There was a bumping sound on the wooden ramp outside and the door opened to admit Charles in his wheelchair. ‘I’m not here,’ he said, perceiving that he might be interrupting something. ‘I just need to borrow a stethoscope, a thermometer and some paracetamol. Won’t be a moment. Beth, you could save time by grabbing everything for me.’
‘Anything wrong?’
Charles winced. ‘Not really. Lily’s got a bug, or something. She’s probably just incubating a cold. She didn’t want breakfast this morning, and she’s got a bit of a sore throat and a cough. She’s still saying she wants to go and play on the beach.’ His mouth tightened a little. ‘And Jill’s not out here yet, so it would be much easier if I could let Lily play, because I still have a lot to do before tomorrow and Saturday. But she feels warm to me.’
‘We have a few children here that we really don’t want getting sick,’ Miranda pointed out.
‘True. But she was probably incubating this yesterday so the damage is already done. You’re right, though. She has to be kept away from the other kids now, even if it is just a mild cold. I’ll have to send her home to Jill, or work something else out.’
Beth had now hunted up his list of items. ‘Keep the paracetamol, but I want the stethoscope and the thermometer back!’
‘Ten minutes,’ Charles promised.
He manoeuvred his wheelchair in an expert pivot to face the door, but before Beth could dart in front to open it for him, the Allandales appeared, the parents looking highly anxious and ready to be angry, and Lauren sobbing with her hands over the lower half of her face.
‘What’s happened?’ Beth said quickly. ‘Where are you hurt, Lauren?’
‘My face. I fell on the rocks. It really, really hurts.’
Miranda could see that it undoubtedly did. There was blood running between Lauren’s fingers and dripping onto the medical centre floor. Julia had gone back to her daughter’s bedside, still looking perplexed at the possibility that Kathryn might be deliberately triggering or exaggerating her attack.
‘Let’s have a proper look at you, sweetheart,’ Beth was saying. ‘Come through here. We’ll get you all fixed up in no time. We’ve got Dr Wetherby and our lovely nurse Grace.’
‘No, that’s not acceptable,’ Mr Allandale cut in sharply, as he understood what Beth was suggesting. ‘Treat her here? No! We want you to call the helicopter service. You can put a dressing on it here and stop the bleeding, but you can’t stitch it. It’s on her face. She’ll be scarred. She needs a plastic surgeon for this, at a major city hospital, not some rural jack of all trades with a carpet needle.’
‘Don’t worry, we threw out the carpet needles last year when we got in some smaller ones,’ Charles said. Until now, he’d taken a back seat to what was going on.
He flashed a crinkly, white-teethed, let’s-not-get-our- knickers-in-a-twist kind of grin that Miranda privately thought quite infectious and charming, especially given that he’d just had his medical credentials slammed in his direct hearing, but neither of the Allandale parents were in any mood for jokes or charm.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Mrs Allandale hissed.
‘Let’s take a look first, before we make any decisions,’ Beth said, trying to settle the atmosphere.
‘No,’ said Rick Allandale. ‘The decision’s made.’
Charles didn’t agree, Miranda could tell, but he didn’t waste his time saying so. That evidently wasn’t his style. ‘Beth, run over and check on Lily for me, would you?’ he said quietly. ‘She’s on her own in the cabin and I’ve already left her for too long.’
Beth nodded and didn’t argue.
But when she went to leave, Kirsty Allandale said indignantly, ‘Where are you going?’
‘Dr Wetherby is going to have a look at Lauren.’
‘You can’t be a doctor!’ She was looking at the wheelchair.
‘Some people think so,’ he replied mildly, ‘but, in fact, I am. The medical director at Crocodile Creek Hospital, and the person ultimately responsible for making decisions on emergency medical evacuations for this whole region. Dr Carlisle, Lauren is your patient at home, so perhaps you’d come into the examination room with me?’
‘Of course.’
He led the way, and the small cubicle simply didn’t have room for both the Allandales at the same time, so Mrs Allandale came in while her husband stayed at the front desk, glowering.
The cut on Lauren’s chin was a bad one, deep and untidy and embedded with grit. It definitely needed suturing after a thorough clean. With their ongoing anxiety about her health, Miranda could understand the parents’ concern about scarring, but she could also understand that Charles couldn’t possibly assign a hugely expensive helicopter evacuation to the city for purely cosmetic reasons.
‘It has to be done here,’ he said quietly to Miranda, after they’d retreated to the privacy of an office. ‘Sending them across to Crocodile Creek Hospital wouldn’t help.’ He drawled, ‘All my doctors over there are rural jacks of all trades, too. I mean, they’re a brilliant bunch, but the Allandales won’t believe that, and the fact is that none of them have specialised cosmetic surgery skills.’
‘There is Nicholas Devlin,’ she said slowly.
‘Who? Oh, you mean Nick? Josh’s dad?’
‘That’s right. He’s a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Royal Victoria Hospital in Melbourne.’
‘I didn’t even realise he was a doctor. He’s kept that quiet!’ Charles allowed himself a small chuckle.
‘It might get you off the hook. I’m sure he’d be willing, and he has a very good reputation. This is such a wonderful place, and all the kids are having such a great time. I’d hate future camps to get marred by complaints or legal problems.’
Charles thought for a moment, then said decisively, ‘Ask him. We’re good at roping in stray doctors around here. Some of them even end up staying! While you’re hunting him up, I’ll clean out the wound and give Lauren a local, see if I can get the parents to be a bit more reasonable. Let’s get this done.’
Miranda had a hard time ducking Mr Allandale’s onslaught of demands. ‘DrWetherby wants to talk to you first,’ she said, to keep him at bay. There was no point in mentioning Nick and his specialist skills until she knew whether he was willing and able.
After some minutes of hunting, she found him returning from the beach with Josh, to get cleaned up for some quiet time before lunch. They both looked relaxed and—she hadn’t consciously seen this before—incredibly alike. Dark hair, big boyish grins, tanned feet that moved nimbly on the sandy ground and seemed to relish their lack of shoes.
It was hard to break into their time together with a request for Nick’s professional help, but if he was the man she believed him to be, she knew he’d want to give it.
‘Of course,’ he said, once she’d explained. ‘But there’s Josh.’
‘There’s a session just starting in the pottery room. Would he like that?’
Nick nodded. ‘That’s a good idea. Let me get him settled, and I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
Miranda heard raised voices as she came back up the ramp to the medical centre. Charles still spoke calmly, repeating his insistence that the helicopter service was not at their disposal, but the Allandales were both yelling in their attempt to argue their case.
‘Hasn’t our daughter been through enough?’
Miranda knew from experience that they wouldn’t give up quickly. ‘I’ve found a specialist,’ she announce
d, before Dr Wetherby could repeat his quiet statement of the facts. The Allandales looked blank and suspicious, so she explained, ‘He’s a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Royal Victoria Hospital. Nick Devlin.’
‘But he’s one of the parents.’
She smiled. ‘We have a range of careers among our parents. A couple of them might surprise you! In this case, you couldn’t have done better than Josh’s dad.’
‘I’ve talked to him,’ Rick said. ‘He didn’t say he was a surgeon. We talked about chess.’
‘But he is,’ she assured them brightly, ‘and he’s willing to work on Lauren’s injury. You’re very lucky.’ She emphasised the statement. ‘It’ll be so much better to have it done promptly on the spot, and it won’t spoil her holiday.’
As if still suspicious that she might be putting one over them, the Allandales nodded, looked at each other and exchanged a short series of whispered phrases. ‘As long as there’s no delay,’ Mrs Allandale said.
‘And if you’ll stand in on the procedure, Dr Carlisle,’ her husband added.
‘Of course, if you want me to.’
Charles raised his eyebrows at Miranda as if to ask, Is this typical?
Miranda spread her hands and shrugged. Yes, it was.
Rick slipped outside and soon had his mobile pressed to his ear, visible through the medical centre windows. He was phoning some contact of his in Melbourne to verify Nick’s professional credentials, Miranda realised. Although the mistrustful action made her hackles rise, she accepted that she might have done the same thing if this had been her pretty and chronically ill teenage daughter. Like children, parents didn’t always know how to behave! Kirsty had followed her husband outside, after a murmured excuse, and now they were talking.
Nick arrived just a few minutes later, walking with Beth. The latter told Charles, ‘I took her temp. It’s up a bit, but not much. Thirty-eight point three. I’ve given her the paracetamol and listened to her chest. There’s some congestion building up, but it’s probably viral so there’s not a lot we can do. She’ll shake it off in a day or two, she’s such a sturdy little thing.’
He nodded. ‘I expect she will. Is she on her own again?’
‘I settled her on the couch with a book. She seemed happy. I can go back, if you like. She’s so at home here, she’ll run and find someone if she has any problems.’
‘That’s always what I’m afraid of, with Lily,’ Charles answered. ‘She could go out on the veranda in search of a tissue-box and strike up a lifelong friendship with the first person she sees, even if he had three heads and green teeth. No, I’ll go. My professional skills have been roundly rejected, so I’m a free man.’ He gave a wry grin and began to wheel himself towards the door.
Nick had already moved in the direction of the treatment room, where minor surgical procedures could be performed. He had no idea that his qualifications were still being investigated. ‘Dr Stuart, can you give me a quick run-down on your set-up?’ he said to Beth, who followed him quickly.
The Allandales came back inside and went directly to their daughter. ‘Everything’s going to be all right, sweetheart,’ Kirsty said.
Meanwhile, in her hospital bed, Kathryn couldn’t keep up the pretence that her attack was out of control. She was breathing much better, and lay back quietly against her pillows, tired out by the recent drama.
Miranda only had time to poke her head around the door, but bubbly, down-to-earth Grace was in attendance. They had an elderly man from the resort hotel in another bed, separated from Kathryn’s by a partition jutting part way across the room and curtains drawn along tracks in the ceiling. The gentleman thought Grace was gorgeous, with her bouncy hair and twinkly blue eyes and just the teeniest bit of flirtiness in the way she talked to him, and it was making him feel better by the minute.
‘I just want Daddy to come up here,’ Miranda heard Kathryn say in a very small voice.
She went back to Nick and Lauren in the treatment room. ‘Keep the parents out, can you?’ he muttered to her. ‘I hate having interested parties looking over my shoulder.’
‘You’ll have me, if you don’t forbid it,’ Miranda muttered back. ‘They’ve asked if I can keep an eye on you.’
‘Wha-a-a-t?’
‘Don’t take it personally. I’ll pass you things. Can be quite useful, I can, when I want to be.’
‘More cheekiness, Dr Carlisle?’
‘I’m saving most of it.’
‘Good…’ He grinned at her and her heart melted.
In the end, the procedure itself created no drama. Charles had already administered the local anaesthetic, cleaned the cut and put a temporary dressing in place. Nick took a moment to plan his work, but once he actually began it he moved with a delicacy and speed that Miranda knew her own fingers could never have matched.
‘We’ll give you an antibiotic, Lauren, so there’s no danger of infection. The stitches will dissolve on their own. I’ll take a look at it every day to make sure it’s healing right.’
Lauren nodded. ‘Here?’ She’d taken the whole procedure calmly and patiently, with no complaints.
‘I don’t think we need to come here. We can do it on the beach, if you like.’
She managed a grin—no mean feat for a girl with a numb chin. ‘That’d be good.’
She might be spoiled, especially in the company of her parents, but she’d spent enough time in hospitals to be stoical about them—and at the same time very happy to avoid yet another visit.
‘Want to show Mum and Dad before we cover it up?’ Nick asked, and Lauren nodded.
Miranda held her breath when the Allandales came in, but Nick explained what he’d done to minimise scarring and earned their complete confidence and a gushing level of gratitude in about a minute and a half. ‘I don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t been here. Flown her to Brisbane in a chartered helicopter at our own expense. It would have been terrible,’ Kirsty said.
When they’d gone, Nick said to Miranda, ‘Should I have suggested they donate the cost of a charter flight to the new medical centre instead?’
She laughed. ‘Only if you wanted to stir them up. You were great. Nobody wanted it to turn into a major incident, but it was heading in that direction.’
‘Shall we go and pick up Josh?’
He ran his hand down her arm in a private, intimate gesture that made her heart sing, and a voice of hope inside her began to say, It’s going to work out this time. It’s the start of something wonderful. It’s real.
Then she smelt the sunscreen on his neck and remembered the way she’d always felt when she played with the kids on the beach…and the way she’d felt when beach time ended.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘SHE was scared we were getting divorced!’ Julia shook her head, reliving her mingled bemusement and relief at getting to the bottom of Kathryn’s deliberately triggered and exaggerated attacks.
‘But those attacks were real.’ Miranda frowned. ‘The second one, in particular. How did she trigger it?’
‘Took the pillow slip and plastic cover off her pillow, the naughty girl, pressed her face into it and took several good big breaths.’
‘That’d do it, yes,’ Miranda agreed drily.
It was the reason Kathryn’s pillows had a layer of plastic covering in the first place. No matter how thoroughly Julia might wash bedding and vacuum mattresses, any invisible dust, dander or mould spores trapped in pillows and upholstered seating triggered Kathryn’s
asthma if these items weren’t covered in plastic.
‘We’re not getting divorced, I should tell you,’ Julia said.
‘What made her think it was a possibility?’
‘Oh, she put two and two together and it came out wrong. We had an argument last week, Bruce and I, and she overheard. Unfortunately, she didn’t hear the apology and compromise we reached at the end of it. And then he couldn’t come up here, and I guess she thought the work commitment was just an excuse. Meanwhile, her best friend’s parents have just separated, and she obviously thought that if it could happen to Megan, out of the blue, it could happen to her. I think we’ve sorted it out, now. I put her on the phone to Bruce and that helped.’
‘You’ll enjoy the rest of your stay much better now.’
‘I wish we were having the full two weeks.’
Some people weren’t. Miranda would say goodbye to three of her patients on Sunday morning and welcome three different ones on Sunday afternoon, although the rest were staying through for a second week.
The time had gone too fast. It was already Thursday afternoon, and Miranda expected that she or Nick would soon hear from Anna about her plans to fly up and take over Josh’s care some time over the weekend.
‘I want her mother to be managing badly. I want both her sisters to stay in Sydney and refuse to come down to Melbourne to help out,’ Nick confessed darkly as they sat on the beach. ‘Every hour that goes by without a phone call from her, I’m hoping it means she can’t work something out. I’m hoping the flights will be full or there’ll be a refuellers’ strike, or something. She told me last night that she’d phone some time today about her plans, but she hasn’t yet, for some reason, and I’m holding my breath. I want the extra week with him, and to hell with anyone else on the planet!’
As usual, after he’d spoken his darker thoughts, he withdrew a little. While Miranda chatted with a couple of parents, he walked down to the water’s edge in brooding silence, as if replaying what he’d just said and regretting it.
The Australian's Desire (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 45