‘I don’t know.’ Was Ryan imagining it or was there a tiny hopeful note behind Sam’s words? ‘I’ll have to talk to her. Maybe she’ll come out, we’ll get married and she’ll go back before me.’ That might be the best plan. Then, again, Felicity might decide she wanted a real honeymoon and put everything off until they could take more time away together. Which would be a year or more from now.
It didn’t matter.
The thought of a delay to their wedding-and its seeming irrelevance-made Ryan frown. It didn’t matter if their wedding was put off? Why?
Never mind. He could think of Felicity later. For now there was his father’s agreement to gain. His father’s health. That was the important thing. That was why he didn’t have room to worry about Felicity.
There couldn’t be any other reason.
‘You need to agree, Dad,’ he said, and met his father’s eyes directly. ‘I want you to have this surgery. The way your heart is now-well, you could have a full-blown heart attack at any minute and you could die. And I badly don’t want that to happen.’
‘You meant that?’
‘Of course I mean it.’ And he did. For twenty years Ryan had been carrying the look of his father as he and his mother had boarded the plane away from here. His father’s look had been blank, expressionless, and-Ryan had thought-uncaring.
Abbey had told him that he was wrong to believe his father uncaring. And suddenly he believed Abbey.
His father loved him and it was a damned good feeling. He didn’t want to lose that. He didn’t want to lose Sam now, when he had just discovered that he had a father after all. A real father. Not a pen at the end of a series of duty letters.
And Sam was looking from Abbey to Ryan and back again.
And smiling.
‘Well, I guess I’d better have that surgery after all,’ he whispered. ‘You say you’ll stay a month?’
‘A month.’
‘Well, anything can happen in a month,’ Sam said ambiguously. ‘It’s worth taking a risk on.’
Abbey didn’t see Ryan again for another few hours. He settled her back into bed-once more refusing her request for clothes-and gave instructions for the nursing staff not to let her out of bed. Then he took himself off to do her clinic. Ryan came back into the hospital at eleven when the ambulance arrived to transport his father to Cairns, but by then Abbey was dead to the world.
It was as if Abbey’s exhaustion of the last few months-or maybe the last few years-had finally caught up with her. That, and the shock of the accident the day before, let her sleep the sleep of the dead. Janet and Jack and her cows and farm were in safe hands. Her clinic was in Ryan’s hands. Sam was having his by-pass.
For once all was right with her world. She slept.
She woke briefly at lunch to find Eileen hovering over her with orders to see she ate every mouthful, and then she slept again. When she woke once more Ryan was standing over her bed, smiling down at her with satisfaction.
‘If you don’t wake up soon you’ll miss bedtime,’ he warned, and Abbey managed a sleepy smile.
‘It can’t be bedtime. No one’s bullied me into dinner yet’
Ryan looked at his watch. ‘You’re right. It’s five-thirty. Dinner at six and bedtime at seven.’
Abbey nodded. The idea had immediate appeal. ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this,’ she murmured. ‘It’s not like I was really hurt yesterday.’
‘No? You’re telling me you’re not aching in every bone in your body? Truly, Abbey?’
Abbey stirred and checked herself out. Every bone? Well, maybe. Every bone certainly complained.
‘Yeah, well, it’s only bruising.’
‘I know.’ Ryan touched her lightly on the cheek-a touch that sent Abbey’s senses screaming. ‘Plus the fact that you’re exhausted.’ He hauled a chair over and sat down. ‘Abbey, you can’t keep going like this,’ he said gently. ‘I’ve seen your medical workload now. This community needs two doctors-or at least one and a half. And, with Jack to care for and the farm to run, you should be the half.’
‘No.’ Abbey shook her head with decision. ‘No way.’
‘Because someone else would take over some of the limelight? Because you like being the town’s only doctor?’
‘That’s unfair,’ Abbey said firmly. ‘Ryan, I’d let go if I could, but finding another doctor to move to a rural area… ’
‘Even an area as beautiful as Sapphire Cove?’
‘Doctors want big hospitals and specialists on call and private schools and universities on tap for their children,’ Abbey told him. ‘I thought your mother would have drilled into you what an unsuitable place Sapphire Cove is to live. I shouldn’t have to.’
She had. Ryan flinched.
‘But even so, Abbey…’
‘Even so, I can’t afford to work less. I have debts.’
‘John’s debts?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘Maybe, but I had a talk to one of your patients this afternoon,’ Ryan told her. ‘Mr Ellis. The local bank manager. He came in with shingles.’
‘Shingles…’ Abbey screwed up her nose, her attention diverted. ‘Oh, no. The poor man. Shingles is so painful. Did you start him on acyclovir?’ She pushed herself up on her pillows. ‘Ryan, it’ll be a new treatment since you trained. You must start him on that in the first twenty-four hours. It really does stop shingles in its tracks-quarters the time of discomfort. If you haven’t been around as a general practitioner for-’
‘I know all about acyclovir,’ Ryan told her, and then smiled at her look of disbelief. ‘Don’t worry. I know I’m out of touch with general practice but I’ve figured a really efficient way of sounding as if I know what I’m talking about while I’m seeing your patients. I’ve hooked up to the Internet. On the Internet I can play doctor-patient in a virtual hospital. All I have to do is type ‘shingles’ and out comes all the latest treatments and references to all the current literature. Excerpts and precis included.’
‘You mean you leave the patient-’
‘I have my lap-top computer on my desk,’ he told her smugly. ‘I tell the patient I’m recording details of their case as I go, and all the time I’m asking what the heck the latest treatment for shingles is. Then I do a fast search of
‘Oh, and by the way.’ He smiled. ‘In case you were worrying, I rang the medical board and they’ve given me emergency registration as an interim measure.’
‘Oh, Ryan… ’ Abbey’s hand flew up to her mouth. ‘I forgot.’
‘Understandable.’ He smiled again, his lazy, caring smile that ran right through her. ‘You’re not well, Abbey. And not just because of the accident. You’ve run yourself into the ground. And Mr Ellis says-’
‘You shouldn’t have been discussing me with my bank manager,’ Abbey said fretfully, and Ryan shook his head.
‘I haven’t been discussing you with anyone. I’ve simply been listening while one patient after another has come in, berated me for knocking you off your bicycle and then told me how worried they are about you. And Mr Ellis has done more than that. He tells me the debts you’re paying off are gambling debts incurred when John was under such pressure he didn’t know what he was doing. He says he’s advised you strongly to declare yourself bankrupt, wipe the slate clean and start again.’
‘How can I do that?’
‘Simple. Find yourself a lawyer and do it. He also said you can’t lose the farm. Your home’s exempt and, with Janet and Jack living there, too, it’s doubly insured. He said you could have stayed living where you were.’
‘And have Jack growing up with people knowing his father owed them money he never repaid,’ Abbey said simply. ‘No, thank you. This is my problem, Ryan, and I’ll thank you to butt out of it.’ She swallowed but the expression on her face of grim determination didn’t waver. ‘Who… who else did you see in clinic?’
And Ryan stared down, baffled. It had seemed so simple when Brian Ellis had explained it to him. Abbey should
