went back into her office to prepare for the day. Which would most likely be busy now that Kali was here.
“It’s not like I was away having the time of my life or anything!” he called after her.
She stuck her head out into the corridor again, but said nothing.
“People were dying in droves!”
“Yes, you were an incredibly compassionate, brave man to go and do what you did—and it’s a shame folk here haven’t quite caught up with that. But with you looking like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders it’s little wonder you’ve become so unapproachable.”
“Unapproachable! Me?” He all but bellowed it, just as Kali walked into the hallway—only to do an immediate about-face back into the reception area.
Ailsa gave him an I-told-you-so look. Brodie took a deep breath in to launch into a well-rehearsed list of the things wrong with Dunregan and her residents, and just as quickly felt the puff go out of him. It would take an hour to rattle off the list of things wrong with himself this morning, let alone address the big picture.
For starters he’d been rude to Kali. Unprofessional. Then had thrown a blinkin’ tantrum over a burn that had happened solely because he’d been slamming around a kettle of boiling water in a huff because he had to tell yet another person why he was toxic.
The word roiled round his gut.
He wasn’t toxic! He was fit as a fiddle set to play for an all-hours fiddle fest! But he knew more than most it ran deeper than that. How to shrug off the mantle of the tortured laddie who’d sailed out on a handmade skiff with his mum, only to be washed ashore two hours later when the weather had turned horribly, horribly fierce?
He knew it was a miracle he’d survived. But he would’ve swapped miracles any day of the week if only his mother could have been spared.
“You know, Ailsa...”
His aunt gave him a semi-hopeful look when she heard the change in his tone.
“A second pair of hands round this place would be helpful longer term, wouldn’t it? Female hands. You’re wonderful—obviously—but Dad always spoke of having a female GP around. Someone not from Dunregan to give the islanders a bit more choice when they need to talk about sensitive issues.”
As he spoke the idea set off a series of fireworks in his brain. New possibilities. With Kali on board as a full-time GP he wouldn’t have to kill himself with office hours, out-of-hours emergency calls, home visits and the mountain rescues that cropped up more often than not during the summer season.
Not that he minded the work. Hell, he’d work every hour of the day if he could. But working here was much more than ferrying patients in and out for their allotted ten minutes. And if he was going to make good on his deathbed promise to his father to work in the surgery for at least a year he wasn’t so sure doing it alone would get the intended results...
His grandfather and his father had prided themselves on being genuine, good-as-their-word family doctors. Their time and patience had gone beyond patching up wounds, scribbling out prescriptions and seeing to annual checkups. Here on Dunregan it was personal. Everything was. It was why his father’s premature death from cancer had knocked the wind out of the whole population. Everyone knew everyone else and everything about them.
Sharing the load with Kali might be the way he’d get through the year emotionally intact. Maybe even restore some of his tattered reputation. Everyone who’d ever met his father thought the world of him. John McClellan: treasured island GP.
The same could not be said of himself.
Ailsa eyed him warily. “You’re not just saying this to get out of the promise to your father, are you?”
“No.” He struggled to keep the emotion out of his voice. A bedside promise to a dying father... It didn’t get more Shakespearean than that.
“Well, my dear nephew, if you’re wanting Dr. O’Shea to stick around you best check she’s not already legged it out the front of the clinic. You need to show her the other side of Brodie McClellan. The one we all like.”
She gave his cheek a good pinch. Half loving, half scolding.
He laughed and pulled her into her arms for a hug.
“What would I do without you and your wise old ways, Auntie Ailsa? I’ve been a right old pill this morning, haven’t I?”
“I’m hardly old, and there are quite a few ways I could describe your behavior, Brodie—but your way is the most polite.” Ailsa’s muffled voice came from his chest. “Now...” She pushed back and looked him square in the eye. “Let me get on with my day, will you?”
As she disappeared into her office so, too, did the smile playing across his lips. Here he was, blaming the islanders for the situation he was in, when truthfully all his frustration came from the fact that he loved his father and his work and right now the two were at odds. Not one part of him was looking forward to the year ahead.
Truthfully? He needed Kali O’Shea more than he cared to admit. If he could convince her to stay she might be the answer to all his prayers. A comrade in arms to help him get through the thicket of weeds he was all but drowning in.
He jogged his shoulders up and down.
Right. Good.
Time for what his father had called a “Starty-Overy, I’ve Done A Whoopsy.” His behavior this morning had been childish. He might as well give it the childish name. Then start acting his age and focus on winning over the mysteriously enigmatic Dr. Kali O’Shea.
* * *
Kali tapped at her computer keyboard a second time. Then pressed Refresh. And again.
Weird.
There didn’t seem to be anyone next in the queue. She stuck her head round the corner into the office where Brodie had been lurking... Okay, not exactly lurking. He’d been “on hand” in case she needed any information. But it had felt like lurking.
“Hey, does the computer system get jammed sometimes?”
“All the time is more like it,” he answered with a smile.
Her stomach grumbled. Kali’s hand flew to cover it, as if it would erase the fact it had happened.
“Er...”
“Hungry after only seeing three patients?” Brodie teased.
“Something like that. I was too excited for my first day at work to eat breakfast.”
“Only fifteen more patients to go before lunch!”
“Or...” She drew out the word and thought she might as well push her luck. “I do seem to recall an offer of a cup of tea and a biscuit.”
He blinked, dragging a tooth across one of those full lips of his. Distracting. Very distracting.
“Would you like it if I put on a pinny and pushed a wee cart along to your office for delivery, Dr. O’Shea?”
A flush of embarrassment crept up her cheeks. He was an experienced doctor. Her superior. Had she pushed that envelope too far?
“Ach, take that nervous expression off your face, Dr. O’Shea. I’m just joshing you.” He stood up from his desk and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “A nice cup of tea is the least I can do an hour after I promised it.”
He dropped her a wink and her tummy did a flip. The sexy kind.
Oh, no. Not good. Not good at all.
“Right, well...I guess I better check with Caitlyn who’s next.” She gave the door frame a rap, as if that was the signal for action. Then didn’t move.
“Anything good this morning?”
“Depends upo
n your definition of ‘good,’” she replied with a smile. She liked this guy. He was a whole load nicer than Dr. McCrabby from this morning. “A prenatal check, a suspected case of the flu—which thankfully wasn’t more than a really bad cold—and a check on a set of stitches along a feisty four-year-old’s hairline. Rosie Bell, I think her name was.”
“That’s her mother. The daughter is Julia.”
“Right—that’s right. I mean, of course you know it’s right—you know everyone.” She stopped herself. She was blathering. “The stitches were just fine. She had them put in on the mainland, at the hospital, there...so...that was a quickie. Everyone has been incredibly welcoming...”
So much for no more blathering.
A shadow darkened Brodie’s eyes for a moment. He abruptly slipped through the doorway and headed down the hall. “Best go get my pinny on and leave you to it, then, Dr. O’Shea.”
“Thank you,” she said to his retreating back, wishing the ground had swallowed her up before she’d opened her big mouth.
But it was the truth. Everyone had been really welcoming and it felt amazing! Never in her adult life had she been part of a community, and this place seemed to just...speak to her.
Her tummy grumbled again.
Dinner.
She would ask Brodie to join her for dinner and then maybe she would stop saying the wrong thing all the time. Fingers crossed and all that.
“Who’s next, please, Caitlyn?” Kali stuck her head into the receptionist’s room, willing herself onto solid terrain. Seeing patients was the one thing in the world that grounded her. Gave her the drive to find some place where she could settle down and play a positive role in her patients’ lives.
“Sorry, Dr. O’Shea... I’ve been trying to send it through on your computer screen. I’ve not yet got the hang of the system with all of these patients showing up like this.”
Kali peeked beyond Caitlyn and out into the busy waiting room.
“It’s not normally like this?”
“Well...” Caitlyn used her feet to wheel herself and her chair over to Kali, lowering her voice to a confidential tone. “Since I started last week it’s all been mostly people here to see Auntie Ail—I mean, Sister Dunregan. But most of the people who canceled appointments when Unc—Dr. McClellan came back seem to have all magically turned up now they’ve heard you arrived...”
