by Tina Beckett
Blood sugar level. It was six point three; she’d just taken it. She went to say it but then she paused. Something made her stop.
I have to find out your blood sugar level...
‘Did your Uncle Hugo tell you to find out?’
‘He says you’re d...diabetic and your blood sugar has to be under ten and above four and if it’s not I have to ring him and he says I have to make sure you still have juice on your bedside table.’
Polly glanced at her bedside table. There was a glass of juice there.
Hugo must have brought it in last night or early this morning. He must have come into her bedroom while she was asleep.
Creepy?
No. Caring.
But she didn’t like caring. She didn’t like fuss. She’d been swamped with fuss since childhood.
Ruby was patiently waiting for an answer.
‘Can you help me with my glucose meter?’ she asked and motioned to the small machine beside her.
‘What does it do?’
‘If you hold it out, I put my finger in it and it takes a tiny pinprick of blood. It tests the blood and gives a reading.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Not if you hold it still.’
Ruby looked fascinated. Still a bit scared, though. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘I can do it myself,’ Polly confessed. ‘But I have to be brave, and now I have a sore hand. It would help if you do it for me.’
And Ruby tilted her chin and took a deep breath. ‘Like doctors do?’
‘Exactly.’
‘My Uncle Hugo is a doctor.’
‘Yes.’
‘He could do it.’
‘Yes, but he’s not here. It’s lucky I have you.’
‘Yes,’ Ruby said seriously and picked up the glucose meter and studied it. She turned it over and figured it out.
‘That’s the on switch?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I think you have to put your finger in here.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do we have to wash your finger first?’
‘You’re practically a real doctor,’ Polly said with admiration. ‘Wow, how do you know that? Ruby, I would disinfect my finger if this wasn’t my meter, but I’m the only person ever to use this. There are only my germs in there. I take a chance.’
Ruby raised one sceptical eyebrow. ‘But it’d be safer if I did wash your finger,’ she declared and who was Polly to argue?
‘Yes,’ she conceded, and Ruby gave a satisfied nod and fetched a damp facecloth and a towel and a tube of disinfectant.
She proceeded to wipe Polly’s finger, dry it and then apply disinfectant cream. A lot of disinfectant cream.
‘Now it’s done its job, maybe we need to use a tissue to wipe most of it off,’ Polly offered. ‘Otherwise, we’ll be testing the disinfectant instead of my blood. You’d be able to tell your Uncle Hugo that your tube of disinfectant is safe, but not me.’
And Ruby stared down at the ooze of disinfectant, she looked at the meter—and she giggled.
It was a good giggle. A child’s giggle, and Polly guessed, just by looking at her, that for this child giggles were few and far between. But the giggle died. Ruby was back in doctor mode. She fetched a tissue and wiped the finger with all the gravitas in the world.
‘Put your finger in,’ she ordered Polly, and Polly put her finger in and the machine clicked to register the prick and seconds later the reading came out.
‘Six point eight,’ Ruby said triumphantly. ‘That’s good.’
‘That’s excellent,’ came a gruff voice behind them and Ruby whirled round and Polly looked up and Hugo was standing in the doorway.
How long had he been there? How much had he heard?
He was smiling. Oh, that smile...
‘That’s really good,’ he reiterated and he crossed to the bed and ruffled Ruby’s pigtailed hair. Which was easy to do because the pigtails looked very amateurish—blonde wisps were escaping every which way. ‘Thank you, Ruby. How’s our patient? Was she brave when you did the finger prick?’
‘Yes,’ Ruby said. ‘She moved a little bit when it went in, but she didn’t scream.’
‘I didn’t,’ Polly said, adding a touch of smug to her voice. ‘I’m very brave.’
‘It’s all about how you hold the meter.’ Hugo was talking to Ruby, not her. ‘You must have very steady hands.’
‘Yes,’ the little girl said, and smiled shyly up at her uncle but there was anxiety behind the smile. ‘I did. Are we really still going to the beach for Christmas?’
‘We’re going to try,’ Hugo told her. ‘I told you this morning, and I mean it. If we can get Dr Hargreaves better...’
‘I’m Polly,’ Polly said fast, because it seemed important.
‘If we can look after Polly,’ Hugo corrected himself. ‘If we can make her better, then she can be the doctor and we can still have our holiday.’
‘She doesn’t look like a doctor,’ Ruby said dubiously.
‘She doesn’t, does she? Those are very pretty pyjamas she’s wearing.’
‘They are,’ Ruby conceded. He and Ruby were examining her as if she were some sort of interesting bug. ‘I’d like pyjamas like that.’
‘I think I can find some like these on the Internet in your size,’ Polly ventured. ‘If it’s okay with your uncle.’
‘Doctors don’t wear pyjamas.’ Ruby seemed distracted by Polly’s offer but not enough to be deflected from her main purpose, which was obviously to find out exactly how qualified Polly was to take over here and thus send Ruby to the beach.
‘Does your uncle have a white coat?’ Polly demanded, and Ruby nodded.
‘He has lots. They’re hanging in the airing cupboard.’
‘If you put one of those on me, I’ll look just like a doctor.’
‘But your hair’s too red,’ Ruby told her. ‘Doctors don’t have red curly hair.’
‘You’ve been moving with the wrong type of doctor. The best doctors all have red curly hair. If the medical board discovered your Uncle Hugo’s hair was black and almost straight he’d be sent to the nearest hairdresser to buy a wig.’
‘A wig...’ Ruby’s eyes widened.
‘You can get wigs on the Internet too. You want to help me look?’
‘No!’ Hugo said, and both girls turned and stared at him. At his hair. It was thick and short. It only just qualified as wavy—definitely not curly—and it was definitely black.
‘A red wig would be perfect,’ Polly decreed, and Ruby giggled and giggled some more and Hugo’s face creased into a grin and Polly lay back on her pillows and smug didn’t begin to describe how she was feeling.
She’d been in some tight situations before this. Lots of tight situations. As an emergency physician she’d even saved lives. It had felt great, but somehow this moment was right up there. Making Hugo and his niece smile.
‘Ruby, Mrs Connor’s just asked if you’d like to go to the pictures in Willaura,’ Hugo said, almost nonchalantly. ‘Three girls from your class will be there. Talia and Sasha and Julie. Mr Connor will pick you up in ten minutes if you want to go.’
And he picked up the glucose meter and studied it as if it was really interesting instead of something doctors saw all the time—and Polly realised that this was important.
How many times did Ruby accept this kind of invitation? She suspected seldom. Or never?
‘Don’t I have to look after Polly?’ Ruby asked dubiously.
‘She’s awake now and she’s been tested and her blood sugar’s good. We’ll give her breakfast and then she needs to go back to sleep. We can ask Hamster to snooze under her bed to look after her.’
‘We could put a white coat on Hamster,’ Ruby said an
d giggled again. ‘He could be the doctor. And I could maybe teach the girls how to make frogs.’
‘That’s a grand plan,’ Hugo told her and Ruby swooped off to get ready.
And Hugo was left with Polly and Polly was left with Hugo and suddenly there were no words.
* * *
What was it with this woman?
What was it that made him want to smile?
She should be just another patient, he told himself, or just another colleague.
She was both. She was neither.
She lay in the too big bed in her cute swirly pyjamas, pink and orange and crimson and purple. They should have clashed with her red hair but they didn’t. She looked up at him and she was still smiling but her smile was tentative. A bit uncertain.
She looked...vulnerable, he thought, and suddenly he realised that was how he was feeling.
Vulnerable. As if this woman was somehow edging under his defences.
He didn’t have defences. What sort of stupid thought was that?
‘Lorna will bring you breakfast,’ he told her.
‘Lorna?’
‘My housekeeper for this morning. Our usual housekeeper, Lois, has taken Christmas off.’
‘And because of me you’re having to find fill-ins.’
‘I told you. Yes, because of you, Ruby and I are stuck here, but if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here in the worst sense of the term. So lie back and get better without qualms. What would you like for breakfast?’
‘Toast and marmalade,’ she said, almost defiantly, and he raised an eyebrow in exactly the same way she’d just seen Ruby do it.
‘Don’t tell me.’ The corner of his mouth quirked upward. ‘Plus coffee with three sugars.’
‘If you’re about to lecture me...’
He held up his hands as if to ward off attack. ‘You’re a big girl, Dr Hargreaves. You manage your own diabetes. And we do have sourdough, which has a low...’
‘Glycaemic index. I know.’ She glowered. ‘If you turn into my mother I’m out of here.’
‘For the next two days I’m your doctor and I have a vested interest in getting your diabetes stable.’
‘I like sugar.’
‘You had enough last night to keep you going for a week.’
And she knew he was right, he thought. Her protests were almost instinctive—the cry of a kid who’d been protected since diagnosis, told what to eat and when, who’d not been given a chance to make her own choices.
‘I’m not silly and I’m not a child,’ she muttered, confirming what he’d thought.
‘I know you’re not. And of course you can have marmalade.’
‘Your generosity overwhelms me.’
‘Good,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Let me look at your hand.’
She held it out for inspection. He lifted a corner of the dressing and nodded.
‘It’s looking good. If you stay here and work you’ll need to be extra careful. Glove up for everything.’
‘Yes, Grandpa.’
‘The correct term is Doctor. Say, “Yes, Doctor”.’
‘Won’t,’ she said and grinned, and he looked down into her face, that smattering of freckles, at those gorgeous auburn curls and...
And he had to get out of here.
She was messing with his equilibrium.
‘Call Lorna if you need anything,’ he said and she glowered.
‘Why is Lorna staying? Ruby’s going to her friends. Hamster and I are fine.’
‘Humour me,’ he told her. ‘Lorna will stay until after lunch, just until I’m sure that you’re...safe.’
‘I don’t like being safe,’ she snapped and he grinned and patted her head as if he was patting Ruby’s head.
Except it wasn’t like that at all. It felt...different. Intimate.
Okay?
‘Says the woman who’s just been playing with snakes,’ he told her. ‘You don’t like being safe? You know, Dr Hargreaves, I’m very sure that you do.’
* * *
Polly slept on and off for the rest of the day. She woke late afternoon and looked at the time and nearly had kittens. Five o’clock? Where had the day gone? She must have been more shocked than she’d realised.
Lorna had brought in sandwiches around midday. She’d eaten two. The other plus her untouched mug of coffee still sat on her bedside table.
Two days’ rest. ‘That’s enough,’ she told herself and headed across to the bathroom and showered—just a little grateful for the hand rail—and then tugged on jeans and a T-shirt and pulled a comb through her curls.
Hamster was still under her bed. The rest of the house was in silence.
She ate her remaining sandwiches—yeah, she did have to be careful—checked her blood sugars and felt smug again and then headed to the kitchen.
No one.
There was a note from Lorna on the kitchen table.
I’ve had to go, Dr Hargreaves, but Dr Denver thinks you’ll be okay. My number’s on the pad by the phone if you need me. Ruby’s staying at Talia’s for a sleepover. Dr Denver has some emergency over at the hospital. He says help yourself to what you need and he’ll see you as soon as he can. Fridge is full. Good luck.
She hardly needed good luck. She opened the fridge and stared in and thought it would take a small army to eat their way through this.
She meandered through the empty house feeling a bit intrusive, a bit weird. It was still very much Hugo’s parents’ home, she thought, furnished and decorated over years of raising a family. There were pictures of Hugo and a girl who was evidently Grace as babies, as they grew up. There were pictures of high school graduations, Hugo’s medical graduation. Happy snaps.
Though Polly could see the telltale signs of early depression on Grace’s face as soon as she reached her teens. Hugo smiled obediently at the camera. Some of his smiles said he was long-suffering but Grace’s smiles seemed forced.
As were the smiles Grace produced in later photos, taken with Ruby.
Depression... Aagh. It was a grey fog, thick sludge, permeating everything and destroying lives.
And now it had destroyed Hugo’s.
But had it been destroyed? He’d had to leave Sydney, commit himself to his family.
It’d be the same if Polly had to stay in Sydney, commit herself to her family.
‘He has the bigger load to bear,’ Polly said out loud, though then she thought of Hugo ruffling Ruby’s hair and saw there would be compensations. And this did seem like an awesome place to live.
‘But people probably think that about the six-star places my parents want to cocoon me in,’ she muttered and thought: enough.
What she needed was work. Or at least an introduction to work.
She thought back to the note:
Dr Denver has some emergency over at the hospital...
Work. Excellent.
She found one of Hugo’s white coats. It was a bit too big—okay, it was a lot too big, but with the sleeves rolled up she decided she looked almost professional.
‘See you later,’ she told Hamster but Hamster heaved himself to his feet and padded determinedly after her.
‘Are you my minder?’ she demanded and he wagged his tail and stuck close.
‘Has he told you to bite me if I’m not sensible?’
Hamster wagged some more and she sighed and gave up and headed across to the hospital, her minder heading after her.
CHAPTER NINE
SURGEONS WEREN’T TRAINED to cope with human conflict. Surgeons operated.
Yes, surgeons consulted pre-operatively. Yes, they visited their patients at their bedsides, but consultations were done within the confines of appointments, and patient visits were made with a nurse hovering close
by, ready to whisk away all but the closest of friends or family.
Death, however, observed no such restrictions. Max Hurley had passed away peacefully in his sleep, aged ninety-seven. He’d been in the nursing home section of the hospital for the last twelve months, during which time his daughter Isobel had been a constant visitor, having nursed him at home for years. His wife had died ten years back. Hugo had assumed there was little other family.
Two hours after his death, he’d learned how wrong he was. A vast extended family had descended on the place like a swarm of locusts. Isobel, seventy years old and frail herself, was jammed into a chair at the edge of the room while her family railed around her.
One of the older men in the group looked almost ready to have a medical incident himself. He was red in the face and the veins on his forehead were bulging. ‘I can’t believe it!’ he was shouting. ‘He’s left her the whole blasted farm. She’s seventy. A spinster. What the hell...? It’s a family farm. It’s hard up against my place. The old man always intended the farms to be joined. We’ll be contesting...’
‘There’s no need!’ another man snapped. ‘Isobel will be reasonable, won’t you, Isobel?’ The men were standing over her, obviously furious. ‘But, as for your farms being joined... We’ll split, fair down the middle. You get half, Bert, and I’ll get the other half. Isobel, we can organise you a nice little retirement unit in town...’
Isobel was surrounded by her family, but what a family! She had a buxom woman sitting on either side of her. One was even hugging her, but she looked...
Small. He could think of no better adjective. Her father’s death seemed to have shrunk her.
Any man’s death diminishes me... It was a quote from John Donne and, looking down at the helpless Isobel, he thought, even though her dad had been almost a hundred, that diminishment was just as powerful.
‘Do you want everyone to leave?’ he asked Isobel, thinking she needed time to be alone with her father, but she shook her head.
‘N...no. These are my family.’
Family. This was her call, but oh, he felt for her. Trapped by loving...