The Doctor’s Proposal

by Marion Lennox

  And they were having a baby.

  ‘If I ever suggested I didn’t need a man in my life, can I change my mind now?’ she said under her breath. ‘Jake, I need you. Now!’

  ‘Rot-Tooth Rocks are that white line on the horizon.’

  The moment Rod said it, Jake had the field glasses fixed on the horizon. ‘Can’t we go faster?’

  He was ignored.

  Closer.

  ‘I think…’ Jake was straining to see and Rod grabbed the glasses back from him. The big fisherman’s eyes were creased from staring at the sea all his life. He focused. And what he saw…

  He dropped the glasses and gunned the motor so hard black smoke started coming out the rear.

  ‘Hey,’ the police sergeant said, startled. ‘You’ll kill us.’

  ‘They’re on the rock,’ Rod snapped. ‘From here…one’s crouching over but one…hell, maybe one’s dead.’

  ‘There’s a boat coming.’ Kirsty whispered it to Susie but Susie was no longer listening. She was in a mist of pain and terror. She should have an epidural, Kirsty thought numbly. To have this type of pressure on her already damaged back… To have this level of pain…

  There was a boat coming.

  Was it Kenneth? It was still too far away to make out.

  They couldn’t slip back down into the water now. They couldn’t hide.

  Another contraction, merging into the last.

  ‘No,’ Susie screamed. ‘Kirsty, no…’

  ‘Breathe into it,’ Kirsty said, firmly releasing the clutching fingers and moving to where she needed to be. Which gave her exactly six inches of balancing space before she toppled into the sea. ‘OK, Susie, if you must, you must. Push.’

  ‘Kirsty!’

  They were near enough to be heard. Jake was at the side of the boat, yelling frantically to the girls on the rock.

  Kirsty was kneeling over Susie and he couldn’t see…he couldn’t see…

  She must be able to hear him.

  ‘Kirsty!’

  Fifty yards. Thirty.

  ‘I daren’t go closer,’ Rod muttered, but before he finished saying it Jake was over the side, stroking his way desperately through the white water.

  One minute Kirsty was frantic. Despairing. The next Jake was beside her, hauling himself up on the rock. Assessing fast.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he snapped, and Kirsty gave a choked cry of fear and shock.

  Jake was grasping her shoulders, pulling her aside. She was too close to Susie for him to be able to see.

  ‘Back into medical mode here, Dr McMahon.’

  And, snap, just like that, it returned. Somehow. Enough for her to be able to falter, ‘The cord. It’s round the neck. I can’t stop…’

  She was picked up and lifted to the other end of the rock where there was a tiny amount of space by Susie’s head. Jake was crouching down, his big hands moving.

  ‘Susie, stop pushing,’ he snapped, so loudly that Kirsty jumped in shock.

  ‘Pant. Don’t push. You’re not to push, Susie. Stop!’

  Kirsty knew what he was doing. It was what she’d been trying to do but her hands were so cold they were numb, the pain in her chest was too sharp, she didn’t have the strength…

  He’d be pushing the baby back. Just a bit. Just a little so he could manoeuvre…

  ‘There.’ It was a sigh of triumph, and Susie cried out.

  ‘I can’t-I can’t…’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jake said, still triumphant. ‘Push, Susie, love. Go for it.’

  And ten seconds later Rosie Kirsteen Douglas emerged into the world. Two miles out to sea, on a flat piece of rock not much bigger than a man. Seven pounds eleven ounces, and with the healthiest set of lungs a baby could be blessed with.

  Jake held her in his hands, moving swiftly, ripping up his shirt, tying the cord with a scrap of fabric, holding her up-just for a second-so the men in the boat could see, holding her for another millisecond so Kirsty could see, and then smiling down at Susie, showing her her baby and tucking the tiny newborn under Susie’s sodden windcheater, tight against her skin.

  After the mammoth effort Susie had made, her breasts had to be warmest place available, Kirsty thought. It was the warmest place until they could get themselves off the rock.

  Sensible.

  But Kirsty was no longer sensible. Susie was smiling and smiling, cradling her body into a protective curve, no longer aware of anything but this new little life that was gloriously hers.

  Kirsty was weeping. Her head was in her hands and she was out of control, and when Jake swore and managed to get himself to where he could reach her, touch her, take her into his arms and hold her, the weeping only grew worse.

  She was lost.

  She didn’t cry. She never cried.

  She cried now as if she’d cry for ever.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SHE woke and she was on the wrong side of a hospital bed. The inside rather than the outside. It was so extraordinary that she had to shake her head to make herself believe she wasn’t dreaming.

  Shaking her head wasn’t a good idea. Shaking anything wasn’t good.

  She stayed very still indeed, and when Babs tiptoed in to do her obs and Kirsty spoke, Babs gave a squeak of surprise.

  ‘I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘Just very, very still,’ Kirsty said cautiously. She reached out and grabbed Babs’s wrist, anxious that this contact with the outside world not be broken. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘You’re black and blue and red all over,’ Babs said cheerfully. ‘If you want a more technical medical diagnosis, I’ll have to get your doctor. Which, since your doctor has been pacing the corridor for the past two hours waiting for you to wake up, won’t be too hard at all. Let me take your blood pressure and temp. and I’ll fetch him.’ And then, as she looked at Kirsty’s face, she grinned and relented. ‘OK, I’ll fetch him now. Something tells me your blood pressure before and after you see your treating doctor might be very different.’

  Before Kirsty could reply, she’d whisked herself out of the room-and one minute later Jake was there. He stood in the doorway with such an expression of anxiety on his face that Kirsty almost laughed. Almost. You had to move your chest to laugh and she wasn’t about to do any such thing.

  ‘Jake.’

  In two strides he’d reached her, taking her hand, stooping to kiss her forehead, her lips.

  ‘Kirsty…’

  ‘Hey, am I dying?’ she managed weakly. ‘I don’t even act like this with patients two minutes before the end.’

  ‘You could have died,’ he growled, his voice breaking with emotion. He hauled a chair up and sat beside her, without letting go of her hand. Which was very satisfactory indeed. ‘Kirsty, will you marry me?’

  Her world stilled. Marry…

  Too much was happening too fast. This was crazy. It couldn’t be happening.

  ‘Um, no,’ she whispered, and then at the look on his face she added an addendum. ‘Well, not yet. There’s things I need to sort out first.’

  His face cleared. ‘I haven’t actually got the marriage celebrant out in the hall,’ he told her with a rueful smile-and kissed her again. ‘What do we need to sort out?’

  She was having trouble sorting out her head.

  ‘I’ve been asleep?’

  ‘We gave you ten milligrams of morphine before we winched you off the rock,’ he told her.

  ‘You gave me morphine?’

  ‘I was so worried about the baby I didn’t see you were in trouble,’ he said. ‘Then you disintegrated…’

  Hey! ‘I did not disintegrate.’

  ‘There’s my girl,’ he said approvingly. ‘OK, you had a wee sniffle. You sniffled until the medical evacuation helicopter arrived from Barnham. We winched Susie and the little one up and lowered them onto the boat. Then we put the harness on you and you proceeded to pass out.’

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t,’ she said with an attempt at indignation, which didn’t quite c
ome off.

  ‘There’s no shame in passing out when some stupid medic tries to winch a patient with two broken ribs,’ he told her. ‘Rule at accident scenes: examine and don’t take anyone’s word that they’re not injured. Hell, Kirsty, your chest is a mess. You must have thumped into a rock when you went overboard. Susie said you hauled her up onto the rock, and how you did it…’ His voice broke. ‘I’ve heard of mothers lifting cars off injured kids. Adrenalin or something. It was the bravest-’

  ‘Susie,’ she said, cutting across a description that was starting to unsettle her more even than she was already unsettled. It wasn’t so much what he was saying, it was how he was looking at her as he said it. Like he’d found a new world. ‘Tell me about Susie,’ she managed before he could start again, and he took a couple of seconds to recover his voice, to make it work again.

  ‘Susie’s great. We winched her and the baby over to the boat but she proceeded to sit up and watch as you were winched off. The moment she realised you’d passed out it was like she’d assumed another body. She was battered and bruised and she’d just given birth. After the battering she’d taken she should have been unconscious herself. Instead, she was hugging her baby so tight it took two of us to prise her away so we could examine her. She was sitting up on the deck, yelling at us to take care of you and to bring more doctors. She was saying that I was too emotionally involved to treat you, and she wanted specialists, and to get a team of the best doctors down at the wharf to take control the moment we docked…’

  Kirsty smiled. That was the Susie she knew. Bossy. Happy. In charge of her world.

  Oh, welcome back, Susie.

  ‘And the baby really is fine?’

  Jake smiled, a lovely, wide smile that encompassed the world. ‘Rose is gorgeous. Rose and her mother are currently asleep in the ward next door. In the next bed is Angus, who’s refused to go to Sydney until he’s seen you safe. He and Susie have both gone to sleep with Rosie’s incubator between them, and I can’t tell who looks the proudest.’

  ‘Incubator?’

  ‘Only until we’re absolutely sure she’s warm. But it’s a precaution I’m sure we don’t need. She’s fine.’

  ‘How wonderful.’

  But there was one more question. One more thing that had to be asked. ‘Kenneth?’

  His face clouded. ‘Can it wait?’

  ‘No.’

  His hold on her hand tightened. ‘Not good.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘We saw him while we were heading out to the rocks,’ Jake said softly. ‘Angus told us where to look-and why. What he said made us think we ought to keep on going. But the police sergeant got on the radio and by the time Kenneth reached harbour he had a reception committee.’

  ‘But they didn’t arrest him?’ There was something about his voice that told her…

  ‘He headed out to sea again. The fisheries and wildlife patrol boat went after him. They followed him for about half an hour, not approaching, just waiting for him to run out of fuel. They knew he was sick.’

  ‘Then?’ Kirsty asked, but by the look on Jake’s face she already knew what was coming.

  ‘He came close to shore,’ Jake said grimly. ‘They thought he’d beach the boat and make a run for it. Then, at the last minute, he just hit the throttle, took the boat up to maximum speed-which on that boat is enormous-and steered straight at the rocks. He didn’t stand a chance.’

  Oh, no. She lay still, letting the enormity of what had happened sink in. ‘Dear God.’

  ‘Mental illness is such a void,’ Jake said sadly. ‘There’s so much we don’t know. Maybe if I had my time again I’d train to be a psychiatrist.’

  ‘And then Dolphin Bay would miss out on having the best family doctor in the world,’ Kirsty said softly. ‘Oh, Jake…’

  ‘Which leads back to my original question,’ Jake whispered. ‘I’ve just watched a doctor under the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances rescue a patient from drowning, perform a flawless delivery-’

  ‘Hey, you delivered-’

  ‘Perform a flawless delivery,’ Jake repeated. ‘Knowing to a nicety when to accept help-’

  ‘It was your timing-’

  But he wasn’t letting her get a word in edgeways. ‘And you did all that when you were so battered yourself that you should have been prostrate with pain. I’ve decided this place needs another doctor. I decided that a long time ago but now I’m certain. And that other doctor’s you, Kirsty McMahon. I love you so much…’

  ‘You can’t love me.’

  ‘How can I not?’

  ‘You don’t do love any more.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Now I do.’

  ‘I propositioned you,’ she whispered. ‘I goaded you on.’

  ‘And very nicely you goaded, too. But you only asked for a kiss.’ He assumed a look of virtue. ‘I’m taking it further. I’m asking for your hand in marriage.’

  It was too much. The pain was whirling back again, making her senses swim. She looked up into his eyes and she saw love and desire, and all she wanted to do was sink into those eyes…forget…forget…

  Marriage.

  Jake.

  ‘This isn’t fair,’ Jake whispered, seeing the doubt and confusion and pain in her eyes. ‘I won’t push you.’

  ‘I can’t think.’ She had to think. She must. Jake…

  ‘Don’t,’ he said softly. He bent and kissed her lightly on the forehead, brushing the salt-stiff curls away and letting his fingers rest on her face. ‘I’ll give you something now that’ll send you right back into the land of nod, and when you wake up we can start again.’

  ‘Start…’

  ‘Let’s start again. Kirsty,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s forget you propositioned me. Let’s forget I was a dope, and now let’s forget I proposed marriage. But also…let’s forget your fear of commitment, your belief that the people around you will die, your fear of moving forward. Sleep, my lovely Kirsty, and wake up to your new world. Our new world. Starting now.’

  He kept to his word.

  For the next few weeks, while Kirsty’s battered body healed, while she came to terms with what had happened and while her world righted itself on its axis, Jake left talk of marriage alone.

  Firstly he was her doctor. One of the fractured ribs was displaced, with sharp rib ends protruding toward the lung, and when the air ambulance took Angus to Sydney it took Kirsty as well. She needed specialist thoracic surgery. ‘You were so lucky you didn’t pierce a lung,’ Jake growled when he showed her the X-rays. The fragmented bone was so close. So close…

  He strapped her with professional care, he handed her over to the care-flight doctors with clinical efficiency, and only at the last minute did he stoop and kiss her, hard, briefly, lovingly, on the lips.

  He didn’t ring her in Sydney more than a concerned family doctor might have. A very caring doctor…

  She’d spent a week in Sydney. A kindly anaesthetist had given her an intercostal block. Out of pain, she’d slept and slept, and her doctors had looked at the amount she’d been sleeping and decreed that she take as long as she needed.

  So when she returned-by road ambulance this time- Angus was ready to return with her. His bypass had been gloriously successful. He still had his pet-dog-oxygen-cannister with him, but his breathing was easy, his eyes were alive with excitement and he beamed all the way home.

  He had Susie to go home to.

  For Susie would stay as long as the old man had left, Kirsty thought. Susie had rung her over and over while she’d been in Sydney. She had described the perfection of her daughter. She had described how much better her walking was without the burden of pregnancy. And Kirsty was no sooner back at the castle than she was taken out to be shown Spike.

  ‘Jake’s been replenishing his IV drip every day,’ Susie told her. ‘He’s been wonderful.’

  ‘Is he still staying here?’

  ‘He took the girls home this morning,’ Susie said-with no more than a sideways glance at
her sister. ‘He said you and Angus needed to rest and you’ll rest better without the twins and Boris around all the time. Margie has arranged for her sister to help with the housework until we’re all fit again.’

  Which would be soon, Kirsty thought, watching her sister cradling her baby daughter, watching her laugh with Angus, boss Angus, boss Kirsty into resting… She’d dreaded the baby’s birth, fearing postnatal depression. Instead, the birth had catapulted Susie to the other side.

  ‘So Jake will come…when?’

  ‘He said he’ll come tonight and every night while we still need him,’ Susie told him. ‘For Angus.’

  For Angus.

  And it was for Angus. Jake arrived that night and he spent half an hour with the earl. He came downstairs and chatted to Kirsty and Susie, and if his eyes were warm and loving as they looked at Kirsty…well, they were warm when they looked at Susie as well, and also as he looked down into Rosie’s cradle and smiled and gave the tiny baby his little finger to hold.

  Kirsty walked him to the door afterwards and tried to thank him, but he took her shoulders in his hands and kissed her-lightly on the lips but still far too lightly for her liking-and put her away again.

  ‘Don’t thank me for loving, Kirsty,’ he told her. ‘It’s all coming together.’

  For both of them. She knew it. But it was as if they both needed time now, space to come to terms with what they knew was inevitable. She knew the townsfolk were looking at them, but she didn’t mind. She knew Susie was big with questions but she didn’t mind that either.

  One day soon it’d be right but not yet…not yet.

  Her job back home was still waiting for her. She made no irrevocable decision, but she did phone Robert and tell him that he should find someone else.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ Robert said. ‘We’ve always been such good friends.’

  Yes, but I’ve found more, she thought, but she didn’t say it. She hardly dared say it herself.

  She didn’t think of the future.

  As her ribs healed she did a little medicine-she ran a few clinics, she went out to see Mavis and spent quite some time at that lady’s bedside.