In Dr. Darling’s Care

CHAPTER FIVE

Memo:

I will not go and see what the trouble is. Lizzie is a fine doctor. I need to stay off my feet. If I make myself useful then she might not stay.

I will not think about Lizzie staying.

I will go and ring Emily and tell her…tell her… Tell her what?

I will not ring Emily.

I will not go and see what the trouble is. Good doctors do not interfere with another good doctor’s work.

I will just make sure…

TROUBLE.

Lizzie could hear a child sobbing in pain as soon as she swung open the dividing door into Emergency. May met her, looking concerned.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be off duty?’ she asked, and the nurse shook her head.

‘One of the other girls has flu. With Emily away we’re tight. I’m working split shift till midnight. And I know Terry.’

‘Terry?’

‘He’s a friend of one of my kids. His parents are farmers. Sensible folk.’ She glanced over to a cubicle where the child was rocking back and forth on the bed with his father trying to hold him down. ‘Um…you should know that they’re a bit puritan. Or very puritan. They won’t even tell me what’s wrong. They want Harry to see the boy-because he’s a man, I gather, and what’s wrong with Terry is a man’s problem.’

‘He’s how old?’

‘Eleven.’

‘Man’s problem. Right.’ Lizzie unconsciously braced herself. Problems like this happened all the time in a big city emergency department. Problems out of left field. Like the biker who refused to be treated unless he could keep his pit bull terrier under his jacket all the time-a bit of a problem when she needed to take X-rays. Or the parent who refused to let go of a baby when the child needed resuscitation.

Problems. She could handle problems.

‘Is Harry awake?’ May asked, and she shook her head.

‘He might be awake but he’s not working tonight. He’s a patient himself.’

‘But-’

‘Come on, May,’ she said, grinning. ‘We can handle this. What’s a mere man’s problem for two competent women?’ She pinned her efficient, doctor-in-charge-of-the-world smile on her face, shrugged on the white coat that May was holding out to her and walked over to the bed.

The parents seemed to unconsciously stiffen. There was no welcome at all.

‘Hi,’ she told them. ‘I’m Dr Lizzie Darling. I’m looking after Dr McKay’s patients while he’s ill. What seems to be the problem?’

They didn’t reply. The man held his son tighter and the woman sank down onto a bedside chair and wept. They both looked away from her. Then the child whimpered in his father’s arms and clutched his groin. He doubled over and his face was bleached white.

‘Where’s Dr McKay?’ the farmer growled, but Lizzie had seen enough. A hurting child wasn’t to be put aside because his parents were worried about which doctor they wanted. She sat on the bed beside the farmer and moved to prise the little boy’s hands away from his groin.

‘Terry, let me see what the matter is. I’m a doctor. I can help.’

‘It’s his… You can’t…’ his mother whispered, but enough was enough.

‘I’m a qualified doctor,’ she told them, her voice stern. ‘I’ve treated hundreds of children in my time in medical practice. There’s nothing here to shock me, and I’m not interfering with Terry’s privacy. Terry, I need to examine you. I can’t stop the pain unless I know what’s wrong.’

His parents looked wildly at each other. Terry whimpered again and started to sob. Lizzie signalled to May. The nurse moved in, took the farmer’s hand and propelled him forward.

‘Let Dr Darling see what’s happening,’ she said. ‘She’s good. Don’t hold her up.’

The farmer moved a whole six inches back.

For heaven’s sake. What was their problem? This wasn’t something like a blood transfusion, Lizzie thought, where religious beliefs might be an issue. It was pure and stupid coyness.

Coyness or not, Terry had been inculcated with his parents’ obsession for decency. The little boy was clutching the front of his pyjama pants and he was looking up at her in pure terror.

‘What is it, Terry?’

‘It hurts,’ he whispered. He threw a scared look at his parents, as if expecting punishment, but his need for help was overriding what he’d been taught. ‘Me…me balls…’

His testicles.

Lizzie nodded. It was what she’d been starting to expect. Terry was the right age for this sort of problem.

But the easy things had to be excluded first. ‘Have you had an infection?’ she asked. ‘Has it been sore down there for a while?’

‘No. Only tonight. After dinner.’ He gave another moan and clutched himself again.

‘I need to see, Terry.’

‘But…you’re a girl.’ Another look at his parents and what he saw there seemed to cement his conviction as to what was right and what was absolutely wrong. He clutched himself even tighter. It was apparent to everyone that his dignity was more important than his need for assistance.

He looked up at her wildly and Lizzie knew if she touched him she’d spark hysteria. Maybe from all of them.

Now what? Lizzie took a deep breath. ‘Look, this is foolish-’

‘Can I help?’

Harry.

She turned and Harry was right behind her, balancing on his crutches in the doorway. What was he doing here? She cast him a glance that was half exasperated, half relieved.

‘We have a bad case of sex discrimination here,’ she told him, and he nodded. He’d been listening for a while, then.

‘And now’s not the time to take it to the equal opportunity commissioner?’ His eyes were smiling at her, and she thought suddenly, Great. It was great that he was here.

She didn’t need him. She shouldn’t.

But it was great.

‘Stand back and let me see,’ he told her, so she did just that while Harry bent over the little boy. To her indignation there wasn’t the slightest hesitation in the child agreeing to let Harry see.

‘You know, Dr Lizzie’s not really a girl,’ Harry told the little boy as he adjusted the child’s pyjamas. ‘She’s a doctor. For future reference, I think you and your parents need to figure out the difference. But for now I can look after you.’

Lizzie’s not really a girl…

‘Hey,’ Lizzie said indignantly from behind him. ‘I like being a girl.’

‘Stethoscope or pantyhose, take your pick.’ He gave her a grin over his shoulder. He was leaning heavily on the bed, and she moved to take his crutches before they toppled. ‘It seems in Terry’s terms you can’t have both.’

She hesitated. That grin had the power to deflect her but some things were important. The crutches were in her hands now. They should be in his. She glared. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded. ‘You can’t stand up.’

‘I’m a one-legged wonder. It’s time you realised that. Now, Dr Darling, turn your face to the wall and let Terry and me get on with secret men’s business.’

Turn your face to the wall? She swallowed and glared some more, but he was no longer paying her attention. All his attention was on Terry. Lizzie and May were left to talk to themselves.

Even the parents had turned away. Some people took privacy to absurd levels, Lizzie thought. To raise a child with this level of paranoia about personal privacy was asking for trouble.

At least Harry was here. She could have managed this, she thought. She could.

But it was just as well Harry was here.

There was silence during the examination. Terry had stopped whimpering and the parents were shocked and speechless. Waiting for the worst.

Had they looked themselves? By the appearance of fear on their faces, they seemed to think it could be anything that Harry was finding down there. Good grief.

‘I wonder if they changed his nappies when he was a baby?’ May whispered behind her hand, and Lizzie shushed her but then had to choke back a giggle.

She was a doctor. Not a girl. She had to remember that.

‘There’s no sign of infection,’ Harry said at last. ‘But it’s really tender. I need to do a test for a urinary tract infection. Can we get a sample?’

‘I guess we can if you hold the bottle,’ Lizzie told him. ‘I bet that’s men’s business as well.’ May snorted, turned it into a cough and caught her eye, and suddenly the two women were grinning at each other like fools.

Or like…friends?

Where had that thought come from? Lizzie wondered, but it consolidated. Here in this little room with this rigid farming family, with the caring doctor with the gammy leg and the kindly smile, with the laughing nurse sharing a joke…

She could stay here.

Now, there was another crazy thought. She had no business thinking about long-term plans when she should be concentrating on the needs of an ill child. But there was little to concentrate on when it was Harry who had to cope with obtaining a urine sample.

‘I’ll fetch the bottle,’ May said, and Lizzie stepped out of the room as well so that she could do her grinning in private.

‘Collecting urine samples isn’t our Dr McKay’s favourite job, but serve him right,’ May muttered, once the bottle had been handed over. While this intensely personal operation was going on there was nothing they could do but wait. ‘Men. Do you think you and I should retire to the kitchen and do a little knitting, Dr Darling?’

‘Could you run the tests?’ Harry asked, and handed the bottle through the door. He looked from Lizzie to May and back again and added. ‘Please?’

‘See?’ May said darkly. ‘Running tests on little bottles of urine. That counts as cooking. Women’s work. Keep them barefoot and pregnant…’

‘And in the lab where they belong.’ Lizzie grinned and took the bottle from Harry. As she turned toward the lab she was aware of him watching her.

He watched her all the way down the corridor and May watched him.

Well, well, well.

‘There’s no sign of infection.’

Minutes later Lizzie had the results of the urine sample test. ‘Nothing,’ she told him.

Harry parked his crutches and sank into a chair in the nurses’ station. ‘The tenderness is getting worse.’

‘Torsion?’

‘It has to be.’

They stared at each other. The laughter of a few minutes ago had disappeared. Each knew what was happening.

In boys this age it could occur out of the blue-a twisting of the testes inside the scrotum. Left alone, the testis would lose all blood supply and would die.

The only way to manage the problem was to operate. Now.

‘You’re not up to operating,’ she told him.

‘The alternative is sending him to Melbourne, but by the time he reaches Melbourne the damage will have been done. He’s risking the loss of his testicle. There are implications for long-term fertility. We need to move.’

Lizzie swallowed. ‘He may already… The damage may already be irreversible.’

‘He’s only been in real pain for twenty minutes. If we move fast…’

‘You can’t.’

‘Of course I can. I’ll get a stool set up in Theatre. It’s a simple operation and I assume you can give an anaesthetic.’

‘For something like this? Of course I can.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’

‘I’m a woman,’ she told him, making her voice meek. ‘You think I should be allowed in the operating suite?’

‘We’ll rig up a sheet,’ he told her, his eyes creasing again with the laughter she was starting to love. ‘We wouldn’t want to shock our Dr Darling, now, would we?’

It was a straightforward operation, for which Lizzie was profoundly grateful. Despite his protestations, Harry was starting to look distinctly grey around the edges. It had been a long trip back by ambulance, even if he had been able to lie down. He was six days post-trauma and his body was still not close to recovered.

‘I’m fine,’ he growled as he saw her watching him. ‘Concentrate on your anaesthetic.’

‘Yes, sir.’ She adjusted the mask on the little boy’s face and turned back to her monitors. He’d gone to sleep without any problem at all. There’d been no more hassle with either Terry himself or his parents-it seemed that once he was asleep Lizzie could be a doctor and not a female.

The anaesthetic was textbook simple. Terry was a healthy little eleven-year-old with no problems other that the one Harry was intent on fixing. She could afford to let her attention divide a little so that she could watch Harry.

The man was seriously skilled. His fingers were swift and nimble, not hesitating in the least. He swabbed the area, draped and made a neat incision, wincing as he saw what lay exposed.

‘Poor kid. No wonder he’s been complaining. If this happened to me I’d be climbing walls.’

‘Twisted?’

‘The testis has turned inside the scrotum. Hell. There’s no blood getting through at all.’

Silence. It was a tricky little procedure, manoeuvring it back.

Harry’s fingers were gently shifting, moving the testis into a more natural position, enabling the blood vessels to work…

‘Ah…’

The theatre-collectively Lizzie and May-held its breath.

‘Ah?’ Lizzie said.

‘Colour.’

Colour. She knew what he meant.

OK, for many men one damaged testicle didn’t mean infertility, but often it did. To condemn an eleven-year-old to a lifetime prospect of never becoming a dad…

‘It’s even better than your leg,’ she said in quiet satisfaction, and he cast a startled glance up at her.

‘Hey. We’re talking infertility here. That’s a darn sight less important than losing a leg.’

‘Is it?’ She frowned, still concentrating on her dials.

Harry appeared to think about it. He was starting to stitch, fastening the testis to the wall of the scrotum so it couldn’t twist again.

‘I reckon.’ He told her. ‘Babies or leg? No choice really.’

‘I bet Emily wouldn’t think so,’ May retorted, and Harry gave a rueful grin.

‘That’s because it’s not Emily’s leg.’

‘You wouldn’t give up your leg for a baby?’ Lizzie asked curiously.

‘Well, I might have to,’ he conceded. ‘I mean, if you held up a living, breathing baby called Alphonse and you said to me, “Your leg or the baby gets it,” then maybe I’d concede a leg.’

‘Gee, that’s good of you.’

‘Alphonse would have to be a very nice baby as well.’

‘Emily wants six babies,’ May volunteered, and Harry nearly dropped his needle. He caught himself and concentrated harder, and Lizzie grinned.

‘That’s not a good thing to drop on an operating surgeon, Sister,’ she told May. ‘We could have him faint in Theatre and then where would we be?’

‘He’s just doing needlework now,’ May retorted but she looked a little abashed. ‘I could do that.’

‘Yeah right,’ Harry said. He stitched some more. ‘Six babies?’ he asked cautiously, and May nodded.

‘That’s what she said. Though I concede that maybe I shouldn’t be the one to break it to you. I think you need to speak to your bride.’

‘Phoebe’s likely to have six babies or maybe even more,’ Lizzie volunteered. All of a sudden the grey tinge on Harry’s face had become more pronounced and she was starting to worry. He should be in bed. All she could do was lighten things up and hope.

‘Can we award six art prizes?’ May asked. Like Lizzie, she’d seen the strain descend on Harry’s face and she was prepared to take a lead.

‘Nope. I’ll leave the other five with our Dr McKay. If Emily wants six babies, that’s five of Phoebe’s and if he and Emily try really hard and read all the proper instruction manuals then maybe they can make one all of their own. Their own little Alphonse who they won’t even have to sacrifice a leg to obtain.’

He should smile, she thought. The laughter should come back. But it wasn’t appearing.

‘Dressing,’ he said curtly, and May handed him what he needed with a curious sideways glance at Lizzie.

They’d stepped over a boundary. They knew it. But neither of them knew exactly what that boundary was.

With the anaesthetic reversed and Terry slowly and drowsily coming around to the land of the living, and with his parents reassured, it was time to call it quits. Harry made his way through to the doctor’s quarters, leaning heavily on his elbow crutches, and Lizzie followed in concern.

‘Let me help you get into bed,’ she said, but he shook his head.

‘I can do it.’

‘I’m a doctor, remember?’ she said gently. ‘You’re not going to do a Terry on me, are you?’

‘No, but-’

‘If I leave you alone you’re just going to flop down on your bed and sleep just as you are-aren’t you?’

‘How do you know?’

‘I can see it in your face.’

‘You can see too damned much,’ he said enigmatically, but she was already holding the bedroom door for him.

‘In. Now. Sit on the bed and let me help you undress.’

‘I can-’

‘You can’t. Sit. Submit to being cared for. Now.’

It shouldn’t be personal.

She was a doctor, and he, for the moment, was a patient. How many times in her medical practice had she helped a patient undress? Hundreds, she thought.

It was stupid to avoid this. Harry knew it too. He left his boxers on-a man had some pride-but he let her slip the rest of his clothes from his body and pull on a pyjama jacket. Then he slid back onto the sheets with a sigh of relief and watched as she examined his leg.

‘Is it hurting?’

‘Like hell,’ he admitted.

‘You shouldn’t have been on it.’

‘I hardly had a choice.’

No. Terry would have been in real trouble without him.

‘Can you bear for me to give it a rub?’ she told him. ‘I swear I’ll be gentle.’

‘It doesn’t need it.’

‘You know it does,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t do all that heroic leg manipulation in the pouring rain only to have my patient die of deep vein thrombosis.’

‘I’m not intending to develop DVT.’

‘Not if you let me massage it,’ she said demurely. ‘Come on, Dr McKay. Let the nice doctor do her job. I promise you it’ll barely tickle.’

‘Liar,’ he said, and she chuckled.

‘Be brave, then,’ she told him. ‘If you’re very good I’ll see if I can find you a jelly bean from the kids’ ward as a reward.’

Under the bandages the leg still looked swollen and painful. Lizzie laid the last of the bandages aside and winced.

‘Ouch.’

‘Hey, who has to be brave here?’

‘Sorry.’ She pulled up a chair and sat, making a careful assessment of the wound.

The leg had been broken two thirds of the distance from knee to ankle. The plate and pin had been inserted through a neat incision that would heal really well.

‘You’ll be as good as new in no time,’ she said appreciatively. ‘That’s a very nice scar.’

‘Why, thank you.’ He had his hands linked behind his head and was staring up at the ceiling.

‘If it hurts you, I’ll stop,’ she said gently, and he glared.

‘I’m not scared.’

‘I’d be scared if I were you,’ she told him. ‘Letting me practise my massage skills on you. I’d be scared out of my wits.’

But she didn’t hurt him.

Lizzie had watched the physiotherapists in the orthopaedic wards enough to do no harm now, and to achieve what she wanted. Carefully, skilfully she massaged the swollen leg, keeping well clear of the wound itself. She left the back-slab on, slipping her slender fingers under when she wanted to gain purchase. She didn’t want to encourage movement at this stage. She simply wanted to facilitate the blood supply through the bruised and damaged blood vessels. And ease the hurt.

She took her time. Slowly stroking. Kneading. Over and over, gently and soothingly, taking all the time in the world.

She didn’t speak, and he didn’t seem to want to either. She simply moved her fingers carefully over his bruised leg, letting him lie back on the pillows with his thoughts going where they willed.

And somehow-some time-the tension faded from Harry’s face. The lines of pain and the tinge of grey eased and faded.

It felt good, she decided. Great. Maybe she should have been a masseuse instead of a doctor. To have the capacity to wipe away pain.

From this man’s face…

He was just a patient, she told herself. Just a patient.

‘You work in Emergency up north?’ he asked, and the question was a jolt all by itself. She had been far away, but she hadn’t been thinking of work. She hadn’t been thinking of home.

‘Mmm.’

‘Nine to five?’

‘Eight to four or four to midnight or midnight to eight,’ she told him, still massaging the tightness of his calf muscles.

‘And you walk away afterwards?’

‘There’s not a lot of follow-up in emergency medicine.’ She shrugged. ‘Sometimes I get involved. I can’t help it. But not often.’

‘You don’t like getting involved?’

‘Not if I can help it.’

He was watching her, those deep eyes calmly speculative. It seemed he’d relaxed at last, and as he relaxed he could think about her. She wasn’t sure she liked it.

‘Why don’t you like getting involved?’

Lizzie sighed. She looked at him but his eyes were nonjudgmental. They were asking a question. She could tell him to butt out of what wasn’t his business, but all of a sudden…It wouldn’t hurt to tell him. This hurtful thing.

‘When I was a newly qualified doctor I did a stint in family practice,’ she told him. She was concentrating on his leg again, carefully not looking at him. ‘I had a kid come to me with depression. She was fifteen years old. About the same age as Lillian. Anyway, I was a know-it-all, just graduated family doctor. I read up all the literature on antidepressants. I practised my counselling skills. I tried family therapy with Patti as well as her parents. All the things we were taught as bright little potential doctors.’ She bit her lip and the fingers massaging Harry’s leg stilled. Remembering hurt.

‘And?’ he said softly, but by the sound of his tone he knew what was coming.

‘You know,’ she told him. ‘It’s not hard to guess. Patti was trying so hard to please me. “Of course I feel better,” she told me. “I feel great.” The night after she told me that she took a massive overdose of every medicine she could find in the house and she was dead before anyone found her.’

‘Tough,’ Harry murmured, and Lizzie swallowed.

‘It was. So, you see, I’m not all that clever. I figured that playing expert is a fool’s game. So now I see patients at the coalface-in Emergency. I patch them up as best I can and then I refer them on to people who really know their stuff.’

‘You think Patti would still be alive if you hadn’t treated her?’

‘If she’d seen a skilled psychiatrist…’

‘Would she have gone to see a psychiatrist?’ Harry’s eyes were resting on her face, unsettling her with what he seemed to be seeing. ‘Lillian won’t see a psychiatrist. She refuses, and her parents back her up. Do you think I should refuse to treat her because of that?’

‘No, I-’

‘There are all sorts of people in Birrini who should be seeing specialists,’ he continued. ‘They’re not. They don’t want to take the trip to the city. Or they don’t trust people they don’t know. They make the decision to keep their lives in my hands. And if I occasionally lose one of those lives…’

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘I do,’ he said wearily. ‘Of course I do. I had an old man die three weeks ago because he refused to go to Melbourne for bypass surgery. I tried to keep him alive here, but I didn’t have the skills. Does that make me want to walk away?’

She flushed. ‘You think I’m a coward?’

‘I know you’re not.’

Silence.

The silence went on and on. And in that silence something built. Something intangible. Something neither of them recognised, but it was there for all that.

‘It’s a sensible job you have up north, isn’t it?’ he asked at last, and she nodded.

‘Yes.’

‘And do you have a sensible boyfriend?’

She flushed at that. ‘I do, as a matter of fact.’

‘Is that who you’re running from?’

‘I’m not running.’

‘I can pick running from a mile off.’

‘You were running,’ she said softly, ‘when I first met you.’

‘Well, you stopped that.’ There was a moment’s pause and then he added, ‘Maybe I can stop you running.’

‘Now, what do you mean by that?’ she said, with more asperity than she’d intended. She lifted the bandages and started wrapping the leg again. She was thoroughly unnerved and it took real concentration to keep her hands steady and not jolt the leg.

‘I could very much use a partner here in Birrini.’

‘What-another family doctor?’

‘The place is screaming for two doctors. Times like tonight. To not have an anaesthetist…’

‘I live in Queensland,’ she said flatly, trying to suppress a quiver of sheer panic running through her. Work here? With this man?

‘But you don’t want to be in Queensland.’

‘I do.’ She fastened off the bandage and rose. She should go. This conversation was far too intimate. Far too…threatening?

But she had to ask.

‘Why are you in Birrini?’ It had her fascinated. This man was a surgeon and a good one. Why was he stuck in such a remote spot?

‘I love Birrini.’

‘Why?’

‘My father was a fisherman,’ he told her. ‘I spent my life here, by the sea.’

She nodded. It fitted. He looked weathered, she thought. The look of the sea was in his eyes.

‘Yet you did surgery,’ she said, thinking it through. ‘Surely if you were intending to come home to practise, you would have done family medicine-become a generalist rather than specialising.’

‘I didn’t want to come home.’

‘Why not?’

She should let him sleep. The bedside lamp was all the light there was in the house. He was deeply relaxed, lying back on his pillows, and she knew suddenly there was never going to be a better time to question this man. To find out what made him run.

‘All the time I was a kid here…’ he said, and his voice was almost dreamlike. He was drifting to sleep and his voice was slurred. But still he kept on. ‘I wanted to see the world. I thought Birrini was so narrow. My parents were really happy here, but I almost despised them. There had to be a great big wonderful world out there, so as soon as I graduated from high school I was out of here and I never looked back.’

‘What happened?’ she asked. She was almost unable to breathe. This night-this time-was weirdly personal. She felt as if she was probing into places she had no business being. But she couldn’t stop.

‘I was such a success,’ he said wearily. ‘High-powered city surgeon. Fantastic. I came down here every few months. To visit. To show off.’

‘Oh, Harry, I’m sure-’

‘Don’t stop me,’ he told her.

‘I don’t want to upset you.’

‘It’s not you doing the upsetting.’ He fell silent for so long that she thought he was sleeping, but as she moved to turn away his hand reached out and grasped her wrist.

‘I was engaged,’ he told her. ‘To Melanie. Before Emily.’

‘I knew that,’ she whispered. ‘Lillian said she was killed.’

‘She was. We came down for the weekend.’ His voice was suddenly dragged down with exhaustion, but she sensed it wasn’t his leg that was making him tired. This was some bone-deep weariness that had been with him for years. ‘Melanie was driving her new toy-an open-topped roadster. All the horsepower in the world. Melanie was another surgeon, and money was the least of our problems. And Melanie…she was…well, Melanie was really something. Smart, ambitious, beautiful. I thought I was so in love.’

‘You weren’t?’

He shrugged. ‘Love? What the hell would I know about love? I was stupid. We were stupid. Anyway, she was so proud of her new car. And my dad…he was always so kind. So kind. He asked her to take him for a ride in it. My dad, who didn’t know one end of a car from another and couldn’t care less about them. So Melanie took him out on the coast road. You’ve seen the bends. She was showing off. City doctor showing the country hick what it’s all about. They went off the road about a mile from town and hit the rocks twenty metres below.’

‘Oh, Harry…’

‘Melanie died instantly,’ he said, and his weariness was palpable. Bleak and unforgiving. ‘My father had massive internal injuries. Maybe if we’d had another doctor here…maybe… But there was only me. There were no facilities. I couldn’t operate on my own and he died being transported to Melbourne.’

He was still grasping her wrist. Lizzie stared down at their linked hands and slowly she sank down onto the chair she’d just risen from and took his hand in both of hers.

‘So you decided to be sensible.’

‘Of course I did.’ His eyes were closed but his free hand came up to stroke the back of hers. So there was a linking of four hands. She needed it. She needed every vestige of warmth she could get.

‘My mother was still here. Of course. I couldn’t leave her. I came back here and applied to open the hospital. It had been shut for years because they couldn’t get a doctor. I settled down and worked my butt off.’

‘And your mother?’

‘She died last year. She never got over my father’s death.’

‘And neither did you?’

‘No.’ There it was, in all its bleakness. The truth.

‘So where does that leave Emily?’

‘Emily?’

‘Your fiancée,’ Lizzie said gently, and Harry flinched. She felt it in his hands. She saw it in his face.

‘I think I’ve been stupid,’ he told her. ‘Again. For different reasons but still stupid. Six bridesmaids.’

‘It’s a lot of bridesmaids,’ she agreed, and received the first trace of a smile in return.

‘A veritable horde.’

‘Scary.’

‘Very scary.’

She smiled. Enough. All she wanted to do for now-for some reason she couldn’t figure out even to herself-was to stay sitting here. Holding this man’s hand. Lighting the bleakness of his night.

But she had things to do. She needed to check on Lillian. She needed to…needed to…

She needed to leave.

‘You ought to sleep,’ she told him, and slowly, reluctantly she extricated her fingers from his. She rose and stood looking down at him. ‘Do you want anything for the pain?’

‘I don’t have pain.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

He smiled again, that wry self-deprecating smile she was coming to know. ‘I’m fine, thank you, Dr Darling.’

The way he said it… The softness in his voice…

It was really, really stupid to find tears welling behind her eyes. Ridiculous.

And it was even more stupid to do what she did next. To lean over and let her lips just brush his.

The gentlest goodnight kiss.

It was not what most doctors did to their patients.

It was right, though. It was meant to be. It was…

It was very, very scary. She stood looking down at him in the half-light and she felt her world shift on its axis. She didn’t have a clue what was going on here, but she knew that nothing could ever be the same again.

Emily. Edward. Queensland. Phoebe. Life…

The expression in his eyes was as confused as hers was. He couldn’t leave, though. He was stuck in his bed.

It was up to her to break their gaze. To walk out of that room and close the door behind her.

And she’d never done anything so hard in her life.

‘Phoebe?’

The big dog was sprawled full length over the kitchen floor, her nose pressed hard against her supper dish. She hadn’t been fed for years, her expression said, and Lizzie managed a smile as she knelt and gave her great fat dog a hug.

‘So you’re pregnant. You must have been in love,’ she whispered. ‘What would you do?’

And then she thought about what she’d said. In love?

‘That’s one crazy thing to think,’ she told herself. ‘You’ve known him for how long?’

Ridiculous.

‘How long did you know the father of your puppies?’ she asked Phoebe, and Phoebe looked soulfully up at her and then looked again at her supper dish.

‘Right. Think of practicalities. Men are no use at all, unless you want kids, right?’

Phoebe nudged her supper dish again.

‘Right.’

She should ring Edward.

Why on earth?

‘To ground myself. To remind myself that this is a tiny part of my life and as soon as Harry McKay gets himself married I’m out of here.

‘You could leave now.

‘What, and leave him like this?’ It was a ridiculous conversation, and Phoebe wasn’t the least bit interested. She’d figured that Lizzie’s attention wasn’t where it should be and was gazing at her dish now as if it was the last bastion of hope for the entire canine race. Hopelessness personified. Starvation was just around the corner. The end of the world was nigh.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake…’

Lizzie gave herself a shaky laugh, hugged her dog again and rose to her feet.

‘The vet said no. You’ve had enough tonight. You’ve had more than enough.’

Phoebe looked up at her, her great ears almost lifting with effort. Hope, her eyes said. Death had been looming but now the kitchen cupboard was opening. A sliver of light was appearing in the darkness of desperation.

And Lizzie couldn’t help herself. She smiled. ‘OK. Half a cup. No more. I’ll buy your love with half a cup of dog food and then I’ll forget love altogether.’

Phoebe looked at her as if she was out of her mind.

‘Until suppertime tomorrow,’ Lizzie corrected herself. ‘Fine. I have the devotion of a dog and I’d better look after it. Because that’s all I’m going to get.’

Memo:

I will not scratch my leg. Scratching is an entirely inappropriate response to stimuli of damaged nerve endings.

I will not think of Lizzie. Of the way her fingers felt. Of the way her lips brushed mine.

I will not scratch my leg.

I’ll just rub my fingers really gently…

I will not think about Lizzie.

I will not… I will not…

I will forget about inappropriate responses. What a man’s got to do, a man’s got to do.

And a man has to scratch!