The Doctors’ Baby

CHAPTER NINE

‘YOU are out of your mind!’

‘Sorry?’

‘You have turned down Jonas Lunn? Emily Mainwaring, you are nutty about the man. I have eyes in my head. You’re head over heels in love with him and you’ve turned down a proposal of marriage!’

Lori’s voice rose so high it was practically a squeak.

She plonked herself down on the chair beside Em’s desk and gazed at her friend in stupefaction.

‘All our problems would be solved,’ she said bleakly. ‘We’d have a new doctor for Bay Beach. We’d have parents for Robby. End of loneliness for you. Plus a sex life. And you turn the man down!’

‘He didn’t mention a sex life.’ Em said very carefully, staring at her prescription pad rather than at her friend.

That set Lori back.

‘You mean…’

‘I mean, after you left we stayed in exactly the same positions-him on one side of the room and me on the other-while we talked technicalities about how a marriage would work. He thought it was a really sensible business proposition. In fact…’ She took a deep breath. ‘In fact, I think he might even let himself get fond of Robby. But from a distance.

‘He’s not that tough,’ Lori said weakly, but Em bit her lip.

‘He is. He’s been taught the hard way how to be impersonal-tough, as you say-and he’s not about to unlearn it. Just because…’

‘Just because you love him?’

‘Just because I love him.’ Em raised her face and met Lori’s concerned gaze. ‘That’s it in a nutshell, Lori. I love the guy.’

‘And it’d drive you crazy to be married to him when he doesn’t love you.’

‘You do understand,’ Em said gratefully. ‘If Ray didn’t love you…’

‘I’d go quietly insane,’ Lori told her. ‘I didn’t realise until I nearly lost him. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. We’re getting married in a month’s time and I want you as my maid of honour. Will you do it?’

‘Of course I will.’

‘But there’s no chance of you marrying first? Of you being my matron of honour?’

‘Lori, I can’t.’

Lori looked at her friend over her surgery desk and knew that Em spoke the absolute truth.

And she also knew that her friend was breaking her heart.

‘I don’t want him adopted by a single mother.’

It was Robby’s aunt. She was facing Tom and Em in Em’s surgery, and she was angry. ‘What’ll people think? That I let my sister’s kid be adopted by a single mum when I should take care of him myself?’

Tom’s hands clenched on his knees. Em could see them from where she sat. As the director of the children’s homes, Tom was accustomed to all sorts of family dramas, but he still had the ability to be emotionally involved. And who could help being moved by Robby’s situation?

‘Laura, you’re saying you don’t want him, but you also demand that he must stay in Bay Beach and he must be adopted by a married couple?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But he’s badly scarred,’ Tom said gently. ‘There’s ongoing injury. You know that. Robby has years and years of skin grafts ahead of him. He needs constant medical attention. Em wants to give him just that-and a mother’s love as well. I don’t think you’ll find anyone else to take him on. Not with his injuries.’

‘Then he stays in the children’s home,’ Laura said obstinately. ‘You’re not blackmailing me into anything else. I know what my sister would want if she was alive to tell me.’

‘Surely she’d just want someone to love Robby.’

‘But she wouldn’t want the community to say I’d shoved my sister’s kid off onto a single mum. Dr Mainwaring can look after him short term if she likes,’ she added diffidently. ‘I can say it’s a short-term arrangement until he’s better and people will see that it’s sensible. In fact, I don’t care who does the short-term caring as long as he’s treated properly. But no adoption. Unless she’s married. No way!’

‘That short term is likely to become long term,’ Tom warned. ‘Which is unsatisfactory for everybody. Robby needs permanence.’

‘Then find him a family. Here. A family who’ll accept him, injuries and all.’

And that was that.

Em went back to Robby that night, cuddled him to sleep and thought about what she was doing. No adoption…

It meant she could care for Robby for now, but he could be taken from her at any time.

It couldn’t matter. She was all he had, for now.

Bernard was lying at her feet. Amazingly, the big dog lifted his head and stirred his tail, looking up at her with soulful eyes that told her he was missing the noise and excitement of Anna’s kids, and he didn’t understand where they’d gone.

And in the next room Em could hear Jonas moving around, getting ready for bed.

‘We have all the pieces of a jigsaw-puzzle,’ Em told her ancient dog. ‘What we need now is a miracle-worker to put them together. And somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen. Miracle-workers are a bit thin on the ground around here.’

Next door Jonas was telling himself he needed no such thing as a miracle. What more did they need than the elements they had right now?

Em was being pig-headed, he told himself. His vision of their marriage could work for all of them. If only she could forget this stupid need for emotional involvement.

He couldn’t give what he’d never been taught, he thought. He couldn’t give what scared him to admit even existed.

But what was happening now was ridiculous. Holding each other at arm’s length-not being permitted to adopt Robby-it was silly. It was crazy, and it was all because Em had this damned fool idea that she was in love with him.

It was stupid!

And he couldn’t go down her road, he told himself over and over. He couldn’t. He wanted this family-he wanted to hold it together and marriage would be the binder-but Em wanted more.

She thought love had to be present to hold them.

Love…

He was prepared to love, he thought-in an abstract sort of way. He just…

He just couldn’t let himself need.

‘You’re a coward, Lunn,’ he said into the darkness-and he knew that he was right.

But there was nothing he could do about it.

Nothing at all.

The medical set-up of Bay Beach was transformed almost overnight. Once set on a course of action, Jonas was determined to see it through, and he almost seemed like a man driven.

OK, Em wouldn’t agree to marrying him, but she sure as heck needed him to stay-as did Anna-and he wouldn’t let them down for want of trying.

So schedules were made up. Surgery equipment ordered. Lou was employed full time to cope with two doctors instead of one, and Amy was given a permanent part-time job as babysitter.

Jonas moved right into the medical scene of Bay Beach as if he was in charge.

Which made Em feel really, really strange.

She should feel resentful that he seemed to be taking charge, she told herself. She should feel as if she was being made redundant.

In truth, she didn’t have a clue how she was supposed to feel. Jonas was one fine surgeon, he wanted to work here and she couldn’t stop him. That’d be crazy.

And to marry him would be crazier still.

Her world was spinning out of control. If Jonas seemed in charge it was just as well, she told herself desperately, because nobody else was!

Anna continued to improve. Em took to popping in on her every couple of days, just to see how she was managing and to check her arm. She was coping fine physically, but Em still wasn’t sure how Anna was mentally.

‘Radiotherapy starts next week,’ Em reminded Anna. ‘Unless you change your mind and have chemotherapy as well.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You know, even though the benefit for you is slight, I wish you wouldn’t completely dismiss it out of hand,’ Em said mildly. ‘The chances of recurrence now is really small, but with the added insurance of chemotherapy it’d be tiny. Why do I get the feeling you won’t even consider it-just because it’d make you more dependent on people in the short term?’

Anna flushed. Em had hit the nail on the head and she knew it.

‘I hate it,’ she admitted. ‘I hate it that I can’t hang up my washing. I hate it that I can’t lift Ruby…’

‘That’ll pass. Once your arm settles, you’ll be just as strong as you were before. Lymphoedema’s becoming more and more rare as surgical techniques improve, and Patrick’s a great surgeon. I’d be amazed if there’s any long-term problems at all.’

‘But I have short-term problems,’ Anna threw at her. ‘That’s enough. I hate being dependent at all, and chemotherapy would make things worse. I hate it that everyone worries. I hate it that Jonas is still here-watching me. I hate it that Jim calls in every night…’

‘Anna, they love you.’

‘And I don’t know what love is, and I don’t want to.’ She shook her head. ‘Neither does Jonas,’ she added bitterly. ‘The only reason he’s here is that I’m his kid sister. I’m something he has to care for because it’s his duty. Plus he’s staying on because he has this thing going with you that I don’t understand. But I’ll bet it’s not love as normal people know it. Is it?’

Em caught her breath, unable to think of what on earth to say in reply, but it seemed an answer wasn’t wanted. Anna hadn’t finished. ‘Whatever it is, it’s just silly that he’s staying,’ she told Em. ‘But he won’t budge. And as for Jim… Did you know he asked me to marry him? Marriage? Me. A woman with three kids and half a breast. If he thinks I’m such a charity case…’

‘I’m sure Jim’s not doing it because he feels sorry for you,’ Em said quickly, and she knew she was right.

‘So you think I should marry him?’

‘That’s your business.’ Em took a deep breath. ‘But you’d have to love him.’

‘Like you love my brother?’

That set her back. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean Jonas said he wants to marry you. He said that’s the main reason he’s sticking around. Because of you.’

‘I think you’ll find it’s because of you.’

‘Because of me. That’s a laugh.’ Anna shook her head. ‘No one cares that much for me, and no one’s going to.’

‘They would if you let them.’

‘No way.’ She shook her head. ‘Me and Jonas,’ she said bitterly. ‘We’ve seen what love can do. It destroyed my parents and it nearly destroyed us. And that’s my last word. I can’t believe Jonas wants to marry you, but if he does then you’re sensible for refusing him. Because he’s just as emotionally damaged as I am.’

And that was that. Em worked on in a fog of uncertainty and misery.

Sure, she had her Robby. Jonas’s presence meant that at least she could keep caring for her precious baby. Jonas did morning surgery now, which meant that Em woke to a morning free to spend with her beloved Robby. Which was blissful.

They started taking long walks, and even the somnolent Bernard began reluctantly to enjoy them, loping along beside the pram like a walking doormat. And all the time Em thought and thought. And thought some more.

She was being stupid, she told herself. She was pining for something that didn’t exist.

Jonas’s love. Ha!

But while Em looked increasingly haggard, Robby bloomed. His scarred little body began to heal faster than Em had anticipated, and she fell for him harder and harder by the day.

Talk to herself as she might, and chastise herself over and over again, it made no difference. She also fell harder and harder for Jonas.

He was always there, she thought desperately. Just there. He was either knocking on her door to check on a question about a patient, or asking her to do a minor anaesthetic for him, or finding out the background of a tricky patient. Or he’d be in the ward as she did her hospital rounds…

Or he’d be in her sitting room reading the paper, or working on his referrals or medico-legal stuff, or taking his turn cooking the dinner…

And even if he wasn’t physically present, he was in her thoughts.

They had to find some alternative living arrangement, Em decided desperately, a few days before Anna started her radiotherapy. She decided that even though she loved him living in her house. She loved it that Jonas was in her life-that he brought his niece and nephews around to cheer up Bernard and play with Robby…

She loved every part of it.

But it was breaking her apart.

‘There’s a fisherman’s cottage coming up for lease at the end of the month,’ she told him. He was cooking them a stir-fry, a silly, frilly apron of Em’s protecting his casual trousers and open-necked shirt. It didn’t make him look one whit less masculine. In fact, he looked impossibly handsome.

Bernard was lying adoringly at his feet, waiting for him to drop something, and Robby was waving his toes in the air in his carrycot-and the sight of so much domesticity was making Em’s heart do back flips.

‘You want me to look into the lease?’ she asked again, and Jonas’s hand stilled in his stir-frying.

‘Do you want me to leave?’

It had to be said. So she said it. ‘Yes. I do. This…this living arrangement can’t be long term.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not,’ she said desperately. ‘How often do I have to spell it out for you, Jonas? You’re turning us into a family without the commitment-and I want it all.’

He paused, went back to stirring and then shook his head. ‘This works for me,’ he said at last. ‘I like living with you.’

‘Well, I don’t like living with you,’ she snapped back. ‘It’s driving me nuts.’

‘But I do a great stir-fry.’

He did. It was a major attribute. A man who could cook…

But Em hardened her heart.

‘No,’ she told him. ‘You have to leave. Shall you enquire about the cottage, or shall I?’

‘Bernard doesn’t want me to go.’

‘I want you to go.’

He turned then, and looked at her, straight and direct across the room.

‘Really, Em? Really?’

‘Yes!’

He sighed. Did his shoulders slump just a little? Or was she imagining it?

‘OK,’ he told her. ‘I’ll go. If that’s what you really want.’

Only it wasn’t what she wanted at all! She lay in bed that night and asked herself if she was a fool. To reject marriage, to reject even sharing a house with him…

To reject the chance to stay with him for ever.

‘Maybe it’d work,’ she whispered into the dark, and her hand crept out to touch Robby’s cradle. ‘Maybe he’d learn to love us.’

But if he didn’t…

It was all just too hard. She turned over and thumped her pillows, and her mind twisted into a million different maybes.

But maybes were too hard!

Maybe Jonas was right. Loving was a big, big mistake.

Em wanted him to go!

Well, he’d expected it, Jonas told himself. After she’d knocked back his marriage proposition, it was the only sensible decision.

She was darned lucky he intended staying on in the town.

No. That was anger speaking, and he forced anger onto the back-burner. OK, he felt anger that she’d turned down what was the most logical plan for all of them. He felt anger that she let her heart get in the way of sense.

But it wasn’t sensible for either of them to want Robby, he thought. And if Em hadn’t wanted Robby, would he have wanted this marriage thing so much?

It was all muddled in his mind. Robby. Anna.

Em…

There was a whuffling under his bed, and he put a hand down to discover a large, wet tongue rasping across his hand. Bernard. Well, well. When had Bernard last moved from the comfort of Em’s bed?

‘You’re a dope, dog,’ he muttered, thinking of where the dog had come from. ‘That’s where I’d love to be.’

And then he heard what he’d said.

Was it the truth?

Yes, he acknowledged. Absolutely. Well, why not? Em was the most gorgeous woman he knew. A man would have to be insane not to want to sleep with her.

Or…marry her? That, too.

Just not love her.

‘I can’t,’ he told Bernard a trifle desperately. ‘I don’t even know how to begin to love someone. And she’d depend on me, and it’d scare me rigid. I’m independent. I’ve fought all my life to be independent and that’s the way I intend to stay.’

Bernard licked again, and Jonas sighed.

‘You’re telling me I’m not so independent-that I can’t walk away and leave everyone. That it’s not just Em. It’s Anna and her kids. It’s Robby. And it’s even you, you misbegotten mutt.’

That earned him another slurp and he grinned.

‘Hell!’

He was getting deeper and deeper into this quagmire.

‘The lady’s right. I need at least to get out of here. I need to live alone.’

Only why did the thought seem so bleak?

Two days to Anna’s radiotherapy. Then one.

‘Do you want me to come with you the first time?’ Jonas asked for what must surely have been the tenth time. ‘Anna, it’s not something you should face alone.’

‘Why? Does it hurt?’

‘No. It doesn’t hurt at all. It’s just a simple X-ray.’

‘Well, then…’

‘There’ll be people there who are sicker than you,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Proper cancer patients. Not frauds like you.’

That earned him a faint smile, but still Anna shook her head.

‘I can cope alone.’

‘Some people find it threatening.’

‘And so might I,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ve never depended on anybody and I don’t intend to start now. Jim’s already been at me to let him come with me, and I’ve refused him. So back off, Jonas, and let me be.’

He had no choice but to accept her decision. He was doing a lot of that these days. And the damnable thing was that he knew, in her situation, he’d do exactly the same thing.

So he worked on through the afternoon’s list of house calls, he concentrated on his medicine and he knew more and more that he could never depend on anyone. That had been knocked out of him and his sister the hard way.

But Em and Robby needed him. They needed him to stay in the town.

That was all right, he told himself. The need was on Em’s side only. Not his.

He didn’t need in return.

Ever.

It was two in the afternoon. Em was at her desk in her surgery and Jonas was out doing a house call on a farmer with gout. This was the Jonas-organised new order. Em was seeing one patient after another, enjoying the sensation that her house calls weren’t mounting up as she went. When she finished surgery at six or so, Amy would be waiting to hand over Robby. Then Jonas was on call tonight, so she could get back to being Robby’s mother.

Which was lovely.

Or it should have been lovely. There was still this aching need that wouldn’t subside, a need that Jonas had created and not filled.

He’d asked her for marriage, but he hadn’t needed her. He didn’t love…

Medicine!

She needed to concentrate on medicine.

The phone rang. She winced, knowing before she picked up the receiver that it meant an emergency. She was in the middle of Erica Harris’s litany of complaints and Lou didn’t interrupt a consultation by putting a call through unless it was absolutely vital.

And it was. The normally unflappable Lou sounded shocked and sick.

‘Em, it’s Anna Lunn’s little boy, Sam.’

Em’s heart sank. The voice Lou was using spelt disaster.

‘What is it?’

‘Anna has just rung, and she’s almost hysterical. It seems Sam went up into the bush behind their place-the site of the old gold diggings? Apparently there’s an old shaft there that hasn’t been filled in. Or she says it looked filled in from the top, but it’s collapsed and he’s fallen. Anna says she and Matt can hear him calling from about thirty feet down, but they can’t get him out. They can’t get near him. I’m ringing the emergency services but can you go out there, too?’

Of course. She’d already left. Erica Harris was left sitting with her mouth open.

‘Find Jonas,’ Em snapped at Lou as she flew past. ‘Explain to Mrs Harris.’

And she was gone.