In Dr. Darling’s Care

by Marion Lennox

It was really, really stupid to find tears welling behind her eyes. Ridiculous.

  And it was even more stupid to do what she did next. To lean over and let her lips just brush his.

  The gentlest goodnight kiss.

  It was not what most doctors did to their patients.

  It was right, though. It was meant to be. It was…

  It was very, very scary. She stood looking down at him in the half-light and she felt her world shift on its axis. She didn’t have a clue what was going on here, but she knew that nothing could ever be the same again.

  Emily. Edward. Queensland. Phoebe. Life…

  The expression in his eyes was as confused as hers was. He couldn’t leave, though. He was stuck in his bed.

  It was up to her to break their gaze. To walk out of that room and close the door behind her.

  And she’d never done anything so hard in her life.

  ‘Phoebe?’

  The big dog was sprawled full length over the kitchen floor, her nose pressed hard against her supper dish. She hadn’t been fed for years, her expression said, and Lizzie managed a smile as she knelt and gave her great fat dog a hug.

  ‘So you’re pregnant. You must have been in love,’ she whispered. ‘What would you do?’

  And then she thought about what she’d said. In love?

  ‘That’s one crazy thing to think,’ she told herself. ‘You’ve known him for how long?’

  Ridiculous.

  ‘How long did you know the father of your puppies?’ she asked Phoebe, and Phoebe looked soulfully up at her and then looked again at her supper dish.

  ‘Right. Think of practicalities. Men are no use at all, unless you want kids, right?’

  Phoebe nudged her supper dish again.

  ‘Right.’

  She should ring Edward.

  Why on earth?

  ‘To ground myself. To remind myself that this is a tiny part of my life and as soon as Harry McKay gets himself married I’m out of here.

  ‘You could leave now.

  ‘What, and leave him like this?’ It was a ridiculous conversation, and Phoebe wasn’t the least bit interested. She’d figured that Lizzie’s attention wasn’t where it should be and was gazing at her dish now as if it was the last bastion of hope for the entire canine race. Hopelessness personified. Starvation was just around the corner. The end of the world was nigh.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake…’

  Lizzie gave herself a shaky laugh, hugged her dog again and rose to her feet.

  ‘The vet said no. You’ve had enough tonight. You’ve had more than enough.’

  Phoebe looked up at her, her great ears almost lifting with effort. Hope, her eyes said. Death had been looming but now the kitchen cupboard was opening. A sliver of light was appearing in the darkness of desperation.

  And Lizzie couldn’t help herself. She smiled. ‘OK. Half a cup. No more. I’ll buy your love with half a cup of dog food and then I’ll forget love altogether.’

  Phoebe looked at her as if she was out of her mind.

  ‘Until suppertime tomorrow,’ Lizzie corrected herself. ‘Fine. I have the devotion of a dog and I’d better look after it. Because that’s all I’m going to get.’

  Memo:

  I will not scratch my leg. Scratching is an entirely inappropriate response to stimuli of damaged nerve endings.

  I will not think of Lizzie. Of the way her fingers felt. Of the way her lips brushed mine.

  I will not scratch my leg.

  I’ll just rub my fingers really gently…

  I will not think about Lizzie.

  I will not… I will not…

  I will forget about inappropriate responses. What a man’s got to do, a man’s got to do.

  And a man has to scratch!

  CHAPTER SIX

  HARRY was still sleeping when Lizzie was ready for the day.

  Lizzie ate her breakfast at dawn, gave Phoebe a snack, showered and readied herself for work-she’d dressed Corporate this morning, in the neat little suit she’d been wearing when she’d crashed into Harry-and then opened his bedroom door.

  He was out for the count.

  He’d been awake during the night. She looked at the bedside table where she’d left a glass of water and four painkillers. Two of the tablets were missing.

  Good. He might have played a hero in front of her, but he had enough sense not to suffer unnecessarily.

  His body needed sleep.

  He looked good asleep, she thought, her eyes softening as they rested on him. He’d thrown back his covers-the room was heated and the back-slab and bandages would be hot. He was bare-chested, his hair was tousled from sleep and his face on the pillows looked unlined and younger than his thirty-odd years.

  He’d had a bad time, she thought ruefully. To lose a fiancée…

  Actually, maybe he’d lost two fiancées. Where was Emily?

  What was the line? To lose one husband is careless. To lose two is just plain ridiculous.

  She smiled but the laughter didn’t reach her eyes. There was so much about this man that she didn’t understand.

  Or maybe she did. He was being sensible. He’d had one crack at being the big city specialist, and it had been a disaster. It had hurt everyone around him. So for now he wouldn’t follow his heart. He’d follow his head.

  He’d marry Emily despite her six bridesmaids.

  What a waste.

  She should leave him to sleep. She had no business staring at him. Any minute he’d wake and question her motives, and she hadn’t the faintest clue what her motives were.

  She’d just stand there for one moment longer.

  Memo:

  I will not open my eyes.

  I am asleep.

  Maybe I’ll open my eyes and think of something clever to say. Something flippant.

  I will not open my eyes.

  Being a country doctor was really strange. The medicine Lizzie was accustomed to was trauma in a big city hospital. Here she was, at Birrini Elementary School-practising medicine?

  There was no trauma in sight-but there was definitely need. The needs of Amy-the little girl who’d been so badly bullied-and Lillian’s needs. Lillian, whose self-confidence had to be built at all costs.

  ‘So tell me again what you want me to do?’ Lillian was asking, and Lizzie had to collect her breath for a moment and think about it. What was she doing here?

  Lizzie and Lillian-and Phoebe-were backstage at the junior school hall. Out the front were fifty-odd pupils, all lined up and waiting for the results of Lizzie’s art competition. Somewhere among them was Amy, a little girl who’d had to nerve herself to come to school this morning. A little girl whose home life was almost as awful as school.

  And Lizzie’s idea to use Lillian to help fix it… Would it work? Lillian was shaking like a leaf.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, Lizzie thought, but, then, it had been partly Lillian’s own plan, put forward with such tentative anxiety that to knock it back would have been unthinkable. And it had just seemed to fit so well. Two pieces of a puzzle coming together. Or two damaged kids helping to heal each other.

  ‘You’re the best artist in Birrini,’ she told Lillian stoutly, pushing away any qualms that she might yet have a disaster on her hands. ‘You won the state competition last year and May tells me that every kid in town was so jealous they could spit.’

  ‘They’re never jealous of me.’

  ‘You know they are,’ Lizzie told her, fleetingly touching the girl’s face. ‘Or course they are. You’re beautiful, you’re clever and you’re talented.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You have a father who tells you you’re not,’ Lizzie said bluntly. ‘That’s because he can’t see what’s so obvious to everyone else. You have a brother and a sister who are academically brilliant. One’s doing medicine and one’s doing law. That’s their thing. Your thing’s art.’

  ‘Art’s useless.’ The burgeoning confidence of the girl back in the hospital
had all but disappeared. To appear in public…Her terror was palpable.

  Lizzie sighed. Should she let Lillian off the hook? Do the presenting herself?

  No. It’d reinforce all the negatives that Lillian had instilled in herself. They had originally been a product of her father’s belittling, but they were now self-feeding.

  ‘Are you going to tell Amy that art’s useless?’ she demanded. ‘You know what’s happening to her. We’ve agreed-and it was partly your idea-that winning here will be a chance for her to break this horrid cycle of self-doubt. The same self-doubt you’re coping with. I thought you agreed you’d do this for me.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You can do this, Lillian. You know you can.’

  ‘I want to be sick.’

  ‘If you’re sick now, then Amy keeps on being bullied. Is that what you want?’

  ‘N-no.’

  ‘Then let’s do it.’ Lizzie stooped and hugged Phoebe, her grin belying how sick she felt herself. Would this work? Please…

  Harry found May taking obs and waylaid her. He was feeling so disoriented it was crazy. He’d stayed in bed for as long as he could bear it but this was ridiculous. This was his hospital. His patients. What was Lizzie doing taking over as if she belonged?

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Who?’ May turned from her patient and smiled. She knew darned well who he was talking about.

  ‘Lizzie.’ He corrected himself and gave a rueful smile to old Mavis Scotter in the bed. ‘I mean Dr Darling.’

  ‘She’s taken Phoebe and Lillian down to the school.’

  ‘Phoebe and Lillian?’

  ‘Yep. Girl and dog. Both of them.’

  It was nine in the morning. May had only had eight hours off duty and she was, in reality, too weary to be working.

  One of the town’s bank of semi-retired nurses would take her shift if she asked. Maybe she should-but, heck, she was enjoying herself here.

  There were, in fact, other reasons May needed to work. Reasons May didn’t want to think about.

  But meanwhile… Dr McKay had hobbled into the ward looking angry. Which was really interesting. There was no need for the man to be angry, she thought, but anger was definitely there.

  May was more and more interested. And so was old Mavis. As would half the town if they could see the expression on Harry’s face.

  ‘Phoebe and Lillian,’ she agreed, and watched his face change. Nurse and patient grew even more interested.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s the announcement of the winner of the art prize.’

  ‘Amy’s art prize.’

  ‘We don’t know that, Dr McKay. Anyone could win.’ May pursed her lips and tried to look prim-and failed.

  ‘You’re telling me it’s not rigged?’

  ‘The most deserving child will win, and that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘So Lillian’s watching Lizzie present a rigged prize.’

  ‘Lillian’s presenting the prize.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Nope.’ She gazed at him ‘Aren’t you still supposed to be in a wheelchair, Dr McKay?’

  ‘I not only shouldn’t be in a wheelchair,’ he said grimly, ‘I shouldn’t be here. Call Jim. I want him to drive me down to the school. Lillian’s going to present the prize? We could really use this. If she’d told me… If I have time… Quick, May, ring Jim now.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’ And she smiled to herself as she made her way to the nurses’ station. Very interesting indeed…

  Phoebe the basset could play a crowd better than anyone-or anything-that Lizzie had ever seen.

  The great fat basset, beautifully adorned in a purple bow that was wider than her ears, waddled out to centre stage and beamed at the audience with all the charisma of a comedian who’d been treading the boards for fifty years.

  The school children were seated in rows facing the stage-fifty or sixty children ranging from six to twelve. It was a really scary audience, Lizzie thought as she followed Phoebe onstage and thought again, What have I done? This was such a far cry from the emergency room she was accustomed to. She was sticking in her oar and she suddenly wasn’t the least bit sure it was going to work.

  It had seemed such a good idea at the time.

  Beside her was Lillian, and the tension emanating from the girl was real and dreadful. But at least she looked great, Lizzie thought. She herself had opted for clinical-her neat little suit with a stethoscope just peeping from her top pocket to emphasise the fact that she was who she said she was. But Lillian… They’d stopped by her home and chosen jeans, a clingy little top that hid her almost skeletal frame but made her look really cute, and a gorgeous tie-dyed purple scarf to tie back her blonde curls and make her look almost bohemian. She was your absolute picture of an artist starving in the garret, Lizzie thought appreciatively, and she knew, looking down at the sea of little girls looking up at her, that they’d all think Lillian looked lovely.

  Would it be enough?

  But it was time for her to speak. The principal had introduced them and it was Lizzie’s turn.

  These kids had decorated her-Harry’s-apartment. She owed them.

  Was this really medicine?

  It was country medicine, she knew. This was good. If it worked.

  Please…

  ‘I’d like to thank you all for my wonderful paintings,’ she told them, and thought, How can I be so nervous in front of kids? But she was. Her knees were shaking. ‘I love every single one of them and if I were judge they’d all win. But Phoebe’s only willing to relinquish one of her puppies to the winner.’

  Phoebe’s beam grew broader at that. Honestly, you’d swear the crazy basset knew she was the star attraction.

  ‘So here’s Lillian,’ Lizzie managed. ‘Here’s Lillian, who everyone tells me is Birrini’s best artist and is headed for fame and fortune, to announce the lucky winner.’

  Applause.

  And, as if on cue, Phoebe stood up and strolled to the edge of the stage and wagged her tail. Which was just as well as it gave Lillian breathing time. She looked petrified.

  ‘I did it without falling over,’ Lizzie breathed as she propelled her forward. ‘So can you.’

  ‘You were scared?’

  ‘Petrified.’

  ‘O-OK.’ Lillian seemed to take heart from shared terror. She took a deep breath and turned to the audience. And spoke. While Lizzie had trouble breathing.

  But Lillian had it under control. Describing the paintings in glowing terms. Sounding just like a professional.

  ‘I looked for great texture,’ she told them. ‘Wonderful composition and balance. I looked for potential. As Dr Darling has said, though, there can only be one winner.’

  She’s doing it, Lizzie thought, stunned. The girl seemed to be gaining in stature while she spoke. She knew her art. In the few days Lizzie had known her it was the one area where she lit up. How dared her father belittle this? This gift.

  To lose a life like this to anorexia would be such a waste.

  And then she looked up from the stage and caught sight of a cluster of people at the back of the hall.

  Harry.

  It wasn’t just Harry. There were also Lillian’s parents and Amy’s parents. How had he collected them at such short notice? she wondered, bemused. There was also a small group of boys in their late teens in the uniform of the senior school. Big boys. Good-looking kids, toting guitars and a drum kit.

  The whole group had Lizzie intrigued, but mostly Lizzie just looked at Harry.

  He was propped up on crutches, leaning against the wall, surveying her with a look that was half a smile, half a question.

  She couldn’t look at Harry now. She needed to focus all her attention on Lillian. This was such a gamble.

  ‘And the winner is…’

  Lillian paused for effect. Phoebe turned to her and pointed her wet nose in the direction of the envelope. Lillian tore open the envelope.

  ‘The winner is Amy Dunstan.’


  Silence.

  Would it work?

  There were a few groans as various hopefuls realised they hadn’t won. There was a collective regroup. And then as the diminutive Amy got to her feet, unbelieving, bewildered, the school community burst into clapping. If they couldn’t win, at least one of their own was going to obtain one of these wonderful puppies.

  Amy still looked bewildered. She’d been shadowed by her brother’s death for so long she’d stopped believing good things could happen. A tiny child for her age, wearing glasses that were too thick for her elfin face and clothes that didn’t quite fit, she looked almost bereft.

  But not for long. A smiling Miss Morrison came forward and took her hand, leading her up onto the stage. The little girl looked as if her knees were about to buckle under her, but her face was breaking into the beginnings of a tremulous smile.

  ‘I…I’ve won?’

  Lillian looked at Lizzie to confirm Amy’s win, but Lizzie shook her head and stepped back. This was Lillian’s call.

  ‘You’ve won,’ Lillian said gamely. And then added, with even more confidence, ‘It’s a wonderful picture. You should be very proud.’ She held out her hand and Amy took it, and Lizzie almost crowed in delight. Two damaged kids, helping each other to heal. They had a long way to go. But maybe…

  ‘I’ve won a puppy?’ Amy quavered, and Lillian didn’t even look at Lizzie this time.

  ‘You have,’ she said. ‘If you want one.’

  If she wanted one. Amy stared down at Phoebe, and Phoebe, rising majestically to the occasion for such a dopey mutt, sauntered over to Amy and stuck her nose straight up Amy’s sweater. Amy was so short and Phoebe was so…elongated that the basset’s nose came straight out of the neck of Amy’s sweater. Amy gave a little giggle of pure pleasure and wrapped her arms around Phoebe.

  If ever there was a case of kid needing dog, this was it.

  But… Amy’s jumbled emotions were letting in an awful thought. ‘Mum won’t let me keep it,’ Amy whispered, the beginnings of joy fading almost as soon as they’d appeared. ‘Mum says she couldn’t bear a puppy. Scott wanted a puppy. Before…before…’

  The principal spoke up then, a stern-looking lady in her sixties. ‘I think you’ll find your parents approve of the idea,’ she told Amy. She looked down the hall for confirmation, to where Mr and Mrs Dunstan were standing beside Harry.