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 (8 page)

Batman would never have asked that question.

Batman would have known the answer without having to ask.

In actual fact, Kate knew the answer, too, because she could feel the attraction between them simmering in the clean morning air.

Pollution, that was what it was …

And, as Hamish had said, it was a ridiculous situation. They’d barely met. He was going away.

‘Do you know how badly I want to kiss you?’ His voice was tight enough to make the words sound clipped and harsh.

‘I can guess,’ Kate admitted, as her own body hummed with a quite absurd desire to do the same to him. ‘But I’m sure it’s just proximity that’s doing this to us. We shared a night of tension, out there in the gorge with Jack, and it drew us closer together than a month of normal company might do.’

Did she sound down to earth and together, or had her internal flutters botched the job?

‘Do you honestly believe a work-related bond would make me want to kiss you? I’ve worked with Cal for two years and never wanted to kiss him. Or Emily. Or Christina.’

Hamish didn’t seem to be moving but his body was narrowing the gap between the two of them so now she could feel its warmth.

‘I should hope not,’ Kate retorted, edging backwards because the warmth was dangerous. ‘You can’t go around kissing all your colleagues. And that includes me. Apart from anything else, with me, anyway, it’s impractical. Think about it, Hamish! Starting something would be idiotic. You’re going home in less than three weeks and I’m here on a mission. It’s a perfect example of the wrong time and the wrong place.’

She was trying hard not to look directly at him—looking at Hamish being something more safely done from a distance—but she knew for sure he’d greeted this prime example of common sense with a frown.

Knew for sure he’d closed the gap between them once again!

‘Wrong time? Wrong place? Is there such a thing with kisses?’ he demanded, then, without waiting for her answer, his lips closed on hers, warm and firm and all-encompassing, claiming her mouth like a trophy, tempting her lips open with an inciting tongue, luring from her a response she knew she shouldn’t give.

The kiss lasted until her knees gave out and she slumped against his body.

‘Hamish!’

The word she’d intended as a protest came out more like an endearment, encouraging him to lock his arms around her body and draw her close against him, supporting her, so he could continue to plunder her mouth at will.

The sweet invasion warmed the lonely places in her heart, seducing her with its promise, and although her head knew kissing Hamish was not at all a good idea, her heart longed for more—her body demanded more.

No! Kate broke away, frightened by the intensity of whatever it was between them.

‘I’m going back,’ she said abruptly, and ran away, heading
down towards the house—hoping she might find her lost sanity along the way.

CJ was on the top step again, but as Kate drew close Cal appeared, hoisting the child onto his shoulders and carrying him down the steps.

‘I’m taking a spaceship to child care,’ CJ told her, waving a cardboard contraption in the air above Cal’s head. ‘And Mr Grubb’s taken Rudolph to get his shots so he won’t follow me today.’

Kate congratulated them both on the excellent spaceship, wished CJ a happy day then took the steps two at a time, crossing the veranda and finding Emily in the kitchen with Mike.

‘Hi, Kate. Have you met Mike? Our second chopper pilot and paramedic.’

Emily had a possessive hand resting on Mike’s shoulder, and the same sheen in her eyes that Kate had noticed in Gina’s the previous day.

The love epidemic?

‘We met last night,’ Kate explained. ‘Jack OK?’

Emily beamed at her.

‘More OK than he was earlier. We’d thought of bringing Megan in, but we had no idea if he’d want to see her or not. He hadn’t been in touch with her for six months, so we thought maybe he’d be more upset than he already was.’

She paused for breath, then added, ‘Hamish said Jack told you both how he felt about his girlfriend, and how he’d tried to go and visit her.’

‘It’s often a case of whatever works in medicine, isn’t it?’ Mike said, patting Emily’s hand, which still rested on his shoulder. ‘How was your run?’

The change of subject was somewhat abrupt and Mike’s question was innocent enough, yet Kate felt colour surge into her cheeks. Could people see the headland from the kitchen? Or had Mike been outside and seen her kissing Hamish?

‘It was fine,’ she said, ‘but I’m very sweaty. I’ve got to change for work.’

And with that she escaped to her room.

It didn’t matter who saw what, she told herself, but she knew it did. After the public humiliation she’d endured with Daniel and Lindy, Kate was determined her private life would be just that—private.

Not that she intended having a private life with Hamish.

She’d have a shower, grab a bowl of cereal—she would have to find out about cooking and shopping rosters—then go over to the hospital well in time for the trip to Wygera.

If she was early enough, she could get her roster from Jill. Maybe she could get the doctors’ rosters as well. Then all she had to do was make sure she was always busy if she and Hamish happened to have corresponding time off.

Avoidance—that was the answer.

The white station wagon with the 24-hour-rescue emblem she was beginning to recognise as belonging to the hospital, pulled up in front of her, the driver—from his sheer size—unmistakable.

‘Charles or Cal usually do Wygera clinics,’ Hamish said cheerfully, reaching across to open the door for her, ‘but Cal’s got a theatre list today and Charles wants to stay close to Jack, so you’re stuck with me again.’

Kate eyed him with suspicion. It wasn’t so much that he might have engineered this togetherness—after all, he didn’t know about her avoidance decision—but the way he was acting so … well, colleaguey!

Weird!

Uncomfortable, even.

But two could play at pretending they hadn’t exchanged heated kisses on a headland a bare hour earlier.

‘Will you be helping me judge the swimming pool designs?’

‘Oh, no, not me! That’s your job, Sister Winship. Yours
alone, although remind me when we get there, I’ve got young Shane’s model in the back of the car. He came in a few days ago with a burst appendix and as he had to finish his model in hospital we gave him an extra couple of days to get his entry in.’

Kate remembered the talk about the competition she’d heard the previous evening. And CJ’s words as well.

‘And CJ and Max’s entry? They were working on it last night. Have you got that on board?’

Hamish turned and smiled at her, and she forgot swimming pools, and models, and a small boy who needed a cowboy hat.

This could
not
be happening!

‘Cal has already ordered a cowboy hat for Max and he and CJ will get it as a consolation prize,’ Hamish said. ‘That was arranged after Rudolph ate the dressing sheds which they’d made out of dog biscuits.’

Kate had to laugh, but Hamish’s tone made her feel uncomfortable.

He was either far, far better at this colleague stuff than she was, or his words about needing to kiss her had been just that—words.

Or maybe he tested women with a kiss.

Maybe he’d tested her and she’d failed.

The thought made her so depressed she remembered she was going to Wygera so she could see something of the countryside, and she looked out the window at the canefields through which they were passing, seeing nothing but a green blur, while her mind wondered just what the man beside her might have expected from a kiss.

Kissing ineptitude—was that why Daniel had chosen Lindy?

‘Aboriginal community.’

Kate tuned back in to Hamish’s conversation but it was too late. Not a word of it could she recall.

‘I’m sorry, I missed that,’ she said, facing him again, although that was dangerous when he might smile at any time.

‘Canefields
are
fascinating,’ he said, eyes twinkling to let her know he knew she hadn’t seen them.

He knew too damn much!

‘I was saying that as well as a swimming pool, Wygera needs some kind of industry. Perhaps industry is the wrong word, but a number of aboriginal communities like it are self-supporting. They run cattle stations, or tourist resorts. In the Northern Territory there are artists’ colonies. The problem is Wygera’s close enough to Croc Creek for some of the men to be employed there, but there’s not enough employment in town for all of them. Nor does everyone want to drive fifty miles back and forth to work.’

‘So kids grow up and leave home,’ Kate said, understanding the problem of the lack of employment in small towns.

‘Or don’t leave home and get into trouble,’ Hamish said, sounding more gloomy than she’d ever heard him.

‘You sound as if you really care,’ she said, thinking how different he was from some city doctors she had known who felt their responsibilities ended when a patient walked out the door.

‘Of course I care!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve worked with these people for two years and become friends with a number of them. Just because I’m going home, it doesn’t mean I’ll stop thinking about them. But until something happens to change things at Wygera, these clinic runs—well, doctors and nurses will go on treating symptoms rather than the problem.’

They’d turned off the main highway onto a narrower road which ran as straight as a ruler towards a high water tower.

‘Wygera!’ Hamish said, nodding towards the tower, and gradually, beneath it, a cluster of houses became evident. Dilapidated houses for the most part, with dogs dozing in the dirt in the shade cast by gutted car bodies. Kate recognised the look—there were suburbs in Melbourne where car bodies were the equivalent of garden gnomes in front-yard decor.

Beyond the houses, the ground sloped down to where thickly grouped trees suggested a creek or a river.

But if the town had a creek or river, why would it need a swimming pool?

H
AMISH PULLED UP
in front of a small building with a table and three chairs set up outside and a group of people lounging around on logs, chairs, or small patches of grass.

‘Medicine, Wygera-style,’ he said to Kate. ‘If the weather’s good we work outside, although there are perfectly adequate examination, waiting and treatment rooms inside the building.’

He nodded towards a stand of eucalypts some distance away, where more people lay around in the shade.

‘They’re your lot. We come out a couple of times a week, and today’s well-baby day, but if you see anything that worries you, shoot the person over to me. Eye problems are the main worries with the kids, diabetes with the mums. They’ll all have their cards with them—the health worker sees them before we arrive.’

Kate accepted all this information and advice, then, as a young man opened her door with a flourish, she stepped out and looked around her.

The place was nestled in the foothills of the mountains that divided the coastal plain from the cattle country further inland. The ground was bare and rocky, with grass struggling to grow here and there, mainly in the patches of shade.

‘Your bag, ma’am,’ Hamish said, handing her a square suitcase from the back of the station wagon. ‘Scales, swabs,
dressings and so on all inside, but Jake here will act as your runner if you need anything else.’

Kate took the bag, but the young man—presumably Jake—who had opened the car door lifted it out of her hand and led her towards the trees, where the shapes became women and children as Kate drew closer. Another table was set out there, with two chairs beside it, but Kate wondered if she might be better sitting on the grass with the women.

‘Sit on the chair, then the women can put babies on your knee,’ Jake told her, while another woman who Jake introduced as Millie got up from the grass and took the second chair.

‘I’m the health worker here,’ she said, unpacking the case and setting up the baby scales. ‘I do the weighing.’

‘Thanks,’ Kate said, but she glanced towards the clinic building. Strange it didn’t have its own scales.

‘People take them to weigh fish and potatoes and bananas, not so good afterwards for babies,’ Millie said, while Kate wondered if people in North Queensland had a special ability to read minds or if she’d always been so easy to read.

Though Hamish was a Scot, not a North Queenslander.

She almost glanced towards him, but remembered Millie and caught herself just in time.

‘I’m Kate,’ she said to the assembled throng, then she took her chair. ‘Now, who’s first?’

Some of the women giggled, and there was general shuffling, but Millie called a name and a pretty girl in blue jeans and a short tight top came forward, a tiny baby in her arms.

Kate looked at the girl’s flat stomach, complete with navel ring, and decided she couldn’t possibly have had a child, but Angela was indeed baby Joseph’s mother.

‘He just needs weighing and I’m worried about this rash,’ she said, putting the baby on the table and whipping off his disposable nappy. ‘See!’

The angry red rash in his groin and across his buttocks would have been hard to miss.

Kate delved into the bag, assuming she’d find a specimen tube and swab. Yes, it was as well equipped for a well-baby clinic as the equipment pack had been for Jack’s retrieval. She wiped a swab across the rash, dropped it into the tube, and screwed the lid shut and completed the label, taking Joseph’s full name from the card.

‘Nappy rash, I told her,’ Millie said. ‘Said to leave off his nappies or use cloth ones on him.’

‘I did leave his nappy off,’ Angela protested, ‘and it didn’t get better, and I tried cloth nappies.’

‘Actually, the latest tests seem to find that disposable nappies are less irritating to the skin than cloth ones,’ Kate said gently, not wanting to put Millie off side, but wanting to get the message across to Angela. ‘Also, if we look at the shiny surface of the rash and the way there are separate spots of it here and there, I think it might be candida—a yeast infection.’

‘Like women get?’ Angela asked, and Kate nodded.

‘A similar thing. It’s caused by yeast from the bowel and by bacteria and is more uncomfortable for poor Joseph than simple nappy rash, but there’s a cream you can use that should clear it up.’

What next? From what she’d seen of the town, it didn’t have a chemist’s shop, so getting Hamish to write a prescription seemed pointless.

‘Cream in the bag,’ Millie said to Kate. Millie obviously knew far more about clinic visits than Kate did! ‘This stuff stains his nappies so don’t you be worrying about it,’ Millie continued, addressing Angela this time, while Kate found the cream, one per cent hydrocortisone and three per cent iodochlorhydroxyquin—and, yes, the tube said it could leave a yellow stain.

Millie certainly knew more than Kate did!

‘Spread it thinly over the sore part twice a day,’ Kate told Angela. ‘Like this.’

She used a treated cloth to wipe the little fellow’s nether regions clean and another cloth to dry him off, then smeared a little of the cream over the bright scarlet rash. ‘You really need just a thin smear—putting it on more thickly doesn’t make the slightest difference. If it hasn’t shown signs of improvement, come back …’

There wouldn’t be a well-baby clinic more than once a fortnight but Kate remembered Hamish saying they did clinics, plural, each week.

‘Come back and see whoever comes later in the week,’ she finished, while Angela handed the baby and his card over to Millie for weighing and recording.

‘You give Joseph to his gran and get back to school,’ Millie told Angela when Joseph had his nappy on again and was ready to go.

‘She’s still at school?’ Kate asked Millie, while they waited for the next patient.

‘Last year, university next year. Wants to be a doctor. She’ll do it, too. Her mother’ll go to Townsville with her to mind Joseph while she studies. Girl’s got guts and brains—just stupid in the heart.’

Stupid in the heart! It was such an apt phrase it stayed with Kate as she examined another eight babies and listened to the problems their mothers had. She brought some up to date on their triple antigens, administered Neosporin drops into weeping eyes, gave advice to mothers on weaning, solids, diarrhoea and contraception, Millie letting her know in unsubtle ways whether she agreed or disagreed with the advice dispensed.

‘Lunch and judging time.’

Kate looked around to see Hamish approaching.

Stupid in the heart, Kate reminded herself just in case the reaction inside her had been something other than hunger manifesting itself.

‘Why doesn’t Millie take the well-baby clinic?’ she asked Hamish as they drove further into the town. ‘She knows the people and certainly knows as much if not more than I do.’

‘She says the people take more notice of someone from the hospital. They go to Millie in between our visits then come to see us to confirm what she’s told them.’

‘And that doesn’t drive her wild? That they don’t believe her in the first place?’

Hamish smiled.

‘I think it would take a lot to drive Millie wild. She just accepts that’s the way things are and gets on with her job.’

And that’s a salutary lesson for you, Kate told herself, then she gazed in astonishment at the building in front of her.

‘What
is
this place?’

‘Local hall. Funded by the federal government and designed in Canberra, which is why the roof is steeply pitched—so snow can slide off it.’

Kate was laughing as she got out of the car into the searing heat of what in North Queensland was considered cool spring weather, but once inside her laughter stopped, though a smile lingered on her lips.

The models, dozens of them, were set out on tables in the middle of the hall.

‘So many? Boy, the people here are really enthusiastic about having a swimming pool.’

‘You’d better believe it! But we’ll eat first. Wygera does the best lunches of all our clinic runs,’ Hamish said, leading her past the tables of exhibits to the back of the hall, where three women waited in a large kitchen.

‘Cold roast beef and salad. That all right?’ asked an older woman Hamish introduced as Mary.

‘Sounds great,’ Kate said, though she felt uncomfortable sitting at the table with Hamish while the women served and fussed over them, offering bread and butter to go with the
salad, tea or coffee, then finally producing a luscious-looking trifle, decorated with chocolate curls.

‘I bet the female staff refuse to do more than one Wygera trip a week,’ Kate said, smiling at the women. ‘I’d be the size of a house if I came here more often.’

‘We like visitors, so why not show them how we feel with good food?’ Mary said, then she cleared the table while one of the other women walked back into the hall with Kate.

‘All the plans and models have numbers and the doctors who were here on Sunday, they have a list of the number and the names, so all you have to do is choose one and tell them the number. Dr Cal, he has the list.’

Kate turned around, thinking she might co-opt Hamish into helping her, but he was still in the kitchen, talking to Mary.

So she pulled her little notebook and pen out of her pocket and did an initial survey of the entries.

Round and round she went, slowly eliminating designs, until finally one was left. It had bits of dying bushes where trees would be planted, and tiny plastic animals sliding down plastic rulers to show waterslides. Scraps of drinking straws indicated where water would stream out from spa jets and what looked suspiciously like a hospital kidney dish represented the main pool.

‘This is it,’ she said to Hamish, who, with the other women, had now joined her in the hall and were eagerly awaiting the decision.

‘But that’s Shane’s,’ Hamish said, apparently recognising the model he’d brought into the hall earlier.

‘Does that disqualify it in some way?’ Kate asked.

‘No, no, of course not,’ Hamish said quickly, then he smiled. ‘In fact, I think it’s great. Poor kid’s been sick as a dog since his appendix op, and this will cheer him right up.’

He turned to the three women.

‘Will you keep it quiet or should we announce it straight away?’

‘People will know straight away whether you tell or not,’ Mary said. ‘People always know things.’

This was no more relevant to her situation than the ‘stupid hearts’ comment had been, Kate told herself, yet ‘people know things’ joined the ‘stupid in the heart’ phrase in her head, as if both were philosophical concepts of prime importance in her life.

You do not
know
you’re attracted to Hamish—you just think you could be, she reminded herself. But the phrase refused to budge.

‘This afternoon we work together, usually doing a bit of minor surgery in the clinic itself. Some days there’s a long list and other times we get an early mark.’

Hamish explained this as he carried Shane’s model out to the station wagon. They would take it back to Crocodile Creek and pass it on to the architect, hoping he would at least follow the concept of this winning design.

Still in colleague mode, Kate registered, which was good—at least one of them would be totally focussed on work!

But Kate’s mind found focus soon enough. Their first patient was a middle-aged man, Pete, with a fish hook caught in his wrist. As he peeled off a grubby bandage, Kate could see the angry red line that indicated infection running up his arm from the wound.

‘You did the right thing, cutting off the barbed end and trying to pull it back through,’ Hamish said, as he injected a local anaesthetic around the injured part. ‘But slashing at yourself with razor blades to try to cut it out wasn’t the brightest follow-up treatment.’

‘M’mate did that,’ Pete told them. ‘We were up the river in the boat, and we’d had a few tinnies, and he thought he’d get it out.’

Now the wound was cleaned, Kate could see the slashes across the man’s wrist, making it look like a particularly inept suicide attempt.

Or was it, and the fish hook just an excuse?

She glanced at Hamish, who was now probing the wounds carefully and competently, talking quietly to Pete about fish and fishing.

He was obviously a doctor who saw his patient as a person first while his easy camaraderie with the women at lunchtime had suggested they saw him as a friend.

‘Ah, I can see it now. Forceps, Kate.’

Recalled to duty, Kate passed the implement but, try as he might, Hamish couldn’t pull the hook free.

‘I’ll have to cut down to it,’ he said, and Kate produced a packaged scalpel for him, carefully peeling off the protective covering and passing it to him.

‘Soluble sutures for inside and some tough thread for the skin—these guys don’t treat their wounds with any consideration,’ Hamish told her, as he cut into the man’s wrist. ‘And check Pete’s card for his tetanus status.’

Kate found the sutures Hamish would need, prepared a tetanus injection and another of penicillin, certain Pete would need an antibiotic boost even if Hamish gave him tablets. Another check of his card showed he’d had penicillin before so they had no need to worry about allergies.

But it was the need for his last dose of penicillin that drew Kate’s attention. A fish hook in his foot?

‘Was Pete plain unlucky or are fish hooks particularly aggressive up here in North Queensland?’ she asked Hamish as, three hours later, they drove away from Wygera. ‘He had one in his foot only six months ago.’

Hamish turned to smile at her.

‘Pete’s mad keen on fishing. He took me out once, but once was enough. I know the boat we were in was bigger than the crocodiles I kept seeing lazing on the bank, but not by much. In fact, it got flimsier and flimsier the longer we stayed out, especially when some of the crocs got off the bank and started swimming towards us.’

‘Real crocodiles?’

Kate knew it had been a stupid question as soon as she’d asked it, but she’d just blurted the words out.

‘Too, too real,’ Hamish said, ‘although before that day I thought Crocodile Creek was just a name. You know, like Snake Gully. Maybe someone once saw a snake there, but it doesn’t mean there are dozens of the things in the gully.’