A Magical Christmas

by Patricia Thayer

  Or would a man like him not realise that?

  She didn’t have a clue what kind of man he was, and probably would never know him well enough to guess, and that thought, as he fell in beside her to walk into the hospital, sent a twinge of sadness through her heart.

  Stupid heart! This was a man who’d come into her life less than forty-eight hours ago—what could she be thinking?

  ‘We’ve a terrific bunch of nurses at the moment—in fact, they’ve always been top class. For a long time, before I came back here, they put up with locums coming and going, and virtually ran the hospital and catered for the townspeople’s medical needs themselves.’

  She took the two steps in a stride and stopped at the top as a middle-aged woman in dark blue long shorts and a paler blue shirt came out of the front door, a door already festooned with Christmas decorations.

  ‘I know you were out dancing last night so I phoned Ned and told him to tell you we didn’t need you,’ she scolded, and Neena, feeling about six years old in the face of Lauren’s disapproval, hurriedly introduced Mak.

  ‘We do need another doctor—even without the power plant going ahead, the town’s population could carry two GPs,’ Lauren said, shaking Mak’s hand and sizing him up at the same time. ‘Come on in, I’ll give you the tour. You.’

  She turned to Neena.

  ‘You can make the tea. I bought some more of those lemon-flavoured decaffeinated teabags for you so don’t think you can sneak a real one because I’ll smell it.’

  Neena scowled at her. ‘Never fall pregnant in a country town where every citizen feels impelled to count your caffeine intake every day,’ she grumbled at Mak.

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ he said, a teasing smile twisting those mesmeric lips. ‘Caffeine addict, were you?’

  ‘Was she ever.’ Lauren answered for her. ‘The worst! Coffee morning noon and night, then she gets pregnant and tries to convince us all that tea has no caffeine in it—as if we’d fall for that!’

  Mak was once again struck by the protective attitude towards Neena—a loving protection that he assumed she must have earned. He remembered the conversation as they’d driven up to the hospital—remembered her saying she’d come back to town.

  ‘Did she grow up here that you’re all so watchful of her?’ he asked Lauren as the straight back with the long black plait dangling down it disappeared through a side door.

  ‘She did. Her father came out here from India at a time when it was nearly impossible to get doctors in the country. He was newly married and wanted to build a better life for his family, but sadly his wife died in a car accident when Neena was four, and she was the only family he had.’

  ‘She and the townsfolk,’ Mak suggested, and Lauren smiled.

  ‘It took a while. We’re not a trusting lot, out here in the bush, but he was so good to everyone, and then his wife dying so, yes, the town took him to their hearts. Then—But you’re here to see the hospital, not hear the history of the town. As you can see, we’ve four four-bed wards straight off the central corridor and one more right at the back, but the back three are permanently closed. Mr Temple here—’ she led him into the ward on the right ‘—is in while Neena gets his medication sorted. He goes back home—he lives out of town—and forgets to take his tablets, then takes too many—’

  She broke off as she reached the bed of the ward’s only occupant.

  ‘Mr Temple, this is Dr Stavrou. He’s here to help out for a while.’

  ‘While Neena has her baby?’ the old man asked. ‘You know if it’s a boy she’s going to call it after me?’

  ‘Call it Mr Temple?’ Lauren teased, and the patient glared at her.

  ‘You know I’ve got a name, it’s on me chart, I just don’t hold with this modern habit of everyone calling everyone by their first names as if they’re all best mates.’

  ‘I quite agree,’ Mak told him, surreptitiously checking the chart to see what the man’s name was, but the scrawl was indecipherable. Surely not Clarence. If Neena wouldn’t call a camel Clarence she wouldn’t—

  ‘It’s Charles, if you’re trying to read it upside down,’ Mr Temple said. ‘That’s a perfectly proper name for a baby. It’s a real name, not a made-up one like Autumn.’

  ‘Mr Temple’s great-granddaughter is called Summer,’ Lauren explained. ‘And his granddaughter is expecting her second one, but she’s only teasing you, Mr Temple, about calling it Autumn. Maybe if she has a boy she’ll call him Charles.’

  ‘Can’t have a whole class of Charleses in the same class at the school in five years’ time!’ the patient grumbled.

  Mak listened to the conversation while a strange feeling of contentment swept through him. Wasn’t this what he’d envisaged when he’d begun to study medicine—spending time with patients, quality time, not the rushed politeness of the ER? Of course, it was impossible to think that this situation could be recreated in a city practice or city hospital.

  Or could it?

  Lauren was leading him out of the ward and into the one across the passage where two middle-aged women were sitting up in bed knitting, metal walking frames by their beds suggesting they might be post-op hip replacements.

  ‘The terrible twosome,’ Lauren introduced them. ‘Marnie and Phyllis. Twins, though you wouldn’t know it to look at them, and determined that if one experiences something the other must as well. Marnie fell at the clothesline and broke her ankle, had to be airlifted out so it could be pinned and plated and she’s back here until we get her weight-bearing on it, and Phyllis, not to be outdone, broke her leg last week. Simple fracture of the tib and fib, Neena set it here. We’ve only kept Phyllis over the weekend because she’s having trouble with crutches and the walking frame will be hard for her to manage at home.’

  ‘And because I’m company for Marnie and with shearing next week I won’t get the layette finished for Neena’s baby if I have to go home,’ Phyllis told him, holding up the tiny garment—in bright purple wool—that she was knitting.

  Marnie’s wool was green and Mak wondered if politeness would decree Neena’s baby had to wear the garments being knitted out of kindness and no doubt love.

  ‘Green and purple?’ he said to Lauren as she led him into the big kitchen at the back of the building.

  ‘They’re not still knitting, are they?’ Neena demanded, picking up on the conversation immediately. ‘Honestly, Lauren, can’t you tangle the wool in the walking frames?’

  ‘My baby had to wear a bright orange jumpsuit knitted by the twins, and it was midsummer at the time, so live with it. Put the things on when you know the twins’ll be in town on mail days, and the rest of the time dress him however you want.’

  She waved the teapot at Mak and at his nod poured a mug of tea, pushing a plate of biscuits towards him.

  ‘Does everyone in this town consider you’re having a boy?’ Mak asked Neena, who was sipping distastefully at her aromatic drink.

  ‘We’re kind of assuming it because of the general nuisance value,’ Lauren said.

  ‘Boys being more annoying than girls?’ Mak guessed, deciding a second biscuit, each bite rich with chocolate pieces, wouldn’t go astray.

  ‘When they’re younger, definitely,’ Lauren said. ‘Girls rarely think of taping kites to their backs and jumping off the garage roof to see if they can fly.’

  ‘He only broke one leg,’ Neena put in. ‘And you have to admit, you worry a lot more about your girls now they’re older.’

  ‘All teenagers are a worry,’ Lauren decreed. ‘You got kids?’

  This last was directed at Mak and he knew enough about hospital gossip to realise this was also an ‘are you married’ question.

  ‘No kids,’ he said, deliberately not taking the bait, though again feeling a faint twinge of what couldn’t possibly be regret. After Rosalie, his distaste for the marriage experience had been so strong he’d decided it was something he would never repeat. But kids? Back then, he’d been excited about the prospect of a baby, about bei
ng a father…

  ‘Lucky you,’ Lauren said, and he could feel the next question hovering on her lips, but at that moment there was a loud crash and Neena and Lauren rushed from the room.

  ‘Phyllis, didn’t I tell you to buzz me before you tried to use the crutches?’ Lauren was saying when Mak arrived at the scene of the accident—a fall on the veranda outside the kitchen.

  ‘Yes, well, Marnie reckoned he looked a bit like The Rat and I had to check.’

  Neena and Lauren had her back on her feet and were settling the crutches under her armpits, both of them looking slightly flustered. But Phyllis had no intention of moving, not until she’d studied Mak’s face intently enough to make a judgement, finally shaking her head.

  ‘Nah, she’s wrong. The Rat had the charm thing going—sparkly eyes whenever he looked at any woman. Smile about to pop out, always there ready on his lips. This bloke looks okay. Solid!’

  She nodded at Neena as if her judgement was approving something, though what Mak didn’t like to think, then, with Lauren by her side, she started back to bed.

  ‘Pity she didn’t break her wrist when she fell,’ Neena muttered as he followed her back into the kitchen.

  ‘Nice attitude for a doctor,’ he told her, and she turned to frown at him, studying him.

  ‘She couldn’t knit with a broken wrist,’ she said, but Mak had the strangest sensation that knitting was the last thing on her mind. He’d figured out ‘The Rat’ was none other than his dead nephew, but from the look of disappointment on Neena’s face, she, too, had found no resemblance.

  Shouldn’t that be good?

  ‘Phyllis thought I looked okay,’ he told her, and won a half-smile.

  ‘Phyllis thinks all men look okay—she’s a fifty-seven-year-old spinster—she and Marnie run the family property. Marnie was married at one time, but to another Rat, but that doesn’t mean they judge all men by his behaviour. In fact, at one time, Phyllis rather hoped she might become my stepmother, but my dad was hung up on my mother even after she died and that was never going to happen.’

  Mak shook his head—it was definitely becoming a habit. ‘Are all country towns this—with everyone seeming to know everyone else’s business? Do you ever get any privacy?’

  Neena smiled at him and patted the small neat baby bump protruding under her T-shirt.

  ‘I must have at least once, mustn’t I?’ she said, and although she spoke lightly, the smile had slid off her face and the sadness in her eyes made him want to hug her.

  Hug her? A woman pregnant by his nephew—the nephew commonly known in town as The Rat? A woman who might have deliberately become pregnant? More to the point, a woman who carried a rifle in her car? He’d seen it there when he’d put Albert inside in the early hours of Saturday morning.

  Hugging just wasn’t on the agenda.

  Not now, and not ever.

  Though hadn’t he held her in his arms when they’d been dancing? Even touched her bump? And she hadn’t objected to that!

  ‘Where next?’ he asked, taking another biscuit because chocolate was good energy food, and they were the best biscuits he’d ever tasted.

  ‘Retirement units next door—it’s not quite a nursing home, but some of the people living there are getting on a bit and Maisie, one of the oldest, has been having breathing problems. It’s congestive heart failure but…’

  ‘But?’ Mak echoed, when it became clear Neena wasn’t going to expand on the subject.

  ‘Come and meet her, but be warned, she’s another lifelong spinster with an eye for single men, and although you ducked that question from Lauren earlier, can I assume you are single?’

  ‘I am,’ Mak replied, and found himself wishing she was asking for personal reasons, although he knew full well that wasn’t the case. He was going to be working with her—it was natural she’d want to know something of his background, and marital status was part of that background.

  ‘Maisie will be delighted,’ Neena told him, her smile back again—a more healthy smile this time.

  She stood up and led him off the back veranda of the hospital and across a gravelly strip of land where nothing grew towards a newish building, brick with a green tiled roof.

  ‘The local service clubs got together to build it, and having it close to the hospital means we can share the staff. All meals are supplied, although some of the units have small kitchens so the residents can be self-sufficient if they like. Being Sunday, there’ll be a barbeque late this afternoon if you want to stay for it.’

  She led the way into the cool building, and along a wide corridor towards a big open room. Four women and two men were sitting in there, watching television or reading. Neena spoke to a young man in dark blue shorts and a paler blue shirt, the male version of the uniform Lauren had been wearing.

  ‘Maisie?’

  ‘In the greenhouse,’ he said, and though he looked enquiringly at Mak, Neena didn’t introduce him, leading him out of the room and further down the hall.

  ‘The building was designed to be eco-efficient. Like most western buildings, it has an evaporative air-cooling unit on the roof, and the greenhouse provides shade from the western sun. It also gives the residents who are interested something to do, looking after the plants.’

  She opened a door that led directly into the shade-cloth covered room—no, it was larger than a room, more the size of a village hall. And everywhere were orchids in full bloom, long stems of them bending across the narrow passage between the shelves of plants.

  ‘But they’re beautiful,’ Mak said, noticing for the first time a woman in a wheelchair down the end of the greenhouse.

  ‘They are, and a lot of them have been propagated from plants Maisie brought from her home when she shifted in, and she’s the one who’s taught the others how to care for them. Right now I’d guess she’s tagging the flowering plants she wants to go on display in the hospital and in the common room here. Hi, Maisie, I’ve brought you a visitor.’

  ‘Nice-looking man, from what I hear,’ the old voice croaked. ‘Come closer so I can take a look at you.’

  Mak walked obediently closer, hoping shock wasn’t registering on his face as he saw how old the orchid cultivator was. Rheumy brown eyes were almost lost in a maze of wrinkles, while toothless gums shone in her wide smile.

  ‘I’m Mak Stavrou,’ he said, bending over to take her hand, and without thinking, to lift it to his lips for a gentle kiss.

  ‘Mac like in MacKenzie?’ she asked, letting her hand linger in his.

  ‘No, spelled with a K and short for Makarios, a Greek name meaning blessed. My parents had a daughter first and, being traditional Greeks, thought the family needed a boy. It took a while, hence the name, although my sister turned out to be the one who followed in my father’s footsteps.’

  ‘I hope you are blessed,’ Maisie said, and Mak heard the wheeze in her voice and realised that even this short conversation had tired her.

  ‘Is there anything you need?’ Neena asked, and when Maisie shook her head, they stayed a little longer, Neena telling him the names of the various orchids, pointing out which ones were native to Australia, showing off Maisie’s work in a way that was obviously pleasing to her but not exhausting her.

  ‘Is she on diuretics? Heart medication?’ Mak asked when they’d said their goodbyes and left the greenhouse, taking an outside door and heading across the car park towards the car.

  ‘Not any more,’ Neena said, the sadness so evident in her voice Mak had the urge to hug her again.

  ‘Why not?’

  He had to ask.

  ‘She doesn’t want it. She says it’s time to go and she doesn’t want her body rattling with pills and potions when she turns up at the Pearly Gates. That’s a direct quote, I might add. She’s a great believer in the Pearly Gates. She’s also quite sound in her mind, so I have to respect her wishes.’

  ‘But she seems to have a lot of life in her yet and she loves the orchids—wouldn’t she want to see them flower again?
’

  Neena turned towards this man who had come so suddenly into her life and was now disrupting it quite enough without arguing over Maisie’s medication—a subject that already tormented her.

  ‘She’s one hundred and five, Mak,’ she said. ‘She’s seen the orchids bloom enough. And don’t think I haven’t been trying to persuade her otherwise. She’s been part of my life for ever. She’s Ned’s mother, and she was our housekeeper when my mother died, passing the job on to Ned when she retired.’

  ‘She brought you up?’ Mak said softly, and Neena nodded, the sadness she felt almost overwhelming her.

  ‘And right at the end I disappointed her—great, isn’t it?’ she said bitterly, then she strode away.

  Perhaps her pregnancy hadn’t been deliberate. The thought struck Mak as he followed her back to the car, his steps slowing as hers speeded up.

  But she was a doctor—she’d have a supply of morning-after pills in her surgery, every GP would have them these days. So even if becoming pregnant had been accidental, continuing with the pregnancy had been deliberate.

  And persuading Theo to include the unborn baby in his will? Had he not been careful? Had she worked on that?

  Just because everyone in town thought she was the bee’s knees, it didn’t mean she wasn’t as devious as most women. Look at Helen, at his mother, at his ex-wife—all past masters in the art of getting their own way.

  ‘You not ready to move on?’ Neena called, and he realised his forward progress had stopped altogether, his mind lost in the past. No, he wasn’t married, as he had told Lauren earlier, but he had been once, persuaded into marriage by a woman whom he’d believed was carrying his child.

  When the pregnancy hadn’t progressed—an apparent miscarriage—they’d struggled on for a while, Mak believing marriage was for keeps, but six months later his wife had announced she was in love with his best man and wanted a divorce.

  The fact that his best man had been a corporate raider who had earned more in a month than Mak had earned in a year probably had nothing to do with it, but he’d wished he’d brought the two of them together earlier. It would have saved a lot of emotional torment of the ‘where did he go wrong’ type, not to mention a lot of fuss and embarrassment.