The Bachelor Doctor

by Judy Campbell

  He strode into Reception and picked up the papers relating to the meeting.

  ‘Is everyone in yet?’ he asked Karen.

  ‘Only Cara so far. She’s just seen her last patient, so you might as well go in—I’ll bring in some coffee for you all soon.’

  Jake nodded and went straight to Cara’s room, then stopped at the doorway, for a second unable to believe his own eyes.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Cara lay doubled up on the floor, her hair spread wildly over her shoulders and a gasping sound coming from her throat.

  ‘Cara, what’s the matter? Where does it hurt?’

  He knelt down beside her, gently brushing back her hair from her forehead and putting his hand on her pulse. ‘How long have you been like this?’

  ‘It…it’s been coming on and off all morning. I can’t breathe with the pain…it’s like a knife,’ she whispered. She turned over on her back, her forehead damp with perspiration. ‘Jake, I…I think something’s very wrong. It’s my right lower abdomen. It’s awful…’

  ‘Don’t worry, Cara, I’m here,’ he said in a calm, firm voice. ‘I’m taking you to St Cuth’s now. Sheena can come with us, and I’ll phone through to A and E and get things set up for a scan.’

  She nodded feebly, her eyes closed, and Jake looked down at her pale, drawn face, her lashes a dark sweep over her cheeks, her hair a tumble of auburn on the floor. And all at once, with a terrible lurch of his heart, it was as if a dusty mirror had been cleaned and he saw things clearly for the first time. All other considerations faded away into the background. Was he going to lose her just as he realised that she was all he wanted in his life? He needed her, body and soul.

  He couldn’t stop himself. He bent down and kissed her damp forehead. ‘It’ll be all right, darling—hang on there!’ he whispered huskily.

  She didn’t answer, just gave a faint moan.

  He stabbed his finger on the intercom button on her desk, his hand shaking in a most unprofessional manner, his mind racing through all the things that could be causing Cara’s illness.

  ‘Karen!’ His voice was clipped and urgent. ‘Come and stay with Cara for a minute. We’ve got an emergency on our hands—she’s got acute abdominal pain and I’m just phoning through to the hospital.’

  Karen looked at Cara in shocked surprise as she rushed into the room, then knelt down beside her and held her hand. ‘Oh, Cara,’ she said in distress, ‘You poor thing!’

  Through a haze of pain Cara could hear Jake’s terse voice phoning through to the hospital. ‘Dr Donahue here, Ballranoch Practice—I’m bringing in my colleague, Cara Mackenzie, as an emergency. She’s got acute right ileac fossa pain—could be appendicitis or an ovarian problem. Can you set things up for our arrival in about half an hour?’

  Jake and Sheena were taken to the small staff kitchen in St Cuth’s Casualty Department by Sheena’s sister who was a nurse at the hospital. Sheena sat on a chair, sipping a cup of coffee, while Jake stalked up and down the room like a caged lion.

  ‘She should have told us she’d been feeling off for a few days,’ he fumed. ‘Carrying on with that abdominal pain was silly. Any other person would have gone to the doctor! She could have a ruptured appendix, an intestinal blockage…anything!’

  ‘Keep your hair on, Jake—she’s gone for an MRI scan now and they’re running blood tests, so we should know fairly soon—and she’s in the best place.’ Sheena patted the chair beside her. ‘Now, why don’t you have a cup of coffee and try and relax?’

  ‘OK,’ he muttered, and sat down on the edge of the chair, staring down at the cup of coffee she handed him.

  The door opened, and a short, balding man with glasses came in. Jake sprang out of his chair, dropping his cup on the floor. ‘Well, Barney? What’s the verdict—what have you found?’

  Barney Woolerton, the consultant on A and E gave a wry smile. ‘Lovely big twisted ovarian cyst, I’m afraid. We’re going to operate. Connie Brown’s the gynaecologist and she’s going to look at Cara first. She thinks it’s a haemmorrhagic cyst—there seems to be some bleeding into it.’

  ‘When are you taking her to Theatre?’ asked Jake.

  ‘As soon as possible. Do you know how long it is since she’s eaten?’

  Sheena smiled. ‘I happen to know that. She came in a bit of a flurry to work this morning, said she hadn’t had time for any breakfast so she had a cup of coffee in surgery at about nine o’clock.’

  Barney looked at his watch. ‘That’s nearly six hours ago—we should be all right to give her an anaesthetic now, so I should think she’ll be under the knife in no time at all.’

  Jake winced. ‘Don’t be quite so graphic, Barney,’ he snapped. ‘Just get on with it!’

  He followed Barney down the corridor, running an agitated hand through his hair. ‘What about her obs? You won’t operate unless—’

  Barney turned round and patted him on the arm. ‘Calm down, mate! I can tell you her obs are stable. She’s slightly tachycardic but her BP’s holding out fine, something like one-ten over seventy…nothing to worry about!’ He looked at Sheena standing by Jake’s side. ‘Why don’t you take him to the pub for lunch?’ he suggested. ‘Let us get to grips with things!’

  Cara stretched gingerly. The wound in her abdomen still hurt, but the terrible searing pain had gone, and a few days after the operation she felt surprisingly well. The whole incident seemed like a hazy nightmare. She could hardly recall being taken to hospital, although she knew that Jake had lifted her out to his car, could still remember the rough feel of his jacket on her face as he’d lowered her onto the back seat. She flushed. She had rather it had been anyone other than Jake who’d seen her in such an embarrassing state, being sick, as she recalled, all over the floor of his car!

  She looked out of the window of the little side ward she’d been allocated, and felt a sudden sadness come over her. Perhaps it was just post-operative blues, or too much time to think about herself, but the future seemed to have lost its promise. That sense of loss she’d felt earlier came back more vividly than ever. She’d come back to Ballranoch with such high hopes of making it up with her father, giving Dan a better life—and then there had been the bonus of being attracted to the gorgeous Jake Donahue! More than attracted, she thought wistfully. She had to admit, she’d fallen totally in love with the man.

  Only it hadn’t worked out. She’d allowed herself to believe he felt something deeper than attraction for her, and she’d been wrong. There wasn’t room in a two-handed practice for an uneasy relationship and when she felt better she’d have to look for pastures new. She blinked back a few tears of self-pity. There seemed to be a pattern developing in her life—going somewhere for a new start, and then it crashing down about her ears! She hunched the sheet round her shoulders as if she were cold, and felt a bitter finger of sadness touch her heart.

  There was a soft knock on the door, and Cara sighed. So far the only visitors she’d seen had been Dan and Karen, and it was hard to seem welcoming at the moment to anyone else.

  ‘Come in!’ she called, trying to sound upbeat.

  The door opened and Jake stood there, dwarfing the entrance, with a huge bunch of flowers in his hand. He looked down at her strangely, a kind of nervous suppressed energy about him.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to you,’ he said tersely.

  Cara’s eyes opened wide. ‘Jake! I hope you got my message from Karen thanking you for getting me here…Sorry I’ve been such a nuisance.’ She tried to keep her voice cool, not too grateful.

  Jake made a gesture of impatience. ‘Oh, that—that was nothing.’ He looked at her critically, a slight smile lifting his lips. ‘I must say you look better than the last time I saw you! How are things feeling—any pain?’

  ‘No…a lot better, thank you.’

  They stared at each other for a second in silence. Cara tried not to notice how very, very blue his eyes were, how thick and tousled his hair was over his brow. How, even now, she l
onged to feel his arms around her and his heart beating next to hers. She felt that familiar treacherous flutter of attraction flicker through her body, and she willed it away, pleating the sheet nervously with her fingers.

  ‘How are things are the practice—did you manage to get a locum?’ she asked at length.

  ‘A retired doctor, Jack Stothers, has agreed to help out for a while.’

  Jake put the flowers down on a table in the corner of the room, then turned round, his face grim. ‘Ursula tells me you’re already looking for another job, that you might move out of the area.’

  Cara smiled faintly. ‘Word gets round quickly. At the moment I don’t feel like moving anywhere. But, of course, as things are between us, it would be better for me to move on as soon as possible…’

  Her words hung starkly in the air, and Jake shook his head slowly, then sat down on the chair beside the bed. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about work,’ he said abruptly. ‘I wanted to tell you something—something I should have told you many weeks ago.’

  Cara looked at him questioningly. ‘What would that be?’

  He ran his hand through his hair rather distractedly, so that it stood up in peaks round his head. ‘Dammit,’ he said huskily. ‘Can’t you guess?’

  She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘Then it’s not about work?’

  Jake gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! No, it’s something I have much less control over than work! The truth is, Cara…’ He paused for a moment, then hooked his finger under her chin, his eyes going slowly over every detail of her face. ‘The truth is, I was so very, very wrong to keep backing away from you—to keep dodging any relationship. I knew it before, but I was too caught up with stupid problems of my own…and the thought that anything you felt for me might be on the rebound after Toby.’

  Cara gazed at him in astonishment, then she said flatly, ‘What are you talking about? You’re not interested in relationships. Even if your sister hadn’t told me that, I found out for myself in the end, didn’t I?’

  ‘It’s not true. I mean it! There were things about my life that I thought would be unfair to burden you with—but I know I was wrong!’

  Cara’s looked uneasily at him. Was he just giving her the big come-on again?

  ‘Don’t give me that, Jake,’ she said a little wearily. ‘You don’t have to make it up with me just because I’ve been ill, you know. I’m a big girl, I can look after myself!’ She gave a wry smile. ‘I’ve had to get over worse things than our little misunderstanding, you know! My life with Toby wasn’t exactly a bed of roses.’

  ‘So you hadn’t really got over him when you came back here?’ A careworn, sad expression flitted across Jake’s face.

  Cara shrugged. ‘Actually, getting over Toby was easy when I found out what he’d done to me…and who he’d done it with!’

  Jake looked at her sharply. ‘A best friend—someone you knew?’

  Cara hugged her arms round her body as if trying to press away the horrible image that leapt into her mind. ‘You’re right,’ she said quietly. ‘It was someone I knew, all right. It was Angela, my dear stepmother! They’d been having an affair for some time, but I only discovered it when I actually found them making love in the flat when I came in with Dan one afternoon.’ She smiled grimly. ‘Funny, isn’t it? One woman managing to destroy two relationships—mine and my father’s!’

  Jake stared at her in horror. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I had no idea. And so your trust in men has been rather dented, then?’

  ‘I told you, I’ve put Toby behind me and I hope I’ve learnt to be more discerning. That’s why I don’t want you to feel any sense of obligation to me because I’ve been ill. I can carry on with my life very well without you, Jake!’

  Jake sprang up from his chair with a groan of impatience, then spun round to look at her again, his fists clenched against his sides.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, your illness may have kicked me into action, but can’t you understand what I’m trying to say? I love you, dammit, and I have done for a long time!’

  He knelt by the bed, his strong hands taking hers and gripping them hard, his eyes pleading. ‘Sweetheart, you’ve got to believe me! I fell for you almost as soon as I met you—at the hogmanay dance it was, when you looked so fantastic. But I had obligations to fulfil. I thought it would be wrong to burden you with my concerns. You had responsibilities of your own—why should I add to them?’

  Cara felt her heart begin to pound in her ears. Had she heard aright? Had Jake just said he loved her?

  ‘I—I don’t understand,’ she stammered. ‘How can you love me?’ Then with more spirit, she added, ‘You had a funny way of showing it!’

  ‘I told you, I felt with my background I wasn’t a suitable candidate for a lasting relationship. I tried to stop myself before it was too late.’

  ‘So what was this obligation, this worry?’

  Jake lowered his head for a moment and sighed. ‘I told you that I care for Ursula very much, that I feel I owe her a lot—everything really. What I didn’t tell you was that Ursula has been obsessively possessive of me for many years…so much so that for a time she didn’t want me even to go to work. I was sure that if you and I got together she would make life very difficult for you. Jealousy can be a terrible and destructive thing—in Ursula it was frightening.’

  ‘That’s very sad,’ whispered Cara. ‘What made her so dependent?’

  ‘A complete lack of confidence—and partly because she felt inadequate socially. I told you the mugging had changed her character. She never used to be like this.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘Because,’ said Jake simply, ‘I knew you were too kind and loving a person not to take on my sister. But I felt I couldn’t let you carry that burden—it was my problem.’

  ‘And what’s changed your mind?’ Cara’s clear grey eyes gazed at him, slightly puzzled, although a sudden little ripple of excitement had started to gather strength somewhere in the pit of her stomach, as if what he was saying might just be true!

  He smiled ruefully at her. ‘A combination of things, I suppose. An old friend came into the surgery and reminded me how time passes, and then I realised that if anything had happened to you…’ His voice was husky. ‘I’d have lost you for ever…’

  Cara’s head whirled like the colours in a kaleidoscope. She felt confused, bewildered by the chain of events. ‘But what about Ursula now. Have you told her how you feel…about me?’

  Jake shook his head. ‘I haven’t, but I feel she’s much more positive than she was—she’s suddenly come out of her shell. She’s become really interested in helping to organise the hospital art exhibition—and also,’ he said with a twinkle, ‘she seems to have fallen very heavily for little Dan! She’s seen him once or twice when he’s been to visit you and she’s been here with her paintings—they have quite a rapport! Somehow I don’t think she’d object at all to being more closely connected to him!’

  He held her face between his hands. ‘I’m beginning to realise that I only have one life, Cara. I can’t…won’t let you go. I need you more than my sister needs me,’ he added softly. ‘For heaven’s sake, tell me I have a chance, sweetheart.’

  There was a wonderful tenderness in the look he gave her, and all at once the ripple of excitement inside her became a torrent. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve made a fool of myself once before, allowed sweet talk to sway my judgement…’

  ‘But do you love me?’ persisted Jake, his elbows supporting him on either side of her. His face was so close to hers, those eyes so penetrating, willing her to confess that she loved him with all her heart.

  Cara closed her eyes for a second. Was this just a wonderful dream, or was it real? It had happened so quickly. Ten minutes ago she’d been so sad, and now she was filled with the most delicious happiness.

  She looked up into his eyes and smiled. ‘I must be mad,’ she whispered,
‘but I guess I do…’

  Jake pushed her back against the pillows, and covered her mouth with his in a lingering sweet kiss. She wound her arms about him and pressed herself to his hard chest.

  ‘We shouldn’t be doing this in here,’ she whispered.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said, lifting his mouth from hers for a second. ‘This is what I prescribe for all my patients—tender loving care from someone you love!’ He kissed her forehead lightly. ‘I want to look after you, my darling, for the rest of my life!’

  The nurse who’d opened the door behind them smiled, then went out again quietly.

  EPILOGUE

  ST CUTHBERT’S huge Victorian hall, surprisingly impressive for a hospital, was filled with a chattering crowd of people crowded into every available space. Round the walls paintings had been hung and on a makeshift platform at one end were myriad lights and a television camera, with a microphone dangling from loops in the ceiling. Cara swept a glance round the scene in disbelief. Only a few weeks ago the idea had been put forward to raise money—and now nearly the whole community seemed to be here!

  ‘I must say St Cuth’s doesn’t look much like a hospital at the moment—certainly not with all this crowd knocking back the champagne,’ observed Jake with a grin. ‘They’ve really transformed the old place—I often thought it was a pity this magnificent space wasn’t really used for anything productive.’

  ‘It’s a fantastic place for an art exhibition,’ agreed Cara, sipping her drink. ‘And Ursula’s paintings are set off to such advantage. I think she’s going to make a real mark for herself.’

  Jake looked down at her with a tender smile. ‘And she’s got you to thank for that, I know…’

  Cara opened her mouth to protest, and he put his hand up to stop her. ‘No use pretending you had nothing to do with her being asked to contribute—Peter Dunne let the cat out of the bag earlier and told me it had all been your idea! Why the big secret anyway about it being your project?’