Marion Lennox - City Surgeon, Small Town Miracle

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, and the pressure of her hand was warm and strong. Maggie would certainly be a great doctor, he thought. Empathic and caring and…lovely?

Lovely. There it was again. It wasn’t a professional word, he thought, but it was in his head and it wouldn’t go away.

‘So?’ she said.

‘So I abandoned obstetrics, left England and came to Sydney to be a gynaecologist,’ he said, too briskly, and rose to his feet. ‘End of story. You need to go to bed.’ He sounded rougher than he’d intended.

‘I do,’ she admitted.

‘Let me carry you. That leg must be giving you hell.’

‘It’s not tickling,’ she admitted, and somewhat to his surprise she didn’t object as he gathered her up in her pile of eiderdowns.

‘Maybe it’s time we both moved on,’ she said as he carried her through the roses, and he didn’t disagree at all.

The fire was dying in the grate. He settled her on the settee again, loaded the fireplace with logs, found a can of soup, made them both soup and toast-he was hungry even if she wasn’t-and bullied her into eating.

Then, finally, he tended her face and her knee. And all the time…

Lovely.

The word kept echoing over and over.

Which was crazy. And impossible. She was seven months pregnant. He was mixing her up with his memories of Alice, he thought as he worked. He had Alice in his mind-that it was Alice he was helping, It was Alice he could save.

No!

But there were memories coming at him from everywhere and the only word that kept superimposing itself on all of them was…

Lovely.

He had the gentlest hands.

She was drifting. He was cleaning her face, carefully ridding it of every trace of dirt, then making it secure with wound-closure strips and dressings. Occasionally what he was doing hurt, but she hardly noticed.

His face was so close to hers. Intent on what he was doing. Careful.

Caring.

How long had it been since someone had cared for her? How long since someone had even opened a can of soup and made her toast?

It was an illusion, she told herself. This man was trapped by circumstances, in the same way she was trapped. The only difference was that tomorrow morning he’d leave and she’d stay.

But somehow the bleakness had lifted. For tonight she could let herself drift in this illusion of tenderness. She could look into his face as he worked, watch his eyes, abandon herself in their depths. Feel the strength and skill of his fingers. Watch his concern.

He was worried about her. She should reassure him, she thought. She should say she had things under control, everything was fine, that she’d bounce up in the morning like Tigger. As she’d bounced before.

Only right now she didn’t feel like Tigger. Surprisingly, though, neither did she feel like Eeyore, for who could feel sorry for herself when a doctor like Max Ashton was right in front of her? He was so close she could take his face between her hands and…

And nothing. Get a grip, she told herself, and something in her face must have changed because Max’s hands lifted away and his brows snapped downward.

‘Did I hurt you?’

‘I… No. I believe I’m nearly asleep.’

‘I need to wash your knee.’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘You want to wriggle out of what’s left of those jeans?’

‘I can do that,’ she said with an attempt at dignity, and then tried and it didn’t work, and when Max gave up watching and helped she was pleased. Only then his hands were on her thighs and she thought that was pretty good, too.

Whoa. Keep it in focus, Maggie. He was a doctor and she was a patient.

She felt like she was drifting on painkillers, yet she’d had nothing. She felt drifty and lovely, and like it was entirely right that she was lying half-naked on a settee in front of a roaring fire with the man of her dreams taking her leg in his hands.

The man of her dreams?

‘Ouch!’

Yikes, that brought her down to earth. Earth to Maggie? It was about time contact was made.

‘Sorry,’ he said ruefully. ‘But it’s not looking as bad as I thought.’

‘Good,’ she said sleepily. ‘Excellent.’

‘Have you been worrying?’ he asked, sounding bemused.

‘I guess I’ll worry if it’s about to drop off,’ she said. ‘Speaking of dropping off…’

‘You want me to carry you to bed?’

‘I’m fine here.’ The thought of going out to her apartment at the back of the house seemed suddenly unbearable.

‘You are fine,’ he told her. ‘Some of that initial swelling’s already subsiding. I think you’ve simply given this one heck of a bang. I suspect the X-ray tomorrow will show a nice big haematoma at the back of the knee and nothing else.’

‘Excellent. Then life can get back to normal.’ She hesitated. ‘You know, I don’t really need you to stay.’

‘I need to stay,’ he said. ‘You banged your head, you shook your daughter about and you need to be in hospital under observation. If that’s not possible, you’re stuck with me.’

‘Or you’re stuck with us. I’m sorry.’

‘Forget it,’ he said roughly, and then looked contrite. ‘Sorry. ‘It’s okay, though. Just forget the sorry and think of it as one colleague helping another. You look like you need far more help than I can possibly give, but one night out of my life isn’t much.’

Put like that, it even sounded reasonable that he stayed, she thought. And there was no way she was arguing any more. Not when she wanted him to stay so much.

For all the right reasons, she told herself hastily. For very sensible reasons, which had nothing to do with the way her insides did this queer little lurch when he looked at her.

“You want to use Gran’s settee?’ she managed.

‘You want me to stay here with you?’

She did. It sounded wimpy and she had no right to ask him. There were plenty of spare bedrooms. But…

‘This room’s warm.’

‘So it is,’ he said, and suddenly he was smiling.

‘I-it seems a waste to heat another.’

‘It does,’ he agreed. ‘And it’ll mean I can check your vital signs during the night without getting up. Also it’ll mean I don’t need to get my sleeping bag from the car.’

‘You don’t need to check my vital signs.’ But the night was getting fuzzier and she was getting past arguing. ‘You have a sleeping bag?’

‘For camping. At the music festival. Not that I needed to. My friends organised us a camp that’d make a Bedouin sheikh jealous.’

‘Your friends?’

‘Fiona did most of the organising. She’s a radiologist and she’s a very organising person.’

Fiona. He had a girlfriend, then. Of course he did. Anyone with a smile like that would have a partner. There was no reason then why her somersaulting insides would suddenly somersault in a different direction.

It was too much. She was too tired. She needed to sleep and not think of problems and how she was going to manage with an injured knee and how she could check Gran through the night when she was so tired and what she was going to do tomorrow.

Without Max. Who had a girlfriend.

‘Do you need help with the bathroom?’ he asked, and she had to think about it before answering.

‘I can manage,’ she said with another of her dumb attempts at dignity.

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Very well,’ he said, and smiled and lifted her eiderdown and tucked it up under her chin. And then, before she knew what he intended-before she could even guess he’d thought of such a gesture-he bent and kissed her.

It was a feather kiss, maybe a kiss of reassurance, of warmth and of comfort. But surely such a kiss should be on the forehead. Not on the lips.

But on her lips it was.

His mouth brushed hers, and it was as if the heat of the room was suddenly centred right there, and it was a surge of warmth so great it was all she could do not to reach out and hold him and lock the kiss to her.

Only her hands were under the eiderdown. Thankfully. Because to hold this man…

To hold him would be a shout that she needed him, that she was alone, she was bereft and he was everything she most wanted but could never have.

William…

She made herself say her husband’s name in her head but it didn’t work. There was nothing there.

William. Gone.

Max. Here. All male.

‘Goodnight, Maggie,’ he whispered, and she could have wept as he drew away.

‘Goodnight,’ she made herself whisper back.

She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to, but she did.

William, William, William.

As a mantra it had no strength at all.

Max. She wanted him to stay. Right here. Right now.

For ever.

SHE woke and sun was streaming in the windows. Max was kneeling in front of the fire and it was morning.

It was well into morning. Her eyes flew open, she stared at the sunlight flooding the room and thought this was no dawn light.

Her eyes flew to the grandfather clock in the corner and as if on cue it started to boom.

Nine booms. Nine o’clock!

‘And how any of you ever sleep with that thing is a mystery,’ Max murmured, kneeling to blow on the embers as she stared at the clock as if it had betrayed her. The embers leapt to life-of course. Would they dare not if this man ordered?

He looked… He looked…

Much cleaner than last night, for a start. He looked like he’d showered. He was wearing clean jeans and a clean shirt, though he had the sleeves rolled up as if he meant business.

He looked like he should always be here. Making her fire in the mornings. Living in her house. Just being here.

But then he turned to her and she saw the strain on his face and inappropriate thoughts went right out the window.

‘Betty died at six o’clock this morning,’ he told her, and her world stilled.