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‘That’s right.’
The blunt words hit her, their uncompromising tone harsh and decisive. ‘Well, there’s no paediatric registrar in Port so what about children who come into the clinic?’
His mouth flattened into an obdurate line. ‘On the unlikely chance you’re not available, I’ll see them.’
‘Well, that’s reassuring.’ The sarcastic words leapt off her lips as a fizz of frustration spread through her. ‘Do you have any other demographic groups you refuse to work with? Any other conditions I should know about before we start?’
His eyebrows rose in a perfect arch at her mockery, but when he spoke his tone was all steely business. ‘This is how I see it working. Each weekday morning I’ll meet you at seven a.m. for the nursing-home ward round and I’ll work half-day clinics Monday to Friday with lunchtime case-review sessions as part of your supervision. I’ll be unavailable on Saturdays because I’ll be at the market.’ He extended his arm toward her, every part of him vibrating with tension. ‘Deal or no deal?’
She recognised the adversarial glint in his eyes as a thousand questions hammered in her head and poured into her mouth, demanding instant answers. She couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t work at the camp. Why he would prefer not to see the children at the clinic—none of it made sense, but she swallowed hard against every single question, forcing them down deep. If she quizzed him too closely on why he wouldn’t work at KC he would walk, and she couldn’t risk that. He had her well and truly cornered and she had no choice.
Slowly, she stretched out her right hand and slid her smaller palm against his. Work-hardened calluses scraped gently over her softer skin in a tantalising caress as his fingers wrapped around her hand. His heat poured through her, racing along her arm, radiating into her chest, tightening her breasts and then burrowing down deep inside until every part of her had liquefied with desire. Yet a dangerous vixen-voice betrayed her, demanding even more.
No, no, I’m not doing this. I am immune to men. But her body disagreed. His touch was unlike any handshake she’d ever known and she breathed in sharply, trying to grasp control of her wayward and wanton body which longed to drape itself over the chair and purr with pleasure. She finally found her own voice and hoped it sounded firm and businesslike. ‘Deal.’
A smile roved across his face, creating twinkling dimples in his cheeks, sparking emerald lights in his eyes and completely eliminating all signs of his previous tension. ‘Deal it is, then.’
‘Wonderful.’ The word came out horrifyingly breathy, the vixen having gained control. Suddenly the deal that would keep her in Port, well away from Anthony and her shattered dreams, was no longer the ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ that she’d expected.
‘But, Doctor, are you sure you’ve seen enough?’ Mrs Norton’s rheumy blue eyes sparkled as arthritic fingers fumbled over the pearl buttons on her crocheted bedjacket.
‘Let me help you with that.’ Nick smiled as he quickly buttoned the jacket on the elderly woman who would have been a stunning beauty in her younger days. ‘If you can flirt with me, Mrs N. then you’re doing just fine, but I have adjusted the diuretic so that should make breathing a little easier.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’ She touched his hand as he finished latching the last button. ‘And when will you be in to see me next, dear?’
‘Tomorrow morning.’
‘I’ll be ready.’ She gave him a wave as he left the room.
Mrs Norton was the last nursing-home patient on his morning round’s list and over the last hour he’d met all the residents. Every female patient had held his hand and flirted with him as well as showing him pictures of their granddaughters and great-granddaughters. ‘She’s a wonderful cook, Doctor, and you could do with some fattening up.’ The male patients had gruffly given him fishing tips, shaken their heads at his choice of football team and told him the ‘sure-fire’ solution to aphids—‘garlic and soapy water, Doc.’
After working in emergency medicine for years, he’d expected to find a nursing-home round slow and boring work. He didn’t know if it was because he hadn’t worked in almost two years and today he was just enjoying being back in the field, but he’d been surprised at how much fun he’d had chatting with them all. The moment he got home he was going to make up that aphid-fighting mixture and use it on his tomatoes this afternoon.
He glanced at his phone and read a text from Kirby asking him to meet her at the clinic. She hadn’t made it to rounds, having been called out at six a.m. to Kids’ Cottage.
He’d had no idea the town had a kids’ holiday camp dating back a hundred years. When he’d initially said he would have conditions attached to working here, he’d been thinking about how he would juggle the farm with practising medicine and still have precious time for himself. He hadn’t realised he would need to use the ‘conditions’ banner for anything else, but no way was he going to be the medico for a kids’ camp.
He shuddered as the memory of his father’s voice suddenly sounded in his head. You have to go, mate. You’ll enjoy it if you give it a chance.
He’d hated the enforced time he’d spent at camps as a kid and he sure as hell wasn’t spending time there as an adult. This time he had a choice and he was choosing to say no.
Suddenly the vision of Kirby’s wide blue eyes aimed squarely at him and full of disapproval shoved his father’s voice out of his head. Damn it, he was the experienced doctor and he had the right to say where he would work without giving a full-on explanation. He was so not revisiting his childhood, especially not with a woman whose eyes threatened to see down to his soul.
Better that she thought him a jerk than to go there.
Yeah, right. You go ahead and think that if it makes you feel better.
He ran his hand across his hair, short spikes meeting his palm, and he grunted in frustration. Hell, he didn’t even have to be working in Port! This time here was supposed to be all about wellness and focussing on himself. He was the one doing her the favour.
Shaking his head to clear it of unwanted images, errant thoughts and the eminently reasonable voice of his father, he strode toward the clinic, which was attached to the small emergency department of Port Bathurst Bush Nursing Hospital. Pushing open the door, which was covered in healthy-lifestyle posters, he stepped into the waiting room.
‘Good morning. You must be Dr Dennison. Welcome!’ A woman who looked to be in her early fifties with spiked, short red hair walked toward him, extending her hand. ‘I’m Meryl Jeffries, the practice nurse, and it’s wonderful that you’re here.’ She pumped his hand firmly and didn’t draw breath. ‘The whole town is talking about how you used Cheryl’s jewellery pliers to pull that strawberry out of Garry’s throat, and thank goodness you were there. Anyway, Kirby is just giving Theo the scoop on young Harrison, who thought that he’d start the day by jumping off the top bunk and fracturing his tib and fib so she’ll be here in a minute and, well, here she is now so I’ll let her give you the tour as I’ve got my baby clinic.’ She threw her arm out behind her toward the reception desk. ‘But if you need anything just ask because Vicki and I have been here for years.’
Vicki, who looked a bit older than Meryl, glanced up from the computer and smiled at him over the top of her bright purple glasses. ‘Lovely to have you here, Dr D., and, like Meryl said, just yell. My only rule is that you bring the histories back to me as you greet your next patient so they can be filed or else things get lost. Oh, and I made you a ginger fluff sponge and it’s in the kitchen so help yourself to as much as you like because you do look a bit on the thin side, dear.’
He opened his mouth but words escaped him. It was like work had just collided with his mother—instructions and praise all rolled into one with a slightly disapproving look thrown in. ‘Ah, thank you for the welcome and the cake.’
They both nodded and smiled and then Vicki returned to her computer screen and Meryl disappeared down the corridor.
‘I see you’ve met Meryl and Vicki.’ A familiar tinkling laugh sounded behind him.
He turned around to find a smiling Kirby walking toward him. Her hair moved in sync with her body, brushing across her shoulders and floating around her face. On Saturday she’d been wearing Lycra running gear. Today she wore a summer dress with a close-fitting scoop-neck top that hugged her waist before opening out into a short full skirt that showcased her shapely long, tanned legs. Bright red painted nails peeked out of strappy sandals.
Heat poured through him and zeroed in on his groin, making him dizzy. His reaction to her was so much stronger than two days ago and that made no sense at all. On Saturday she’d had a bare midriff and figure-hugging clothes on so of course his body had reacted. Hell, he’d been pleased it had because it meant things were finally getting back to normal despite the fact he’d always preferred brunettes.
But today far more clothes covered Kirby’s body and yet the hidden curves tantalised even more. He dragged his gaze up from the hint of creamy breast back to her face and prayed she hadn’t noticed his lapse of professionalism. He might have been known for dating many women but he’d always kept work and pleasure distinctly separate. He never dated someone he worked with directly so he definitely needed to get back into the work saddle again if those lines were blurring.
He rubbed his jaw. ‘Those two are like a hurricane. Are they always like that?’
‘Always.’ A more serious expression played around her mouth. ‘But don’t be deceived—they really know their stuff and the clinic runs like clockwork. Vicki’s children are adults and living in Melbourne now so I think she’s missing mothering and she’s making up for it with us.’ Her eyes danced, softening the indignant look that streaked across her face. ‘Although I’ve never had a cake made for me.’
He answered without thinking. ‘You can have as much as you like. I really don’t eat cakes.’
‘First no coffee and now no cake?’ She tilted her head enquiringly, a glint of interrogation in her eyes. ‘Next you’ll be telling me you don’t drink.’
He smiled, falling back into old habits in an attempt to deflect her. ‘I do drink but only top-shelf wine on special occasions.’ He didn’t really want to talk about why he’d given up cakes and cream. ‘So how about you show me around the clinic and the emergency department of the hospital and then I can get started.’
Work. After all, that was why he was here. He itched to throw himself into a busy day because working seemed a heck of a lot safer than talking about himself or ogling a colleague’s décolletage.
‘Can I run something past you?’ Kirby caught Nick between patients.
‘Sure. What’s up?’ His eyes darkened to the colour of moss as he swung around on the office chair, his gaze fixed firmly on her.
A gaze so intense that her skin tingled. Get over yourself. You asked the man a question and he’s giving you his undivided attention, just as a colleague should. She gripped Melinda Nikoloski’s history and focussed on the facts. ‘I’ve got a thirty-five-year-old woman with general fatigue, enlarged glands, persistent cough, raspy voice and episodes of shortness of breath.’
‘On bare facts alone it sounds like summer flu.’ His mouth tweaked up on the left in a thoughtful smile. ‘But you wouldn’t be running it past me if you thought it was flu.’
She slid into the chair next to his desk, grateful for his intuition. Grateful that he was here. Leaping into this job a year before most people started a GP rotation had stretched her, but she’d been desperate to leave Melbourne, desperate to distance herself from everything that reminded her of what she’d lost, and Port had been desperate enough to accept her. ‘The previous doctor saw her a month ago, made a diagnosis of flu and prescribed bronchodilators for the shortness of breath.’
He tapped his silver pen on a notepad. ‘So how is she now?’
‘Not much better.’ Kirby chewed her bottom lip in thought. ‘She could be anaemic, like many women in their mid-thirties are, so on Friday I ordered a routine full blood examination and those results should be back shortly, but even so, I have a nagging feeling about it. Totally non-scientific, I know, but nagging none the less.’
Understanding lined his face. ‘Listening to your gut feeling is an important part of being a good doctor. Out here you don’t have access to the full weight of diagnostic tests that you get in a large hospital.’
He sat forward, his hands flat on the spun cotton of his summer trousers which so casually covered what she imagined to be solid, muscular thighs. ‘A persistent cough and shortness of breath can too easily be attributed to asthma. As we’ve got an X-ray machine, let’s do a chest X-ray. It’s a simple test and hopefully we can rule out a lung mass.’
‘But she’s not a smoker and has no other risk factors.’
He shrugged. ‘There are other masses that can be found in the chest. But that said, it’s important to remember that non-smoking females are dying from lung cancer because it’s being missed in the early stages of the disease. Granted, the air down here is cleaner than other places but you don’t know what she’s been exposed to.’ He tugged on the hair just behind his ear, his voice rising slightly. ‘Hell, we don’t know half of what we’re exposed to in the air or in our food.’
His heartfelt reaction surprised her. He sounded more like an environmentalist than a doctor. But, then again, he did grow organic vegetables and he didn’t drink coffee. Two things she knew he hadn’t done two years ago because Virginia had basically told her everything about this citified man who’d loved the good things in life. ‘OK, I’ll organise a chest X-ray. Thanks.’
‘No problem, it’s what I’m here for.’ He spun back on his chair, his attention returning to the article he’d been reading when she’d walked into the room.
Familiar disappointment slugged her and she tried to shrug it off because there was no reason to feel like this. Nick had done his job well. Very well. He’s the mentor, you’re the student. That’s what you want and that’s what you’re getting.
She continued to remind herself of that against the strange hollow feeling in her gut as she walked back to her consulting room. Glad of something to do, she picked up the phone and called Melinda, asking her to come in for a chest X-ray.
Melinda sat in the chair, her face pale with black smudges under her eyes. She rubbed her knee. ‘I think I should have got an X-ray of my knee as well as my chest. It’s been sore for the last week.’ She sighed. ‘I really hope the chest X-ray will tell you what’s wrong with me because I’m sick of feeling like this and I think I’m getting worse, not better.’
Kirby silently agreed with her patient—Melinda had the pasty pallor of someone extremely unwell. She slid the black and white film onto the light box and flicked on the light. Using her pen she outlined the image. ‘Your heart is here and it’s the normal size, and if there was any fluid on your lungs or infection that would show up as white on the film. But your lungs are pretty clear, which is why they look black.’ And you don’t have a tumour, thank goodness.
‘But I feel so awful.’ Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes. ‘I’m so grumpy, the kids and Dev are avoiding me and all I want to do is sleep but I keep going hot and cold and my joints ache.’
‘Just hot at night?’ Piece by piece she tried to match up the vague symptoms. She rechecked the X-ray but there was no lower lobe consolidation, no sign of pneumonia.
Melinda wrung her hands. ‘Sometimes during the day too.’
‘Are you still menstruating?’ Menopause was unlikely but Kirby had learned the hard way that sometimes the unexpected happened.
Her patient grimaced. ‘Oh, yes, I’m doing that too well—flooding, in fact.’
Which led Kirby back to her initial thoughts from Friday. Menstruating women were often anaemic—lacking in iron could make you feel pretty low. But not give you hot flushes. The words nagged at Kirby. Perhaps she needed to run a test for hormone levels and do blood cultures as well.
She glanced at her watch and picked up the phone to speak to Vicki. ‘The courier should have arrived with the results of your blood test and hopefully the results will say I need to prescribe you my famous orange-juice-and-parsley iron-boosting drink.
‘If that’s the case, in two weeks you’ll feel like a new woman and we can discuss your options to reduce your menstrual bleeding.’ She smiled, trying to reassure her patient despite an enveloping sense of gloom that Melinda’s condition would not be that simple and neither would it have such a straightforward solution.
But she had to be wrong. Right now she didn’t trust her gut at all, given the way her body melted into a mush of pulsating need at one smile from Nick. How could one smile from a man she knew to be a womanising charmer undermine everything she’d learned at the hands of Anthony? Face it, Kirby, he’d said. You can’t give me what I need.
She knew better than to get involved again—this time she knew in advance what the outcome would be and she wasn’t putting her hand or heart up for another brutal and soul-destroying rejection. No, now she was a lot wiser and she knew better than to let attraction blind her to a handsome man. But her body wasn’t listening to her brain and it betrayed her every time she clapped eyes on Nick. No, she definitely didn’t trust her gut, because right now her radar was really out of whack.
A knock sounded on the door and Nick walked in, holding a printed piece of white paper with the familiar logo of Barago Hospital’s pathology department. The smile on his face didn’t quite reach his eyes and the lines around his mouth looked strained.
‘I brought you this.’ He handed the report to Kirby and immediately turned his attention to Melinda. ‘I’m Nick Dennison. I hope you don’t mind me barging in like this but as I’m working with Dr Atherton I thought I’d introduce myself.’
Recognition moved across the sick woman’s face. ‘Oh, you’re from the market. When I bought those strawberries from you on Saturday I didn’t realise you were a doctor. Mind you, I didn’t get to taste any of them, the kids ate them all before we got home!’
Kirby heard the warm burr of his voice reply to Melinda but her whirling brain didn’t decipher the words. At first astonishment that Nick had brought in the report drowned out the conversation then shock rocked through her, muting everything around her, and finally aching despair obliterated all sound. She read the pathology report three times and finally closed her eyes against the words. But they lingered against her retina as if burned there. Melinda had leukaemia.
Slowly the conversation between Nick and her patient sounded in her ears again and she sucked in a deep breath, turning to face them both. Nick had pulled up a chair, his casual demeanour tinged with an alertness she hadn’t noticed before. She realised he’d read the report and that was why he’d brought it in.
She shot him an appreciative look—she hated giving out bad news. It wasn’t something a person got better at with practice and it certainly never got easier. ‘Melinda, the results of your blood test are back and I’m afraid it’s not good news.’
Melinda instantly stiffened, fear clear in her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
Nothing Kirby could say would soften the truth. ‘Your white blood cells—the ones that fight infection—are abnormal and that means you have a form of leukaemia.’
Melinda’s hand shot to her mouth before falling back to her lap. ‘You mean cancer of the blood?’
Kirby nodded slowly. ‘That’s right. We need to get you to Barago hospital this afternoon for a series of tests, including a bone-marrow biopsy so that we can get an accurate diagnosis and start chemotherapy.’
But Kirby knew Melinda hadn’t heard a word since she’d confirmed leukaemia was cancer.
The petrified woman started to breath quickly, short, shallow breaths, her hands gripping the sides of the chair.
Kirby reached for a paper bag but Nick grabbed it first.
‘Melinda.’ He squatted down in front of her and took her hand. Looking straight into her eyes, he spoke slowly. ‘I need you to breathe into the paper bag and try to slow your breathing. I’m going to count to help you.’
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