leg, letting him lie back on the pillows with his thoughts going where they willed.
And somehow-some time-the tension faded from Harry’s face. The lines of pain and the tinge of grey eased and faded.
It felt good, she decided. Great. Maybe she should have been a masseuse instead of a doctor. To have the capacity to wipe away pain.
From this man’s face…
He was just a patient, she told herself. Just a patient.
‘You work in Emergency up north?’ he asked, and the question was a jolt all by itself. She had been far away, but she hadn’t been thinking of work. She hadn’t been thinking of home.
‘Mmm.’
‘Nine to five?’
‘Eight to four or four to midnight or midnight to eight,’ she told him, still massaging the tightness of his calf muscles.
‘And you walk away afterwards?’
‘There’s not a lot of follow-up in emergency medicine.’ She shrugged. ‘Sometimes I get involved. I can’t help it. But not often.’
‘You don’t like getting involved?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
He was watching her, those deep eyes calmly speculative. It seemed he’d relaxed at last, and as he relaxed he could think about her. She wasn’t sure she liked it.
‘Why don’t you like getting involved?’
Lizzie sighed. She looked at him but his eyes were nonjudgmental. They were asking a question. She could tell him to butt out of what wasn’t his business, but all of a sudden…It wouldn’t hurt to tell him. This hurtful thing.
‘When I was a newly qualified doctor I did a stint in family practice,’ she told him. She was concentrating on his leg again, carefully not looking at him. ‘I had a kid come to me with depression. She was fifteen years old. About the same age as Lillian. Anyway, I was a know-it-all, just graduated family doctor. I read up all the literature on antidepressants. I practised my counselling skills. I tried family therapy with Patti as well as her parents. All the things we were taught as bright little potential doctors.’ She bit her lip and the fingers massaging Harry’s leg stilled. Remembering hurt.
‘And?’ he said softly, but by the sound of his tone he knew what was coming.
‘You know,’ she told him. ‘It’s not hard to guess. Patti was trying so hard to please me. “Of course I feel better,” she told me. “I feel great.” The night after she told me that she took a massive overdose of every medicine she could find in the house and she was dead before anyone found her.’
‘Tough,’ Harry murmured, and Lizzie swallowed.
‘It was. So, you see, I’m not all that clever. I figured that playing expert is a fool’s game. So now I see patients at the coalface-in Emergency. I patch them up as best I can and then I refer them on to people who really know their stuff.’
‘You think Patti would still be alive if you hadn’t treated her?’
‘If she’d seen a skilled psychiatrist…’
‘Would she have gone to see a psychiatrist?’ Harry’s eyes were resting on her face, unsettling her with what he seemed to be seeing. ‘Lillian won’t see a psychiatrist. She refuses, and her parents back her up. Do you think I should refuse to treat her because of that?’
‘No, I-’
‘There are all sorts of people in Birrini who should be seeing specialists,’ he continued. ‘They’re not. They don’t want to take the trip to the city. Or they don’t trust people they don’t know. They make the decision to keep their lives in my hands. And if I occasionally lose one of those lives…’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘I do,’ he said wearily. ‘Of course I do. I had an old man die three weeks ago because he refused to go to Melbourne for bypass surgery. I tried to keep him alive here, but I didn’t have the skills. Does that make me want to walk away?’
She flushed. ‘You think I’m a coward?’
‘I know you’re not.’
Silence.
The silence went on and on. And in that silence something built. Something intangible. Something neither of them recognised, but it was there for all that.
‘It’s a sensible job you have up north, isn’t it?’ he asked at last, and she nodded.
‘Yes.’
‘And do you have a sensible boyfriend?’
She flushed at that. ‘I do, as a matter of fact.’
‘Is that who you’re running from?’
‘I’m not running.’
‘I can pick running from a mile off.’
‘You were running,’ she said softly, ‘when I first met you.’
‘Well, you stopped that.’ There was a moment’s pause and then he added, ‘Maybe I can stop you running.’
‘Now, what do you mean by that?’ she said, with more asperity than she’d intended. She lifted the bandages and started wrapping the leg again. She was thoroughly unnerved and it took real concentration to keep her hands steady and not jolt the leg.
‘I could very much use a partner here in Birrini.’
‘What-another family doctor?’
‘The place is screaming for two doctors. Times like tonight. To not have an anaesthetist…’
‘I live in Queensland,’ she said flatly, trying to suppress a quiver of sheer panic running through her. Work here? With this man?
‘But you don’t want to be in Queensland.’
‘I do.’ She fastened off the bandage and rose. She should go. This conversation was far too intimate. Far too… threatening?
But she had to ask.
‘Why are you in Birrini?’ It had her fascinated. This man was a surgeon and a good one. Why was he stuck in such a remote spot?
‘I love Birrini.’
‘Why?’
‘My father was a fisherman,’ he told her. ‘I spent my life here, by the sea.’
She nodded. It fitted. He looked weathered, she thought. The look of the sea was in his eyes.
‘Yet you did surgery,’ she said, thinking it through. ‘Surely if you were intending to come home to practise, you would have done family medicine-become a generalist rather than specialising.’
‘I didn’t want to come home.’
‘Why not?’
She should let him sleep. The bedside lamp was all the light there was in the house. He was deeply relaxed, lying back on his pillows, and she knew suddenly there was never going to be a better time to question this man. To find out what made him run.
‘All the time I was a kid here…’ he said, and his voice was almost dreamlike. He was drifting to sleep and his voice was slurred. But still he kept on. ‘I wanted to see the world. I thought Birrini was so narrow. My parents were really happy here, but I almost despised them. There had to be a great big wonderful world out there, so as soon as I graduated from high school I was out of here and I never looked back.’
‘What happened?’ she asked. She was almost unable to breathe. This night-this time-was weirdly personal. She felt as if she was probing into places she had no business being. But she couldn’t stop.
‘I was such a success,’ he said wearily. ‘High-powered city surgeon. Fantastic. I came down here every few months. To visit. To show off.’
‘Oh, Harry, I’m sure-’
‘Don’t stop me,’ he told her.
