The Doctor’s Proposal

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHE woke and she was on the wrong side of a hospital bed. The inside rather than the outside. It was so extraordinary that she had to shake her head to make herself believe she wasn’t dreaming.

Shaking her head wasn’t a good idea. Shaking anything wasn’t good.

She stayed very still indeed, and when Babs tiptoed in to do her obs and Kirsty spoke, Babs gave a squeak of surprise.

‘I thought you were asleep.’

‘Just very, very still,’ Kirsty said cautiously. She reached out and grabbed Babs’s wrist, anxious that this contact with the outside world not be broken. ‘What’s happening?’

‘You’re black and blue and red all over,’ Babs said cheerfully. ‘If you want a more technical medical diagnosis, I’ll have to get your doctor. Which, since your doctor has been pacing the corridor for the past two hours waiting for you to wake up, won’t be too hard at all. Let me take your blood pressure and temp. and I’ll fetch him.’ And then, as she looked at Kirsty’s face, she grinned and relented. ‘OK, I’ll fetch him now. Something tells me your blood pressure before and after you see your treating doctor might be very different.’

Before Kirsty could reply, she’d whisked herself out of the room-and one minute later Jake was there. He stood in the doorway with such an expression of anxiety on his face that Kirsty almost laughed. Almost. You had to move your chest to laugh and she wasn’t about to do any such thing.

‘Jake.’

In two strides he’d reached her, taking her hand, stooping to kiss her forehead, her lips.

‘Kirsty…’

‘Hey, am I dying?’ she managed weakly. ‘I don’t even act like this with patients two minutes before the end.’

‘You could have died,’ he growled, his voice breaking with emotion. He hauled a chair up and sat beside her, without letting go of her hand. Which was very satisfactory indeed. ‘Kirsty, will you marry me?’

Her world stilled. Marry…

Too much was happening too fast. This was crazy. It couldn’t be happening.

‘Um, no,’ she whispered, and then at the look on his face she added an addendum. ‘Well, not yet. There’s things I need to sort out first.’

His face cleared. ‘I haven’t actually got the marriage celebrant out in the hall,’ he told her with a rueful smile-and kissed her again. ‘What do we need to sort out?’

She was having trouble sorting out her head.

‘I’ve been asleep?’

‘We gave you ten milligrams of morphine before we winched you off the rock,’ he told her.

‘You gave me morphine?’

‘I was so worried about the baby I didn’t see you were in trouble,’ he said. ‘Then you disintegrated…’

Hey! ‘I did not disintegrate.’

‘There’s my girl,’ he said approvingly. ‘OK, you had a wee sniffle. You sniffled until the medical evacuation helicopter arrived from Barnham. We winched Susie and the little one up and lowered them onto the boat. Then we put the harness on you and you proceeded to pass out.’

‘I’m sure I didn’t,’ she said with an attempt at indignation, which didn’t quite come off.

‘There’s no shame in passing out when some stupid medic tries to winch a patient with two broken ribs,’ he told her. ‘Rule at accident scenes: examine and don’t take anyone’s word that they’re not injured. Hell, Kirsty, your chest is a mess. You must have thumped into a rock when you went overboard. Susie said you hauled her up onto the rock, and how you did it…’ His voice broke. ‘I’ve heard of mothers lifting cars off injured kids. Adrenalin or something. It was the bravest-’

‘Susie,’ she said, cutting across a description that was starting to unsettle her more even than she was already unsettled. It wasn’t so much what he was saying, it was how he was looking at her as he said it. Like he’d found a new world. ‘Tell me about Susie,’ she managed before he could start again, and he took a couple of seconds to recover his voice, to make it work again.

‘Susie’s great. We winched her and the baby over to the boat but she proceeded to sit up and watch as you were winched off. The moment she realised you’d passed out it was like she’d assumed another body. She was battered and bruised and she’d just given birth. After the battering she’d taken she should have been unconscious herself. Instead, she was hugging her baby so tight it took two of us to prise her away so we could examine her. She was sitting up on the deck, yelling at us to take care of you and to bring more doctors. She was saying that I was too emotionally involved to treat you, and she wanted specialists, and to get a team of the best doctors down at the wharf to take control the moment we docked…’

Kirsty smiled. That was the Susie she knew. Bossy. Happy. In charge of her world.

Oh, welcome back, Susie.

‘And the baby really is fine?’

Jake smiled, a lovely, wide smile that encompassed the world. ‘Rose is gorgeous. Rose and her mother are currently asleep in the ward next door. In the next bed is Angus, who’s refused to go to Sydney until he’s seen you safe. He and Susie have both gone to sleep with Rosie’s incubator between them, and I can’t tell who looks the proudest.’

‘Incubator?’

‘Only until we’re absolutely sure she’s warm. But it’s a precaution I’m sure we don’t need. She’s fine.’

‘How wonderful.’

But there was one more question. One more thing that had to be asked. ‘Kenneth?’

His face clouded. ‘Can it wait?’

‘No.’

His hold on her hand tightened. ‘Not good.’

‘Tell me.’

‘We saw him while we were heading out to the rocks,’ Jake said softly. ‘Angus told us where to look-and why. What he said made us think we ought to keep on going. But the police sergeant got on the radio and by the time Kenneth reached harbour he had a reception committee.’

‘But they didn’t arrest him?’ There was something about his voice that told her…

‘He headed out to sea again. The fisheries and wildlife patrol boat went after him. They followed him for about half an hour, not approaching, just waiting for him to run out of fuel. They knew he was sick.’

‘Then?’ Kirsty asked, but by the look on Jake’s face she already knew what was coming.

‘He came close to shore,’ Jake said grimly. ‘They thought he’d beach the boat and make a run for it. Then, at the last minute, he just hit the throttle, took the boat up to maximum speed-which on that boat is enormous-and steered straight at the rocks. He didn’t stand a chance.’

Oh, no. She lay still, letting the enormity of what had happened sink in. ‘Dear God.’

‘Mental illness is such a void,’ Jake said sadly. ‘There’s so much we don’t know. Maybe if I had my time again I’d train to be a psychiatrist.’

‘And then Dolphin Bay would miss out on having the best family doctor in the world,’ Kirsty said softly. ‘Oh, Jake…’

‘Which leads back to my original question,’ Jake whispered. ‘I’ve just watched a doctor under the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances rescue a patient from drowning, perform a flawless delivery-’

‘Hey, you delivered-’

‘Perform a flawless delivery,’ Jake repeated. ‘Knowing to a nicety when to accept help-’

‘It was your timing-’

But he wasn’t letting her get a word in edgeways. ‘And you did all that when you were so battered yourself that you should have been prostrate with pain. I’ve decided this place needs another doctor. I decided that a long time ago but now I’m certain. And that other doctor’s you, Kirsty McMahon. I love you so much…’

‘You can’t love me.’

‘How can I not?’

‘You don’t do love any more.’

‘Yes, I do. Now I do.’

‘I propositioned you,’ she whispered. ‘I goaded you on.’

‘And very nicely you goaded, too. But you only asked for a kiss.’ He assumed a look of virtue. ‘I’m taking it further. I’m asking for your hand in marriage.’

It was too much. The pain was whirling back again, making her senses swim. She looked up into his eyes and she saw love and desire, and all she wanted to do was sink into those eyes…forget…forget…

Marriage.

Jake.

‘This isn’t fair,’ Jake whispered, seeing the doubt and confusion and pain in her eyes. ‘I won’t push you.’

‘I can’t think.’ She had to think. She must. Jake…

‘Don’t,’ he said softly. He bent and kissed her lightly on the forehead, brushing the salt-stiff curls away and letting his fingers rest on her face. ‘I’ll give you something now that’ll send you right back into the land of nod, and when you wake up we can start again.’

‘Start…’

‘Let’s start again. Kirsty,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s forget you propositioned me. Let’s forget I was a dope, and now let’s forget I proposed marriage. But also…let’s forget your fear of commitment, your belief that the people around you will die, your fear of moving forward. Sleep, my lovely Kirsty, and wake up to your new world. Our new world. Starting now.’

He kept to his word.

For the next few weeks, while Kirsty’s battered body healed, while she came to terms with what had happened and while her world righted itself on its axis, Jake left talk of marriage alone.

Firstly he was her doctor. One of the fractured ribs was displaced, with sharp rib ends protruding toward the lung, and when the air ambulance took Angus to Sydney it took Kirsty as well. She needed specialist thoracic surgery. ‘You were so lucky you didn’t pierce a lung,’ Jake growled when he showed her the X-rays. The fragmented bone was so close. So close…

He strapped her with professional care, he handed her over to the care-flight doctors with clinical efficiency, and only at the last minute did he stoop and kiss her, hard, briefly, lovingly, on the lips.

He didn’t ring her in Sydney more than a concerned family doctor might have. A very caring doctor…

She’d spent a week in Sydney. A kindly anaesthetist had given her an intercostal block. Out of pain, she’d slept and slept, and her doctors had looked at the amount she’d been sleeping and decreed that she take as long as she needed.

So when she returned-by road ambulance this time- Angus was ready to return with her. His bypass had been gloriously successful. He still had his pet-dog-oxygen-cannister with him, but his breathing was easy, his eyes were alive with excitement and he beamed all the way home.

He had Susie to go home to.

For Susie would stay as long as the old man had left, Kirsty thought. Susie had rung her over and over while she’d been in Sydney. She had described the perfection of her daughter. She had described how much better her walking was without the burden of pregnancy. And Kirsty was no sooner back at the castle than she was taken out to be shown Spike.

‘Jake’s been replenishing his IV drip every day,’ Susie told her. ‘He’s been wonderful.’

‘Is he still staying here?’

‘He took the girls home this morning,’ Susie said-with no more than a sideways glance at her sister. ‘He said you and Angus needed to rest and you’ll rest better without the twins and Boris around all the time. Margie has arranged for her sister to help with the housework until we’re all fit again.’

Which would be soon, Kirsty thought, watching her sister cradling her baby daughter, watching her laugh with Angus, boss Angus, boss Kirsty into resting… She’d dreaded the baby’s birth, fearing postnatal depression. Instead, the birth had catapulted Susie to the other side.

‘So Jake will come…when?’

‘He said he’ll come tonight and every night while we still need him,’ Susie told him. ‘For Angus.’

For Angus.

And it was for Angus. Jake arrived that night and he spent half an hour with the earl. He came downstairs and chatted to Kirsty and Susie, and if his eyes were warm and loving as they looked at Kirsty…well, they were warm when they looked at Susie as well, and also as he looked down into Rosie’s cradle and smiled and gave the tiny baby his little finger to hold.

Kirsty walked him to the door afterwards and tried to thank him, but he took her shoulders in his hands and kissed her-lightly on the lips but still far too lightly for her liking-and put her away again.

‘Don’t thank me for loving, Kirsty,’ he told her. ‘It’s all coming together.’

For both of them. She knew it. But it was as if they both needed time now, space to come to terms with what they knew was inevitable. She knew the townsfolk were looking at them, but she didn’t mind. She knew Susie was big with questions but she didn’t mind that either.

One day soon it’d be right but not yet…not yet.

Her job back home was still waiting for her. She made no irrevocable decision, but she did phone Robert and tell him that he should find someone else.

‘It’s a shame,’ Robert said. ‘We’ve always been such good friends.’

Yes, but I’ve found more, she thought, but she didn’t say it. She hardly dared say it herself.

She didn’t think of the future.

As her ribs healed she did a little medicine-she ran a few clinics, she went out to see Mavis and spent quite some time at that lady’s bedside.

Like Susie, Mavis wasn’t asking questions. She was almost totally pain-free now, and her bright, inquisitive mind was working at full capacity-but she made no comment about Kirsty and Jake.

It was time out. It was a time of knowing that happy ever after was just around the corner but not to be rushed…not to be rushed…

And then came Harvest Thanksgiving.

Harvest Thanksgiving in Dolphin Bay was huge. From the moment Kirsty had entered the town she’d known that this was the biggest festival on the calendar. It took the form of a fête, a two-day celebration where fun and laughter and affirmation of life was the order of the day.

It was also Spike’s moment of glory.

The district’s best jams and jellies, most obedient dog, highest sponge-and widest pumpkin-were all on show.

Angus was to open the proceedings.

He fretted for days beforehand. ‘I couldn’t be doing it last year,’ he told them. ‘I had pneumonia. But I’ll be getting there this year if it kills me.’

It almost did. He spent two hours getting into his full Scottish regalia and at the end he had to have a wee lie down. Kirsty went into his bedroom and found him gasping without oxygen.

‘If you think you can open the festival dead, you can think again,’ she told him, hooking up his oxygen tube and swiping his hand away as he tried to protest.

‘The Laird of Loganaich would never have anything as sissy as an oxygen cylinder,’ he told her, and Kirsty gazed around the room, saw a discarded sash and wound the offending cylinder with the Douglas clan.

‘There,’ she said. ‘The Laird of Loganaich would find it impossible to leave his loyal and appropriately clad companion behind.’

‘You’d be as bossy as your sister.’

‘No one’s as bossy as Susie.’

‘Susie’s staying on,’ Angus said in quiet satisfaction. ‘She’s promised. How about you, lass?’

Kirsty fiddled, adjusting the tartan.

‘You’re marking time,’ Angus said softly. ‘Waiting for what?’

‘To be sure,’ she whispered.

‘He’s sure.’

He was. Every day Kirsty saw Jake’s certainty grow. He still didn’t push her. He was simply her friend-the friend who laughed with her, who talked to her of her patients as she grew more enmeshed in this little community, who shared the love and laughter of his little girls…

‘You can’t be keeping him waiting for ever,’ Angus said, and Kirsty nodded, tying the sash with a defiant tug.

‘I know.’

‘So what’s holding you back?’

‘It’s like…I’ve been so self-contained for so long,’ she whispered. ‘But now I’m happy.’

‘You’d be fearful that if you take the next step you’ll compromise what you already have?’

‘My mother’s death tore my family apart,’ she told him. ‘My parents were in love, but after Mom died, Dad just…stopped. And Susie-she gave herself completely, and when Rory died she came close to dying as well.’

‘So you’ll not go that last step.’

‘I…I will.’ She knew she must. She loved Jake so much. But this last step…

‘It’s a hard hurdle,’ Angus told her, between deep breaths that replenished his oxygen-starved lungs. ‘But it’s part of life, lass. You love and risk losing, or you don’t love at all and then you’ve lost already. Deirdre and I had the best fun. Here I am left with just a bunch of plastic chandeliers and old Queen Vic in the bathroom-but I wouldn’t be having it any other way. I had forty glorious years of my lovely Deidre, and here I am falling in love all over again with a wee mite called Rose who’s twisted around my heart like…’

He paused as the sound of a horn sounded from the forecourt and wiped a surreptitious tear from his wrinkled cheek. ‘Enough. I’ll be getting maudlin. But don’t you be risking things by waiting too long, lass.’

No. She wouldn’t.

All she had to do was say yes, she thought as she drove her cargo of Angus and Susie and Rosie in her baby seat-and Spike in a trailer in the rear-to the fair.

Jake was already there. Alice and Penelope whooped up to them the minute they arrived, big with all the news of girls who’d been deprived of their favourite people for a whole two days.

They talked, Jake chatted and joked with Angus and Susie, but all the time Kirsty knew Jake was watching her.

No, she thought. It was different. He wasn’t watching her. He was just…with her.

She had to take this leap. She loved him. All she had to do was say yes.

But she stood apart a little. Part of this extended family but not quite taking this final step. Not quite.

Angus played his part in style. That choked her up. The bagpipes started, reaching a crescendo of drums and music that could have come straight from a grey Scottish gloaming. And then there was Angus’s speech, full of wry humour, pulling in each and every one of the people present.

He truly was the laird, Kirsty thought, her eyes misting with love for the old man. His speech was hardly marred by his need for oxygen and the cylinder was inconspicuous behind him.

How long did he have?

Pulmonary fibrosis was a killer. Soon…soon.

Not now. She glanced up and Jake’s eyes were on her. She met his look full on.

Soon.

The pumpkin judging was early on the agenda. At the appointed hour Kirsty and Jake brought the trailer round and hauled in a few hands to help tug Spike onto the judging dais.

There were yells of appreciation.

‘He has to win,’ Kirsty said.

‘Thanks to Dr McMahon and her magic medication,’ Jake said, grinning.

‘Is an IV line illegal in pumpkin circles? Like doping in sport?’

‘We cut the stalk away,’ Jake said. ‘The evidence is rotting in Angus’s compost patch. And I doubt they’ve invented a urine test for pumpkins.’

And then there was another cry of awe and they turned-to see another pumpkin being hauled across the judging area.

A huge pumpkin. Vast!

Bigger than Spike?

‘Whose…?’ Kirsty breathed, and a head bobbed up from behind the pumpkin and beamed.

Ben Boyce.

‘Hi,’ he said, and he looked at Angus and his beam darned near split his face.

‘You-you…’ For a moment Kirsty thought Angus was heading for apoplexy. She moved toward him, but Angus’s face was recovering his colour, turning the healthy red of true indignation. ‘You traitor!’

‘Why traitor?’ Ben said-all innocence. ‘I grew my pumpkin in my back yard and you grew yours in yours. What’s the harm in that?’

‘You helped with my pumpkin!’

‘So I did,’ Ben said. His wife was firmly tucked by his side and he was walking with a step that was almost sprightly, totally at odds with the gnarled appearance of his arthritis-affected bones. ‘It wouldn’t have been sporting not to have helped.’ He beamed again as his pumpkin was hoisted onto the scales. ‘Her name’s Fatso, by the way,’ he told them. ‘And she’s a better doer than Spike. Thirstier.’

Angus gasped. ‘You don’t meant to tell me you used IV lines.’

‘Of course we did,’ Ben said. ‘When you started using them I got some medical advice. We watched Doc McMahon do yours and my Maggie’s a nurse. We owe you a vote of thanks, Doc,’ he told Kirsty, who choked.

Unnoticed-or maybe noticed but unobtrusive-Jake’s arm came around her waist.

‘Fatso will have to win,’ Susie was saying. She lifted Rosie out of her baby sling and perched her small, wrinkled person on top of the pumpkin. Cameras went wild. ‘Oh, Angus, do you mind very much?’

Angus was glowering at his friend. ‘Of course I mind,’ he barked at Ben. ‘Whippersnapper. That’s eight out of twenty times you’ll be beating me. You wait until next year!’

Next year.

Kirsty blinked. This from a man who just weeks ago had intended to die.

‘It’s a date, then,’ Ben said. ‘Same time next year, Angus Douglas, and it’s a bottle of your best Scotch against one of Maggie’s fruit cakes that I’ll beat you again.’

‘Done.’

General laughter. Angus slapped his friend on the back and they headed to the refreshment rooms-probably for one of Angus’s whiskies.

Laughter being the best medicine?

Tomorrow being the best medicine.

‘It’s time for the mother-daughter sack race,’ someone announced over the loudspeaker.

Jake’s hand dropped from her waist.

He moved over to where Alice and Penelope were admiring the pumpkins. ‘Let’s go find a lemonade, girls,’ he told them.

All around them women were sorting themselves into groups. Kirsty watched for a few minutes. This seemed to be a general mother-daughter sack race, the only rule being that mothers and daughters had to be in the same sack.

The sacks were piled high, a huge assortment of weird-sized sacks.

The mother-daughter combinations were extraordinary.

There were ancient mothers with almost-as-ancient daughters. One mother had three daughters. One mother had five daughters! Mavis was there, Kirsty saw in astonishment. She’d been wheeled along in a wheelchair. Now someone was frantically cutting holes in a sack for her wheelchair, and Barbara was preparing to climb in with her. There was also Barbara’s daughter and two more grandkids Kirsty hadn’t seen before.

‘Hey, I can do that,’ Susie said. She’d come in her wheelchair-only because she still needed a walking stick and she couldn’t carry Rosie or stay upright very long without it. ‘I’m a mother, and if Mavis can do it, so can I.’

‘Yahoo!’ someone yelled-it was Mrs Grey from the post office, wielding a vast pair of scissors. She picked up a sack and prepared to chop wheel holes. ‘You and Rosie’ll knock ’em dead, girl.’

Susie and Rosie would race.

Mother and daughter.

Kirsty went to help-and then she paused. There were lots of people helping Susie.

She looked across the fairground and saw Jake retreating.

He was leaving. He was taking his girls to the lemonade stall so Penelope and Alice would ask no questions.

Questions like why didn’t they have a mother?

He wouldn’t push, she thought. He had a twin by each hand, gripping hard, and the slumping of the girls’ shoulders said they were aware of what was happening and they hated it.

If she called out…

Could she?

Why not? Why on earth not?

The rest of her life started now.

‘Alice,’ she yelled. ‘Penelope!’

They turned. They all turned.

Alice and Penelope looked hopeful.

‘Do you girls want to come in a sack with me?’ she yelled-and every person there knew exactly what she was saying. Every person in the fairground knew their local doctor, and almost every one of them wished for exactly this.

Jake was standing motionless. Expressionless. She dared give him no more than a fleeting glance but in that moment she knew she’d crossed some invisible line, and there was no going back.

‘You’re not our mother,’ Alice called, straight to the point like any four-year-old should be.

‘No, but a mother-daughter sack race is fun,’ Kirsty called back. ‘So I thought…I could be a friend who’s a sort of mother-when-you-need-me.’

How about that for a declaration? she thought, breathless. Even her twin was hornswoggled. Susie and her chair were halfway into her sack. Susie sat with her mouth open, and the twins stared with their mouths open, and Kirsty thought, There are far too many twins.

There’s too much emotion.

But not for long. People were starting to cheer. Someone- Ben?-hauled an extended-family sack from the pile, and the twins dropped their father’s hands and ran. They dived into Ben’s proffered sack, whooped around the bottom for a bit and then stood, sack pulled to their chins, with a gap left in the middle.

‘This is your place,’ Penelope told Kirsty. ‘In the middle.’

‘That’s where all the best mothers go,’ Susie said softly from beside her. ‘Jump right in, Kirsty, love. Heart and all.’

So she did. The next minute she was in the sack with the twins, lined up in a row stretching right across the fairground.

The assortment was stunning. There were womenfolk from Rosie’s age to Mavis’s age, and everything in between. Mothers of all shapes and sizes.

Alice and Penelope were beaming and beaming, but not Kirsty. Kirsty stared straight ahead while Jake stared at the ground. Kirsty caught a glimpse of Angus patting him on the shoulder, and all of a sudden she felt like crying.

There’d been enough tears.

‘Go!’

They were off. Jumping, running, wheeling, tumbling, mothers and assorted daughters, up to four generations in the one sack, all making their way any way they knew how to get to the finish line.

The menfolk were roaring encouragement and advice. Angus had forgotten all about his lack of oxygen, his dicky heart, and he was cheering fit to burst.

Kirsty and Penelope and Alice were concentrating. ‘We have to jump in step,’ Kirsty gasped at their third tumble. There were some fast movers here but the fastest were being handicapped in all sorts of ways: dogs racing across their paths-including Boris!-people falling over; an ex-marathon runner and her sprinter daughter being held back by the local blacksmith who simply darted over and stood on a corner of their sack until his wife and kids passed them by.

‘We’re jumping, we’re jumping,’ the twins were yelling. ‘Watch us jump, Daddy.’

‘Go on,’ Kirsty heard herself scream. ‘We can do this.’

She could do this.

Of course she could. And of course they did. They reached the finish maybe eighteenth, maybe nineteenth, but gloriously in the middle of the pack and not at the back. They watched in a muddle of sacks and contorted bodies and frantic laughter as someone rushed forward and proclaimed Susie and Rose-Susie and Rose!-as the winners. In their chair they’d been out front by a mile, and second were Mavis and Barbara and assorted granddaughters. Someone was laughing and saying that next year the wheelchairs had to be nobbled, but not this year. This year the wheelchairs were the winners.

There were more winners than wheelchairs.

Kirsty lay on the ground and hugged her girls to her and Boris bounded over and licked her face, and she wondered how she could feel any more of a winner than she did right now.

Then Jake was there.

He was crouching down, lifting her out of the puddle of children and sack and dog-doctor performs incision of sack with precision and style-hauling her against him and laughing and kissing her and smiling his pride and his joy for all to see.

‘We didn’t win, Daddy,’ Alice was saying.

‘We didn’t win,’ echoed her twin. ‘But we jumped really high.’

‘Don’t you worry about winning,’ Jake told his daughter in a voice that was none too steady. ‘There’s always next year.’

And then in front of the entire population of Dolphin Bay, in front of these people who would be part of their lives for ever, Dr Jake Cameron kissed Dr Kirsty McMahon.

Two became one.

Or…two became part of this wonderful, muddly assorted population that was what you called life.

For ever.