The Doctor’s Proposal

by Marion Lennox

  ‘No, I-’

  ‘I’ve been talking to you. I’ve been daring to impose on your personal space by making you talk back. You even smiled a couple of times. Does that constitute a relationship?’

  ‘You know very well what I mean.’ He looked flustered.

  She thought, Good!

  ‘So you’re scared of coming to dinner with me and my sister and Angus and the twins and the Boyces and Boris. You’re scared because that’ll cause what you call a relationship. You’re terrified that halfway through pudding I’ll jump over the dining table and rip your clothes off.’

  ‘Don’t be-’

  ‘Melodramatic?’ she flung at him. ‘Of course I won’t be melodramatic. Don’t you think it’s you who’s being just the faintest bit melodramatic, deciding that a casual invitation to you means I’m after your body? And don’t you think that you’re being just the tiniest bit insulting? You know nothing about me, Dr Cameron. For all you know, I may have a husband and six kids back home in Manhattan, and here you are suggesting that not only am I propositioning you but I’m betraying my…my darling husband’s trust. Not to mention all the little rug-rats that my husband is caring for while I cart my sister halfway around the world.’

  ‘Are you married?’ he asked, startled at her not-so-coherent outburst, but she was already out of the car.

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped. ‘Oh, it might be if I was propositioning you, but, believe it or not, incredible as it might seem, I’m not propositioning you at all. So you can take your dinner invitation and shove it, Dr Cameron. We do not have a relationship. No relationship. Nix.’

  ‘Kirsty…’

  ‘What?’ It was practically a snarl.

  ‘Will you still do the hernia with me tomorrow morning?’

  No apology, then. Did he really think she was making a pass at him? Of all the…

  Swallow your anger, she told herself frantically. She was stuck here and she really wanted to do some medicine. She’d been bored for a month in Sydney. She didn’t want to be bored here.

  Swallow your pride.

  ‘We can do your hernia if we stand at separate ends of the table and have an interpreter in the middle,’ she muttered. ‘After all, we can’t talk if we don’t have a relationship, and you’re setting the rules. No relationship.’

  ‘Kirsty, I’m sorry.’ Finally an apology, she thought-but not a very good one.

  ‘So am I,’ she snapped. ‘Because we might just have had a very nice dinner tonight. All of us. It might just have been what everyone needed. And we might just have had a decent working relationship. But it’s not going to happen.’

  She slammed the car door. Hard. She stomped into the castle forecourt. She could hear voices-laughter-coming from the kitchen gardens but she wasn’t stopping to investigate.

  She disappeared fast to her bedroom, she slammed the door and she didn’t emerge until she heard Jake’s car disappear down the road.

  He’d gone. Taking his encumbrances with him.

  Good.

  Had he been stupid?

  Jake worked for the rest of the day with a sense that he’d been an idiot. A huge idiot. A dinner invitation extended to all his family and hangers-on, and he’d reacted as Kirsty had said-as if she’d launched herself at him with the intention of ripping his clothes off.

  So he had overreacted just a tad. Just a little.

  But in a sense he knew he hadn’t.

  Evening surgery was boring. Coughs, colds, requests for repeat prescriptions, Mrs Bakerson’s ever-troublesome knee, which responded only to fifteen minutes listening to how much trouble her kids were…there was nothing there to distract him from what he was thinking about.

  He was thinking of Kirsty.

  She was gorgeous.

  She mightn’t be thinking about relationships, he thought ruefully, but he definitely was. He just had to look at her-listen to her-watch the gentle way she interacted with Angus and with Mavis-and he wanted to take this further.

  But she was married…

  No, she wasn’t married. She’d just thrown that into the ring to make him feel even more stupid about his repudiation of her dinner invitation.

  It hadn’t been a stupid repudiation.

  She was a lovely, vibrant doctor with the world at her feet. She was building her career in Manhattan. She’d see her sister safely delivered and then the two of them would be off back to their life in the States.

  Leaving him…

  ‘Can you look at my big toe while I’m here?’ Connie Bakerson was asking. ‘The toenail’s cutting in. You reckon I need an operation?’

  He examined Connie’s big toe with all seriousness. Diagnosis was easy. That was one of the good things about being a country doctor. He got the whole picture. Despite her troublesome knee, Connie and her husband spent every spare minute indulging their passion for line dancing. He’d noticed the appalling stiletto cowboy boots she wore, and he’d expected trouble ever since.

  But he was still thinking about Kirsty. If he let himself fall in love…

  How could he? There was no future in loving anyone except his twins. His girls were totally dependent on him, and he had little enough time for them now. If he spent the next few weeks falling in love with Kirsty and then she left…

  Maybe he was being dumb, but he saw nothing down that road except heartache.

  ‘You’re not very chatty,’ Connie commented, and he hauled himself to attention with an effort.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’ll be thinking of those young ladies out at the castle,’ Connie said with sudden perspicacity. ‘Isn’t it great that they’re here? Everyone’s talking about it. One of them pregnant with our Angus’s great-nephew, and the other a doctor. What a combination.’ She tugged her sock onto her foot and beamed. ‘Wouldn’t it be great if they stayed? Great for Angus. Great for you.’

  ‘Why great for me?’

  ‘Well, one of them being a doctor, of course,’ Connie said, astonished. ‘I hear she’s already been out on a house-call with you and the locals are saying she’s lovely.’

  Of course, Jake thought bitterly. This was a tiny community. News travelled fast.

  All the more reason not to think about Kirsty. If he so much as touched her, the news would be all over the district in minutes.

  ‘Hey, maybe she’s eligible,’ Connie said, beaming some more. ‘I hear she’s really pretty. Both of them are lookers, they’re saying, but the first poor lass has been battered. Knocked about in the car crash when her husband was killed, poor girl. But Harriet in the post office says the doctor one is a real stunner.’ She raised her eyebrows in enquiry. ‘So how about it, Doc? You’ve been single for far too long. Those poor wee mites need a mother.’

  He was absolutely right in the way he’d reacted to Kirsty’s invitation, Jake thought grimly as he managed a smile and showed Connie resolutely to the door. Kirsty thought he was inferring too much from one dinner invitation. She didn’t know this town. They just had to see an eligible female and they started planning the wedding.

  He just might nip this in the bud.

  ‘I hear she’s married,’ he said, with something approaching malicious enjoyment. ‘With six kids.’

  ‘Six kids?’ she said, astonished. ‘No one told me that.’

  ‘The village gossip network is letting you down. But she told me herself. She’s taken time off to care for her sister but back home she has a poor, downtrodden husband changing diaper after diaper…’

  ‘You’re having me on.’

  ‘She told me herself,’ he said, virtuous and sure.

  ‘Well!’ Connie pulled herself up, figuring out whether to be indignant or not and deciding a little indignation was justified. ‘Gallivanting over here when she has all those kiddies…’

  ‘Awful, isn’t it?’

  ‘She must be real worried about her sister.’

  ‘Maybe she’s just tired of diapers.’

  ‘We won’t j
udge her,’ Connie said resolutely. ‘We need to know more. Your Margie was out there this morning, wasn’t she?’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘I might just pop in to see Margie on the way home.’

  ‘You do that,’ Jake said, and suddenly he felt tired. ‘See if you can find any more skeletons in the closet. Oh, and, Connie?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘No dancing for a week.’

  ‘But-’

  ‘Some things I’m sure about,’ Jake said. ‘Not many, mind, but this is one of them. Sore knee. Sore big toe. I prescribe new boots and rest.’

  ‘I can’t rest.’

  Not when there was gossip to be gleaned, Jake thought, watching through the window as she marched up the hill to visit Margie with nary a limp.

  If ever he was going to have a relationship…how could he have it under the eyes of everyone in this town?

  He wasn’t having a relationship. End of story.

  Move on to the next patient.

  Kirsty woke the next morning to the sound of her sister whistling. Unable to believe her ears, she crossed to the window and looked outside.

  The change in her two patients was extraordinary.

  Susie was dressed and lying on a camping mattress they’d found yesterday. They’d cleaned it so Susie could lie on it while she gardened. The last of the rain had cleared. The day was already warm. Susie had a trowel in her hand, and she was digging around individual carrots.

  Kirsty glanced up to Angus’s window and Angus was perched in the window-seat, overseeing operations.

  ‘You’ll do yourself damage, girl,’ he called. ‘Wait until I get down to give you a hand.’

  She was being put to shame by two invalids, Kirsty thought. Angus needed help dressing and he needed his oxygen checked and he was waiting for her.

  Two people who thirty-six hours ago had wanted to die were now both aching for the day to begin.

  Was she aching for her day to begin?

  Maybe she was.

  She was going to help Jake operate this morning, she remembered, but excitement wasn’t exactly her overriding emotion.

  Maybe there was also a tinge of fear.

  Why fear? Was she fearful of the way she responded? Jake had let her know in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing of that response.

  She needed to ring Robert, she decided. Robert, her nice safe boyfriend back home. He was an optometrist she’d known for ever and their romance had been proceeding placidly-if tamely-when she’d had to leave with Susie.

  She hadn’t rung Robert for a week. It was time to get in touch with him again. Maybe he’d be surprised to hear from her. Their relationship was lacklustre at the best of times, and she suspected a month’s absence was probably killing it for good, but she needed to ground herself somewhere and Robert was eternally useful.

  Right. She’d ring Robert. After she’d telephoned Mavis Hipton to see how she’d got on in the night. After she’d organised Angus down to his garden. After she’d bullied Susie and Angus into eating breakfast.

  But maybe the bullying wouldn’t be because they weren’t interested in eating, she thought suddenly. It would be bullying because they’d be too busy to eat.

  Suddenly Susie and Angus were excited by life again.

  She needed to get excited, too.

  She was going to operate with Jake.

  She was excited.

  There was no relationship, she told herself crossly.

  No-but she was still excited.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DOLPHIN BAY Bush Nursing Hospital was a neat little building made of the deep grey stone of the local cliffs. It had wide verandas and a lovely, rambling garden, and as she pulled into the parking lot she could see half a dozen people pottering in the flower-beds. There were glimpses of the sea through the tangle of honeysuckle and bougainvillea, and a flock of white galahs was screeching and fighting for places on the branches of the towering gums.

  She should transplant this place to Manhattan, she thought longingly. What a wonderful place to die.

  What a wonderful place to live.

  They all knew who she was. The moment she climbed out of the car she was watched, by the gardeners and by the patients sitting in the sun on the veranda, and a chirpy young nurse bustled out to greet her.

  ‘You’ll be Dr Kirsty. I’m Babs. We’ve been waiting for you.’

  Dr Kirsty. Babs. This was as formal as it got in Dolphin Bay, Kirsty thought wryly, but she grinned.

  ‘Dr Cam- Dr Jake said to be here at ten.’

  ‘Yes, but Francis is in such a state that if we don’t knock him out soon, he’ll do a runner,’ Babs told her. She ushered her inside and flung open the theatre doors. ‘It’s OK, Jake. Kirsty’s here.’

  Jake was already in theatre gear. He was systematically checking equipment but as Kirsty walked in he turned and smiled, and her heart did that crazy backflip she was starting to recognise. And starting to resent. Darn, why didn’t she get that backflip when Robert smiled?

  This man didn’t want a relationship. Not!

  ‘You’ve been waiting for me?’ she managed.

  ‘We have the world’s scaredest patient,’ he told her. ‘Francis is sixty years old. Until his hernia got bad he was our local fire chief. Put him in front of wildfire and he’ll be the coolest head in the district, but show him a drop of blood and he’ll faint. He’s still in his room. I thought if we wheeled him along here and he caught sight of theatre gear, he might end up dying of shock.’

  ‘I’ll check him there, then, shall I?’ she asked, and he smiled again.

  ‘If you would. Is there anything else here that you need?’

  She did a fast check. This should be a simple procedure-a simple anaesthetic. Even catering for terror.

  The little theatre looked brilliant.

  ‘How many beds does the hospital have?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘Twenty. Plus ten nursing-home beds.’

  ‘That’s too many for one doctor.’

  ‘You’re telling me. I have to work hard to keep them healthy.’

  ‘Jake makes his patients work in the garden,’ Babs said cheekily from the doorway. ‘He has a method of bowel control that’s second to none. You stay regular or you get garden duty.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘He gives out garden duty for everything,’ Babs continued. ‘You just sigh in this place and someone sticks a trowel in your hand.’

  ‘Don’t the patients object?’

  ‘They love it,’ Jake said, attempting a glower at the nurse. ‘Babs, go introduce Kirsty to Francis. I want him back here asleep in ten minutes.’

  ‘That’s if my checks are OK,’ Kirsty said, attempting to find some vestige of authority.

  ‘They will be,’ Babs said. ‘Otherwise you’ll be handed a trowel as well. Our Dr Jake runs a tight ship.’

  There was no need for the trowel.

  Francis was a big man, but he’d kept himself fit, he didn’t smoke and he had no underlying medical conditions to give her concern. The only problem was his terror, which was palpable the moment she entered the room.

  ‘Hi. I’m Dr Kirsty, your anaesthetist. I’m here to make you relax enough for Jake to fix your bump.’ Then she hesitated. The man was physically cringing. ‘Am I so scary?’

  ‘N-no, but…’

  ‘Does your wife ever get her hair set at the hairdresser? Does she ever sit under a dryer?’

  ‘Sure,’ he whispered, not knowing where this was going.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to scare you any more than you already are, but your wife has more chance of getting electrocuted under the dryer than you do of getting damaged by my anaesthetic. But Dr Jake’s telling me you’re scared.’

  ‘I’m not…it’s not…’

  ‘It’s not logical,’ she said, smiling and lifting his wrist, ostensibly to feel his pulse but in reality to give him the comfort of touch. ‘I know. Like I’m scared of moths. I can’t stand them; th
ey make my hair stand on end. But if I had to face them in order to fix my life…’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Actually, I wouldn’t,’ she conceded with a rueful smile. ‘Not without a lot of screaming and running and general loss of dignity. What I might do, though-if I had to face them-is ask a nice doctor to give me something to make me sleepy and dreamy and away with the fairies, so that any moth could go bump into me and I’d simply wave and smile.’

  That drew a reluctant smile. ‘You’re saying you could give me something like that.’

  ‘Ooh, the very nicest of drugs,’ she told him. ‘Guaranteed to make you smile and wave till the cows come home.’

  ‘Till the cows come home,’ he said, dazed. ‘I thought you were from New York?’

  ‘I’m learning the local lingo,’ she said, with a certain amount of pride. ‘Australian country talk. I can talk about mates and blokes and anything to do with a heap of dung you care to mention. I think I have an ear for languages. Now I’m staying with Angus, it’s Australian with a Scottish accent. So will you let me give you my hallucinogenic substance?’

  He seemed even more dazed. Terror had receded in the face of her ridiculousness. ‘It’ll make me go to sleep?’ he managed, but he didn’t sound as if it was a dreadful idea.

  ‘No,’ she told him. ‘Not my dream stuff. It’ll simply make you relax. Then, if it’s OK with you-and only if it’s OK with you-we can take the next step and give you something so you have a swift sleep while Dr Jake fixes your bump. If you don’t feel relaxed then you can back out. But you do want your hernia fixed, right?’

  ‘Right,’ he whispered.

  ‘You really do?’

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Well done,’ she told him, releasing his wrist and touching the back of his weathered hand lightly with her own. ‘There’s courage and there’s courage. My moths and your anaesthetic. You want to start now?’

  ‘Y- Maybe.’

  ‘Then let’s do step one,’ she told him. ‘You close your eyes while Babs holds your hand, you’ll feel one tiny prick, then we’ll see if my fairy dust works. We can take it from there.’

  She administered the propofol, then stood and chatted some more, watching as his eyes became confused-but not terrified at all. She was even making him smile.