A Proposal Worth Waiting For

by Lilian Darcy

  And his father was right about so many things.

  You did have to work hard to get where you wanted to go in life. You did have to keep a clear head and a strong focus and not step back to let others through first. With a whole lot of life’s biggest challenges, you only got one chance. Mess things up, and that chance was gone forever. Blow off your work with drugs or alcohol, fast cars, garage rock bands or loose women, and you could so easily fail.

  Some of his father’s tenets of faith Nick was no longer so sure about, but those ones he still basically believed.

  So he’d worked and he’d focused, hadn’t married or fallen seriously in love or gone out with endless strings of girls during his university years the way some people had. He’d kept his distance from Miranda the way he’d kept his distance from almost everyone. His fellow medical students hadn’t been friends but future professional rivals. But he’d noticed her, during the classes they’d taken together—noticed her more than either of them had realised at the time—and she’d told him that the same was true for her.

  He’d admired the way she managed to win the approval of various crusty or supercilious professors without playing teacher’s pet. He’d heard the clever, perceptive, diligently researched answers she gave to knotty medical problems posed in class or during their earnest stints of hospital observation. He’d seen the way she worked and focused, just the way he did. He’d liked the way she smiled and the way she danced, the few times they’d gone out in the same group.

  She’d liked his laugh, and the way he would say something funny sometimes when nobody was expecting it. She’d liked the way his questions always pinpointed exactly the areas that other students were unsure about. She’d liked the fact that he never featured in lurid, gossipy stories of drunkenness or womanising.

  And then, one critical night ten years ago, after they’d already known each other for six years, casually, as fellow students, he’d let his guard down and they’d spent fourteen uninterrupted hours together at someone’s party and beyond—couldn’t remember the guy’s name any more—and had fallen for each other the way the moon had fallen into orbit around the earth.

  Thinking about it, he discovered that it still scared him.

  The suddenness of it. The strength. The things he’d told her. The vulnerability he’d shown. The power he’d given her over his emotions, just in one short night. It was as if a lifetime of well-schooled stoicism had broken down all at once. When a dam broke, it didn’t simply spring a leak, it flooded. Everything pent up inside him had broken that night, because of her, and had come flooding out.

  With her. To her. For her.

  ‘I love you, Miranda.’

  Unstoppable. Crystal clear. Terrifying.

  They’d been drinking, of course, but not that much. He hadn’t been hungover the next day. At the point when he’d really begun talking to her, he had downed maybe three beers in three hours. The words had exhilarated him as he spoke them, like jumping out of a plane with a parachute on his back—terror and freedom mixed like a potent cocktail, making him dizzy and wild. How many times had he said them that night? He couldn’t remember. Three? Five? More?

  They’d started in the kitchen. What had she said to him? Something that made him think instantly, She knows who I really am, she knows what I really feel, she’s fabulous. Why didn’t I see any of this before? Within ten minutes they lost all awareness of what was happening around them—the music, the laughter, the people coming and going in search of ice or chips or more beer.

  The emotional nakedness and physical hunger between them was wonderful and crippling at the same time. He ached for her, wanted to kiss her and take her to bed so badly, and yet he wanted to listen to her, too. He wasn’t simply possessed by a young man’s hormonal imperatives, his whole heart was melting and singing. He had no idea it was possible to feel this way. Had no idea how thoroughly they’d already come to know each other after six years as fellow students. Had no idea how he’d failed to see it coming.

  It was a warm night, summer just started, air fresh and a little salty because they were near the ocean. ‘Want to find somewhere outside?’ he asked her, and she nodded. They sat on some brick steps, knees hunched up, bodies touching. He remembered the sweet smell of flowers. Jasmine, or something. All tangled and lush around the posts and lintel of some wooden white-painted garden arch. It gave them privacy. He kissed her for minutes on end and when he finally pulled away, she smiled into his face and stroked his jaw with her hands, looking at him with a helpless frown on her face as well as the smile, as if, like him, she couldn’t understand how something could simultaneously be so strange and so right.

  ‘Dad?’ Josh said tentatively, bringing Nick’s focus crashing back to the present.

  ‘Yes, lit—? Yes, mate?’ Again, he’d almost said little guy.

  He didn’t like mate. It didn’t feel right. What else was there? Love. Sweetheart. Darling. Not those either. He hated it that his son was five years old and he didn’t know how to find the right affectionate nickname.

  ‘Can I please have a snack?’

  ‘Sure.’ There should be a snack cart coming along soon, but Nick wasn’t going to rely on Josh liking airline food. He was absurdly grateful at the mere fact that his son had spoken to him. ‘You want the muesli bar or the cheese dipper?’

  ‘Muesli bar.’

  ‘And something to drink?’

  ‘Just water.’ He sounded good now, no wheeze left at all.

  Miranda appeared. ‘If you need the bathroom, now would be a good time, Joshie. Before the aisle gets blocked by the food service.’

  Joshie, Nick thought. That worked. That he could say, without feeling that he was somehow faking his way through it.

  Thank you, Miranda Carlisle. Again…

  They must have talked and kissed and sat on those steps until two or three in the morning, learning about each other, by which time the party had been sagging and ebbing into the usual late night dark kind of feeling, people leaving in twos and threes, warm bodies slumped together on the couch, a touch-and-go moment when an irritable neighbour might have called the police, only someone shut down the pounding music just in time.

  ‘Where could we go?’ he asked. ‘I want to be with you. I don’t think I ever want to let you go.’ He meant it, at the time, more than he’d ever meant anything in his life. Lord, in hindsight the nakedness of it still brought hints of blind panic.

  ‘My place,’ she offered at once. It was a shared house. Fellow med students, but they’d gone north to the Gold Coast, she said, for their version of this end-of-exams party night.

  Miranda made it clear that the two of them would be alone—a typical gesture of giving, he thought. No one to overhear, no one to hide from, no one to ever know, no matter how late they slept in.

  You’re safe, Nick.

  He knew he never would have made himself that vulnerable, offering ‘my place’ as if it was the easiest thing in the world. He protected his own space like it was some kind of dark secret, even though it was nothing out of the ordinary, just a ground-level studio flat next to the garage, beneath his landlord’s suburban home.

  The way he’d protected his heart until that night, with her.

  When a dam broke, it flooded…

  They made love.

  He still remembered odd details. They stood out in his mind like bits of coloured glass catching the sun. Miranda’s dark hair sweeping across his chest—it had been longer back then. Her laugh, all creamy and secret and just for him. The confessions he’d made afterwards, while they’d lain in each other’s arms until morning, not sleeping at all.

  Those confessions had felt liberating at the time, a huge weight off his mind, gateway to a new freedom he hadn’t imagined before. ‘I’m not sure if I care enough about people to be a good doctor. I have the medicine down, but how do you care the right amount?’ ‘I don’t think I really love my parents the way I should. My father is so…so rigid, and my mother gives in to
everyone.’ ‘Stupidity makes me angry. And weakness. And sneakiness. All those things. I pull back. I just don’t deal with it. Is that showing strength, to pull back? Or am I being weak, too?’

  He wondered now, as Miranda jumped up once more from the narrow aircraft seat beside him, if she was still as calmly trusting, if she still wore her heart on her sleeve, if she ever said I love you the very first night.

  He didn’t.

  He never had since.

  Where was the sense in making yourself that vulnerable? he’d decided. And yet holding back, the way he had in his marriage to Anna, hadn’t brought him happiness. With any luck, she wouldn’t be seated beside him on the next flight—the final hop out to Wallaby Island, on a propeller-driven plane.

  As the larger jet flight began its descent into Cairns, the ‘Fasten Seat Belt’ sign confined Miranda in place and she felt so aware of Nick—the forbidding silence broken only by occasional rather wooden comments to Josh, the strong shoulder that encroached a little into her own space. Hadn’t these airline seats grown even smaller and more cramped since the last time she’d flown?

  It was so stupid. She really wanted to say to him, So why did you never phone me, when you promised that you would? After ten years, you just didn’t ask that. After ten years, you already knew.

  There were basically only two possibilities.

  Either he had only wanted to get her into bed, and hadn’t minded lying to her for the sake of that goal. ‘I love you, Miranda.’

  Or in the cold light of day, he hadn’t found her nearly as captivating as the party in the moonlight had led him to think.

  At the time, she’d believed his sincerity absolutely, hadn’t even thought to take his phone number as insurance. He had said he would phone, he had said he loved her, which meant he would and did, so she hadn’t needed his number. When a day went by, then two, then a week, the pain and questions started to slow-burn inside her and lasted for months.

  Had she completely misread that sense of rightness and promise? Why had she trusted him so easily?

  Because, despite her stellar performance in her studies, she had been as dumb as a rock in some areas, and one of those areas was men. There was a causal link to the apparent contradiction. She had been clueless when it had come to men because she’d done so well in her studies.

  Success in medicine took hard work. Hard work left little time for other activities. Other activities included hanging out with female friends, meeting men and talking about the men in great detail with the female friends.

  She’d been the beloved only child of older parents. She’d grown up too sheltered and too eager to give her heart. She honestly hadn’t known that some men were love rats, and that you couldn’t always tell who the love rats were at first—or even second or third—glance. Shutting herself away to study, she hadn’t had enough opportunity to experience the bruising reality of the real world. She’d stayed far too innocent for far too long. Was probably too innocent still. Too innocent and too nice. How did you get tougher? Did she want to? She hadn’t realised that matters of the heart required as much prior study as an anatomy exam.

  Oh, and there was another reason why she’d believed the I love you thing.

  Because she’d said the same words back to him, all night, and had meant them from the bottom of her heart.

  ‘Joshie, we need to put the cars away now, so we can put your tray table up,’ Nick said to his son.

  No reply.

  ‘Josh, are you listening?’

  ‘Is this the kids’ camp?’ He twisted around for a moment, and might have been talking to Miranda, not to his dad. She felt Nick stiffen beside her, and stayed silent, leaving the conversation to unfold between father and son, the way it should. ‘I can see buildings. They’re tiny!’

  ‘No, this isn’t the camp,’ Nick answered, ‘because we have to go on the other plane first, remember? That’s Cairns you can see.’

  ‘And I can see ocean and sand, and shapes in the water.’

  ‘Let me look…’ Nick leaned past Josh. ‘Wow!’

  The aircraft banked to line up its approach and Miranda caught a glimpse of tropical yellow and blue, sun glinting on water, and lush rainforest greenery. The promise of the water, the warmth and the reef washed over her like a delectable scent in the air and for a moment she had absolute faith that they were all going to have a great time.

  She was too adept at faith, though, too nice for her own good.

  Hold back, Miranda. Keep your heart safe. Haven’t you learned that yet?

  Well, if she hadn’t, she had Nick Devlin on hand to remind her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘RIGHT, that’s everything on file,’ Dr Beth Stuart said to Miranda. ‘Your lot and Benita’s. She’ll be along in a minute, you said.’

  ‘She’s still getting her group settled. I won’t be surprised if it takes a while.’

  ‘Well, we won’t wait for her. I’ll show you our set-up, and you probably have questions, Miranda.’

  ‘At the moment, I’m too impressed to think of them! Speechless, really.’

  ‘I know. It’s pretty fantastic, isn’t it? Charles says it’s an ill wind—’ Beth interrupted herself. ‘That’s Charles Wetherby, Medical Director, I mean. You’ll meet him. Soon, I expect. He said he’d pop in, and if not he’ll be at dinner in the camp dining room.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Only an hour away. Time’s getting on.’

  ‘He lives out here? I thought—’

  ‘He’s based in Crocodile Creek, yes, on the mainland. But this place is his baby, administratively part of the Crocodile Creek Hospital, and he pushed through the rebuilding after the cyclone with amazing speed. That’s what he meant about the ill wind. It took a cyclone to get a state-of-the-art medical centre here, but now it means we can take kids for the camp that we couldn’t have taken in the past because their health was too iffy for us to handle.’

  ‘Were you here when the cyclone hit?’

  ‘No, I’ve only been working here for a few weeks.’

  Miranda matched this statement with Beth’s use of the word ‘we.’ Clearly she’d settled in and become attached to the place very fast. She was a slightly built woman in her thirties, with typical brunette colouring, hair kept practical and straight and chin length.

  ‘I live in one of the old camp cabins that survived the cyclone. Somewhat primitive but that’s fine. It’s supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but I might start kicking and screaming if they try to move me somewhere supposedly better. There’s something about this place, and my little cabin. Good for the soul. And I love the kids!’ A bright grin came and went, showing a different side to her personality.

  Beth seemed outgoing at first glance, but Miranda wondered about the stream of easy chat. Was there more beneath the surface? In her experience, there usually was. Most women, once they’d passed thirty, had a challenge or two behind them.

  ‘They didn’t used to have a full-time doctor on staff,’ Beth was saying. ‘The medical centre was much more modest, but now we’re effectively a hospital and I’m the doctor who runs it.’

  ‘Not on your own?’

  ‘No, we roster people across from Crocodile Creek. Charles himself. He’s the one I report to, officially. Dr Jamieson, Dr Lopez. Several others. You’ll meet some of them. Oh, this is him, I think.’

  Miranda hadn’t heard anything. But then the door opened as if by magic—no, by a little girl, she saw a moment later—and a man in a wheelchair manoeuvred his way through, followed by a woolly, goldy-brown dog. He smiled at her—the man, not the dog—and they did the whole greetings and introductions thing.

  ‘And the dog is Garf,’ Charles finished.

  ‘Garf is gorgeous. What breed?’

  ‘Labradoodle. They’re good for the asthma kids because they don’t shed. He’s six years old.’ Charles looked to be somewhere in his late forties or fifties, greying slightly at the temples, with lines deepening at the corners of his well-shaped mouth an
d serious-yet-twinkly dark eyes. The little girl was Lily, but where she fitted into the picture neither Charles nor Beth explained.

  Charles seemed preoccupied. ‘We have dignitaries descending from Tuesday onwards for the official opening,’ he was saying, ‘and I have—’ He stopped, looked at Lily.

  Lily was busy linking all the paper clips from the tray on the desk into a long silver chain. Much more interesting than listening to adult conversation.

  ‘Can you watch Lily for a minute, Beth? Unless…’ He looked at Miranda. ‘We’re staying in one of the camp cabins until after the opening. Dinner’s up soon. Would you be able to take Lily across with you, Dr Carlisle, and I’ll meet you there a little later on?’

  ‘Of course,’ Miranda told him politely. ‘But would she…um…?’

  ‘Go with you?’ he mouthed back, understanding her hesitation. He murmured, ‘Yes, almost too easily. Jill and I worry about it.’ Charles turned to the child. ‘Lily, you’re going to go with Dr Carlisle and meet all the camp kids. That’ll be much more fun than coming to the hotel.’

  Lily nodded and dropped her paper-clip chain. She darted ahead of Charles so she could open the office door for him.

  ‘Be good for Dr Carlisle, won’t you?’ he said. ‘Make friends with the camp kids.’

  ‘Can I take Garf?’

  ‘No, I’d better have him with me,’ Charles told her. ‘See you later, OK?’

  He manoevred himself out the door and down the wheelchair ramp that ran across the front of the brand-new building, and a moment later man and woolly golden dog were out of sight.

  ‘Lily, ready to go with Dr Carlisle?’ Beth asked.

  Lily nodded.

  Miranda thought about suggesting the use of her first name, but her patients didn’t call her that, so she probably shouldn’t offer the informality to Lily either. She said a see-you-around kind of goodbye to Beth and left the brand-new building. Lily knew the way to go. She skipped on ahead, while Miranda tried to orientate herself.