Melting the Trauma Doc's Heart

by Alison Roberts

  People getting addicted to cosmetic surgery in the hope of making their lives perfect was no myth and body dysmorphic disorder—where people became obsessed with a slight or even imagined defect in their appearance—was something Olivia intended to research more thoroughly in the near future.

  The mental state of the last patient she checked on before discharging from the initial post-operative care was also a bit of a worry.

  ‘I’m confident we managed to get all the scar tissue out,’ Olivia assured her. ‘You should find a dramatic improvement in any discomfort you were having after you recover from the surgery.’

  Her patient was in tears. ‘I can’t look. I’m going to look worse than I did before I had the implants, aren’t I? Nobody’s going to want to even look at me. I’ll be flat-chested again and now I’ll have all these scars, as well. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to do something like this in my twenties. Why does anybody do it?’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up, Janie.’ Olivia took extra time to try and reassure this patient and let her know that there were counselling services available through the Institute that she might find helpful. She was running a little late for her six o’clock appointment by the time she left.

  ‘You’re so lucky, you know,’ Janie said by way of farewell. ‘You’re never going to need to even think of having any plastic surgery.’

  It was walking distance from the hospital to the Plastic Surgery Institute, which was one of many buildings devoted to private health care in this prestigious suburb of Auckland, some of which were converted mansions on either side of the tree-lined streets. Normally Olivia would have enjoyed the swirl of autumn leaves drifting down around her but she was trying to pinpoint why her day was feeling as if it had been somewhat unsatisfactory. The surgeries had all gone smoothly and theatre staff had been complimentary about her skills. She’d had plenty of practice in breast surgery during her training, though, and she’d taken great pride in doing the best job she could in breast reconstruction for women who’d had cancer surgery. Now that had been satisfying...

  The waiting room of the Institute was full, which wasn’t unusual. Any private clinic had to cater for clients who wanted an appointment after normal working hours. Olivia didn’t have a clinic to run this evening, however.

  ‘I’m just popping in for that six p.m. meeting,’ she told the receptionist. ‘I believe Simon wanted to see me?’

  ‘He’s waiting for you.’

  Olivia couldn’t miss the knowing hint in the look she was receiving. Had someone in the administrative staff started a rumour that something was going on between her and her boss? Maybe they all thought it was only a matter of time before something happened. She was single, after all, and who could resist the charms of one of the most eligible bachelors in Auckland’s A-list society?

  Olivia could, that’s who. She held the receptionist’s gaze until the young woman looked away, flushing slightly.

  ‘Can you let him know his next client is here already?’

  Simon’s office had an enormous desk, leather chairs and a glass display case of antique surgical instruments.

  ‘Sharon told me to tell you that your next client is here already.’

  ‘She can wait for a minute or two. Oh, wait... I think it’s a “he”. Our new campaign to persuade men that aesthetic surgery is not just for women is starting to pay off. Literally...’

  Olivia heard an echo of that slightly bitter compliment her last patient of the day had given her—that she was lucky that she wouldn’t have to think about surgical enhancement of any kind. Simon was the male equivalent, wasn’t he? Every feature perfectly symmetrical and his grooming and taste in clothes contributing to make him look years younger than forty-five. Even those grey streaks in that immaculate haircut could have been put there just to make him look more attractive.

  As he stood up from his desk and put his jacket back on, she thought he looked as though he’d just stepped out of a magazine page—from an advertisement for luxury Italian suits, perhaps.

  ‘So... Did you get my message?’

  ‘Um...’

  ‘You forgot to switch your phone back on after being in Theatre, didn’t you?’

  Olivia groaned. ‘Sorry... It’s been a long day. What was the message?’

  ‘A last-minute invitation to a charity gala tomorrow night. The guest speaker is a London doctor who rang here this morning asking after you. He knew your mother well, he said, and he wanted to arrange a chance to pass on his personal condolences. He was out of the country on a sabbatical at the time of her funeral, he said, and by the time he got back, you’d already made the move here.’

  Anybody who was anybody in London had known Olivia’s mother, Janice, thanks to her position as one of the city’s leading cardiologists and her thriving Harley Street practice. That spotlight had extended to Olivia, as her daughter, as well, bringing with it a pressure that had never felt comfortable. Escaping that spotlight was one of the reasons she had chosen to come back to New Zealand.

  ‘I’m not sure, Simon.’ Olivia knew she was frowning. ‘I’ve never liked being in a crowd of people I don’t know and any formal dresses I own are still in storage until I find an apartment I want to buy.’

  ‘But you’ve got a day off tomorrow, haven’t you? You could go shopping for a new dress. And this is how you get to know people. The important people.’

  Attending functions like charity galas had been pretty much her mother’s only social life. It had been at a charity event she had attended with her mother that she’d met Patrick, in fact—the man everybody, including herself, had expected her to marry. That breakup had been the other, even bigger reason she had decided to come back to the country of her birth to make a fresh start in her life. Olivia knew that her mother would have shrugged off the failed relationship as no more than an inconvenience. She also knew what she would have said about going to this event.

  Go, Olivia. It’s important to be seen. This is your career. The most important thing in your life. The only thing you can really count on...

  ‘You don’t have to go alone,’ Simon added with an encouraging smile. ‘I’ll be there. I’ll look after you, I promise.’

  Olivia couldn’t help glancing at the door as if looking for an escape route. Simon couldn’t possibly know how much of a nerve he was stepping on. That he was reminding her of exactly how her relationship with Patrick had started—and its disastrous ending not that long after her mother’s death—when he’d moved on to someone who offered an even better step up the social ladder.

  Simon had followed her glance. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’d better get on with seeing my next patient.’ He went to open the door for Olivia. ‘Let me know what you decide. Maybe we can meet up for a drink before the event and that way you won’t have to go in by yourself.’

  Olivia fished her phone out of her pocket and turned it on as she left the building. It really was a very bad habit to turn her phone off but she knew that a staff member could easily find her if there was a problem on theatre days and she hated even the possibility of distractions when she was operating. Hearing the chime of an incoming message, she glanced at the screen, expecting it to be the message Simon had left about the invitation to the gala tomorrow, but it wasn’t. It was a voicemail that had been left a couple of hours ago. From an unknown number.

  Curious, Olivia keyed in her code as soon as she was sitting behind the wheel of her car, turning on the ignition as the message started to play.

  ‘My name is Isaac Cameron,’ a male voice said. There was a hint of an accent there. An Irish lilt, maybe? ‘I’m a doctor at Cutler’s Creek Hospital.’

  Olivia gasped. Hearing the name of that small Central Otago township was disturbing, to say the least. She had a sudden urge to cut the call and delete the message but it was too late. She had been captured by the sound of the stranger’s voice
.

  ‘I don’t suppose you want to hear this, Olivia Donaldson, but—you know what? I’m going to tell you anyway.’

  She could hear the indrawn breath, as if the caller was about to start a lengthy story. And there was something about his tone that sent a shiver down Olivia’s spine. Without thinking, she turned off the engine of her car and slowly leaned back into her seat, touching the speakerphone icon on the screen. She had no idea what this was about but it felt like it was going to be something significant. Potentially life-changing?

  ‘I thought you should know that your father’s dying,’ the voice continued. ‘He’s got pancreatic cancer, which is what killed his father about twenty years ago. Not that that bothered you, from what I hear, seeing as you apparently refused to come to your grandfather’s funeral.’

  She could hear a judgemental note in his voice and that put her back up. For heaven’s sake, Olivia thought, I was only thirteen years old. I’d never even met my grandfather that I could remember. I hadn’t seen my father since he’d walked out on his family. Why would anyone think I was expected to travel from the other side of the world to go to a funeral for a stranger?

  ‘I wouldn’t have known anything about you,’ Isaac was saying now, ‘but I found your father crying over a box of old letters. And parcels. All the things that you’d sent back to him over the years without even bothering to open them.’

  Olivia’s jaw dropped. He was accusing her of something she knew nothing about. Letters? Parcels? She’d never seen anything from her father. He’d never even made a phone call. She could remember being in floods of tears that first Christmas after he’d gone and her mother trying to comfort her.

  ‘I know it’s difficult, Olivia, but you wouldn’t want to grow up in a place like Cutler’s Creek, believe me. I don’t think there’s even a proper school there. My new job in London is going to give us both the most amazing opportunities, you just wait and see. We can even think about getting you that pony you’ve always wanted.’

  Did her mother know something about that mail? Had she thought that cutting any links Olivia had to a small country town would help her embrace a new life in a huge city? She could imagine her mother being that determined. Convincing herself that she was doing the best thing for her daughter, even.

  She tuned back into the continuing voicemail. ‘He loves you. He wants the chance to tell you that before he dies. I have no idea how long he’s got but I imagine it’s not that long because he’s refusing to seek treatment.’

  Why would he do that? Olivia could feel the frown line between her eyes deepen. Pancreatic cancer could kill in a matter of weeks in some cases if nothing was done. Why didn’t he want to fight? Did he not have people in his life who could persuade him it was worth fighting?

  As if to answer her question, Isaac was talking at the same time. There was a rising note of something like anger behind his words now.

  ‘You probably don’t know and maybe you don’t even care but there’s a whole community here in Cutler’s Creek that thinks a great deal of your father. He’s a good man and I think it’s a crying shame that you turned your back on him.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Olivia said, her tone shocking her with both its volume and the outrage it contained. ‘It was totally the opposite...’

  ‘Maybe the past shouldn’t matter now,’ Isaac said, and it almost felt as if they were having a real conversation. ‘If the people around here knew about this, they’d move heaven and earth to grant any last wish he might have but your father doesn’t want anyone to know and, anyway, there’s only one person who can do that, and that’s you. You could stop him dying with that regret on his mind.’

  There was a long moment’s silence, then, as if the speaker was taking a long breath. Trying to control his emotional outburst, perhaps? Yes...when he spoke again, it was at a much slower pace. In a much quieter tone.

  ‘I don’t know you, Dr Olivia Donaldson,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure I’d want to know someone who could turn their back on someone who loves them that much but I thought you should know. Before it’s too late. Because...because if you’ve inherited even a fraction of the compassion for others that your father has, you wouldn’t want to refuse to give him the one thing that would mean so much to him.’

  Olivia could hear a breath being released as a sigh. ‘You never know...one day it might be your dying regret. That you never gave him a chance...’

  The click told her the call was ended. Another voice was giving her the automatic options of saving, deleting or listening to the message again. Olivia simply turned her phone off and, for the longest time, she sat there without moving a muscle. She was stunned. Shaking, even.

  It shouldn’t matter this much. It was ancient history. Maybe she was just feeling angry that a stranger was blaming her so unfairly. Telling her that it was her behaviour that had caused someone grief. Enough grief that, after all these years—decades, in fact—this father that she hadn’t seen since she was a young girl had been crying? She tried to shake off the unpleasant knot that was trying to form in her stomach. She didn’t care about this man. She hated him, in fact. He’d walked out on her without a backward glance.

  Or had he?

  Was it true? About the mail? What had been in those parcels? Books, maybe. The thought slid into her head uninvited. Unwelcome. Her father had always given her books. He’d been the one to read the bedtime stories when she was too young to read for herself. She could remember the way he’d lounged on the edge of her bed, his elbow propped on her pillow so that she could snuggle into the crook of his arm as she listened.

  Olivia closed her eyes tightly. She recognised that prickly sensation that was tears trying to form. She hadn’t shed any tears over her father for longer than she could remember. But remembering him reading to her had unlocked so many things that she’d buried. There had been a time when she’d missed him so much... She’d missed his hugs, that gleam in his eye that told her he was proud of her, that rich chuckle that was his laughter and...and even his smell, which came from that old-fashioned aftershave he insisted on using.

  That knot in her stomach was tightening enough to be painful. Olivia felt like she was being attacked on all sorts of emotional fronts. She’d only lost her mother a matter of months ago and she was going to become an orphan now? With no close family at all? There was a possibility that her mother had betrayed her long ago but even if that was the case, why hadn’t her father tried harder? How unfair was it that he had given up and then blamed her? Okay, she had refused to go to her grandfather’s funeral when her mother had passed on the information and message from her father and she had written a response telling him that she never wanted to hear from him again but she’d only been a teenager. A kid. He’d been the adult. If he’d really cared that much, he would have tried again.

  And, on top of all that, here was this complete stranger judging her and deciding she wasn’t a person worth knowing. It was so unfair that it couldn’t be allowed to go unanswered. Olivia flicked her phone on. She was going to return that call and tell this Isaac Cameron exactly what she thought of someone who could attack someone they knew nothing about.

  Maybe she would write another letter to her father as well and put things straight about who had turned their back on whom. Or...her finger was still a little shaky as she poised it over the icons on the screen of her phone...she could do it face to face. Like an adult instead of a petulant teenager. Because, if she did that, she’d know for sure what the truth actually was. And maybe she needed to know the truth.

  The icon that she chose to press instead was a browser. Just to find out how hard it might be to get to Cutler’s Creek. Dunedin was the nearest city but there was an airport in Queenstown, as well. With a rental car it wouldn’t take too long to get deeper into the centre of the South Island. If she left early enough, she could be back in Auckland by tomorrow night. Not early enough to attend that
gala function but, to be honest, that added to the appeal of the plan she was formulating.

  By the time Olivia Donaldson pulled out of the car park and was headed into rush-hour traffic to get to her central city apartment, she had been online to organise every minute of her day off. She’d also sent Simon a text message.

  So sorry but I won’t be able to make it tomorrow night after all. Something’s come up and I need to head south for the day. It’s a personal thing...

  CHAPTER TWO

  RURAL NEW ZEALAND was a lot wilder and emptier than English countryside.

  Olivia Donaldson had had memories of the country’s biggest city, Auckland, because she’d lived there until she was about eight years old but she’d never been to a small town like Cutler’s Creek.

  The main street boasted a church, community hall, petrol station and a pub. A war memorial marked the start of the more intensive commercial area that was, surprisingly, big enough to warrant a decent-sized supermarket amongst cafés and quirky-looking second-hand shops and, on the other side of town before the buildings changed from shops to houses, Olivia spotted the fire station, where an ambulance was parked alongside the fire truck.

  She pulled in to stop and stretch her legs after the drive, which had taken a fair bit of concentration—especially that last winding stretch through a gorge. She needed a moment to take a deep breath, too, before she followed the yellow road sign that indicated she would have to turn right off the main road to find the local hospital. Her heels tapped on the paved footpath as she walked a few steps to have a closer look at what seemed to be a deserted emergency response station. Were there people in there, she wondered, or were the firies and ambulance officers here all volunteers who would only come in if needed? She was pretty sure that would be the case. Government funding didn’t run to luxuries like paid staff for emergency services in every small town in the back of beyond. It was astonishing, in fact, that Cutler’s Creek still had its own hospital.