‘This has nothing to do with—’
‘I think it has.’ She closed her eyes, and when she opened them she’d withdrawn still further. ‘Jack, my parents needed me for physical care and their love for me was bound up with that. My dad was sixty when I was born and Mum was over forty. My birth almost killed Mum, and Dad already had heart problems. My needs came a poor second to their health, to their needs. My job was to make them feel secure, make them proud, not rock the boat. And then Simon came along and I fell in love with him but he needed me for my money. He needed me to play the subservient wife. Even when I was struggling to escape from Simon I was still trying to protect my parents. I don’t know whether you can understand this, but I don’t want to be...needed...again.’
‘Kate, I would never...’
‘Ask me to take a share in raising Harry?’
‘This was only our second kiss!’
‘I know.’ She managed a rueful smile. ‘I’m looking at an egg and seeing a dinosaur. Talk about forward catastrophising. But when you hold me I feel...like it could be the beginning.’
‘That makes two of us. Kate, I think I could love you.’
‘That’s what you say,’ she said gently. ‘But how can I trust in such a word? It’d fit really neatly for you, wouldn’t it? You need a family for Harry. Harry already likes me and he loves Maisie. Replace Annalise with good ol’ Kate and your problems are solved.’
Whoa. How had they got here? A kiss and she was projecting forward to marriage, parenthood, delegation of responsibility? This was nuts. But as he looked at her he felt a jolt of recognition in what she was saying.
She was gorgeous. She was an old friend. She was the answer to his problems, wrapped up in one very desirable package.
Maybe subconsciously she was right.
‘Get your house in order,’ she said softly. ‘Do what you need to do to make you and Harry into a family. Then think of expanding.’
‘I’m not kissing you because I want a family!’ It was an explosion and she smiled faintly, almost teasingly.
‘But are you kissing me because you don’t want a family?’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘Unfair or not, I’m taking no chances.’ She rose, putting physical distance between them. ‘I’m your nephew’s treating doctor,’ she said. ‘Kissing you is unprofessional, crossing boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed. I need to put those boundaries back into place.’
‘We both know that’s nonsense.’
‘We both know it makes sense. Jack, this needs to stop.’
He rose, too, anger building. She’d built this into something it wasn’t. She was insinuating he was manipulating. He wouldn’t.
A tiny voice in the back of his head said he might. It would be so easy to give Harry a loving, caring Kate.
Her phone rang.
She’d laid it on the wicker table. All the tension in the room seemed to turn and focus on that table, and maybe that was a relief. How had they reached this point? Kissing had never meant this much before, Jack thought. How had it escalated so fast?
How much easier to focus on a telephone than on the tension zinging between them.
Kate flicked it open. ‘It’s Alan,’ the voice said, audible in the stillness, and Jack recognised it as one of the parents. Wendy’s father. The eleven-year-old with the neuroblastoma.
And Kate switched into medical mode, just like that.
‘How can I help?’
‘Wendy’s vomiting,’ he said. ‘She’s getting distressed. Would you—?’
‘I’ll be there in two minutes.’ She disconnected and turned to Jack.
‘Harry will be okay,’ she said, and he realised she’d turned back into the professional she was. Personal interaction was over. ‘You and Harry will make a great family,’ she told him. ‘You have the skills to help him. Talk to me again if you need to—that’s what I’m here for—but between you and me, we’re done. I need to fetch my bag and take care of Wendy. Goodnight, Jack. Give Harry a hug for me.’
And he’d been dismissed. She’d finished with one client and she was moving on to another.
CHAPTER NINE
THE NEXT FEW days went well, as far as Harry was concerned. Every day he woke up brighter, more voluble, embracing life again. He had his reassurance from Jack, and even more than the dolphin therapy it seemed to make a difference. He turned to Jack over and over—‘Jack, watch me. Jack, can we do this? Jack, get up, Hobble’s waiting. Jack, I don’t like spaghetti.’
It seemed Jack had turned into a parent, just like that. It left Jack feeling confounded, maybe even trapped, but as he saw the difference it was making to Harry he could only feel relief.
He couldn’t want it any other way, but still there was the sensation of walls closing around him. It seemed he was a family, like it or not.
A single parent.
‘You’ll manage,’ Kate said to him on the third or fourth day after that last kiss, and he wondered if his face was so revealing.
‘Of course I will.’
‘Even without a woman,’ she said, and chuckled. He watched her head back to the dolphin pool and felt—on top of everything else—a gut-wrenching sense of loss.
If he’d done things differently he might...
What? Have Kate for a wife? Have a mother for Harry? Bind Kate to the solution he had to find?
It wasn’t fair. He accepted that. What was between them had escalated far too fast, and he understood her fear. But he watched her with her little patients, he saw the care and the kindness, he heard her laughter, he watched her tease, cajole, empathise, and he wondered why he hadn’t seen this all those years ago.
Was it because he’d never thought of wanting a permanent partner—a partner in the real sense of the word? Was it because he’d never wanted anyone to share his life?
And he was honest enough now to accept that he couldn’t differentiate his needs. Yes, Kate was seeming more and more desirable, but he knew Harry was in the equation, too, and he couldn’t lay that on her.
Maybe in the future...
Ha. In the future he’d be in Sydney and she’d still be here. She was treating him with professional distance now. How could putting the width of Australia between them make anything different?
‘Jack, watch me. Jack, I can swim eighteen whole strokes before Kate has to put her hand under my tummy. Jack, Hobble pushed my tummy up even before Kate reached me.’
Woman and dolphins were an amazing medical team, he thought as he made admiring noises and tried not to make eye contact with Kate—because making eye contact with Kate seemed to make things harder. More convoluted. More needy. He tried to focus on his nephew’s achievements and they were indeed awesome.
Someone should write up what she was achieving in the medical journals, he thought, but then he thought of the shadows in Kate’s past and he knew such a thing was impossible.
Besides, there weren’t enough dolphins in the world to do what Hobble and his mates were achieving. He’d been truly lucky to find this place.
To find Kate?
And it always seemed to come back to Kate. She was racing Harry now—or pretending to race him. They each had a cork kickboard and they were kicking to the side of the pool.
Hobble was zooming between them, creating a wake, heading Kate off so she had to change direction just as she got a lead. Harry was laughing so hard he was almost forgetting to kick—but kick he was, with his injured leg, putting aside pain as unimportant.
This was miracle territory. Hobble and his mates were miracle-makers.
So was Kate, but she was a woman alone and he needed to respect that.
* * *
At two the next morning he woke to a knock on the bungalow door. It was such a light knock he might have dreamed it, but
years of medicine had given him a knack of sleeping lightly. He was out of bed even before the knocking stopped.
He flung the door wide and Kate was in front of him. She was wearing her customary jeans and a windcheater, and her curls had been tugged back into a loose knot. She looked as if she’d woken in a hurry and rushed out.
Her feet were bare. He looked at her in the moonlight and thought...he thought he’d better not go there.
‘Jack, could you help me?’ she said, and emotion and desire took a back seat as he switched to medicine. The professional side of him was awake and alert and ready to act.
‘Of course.’ No hesitation. After all she’d done for Harry, whatever this woman asked of him, she had it.
‘It’s Wendy,’ she said. ‘You know she has neuroblastoma. It started in the adrenal glands but she presented late. Her parents put tiredness and weight loss down to puberty. They were busy, they have three other kids and they just didn’t notice. So it’s already metastasised, with spread into the abdomen and the liver. She’s been through twelve months of intensive treatment, with chemo and radiation targeting each tumour, but she’s run out of options.’
‘So what’s happening now?’ Two weeks ago he would have asked what a child with such a diagnosis was doing in a place like this, but that had been before he’d got to know Kate and her miracle-workers. All he needed was a medical status update.
‘She’s vomiting. She had an episode four nights back—that was when you and I...’ She paused, and her colour mounted a bit but she had herself under control in an instant. ‘I got things under control then, but tonight she’s vomiting again and she’s worse. I’ve given her promethazine and set up an IV line for fluids but she’s not settling. Jack, I’m out of options. If you can’t help I need to get a chopper in and transfer her to Perth.’
‘Is that what her parents want?’
‘They’re desperate for her to stay here,’ she said simply. ‘After twelve months of hospitals and intensive treatment, she’s had enough. She came in three weeks ago, traumatised and almost as withdrawn as Harry after months of coping with frightened adults, but here she’s turned into a kid again. She’s loving it, and we’re fighting to have her stay as long as we can. But I can’t stop her vomiting. Jack, you’re an oncologist. I hate asking—you’re here as a client as well—but if you would take a look...’
‘Of course I will.’ There was no hesitation. But then he glanced back toward Harry’s bedroom. Problem. He was a single dad. He wasn’t free to leave.
But once again Kate was ahead of him.
‘I’ve woken Louise,’ she said. ‘If you agree to help, she’ll be here in two minutes to take over Harry duty. She’s great at this sleep business. She’ll be on your sofa, snoozing as if we hadn’t even woken her, two minutes after she gets here, but she’ll hear the slightest sound from Harry. It’s a splinter skill she’s proud of. Let her show it off.’
And there was nothing else to say.
‘Give me ten seconds to haul on jeans and T-shirt,’ he told her. ‘Kate, I make no promises. There’s every chance Wendy will need to be evacuated to get decent symptom control but I’ll see what I can do.’
* * *
She’d known Jack was good back in med. school. It took all of five minutes of watching him with Wendy and that knowledge was confirmed. He had the empathy and he had the skills to match.
Wendy was exhausted and sick and frightened. Her parents were terrified.
It took a whole thirty seconds with Jack to calm them down.
‘Hi,’ he said, as she showed him into the little cabin, into Wendy’s bedroom where her parents were standing by the bed, looking like deer trapped in headlights. ‘Hey, Wendy, Dr Kate tells me you can’t stop being sick. Is it okay with you if I see if I can help? Dr Kate’s good—she and I went to university together so I know she’s about the best doctor around—but while she specialised in family medicine I specialised in caring for people who have cancer. People like you, Wendy. That means right now I have skills that might help.’
He was talking straight to Wendy. It was the right thing to do. Wendy’s parents straightened a little, and she could see the sliver of hope lessening their despair. Courtesy of Jack.
‘How long since you’ve been sick?’ Jack asked.
‘Five...about five minutes,’ her mum said haltingly, and Jack gave her a smile that said, excellent, he obviously had another professional on side. And the sliver of hope intensified.
‘That’s good. This awful retching usually goes in about twenty-minute cycles so we have a window of time to get this sorted. Let’s see what we can do before the next one hits. Wendy, I might not be able to stop the next couple of vomits but I should be able to stop them after that. Is it okay with you if I try? Can I take a look at your tummy?’
‘Yes,’ Wendy quavered.
‘You must be tired of doctors,’ he said. ‘But I have one advantage. I have very warm hands.’
‘Wh-why are they warm?’
‘I have hot blood,’ he said smugly. ‘I’ve trained it. Some people can touch their foreheads with their toes. I can warm up my hands on command. Want to feel?’
‘Yes,’ Wendy said, and Kate almost gasped. Ten minutes ago the atmosphere in this room had been one of despair. Now not only was there hope, there was a touch of fascination. A blood-warming specialist...
Jack was moving fast, with light banter, as he lifted Wendy’s pyjama top. His hands probed gently. Kate knew what he’d be feeling—an enlarged liver in her distended tummy, a hard, appalling mass of unmovable tumour.
‘I don’t suppose you have an X-ray machine lying around here someplace?’ he asked Kate, as if it didn’t matter too much.
But it did matter. If he could diagnose what was going on...
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Basic films are all I can organise, though. MRIs are out of our league.’
‘Basic films are good,’ Jack said fine. ‘In the main building?’
‘Yes.’
‘If I wrap you up nice and warm and carry you, will you try very hard not to be sick on me?’ Jack said to Wendy. ‘If you’re going to be sick, call out and I’ll give you to your dad to carry. If I’m not mistaken, you had spaghetti for tea and I have my favourite T-shirt on. If you’re sick on it I’ll look like I’m covered in spaghetti graffiti. I’m cool but not that cool.’
And unbelievably, incredibly, Wendy giggled. ‘You’re silly,’ she managed. ‘Everyone says...everyone says you’re silly.’
‘Yes, but I’m silly and clean,’ Jack said, grinning back at her. ‘Okay, my lady, let’s get you X-rayed. Ready, set, go.’
* * *
Kate hadn’t bothered with taking X-rays. No matter what they showed she was beyond her level of expertise, but what she saw confirmed what she expected. A complete bowel blockage. That meant evacuation. There was no way she could cope with this here.
But Jack took the X-rays and as they went into her little side office to check them he didn’t even suggest evacuation. ‘Right,’ he snapped. ‘What medications do you have? Dexamethasone? Morphine? Sedatives?’
‘Yes, but I don’t have the skill—’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a huge blockage. I’m thinking steroid can reduce the swelling and clear it.’
‘But if it doesn’t work...’
‘It has just as much chance of working here as in Perth. Kate, I’m looking at this mass of tumour and thinking no surgeon’s going to operate. One blockage will be followed by another. But if I can get the swelling down we may well buy some time.’ He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You know there’s no easy answer, Kate, in fact there’s no answer at all, but there is a way forward. If we use steroid to ease the swelling and unblock the bowel then she may well have a few good weeks. When things catch up with her, the steroid will be disconti
nued. Death will be fast. But right now this is a no-brainer in terms of treatment.’
‘And you can do this here?’
‘Yes,’ he said—and she believed him.
Trust was such a nebulous thing. She’d sworn not to trust but as she looked up at his face, as she felt the strength of his hand on her shoulder, she felt trust sweep over her. Stupid or not, she trusted this man.
And not just as a doctor.
She nodded. He gave her a smile that said he understood the mix of emotions swirling in her head and for some reason she trusted that, too.
And then it was time to face Wendy. Her parents had taken her back to their cabin. She’d just copped another bout of retching and was limp in her dad’s arms but she was still awake and aware. Her mum was sitting to the side, looking as ill as her daughter.
The little girl looked beyond exhaustion but Jack still talked directly to her. ‘Wendy, what Dr Kate and I can see in the X-rays is lots of fluid. That’s why your tummy feels so hard. It tells me you have a blockage in your tummy so the food you’ve been eating can’t move through. So you have a choice. The doctors who looked after you before you came here could look after you again—Dr Kate says we can organise a helicopter to take you to Perth—but Dr Kate tells me you’d like to stay here. If that’s what you want, then you need to trust me to care for you. Is that okay?’
And he didn’t need to go further. Kate had told him that Wendy’s parents had been warned of potential problems like this before they’d come here. Spelling those problems out now would terrify their daughter. He could take them outside and talk, but Wendy had had a year of medical procedures and lots of bad news. She’d have figured by now what doctors taking her parents outside meant.
So now Jack was treating Wendy as the decision-maker, and Kate could feel the family’s trust in him grow stronger. Trust...it seemed to be growing by the moment.
‘What can you do?’ Wendy’s father growled, and Kate could see the big man trying not to cry.
‘Stop the vomiting,’ Jack said promptly. ‘Dr Kate tells me we have steroid here, and morphine.’
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