The dressing had to be changed. But May shouldn’t be doing it.
‘Am I imagining things or have you been on duty for over twelve hours-plus, you had barely eight hours off last night?’
‘You’re imagining things,’ May told her, and Lizzie looked more closely at the normally cheerful nurse.
‘May?’
‘Yes?’ May smiled brightly at Mrs Scotter. ‘The leg’s going really well, Mavis. And did you hear about our Dr Darling kissing Dr McKay?’
‘Stop changing the subject,’ Lizzie told her, but the nurse kept on.
‘Where’s Dr McKay now?’ May asked.
‘Phoebe-sitting, I hope. And resting his leg. Which is what you should be doing.’
‘What?’
‘Resting.’
‘I need to-’
‘I’ll finish Mavis’s leg.’ Lizzie smiled at the old lady. ‘That’s OK, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes, dear.’
‘I’ll do it,’ May said, but Lizzie wasn’t listening.
‘There are other nurses available to relieve you.’ Refusing to take no for an answer, Lizzie lifted the crepe from May’s hands and started winding. ‘I’ve seen the roster. Emily leaving hasn’t made us that short-handed.’
‘No, but…’
‘But what?’
‘I’d kind of like the overtime,’ May confessed. ‘And I’m not tired. I’m really not.’
Lizzie looked at her. Really looked at her. Not tired? Ha! There were shadows under her eyes and the normally effervescent nurse looked strained to breaking point.
Why hadn’t she noticed that?
There was an easy answer to that. She’d been caught up in her own emotional turmoil.
But it wasn’t the time to press for reasons now. Not with Mavis hanging on every word and her wound still half-dressed.
‘Ring one of the relieving nurses,’ she told May gently. ‘Do it now. I’ll finish here. Go home.’
‘But-’
‘Or go and sit in the nurses’ station and put your feet up until I get there,’ she told her. ‘But you’re officially off duty. I’m taking over. Go.’
At least it was something to talk about. Something she needed to talk about, rather than facing this tension that was between them. Lizzie finished the dressing, went out to discover a relief nurse already on duty and May gone, and went through to the doctor’s quarters to find Harry cooking steak and chips.
‘If you were any longer I’d have shared the steak with Phoebe instead of you,’ he told her. He was back on crutches-or rather he was using one crutch and one leg while he stood supervising the steak. And he had his frilly apron on again, which for some stupid reason had the capacity to make her want to melt into a puddle of sheer, stupid desire.
How could she want a man who wore a frilly pink apron?
How could she not want him? She wanted him with a fierceness that was threatening to overpower her!
Boy, should she take a cold shower.
Instead, she talked about May. Somehow.
‘She carries a load and a half,’ Harry told her, nicely deflected as she helped him carry his steak and chips to the table. ‘She thinks the world of her Tom, but he has a weakness for gambling. He got himself into a real mess a couple of years back. I arranged for him to go to counselling in Melbourne-he did a full residential course to try and kick the habit and he’s pretty much controlled, but he’s confessed to me that he’s struggling. If May’s looking grim then my guess is that that’s what it’ll be. She’ll have just received a bank statement. I’ll go out and talk to him tomorrow.’
Lizzie ate a few chips and thought about it. ‘Um…what business is it of yours?’ she asked at last.
‘He’s my patient.’
‘But this is gambling. Not medicine.’
‘You don’t think that gambling is a medical problem?’
‘I don’t see much of it in the emergency department where I work,’ she admitted. ‘I’d have thought it was more to do with Social Services or family counselling.’
‘There’s no Social Services counselling available in Birrini-and even if there was, Tom wouldn’t go. Not in the first instance. Not without my intervention.’
‘So you take it on board…’
‘I don’t have a choice,’ he said gently. ‘If Tom becomes obsessed with gambling again…well, you’re telling me May’s looking exhausted already. She starts taking on more shifts to make things pay. Her health suffers. She works long hours and the kids suffer. Tom gets more and more isolated. I’ve seen suicides as a result of problem gambling and that is very much my business.’
‘But-’
‘Medicine’s not just bodies,’ he told her. He was watching her, his eyes strangely questioning. Challenging. ‘It’s about the whole person. The whole family. I’m a family doctor, Lizzie. I believe I’m a good one. I didn’t want to come here but now I’m here I wouldn’t swap it for anywhere else. And…’ He paused as if thinking about it but then obviously decided to go ahead anyway. ‘I believe you’d make a fine family doctor, too,’ he told her. ‘If you could find the courage.’
‘The courage…’
‘You’d like to work here,’ he said gently. ‘You had one disaster-’
‘And that’s where I’m stopping.’
‘Stay here,’ he told her. ‘There’s no stopping. You’re a family doctor and you know you are.’
Silence. She’d started eating her steak, but now she laid her knife and fork down. And looked across the table at him.
He looked straight back at her, his eyes calm and steady.
‘You kissed me,’ she said, and his gaze didn’t waver.
‘That’s got nothing to do with this.’
Like hell it didn’t. ‘I see.’ She bit her lip. ‘So you’re offering a professional partnership here.’
‘Of course I am.’
‘There’s no “of course” about it,’ she snapped, and speared a chip with her fork so savagely it went flying off the plate and landed on Phoebe’s nose. Phoebe looked stunned. She surveyed the chip from all angles, decided that to refuse it would be denying the gods, ate it with care and then put her nose skywards in the hope of another gift from heaven.
‘See what you’ve made me do?’ Lizzie demanded, furious. ‘Phoebe’s a pregnant mum and she’s on a pregnant mum diet.’
‘Hey, you fed her the chip.’
‘You made me.’
‘Oh, yeah, right.’
This was a ridiculous conversation. She refused to continue. She went back to demolishing her chips with a ferocity born of anger. One after another. Eat and get out of here…
‘It’s only a job,’ he said at last, and got a king-sized glare for his pains.
‘So why did you kiss me?’
‘If I remember rightly, it was you who kissed me.’
‘You know very well that it was you…’ She faltered at that. No. He didn’t know very well it had been him. It had been both of them. What she’d felt had been a coming-together of a man and a woman that had packed a lethal punch. She’d never felt anything like that. Not even with Edward.
Edward. Now, there was a steadying thought. Edward was enough to steady anyone, she thought miserably, and he was a good note to end this conversation on.
‘I can’t stay here,’ she told Harry, standing up and taking her half finished plate to the sink. Phoebe’s tail
