Marion Lennox - Stormbound Surgeon

‘He doesn’t look after her very well.’

‘Well, they’re not married.’

‘If I was engaged to Amy…’

‘Yes, dear, but you’re not,’ Daisy said patiently. ‘And, of course, Malcolm can’t move here. His practice is in Bowra and when it rains it floods and the road’s cut. Though not always as spectacularly as it is now.’

There was a lot he still didn’t understand but it was time to move on.

‘You guys have two cars, right?’

His father and stepmother looked at each other. ‘Yes, but…’

He saw where their thoughts were headed. ‘No, I’m not planning to try a stunt jump over the river. I know I’m stuck here.’

‘You’re very welcome to stay with us for as long as you like,’ Daisy told him, and his father beamed his consent. They’d come out to Amy’s practically twittering with excitement, and now they were aching to take him home.

‘I’m happy here,’ he told them, and Daisy looked around and shuddered.

‘Yes, dear, but it’s hardly cosy.’

‘And that’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. Look at this place.’

They looked-and they could only agree.

‘We didn’t think she lived like this,’ Daisy told him. She was clearly puzzled. ‘We thought…well, she lives in such a huge house we thought that her clothes and her car were a sort of eccentric choice.’

‘She has no money.’

His parents looked shocked at the thought. ‘Of course she has money. She lives in this place…’

‘Which is costing her a bomb, but she can’t even afford to heat it. I gather she has no money at all.’

‘She told you that?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’ve only just met her.’

‘I have a very confiding nature,’ Joss told them, and got an odd look from his stepmother for his pains.

‘She really has nothing?’

‘So I gather. The old man left everything but the house and the nursing home to his nephews.’

They practically gaped. And then Daisy moved straight into the organisational mode Joss was starting to dread. ‘Well! I’m sure we could find all sorts of furniture to give her and so could half the population of Iluka. If we’d had any idea… Most of us are in a position to give. We think so much of Amy…’

‘It wouldn’t work.’ Joss was doing some on-the-spot thinking. ‘She’d sell it. She’s strapped for cash and the nephews are breathing down her neck for more. But if you lent her things…’

‘Lent?’

‘Like, for six years. Would you do that?’

He watched their faces and saw the measure of respect and affection in which Amy was held. There was no hesitation at all. ‘Of course we would.’

‘We’ll get onto this straight away,’ his father told him. ‘It’ll be a pleasure to do it. If the town had known… I know Jack Trotter-he’s Shire President. I’m sure there’s things we can do. This town’s coffers are very healthy indeed-there’s not a lot of traffic lights that need maintaining around here. Come to think of it, there’s not a lot of anything that needs maintaining. Now, how about you, lad? You don’t want to stay here, I assume?’ He looked around the barren room in distaste. ‘It puts a man off money, seeing the place like this.’

‘It does.’ But Joss hesitated. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Dad, I might stay on. If you can lend me one of your cars…’

‘Surely.’ But his father’s face was a question. ‘But why?’

‘It’s just… The reason I was leaving was to get down to work on this conference paper. That still applies. This place is quiet…’

‘And you need to be here as our furniture arrives.’ Daisy was smiling in a way Joss didn’t like. It meant his stepmother was reading far too much into his intention to stay. ‘You leave the boy be, David. He doesn’t want to be staying with a couple of oldies like us when he could be staying with Amy.’

‘Amy’s engaged,’ David said, surprised. He’d caught the gist of where Daisy was headed but he didn’t follow.

‘Yes, she is,’ Daisy muttered, and Joss raised his eyebrows.

‘You don’t like this Malcolm?’

‘No.’ Daisy was blunt and decisive.

‘That’s not really fair.’ Joss’s father was frowning. ‘You hardly know the man.’

‘I know that he’s wishy-washy.’

‘He’s a decent bloke.’

‘He’s never going to set the world on fire,’ Daisy retorted. ‘He’s an accountant in Bowra and he’s the sort of man you’d know from five years old that was where he’d end up.’

‘That’s a bit harsh. Amy must like him,’ Joss said mildly, and Daisy snorted.

‘Yeah. Like she had a choice. He’s a presentable young man and presentable young men are a bit thin on the ground here. And as for Malcolm… He’s onto a very good thing with Amy Freye and he’s enough of a money manager to know it.’

‘In six years, maybe.’

‘Would you take great trouble to hold onto a gold mine even though you knew it wouldn’t pay out for six years?’

He thought that through. ‘I guess I would.’

‘There you go, then,’ Daisy said triumphantly. ‘He’s wishy-washy and a gold-digger. I rest my case.’

JOSS returned to the hospital to find Charlotte was sleeping. Amy was taking her obs as he walked into her room. She had her white coat on over her clothes again and he thought again how strikingly attractive she was. Once she was out of those dreary clothes…

Maybe he could get Daisy onto that, too.

But Amy was smiling and he thought, Why bother? She was gorgeous enough as she was.

Luckily, Amy wasn’t into mind-reading. She was concentrating on her patient. ‘She’s hardly stirred.’

‘She’s due for some pain relief.’ He took the chart and wrote up what was needed-and then he hesitated. ‘I suppose we have the necessary drugs…’

‘Because we’re isolated I have permission to run a limited pharmacy. I have what’s needed.’

He shook his head in appreciation. ‘This is an amazing nursing home.’

‘It is,’ she said without any false modesty. ‘But didn’t I have you trapped at home?’

‘My father and Daisy came to the rescue. I am currently driving Daisy’s pink Volkswagen.’

She grinned. ‘I bet your dad’s relieved. He might be in love but even he blanched when she had it spray-painted pink.’

‘Bertram took one look and elected to stay at home.’

‘Wise dog.’

‘But I thought I might be needed here.’

‘So you decided to brave even a pink Volkswagen. What a man!’

She was laughing at him. He liked it, he decided. He definitely liked it.

‘Maybe I’m not needed,’ he said, moving on but not without a struggle. ‘Things are looking good here. The baby’s still fine?’

‘Yep. She’s in the sitting room with the oldies. My nursing staff decided that while her mother slept they could babysit.’

‘So we have…twenty babysitters?’

‘At least. Charlotte will be lucky if she gets her daughter back. Talk about a case of collective cluck.’

‘I wonder who she is.’

‘I wonder.’ Amy followed his gaze to the sleeping mother. ‘She looks exhausted.’

‘But she’s not a local?’

‘I’d reckon every single one of our residents managed to get a look at her on the way in and no one recognises her.’

‘Her truck looks like a farm truck.’

‘And that’s what she looks like. A farmer. Her hands…they’re work hands.’ She lifted the girl’s fingers gently from the counterpane. Joss saw and thought that they had matching hands. The stranger’s hands were work-worn but so were Amy’s. Both women knew how to work hard.

‘She’ll tell us soon enough when she wakes.’

‘I’m not sure.’ Amy was still watching the girl’s face. ‘She woke for a little but she seems…she seems almost afraid.’

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of here.’

‘Apart from being cosseted to death. What a place to have a baby. There are no fewer than five sets of bootees and matinée jackets being knitted as we speak.’

‘Fate worse than death.’

‘As you say.’

They left Charlotte sleeping and made their way to Amy’s office. Charlotte was nicely stable and the baby was doing beautifully. There was no reason for him to stay, but Joss made no move to leave.

There wasn’t a good reason for him to leave, Amy figured, remembering where he was going home to. So she might as well make use of the man.

‘How do you feel about checking Rhonda Coutts’s lungs?’

‘Rhonda Coutts?’

‘I think she might be building up to pneumonia. She had a fall last week and spent a few days on her back. She’s up now but she’s coughing and she’s weak. As the Bowra doctor can’t get through…well, would you check her?’

‘Sure.’ Rhonda Coutts’s lungs. Well, well.

He was a surgeon-one of the top in his field. It had been a long time since he’d been called on to advise about the possible pneumonia of an elderly patient with no surgical background.

She sensed his hesitation. ‘Would you feel competent…?’

He bristled. ‘Hey, of course I’m competent.’

‘I only thought…well, with you being a surgeon you might have…’

‘Forgotten?’

‘I’m sorry.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘Insulting, huh?’

‘No. It’s fine.’ He was still bristling. ‘Lead the way to Mrs Coutts.’

‘I have a real live doctor on tap. For a week, if I’m lucky. What I won’t be able to achieve in a week…’

Kitty, Amy’s secretary, was staring at her as if she was demented as Amy danced in to fetch Mrs Coutts’s medical records. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

But Amy was practically whooping on the spot as she planned ahead. ‘Mr Harris’s ingrown toenails. Ethel Crane’s eczema. Martin Hamilton’s prostate. They can all be seen here. Now.’

Martin’s prostate was the best one. The Bowra doctor was a middle-aged woman and Martin wouldn’t consent to speaking to her about his prostate, much less let her examine him. ‘With a doctor right here, I can solve all these problems in one fell swoop.’

‘But he’s here on holiday,’ Kitty said doubtfully. ‘Do you think he will?’