‘So…’ The girl’s eyes flew to hers, hope flaring. ‘This may well be just a waste of time. If it’s just a cyst, I can go home and forget it.’
‘Yes, but you can’t go home and forget it yet,’ Em told her. ‘Because you may be right in your first guess. Your age means that you’re in a low-risk group for breast cancer, but we have to exclude that possibility.’
‘But I don’t want to know.’ Anna put her hand to her mouth as if to stifle a sob. ‘If it is…cancer…then I want to be as normal as I can for as long as I can. I have three kids. I want to be there for them. Jonas made me come, but if it’s cancer then it’s better not to know.’
‘Well, that’s exactly where you’re wrong.’ Em handed Anna back her blouse-and a tissue-and waited until she was decent. Then she pushed back the screen so Jonas could join in the conversation. ‘It’s far, far better to know.’
‘Why? So you can cut off my breast?’
‘That hardly ever happens any more,’ Jonas growled. Unable to restrain himself, he rose and moved to give his sister a hug. ‘For heaven’s sake…Stoopid. Why didn’t you tell me? I could have eased your fears.’
‘By agreeing I may have cancer?’ She was looking wildly from one to another. She was very close to the edge, Em thought, and knew this visit was the culmination of weeks without sleeping. ‘No one’s easing my fears now.’
‘I can do that,’ Em said gently, but there was a note of iron in her voice. What Anna didn’t need was false sympathy or reassurance. She needed facts. ‘Sit down, Anna.’
And Anna sat, still looking like a hunted animal. She was like a tigress defending her cubs, Em thought, and suddenly realised that the comparison was appropriate. Anna wasn’t scared for herself as much as for the three small children who depended on her.
‘Anna, your brother’s a surgeon,’ she told her, casting a quick glance at Jonas. He could intervene any time he liked, but she sensed he wanted this to come from her. ‘He’ll back up everything I say, but I want you to listen.’
She held up her hand.
‘One, you’ve come very early, and the lump I’m feeling seems very well defined. That means it’s either a nice little cyst, which we can confirm with a biopsy, or, at worst, it’ll be a small cancer that we can remove. Now, I can’t make promises until the tests have been done, but if, as I suspect, it’s confined to the one small area, then there’ll be no question of you losing your breast, even if it is cancer.’
‘But I’d want…’ Anna gasped, then continued. ‘If it’s cancer I’d want it off. All off. The whole breast.’
‘Surgeons don’t remove breasts without very good reason,’ Em told her. ‘Even if it is cancer, with modern surgical techniques there’s usually no need. They’d simply take away the affected part. That means you’d be left with a scar and one breast a little smaller than the other.’
‘And that’s it?’ Anna looked as if she just plain didn’t believe Em. ‘What about chemotherapy?’
‘If it’s as early as I suspect it must be, then you’d undergo a six-week course of radiotherapy just to mop up any stray cells. Then you and the oncologist would decide whether you wanted chemo.’
‘But…’
‘The survival rate for early breast cancer is great,’ Em said firmly. ‘After surgery and radiotherapy it’s well over ninety percent. And it’s not the fearful experience it once was. Honestly, Anna, about the worst side effect of current chemotherapy is fatigue as your body copes with medication, and hair loss. And hair loss is no big deal.’
She grinned. She may as well be honest here. ‘You and your brother are so good-looking that having shiny scalps would only make the pair of you even more attractive. It’d just bring you back to be on a level with the rest of us ordinary mortals.’
‘And I’d shave with you,’ Jonas said promptly, and he finally succeeded in drawing a smile from his sister.
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Watch me!’
Em blinked. The thought of a bald Jonas…
Good grief. Once more, there was a wave of pure fantasy. Jonas bald…
She was right. They’d both be stunningly attractive, no matter what they did to their hair, or…or anything.
But Anna was back on consequences. ‘I don’t want to be bald.’
‘So you never need to be,’ Em told her. ‘The health system in this country makes sure you’ll get a wig if you want one, no matter what your income is, and wigs are great.’ She smiled at the pair of them. The tension was decreasing by the minute. ‘You know June Mathews?’
‘I…yes.’ Everyone knew June. She ran the local minimart. June was a stunning strawberry blonde. Or, to put it more truthfully, she was an interim strawberry blonde. Until she tired of it.
‘June doesn’t dye her hair.’ Em’s smile widened. ‘Whenever June tires of her hairstyle, she just buys a new one.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘I’m not kidding.’ Once more, Em’s voice gentled. ‘She doesn’t mind me telling people who need to know, as long as I ask that you don’t tell anyone else. June suffers from alopecia-hair loss-and she’s been wearing a wig for twenty years.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ This was clearly a side of June that stunned Anna, temporarily diverting her from more serious issues. Which was just what Em wanted.
‘Believe it. And I know there’s nothing June would rather do than help you choose a wig if it ever becomes necessary. She adores wig-buying. She told me once that choosing hair is better fun even than sex!’
Then, as Anna blinked in astonishment, Em pushed home her advantage. She smiled her most reassuring smile. ‘But, Anna, we’re crossing way too many bridges, and we’re crossing them way too fast. As I said, chances are we’re talking about a cyst.’
‘You’ll be fine, Anna,’ Jonas added, and Em heard the catch of emotion in his voice. This was his baby sister after all.
Em looked at Jonas and she realised with a sense of shock that he, too, was asking for reassurance. For facts! As a surgeon, he must know the statistics, but he wanted to hear them out loud.
Cancer was a frightening word, she thought, no matter who faced it, and the only way to lessen the fear was to confront it head on.
Help me, he was asking, and it was suddenly all Em could do not to put out a hand and touch his. Her smile died.
Because brother and sister were both afraid of one thing. Anna was taking a long, drawn-out breath, searching for courage for the next question.
‘If…if it’s cancer, it’ll come back,’ she said finally, and her voice was now strangely calm. ‘I’ll die. My kids… Sam and Matt and Ruby. Ruby’s only four. Who’ll look after them?’
‘Anna, I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours giving piggy-backs to your three terrors,’ Jonas said, in a tone of one much maligned. ‘I love your kids dearly and of course I’d take care of them, but for the sake of my aching back, can we arrange to have you live?’
‘I…’
‘Please, Anna.’
Anna took another deep breath. ‘I don’t have a choice, really. Do I?’
‘We don’t,’ Jonas said. He rose and his hands clenched and unclenched. He’d also been under a huge amount of strain, Em realised, wondering just what was wrong with his sister. This must come almost as a relief. There were so many worse diagnoses than early breast cancer. ‘Anna, I love your kids but, let’s face it, they’d be much better off with their mum than with their Uncle Jonas.’
He grinned then, a wide, lazy grin that sent Em’s insides doing crazy things again. Stupid things! She had to force herself to focus on what he was saying.
‘I’m willing to stay in Bay Beach while you need me,’ he was telling Anna. ‘In fact, I have a feeling that Dr Mainwaring could use some help, too, and with two women in need, what’s a man to do but stay?’ He flashed them another grin, even wider than the first. ‘So can we organise these tests and get on with it, please?’
Anna looked up, long and hard, at her br
other-and then she turned to Em. In her face was a slackening of terror. There was still fear, but less. The hardest decision had been made.
And the smile she finally gave almost matched her brother’s. ‘Yes, please,’ she said.
‘Then let’s do it.’ Em reached for the phone and started dialling.
CHAPTER TWO
EM WOKE to afternoon sunlight.
The feeling was so novel that for a moment she thought she must be dreaming. Then the morning’s events came flooding back, and with them came emotions so complex she had trouble taking them all in.
First there was Charlie’s death. Despite his age, there was a sensation of emptiness and grief which she needed time to absorb.
Em tried hard to stay dispassionate but, as the only doctor in a small country town it was impossible. And she’d known Charlie all her life. Em’s parents had died when she was tiny. She’d been raised by her grandfather, and Grandpa and Charlie had been close mates.
With Charlie’s death had gone one of her last links to her childhood-to memories of weekends fishing in Grandpa’s old tub of a boat, or sitting on the pier baiting hooks while the two men yarned in the sun-or having them make her endless cups of tea as she’d studied her medical texts while they’d gossiped easily over her head.
She’d loved them both. Grandpa had died two years ago, and now Charlie had gone to join him.
She’d miss Charlie so much.
And now there was Jonas…
She was so muddled in her thoughts. She’d lain down for a few minutes and two hours later she was waking to confusion-the intermingling sadness of Charlie’s death, the tension of the lump in Anna’s breast…
And the thought of Jonas.
Why did he keep overriding everything else? He was just there, a lightening of the dreariness of her awful day, and the sensation was so novel that she let it dwell.
Well, she let it dwell for all of thirty seconds. Then she rose, rinsed her face, gave her mirror a good talking-to for being lax enough to allow another doctor-about whom she knew nothing-to take over her duties.
She needed to check on him, she told herself. She needed to know who this man was. She might instinctively believe him, but she was trusting him with her patients and the medical board would look pretty darkly at someone who just stood aside and let a quack take over their duties.
And one phone call was all it took, to a long-time friend who was an anaesthetist at Sydney Central.
‘You have Jonas Lunn working for you?’ Dominic’s voice from the staffroom at the Sydney hospital was an incredulous squeak. ‘Em, the man is brilliant. Brilliant! He’s been offered a plum teaching job overseas and the powers that be here are already wondering how we can fill his shoes. He’s the best-as well as being one of the most caring professionals I’ve ever worked with!’
Now, how had she known he’d say that?
‘You hang on to him,’ Dominic said seriously. ‘Em, if he’s offering to help, you take all the help you can get.’
Hmm. Maybe. He was only here for the day, she told herself.
So with a struggle she hauled her muddled thoughts into order and sallied forth to once again become Bay Beach’s sole doctor.
But she was no longer sole doctor. Jonas wasn’t giving the position up lightly.
‘Go home,’ he growled as she opened the surgery door and peeped in. ‘I’m busy.’
He was, too. Young Lucy Belcombe, nine years old and accustomed to lurching from one catastrophe to another, was now suffering from a greenstick fracture of the forearm. Jonas had the X-ray up on the screen so Em could see at a glance what was happening. Jonas was applying a last layer of plaster as Lucy’s mother watched, and Mrs Belcombe was obviously deeply impressed that such a splendid-looking male was taking care of her daughter.
These people don’t even know for sure Jonas is a doctor, Em thought in a little indignation.
He was, though. He looked up at her and he smiled, and Dominic’s words were confirmed. The impression he gave was of pure competence. ‘We’re doing really well without you, Dr Mainwaring,’ he told her. ‘Aren’t we, Lucy?’
And Lucy agreed. ‘Dr Lunn told me I was the bravest kid in Bay Beach when he gave me the needle,’ Lucy told her proudly. Then she gave a sheepish grin. ‘And he also said I was the dopiest.’
‘Hmm.’ Em looked again at the X-ray. Lucy had certainly done her arm some damage, though she’d been lucky in that it was just a greenstick fracture. ‘Tree-climbing?’ she guessed.
‘A really big one out on Illing’s Bluff,’ Lucy admitted, not without pride, and Em winced.
‘Oh, Lucy. If you climb then you’re supposed to hang on. I guess Dr Lunn’s not far wrong when he says it was stupid.’
‘Yeah, it was a bit dopey.’ Lucy gave her a rather white-faced smile and then looked sideways at her mum, as if wondering whether she should admit the next bit. ‘It won me five bucks, though, ’cos it was a bet and I got to the top.’
‘And did you get an extra payment for coming down the fast way?’ Em demanded, and Jonas chuckled.
He had the nicest chuckle, she thought. Sort of deep and resonant and infectious. It made you want to smile just to hear it.
‘The very fastest way,’ he told Em, still chuckling. ‘Lucy’s just lucky she didn’t land on her head. Will you deduct the five dollars from the clothes she’s torn, Mrs Belcombe?’
But Mary Belcombe just gave him a reluctant smile and shook her head. Lucy was the youngest of her six daredevil kids. Broken bones were part of her lifestyle.
‘I’m good at patching,’ she said simply. ‘I have to be.’
‘And so are we.’ Jonas gave the arm one last long look, tied a sling around it and popped the plastered arm inside. ‘Right. One patched arm. I want to check it again tomorrow to make sure I’ve allowed enough for swelling. Meanwhile, if it starts hurting much more than it is now, give us a ring.’
‘Give me a ring,’ Em butted in, and got a sideways grin from Jonas for her pains.
‘Scared I’m doing you out of a job, Dr Mainwaring?’
‘You can have all of my job that you like,’ she told him, and the smile died.
‘Yeah. There’s certainly a heap of it. Far too much for one person.’
‘One person is all there is,’ she told him, and ruffled Lucy’s hair. ‘Goodbye, Lucy. Take care.’
‘Care isn’t in her vocabulary,’ his mother said bitterly, ushering her daughter out the door. ‘Thank you, Dr Lunn.’ And then she turned to Em and added in a conspiratorial whisper that Jonas couldn’t help but hear, ‘Oh, my dear, he’s gorgeous. I’d hang onto him if I were you.’
And she left, with Em blushing from ear to ear.
‘I’ve left detailed notes on everyone I’ve seen, if you’d like to review them. With the Belcombes gone, Jonas gave her an efficient summary of the last two hours. Mrs Crawford’s the only one of any real concern, and that’s mainly because of her diabetes. She’s had intermittent vomiting for two days. I don’t think it’s anything major-she says she ate some fish she thinks was off-but she’s starting to look dehydrated and her blood sugar’s up. So Amy and I admitted her.’
‘You and Amy admitted her?’ Jonas’s businesslike tone was designed to bring her down to earth, but in truth it did the opposite. To have someone take over was such a novel experience it practically took her breath away. ‘You what?’
‘Amy and I admitted her,’ Jonas said, and his eyes twinkled. ‘With the help of your nursing staff. I’ve put up a drip and left her on hourly obs. Not a tricky concept, Dr Mainwaring.’
‘But strange,’ she threw back at him. ‘No one admits anyone to hospital around here except me.’
‘Welcome to the new order, then,’ he told her, and watched with interest while her eyebrows hit the roof.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Wouldn’t you like a new partner-temporarily?’
She could only stare, and the laughter lines in his broad face creased further
. ‘Close your mouth,’ he told her kindly. ‘You’ll collect flies. And do stop looking like I’ve slapped you across the face with a wet fish. I’m only asking for a job.’
‘Asking for a job?’
‘A temporary one,’ he told her kindly, as if she were just a little bit stupid. ‘I need it.’ He still smiled, but his look softened as if he understood just what his offer meant. As if he knew just how exhausted she really was. ‘Sit,’ he told her calmly, and, shocked into submission, Emily sat.
‘You’re going to explain?’ she asked without much hope, and the laughter was back again.
‘I might.’ And then the smile died. ‘Em, Anna needs me but she won’t let me close. Regardless of the outcome of her tests, I need to be here for her for a while. Thank you for getting those tests organised so quickly, by the way,’ he added. ‘Breast Screen in Blairglen rang an hour ago and said they’ve fitted Anna in at ten-thirty tomorrow.’ He gave a rueful shake of his head. ‘Though I’m afraid that means I can’t start work properly until the day after tomorrow.’
‘You can’t start work properly…’
‘Em, Anna doesn’t let me near,’ he said, still with the patience of someone dealing with a person who was terminally stupid. ‘Kevin-Anna’s de facto husband-was a creep who treated Anna like dirt. I knew he was a creep at the outset. I was unwise enough to say so, and it’s haunted me ever since. She kept me away while she was with him, and she probably stayed with him far too long just to prove me wrong. And now she needs me, though she won’t admit it. She’s desperate for help.’
‘She’s very proud.’
‘Too damned proud,’ Jonas growled, and Em gave him a curious look. How would he like it if the shoe were on the other foot? she thought, and she knew instinctively that this man was as independent as his sister.
But he wasn’t thinking of his independence now. ‘There’s a large bridge for us to build, and it isn’t going to happen overnight,’ he told her, and Em nodded.
The Doctors’ Baby Page 2