CHAPTER SEVEN
WHY had she said she’d go out to the settlement with Cal? She must have been mad. But after a couple of hours of staying back at the doctors’ residence, watching CJ play with a pup he couldn’t keep, seeing every other doctors’ eyes on her, staying started to seem a pretty bleak alternative.
After the chaos of yesterday the hospital was quiet. Gina had thought she’d be needed for Lucky but Emily had been hovering over the little one, almost possessive. ‘Emily’s had a bad time lately,’ Charles told her. ‘She needs distraction and if that distraction’s the baby then we’ll let her be.’
This hospital was more of a family than a medical clinic, Gina thought, and Charles’s speculative gaze on her made her feel intensely uncomfortable. Who knew what he was deciding that she needed?
She’d offered to help with the kids from the night before, but she was stymied there as well.
‘The worst of the cases are being transferred to Cairns,’ Charles told her.
There was another pang as Gina saw the plane take off. She should be on it.
‘But you’ve offered to go out to the settlement with Cal,’ Charles said.
‘I could change my mind.’
‘Cal needs you.’
‘He doesn’t need anyone,’ she snapped, but Charles just smiled his wry smile and told her that in a medical capacity she’d be useful and he’d be delighted if she stayed. As she’d agreed to.
So she agreed. She’d run out of excuses. CJ and Walter Grubb had decided they were friends for life and there was more trash to cart. There was nothing for it but to decide this afternoon was just something to be worked through.
But it was hard. She sat beside Cal as the miles disappeared under their wheels and thought she’d been mad. She tried to think of something to say and nothing came.
Silence. Cal’s face was set and grim.
Silence, silence and more silence.
Then, out of nowhere, Cal snapped ‘How long have you been diabetic?’
It was almost an explosion. His knuckles were white on the steering-wheel and she stared at him in astonishment.
‘How did you know?’
‘Charles told me. Just now. He asked me how long you’d been diabetic, whether you were type one or two, how your control was-and you know what? I didn’t even know you were diabetic. You couldn’t have been one five years ago. Were you?’
He wanted her to say no, Gina thought. He sounded almost desperate.
‘I’ve been diabetic since I was twelve,’ she told him. ‘Type one.’
‘You weren’t diabetic when you were here.’
‘Of course I was.’
‘You were living with me,’ he said explosively. ‘Sharing my bed. Sharing my life. How can I have not known you were diabetic?’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘You weren’t sharing my life. We were lovers, Cal. We hadn’t taken it further.’
‘We were living together.’
‘Cal, if we’d been really living together-really sharing our lives-do you think I could have kept something like that from you?’
‘You must have hidden-’
‘I hid nothing,’ she said wearily. ‘But you were so contained. I was hopelessly in love with you but you never shared your life. I had to drag your family history from you. You’d come home after a dreadful day-after some trauma or other-and you’d take my body as if you were desperate, but you’d never talk to me about what you were feeling. And me…You saw what you wanted to see, Cal. I remember at the end, when I was just starting to suspect I was pregnant. I was feeling ghastly and my blood sugars were all over the place and I was desperate. You came home that last night we had together and said I looked pale and what was wrong, and I told you I’d had a tummy bug. “Do you need medication?” you asked. When I said no, you hugged me and told me to go to bed and you considerately didn’t touch me for the rest of the night. When I was crying out to be touched. Then next morning you asked if I was fine, and you believed me and went off to your urgent medical call. Even though I was shaky and white-faced and sick. Because you wanted me to be fine. You wanted me to slot into the edges of your life-the parts that were available.’
‘But you’re diabetic,’ he said, sounding confused but also exasperated. ‘Why hide it?’
‘Because that would have made me way too needy,’ she said, knowing that he wouldn’t understand but not being able to think of any other way of explaining.
‘Needy…’
‘I was already in need,’ she told him. ‘I came to Townsville after Paul had asked for a separation and I was a mess. And you picked me up and put the pieces back together. Then…then you couldn’t figure out where to go from there.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I don’t suppose you do,’ she said sadly. ‘Because what I needed was for you to need me, and that was never going to happen. It was so one-sided. You fell for me because I leaned on you, and as soon as I didn’t need you in a way you understood then you got uncomfortable. I sensed as much really early. I thought that I’d been stupid in the first place, letting myself lean on you, and if you knew I was diabetic then you’d figure I needed you still more, and the relationship would never go past being you the rescuer.’
‘This isn’t making sense.’
‘It’s not, is it?’ she said. ‘But I hate people feeling sorry for me because I’m diabetic.’
‘I wouldn’t have felt sorry for you.’
‘No, but you would have supported me, and it would have felt more as if I needed you, and there was no way our relationship was going to work out that way. I was fighting so hard to get through to you on a personal level. And then I got pregnant and Paul was injured and it didn’t matter any more anyway.’
He shook his head, obviously still trying to work things out.
‘Your diabetes,’ he said at last, and she Gina knew he was returning to medicine because that was an easy route. When in emotional crisis, turn to what you’re good at.
Well, why not? ‘What about my diabetes?’
‘It’s obviously well controlled.’
‘Why obviously?’
‘Because I never knew.’ Once again he seemed to be fighting to contain anger.
‘It wasn’t, actually,’ she told him. ‘I’ve struggled for years and my pregnancy was a nightmare. But there’s a new background insulin that was released last year and it’s fabulous. I haven’t had a hypo since I’ve been on it.’
‘You never had a hypo when you were with me.’
‘Of course I did.’
‘When?’
‘It mostly happened at night,’ she told him. ‘I’d wake feeling dizzy and sick and I’d head to the kitchen for juice. I did my injecting in the bathroom.’
‘I never heard.’
‘Of course you didn’t.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
