Country Midwife, Christmas Bride

by Abigail Gordon

  She loved the idea of David and herself working in the same place in health care and didn’t want to have to leave, but told herself she’d known the score when she’d taken the job and would have to abide by it.

  They’d had David’s friend Lizzie Carmichael round one night for supper and had asked her what she thought was going to happen now that Anna was back, but she’d known no more than they did about what was going on at Bracken House since Anna’s return. All she could say was that on the few occasions she’d seen James since his sister’s return, he’d been pleasant enough, but had made no attempts to speak to her privately.

  David was just as anxious as Laurel about her position at the practice after a week of uncertainty while Anna and Glenn wallowed in the peace of Willowmere after the frenetic pace of their life in Africa, and when he asked James if he knew what Anna’s plans were, he shook his head.

  ‘I’ve been giving them time to settle back into our way of life,’ he told him, ‘but over the weekend am going to have a sorting out. I’m going to offer Glenn a partnership in the practice, and you too, if you would be interested, David. If Glenn accepts, it will leave Ben Allardyce free to go back to the paediatric surgery he’s been missing out on while he’s been helping to cover Georgina’s maternity leave. If Georgina decides to come back to us when her leave is up, I intend to offer her a partnership too, which should leave the surgery well blessed with doctors.’

  ‘I’d be delighted to accept your offer,’ David said immediately.

  ‘Good. But it doesn’t answer your question about what Anna plans to do, does it? As I’ve said, I’m going to discuss it with her over the weekend and should know where Laurel stands in the scheme of things by Monday morning, if that is all right with you.’

  When David had gone, James thought there was no one more anxious to sort some things out than he was, but it wasn’t all with regard to the practice.

  Since the night of the bonfire he’d seen Lizzie going in and out of the clinic a few times and had had to restrain himself from stopping her and sorting their lives out on the spot, but he was forcing himself to wait until the weekend after he’d spoken to Anna and Glenn, and it was not easy.

  For one thing, in spite of the excitement of their aunt’s return the children kept asking for Lizzie. ‘Why doesn’t she come to see us any more?’ Jolyon had asked one night when the bedtime story had been read.

  Pollyanna had put in her plea by saying, ‘I love Lizzie.’

  Don’t we all? he’d thought achingly every time he imagined how she must have felt when she’d disappeared from the bonfire. Come another Saturday he was going to find out once and for all if they had a future together.

  It was great to have Glenn and Anna back in Willowmere, but if there was any justice in the world his future and that of Pollyanna and Jolyon was with Lizzie. He just hoped that when it came to question time she would have the answer he was praying for.

  After breakfast on Saturday the children went upstairs to play and as Anna and Glenn got up from the table he said, ‘Could I have a word with you folks?’

  ‘Sure,’ Glenn said, and Anna nodded her agreement.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of things I want to ask you both,’ he said with a gravity that had them both sitting down again.

  ‘First of all, would you be interested in a partnership in the practice, Glenn? You weren’t with us long before you married Anna and went away, but it was long enough to know that you are an exceptionally good doctor, as is David Trelawney, the other GP in the practice. I’ve offered him a partnership too if he wants it and he is keen to accept. So how would you feel about joining us on a permanent basis as well?’

  There was silence for a moment and then Glenn said, ‘I am most interested in your offer, James.’ He glanced at his wife. ‘And I know that Anna won’t object. She tells me frequently that there is nowhere else she wants to live except here in Willowmere. So, yes, definitely, I accept your offer.’

  ‘That’s fantastic!’ James exclaimed. ‘And now it’s your turn, Anna. Do you want your old job back?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘As you know, James, I can’t have children because of the injuries I received when Julie and I were in that dreadful accident. So we’re going to adopt a child, or two if they’ll let us, and I’ll want to be there for them all the time as they get used to new parents and surroundings. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s wonderful news.’

  ‘I know that adoption can be a lengthy procedure but while we’re waiting I will enjoy having some time to myself, which could mean that I won’t be there for Pollyanna and Jolyon as much as I used to be, I’m afraid,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about that at all, and especially if a certain community midwife agrees to marry me,’ he told her. ‘I’m in love with her, the children love her too, and she loves them. Her name is Lizzie, short for Elizabeth, Carmichael. She lost her husband three years ago in similar circumstances to how I lost Julie and thinks that I don’t really need her because I’m so well blessed with family and friends. So I’ve got to convince her that her place is here at Bracken House with me as my wife. Wish me luck, will you?’

  Anna stared at him in delighted astonishment. ‘That’s the best news I’ve heard in years. How can I meet this amazing woman who has broken through the James Bartlett barrier? We’re not talking about the blonde midwife who’s based next door, are we? I haven’t met her yet, but I’ve seen her coming and going.’

  ‘Yes, we are,’ he told her, adding with a smile, ‘How many community midwives do you think we have in Willowmere? Lizzie is the one and only at the moment.’

  ‘So when are you going to pop the question?’ Anna wanted to know.

  ‘Soon, very soon—today, I hope. She is the only woman I’ve looked at twice since I lost Julie and I’m in love with her, but first I’ve got to convince her how much I need her. Lizzie thinks that because I’m surrounded by loving family and friends she’ll be on the fringe of things if she marries me. She was beside me at the bonfire when you surprised me, and when I turned round to introduce her to you, she’d gone.

  ‘She’s had a grim time in her private life over recent years and is wary of relationships for the wrong reasons, but the first chance I get I’m going round to her cottage to ask her to marry me. So would you mind keeping an eye on the children for me while I’m there?’

  ‘Of course we will,’ they chorused, and Glenn said, ‘We’ve got some news for you. We’ve put a deposit on a house in the village.’

  ‘Great!’ he cried. ‘Which one?’

  ‘Mistletoe Cottage, next to the water-mill.’

  ‘This is going to be a day to remember,’ James said. ‘I’ve got myself two new partners, which means I can sit back sometimes and spend time with Lizzie if she’ll have me, and you folks are putting down some fresh roots in Willowmere in that delightful cottage. This is simply wonderful.’

  By the late afternoon James was beginning to feel that things weren’t quite so wonderful. Every time he’d been round to Lizzie’s she hadn’t been there, and he kept telling himself that if he’d had any sense he should have let her know he was coming. It was a form of arrogance to expect her to be there just because he’d decided to honour her with his presence.

  He was turning away on his last abortive visit when he heard a faint cry and stopped in his tracks. It came again and his blood ran cold. The door was locked. He’d tried it a few times and was going to look a fool if he broke it down and then found that the calls for help were coming from somewhere else.

  But he wasn’t taking any chances, he decided. He’d lost one woman he adored and now the kind fates had brought Lizzie into his life. He wasn’t going to lose her too if he could help it, and as the cry for help came again he put his shoulder to the door.

  Lizzie was lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the narrow staircase and the scene in front of him told its own sto
ry. She’d fallen down it.

  Her face was twisted with pain and streaked with tears as she cried his name in blessed relief. ‘How long have you been here?’ he asked gently as he knelt beside her in the confined space.

  ‘For hours,’ she sobbed. ‘I tripped over the hem of my robe as I was coming downstairs what seems like a lifetime ago, and I can’t get up, James.

  ‘I knocked myself out and when I came to couldn’t move because I think I’ve fractured my hip. I’ve kept drifting off with the pain and then coming back to reality again, and it happened that this time I heard you knocking and ringing the bell. Have you been before?’

  ‘Have I been before?’ he repeated gently. ‘Yes, I have, my darling. I’ve been going crazy, desperate to talk to you but without success, and all the time you were lying here.’

  Even as he was speaking he was ringing the emergency services and while he asked for an ambulance Lizzie lay white-faced and tear-stained beside him.

  His was the name she’d called every time she’d come to. He was the only one she would ever want during good times or bad, and she said weakly, ‘I knew you would come.’

  He groaned. ‘It took me long enough, didn’t it?’

  ‘You must have come before when I was out of it.’

  ‘Possibly, but thank God I’ve found you.’

  He’d placed his jacket over her when he’d found her but even so she was shivering from shock and he said quickly, ‘Is there a hot-water bottle anywhere in this place?’

  ‘Yes, in the bathroom.’

  He looked down at her with all the love in the world in his eyes and said, ‘Don’t move an inch while I’m getting it.’

  ‘I won’t. I can’t,’ she told him, and he went up the offending stairs like a bullet out of a gun.

  When he placed it in her arms she managed a pale smile and said, ‘You are so good at taking care of me.’

  ‘I want to do it permanently. That is what I’ve kept coming round to tell you. Will you let me?’

  ‘Even if I end up walking with a stick?’

  ‘Even if you end up walking with two sticks. Will you marry me, Elizabeth Carmichael? My children and I love you so much. Polly and Jolly keep asking for you. We want you in our lives for always.’

  ‘Do you really?’ she said on a sob. ‘Then I’d better say yes, hadn’t I?’

  He could hear the ambulance coming up the road and he kissed her tear-stained cheek. ‘Yes, you had better say yes, and it will be the sweetest sound I ever heard.’

  He phoned Bracken House while the ambulance was on its way to St Gabriel’s to let Anna and Glenn know what was happening and warned them that it could be some time before he came back. They were horrified to hear what had happened and Anna said, ‘Just do what you have to do, look after Lizzie.’

  ‘I will,’ he promised grimly as he held her hand in the ambulance.

  It had been nerve-racking, trying to move her out of the small space at the bottom of the stairs without causing further damage to her hip, but the paramedics were skilled in such situations and now she was lying on her good side in the ambulance, with him watching over her like a guardian angel.

  An X-ray showed a fracture of the neck of the femur and that luckily the bone ends hadn’t become impacted in the fall. An operation would be necessary to realign them and until it was performed the pain would persist and she wouldn’t be able to walk. But once it had been satisfactorily accomplished she should soon become mobile again.

  The deep cut on her head from when she’d hit the floor in the hall had been stitched, and no bleeding inside the skull had shown up, as it had with Jolyon, so the damage to her femur was the main problem.

  As they were taking her to Theatre she said drowsily, ‘Go home to the children, James. I’ll ask them to let you know when it’s over and I’m in the high dependency ward, or wherever else they decide to put me.’

  He shook his head. ‘Polly and Jolly will be fine. They’re with Anna and Glenn, who are most sorry to hear what has happened. I’m not budging, Lizzie.’ And with his voice deepening, he went on, ‘Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be proposing to you while you were in a heap at the bottom of those stupid stairs, but I got the answer I was longing for. So I want to ask you now, my darling, how would you like a Christmas wedding?’

  ‘Mmm,’ she murmured as they wheeled her into Theatre, and as the doors closed behind her James thought wretchedly that this was a repeat of the awful moment when Jolly had been hurt. He couldn’t wait for the four of them to be together in more tranquil times.

  Surgery on Lizzie’s broken hip had gone smoothly, the orthopaedic surgeon who had operated told James when he came to see him afterwards. He confirmed that the bone ends at the neck of the femur had been realigned and metal screws inserted to keep them in position. In a few days’ time she would be able to walk without pain and return to normal living.

  ‘I was surprised to see Lizzie Carmichael on the table,’ he said. ‘I knew her when she worked here. What connection does she have with you?’

  ‘We’re going to be married,’ James told him.

  ‘Really! You must have something special to have captured Lizzie. There were a few guys here who tried to get to know her but she was never interested.’

  ‘I consider myself very fortunate.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do, but we’re not going to let you have her back too soon. She was lying injured for a long time and we’ll be watching for the effects of shock for a couple of days, as well as making sure she’s mobile before we discharge her. If you want to be there for her when she comes round, they’ve taken her to the recovery unit.’

  If he wanted to be there for her! James thought as he strode off in that direction. That was all he was ever going to want, to be there for Lizzie…and his children.

  When she came round from the anaesthetic and saw him sitting beside the bed, holding her hand, she said weakly, ‘Break it to me gently. What is it to be, James? One stick or two?’

  ‘Neither, from what I can gather,’ he told her gently. ‘You might need some support for a little while but nothing permanent, and when they discharge you, you’re coming to Bracken House where you can be looked after properly.’

  ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to see each other before the wedding, that it’s bad luck?’

  He was smiling down at her. ‘All our bad luck is going to be a thing of the past from now on, you’ll see.’

  She managed a smile of her own and as a nurse appeared at the bedside, about to suggest that he let the patient get some rest, she said, ‘I think you might just be right about that.’

  By the time he’d got to the door she’d drifted off again and as he drove back to Willowmere through the dark November night the thought of the joy that this particular Christmas was going to bring took away some of the nightmare that the day had brought.

  Lizzie was discharged three days later and as she walked slowly up the drive of Bracken House, holding on to James, she could scarcely believe that this gracious dwelling was going to be her home from now on.

  During the past three years there’d been the soulless apartment across the way from St Gabriel’s, and here in Willowmere the small cottage with the narrow staircase that had been her undoing. Neither of them could compare even remotely with Bracken House, and to live there with James and the children would be bliss.

  But first Pollyanna and Jolyon had to be told what the new arrangement was going to be, and the last thing she wanted was for them to be made to feel insecure because of it.

  They knew she loved them and they loved her in return, but not yet as someone who would very soon be sleeping in the same bed as their father. Until they were married she was going to occupy the bed in the spare room next to theirs, and she and James had decided that when the twins came home from school they would tell them about her coming to live with them and the changes that would be taking place at Christmas time.

  Helen had made lunch for the two o
f them and was beaming at them as she observed how James was looking at Lizzie. She would have a perm for the wedding, she decided happily…and a new hat…

  Anna and Glenn were nowhere to be seen. They’d moved into rented property at the other end of the village until the purchase of Mistletoe Cottage was completed, so as to give Lizzie space during her first weeks at Bracken House, but it wasn’t stopping Anna from being eager to make friends with the woman who had brought her brother out from behind the defences he’d erected since losing Julie.

  Jess tactfully disappeared when she’d brought the children home from school, and when they came in and saw Lizzie they smiled but didn’t come rushing up to her as they usually did, and she found herself tensing. Had she been taking too much for granted? she thought.

  Jolyon spoke the first. ‘Which is your poorly leg?’ he asked with his usual attention to detail.

  ‘This one,’ she said softly, pointing to the leg in question.

  ‘Won’t you be able to play with us any more?’ was Pollyanna’s contribution to the conversation.

  ‘Of course I will,’she told them. ‘We’ll have lots of fun.’

  ‘Lizzie is coming to live with us. What do you think about that?’ James said.

  ‘Is it because we haven’t got a mummy?’ asked the deeper thinker of the two.

  ‘No,’ Lizzie said before James could answer him. ‘It’s because I love you all and you all love me, but I’ll be able to do all the things for you that a mummy would do, and you would like that, wouldn’t you? So am I going to get a kiss?’

  ‘Yes!’ they cried together, and as they ran towards her James met Lizzie’s gaze above their small fair heads and the message was there for all time in the eyes looking into his.

  I love you all, it said.

  Lizzie had been absent from the clinic for a week and during that time one of the practice nurses who’d been involved with antenatal matters at the surgery before the new clinic had opened had dealt with patients’ health checks and problems, but there was relief all round when she appeared once more in her neat blue uniform and with a solitaire diamond ring on her engagement finger.