In Dr. Darling’s Care

CHAPTER EIGHT

Memo:

I have no business even questioning Lizzie’s engagement. I have no business even thinking of it.

I have no business thinking about her kiss. Her body. The way she curved into me…

I have no business thinking of anyone.

Maybe I can stay single for ever. Memo to me: Get a life. Alone.

IT WAS an interminable two weeks.

Given any other circumstances, Lizzie could have enjoyed herself enormously. She loved this little hospital. The locals had adopted her as their own. They pampered her already pampered pooch. They brought her gifts. They showed in every way they could that she was entirely welcome, and that Harry’s suggestion that she should stay wasn’t his plan alone. Everyone in the town thought it was a great idea.

She should tell everyone that she was engaged to Edward, she thought. She’d been surprised that Harry had kept it to himself. But he’d never mentioned it. He’d never asked her why she didn’t wear a ring. Even when the phone went late at night and it was obviously Edward, he made no comment. He’d hand the phone to her, his face expressionless, and find some reason to leave the room.

She should tell him…

She should tell Edward…

Tell them what? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was increasingly confused. All Harry had to do was walk into the room and her confusion levels rose to fever pitch, where she couldn’t think logically at all.

She loved this place.

She loved…Harry?

Nonsense. That was nonsense. Emily was out there house-hunting or doing whatever women did when their wedding was delayed, but soon she’d be back and the bridesmaids would take their place and Harry would be married.

So she had no business even thinking of Harry like that.

So instead she tried her best to concentrate on the other parts of Birrini life that she was growing to love. Which was easy enough as Birrini was wrapping itself around her heart, insidious in its sweetness.

Lillian was growing healthier by the minute. She still hated to eat-that was going to take months to cure. She still couldn’t be trusted not to bring the food straight up again. It had become such a habit now that the sensation of a full stomach was completely alien to her.

But Harry had her working now-gently, though, and not with the frenetic over-activity she’d been building up to for the last couple of years. Every morning she’d do schoolwork set by her teachers, and in the afternoons either her mother or one of a roster of hospital volunteers drove her to the local kindergarten where she gave art lessons.

Harry’s suggestion to work at the kindergarten had been met with joy. The only stipulation was that if she needed to go to the bathroom, someone had to bring her back to the hospital. To be accompanied by a nurse. She hated the stipulation, but she was starting to accept her condition enough not to rail against it.

And her art lessons were fantastic. She put her heart and her soul into them. For two hours every afternoon she forgot all about her stomach or her looks or food. She simply was. Even her father was grudgingly beginning to concede that maybe Harry’s and Lizzie’s combined treatment was starting to work. Maybe he could be proud of his kid if she turned into an art teacher.

And every evening Joey wandered past, and the two heads bent over the lesson plans she had for her littlies the next day.

It was deeply satisfying-country medicine at its best.

And Amy… The little girl who’d been a cowering mess two weeks ago was practically transformed. Every afternoon after school a gaggle of little girls with Amy at their centre arrived to visit Lizzie’s great basset.

‘When are the puppies due?’ Lizzie was asked over and over, and the vet was consulted as well. The dates on the calendar were being ticked off and never had babies been more anticipated.

Amy was radiant.

Whenever she saw her, Lizzie looked at her with pleasure, and then she caught Harry looking at her looking at Amy-and tried hard to school her face into some sort of dispassionate doctor-patient assessment.

It didn’t work. She loved what was happening here and she couldn’t disguise it.

It didn’t make one whit of difference, though. She had to leave. She had to move on.

‘So have these babies and we’ll get out of here,’ she told Phoebe, and the big dog heaved her pregnant self into a position where she could nuzzle her mistress’s nose. Lizzie hugged her and thought, At least I have Phoebe.

There was no sign of Emily.

‘She’s taken leave,’ Harry said shortly when she ventured to ask, and Lizzie knew better than to push further. May might have helped-May was never backward about asking questions-but May was still preoccupied, shadowed and worried.

‘I’ve pushed May’s husband but I’m still worried,’ Harry admitted during one of those moments that Lizzie worked so hard to prevent. Times when they were alone. But this one had been unavoidable. Lizzie, on instructions from the orthopaedic surgeons, was removing the staples from his wound and preparing to put a fibreglass cast on his leg.

It felt so strange. Wrong. Too intimate for words. There was no way she could keep professional detachment here. Since that first night when she’d rubbed his leg she’d had one of the nurses do it for her. It seemed too intensely personal. It seemed too intensely personal now-to be working on his leg while he lay on the bed and looked up at her-but there was no way they could avoid it. To send him to Melbourne to get a cast fitted was ridiculous when she had all the skills.

‘You’ve pushed Tom?’ She was concentrating-really hard-on the staples. They were lifting cleanly away, dropping with a clink, clink, clink into the kidney dish under her hand.

‘He says he’s not gambling,’ Harry told her, and she could tell by the tension in his voice that he was finding this situation as difficult as she was. But he was focusing on Tom. There was no choice.

‘Most problem gamblers deny it.’

‘I believe him.’

Lizzie nodded. She removed the last of the staples. ‘This is looking really good, Harry. Your surgeon’s done a great job. You’ll hardly have a scar.’

‘I don’t mind a scar,’ he growled. ‘I wouldn’t have a leg if it wasn’t for you.’

‘You wouldn’t have run into me in the first place.’

‘No. I might have run into a ruddy great truck going like a bat out of hell. I might have been a squashed puddle in the middle of the road instead of a workable doctor with a scar in the middle of my leg.’

‘So you’re grateful to me?’ Her eyes flashed laughter and to her amazement she found he was smiling back. His smile never ceased to amaze her. What his smile did to her…

‘You don’t know how much,’ he told her.

Which sent her straight back to the defence of silence.

Where was Emily? Lizzie knew she phoned occasionally-occasionally she’d heard Harry take a short, terse call-but there seemed little other contact. Anyone would think he didn’t want to get married, she thought. A good doctor-a family doctor-would press the point.

She wasn’t Harry’s family doctor. She was caring for his leg and if she let herself care for any other part of him then she was in major trouble.

Tom. Concentrate on Tom.

‘So if Tom’s not gambling, what’s wrong with May?’

‘Tom doesn’t know. He’s worried about her, too. She’s not sleeping and she keeps taking on more and more shifts when she doesn’t need to. I’ve put a stop to it-told her five shifts a week maximum-but then I find she’s taken on a bit of private nursing. Old Ern Porteous should be in the nursing home but he won’t go. The district nurse calls on him twice a day but he really needs more than that. His family’s paying May to spend two hours there after each shift.’

‘She’s raising three small boys. She’ll kill herself.’

‘Yeah. But she won’t admit to me that anything’s wrong. Or to Tom.’

‘Nor to me,’ Lizzie admitted. ‘So what do we do?’

‘We can’t force the truth from her,’ Harry told her. ‘If Tom really is gambling… They’re both proud people.’

‘But if they’re self-destructing…’

‘We’re only doctors,’ Harry said heavily. ‘There’s only so much we can do. The rest is up to them.’

‘It hurts,’ Lizzie said slowly, and he nodded.

‘You really are a family doctor,’ he told her. ‘You care and you care and you care. Just like me. Now all that has to happen is for you admit it.’

‘Right.’ She stared down at his leg. The swelling had subsided enough for him to wear a cast and, considering the way he refused to submit to being an invalid, the sooner he had a protective cast on it the better.

‘Lie back down,’ she told him. He’d propped himself up so that he could see and the sensation of his face being so close to hers was unnerving.

‘You want me to go back to being a patient-instead of a person?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Because you can cope with the world that way.’

‘I can cope with you that way,’ she muttered, reaching for the wrapping to use under the fibreglass. ‘It’s the only way it’s going to happen. So get used to it.’

Life became more complicated after that. With a plaster boot fitted to his new cast, there was no stopping Harry. Wherever Lizzie went he seemed to be there. He still used a crutch, but he was so subtle she couldn’t hear him coming.

The place was too small for two doctors, she thought-but then had to concede that it wasn’t. It worked brilliantly with two doctors. It was only that one doctor stiffened and couldn’t keep her mind on her work any time the other doctor was present.

‘When did you say Phoebe’s due?’ He asked her that at breakfast the day after she’d fitted his new cast and she sighed. Phoebe’s confinement was starting to be all she thought of herself. He obviously wanted to be shot of her and she felt the same about him. They had to get distance. They must!

‘Soon,’ she snapped. ‘The vet says any day. When’s Emily due home?’

‘Soon. Any day.’

‘Great.’

‘But you can’t leave until the puppies are eight weeks old.’

‘Which gives you time to have your wedding and honeymoon.’ Under her breath she added, ‘And keep yourself out of my way.’

‘Right.’

‘Fine.’

It was ridiculous. Two grown doctors who reacted to each other as if they were impregnated with some electrostatic charge. Harry just had to walk into the room and her skin tingled and she had to concentrate so hard…

‘I don’t know where that girl’s gone,’ Mrs Scotter muttered as Lizzie changed the dressings on her leg again. Mavis was home from hospital and Lizzie had taken to dropping in on the old lady every morning. Her leg was finally starting to heal, but Mavis valued Lizzie’s visits more than the healing.

As Lizzie valued Mavis. She’d miss her when she left.

She’d miss so darn much.

Um…maybe she needed to concentrate on Mrs Scotter. What had she asked? ‘What girl?’ she asked.

‘Emily.’

Emily. The absent fiancée. Right.

‘She’s shopping for things for her house.’

‘She’s been gone for weeks. She’s never been gone for that long. If it was my fella who’d broken his leg the day before the wedding and I knew that he was sharing a house with a woman like you, well, I’d be a damned fool for staying away that long.’

‘Maybe she knows she can trust Dr McKay,’ Lizzie said stiffly. ‘Your leg’s looking great, Mavis. Who’s chopping your wood now?’

‘I am. Who do you think? Do you think she should trust Dr McKay?’ The old lady’s eyes were boring into her, and Lizzie flushed and rose.

‘I have no idea. I hardly know the man.’

‘You’ve shared a house with him for weeks.’

‘We hardly see each other.’

‘More fool you.’

‘Mavis, where’s your woodshed?’ Lizzie demanded. Enough was enough.

‘Out the back. Why?’

‘Because I intend to chop you some wood. I need to vent some frustration and chopping wood seems an ideal way to do it.’

He found her there, half an hour later. Harry limped around the side of the house following voices and the sound of the axe, and he stopped dead at the sight of her.

It was harder than she’d anticipated. Mavis had given her a splitter-an axe specifically designed for splitting logs-but she’d discovered it was science as well as muscle. So Mavis was standing back out of range while Lizzie chopped.

She had a pile now that was starting to give her satisfaction, but maybe it was only enough for one or two nights’ fires and she needed to do more. Her face was flushed bright red. She was exhausted, but she knew that if she stopped Mavis would take over. And some things were unbearable.

Some things other than Mavis’s lack of wood…

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Her axe landed with a thud and the log of wood spilt into two very satisfactory halves. A splinter flew backwards and caught her on the leg and she winced. Drat.

And here was Harry marching toward her, barely letting his crutches touch the ground.

‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘Nope.’ She barely looked at him. The tension between them was nigh on intolerable.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m being a family doctor,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m engaging in a bit of preventative medicine.’

‘Preventing what?’

‘Mavis killing herself.’

‘So you’re chopping with bare legs.’ He pointed down. She’d worn her standard little skirt out on house calls. Nice shoes. City shoes. Or they had been nice city shoes three weeks ago. They’d seen a lot of life since then. ‘You’ll kill yourself instead.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re not fine. If Mavis’s eyes weren’t going she’d have told you what I’m telling you now,’ he told her. He stepped forward and took the axe from her hands. ‘You’re likely to get hit in the leg by splinters. You already have been hit on the leg by splinters. You’re bleeding.’

She looked down at a trickle of blood coming from a scratch on her knee.

‘Not very much.’

‘I suppose you think this is what doctors do.’

‘You’re telling me you wouldn’t chop wood.’

‘I can chop wood. I choose not to. I concentrate on my areas of expertise. As you should. As you especially should. If I was a damned fool city kid, I’d give axes a wide berth.’

‘Hey.’ She glared. A damned fool city kid? Who did he think he was talking to? ‘Give me my axe back and go back to your crutches.’

‘Mavis…’ He sidelined her nicely, turning to the old lady who was watching with avid interest. The tension between the town’s two doctors hadn’t gone unnoticed by Mavis-or by anyone else in town. After the kiss on the day of the race there had been talk of little else. That and Emily’s continued absence…

‘Mavis, I’ll ring the local Rotary club and have someone come out and chop you enough wood to last for the rest of winter,’ he told her, and Mavis grinned, a gap-toothed smile that contained more than a hint of mischief.

‘It’s more fun watching you two fight over it.’

‘Maybe, but I’m on crutches and she’ll kill herself.’

‘She-the cat’s mother?’ Lizzie asked, dangerously polite, but she was ignored.

‘I’ll take her back to the hospital.’

‘Would you mind not talking about me as if I’m an inanimate object?’

‘Would you mind acting as if you had a brain in that frothy head of yours?’

‘Just because I’m trying to be a family doctor…’

‘You can’t be a family doctor unless you commit. And you’re not committing.’

‘Hey, who’s talking about not committing? You’re the one who crashed into my car rather than get married.’

All of a sudden things were way, way too personal. Mavis’s grin had faded. But her ears were positively flapping.

‘This is not…’ Harry took a deep breath. ‘This is not the time.’

‘Is there ever a time?’

‘No.’

And then his mobile phone rang.

It was just as well, Lizzie thought, trying to regain a semblance of her dignity. Things had moved far, far too fast. If Phoebe hadn’t been so loaded down with puppies she’d have done what she should have done three weeks ago. Gone back to Queensland.

To Edward?

Maybe.

But then she stopped thinking about herself. She was hauled out of her emotional turmoil. Harry had replaced the cellphone on his belt and his face told her that what he’d heard was suddenly deathly serious.

‘We need to go,’ he told her. ‘Sorry, Mavis. There’s been a car crash. May’s driven her car off the road near her home and crashed into a tree. The car’s hanging over the cliff and she’s trapped inside.’

The police car was already there. Two more cars. A school bus. Blocking the road.

They’d driven in Lizzie’s little car, hurtling along the back road with more daring than sense. But…

This was May, Lizzie thought over and over again, and by the look on Harry’s face he was feeling exactly the same. And when they pulled up…

The road here twisted around the cliff face. The car looked as if it had veered off the road, smashed into a tree and swung around, so the back half of the car was hanging over a ten-foot drop down to the beach below.

No!

They were out of the car, hauling the emergency equipment Lizzie had started carrying as normal, running past the school bus where a frightened teacher was yelling at his charges to stay sitting, to not move, that everything was OK.

Stupid thing to say. Everything wasn’t OK.

The local police officer looked up as they arrived, his face sagging in relief. ‘Doc… Thank God…’ He had a fire extinguisher playing on a stream of petrol oozing from the still steaming car. There were two men-the drivers of the other two cars, presumably-sitting on the bonnet of the crashed car and Lizzie saw with horror exactly why. The whole car was threatening to slip.

And the car…

The old Ford was crumpled beyond belief, its back wheels hanging out over the edge and still slowly spinning. It looked a complete wreck. A disaster prepared to topple into the sea and be forgotten.

Except…through the shattered glass they could see May, folded forward on the steering-wheel, her hair sprawled out over the dashboard and her hands reaching out…

As Lizzie stared in horror she stirred and lifted her head. She stared out sightlessly and let out a slow keening moan of horror.

There was blood on her face. Blood on her hands…

‘I’ll go in,’ Harry snapped. ‘Car’s not stable.’

‘And neither are you,’ Lizzie told him. ‘You can’t manoeuvre yourself in that space with one good leg. I’m going.’ May was trying to move now, struggling feebly against whatever was holding her. She couldn’t shift. The keening increased.

She couldn’t bear it. ‘May…’

‘We need chocks. We need weight on the hood to keep it stable.’ Harry looked around as a tow truck screamed up beside the school bus. ‘Thank God. Someone, get that bus turned around. Get the kids out of here. Hell, Les, May’s kids are on that bus.’

‘I’ll do it,’ someone said. People seemed to be arriving from nowhere. ‘And I’ll take the kids home to the missus.’

‘We need chocks,’ Harry was yelling. ‘Now. We have to get this thing stable.’

‘I’m lighter than anyone. We can’t leave her. If she tries to haul herself out she’ll cut herself to ribbons.’

‘But-’

‘I’m going in,’ Lizzie said. She grabbed a pair of protective gloves from her bag and hauled them on.

There was glass and torn metal everywhere. She was wearing a miniskirt…

‘Take my overalls,’ the police officer volunteered. He’d been wearing some sort of protective all-in-one suit over his uniform but was already hauling it off. She wasn’t objecting. She grabbed it and pulled it on. It was ten sizes too big but it was better than nothing. Way better than nothing.

But Harry was still aghast. ‘Lizzie, no…’

‘There’s no choice. Get those chocks in place and don’t let me fall,’ she told Harry, and she didn’t wait for him to answer. The overalls clipped into place. She was secure as she was going to be and May needed her.

She didn’t try the driver’s door. The roof and the driver’s side were appallingly crushed. The passenger door was almost intact and was one of the few parts of the car which were almost on the road. But inside…

Thank God for the overalls. That and the gloves saved her from the worst of the mess. Because it was a mess. The roof was crumpled. There was blood, bare metal and glass all over the place and she could hardly move without cutting herself.

Her gloves weren’t thick enough.

Outside people were yelling. She could hear Harry, his voice tight with desperation. ‘Get those damned chocks. Someone…I need the bag from the back of our car. The fluid bags. Everything.’

There were people shouting. She couldn’t hear…

And May was thrashing about, yelling, and quite literally trying to crawl out the window.

‘May, no.’ Lizzie caught her hand and held on, gripping hard. Forcing her to be still. Sort of. ‘May, I’m here. May, you must be still.’

The car was rocking. Dear God, the car was rocking.

She couldn’t think of that now.

This was like some ghastly nightmare. The sight of May-May!-covered in gore. The smell of it. The sharp edges-glass everywhere. May!

She had to fight with that. She had to stay impartial. She was trying desperately to help, but May was beyond working with her. She wanted out. She was desperate to get out, flailing, moaning…

Out of control.

At least she was making a noise, yelling now. That was a good sign-the only good sign. She was alive and she was conscious and her airways were obviously clear. And she was at least aware enough to know that she didn’t want to be there.

There were people sitting on the hood right in front of her. Stabilising it.

She blocked out the thought of what the car had looked like. How many men did it take to stop a car from toppling over the edge?

Harry was out there. He wouldn’t let it fall.

The thought steadied her. He’d be in here if he could. So she had to work as expertly as he would.

The medical stuff. Training. Think, Lizzie, think.

Check the chest. Has she got good oxygenation? Are the airways clear?

Is the abdomen rigid?

Are there signs of a bleed or sensory loss? Is the blood pressure coming down? Were there changes in colour in the skin or the pupils? Those were all problems where she’d have to intervene hard. Cerebral trauma was an obvious worry, as was spinal damage…

Think! Assess!

Then Harry was there-just outside her door. Behind her. She couldn’t see him but she could hear him.

‘Cervical collar,’ he said, and it was in her hand.

That was hard. May wouldn’t keep still. ‘May, you must…’ But May was past hearing.

But finally she did it, working her way around the twisted metal and broken glass to get May into a cervical collar. Then some oxygen, and eventually she managed an intravenous line into May’s arm for fluids and morphine. She took a quick blood pressure and pulse reading. The numbers weren’t good. The BP was a low 90 and the heart rate a high 120.

Lizzie could see she’d taken a knock to the head. She was disoriented and there was a huge swelling under her right eye so she guessed she’d fractured a zygoma, the arch of her cheekbone. There was a long, full-thickness laceration on the right side of her mouth and an ugly degloving injury had peeled back the skin on the back of her right hand.

She was worried about May’s legs. The low BP was a possible indicator of an active bleed, but she couldn’t see below her upper thigh. The legs could have been crushed.

That was why she couldn’t move. The legs…

‘Stay still.’ Harry’s voice was urgent. ‘They’re hauling the car back. Hold-’

‘May, keep still!’ Lizzie urged, and held onto her as the car lurched savagely sideways, up. And stilled.

‘You’re safe. The car’s stable,’ Harry told her, and she gave him a fast relieved smile that didn’t quite come off.

What about the leg? If she could see…

Harry was almost in the car with her now, fitting a clear plastic soft protection sheet. They still couldn’t come near to getting her out. The dashboard seemed to have almost folded completely around her.

‘We’re cutting,’ Harry said. ‘Get out and let me take your place.’

‘Go find your own car wreck,’ she tried. He didn’t smile. But he didn’t try and force her out either.

May was still moaning. Ten milligrams of morphine and still there was pain. There was a condition in medicine often referred to as the ‘golden hour’. Lizzie knew of it and was afraid of it. It was the first sixty minutes or so when the body appeared to compensate for whatever had happened to it. Internal haemorrhage initially could be hidden as the survival mechanism kicked in. Heart rate and blood pressure could rise, adrenalin flowed and the victim would seem to be coping. But the bleeding inside could continue and the patient could crash. Hard.

There was a machine working outside-horrible. Resembling nothing as much as a great, silver-crabbed claw, its job was to chew away metal. Glass was spraying inwards and the sound was terrible. In the confined space every noise was magnified and Lizzie couldn’t stop May’s fear from escalating. ‘Soon,’ she told her. ‘Soon. Harry will get us out.’

‘Tom…’

‘Tom and Harry will get us out,’ Lizzie whispered. ‘Our men.’

And then they did it. The rescue ram seemed to just bulldoze the dashboard away, and with the pressure gone May started to lift her legs.

‘Immobilise first,’ Harry was saying urgently, but May was having none of it.

‘Tom. Tom. Tom,’ she was crying over and over again as she tried again to haul herself free. Harry was on her other side now; together they were trying ever so gently to turn her.

‘No!’ She screamed against their struggles and her legs suddenly lifted.

Harry’s eyes met Lizzie’s, urgent, and she knew what he was asking. They had the equipment. In one swift movement Harry had the concave spinal board under May’s rear, and thirty seconds later they had her out of the car and into the waiting van that served as the local ambulance.

Her leg was bleeding fiercely from a jagged gash. Harry had a pressure bandage on it almost as soon as it was visible.

But still May fought him, incomprehensible in her terror. ‘More morphine,’ Harry decreed.

And finally-finally-she relaxed and her eyes fluttered closed.

‘Now we find the real damage,’ Harry said grimly. ‘Let’s go.’

Three hours in surgery. Three hours of intense, silent work, while both of them came to terms with what had happened-and what had nearly happened.

Three hours while the world changed for both of them.

And when they were finished and had stepped back from the table, all pretence was stripped away. They knew what was between them. Now all they had to do was decide where to take it.

If they took it anywhere at all.