Bachelor Cure

CHAPTER NINE

THE next weeks passed like a dream, with Mike feeling as if a whole new world had opened up for him. Life was brighter, clearer-fantastic!

Everywhere he moved, there was Tessa.

Tessa’s registration came through incredibly speedily. Her medical credentials, it seemed, were impeccable. The medical registration board thought so, and, on reflection, so did Mike.

The town was lucky to have her. Mike was lucky to have her-he just couldn’t believe that it was happening. He felt like pinching himself to ensure its reality.

But Tess was real enough.

Mike watched her as she assisted him in rejoining Jason’s torn Achilles tendon and he couldn’t fault her anaesthetic skill.

He listened to her counsel Doreen, fiancée of Les Wade’s nephew, Hugh. Doreen had drifted to Tess rather than Mike, wanting a female shoulder to cry on. Hugh was still in Melbourne where his uncle had started the long process of rehabilitation for his burns. Doreen and Hugh had postponed their wedding and Doreen was wavering between support of Hugh and fear that Hugh’s guilt might prevent the marriage altogether.

Mike could only marvel at the way Tess stayed silent and let Doreen spill out her guilt and her anguish. The walls between the room Tess used as a surgery and the room Mike used as a file room needed to be soundproofed-long term there were all sorts of arrangements to be made if Tess was to stay-and Doreen’s anguish was loud. Mike, sitting alone as he wrote up patient notes, could hear every word.

There were only gentle murmurs from Tess, though. Tess knew when to stay silent, as well as when to bounce with enthusiasm.

‘Why don’t you go to Melbourne and stay with Hugh?’ she suggested softly, when Doreen had sobbed herself dry. ‘Hugh will be feeling dreadful and that’s where you should be. At his side.’

Doreen finally left, still sniffing into her handkerchief but comforted all the same. ‘Are you sure it’d be OK?’ she asked as Tess saw her to the door. ‘I mean…our relatives all blame us for sleeping together in the first place. They think that’s one reason why Les is in the mess he’s in. If I go to Hugh now…’

‘You follow your heart,’ Tess suggested gently. ‘If you think it’s right, don’t let anyone else stand in your way.’

Follow your heart…

Then Mike watched the way Tess helped her grandfather find his feet again. She spent hours assisting him to make his unsteady way along the hospital corridors, as if she had all the time in the world, and as if spending hour after hour watching an old man learn the skills of using a walking-frame was the most important thing she could possible be doing.

Henry thrived under her care, and Mike couldn’t believe the speed of his recovery.

Tess got to know the locals. She introduced herself to every player of the Jancourt Football Club, and took the job of learning the rules of her new-found passion deadly seriously. To Mike’s astonishment, she even started knitting a scarf in team colours.

‘I think I’ll do two matching ones,’ she told him, clacking away at her knitting needles with the seriousness of a grandmother. ‘Or maybe just one long one so we can wear an end each…’

And at night…

At night the farm lay empty. Tessa had cleaned it so she could stay there, and she still visited Doris and her babies each night and checked on the place, but late each night she returned to town and she took Mike into her arms-and she slept exactly where she wanted to be. With her Mike.

Even Strop seemed to approve. When Tess was there the dog left the bed to them, and in Tessa’s body Mike found a peace he’d never thought to have.

Life had never been this good, Mike thought blissfully as he loved his woman. Mike had never known-never dreamed-it could be so good.

He held his love in his arms and he loved her-but only half of him believed in his good fortune. The other half of him knew he was living in a soap bubble.

‘Hey, I’m not about to disappear,’ Tess teased gently on the anniversary of their first two weeks together. ‘I’m here for good.’

Mike didn’t believe it, but he held her just the same.

In a town like Bellanor it was impossible to keep such a relationship a secret. After that first night-when Mike had emerged to Monday morning after a night spent with Tessa-he had been met with knowing looks and laughter.

‘Bloody good thing too, Doc.’ That was the general consensus. ‘What took you so long?’

So long… A whole three days…

By the end of the two weeks the general approval was becoming laced with a stronger message.

‘So, when are you going to make an honest woman of her, Doc? Get a mother for that crazy mutt of yours…?’

Marriage…

Mike had never thought of such a thing, but, once suggested, the idea stayed in his mind and wouldn’t leave. He looked at it from all sides and knew his vow had definitely been broken already. He could hardly make it worse.

That night, Tess came with him when he did his weekly house call to Stan Harper. Stan was still suffering his chest pains and Mike was increasingly worried about him. His heart seemed strong and healthy, and yet Stan himself seemed to be almost fading.

‘I’m just feeling bloody lousy, Doc,’ Stan told him with an apologetic look at Tess. ‘Pardon my French, miss.’

Tess had been sitting at ease at Stan’s kitchen table while Mike listened to Stan’s chest, and her face was sympathetic. ‘I don’t understand Australian swear words,’ Tess lied. ‘I’m trying to get Mike to teach them to me but he likes me unspoiled. I know “damn” means more than just a big puddle of water, but do you think he’ll explain? No way!’

Stan chuckled and his misery lifted for a little while-but only for a little while.

‘I’d like you to come into hospital for a few days,’ Mike suggested as Stan hauled down his sweater. ‘Stan, there doesn’t seem anything wrong with your heart and the last three electrocardiographs have been normal, but if you’re still having the pain…well, something’s going on. Let’s have you in and do a full check-up.’

But Stan would have none of it.

‘Nope. I’m staying here. But you’ll come again next Saturday?’ His voice was anxious and Mike knew just how lonely the old man was.

‘Tell you what,’ Mike suggested. ‘How about if I get the district nurse to call? I’ll still come next week, but she’ll come every other day as well. Just until we’re sure everything’s right.’

But Stan wasn’t having that either. ‘I don’t want a fuss,’ he said definitely. He sighed. ‘Sometimes…well, yeah, I get chest pain and, yeah, I’m miserable but it’s nothing that having Cathy back wouldn’t fix.’ He sighed again and looked closely from Mike to Tess. ‘But look at the pair of you. Here’s me fretting about myself when I should be saying how glad I am to see you finally wrapped around a woman’s little finger, young Mike. You’re smelling of April and May if ever anyone was. So when are you two going to tie the knot?’

Tess blushed and Mike shook his head.

‘That’s for us to know and you to guess,’ he told Stan firmly-but the thought of what lay ahead was warm inside him. He glanced sideways at Tess and smiled-and she smiled straight back.

‘Don’t hang around too much, then,’ Stan begged. ‘It’s too bloody important. You grab her while she’s here. And hold on for dear life.’

The conversation in the Aston Martin on the way home was strained. Mike was trying to think about Stan, when all he wanted was to concentrate on Tess. They’d left Strop snoozing under Henry’s bed for the afternoon, and it was lovely to be able to see Tessa instead of liver and white spots whenever he glanced sideways, but the sight of Tess-and Tess’s leggings-wasn’t helping his concentration.

‘I’m still worried about Stan,’ he told her stiffly.

‘Mmm.’ Tess pulled her knees up to her chin and hugged them. She was wearing black leggings and a vast purple sweater that covered her from her knees right up. She looked smashing.

‘I don’t think he’s eating,’ she said.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Well, when we went there last week, I prowled,’ she told him. ‘When you had Stan in the bedroom, giving him the complete once-over, I poked my nose into his kitchen cupboards and just had a look at things-like the level of cereal in his cornflakes packet and what groceries there were and where they were. And tonight-when Stan walked us out to the car and I dived back inside because I’d left my bag- I had a fast look again and nearly everything’s exactly the same. He hasn’t touched his cornflakes. There’s exactly the same number of eggs in the fridge as last week and when I picked one up and shook it, it sort of rattled-you know how really old eggs do? I reckon he’s eaten a few bowls of tinned tomato soup, and not a lot else. Even the packet of bread in the freezer is the same one as last week. I ripped a little edge off the packet last week so I’d know it-and it’s the same packet, only about six slices down.’

‘You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes.’

‘I am,’ she said smugly, but her smile faded. ‘Do you agree?’

‘It fits,’ Mike said slowly. ‘That’s one of the reasons I’d like to admit him to hospital. He’s losing a lot of weight.’

‘He’s missing his Cathy so much.’

‘Yeah,’ Mike said grimly. ‘Love’s like that. Once it hits, you can’t get over it.’

‘It’s a problem,’ Tess agreed, with a sideways glance at her love.

Silence. There seemed nothing else to say. The sleek Aston Martin ate up the miles between Jancourt and Bellanor and the silence stretched on and on.

Mike cast his own sideways glance. Tess was now looking straight ahead, peacefully contemplating the evening sky, and he came to an instant decision. This was impossible. He wanted her so much… Taking her in his arms each night, it was suddenly no longer enough.

‘Marry me, Tess,’ he said suddenly-urgently-and then held his breath.

‘Marry you?’

‘That’s what I said.’

Tess closed her eyes. He hesitated, and then pulled the car off the road so they were facing down the valley to the town below. A bellbird was calling from the bushland outside the car, high and sweet and lovely.

And Tess sat silent for longer than he had dreamed possible.

‘Tess?’

Surely there was only one answer here. Dear God, he loved her, and Henry had said she wanted marriage. She must love him.

But finally Tess opened her eyes, and as she did he knew what the answer was going to be. She turned to him and shook her head so her flaming curls flew free and her eyes were bleak.

‘I love you, Mike,’ she whispered. ‘But I’m not going to marry you. Not yet.’

He moistened lips that were suddenly dry. His eyes didn’t leave her face.

‘May I ask why not?’

She tilted her chin with that look of defiance and pride he’d first seen in her-a look he’d come to know and love.

‘Because you’re asking me to marry you against your better judgement, and that’s asking for trouble.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you think you’re letting your mother down. By loving me, you’ve broken your vow. You’d marry me, and then you’d wait for the time when disaster happens. You know it’ll happen some time, and you’re right. Try as I may, if you marry me then some time in the future I’ll interfere with your medicine. Sure, I’ll help. Sure, I’ll be beside you and medicine here will be better because of me, but when I finally get in your way I doubt it’ll count on my part. You’ll hate yourself. And you may well hate me.’

‘You won’t interfere with my medicine,’ he said calmly, surely. ‘And there’s no way I can end up by hating you. Tess, I’ve thought this through.’

‘No, you haven’t. Not properly.’ Tess gave a lopsided grin and a shaky laugh. ‘Mike, life will interfere with your medicine. All sorts of things can happen. A tree could fall on your head and you won’t be effective as a doctor because you’re squashed flat. You’d forgive the tree-or you would if you weren’t squashed-because you haven’t made any vows about never going near trees, but if I alter your life plan one bit and something goes awry because of it, you won’t forgive me. Because when I interfere with your medicine you’ll think it’s because you broke your vow.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I love you, Mike, but I want more than that-and I’m prepared to wait.’

Mike stared straight ahead through the windscreen, trying to sort out her words. Dear God… He was trying to pretend she wasn’t saying exactly what he knew already-what he knew was the truth.

‘This is stupid,’ he said slowly.

‘It might be stupid but it’s how it is,’ she told him, and he knew she wouldn’t budge from her position. He’d been thinking things through, but so had Tess. He was prepared to risk problems because of his vow. What he hadn’t counted on was that Tess wasn’t.

She had it all figured out.

‘Mike, I love you,’ she repeated softly. ‘And I’m prepared to hang in for the long haul here. But I want this disaster to happen before you totally commit yourself to me. I want you to see what loving me is all about-that it means letting life run its course side by side.’

‘That’s what I want.’

‘No, you don’t. Not yet.’ Tess took a deep breath. ‘Look, Mike, let’s leave it. Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing here. I want you so much it hurts, but I’m not letting you make any more vows until you’ve come to terms with the last one you made. Until you let it go and accept that you can live with its release.’

She took his face in her hands and she kissed him gently on the lips. ‘And you don’t see what I mean yet, but I do. You need to wait. We both need to wait, Mike, to see what life throws at us. But no weddings. Just love… And let’s just see if that’s enough.’

Tess wouldn’t budge from that position, and in the end he accepted it. He had no choice. It was crazy, he thought. She was wrong.

Oh, she wasn’t wrong in that she thought he’d blame himself if he was distracted. What she didn’t see was that he needn’t be. With Tess as another doctor, surely there need never be a time when she’d stand in his way.

Meanwhile, though…life was still infinitely sweet. He and Tess worked side by side. The workload in the valley was magically halved. He had time to raise his head from work, and whenever he raised his head Tess was there, ready and willing to slip into his arms.

With his granddaughter as his chief medical specialist, Henry Westcott improved beyond any expectations. Five weeks from the time they’d found him, Tess and Mike prepared to take the old man home.

‘I’ll need to stay on the farm from now on,’ Tess told Mike seriously on the Friday night before Henry was due for discharge. This would have to be their last night together. Both of them knew the difficulties now. The farm was too far from the hospital for Mike to be on call, even if he wished to stay with Tess.

He didn’t. Even though Mike’s body screamed its need for Tess, Mike knew Henry well enough to know that Tess sleeping unwed with Mike in Henry’s house would upset the old man enormously.

But Tess was right. She had to stay.

‘So we need to marry.’ Mike smoothed the curls away from Tessa’s face and kissed her deeply on the lips. ‘Soon. Strop’s going to miss you, and I’ll miss you worse. Marry me.’

‘Nope.’

‘Nope?’

‘Nope. You haven’t had your disaster yet.’

‘I’m not intending to have a disaster.’

‘It’ll happen. I’ll tell you what, though.’ She kissed him back, feather kisses that started on the tip of his nose, descended to his throat and kept on going. ‘If you haven’t had your disaster by the time I’m fifty, I’ll marry you regardless.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘Don’t you want to marry me when I’m fifty?’

Mike groaned. Her kisses were brushing his naked skin, down across his chest. Down…down…

‘I may not live until you’re fifty. I may not live another ten minutes. Tess…’

‘It’s a perfectly good offer. Take it or leave it.’

‘Tess…’

‘I’m serious.’ She stopped kissing him for long enough to rise and brush the hair back from his eyes and meet his look with all gravity. ‘Mike, it’ll happen. I know it will. Let’s just take this one day at a time and go from there.’

So on Saturday afternoon they borrowed the hospital car and Tess and Mike and Strop took Henry home, with Tess and Mike trying hard to act as though they were friends and not lovers. It didn’t quite come off, but if Henry knew better he didn’t let on. His joy at being home-at seeing Doris and her babies, and greeting his goats and sitting in his own armchair before the kitchen fire-was too great to let Mike’s occasional stiffness mar it.

He sat and gazed around at their handiwork in delight.

‘It’s a bloody wonder,’ he told her. ‘Eh, Tess, girl…’ His voice broke in rough emotion and Mike found himself feeling almost as choked up as Henry.

He had to leave. He’d had fallen into the habit of dropping in to see Stan Harper every Saturday evening so now he helped check out Henry’s use of the walking-frame and his ability to get from the bathroom to the bedroom and back to the kitchen, and then it was time to go.

‘Tess will take good care of you, sir,’ he told Henry. ‘And the district nurse will drop in on a daily basis.’

That was what they’d arranged. Also Matt, Jacob Jeffries’s eldest lad, was coming each weekday morning-ostensibly to do some work on the fences around the house but in reality to keep a quiet eye on Henry for the first few weeks of his convalescence. That meant Tess could keep her morning clinic going and, as Henry grew stronger, she could take on more.

‘You’re not staying now?’ Henry demanded, pulling himself out of his pleasurable haze to realise what Mike intended. ‘Hell, you have to stay, boy. I asked Tess especially to cater for all of us. She’s cooking a roast.’

‘I am, too,’ Tess said proudly. ‘Roast pork.’

Mike’s eyebrows hit his hair. Pork? Surely he’d still counted eight babies.

‘You’re kidding!’

Tessa’s eyes crinkled in laughter at his tone. ‘Don’t even think it,’ she told him. ‘Perish the thought. This is a nice anonymous leg of pork bought from a nice anonymous supermarket. Donated, I’m sure, by a nice anonymous pig. I brought it in at dead of night so Doris wouldn’t see, and I swear I’ll bury the remains at dead of night, too.’

‘Very wise.’

‘So you will stay?’ Tess grinned down at her grandfather and then back to him. ‘I’ve bought a can of dog food for Strop, and for us I have everything Grandpa ordered. Apple sauce. Butternut pumpkin. Roast potatoes and fresh peas, with lemon meringue pie to follow…’

‘Lemon meringue pie…’ Both men were now staring at her, their faces reflecting disbelief, and Strop was looking just plain hopeful. Bother the dog food!

‘Hey, I’m not just a pretty face.’ And then Tess relented and chuckled. ‘Well, to be honest, Mrs Thompson made the pie for me, but the rest is mine. Do stay, Mike. We’d both like you to.’

He hesitated, but he was lost. Lemon meringue pie… Lemon meringue pie and Tessa… And Strop would break his heart if he hauled him away from these smells.

‘Stan only needs a social visit,’ he said slowly. ‘I guess I can drop in tomorrow.’

He couldn’t.

At eleven the next morning he finally arrived at Stan Harper’s farm-and Stan was dead.

‘It must have been a massive infarct,’ Tessa said softly. It was Monday morning. She stood back from the autopsy table and looked across at Mike. She’d insisted on doing this. There was no way she was letting him do the autopsy on his own. ‘There’s no doubt,’ she told him now.

‘No.’

‘Time of death, late on Saturday night?’

‘How about late afternoon Saturday,’ he said heavily, and Tess winced. ‘No. There’s no way we can say that.’

‘There’s no way we can say it was definitely later.’

‘OK.’ Tess crossed to the sink and started washing, watching him out of the corner of her eye. ‘I’ll accept that. It might have happened late Saturday afternoon.’

‘When I should have been there.’

‘By the look of this damage, there’s no way you could have helped, even if you had been there,’ she told him. ‘The artery’s completely blocked. You know as well as I do that this wasn’t a minor, recoverable heart attack. If he’d been in the best-equipped hospital in the world, I doubt he’d have been saved.’

‘But there were no signs… Apart from the pain, which we couldn’t pinpoint. The electrocardiograph was normal. I tried to get him to go to Melbourne and see a specialist but he wouldn’t.’

‘That was his choice.’ Tessa’s voice was flat and devoid of emotion. Her eyes were calmly watchful.

‘I should have insisted.’

‘And he would have refused.’

‘At least I should have been there.’

Here it was. The crux of the whole matter.

‘Are you saying if you’d been there you might have saved him?’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ He turned his face away and stared sightlessly at the bare wall. ‘Who can say? He’d run himself down. He wasn’t eating. If I’d spent more time there…bullied him into eating…’

‘Instead of spending time with me,’ she said softly.

‘That did have something to do with it.’

‘The fact that I’m taking so much of your workload that you have more time than ever before has nothing to do with it? The fact that if I hadn’t been here, sharing your work, you might never have had time to pay any social visits at all?’

But he wasn’t listening. ‘I should have been there on Saturday evening,’ he said solidly. ‘I shouldn’t have stayed on with you and your grandfather. I knew Stan was expecting me.’

‘He wasn’t expecting you. You’d called when you could. It was only because I’ve been able to give you free time that you’ve been able to go at all.’ Tess sighed.

‘Mike, Stan may well have been dead already if you’d arrived on Saturday afternoon-or he might even have been fine and then died after you left. There’s no sign of previous scarring here. Apart from the chest pain, which you couldn’t pin down on examination, there was no sign of such a massive problem. This was an act of God, Mike. It has nothing to do with you.’

‘I should have been there.’

Silence. Tess dried her hands and pulled off her lab coat. Then she crossed the floor and took his hands in hers. He stared sightlessly down at her, his heart bleak.

‘Mike, is this our disaster?’ she asked softly.

‘What…?’

‘Will you hold this against us?’

He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t.

‘I should have been there,’ he repeated dully. How could he say anything else? It was all he could think. He’d let Stan down. He’d broken his vow. He’d known this would happen.

‘Do you really believe that if you didn’t love me then Stan would still be alive?’

But he couldn’t answer. His face was cold and bleak and hard, and it reflected how he felt.

‘I don’t know, Tess,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t know. All I know is that-’

‘That you want me to go away?’

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them he knew what he had to say.

‘Yes, please,’ he said.

Silence.

‘I knew this would happen,’ Tess said softly-finally-and the pain in her voice was clear for him to hear. ‘Aren’t you pleased now that you didn’t make another vow? Aren’t you pleased we’re not married?’

She walked slowly out of the room and closed the door behind her.