Harlequin Medical Romance December 2015, Box Set 1 of 2 (26 page)

Her bounce faded a little as she took the offered mug and she gave herself a swift inward kick. What was she thinking? Having fantasies about a man who was so steeped in domesticity he couldn't get out of this valley?

Falling for a man who was committed to love?

Love was what she was running from, she thought dryly. Love was why she'd packed her car and headed for the hills.

Love was chains, blackmail, guilt. Love was your mother watching every mouthful you ate and mentally counting insulin dosages. Love was catching your boyfriend phoning in to report how you were— ‘She's great, Mrs Hargreaves, and of course I'm looking after her. No, of course I won't let her get tired...'

Toerag. She glowered at the absent Marcus and took her tea and stared morosely out into the dark.

‘Hamster been annoying you, then?' Hugo asked mildly and she caught herself and managed a rueful smile.

‘Not so much.'

‘Are you hurting? How's your...?'

‘Don't you dare fuss!'

‘Okay,' he said cautiously.

Silence.

It wasn't bad tea. Good and hot.

It was very hard to appreciate tea when Hugo was sitting beside her.

‘Where would you be now?' she asked, suddenly needing to know. ‘If it wasn't for Ruby.'

‘Sydney.'

Of course. ‘Working?'

‘Possibly. If I wasn't on call, though, I'd be in a supper club around the corner from the hospital. It has a roof top bar that overlooks the harbour. Most of my friends use it.'

‘And you miss it?'

‘What do you think?'

‘And your work? Your surgery?'

‘Almost more than I can bear,' he said and she flinched at the sudden and honest sound of gut-wrenching loss.

‘So why don't you take Ruby back to Sydney?'

‘If I had Ruby in Sydney, do you believe for a moment that I'd be in the supper club?'

‘You could get a housekeeper.'

‘Yes, I could. The problem is that I love Ruby.'

‘She's prickly.'

‘Tough to love. She is. She lets me, though. Inch by inch.'

‘Is it worth it?'

‘What, hoping for Ruby's love in return?'

‘I guess,' she said, doubtfully though, because she wasn't quite sure where she was going with this.

‘I don't have a choice,' Hugo said gently. ‘And I can't count its worth. I met Ruby when she was two days old. My sister was in a mess. I was called to a hospital up in Darwin because Grace was drug addicted and unable to cope. She went into rehab. I took four weeks off work, then my parents took over. But for those four weeks...I held Ruby in the palm of my hands—literally—and she's been there ever since.'

And what was there in that to make her tear up? Nothing, she thought, frantically sniffing, and Hugo handed her a tissue and she thought this was just the sort of man who walked round with spare tissues in his pocket because something about him made you...made her...

Back off. She needed to back off. She'd been here for less than three days and suddenly it seemed as if a fine gossamer web was closing around her. The web she'd run from.

A trap, every bit as claustrophobic as the one Hugo found himself in.

She stood up, so suddenly she splashed tea on Hamster, who looked up reproachfully and then started licking the tea from his paws.

Hugo looked up too, but not reproachfully. It was as if he understood where she was coming from.

And that was a scary thought all by itself.

‘I should go to bed,' she said a bit shakily and he nodded.

‘You should.'

And then his phone rang.

He answered it, listened, then clicked it closed and rose as well.

‘Work?'

‘What do you think?'

‘Anything I can help with?'

‘You're going to bed.'

‘Is that an order?'

‘Um...no.'

‘So tell me.'

‘Groin and knee injuries,' he said. ‘Terry Oakshot. Local farmer and amateur footy player. Late twenties. This sounds like a party prank gone wrong. His mates are bringing him in now.'

‘I'll stay up until I see what the problem is.'

‘No need. If I can't handle it I'll send him out.'

‘Evacuate when you have two doctors?'

‘If I need to evacuate, I'll evacuate.'

‘Of course you will,' she said warmly. ‘But if it's not too complicated, don't forget I'm not just a pretty face.' She grinned and took his mug. ‘Okay, Doc Denver, you go see what the problem is, but yell if you need me. I'll go put my feet up and garner strength for the onslaught to come. Ooh, I wouldn't mind a good onslaught. I'm a wee bit bored.'

CHAPTER TEN

O
NE
LOOK
AT
the mess that was Terry Oakshot's knee confirmed that he needed a surgeon skilled in reconstruction. The blood supply wasn't compromised, though. There was no need for immediate intervention for his knee. He needed decent pain relief and transport as soon as possible to the experts in Sydney.

Unfortunately, it wasn't his knee that was causing Terry to whimper. He was clutching his groin in agony.

It would be agony too, Hugo thought, as Joe helped examine him.

A fast conversation with the mates who'd brought him in had given him all the information he needed. The boys had been having a pre-Christmas party in the footy ground's stadium. After a few beers someone had shouted for Terry to come down to ground level to kick the footy. After a beer or six, Terry had decided there was a faster way than the stairs and he'd tried to slide down the banister.

It hadn't been a good idea. Terry had smashed groin first into the bottom post, then toppled onto the wooden stairs. The knee was bad. His groin was worse. One side of his scrotum was swollen and cut, and one testicle was higher than the other. The less injured side didn't look too good either, and Terry was retching with pain.

‘What's going on?' he moaned as his wife arrived. Maree was in her early twenties and seemed terrified. She looked as if she'd been baking. Her face was streaked white with flour, and it was whiter still with shock.

‘You seem to have given yourself a testicular torsion,' he told him. ‘Terry, your knee's broken and it'll need specialist surgery in Sydney, but what's happened to your groin is more urgent. The spermatic cord running to your testicles has been damaged. The cord's a blood vessel, so the blood supply's been cut. We need to work fast to get it sorted.'

‘Fast'd be good, Doc,' Terry moaned. ‘Fast like now?'

And, with that, Polly's presence came slamming back at him, bringing a wash of relief. He had an anaesthetist.

‘You know I have another doctor working here?'

‘The one that got bit by the snake?' Terry demanded.

‘She's recovered.' Or almost recovered. She could still do with an early night but this needed to take precedence. ‘Terry, you and Maree don't have any kids yet, do you?'

‘No!' And Maree had understood the inference faster than Terry. ‘But we want them. The spermatic cord... Doc, you're not saying...?'

‘I'm thinking we need to operate fast,' Hugo told them both. ‘I'll get Joe to ring Polly. She can do the anaesthetic.'

‘Polly...' Maree managed. ‘What sort of name is that for a doctor?'

‘It's short for Pollyanna. It's a great name for a fine doctor,' he told her. ‘Wait and see.'

* * *

Polly didn't see
the wound until they were in Theatre. Terry declared he ‘wasn't going to get looked at down there by a female'.

‘You'll get looked at by anyone who can fix you,' Maree snapped and clutched Polly as soon as she saw her. ‘We want kids,' she stammered. ‘You get him right, no matter what.'

‘We'll do our best,' Polly told her. She'd arrived at the hospital fast, she was heading to scrub, and she had no time to waste.

Once in Theatre she could focus, and she needed to. Terry was a big man, he was deeply shocked and he'd been drinking. In an ideal world she'd wait for him to sober up, but there wasn't time.

She ran through the options in her head, talked them through with Hugo. Then they went for it. With Terry safely asleep and intubated, Joe started disinfecting the injured area. For the first time she saw the extent of the damage.

‘Ouch,' she said and Hugo cast her a look that could almost be amused.

‘You might say that.'

But he was calm. She watched him assess the wound carefully. She watched as he started the procedure as if he'd done it a thousand times.

He was a thoracic surgeon. This was a job for a trained urologist.

He didn't look concerned. He looked...competent.

He's good
, she thought, and then she relaxed a little, although not very much because her anaesthetic skills were basic, but they were good enough to spare her time to watch Hugo work.

No highly skilled urologist could do a better job than this, she thought. Repairing a damaged spermatic cord was tricky at the best of times, and that was in a large hospital with every piece of modern gadgetry. Large hospitals had magnification, monitors showing exactly what was happening. Large hospitals had skilled backup.

Hugo had a semi-trained anaesthetist, Joe and himself.

If she hadn't been here...

What then?

Hugo would have needed to send him to Sydney, she thought, and by the time Terry reached Sydney, he and his wife would be fated to be childless or needing a sperm donor.

What if this had happened when she was here by herself?

For the first time, her bold foray into bush medicine looked less than wise. She would have failed this couple.

How could Hugo work here by himself?

‘If you hadn't been here I would have talked Joe through the anaesthesia. We've done it before,' Hugo said.

She glanced up at him in shock. ‘How do you know what I'm thinking?'

‘You have an entirely readable face. You were concentrating, concentrating, concentrating, and suddenly you looked petrified. I checked the monitors, saw you had nothing patient-wise to be petrified about and figured you had to be projecting yourself into the future.'

‘He has eyes in the back of his head.' Joe was grinning. ‘You'll get used to it.'

‘She won't,' Hugo said. ‘We'll work together tomorrow and then I'll be gone.'

But he'd be back, Polly thought as his skilled fingers continued their fight to repair the appalling damage. In the New Year he'd be back here being a solo doctor with his little niece. He'd be on his own and she'd be...

Where?

She hadn't figured that out yet. One locum at a time. Wandering...

She'd thought she'd quite like to do a stint for an aid agency, working overseas, getting right away from her parents.

Her diabetes was the killer there. No aid agency, working in Third World conditions, would accept a Type One diabetic.

Maybe that was one of the reasons she wanted it so much. Maybe the locum thing was part of it.

Locum to locum to locum? Never settling? Never doing family?

That was what she'd decided. No more fuss. She couldn't bear it.

Doing things despite her diabetes...

Was this another way her diabetes was controlling her?

‘I'm thinking...' Hugo's voice was a lazy drawl but there was satisfaction behind it and it drew her attention back to where it should be. ‘I'm thinking we might just have succeeded in repairing this mess. The left one's possible and the right one's looking certain. We'll transfer him to Sydney for his knee and get him checked by the urologist while he's there but I'm thinking we've done the thing.'

‘Yes!' Joe said, but Polly didn't say anything at all.

Locum to locum to locum...

That was what she'd dreamed of. Why did it suddenly seem so bleak?

And why did what she'd thought of as a dream suddenly seem like running away?

* * *

There was no
more time for introspection. Polly reversed the anaesthetic, Terry started to come round and Hugo sent her out to talk to Maree.

‘She won't believe Joe. Something about the beard. Polly, go tell her Terry's okay.'

‘So she'll believe a whippersnapper who came on the scene in polka dots with snake bite instead of a beard?' Joe demanded.

‘Absolutely. If Polly, who's hung upside down with snakes, decrees someone's safe, then...'

‘Then she'll think Polly has a weird definition of safe,' Joe retorted and he and Hugo chuckled and Polly looked from one to the other and thought that even though Hugo was trapped in this little hospital there were compensations.

It was like family...

Family...
There was that word again.

‘I have drips to adjust and you deserve to be the bearer of good tidings,' Hugo told her. ‘How's the hand?'

She hadn't even noticed her hand. She'd double gloved because she couldn't scrub the dressing and then she'd forgotten about it.

Her ankle wasn't hurting. She couldn't feel a bruise.

She felt...a mile high.

Successful surgery... There was nothing like it.

She thought suddenly of her parents' recriminations when she'd decided on medicine and she knew, without doubt, that medicine at least wasn't running from her parents' world. Medicine was what she most wanted to do.

She met Hugo's gaze and he was smiling and once again she got that blast of knowledge that told her he understood what she was feeling.

‘Good, isn't it?' he said softly and he smiled at her—and he might as well have kissed her.

It felt like a kiss. A caress from four feet apart.

And Joe was smiling at them, beaming from one ear to the other, and Polly stepped from the table a bit too fast and could have tripped, but she didn't. She wasn't that stupid.

She felt pretty stupid. She backed out of Theatre feeling totally discombobulated.

Terry's wife was waiting outside, sitting huddled on the room's big couch. There were people around her, two older couples who looked as if they'd come in a hurry. One of the women was wearing a crimson-smeared apron—very smeared. Her husband had matching crimson smears on his gingham shirt.

They all looked up at her as she emerged and Maree moaned and put her face in her hands.

‘Hey, it's all right, love.' The bigger of the two men put a rough hand on her shoulder. He was watching Polly's face. ‘The Doc's smiling. You're smiling, aren't you, Doc? You wouldn't do that if our Terry was bad.'

‘I'm smiling,' Polly told them, smiling even more just to prove the point. ‘Dr Denver's operated and everything went as smoothly as we could hope. Everything's been put back together. Terry's not quite recovered from the anaesthetic yet but as soon as Dr Denver's set up the drips—he'll be administering pain relief, fluids and antibiotics—you'll be able to see him.'

‘Oh.' Maree put her face behind her hands and burst into tears. The crimson lady knelt down and gathered her into her arms.

‘There, dear, what did I tell you? Terry always bounces back.' And then she glared up at her husband. ‘I told you. Now we have a pot full of burned toffee and a hundred uncoated toffee apples for nothing.'

There was uncertain laughter, the beginnings of relief, and then Maree put her head up again.

‘And he will...we will be able to have babies?' she whispered.

Polly heard the door swing open behind her. She didn't have to turn to see it was Hugo—she was starting to sense this man.

Why? What was it between them?

He didn't say anything, though—it seemed this was her call.

‘Maree, Dr Denver's done everything we can to make sure that can still happen. We think we've succeeded. I've just watched him operate and I don't think any city surgeon could have done better.'

‘Excellent,' the toffee apple lady said. ‘And will he be home for Christmas?'

‘He won't be, Lexie.' And Hugo took over, putting a hand on Polly's arm as if to signal that he was about to impart medical advice from the team. It was a solid way to go, Polly thought, presenting a united front, and why it made her feel...

Um, no.
She wasn't going there. Right now, she couldn't.

‘Guys, we're going to send him on to Sydney,' Hugo said, firmly now. ‘The operation I just performed was to his groin and, as far as I can tell, it's successful. But his knee needs a competent orthopaedic surgeon. I'd also like him checked by a specialist urologist. We'll send him on to Sydney Central as soon as possible. It'll take about an hour to get the chopper here for transfer. Maree, if you'd like to go with him, I'll tell the hospital you'll need accommodation—they have self-contained flats for just this purpose.'

The group had been starting to relax. Now, as one, they froze.

‘But it's Christmas,' Maree whispered. ‘We can't go to Sydney for Christmas.'

‘You don't have a choice,' Hugo said, still gently, and Maree burst into tears again.

‘Hey.' The toffee apple lady still had her in her arms. ‘Hey, sweetheart, it's okay. We'll manage.'

‘But what about Grandma?' Maree lifted a woebegone face to Hugo. ‘What about you, Mum?'

‘We'll manage.'

‘You can't. Grandma's got Alzheimer's,' Maree explained, looking wildly up at Hugo. ‘She's so confused and she gets angry with Mum, but if Terry and I are there she calms down and Mum relaxes and enjoys Christmas. If we're not there...'

‘We'll take care of things.' The other woman spoke then, a woman who by her looks had to be Terry's mum. ‘We'll look after everyone.'

‘But we'll be by ourselves for Christmas.'

‘With a recovering husband. Surely that's the most important thing?' It was Terry's dad, glancing back at the door into Theatre, but all three women turned and glared at him.

‘Christmas with family...' Maree snapped. ‘What's more important than that?'

‘Now you know very well that health comes first,' her mum said. ‘But you know what? Terry'll be recovering. And you know Aldi Baker? She moved to her son's big house in the centre of Sydney and now her son's gone to Paris for Christmas. She's gone with him and she said if ever we want a base in Sydney we can use that house. So why not now? Why not pack all of us up and we can go to Sydney?' She looked up at Terry's parents. ‘You too. Aldi says there's six bedrooms—can you believe that? It's as if it's meant. We can pick up everything—except the toffee apples—they might be well and truly stuffed and they were just for the Christmas Eve fete at the school anyway. We can take everything down there tomorrow morning. If needs be, I bet we could have Christmas in Terry's hospital room.'