The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For (7 page)

‘We’re running fundraising events like the rodeo,’ Brian explained, ‘and soliciting donations from local businesses. The local council has guaranteed to match us on a dollar-for-dollar basis so I think we can afford to build something fairly special.’

Kate smiled to herself. The ‘fairly’ in front of special showed Brian up as a number-cruncher. Hospital administrators had to be cautious in their spending—after all, it was their job to see the place ran within its means.

The group had by now delegated tasks, and were scattering in various directions, although Gina, Susie and Marcia remained in the kitchen, pulling things out of an old refrigerator and starting work on salads.

‘Can I help?’ Kate asked, but once again Brian had spoken over her, offering to show her around the hospital, saying they may as well get her paperwork in order.

Kate’s apologetic smile at Gina was greeted with a grimace, but directed more at Brian, Kate thought. Was he one of those administrators who insisted on all the paperwork being perfect and always up to date? She’d worked with ward secretaries who’d thought paperwork more important than patients, and it had driven her to distraction.

But she followed Brian out of the house—through the front door this time—and across to the hospital, while he talked about bed numbers, and clinic flights, and retrievals, and how expensive these ancillary services were.

‘But people living in isolation five hundred miles away can’t rely on an ambulance getting to them, surely,’ Kate reminded
him, and although he nodded agreement, he didn’t seem very happy about it.

‘Ah, Kate. I was coming to get you. Jill tells me you’re off to Wygera tomorrow so I thought I’d show you around.’

Hamish loomed up as Brian was explaining how much it cost to run the emergency department, giving Kate figures per patient per hour that made her mind close completely. Maths had never been her strong point.

So Hamish was a welcome relief—he, at least, would make the grand tour patient-oriented.

Providing she concentrated on what he was saying, not what she was feeling. The feeling stuff was to do with having spent a fraught night together, nothing more. She knew that, but at the same time knew she should be on her guard.

Feelings could be insidious. Creeping in where they were least wanted.

‘No, no, we’ve paperwork to do. You go on back to the house and help the others with the barbeque. I’ll bring Kate when we finish here.’

Brian’s assertions cut across her thoughts, so it seemed that even if she’d wanted Hamish as her tour guide, she wasn’t going to get him.

By the time they’d seen the hospital, met dozens of staff, completed the forms Brian required for insurance purposes and walked back to the house, the party on the back veranda was in full swing. The smell of searing meat hung in the air, while sizzling onions tantalised Kate’s taste-buds.

‘After a dry biscuit for breakfast and some sandwiches for a meal at afternoon teatime, that certainly smells good,’ she said to Brian, who had put his arm around her waist to guide her into the crowd.

Cal was there, so she headed towards him, anxious to know when Jack’s operation would take place, only realising who he was with as she drew closer.

‘So, seen all you need to of the hospital?’ Hamish asked, frowning at a point over her shoulder.

‘More than I could take in,’ Kate told him, feeling a new touch on her back and realising Brian had followed her. ‘It’s far bigger than I thought and I’ll be getting lost for at least the first week.’

‘I’m sure you won’t,’ Cal said kindly. ‘Did you look in on Jack?’

‘He was still sleeping and Charles was with him so I didn’t go in. When’s the op? Have you heard?’

Cal shrugged.

‘Between ten and twelve’s the best timing we’ve got so far,’ he said. ‘Though we should know more by nine when the surgeon in Brisbane is due to start the last patient on his list.’

Brian had moved to her side and was asking if she wanted a drink, and politeness decreed she answer him.

‘Something non-alcoholic—I haven’t had much sleep,’ Kate told him, pleased he would have to move away so she could ask Cal about the operation. But to her astonishment Brian simply turned to Hamish and said, ‘Hamish, would you get a squash for Kate?’

Hamish—Cal, too, for that matter—seemed equally surprised, but Hamish moved obediently away, while Brian, perhaps sensing everyone’s reaction, explained, ‘I don’t live here so don’t want to be poking around in their kitchen.’

It was an acceptable excuse, yet Kate felt uncomfortable that Brian was sticking to her like Velcro. She knew it was probably kindness on his part—after all, she was the new face in this gathering of friends and colleagues—but the discomfort remained.

Although being uncomfortable about Brian was certainly distracting her from thoughts of Hamish.

Setting both aside, she returned to her mission—finding out from Cal what lay ahead for Jack.

‘I’m virtually doing a hip replacement. We have prosthetic devices here because we have a visiting orthopaedic surgeon who comes once a quarter, operating in Croc Creek to save the patients travelling to him. It will depend on the damage to the neck of the trochanter. If the bullet is deeply lodged, the orthopod in Brisbane suggests we take if off completely and insert a new-age ceramic replacement and ceramic acetabular socket for it.’

Cal smiled at her.

‘Want to watch?’

Kate shuddered.

‘I had to do a certain amount of theatre work during my training, but the noise of the saws in orthopaedic work put me off that kind of surgery for life.’

‘Besides, she needs to sleep,’ Gina put in, arriving with Hamish and the lemon squash. ‘She’ll need all her wits about her to judge the pool entries tomorrow.’

Hamish handed her the drink, and somehow he and Gina managed to detach Brian from her side. Kate wasn’t sure but she felt it had been deliberate, a sense confirmed when, a little later, Gina whispered, ‘Brian makes a play for all the new female staff and Hamish felt you might be too polite to escape his tenacious clutches.’

Hamish felt that, did he?

Kate scowled at the man in question who’d moved, with his arm around Brian’s shoulders, over to the barbeque. She was about to launch into a ‘What right had he to make that decision?’ tirade to Gina when she realised that she’d given Hamish that right—had told him she wasn’t interested in a relationship with anyone.

Gina suggested they find a chair before they were all taken.

‘Nothing worse than trying to eat barbequed steak standing up,’ she said. ‘Besides, if we’re sitting down, someone might serve us—saves getting in the queue at the salad table.’

Someone did—Hamish bringing two plates piled high with meat and assorted salads across to where they sat.

‘CJ’s eating with Max and Georgie, and Cal’s nabbed us a table at the end of the veranda,’ he said, adding, rather obscurely, ‘With only four chairs.’

Gina stood up and moved away immediately, though Kate followed more reluctantly. Hamish was only being kind, she knew that, but his kindness—she was sure it was just that—made her feel warm inside. Actually, quite hot in places.

Funny that kindness could have that effect …

‘Oh!’

The table Cal had snagged was beyond the old settee and had the most wonderful view out over the cove. The moon had just risen, so it hung like a slightly squashed golden lantern just above the horizon, spreading a path of light across the sea.

‘Nice view?’ Cal teased, and Kate shook her head.

‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered, not wanting to break the spell beauty had cast around her.

‘It’s what makes Crocodile Creek so special,’ Hamish said. ‘And what I’ll miss when I go home. Although I do have a view of the Firth from my flat, and moons do rise in Scotland, though not in quite the same majestic splendour as these tropical moons.’

‘You’re going home?’

Kate’s question came out far louder than she’d intended it to, and she certainly hadn’t meant to sound shocked.

‘In less than three weeks.’ Cal answered for him. ‘And, boy, are we going to miss him. I know Charles has a replacement lined up—several replacements, in fact, because we’re down about three doctors and we don’t know if Joe and Christina will be back—but we’ve kind of got used to having a big, useless Scot around the place.’

‘Useless? I’ll give you useless!’ Hamish growled, and the others laughed.

‘We thought he’d be useless when he first arrived,’ Cal explained.
‘He was so polite to everyone, and so correct, and he’d never been in a light plane or a helicopter and didn’t trust either of them.’

He smiled at his friend. ‘But we brought him up to speed, and now, just when he’s become a reasonably useful member of the community, he’s going back to cold, dreary Scotland.’

‘To specialise in paeds,’ Gina added, giving Cal a nudge in the side, ‘which is what he’s always wanted to do, remember. You should be happy for him, not giving him grief.’

Once again Kate was struck by the warmth and camaraderie between these colleagues and housemates—and once again it emphasised her aloneness.

Or was it the news that Hamish was leaving so soon causing the empty feeling inside her?

Not possible.

She was still debating this when Brian appeared, a plate of food in one hand, cutlery poking out of his pocket and dragging a chair behind him.

‘Thought I’d lost you,’ he said to Kate, pulling his chair into position between her and Gina. ‘Great moon, huh? Maybe we can take a walk up onto the headland when we’ve finished eating. I often take a walk after dinner. Helps me sleep.’

‘I doubt Kate needs a walk to help her sleep,’ Hamish said, before Kate could think of a reply. ‘We had precious little last night and today she’s spent most of her time with Jack.’

Kate looked at Hamish, who appeared to be glaring at Brian, although with Hamish’s rather severe features it was hard to tell. But, glaring or not, he was going back to Scotland in a couple of weeks so he couldn’t possibly be warning Brian away for his own sake.

Did he not like Brian?

Or was he just genuinely interested in her need for sleep?

Whatever! She felt uncomfortable allowing him to take over her decision-making.

‘I’d like a walk after dinner,’ she said, more to the table in general than to Brian.

‘Oh, good, we’ll all go,’ Gina said.

Which was how Kate’s first evening in Crocodile Creek ended in a moonlit walk over the headland above the house with Brian and Hamish, Cal and Gina, Susie, Marcia, Mike, and Georgie, CJ and Max, while a lolloping, lovable, dopey dog called Rudolph gambolled along beside them.

‘W
HAT DO YOU
mean he’s gone into shock? What kind of shock? Septic from the infection? Hypovolaemic from the blood loss? He’s in hospital—how could they let him go into shock?’

Kate was vaguely aware she was shooting the messenger, but Hamish was right there in front of her, so why not vent her anxiety and distress on him? He was big enough to take it.

She had clambered out of bed while he was explaining why he’d woken her for a second time, and was now pulling a pair of sweats over her skimpy pyjama pants. Thrusting her feet into her sandals, she hurried towards the door.

Hamish didn’t move.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ she urged.

‘You’re going like that?’

She glanced down at the amiable hippo on the T-shirt top of her pyjamas.

‘I’m decent, Jack’s very ill, why not?’

‘No reason,’ Hamish said, but he shook his head in a bemused manner and followed her through the quiet house.

Were all the occupants over at the hospital, or were some people actually getting some sleep?

As they walked through the garden, an imminent dawn ghosting the foliage into strange shapes and patterns, Hamish
explained. The operation to remove the bullet, with the guidance of the surgeon in Brisbane, had apparently gone well, and no replacement devices had been required. Jack had made the transition to the recovery room safely. Even there, Emily had been pleased with his responses as he’d come out of the anaesthetic, then they’d transferred him to the ICU for monitoring, and everything had gone haywire, his blood pressure dropping, pulse rate rising and his mental state confused and lethargic.

He wanted to die, he kept repeating weakly, then closing his eyes in response to any comment or question.

Desperate with concern—had he made the wrong decision doing the op here?—Charles had paged Hamish, asking him to wake Kate in the hope she might be able to rouse the young man.

‘The ICU is through here,’ Hamish said, guiding Kate with a hand on her elbow to an area she hadn’t explored with Brian.

Talk about state of the art. Many city hospitals Kate had seen would have been pleased to have such a set-up. Five rooms, all monitored from a central desk, but only one of them occupied. Behind the desk, a nurse and Emily frowned at the monitor.

Jack’s was the room crowded with people in spite of ICU protocols that discouraged such practices.

‘Kate!’ Charles greeted her with relief. ‘I’m sorry, but we thought if you could speak to him—rouse him. Alix is running new blood tests but as yet we can’t find any physical reason for his sudden collapse.’

‘He’s been through a lot,’ Kate reminded him, slipping past the man in the wheelchair to reach the side of Jack’s bed and take one limp hand in both of hers.

‘Hey, Jack, it’s me, Kate. Sorry I was a bit late getting here, but you were ages in Theatre and a girl has to sleep some time.’

She was keeping it light, as she had earlier, but although Jack acknowledged her arrival by opening his eyes, that was all the response she got.

Cal, who’d been standing at the foot of the bed with his arm around Gina, nodded tiredly at Kate, then led Gina away. Jill, who looked as if she hadn’t slept for days, also departed, her shoulders slumped as if Jack’s failure to respond was somehow her fault.

Kate continued to talk, while Charles sat beside her, watching the screen for any kind of response from his nephew.

Nothing—well, not nothing, but the changes were all negative. They were looking on while a healthy young man died for no apparent reason.

Hamish stood outside the room, watching through the window, seeing the urgency in Kate’s pose as she bent over the bed, trying to force a reaction of any kind from Jack.

Apparently deciding there was nothing he could do, Charles left the room, wheeling to a stop beside Hamish so he, too, could watch through the window.

‘I tried to phone his mother, but got an answering-machine. Philip thinks she might be skiing in New Zealand. Even if we ask the police over there to track the family down, it could be days before she gets here.’

The anguish in Charles’s voice told Hamish far more than the words. The man was blaming himself for insisting the lad stayed here in Crocodile Creek.

‘You did all you could,’ Hamish assured him. ‘His whole blood clotting time was within acceptable limits, we had the desmopressin on hand for Lucky, so you were able to infuse that into him before the op. They couldn’t have done any more in a major city hospital, and shifting him again might have provoked this problem earlier.’

But Charles refused to be comforted.

‘I shouldn’t have assumed my way was the best way,’ he said bitterly. ‘Damn it all, Hamish. There’s far too much bad blood in this family already, without me having more of it on my hands.’

‘You’ve already done what you can to get Jim and Honey
Cooper back on their feet and to end the feud between the Coopers and the Wetherbys,’ he reminded Charles.

‘Sure!’ Charles growled. ‘I patch things up just fine then let the father of their grandchild die. It’ll start all over again!’

‘Not if Kate has any say in it,’ Hamish said, nodding to where Kate was ordering the young man to live.

Standing helplessly beside the bed, her gaze snapping from Jack to the monitor and back again, Kate thought about the story Hamish had told her. A family feud that had torn this modern-day Romeo from his Juliet.

His Juliet! His girlfriend! The baby! She swung around to see Hamish talking to Charles outside the window.

Leaving Jack’s side, she headed out the door.

‘Megan? Where’s Megan? Is she still in the hospital? Or in town? Can we get her here? She’s the one person to whom he might respond.’

Hamish, who’d heard Jack’s insistence that Megan was the only girl for him, caught on fastest.

‘She’s living at Christina’s house. I’ll go there now.’

But Charles held him back.

‘You think he cares about her? According to Jim, he hasn’t seen her for six months.’

‘He cares,’ Hamish said, and Charles nodded.

‘Then go and get her. I’ll handle Jim.’

Satisfied she’d done what she could, Kate returned to Jack’s side, and continued urging a response from him, but through the window she saw Charles wheel away—to tell Jim Cooper his daughter’s boyfriend was now in the hospital?

Would Megan come? Kate was frustrated that she didn’t know more about the dynamics of the relationship between Megan and Jack. There was a baby—but did Megan care about its father?

The question was answered very soon afterwards when a
plump young woman came racing into the ICU, Hamish hurrying rather ineffectually behind her.

‘Where is he? Where’s Jack?’ she demanded.

Emily came out from behind the monitor to intercept her.

‘Hush, Megan,’ she said quietly. ‘Calm down, love. You’re not long out of here yourself.’

But Megan was beyond stopping. With one swift glance around the sterile space, she found which room held the man she sought and, stepping around Emily, headed straight for it.

But was it love or anger driving her? Kate had no idea, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. She intercepted Megan as the excited young woman burst through the door.

‘He’s very sick. Don’t shock him,’ she warned, then put her arms around the newcomer as Megan’s face crumpled and she let out an anguished cry.

‘I wouldn’t hurt him,’ she whispered. ‘I love him!’

The plaintive declaration speared pain deep into Kate’s heart, but she held her ground, talking quietly to Megan to calm her before she approached Jack’s bed.

‘Hamish said there was no reason for him to be so sick,’ Megan whimpered, allowing Kate to hold her while she stared at the pale, depleted figure on the bed.

‘No, it just seems as if he’s given up.’

‘He can’t do that. He’s got a baby,’ Megan protested. ‘He can’t die without knowing about Jackson.’

‘He won’t die,’ Kate promised—both fiercely and foolishly—then she led Megan close to the bed, took Jack’s hand and spoke to him again.

‘Hey, Jack, I’ve got a surprise for you. This will make you open your eyes.’

She put his hand into Megan’s and stepped back, while Megan collapsed into the chair beside the bed and brushed her lips across his hand. Tears spilled onto his skin and dampened the sheets, and Kate backed up against the wall and waited,
knowing Megan needed to get her own emotions under control before she could speak to Jack.

‘Jack, I’m here, and I love you so much. Please, don’t leave me again. I tried so hard to believe I didn’t love you. I even told myself I could live without you, but seeing you again I know I can’t, so don’t leave me, Jack, don’t leave me again.’

Megan used his hand to wipe away fresh tears, and Kate found herself swallowing hard and hoping her eyes weren’t brimming too obviously.

‘I need you, Jack,’ Megan continued, her voice steady although she was trembling all over. ‘You have no idea how much I need you—especially now.’

She glanced up at Kate, despairing questions in her eyes. Was she talking too much? Was it doing any good?

And the big one—should she tell him about the baby?

Or maybe Kate imagined that one. She hoped so because she had no idea how a young man might respond to the unexpected news he was a father.

‘Keep talking, that’s all you can do,’ she said.

Megan obeyed, telling Jack she’d been here in hospital herself and though she’d been sick she’d kept thinking of him and that had kept her going.

‘We need each other, Jack,’ she said, imploring a response from him. ‘We’re meant to be together.’

But Kate, who was watching the monitor all the time, willing a change in the slowly declining peaks, knew the words were being lost somewhere in the caverns of emptiness inside the young man.

Megan gave her one last despairing look, then threw the last dice.

‘We have a baby, Jack. A little boy. I called him Jackson—you know, Jack’s son. He’s been sick too, Jack, he has a bad heart, but he’s a fighter, our baby, a real little champ.’

There! The spike Kate had been praying for happened, and
she turned her attention from the monitor to the patient. Jack had opened his eyes, startling Megan so much she began to cry again.

‘A baby?’ Kate lip-read the question, as his voice was strangled by the tubes in his nose and mouth.

Megan held both his hands now, and nodded, tears falling all over him.

‘A baby called Jackson. I’ll bring him in to show you just as soon as you’re well enough.’

‘Now!’

Neither Megan nor Kate could decipher the word, until Jack repeated it.

Megan turned to Kate.

‘The baby’s still here in the nursery because he ran a temperature last week and he’s still not feeding well. Can I bring him now?’

Kate had no idea of the protocol of tiny babies in this ICU, but Charles had obviously heard the conversation, for he was at the door.

‘I’ll get Lucky for you,’ he said to Megan, then he smiled apologetically and added, ‘Jackson! I must remember Jackson!’

He wheeled away, Megan returning to Jack’s side to tell him the baby was on the way, and that he looked just like his father, and now Jack was back they could be a family.

And although Jack’s eyes had closed, Kate could tell he hadn’t slipped away from them again. He’d left that no-man’s land between life and death and, hopefully, wouldn’t return there for a long, long time.

Leaving the little family in the ICU in Charles’s hands, Kate returned to the house, but now, in daylight, she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Not that there was time for sleep. It was after six and she’d been told the hospital car left for Wygera at eight. She changed into her running gear, slipped on her trainers and once again went quietly out of the house.

This time, however, she heard noises in the old building, voices from the side veranda—CJ and Cal, she guessed, while Mike was sitting at the kitchen table, talking into a mobile phone.

He lifted a hand in salute to Kate, then jotted something in a small notebook on the table in front of him.

Kate waved back and continued on her way. A good run over the headland would shake away the cobwebs her interrupted night’s sleep had left behind, and prepare her for whatever lay ahead.

She began slowly, pacing herself as she crossed the dewy grass, relishing the salt tang of the air as she drew it deeply into her lungs. Then her rhythm picked up and she extended her pace so she reached the sun-drenched summit winded enough to need to bend over to regain her breath.

So it wasn’t until she straightened that the full beauty of the place struck her—the blue-green of the sea, the curved hump of an island on the horizon, the golden sands curling around the cove.

Finally, a house by the sea. Maybe she’d extend her contract.

Maybe if her father wanted her …

Best not to think about it, she reminded herself, but the warning came too late. Thinking about the father she didn’t know had disrupted the blissful serenity her run had given her, and now, as she stared out at the peaceful sea, disquiet was growing again within her.

Or was the disquiet because she sensed she was no longer alone on the bluff?

She turned, wondering if it was one of the housemates she hadn’t yet met who was joining her in her silent communion with the sea.

It
was
a housemate, but one she knew—one she’d been trying not to think about as she’d run across the tough, springy grass of the headland.

‘Kate.’

Hamish was close enough to shield her from the breeze that had been fidgeting at her clothing, and her name was both an acknowledgement and a greeting.

She nodded in reply then decided to walk along the clifftop, assuming, if he wanted her company, he’d fall in beside her.

But instead he grasped her elbow, effectively halting her progress and, at the same time, turning her towards him.

He stared at her for a moment, as if uncertain who she was.

‘This is the most ridiculous situation,’ he grumbled at her.

‘Walking on a clifftop?’

‘No!’

The grumble had become a growl.

‘Then what?’