Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter

by Meredith Webber

  ‘You know all this although you weren’t here?’

  He shifted in the chair, as if the question was a missile he might dodge.

  ‘Like any halfway competent practitioner, I need to know the history of the patient before I can attempt a diagnosis. I made it my business to find out. Not that it was difficult. Most patients are only too anxious to tell their side of things.’

  The explanation sounded reasonable, but Caitlin sensed evasiveness behind the words. Did resentment remain although it had been years since the other scientists had arrived to conduct their tests? And if so, how would that affect her work?

  ‘Why did the scientific investigation cause problems?’ she persisted, pushing aside the now empty plate and pouring herself another cup of tea. ‘Why didn’t the townspeople welcome the chance to find out what was happening?’

  ‘It’s probably hard for someone looking in from the outside to understand, but the arrival of those so-called experts caused huge divisions in this town. Everybody had a pet theory. The ‘‘old’’ locals blamed the mine, the cattle people blamed the chemicals used on the cotton crops, brawls broke out in pubs and shots were fired from cars. This town went from a place united by the illness of a handful of its children to a virtual war zone.’

  ‘But surely the ill feeling must have been there all along, hidden beneath the surface. The testing may have provided a focus, which would explain why the violence erupted so suddenly.’

  ‘Like someone lighting a fuse already in place? You could be right,’ he admitted, twirling the teapot around in circles and watching the movement as if it absorbed all his attention. ‘I know the cattle men had resented the irrigation rights given to the cotton growers and there’s been a historical division between the miners and the primary producers, but it had been a niggling kind of enmity—not an explosive force.’

  Connor paused, looking up at Caitlin, then bending his head again as if the words he wanted were written on the table.

  ‘It might have happened years ago, but the animosities still linger.’

  ‘And the hospital?’ Caitlin asked. ‘Where do you sit?’

  ‘Slap bang in the middle of it. There’s a little thing called the Hippocratic oath to deal with—service to all people. Besides, I’m the only doctor in town, so they have to be nice to me. Trouble is—’

  ‘You hear both sides of the story.’

  He glanced up at her, as if startled by her perception, and she smiled at him.

  ‘I’m not totally insensitive to the dynamics of small-town life,’ she said. ‘In fact, if you’re city-born I probably understand them better than you do. Try as I do to forget it, I grew up in a town like Turalla. My father was the local doctor. The hospital, the house—even the tatty park and swings—are all eerily familiar. It’s a bit like coming home—or perhaps going back in time. When I was younger, all I ever wanted to do was get out of the place, to hit the city where I could be anonymous, a no one, not ‘‘the doctor’s daughter’’.’

  Connor studied her across the table. Even in his far from glamorous bathrobe and with her lovely hair hidden in a hospital-issue towel, she was like an exotic orchid transplanted into the drabness of his surroundings.

  ‘Anonymous?’ he teased, raising one eyebrow but smiling to ward off any offence. ‘Like supermodels are anonymous?’

  ‘Believe me, at sixteen, when I went down to the city to finish my schooling, I didn’t look like this. Zits and braces, hair in a long thick plait down my back—the duckling showed absolutely no sign of becoming a swan.’

  ‘And when it happened?’

  It was her turn to sigh.

  ‘I was in med school and it was a darned nuisance. All I wanted to do was study, to learn as much as I could. I loved it, loved the challenge of the work, the science of it all. I was fascinated by the exactness of mathematics, by microscopes and slides. Then suddenly there were boys I’d known for ages panting over me, as if having breasts had suddenly transformed me from one of the guys to a sex object. Believe me, it’s no fun. They even talked differently to me. Remember all the blonde jokes? I actually had people explaining them to me!’

  Connor found himself chuckling at her disgust, yet he was pleased to hear her speak so matter-of-factly about her appearance. No pride, but no false modesty either. She’d accepted the transformation to swan, though she might chafe against the burden that came with it.

  ‘I must be keeping you from your work,’ she said, switching the conversation away from herself. ‘Don’t feel you have to entertain me.’

  ‘It’s Tuesday. I’ve done a morning ward round and usually do minor operations on Tuesday mornings, but for once there wasn’t anyone who required my cutting or stitching expertise so I’ve nothing on my schedule until this afternoon’s clinic. But don’t let me keep you talking. You wanted to catch up on your sleep.’

  Caitlin smiled at him and lifted one hand to tug the towel from around her wet hair.

  ‘I was so tired I thought I’d sleep for a week,’ she admitted, ‘but the shower seems to have woken me up.’

  She combed her fingers through the damp strands, as unselfconscious as a child. Wet, her hair seemed darker, almost brown, the same colour as her eyebrows, and the soft fan of lashes framing her dark eyes.

  Should he ask her why she was here?

  Of course he should.

  So why was he hesitating?

  Caitlin sensed his hesitation. She tracked back through the conversation to where he’d shifted it sideways with talk of the town and the fallout from the TV report.

  ‘How did your predecessor die? From the way you spoke, it was unexpected. An accident?’

  The wall came up between them once again, but she refused to break the silence and finally he spoke again.

  ‘Yes!’

  Silence returned.

  ‘Vehicle?’

  He raised his head and looked at her, studying her face as if trying to fathom her interest—or her willingness to persist until she had an answer. He must have read something in her eyes, for he ran his fingers through his hair again, lifted his shoulders in a heavy shrug, then replied.

  ‘She fell down a mine shaft.’

  The words were rough-edged, scything through the air like a too-blunt knife through bread, shedding tatters of emotion like crumbs.

  ‘Here at Turalla? I thought the mine was an open-cut operation. I didn’t realise there were shafts.’

  He shook his head then propped his elbows on the table and lowered his head to his hands. Not looking at her this time, he repeated words that must have figured in some report, so concisely did he recite them.

  ‘It is assumed the deceased was walking through the bush when she saw the old mine shaft.’ He glanced up again, explaining, ‘We’re talking old gold mines here, not the coal mine.’

  Caitlin nodded, her mind racing as she tried to work out why this man had taken his predecessor’s death so personally. Before she could ask, he bent his head once more and finished his recital, the words delivered without intonation, flat and hard and cold as a steel blade.

  ‘Perhaps moving closer to investigate the excavation, it appears the deceased slipped. The depth of the shaft, when measured, was seventy-two feet, so death was probably instantaneous.’

  ‘Probably instantaneous?’ Caitlin repeated. ‘Surely the medical examiner could do better than “probably”.’

  ‘Not after sixteen months.’ Connor lifted his head and she saw the pain in his eyes. He’d been the medical examiner. He’d been the one who’d had to prod and pry and poke at that broken body.

  ‘Sixteen months—that’s a long time for her family and friends to have lived without knowing what happened to her.’

  Her host nodded grimly.

  ‘It was only sheer luck she was found then. Some of the professional gold-seekers have started detecting the walls of old mines. They use slings and ropes and pulleys—and are quite safe as long as they keep an eye out for snakes that get down into the sh
afts. They’ve found the bones of cattle in holes and the occasional kangaroo, but kangaroos don’t wear wristwatches. She was identified by the jewellery she was wearing.’

  Something in this blunt presentation of facts chilled Caitlin’s blood and she shivered in the warm air.

  ‘When did it happen?’ she asked, sorry she’d brought up the subject but unable to let it die now she knew the stark outline of the story.

  ‘She went missing right in the middle of the leukaemia war. In fact, if the hospital and medical staff hadn’t remained so determinedly neutral throughout all the mudslinging and finger-pointing, I imagine her disappearance would have attracted a lot more attention.’

  An added chill produced goose bumps, making the hairs on Caitlin’s arms stand to attention. Rubbing her hands across her skin, she stared at the man across the table, willing him to lift his head and look at her before she asked the next question.

  Connor felt her attention focussing on him like a laser beam. He banished thoughts of Angie and raised his head, blinking his eyes at the extravagant beauty of this woman who had lobbed into his life as unexpectedly as a mishit tennis ball into a football game.

  ‘You said ‘‘attention’’ but the word sounded more like ‘‘suspicion’’. You don’t think it was an accident.’

  Statements, not questions. He didn’t have to answer statements. But her curiosity should be dispelled before she started to dig deeper into what he thought or didn’t think about the situation.

  ‘As I said, I wasn’t here when it happened. I’ve no reason to think it was anything other than an accident. Believe me, tempers were running so high at the time I’m sure if there’d been the slightest whiff of suspicion someone would have said something. Apparently she liked to walk in the bush when she was off duty. She collected rocks and fossils. The stones are still here in the house somewhere. No, it was an accident.’

  Or you want me to believe it was, Caitlin decided, stacking her cup and saucer on the dirty plate and standing up to take the crockery over to the sink.

  ‘I think I will have that sleep,’ she said, ‘but perhaps the house is ready now. I could go over there.’

  Connor rose to his feet and reached out to take the dirty dishes out of her hands.

  ‘Mrs Neil isn’t one to vary her routine. She’ll finish at the hospital at precisely two o’clock, then start on the house. You’re welcome to use my spare bedroom. I’ll help you get settled into your temporary home when I finish my afternoon session.’

  How’s that for a dismissal? Caitlin thought as she grabbed her bag and headed through the laundry and bathroom to the veranda, turned left as directed and entered the bedroom through open French doors.

  And why hadn’t he asked her why she was here?

  The question made her frown for the two seconds it took to pull back the coverlet and collapse onto the bed, but her last hazy thought as she drifted off to sleep was about the man himself, not the question he hadn’t asked. Were his eyes greenish blue or bluey green?

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAITLIN woke with a feeling of disorientation. The room was dark and shadowy, and she had a sense someone had watched her as she slept. Clutching her host’s bathrobe about her body, she stepped quietly out to the veranda and looked around.

  The day had all but disappeared, leaving a wash of brilliant colour across the western sky, while the stillness dusk brought in its wake seemed to hover over the hospital complex. She listened but could hear nothing beyond the occasional growl of a car engine on a distant street and the hum of an air-conditioning plant—presumably over at the main building. Was Connor still working?

  Connor. The name curled around her tongue and she allowed it to float softly from her lips. Perhaps he’d looked in to see if she was awake—that would explain the feeling of another presence in the room.

  Either that or his predecessor’s ghost, Caitlin joked to herself as she went back into the bedroom to find clean clothes. She’d have another shower, wash away these fancies, then tidy herself up and go across to her temporary quarters. The sooner she was unpacked and could get down to work the better.

  He was home by the time she emerged, for a light was on in the kitchen and the sounds of a string quartet drifted through the air.

  ‘Feeling better?’ he asked as she came into the big room and once again dropped her bag on the floor. There was no string quartet in evidence, but an elaborate stereo set-up on a shelf against the far wall suggested he used this room more than any other.

  ‘One hundred per cent,’ she assured him, her gaze drawn again to his eyes—but only to check their colour. ‘If you point me towards my home, I’ll go over and settle in.’

  ‘I’ll feed you first,’ he offered. ‘You can usually scrounge a meal in the hospital kitchen but it’s getting late and Nellie will be packing up for the night. As well as toast, I do a mean steak and salad if you’re prepared to risk it.’

  She hesitated, knowing it was a sensible suggestion. They also had to discuss the reason for her visit to Turalla—the one subject they’d managed to avoid earlier in the day. Yet instinct told her spending too much time with Connor Clarke might prove unsettling—even dangerous.

  Nonsense, her sane inner self retorted.

  ‘If you let me help,’ she said aloud, mentally crossing her fingers and hoping the inner self was right. ‘I’m a dab hand at washing lettuce.’

  Connor reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a lettuce. He set it down on the bench then stepped away. Images of his visitor had floated in his mind all afternoon, distracting him as he’d dealt with patients and prescribed medication to ease their aches and illnesses.

  Now the real thing was back in his kitchen, lovelier than his images, making faded blue jeans and an overlarge white shirt look elegant and sexy at the same time, her long blonde hair shimmering to her shoulder blades like an ad for a shampoo commercial.

  He could understand the poor guys who’d explained the blonde jokes. It seemed incredible to a male mind that brains could come in such a stunning package.

  ‘I asked if you had a bowl.’

  He stared at her, trying to compute the words. Pity he hadn’t a few more grey cells himself to replace the ones she’d knocked askew. He was the least sexist man he knew, so why was he standing in his own kitchen thinking such sexist thoughts?

  ‘Yes, under that bench. Drawers pull out and there’s an assortment of sizes. I’ve got some sprouts and tomatoes and other salad stuff in the refrigerator.’ He paused, then added, ‘I usually eat on the veranda. There’s a table out there near the barbecue.’

  It wasn’t what he’d wanted to say but it filled the silence, and when he carried the plate of steak and sliced onions out on to the open area beyond the kitchen, she followed him.

  ‘Country air always smells so clean,’ she murmured, setting the salad bowl on the table and leaning out across the railing as if to take in more air than the house could offer. ‘And verandas right around the house—I love the openness of it.’

  ‘So the city that lured you at sixteen didn’t steal your heart?’ he asked, and she shook her head, blonde hair shimmering as light from the lamp reflected off it.

  ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘But what I found in the city did. Science stole my heart—permutations and combinations and searching for answers.’

  Connor felt coldness settle in his stomach well before he asked the question, but it had to be asked. Should have been asked earlier.

  He held his hand above the barbecue plate to test the heat, then threw the onions on to sizzle so the noise provided a background when he did say the words.

  ‘And is that why you’re here? Searching for answers?’

  Caitlin didn’t respond immediately and the coldness grew, sending icy shards through his veins, pricking and cutting at the flesh inside him.

  ‘Looking more at permutations and combinations,’ she said at last. ‘I think answers are still a long way off.’

  He dropped t
he steaks onto the grill and flipped the onions, concealing the rage and despair jostling for supremacy in his mind.

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s anything other than the incidence of leukaemia that interests you?’ he asked, his voice as cold as the blood within him.

  He’d expected her to defend herself so when she didn’t reply he continued.

  ‘Look, this town has suffered enough. It’s just getting over the divisions caused by the last round of experts. How do you think they’re going to feel about you coming and poking your admittedly beautiful nose into their business?’

  The anger remained but the despair had turned to the nameless kind of fear he’d felt earlier—not for himself, or the town, but for the woman who was about to stir up old animosities. He turned the steak then looked across to where she was standing, propped against the railing.

  ‘Perhaps we could discuss this rationally,’ she suggested bluntly. ‘Leaving out all the emotive stuff about the town and divisions and considering one basic fact. It is only through continuing research that puzzles like leukaemia—any cancer, in fact—will eventually be solved.’

  ‘You can’t leave people out of the equation,’ he objected, slapping steak and onions onto a plate and dumping it on the table. ‘Researchers sitting in labs might be dealing with bundles of mutating cells but those cells came from living human beings who hurt and cry and feel the pain of others.’

  He headed for the kitchen, grabbed cutlery and returned, anger still burning.

  ‘What do you hope to find that the other so-called experts failed to discover? There’s been no new case of leukaemia in this town for three and a half, nearly four, years. What can you possibly do at this stage?’

  Caitlin felt the force of his anger but kept a clamp on her own temper. She understood what fuelled his rage but why were scientists always the bad guys? Why were they seen as passionless, unemotional people not affected by the pain and tears of others?

  She sat down at the table and helped herself to salad, then, choosing her words carefully, said, ‘The other experts tested external factors—water, soil, air—seeking something that may have caused the problem. I’m not here to look into possible causes, but to try to trace genetic links between the families.’