The Doctor's Unexpected Family

by Lilian Darcy

‘For you?’

  ‘For Sandie and Chris. I know she might be on tenterhooks, but it’s important that she hears a proper report, in the right way. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced of that.’

  He nodded, his eyes smoky and thoughtful and his mouth straight and closed.

  ‘I’m not sure if she’s even realised that I would see the slide,’ Caroline went on, speaking too fast. ‘I try not to think too much about patient names, because between us we all know a lot of people in this town, and it can be a burden, but how could I not think about Sandie’s? No, I’ll—I’ll wait. For her sake. I’ll phone her in a day or two, when she’ll definitely have heard.’

  ‘And then you’ll go out there?’

  ‘Yes, on the weekend. Friday night, perhaps.’

  ‘Drive safely, Caroline,’ he said quietly. ‘When you do go out there.’

  The words stayed in her mind all the way home.

  Declan had told Caroline to drive safely, but he’d come so close to offering, once again, to drive her to her brother and sister-in-law’s farm himself. He knew he’d made the right decision in not doing so, although he didn’t analyse the reasons too closely. He needed to focus on Suzy. He was no knight in shining armour, coming to the aid of a woman he barely knew. He and Caroline had a pleasant office friendship, one he’d begun to rely on and enjoy, but that was all.

  At home, Suzy stared at her bright computer screen. The room had darkened around her and she hadn’t got up from her desk to turn on the light.

  ‘Are you interruptable?’ he asked her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Want some wine?’

  ‘Yes. Something to eat? Crackers and cheese?’

  ‘Coming up.’

  ‘Sorry. Want to get this right before I stop.’ Her fingers clattered on the keys, then flicked the mouse to highlight and delete a couple of lines.

  The final draft of this episode was due on Friday, and he assumed that was when she’d head back to Sydney, to deliver it in person. She had a meeting scheduled, too, apparently. He’d asked her this morning how the script was coming along, and she’d said, ‘Close.’ In a writer’s case, close was a stretchy word.

  He brought her a glass of wine and a pile of crackers and cheese, and she grunted an acknowledgement and kept typing. He didn’t resent it. She was a professional, and from what he’d read of her work, he had an idea that she was good.

  Scripts were hard to read, though. They were full of choppy scene changes and directions as to interior or exterior, night or day. There was very little poetry in the language. It was probably as hard for him to assess her work with any accuracy as it would be for her to assess his.

  He revised his wish-list for Suzy’s future visits. Maybe she shouldn’t come down when she had a looming deadline. Physically, they might be under the same roof, right now, but emotionally she was far away. He’d really been hoping for a nice night tonight. Hell, what would he have done if Caroline had taken him up on that half-reluctant offer to drive her and Josh out to her brother’s right away?

  Her emotions had been so complex and powerful that he’d forgotten about any other obligations at the time, and that troubled him. Damsels in distress could present unexpected dangers.

  On the other hand, if Suzy stayed chained to her computer for much longer, a four-hour round trip into sheep country wouldn’t have deprived him of her company any more than her work was already doing.

  He prowled, turned on the television for some news, didn’t know what to do with himself. ‘Shall I cook?’ he asked Suzy, interrupting again.

  She half turned her head from the computer, kept her eyes on the screen. ‘No, this is fine.’ She still had crackers and cheese on the plate.

  Fine for her, but he was hungry so, after waiting another half-hour or so, he knocked together an Asian-style noodle soup with some peanuts, green onions and a tin of baby shrimp, leaving a good percentage of it in case Suzy got hungry later after all.

  She emerged finally at just before ten, frowning.

  ‘I’ll have to go back tomorrow,’ she said. ‘There’s this scene at a marina I need to research. I’ve got the gun going into the—OK, no, I know, you don’t need that level of detail.’ She stretched her jaw, worked the tension out of her face with her fingers, then reached back and massaged a stiff spot in her spine. ‘Let’s go out somewhere and eat.’

  ‘Now?’ he answered blankly.

  She grinned, her eyes sparkling. ‘Why not?’

  Because it’s a Monday, and this is a country town, and even if we don’t get dirty looks from the staff of the two restaurants that might conceivably still be open, the food’ll probably be getting very tired. Unless we go for hamburgers and fries.

  He didn’t say it. For some reason, he couldn’t be bothered.

  ‘Feel like fast food?’ he asked, instead.

  ‘Lord, no! Out, Declan. Somewhere nice.’

  ‘You have no idea what time it is, do you?’

  She took it badly and wouldn’t be comforted by the left-over noodle soup, now two hours old. His feelings about her returning to Sydney so soon took second place. In fact, they never got to those at all, and the evening limped along with both of them still prickly and distant and not finding any common ground.

  ‘Come to Sydney yourself,’ she suggested finally. ‘Couldn’t you? This weekend, or next? It’s no fun when we can’t go out.’

  ‘This weekend I’ve said I’d play tennis again. Next weekend I’m on call. But the weekend after…’

  ‘On call for looking down a microscope?’

  He considered an explanation. Sure, as a pathologist he wasn’t likely to get many emergency callouts, but if his pager did go off on a weekend, it went off for a good reason.

  He took a breath, intending to sketch a couple of graphic examples for Suzy’s benefit, but she had already turned away to rummage in the pantry.

  ‘I just don’t feel like Asian noodles from a packet, Dec. I’m starving! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!’ She mimicked a spoiled, whining child. ‘I want… I want… I want something fabulous and delicious and huge. A big plate of pasta from Bill and Toni’s. Mushroom risotto. Vietnamese beef with lemon grass. Gourmet pizza. Followed by sticky date pudding or tiramisu.’

  ‘You want to be in Sydney.’

  She looked at him, head tilted, hands on hips. ‘Well, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t spend a lot of energy on wanting things I can’t have. That only makes you hungrier.’

  She gave an exaggerated sigh, and a pout, and a smile with a dimple. ‘OK, I’ll cook eggs. Want some?’

  ‘No, thanks. I just don’t feel like eggs right now.’

  She recognised that he was teasing her, burst out laughing and threw a teatowel at his head. The atmosphere eased again, and he remembered all the reasons he’d been prepared to follow her to Australia.

  But something struck him, at eleven, as he rolled into bed—on his own, because Suzy had had an idea and had gone back to her computer to key in some quick notes. When you had a relationship in which no statement of commitment had been made, he realised, you needed to feed it more constantly with time spent in each other’s company.

  You had to keep the reasons you were good together right there in front of you. You couldn’t afford to be apart for too long, when the relationship was about now because, without now there was nothing left.

  He got out of bed again and went to interrupt Suzy for the fourth or fifth time.

  ‘If you go back to Sydney tomorrow,’ he said, ‘to research the gun and the marina, does that mean you’ll have the draft in on Friday morning and can head down here for the weekend?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she answered, frowning at the screen.

  Caroline made herself wait all through Tuesday without phoning Sandie and Chris.

  Hiding it on the outside, she anguished within. Chris and his family saw a doctor who worked mainly in Glenfallon itself, but he had an office and surgery in the tiny town of Cargoola, much c
loser to the farm, where he had appointments one day a week.

  Which day?

  She couldn’t remember.

  I’ll phone Wednesday evening, she decided.

  But Sandie got in first. Caroline picked up the phone on her desk at eleven on Wednesday morning and heard her sister-in-law’s voice. She knew straight away that Sandie had been told about the results of the fine needle aspiration.

  ‘I’m in town, Caroline,’ she said, in a high, tight tone. ‘C-could we have lunch? There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh, Sandie, you’ve just seen Dr Malvern?’

  ‘Yes, how did you—?’

  ‘I looked at your slides. It’s my job, Sandie.’

  ‘Of course. I didn’t even think. I somehow assumed they’d, I don’t know, send it to Canberra. Or—I just wasn’t thinking. So you know the whole story?’

  ‘I know the diagnosis. But I’m not sure of everything your doctor will have told you. Look, do you want to come here? It’s early, but we could go to the café…’

  ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’

  Caroline met Declan in the corridor on her way out. ‘Eating early?’ He smiled, looking very casual.

  ‘I’m meeting Sandie. My sister-in-law.’

  His face changed. ‘Oh, lord, of course! I’m sorry.’

  ‘No. No, it’s fine.’

  ‘So she’s heard?’

  ‘Yes. At least it’s in the open now, and I can talk to her about it. She sounds upset.’

  ‘She’ll be too upset to think straight today,’ he predicted. ‘It’s later the flood of questions will come.’

  ‘Josh and I will go out to the farm on Saturday, first thing. He can miss soccer.’

  Declan leaned against the corridor wall, absently rubbing his palm over the semi-gloss paintwork at shoulder height. ‘Listen, can I repeat my offer to drive you out? I wouldn’t let you behind the wheel of a car, the way you look at the moment.’

  ‘By Saturday—’

  ‘By Saturday you won’t care any more, is that it?’

  He drew a reluctant, upside down laugh from her. ‘Oh, you’re right, but I can’t let you go to—’

  ‘You can please, pretty please with bells on, “let” me, Caroline. Suzy’s not coming down, she told me last night. I’ll be bored. I’d like to see some of the country while I’m here. Some of those sheep’s backs you lot supposedly ride on.’

  She couldn’t have accepted the offer as a favour to herself, but now that he’d twisted it around to make it a favour to him, she couldn’t refuse.

  And didn’t want to. She knew quite well the reason, and recognised a whole strand of feeling inside herself that existed quite separately from her anguish over Sandie.

  How much of a sin was it to like a man this much when he was already committed elsewhere?

  Not much, surely. She had no dark intentions. She’d turn this into a friendship with him, if she could. With Suzy, too, if she ever spent any time here. And she’d suffer the deeper attraction in silence until it went away, while keeping a scrupulous façade in place so that Declan didn’t suspect.

  These sorts of things did go away eventually, didn’t they?

  They had to.

  ‘It would be great to have another adult,’ she said slowly. ‘And you’ll be able to answer more of Sandie’s questions than I can. But I’ll have to ask her how she feels about it.’

  ‘Of course. Just let me know.’

  Caroline didn’t spend long with her sister-in-law over lunch. Sandie was due to meet Chris at the hardware store soon.

  ‘I didn’t have a clue,’ she said. She looked pale and wrung out, with her light brown hair dragged back into a low, bushy ponytail at the back that didn’t suit her. Her casual pink top and dark trousers hung on her, showing the weight she’d lost. She moved as if any exertion was an effort.

  ‘I wasn’t even worried,’ she continued. ‘I really thought Dr Malvern would just tell me I was stressed and exhausted and I should eat better and slow down. He didn’t say anything about why he wanted the various tests. I was all prepared to tell him what an impossible piece of medical advice “slowing down” would be for me, with the boys and the farm.’

  ‘So Chris doesn’t know yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you need to know, Sandie? What more did Dr Malvern tell you?’

  ‘There’s only one thing I need to know,’ she said, her voice smoky with unshed tears. ‘That I’m going to live.’

  ‘Of course you’re going to live! You’re going to be fine. We’re not going to consider anything else.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  DECLAN picked up Caroline and Josh from their house at nine on Saturday morning, after he’d phoned her the previous evening to check that Sandie was happy to have a stranger at Comden Reach. Apparently she was. That was nice of her.

  He probably should have reneged on Sunday tennis after Suzy had phoned on Tuesday night to tell him—big surprise!—that she wasn’t coming down. Tom and the others would have understood if he’d said he was going to Sydney instead. But he was angry, dissatisfied. If he went to Sydney this weekend, he knew he’d feel as if Suzy was calling all the shots. They’d have a bad time.

  So he’d stayed here in Glenfallon out of pride and…something else. Caution. Cold feet. He didn’t know what name to give the way he felt. He did know he felt restless, ready to do more than mow the lawn, rent a video and stock up on groceries.

  The weather was gorgeous. He’d have considered it worthy of high summer in Ireland, or even in London. Here it was just another mild, cloudless autumn day. In the back seat of his car, Caroline’s dark-haired, freckle-nosed eleven-year-old sat quietly. The motion sickness tablet always made him drowsy, Caroline said. From the little Declan had seen of Josh, he seemed like a nice kid. Big smile, crooked teeth and a little goofy and vague, as Declan had been himself at that age.

  Caroline was pretty quiet as well, during a drive that took more than an hour and a half, but she was a long way from going to sleep. Every time he glanced sideways, he saw the tense angles of her limbs and the frown on her face. The farther they got from Glenfallon, the better he understood.

  The irrigated stretches of lush green citrus fruit and trellised vines only reached a couple of kilometres beyond the river. After that, they crossed a range of low hills and saw the vast expanse of the western plains. They were flatter than the ocean and still terribly dry. There had been some rain in February, apparently. It had helped. Declan saw streaks of green. But it hadn’t been enough.

  Untidy flocks of sheep, their coats the colour of brown dust, eked out enough sustenance in their huge paddocks somehow. Hard to imagine that before the recent rains, the country had looked even worse. His Irish eyes couldn’t find this landscape beautiful, but he understood its power and its pull. Beauty wasn’t everything. Something stirred in him that he’d never felt in London or Sydney—a sense of awe, and an emotional response to the land itself.

  The distances were so vast out here, and the work was so hard. Caroline’s brother and his family must already be stretched thin. How on earth would the McLennans accommodate Sandie’s vital cancer treatment into their lives, for the next six months and possibly more? Caroline would have to find a way to help. He didn’t doubt that she’d do it.

  ‘How old are the boys?’ he asked.

  ‘Chris and Sandie’s boys? Seven and four.’

  Caroline looked good today, despite her inner turmoil. She wore snug-fitting jeans, white running shoes and a light, Wedgwood blue cotton sweater that showed off her shapely figure subtly. She had her glossy hair up in a high ponytail that made her look at least five years younger than she really was. He was more aware of her seated beside him than he wanted to be.

  ‘How will they manage?’ He threw her another quick glance, drawn by the complex expressions that crossed her face.

  ‘I’m going to offer to have the boys stay with me while Sandie is having the treat
ment in Canberra,’ she said, ‘as well as during the recovery phase following each cycle. And I’m sure Chris will take me up on it. He can’t run the farm and look after the boys on his own.’

  ‘Can you handle that?’

  ‘I’ll have to.’

  He couldn’t help contrasting her matter-of-fact determination with Suzy’s various blithe, beguiling promises over the past few months, which wasn’t fair.

  It wasn’t fair, so he dropped it, refused to think about it. He’d go to Sydney in two weeks and put his cards on the table. He’d given a lot to the relationship already, by moving ten thousand miles. He’d give more—he’d consider marriage—if Suzy would meet him halfway. Having settled that, it would be best if he didn’t think about Suzy at all.

  ‘Mattie’s at school, so he’s less of a concern,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Not in Glenfallon?’ He dragged his thoughts back to someone else’s problems. ‘That’d be a hell of a bus ride.’

  ‘No, in Cargoola. We’ll be driving through it soon. It’s tiny. They have a two-room school. You’ll laugh at it, after London. Mattie can switch to Josh’s school for a couple of terms. Josh will look after him, and he’ll fit right back in at Cargoola later.’

  ‘Sounds like it, if it’s that small.’

  ‘Sam would be at preschool, only there’s no preschool in Cargoola. I’ll have to put him into child-care. And I’ve asked Natalia if she’ll increase her hours, so I can cut down on mine.’

  Declan forced down an instant disappointment at the thought of not having Caroline around for half of every working day. He liked Tom and Steph and the others, but had already concluded that Caroline was the only one he could really talk to. Better than he and Suzy talked, in some ways.

  Dangerous ground, Declan.

  He knew it, and felt rebellious once more, angry with Suzy and with himself. ‘Because it’s fun’ wasn’t a good enough reason for two people to be together.

  ‘She thinks that’ll be fine,’ Caroline went on, ‘but she wants to make sure Alexei agrees.’

  ‘You’ve really thought about it.’

  Again, he had to remind himself that comparisons weren’t fair. ‘Come to Sydney with me,’ Suzy had said. How much thinking had she done before she’d issued that saucy, I-dare-you invitation?