Kate had more patients waiting. She needed to move on, but what had just happened had eased the pain around her own heart a little as well.
* * *
Jack walked over the ridge of sandbank just as the two women turned to walk up the beach. Two women and a child. The women were dressed in plain blue stinger suits. The child was in a wetsuit.
The child was dead.
Jack Kincaid had been a doctor long enough to sense it even as he saw it. The child was cradled in the shorter woman’s arms, the woman was sobbing, and every step they took spelled defeat.
What the...?
He broke into a run. If the child had gone underwater, it might not be too late. Why wasn’t anyone doing CPR? Had they tried and failed? In children there was sometimes success when all hope was lost. He had his phone out, hitting the emergency quick-dial, thinking paramedics, oxygen, help...
‘Don’t phone.’ The taller woman’s voice was a curt command, urgent enough to make him pause. The other woman was sinking to her knees, still cradling the child. ‘What the hell...?’
‘It’s okay.’
What sort of crazy was this? He reached them and he would have knelt by the child but the woman held him back.
‘I’m Dr Kate,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry you had to see this but, believe me, it’s okay.’
‘How can it be okay?’
‘Toby’s had cancer,’ she said, softly so as not to break into the other woman’s grief. She took his arm, drawing him away a little, giving woman and child space. ‘He’s had brain metastases. He was terminally ill. This afternoon he’s been playing with the dolphins, he had a seizure and he died. There was nothing we could do.’
‘Did you try?’ Jack demanded, incredulous. A seizure... He thought of all the things that could be done in a major city hospital, the drugs that could stop a seizure, the resuscitation equipment. ‘Surely...’
‘Amy wanted it this way,’ Kate said. ‘She has the right to make a choice on behalf of her son and I think it was a good one.’ She hesitated and then glanced at her watch. ‘You’ll be Harry’s guardian,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I’m running late but you understand...’ She gestured to woman and child. ‘Some things have to take precedence. Has Maisie settled your Harry?’
Maisie...the dog. She was depending on her dog to settle a new patient?
But, then, Maisie had settled Harry, better than ever he could have.
‘Yes,’ he conceded, dragging his eyes away from the distraught mother and child.
‘I’m glad,’ she said, and she smiled.
And in that moment time stood still. What the...?
He knew this woman! He knew her very well indeed. Dr Catherine Heineman. They’d been students together. Tutorial partners. Friends.
He hadn’t seen her since...since...
‘You’re...Doctor Kate?’ His tone was incredulous.
‘I’m Kate Martin,’ the woman said simply. ‘Dr Kate Martin.’
‘You’re Cathy.’
Her face lost its colour. She stared up at him and took an instinctive step backward.
‘What nonsense is this?’ He’d read the blurb for the dolphin sanctuary. The healing part of it was run by one Dr Kate Martin, this woman. According to the blurb she had qualifications in physiotherapy and counselling. Deeply suspicious, he’d checked, but the qualifications had been conferred by one of the most prestigious universities in New Zealand.
That didn’t fit at all with what he was seeing here now, with what he knew. This woman was in her early thirties maybe. He’d last seen Cathy in her early twenties but it didn’t stop him knowing her.
‘You’re Cathy,’ he said again, and he saw her flinch.
‘I can explain.’
She’d better. Counsellor with training in psychology? Physiotherapist? Had she abandoned her medical degree and retrained in another country? Under another name? Why? Had she been struck off the medical register?
He stared at her and saw shadows. She was five feet eight or so, and a bit too thin. At university he’d thought her attractive. Very attractive. Now she looked...gaunt? Her chestnut hair was tugged into a practical knot. Her blue all-in-one stinger suit was deeply unflattering. Her green eyes, which had flashed with laughter when he’d messed up a lab trial or someone had made a joke, didn’t look like they did much laughing now.
Unregistered? Hiding? Why?
Drugs? Drug-taking was the most common reason for doctors being deregistered and instinctively his gaze fell to her arms, looking for track marks. The sleeves of her stinger suit were pulled up. Her forearms were clean, but she saw where his gaze went and stepped back as if he’d struck her.
‘It’s not what you think. I can explain.’
‘You’d better.’ If he’d dragged Harry all the way across the country to have him treated by an unregistered doctor...
‘I can’t now.’ She closed her eyes for a millisecond, that was all, but when she opened them she seemed to have recovered. The look she gave him was direct and firm. ‘I need to stay with Amy and Toby. Yes, I’m Cathy but I’m also Kate. I’d ask that you keep that to yourself until you hear my explanation.’ She ran her fingers wearily through her hair and the formal knot gave a little, letting a couple of chestnut tendrils escape. It made her look younger, and somehow more vulnerable. ‘Could you bring your nephew and Maisie down to the beach? Build a sandcastle. Give me some time. Please?’
And then she was gone, heading back to the woman and her child, stooping to help the mother lift the lifeless body of her son. Together they carried him up the beach and away.
Jack was left staring after her.
CHAPTER TWO
HE COULDN’T BELIEVE it. Kate Martin, physiotherapist and counsellor, medical director of Dolphin Bay Healing Resort, had transformed into Cathy Heineman who’d shared his undergraduate student life.
Cathy had been his friend, and in truth he wouldn’t have minded if she’d been more than that. She’d been vibrant, fun and beautiful. But she’d also been a little aloof. She hadn’t talked about her private life and she’d laughed off any advances. Friendship only, she’d decreed, though sometimes he’d wondered... When they’d stayed back late, working together, he’d thought there had been this attraction. Surely it had been mutual.
But it obviously hadn’t been. In fourth year she’d turned up after the summer holidays sporting a wedding ring.
‘Simon and I have been planning to wed since childhood,’ she’d told him, and that was pretty much all she’d said. He’d never met her husband—no one had. Neither had the student cohort seen much of Cathy after that. She’d attended lectures but the old camaraderie had gone.
She hadn’t even attended graduation. ‘She requested her degrees be posted to her,’ he’d heard. Someone had said she’d moved to Melbourne to do her internship and that was the last he’d heard of her.
And now... His head was spinning with questions, but overriding everything else was the knowledge that he would not expose his nephew to treatment by anyone who was dishonest.
The Cathy he’d known had been brilliant.
The Cathy he’d just seen had been helping a dead child from the water. She was in a suspect place doing suspect things, and his nephew’s welfare was at stake.
Get out of here now.
His phone rang. It’d be Helen, he thought. The road here had been almost completely lacking phone reception. There was only the faintest of signals now. Helen wouldn’t have been able to ring him for hours. She’d be frantic.
‘Where are you?’ Her tone was accusatory.
‘I’m at the dolphin sanctuary, of course.’
Helen’s breath exhaled in a rush. ‘You made it? Is it good? Oh, Jack, will it make a difference?’
‘So far I’ve seen a dead child and a do
ctor who’s not who she says she is,’ he said bluntly. ‘Helen, do you remember Cathy Heineman? She was a med student with Don and me. She faded from the social scene after fourth year. Remember?’
‘The clever one you did your lab work with,’ Helen said. Helen had five children under ten. She was still mourning her brother’s death, but her mind was like a steel trap. She’d done dentistry while her brother, Arthur, had done medicine with Jack. Arthur and Jack had been mates, and in turn Helen had become best friends with Jack’s sister, Beth. Arthur and Beth had married, bringing them even closer. They’d all been at university together and they knew each other’s friends.
So she knew Cathy. Kate.
‘The whisper was that the guy she married was possessive,’ she said, turning obligingly thoughtful. ‘He wouldn’t let her out of his sight. No one saw much of her after her wedding and not at all after we graduated.’
‘She’s here. She’s practising as a physiotherapist and counsellor. The whole place smells fishy.’
‘Well, it is a dolphin sanctuary.’
‘Helen...’
‘Look, you promised to give it a go,’ Helen said bluntly. ‘Kate, Cathy, who gives a toss what she calls herself if it has a chance of working? You know I’d be there with him myself but I’d have had to bring the babies with me.’
She would. That was what this whole disaster was about. Helen was an earth mother, parent of five noisy, exuberant children, generous to a fault. She and her amiable husband had been more than ready to take their newly orphaned nephew into their expanding brood.
It had seemed the perfect solution. Helen was Harry’s aunt, she loved him to bits, she was married and stable and able to take care of him.
Jack was Harry’s uncle but he was single. He was a rising star in his chosen field of oncology, he had little intention of settling down, and there was no reason that he should take on his seven-year-old nephew.
Except...
Except that one wounded little boy had been failing to thrive within Helen’s noisy throng. Harry had always been quiet and a little introspective, and the loss of his parents, plus the shocking injuries to his leg, had seen him withdraw into himself.
The last time Jack had gone to see him he’d refused to come out of the bedroom he’d been sharing with one of his cousins. Helen had shown him literature on this place. ‘It can’t do any harm,’ she’d told him. ‘I’ll farm the three eldest out and the babies can come with us. Doug won’t mind, will you, darling?’ She’d smiled fondly at her long-suffering husband. ‘We do what we must for each of our children and Harry’s the same.’
Only Harry wasn’t the same. Jack had watched him that night, pushing his food from side to side on his plate, mentally absent from the noise and jostling about him, and he’d made a decision.
‘Let me take care of him for a while. I’ll take a few weeks off work. Maybe he’ll be happier with me.’
Afterwards he hadn’t been able to believe he’d said it. He knew nothing about children—zip. His current girlfriend, Annalise, had been appalled.’
‘Well, don’t expect me to help. Children and me... Darling, I’m a radiologist, not a childminder.
He was an oncologist, not a childminder either, but for the last two weeks he’d been doing his best.
But not getting through.
‘But you will take him to this place,’ Helen had decreed, flourishing the literature at him. ‘I swear, Jack, it sounds just what he needs.’
‘He needs time, not quackery.’
‘If you don’t take him, I will. Jack, I’ll fight you for this. I should make the decisions. You’re not capable of caring for him and I am.’
And there it was, out in the open. They were joint guardians. On the surface they had equal claims to guardianship, but Helen had the home, the experience, the love.
He should stand aside and leave her to it. Only Harry’s desolation prevented it.
Taking him to the dolphin sanctuary had been a test, he thought. Helen—and others—wanted proof he was serious about this parenting role.
The problem was that he wasn’t sure that he was serious about parenting himself, especially as he’d been sole carer for two weeks now and made not one dint in the little boy’s misery.
Until this afternoon, when one bear of a dog had made Harry giggle.
‘I’ll find out about Cathy,’ Helen offered, speaking urgently now. ‘I’ll make enquiries. But unless it’s really awful, you should still give the place a chance.’
‘I told you, Helen, I’ve been here half an hour and already there’s a child dead.’
‘There must be a reason.’
‘A brain tumour,’ he conceded.
‘They do palliative care work as well. You’d expect—’
‘I’d expect resuscitation efforts on a four-year-old.’
‘Give it more than half an hour,’ Helen said urgently. ‘It’s taken me all the contacts we have and then some to get him into the place. Believe it or not, there’s a queue months long. Don’t you dare walk away.’
‘And if it’s dangerous?’
‘You stay with him all the time. Bond. This is what you wanted, Jack. Now’s the time to step up to the mark.’
And he knew it was.
* * *
Kate did what she could for Amy and for her little son. Amy’s mother and sister had spent the last week here as well. Other arms enfolded the distraught mother, freeing Kate to leave her in their care. In the end she backed out unnoticed, as grandmother, mother and aunt collectively said goodbye to their little boy.
She put herself on autopilot for a while, filling in forms, phoning the coroner, clearing the way for funeral directors to fly Toby and his family directly back to Queensland, where they’d lived. She headed back to her bungalow and showered. Then she stood on her veranda and stared out to sea for a while, trying to get Toby’s death in perspective. Impossible, but she had to try, just like she always did. Other children needed her. Somehow she’d learned to move on.
She’d learned to move on from a lot, she conceded, and part of that was her history. And her history included Jack Kincaid.
It had been such a shock to see him.
Jack. His name echoed over and over in Kate’s head and she felt ill.
She couldn’t be ill. Jack’s nephew was her next client. Jack Kincaid was waiting for her to finish the formalities with Toby and his mother. Jack Kincaid had to be faced.
But maybe he wouldn’t wait. She’d seen his horror when he’d realised Toby was dead; when he’d seen that she wasn’t fighting to prolong his life.
She might have got Toby back, she conceded. If she’d tried CPR, had had oxygen on the beach, had fought with every medical skill she had, Toby might still be alive. He’d be unconscious, though. They all knew the tumour was massive and unresponsive to any more chemotherapy or radiation. If she’d fought he could have had maybe a week, maybe even longer, on oxygen, on life support, but his mother hadn’t wanted that. No one had wanted it.
She hadn’t had to flinch at the condemnation in Jack Kincaid’s eyes. She had not one single regret over her care of Toby.
But what would she tell him? Jack had been a friend at medical school. If he was still here she needed to give him an explanation. What?
The truth? Did she trust him enough for that?
She might have no choice. It seemed Harry was Jack’s nephew, Jack’s sister’s child. If she’d recognised the name she would never have accepted him as a client, but the booking had been done by a woman with a name as unfamiliar as all the names she so carefully vetted. Harry had been supposed to be coming with someone called Helen.
No matter. Chinks of her old life were bound to intrude sooner or later. She’d known that. It was just...she’d hoped it would be later.
She thought back to the Jack she’d known over ten years ago. He’d been acutely intelligent, intuitive and skilled. On top of that he’d been drop-dead gorgeous. Tall with dark hair and strong bone structure, always tanned, almost too good looking for his own good, and his dark eyes had always gleamed with mischief. Maturity had only added to his looks, she conceded, but it was the Jack of years ago she was thinking of now. If there had been pranks to be played, Jack had always been at the centre. If there had been a beautiful woman to be dated, Jack had been right there, too.
Early on they were allocated as partners in the science component of their course. They suited each other as study mates. Her seriousness didn’t distract him, and his intelligence and humour pleased her. But his dating habits were legend. ‘You should have a harem,’ she told him. ‘That way you wouldn’t have to date one by one. You could have them all together.’
‘I’d rather that than be stuck with one person for ever from sixteen,’ he retorted. She finally told him of Simon’s existence when he... When they... Well, late one night things got a little out of hand and she had to tell him the truth. That she had a boyfriend. That she’d had a boyfriend for years so she couldn’t be attracted to Jack.
‘Monogamy for life from sixteen?’ he mocked. ‘You must be out of your mind.’
Later, when his words proved true—for it seemed that she had indeed been out of her mind—she’d lie awake in the small hours and think about how different life could have been if she hadn’t been a good girl. How it could have been if she’d been able to forget family obligations. If she’d given in to the attraction she’d surely felt.
Move on, she told herself harshly. The time for regrets was well and truly past. What she needed to focus on now was calming Jack down, persuading him to either let her treat his little nephew or tear up the contract and leave.
But whatever way he went, she had to gain his silence.
On impulse she headed indoors and hit the internet. Jack Kincaid.
Professor Jack Kincaid. Head of Oncology at Sydney Central. Research qualifications to make an academic’s eyes water. Medical practice extraordinary. His early promise had been met and more; this man was seriously skilled, seriously qualified. More, as she flicked through the site she found links to patients’ opinions of the man who’d treated them.
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