The Doctors’ Baby

CHAPTER THREE

THE paddle was a long one-strolling about half a mile away from the town, walking through the small breakers at the edge of the surf. Magically, Em’s beeper stayed silent. It was as if the town had thrown its worst at her over the past twenty-four hours, and knew its doctor was close to breaking point. She needed this break more desperately than she even guessed herself.

The moon was completely up now. They should go home. Em should go to bed.

‘But Anna never has the children in bed until nine,’ Jonas told her. ‘It’s no use turning up there to talk to her before that. She simply won’t listen. And paddling does the soul just as much good as sleeping.’

So they walked. Rather to Em’s regret, her hand was released, and they walked side by side, as two friends might have.

Two good friends.

It had to be good friends, she thought, because their silences weren’t uneasy. They fell into step and splashed through the shallows in unison, and the sensation was like a balm to Em’s troubled mind. She could feel the tension easing out of her, disappearing into the coolness of the surf and washing out to sea.

This was…special.

Em didn’t speak, but she soaked it all in-the night, the lovely feel of surf between her toes and the moonlight. And somewhere in that walk her feeling of desperation, of absolute weariness and of isolation, all fell away, and she knew that tonight, babies and emergencies permitting, she’d sleep like a child.

Jonas had granted this to her, she thought, and for that she was incredibly grateful. She still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but when the headland met the sea in a rocky outcrop and paddling became impossible, she turned to him impulsively.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘For what? For taking a beautiful woman for a walk along the beach?’ He smiled down at her. ‘It’s been my absolute pleasure.’

A beautiful woman…

How long since anyone had called her that? Em thought. Grandpa had, and so had Charlie, but they’d called her beautiful since she was three years old. Back at medical school she’d had a couple of boyfriends, but since moving to Bay Beach… There simply hadn’t been time for boyfriends.

No time to be called beautiful?

She grinned wryly at the thought. I should stick that in my diary, she decided, because the thought, silly though it was, was still delicious. Allow time to be described as beautiful.

‘What’s funny?’

Em smiled up at him, and then resolutely turned her face back along the beach to where Jonas had parked his car. He was driving her tonight, and that in itself was novel. ‘Nothing. It’s time for us to go and see Anna.’

He fell into step beside her. His trousers were wet to the knees-he’d rolled them up but they’d been splashed anyway and it was too warm a night to care about a spot of wetness, and the surf felt great. Em’s dress was soaked almost to the thighs but, like Jonas, she didn’t care. She was feeling so light-headed she could almost float.

It was weariness, she told herself. Or reaction to Charlie’s death. Or…something!

‘You won’t tell me the joke?’ he demanded.

‘Nope.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said, and before she knew what he was about his hand caught hers again and swung. ‘Because I just succeeded, and I want to know how to do it again.’

‘Succeeded?’

‘In making you smile.’ He twinkled down at her. ‘When I first saw you, I thought, I bet that woman has the most magical smile-and she has. Now there’s only one thing more I want to know.’

It was impossible not to ask the obvious. ‘Which is what?’

‘What your hair looks like unbraided,’ he threw back at her, and she gasped and lifted her spare hand defensively to the hair in question.

‘You’ll wait a while for that.’

‘Why?’ Jonas sounded curious-nothing more. Still his hand held hers and it felt good. It felt…right.

‘Because, apart from when I wash it, my hair’s unbraided for about five minutes a day,’ she said with asperity. ‘I rebraid it every night before I go to bed, so it’s ready for emergencies.’

‘You mean…’ he said slowly, looking at her out of the corner of his eye with a look she didn’t quite understand. Or didn’t quite trust. ‘You mean, if I was on call for you, so you wouldn’t be at risk of an emergency call, then you’d sleep with your hair unbraided?’

This was a ridiculous question. But he was waiting for an answer. Em kicked up a spray of water before her-for heaven’s sake, she was acting as young and as carefree as a schoolgirl on her first date-and she tilted her chin and told him.

‘I might.’

‘But it’s not definite.’ He sounded so disappointed that she almost chuckled out loud.

‘I probably would,’ she said, just to placate him. Or just to make him smile.

And she succeeded. ‘That’d make me feel so much better,’ he told her. ‘If I get called out to someone’s ingrown toenail, and I’m whittling away at rotten nail at three in the morning and smelling some farmer’s stinking feet, it’d make me feel a whole heap better knowing that my partner was sleeping at home with her hair splayed out all over the pillow…’

‘And with her dog beside her and her door firmly locked!’ She said it as a reaction, like she was slamming her hand on the lock right now!

‘Really?’ He sounded shocked at the thought of such distrust, and Em could contain herself no longer. Her laughter rang out over the waves. This man was ridiculous. Deliciously ridiculous, but ridiculous all the same.

‘Yes, Dr Lunn, with my door locked,’ she told him. ‘Do you think I’m naïve or something?’

In answer, the hold on her hand tightened even further.

‘You wouldn’t have to lock the door,’ he said virtuously. ‘Because I’d be out chopping up toenails.’ And then his voice flattened. ‘And, no, Dr Mainwaring,’ he told her, and his voice was suddenly deadly serious, ‘I think you’re all sorts of things. But I definitely don’t think you’re naïve.’

He’d caught her right off her guard. She wasn’t ready for seriousness. ‘Jonas…’

‘Emily…’ He matched her tone of uncertainty exactly, and it was all she could do not to laugh again.

‘You’re impossible! Jonas, we need to see Anna.’

‘So we do.’ He sighed. ‘So we do. But we can come back here another night. No?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What sort of answer is that?’ Once more his voice had changed and now he sounded indignant. It was impossible not to laugh.

‘It’s a safe answer,’ she told him, and then because suddenly she didn’t feel safe in the least-she felt very, very exposed-she hauled her hand from his and started to run. ‘I’ll beat you to the car, Jonas Lunn,’ she called.

She ran.

Rather to her surprise, Jonas didn’t follow suit. Instead, he stopped dead, and watched her flying figure in the moonlight, racing up the sandhills toward his waiting car.

And his smile slowly died.

‘I wonder if I’m being really, really stupid here,’ he asked himself-but there was nothing but the moon and the surf to answer him.

Jonas had been right.

Anna was terrified and ready to back out, and it took his and Em’s combined persuasion to keep her on track.

‘We’ve made the appointment.’ Jonas went through it slowly and surely. ‘And we’ve organised everything else that needs to be done. You drop Sam and Matt at school and take Ruby to Lori’s, and then I take you to Blairglen for the tests. If we’re delayed-if you need more tests than a mammogram and biopsy-then Lori will collect the children and give them their dinner.’

‘But they’ll put me straight into hospital. If it’s cancer-’

‘They won’t,’ Em said strongly, and put her hand out to cover Anna’s. The woman was trembling. This fear was the culmination of a month’s imaginings, Em thought. How much better it would have been if she’d just confronted the thing head-on when she’d first found the lump, rather than wait until it had built into this icy terror.

‘Anna, a few days now will make no difference to the outcome at all,’ she told her decisively. ‘No matter what the results of the tests are, there’s time to come home and think about it. Savour the feeling that it’s just a cyst. Or come to terms with the fact that you have an early breast cancer before you need surgery. Either way, no one’s going to rush you into something you’re unhappy with.’

Anna looked desperately from her brother to Em and back again.

‘But Jonas has already spoken to Lori about taking the kids long-term.’

‘That’s just so, if the worst comes to the worst, you know you can face it,’ Em told her, and received a grateful glance from Jonas for her pains. ‘Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. It’s my personal creed and I remember it every time my phone rings.’

There was a pause while Anna thought that through. Then…

‘That must be terrible,’ Anna said slowly, for the first time looking at Em and really seeing her. ‘I hadn’t thought about it before, but now… It’s the not knowing that’s the worst, and in your job all the time there’ll be not knowing. Like that awful tractor accident last week. You had to deal with that, didn’t you?’

‘It was dreadful,’ Em said gently. ‘At the time it was frightening. But once I knew what I was dealing with, the fear faded as I worked through what had to be done. That’s exactly the same as you. Tomorrow you’ll know what you’re dealing with.’

‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Anna whispered, and that was the cue for Jonas to take her other hand.

‘Anna…’

To Em’s surprise she pulled away from her brother. ‘Don’t!’

‘I just wanted to say that I’m here for you. I’ll take you for the test tomorrow, but I’m staying on in Bay Beach.’

His words obviously shocked her. ‘Why?’

‘For you,’ he said promptly, but Anna shook her head at that.

‘No way, Jonas. I don’t need you.’ She bit her lip and stared at the table. ‘I’ve never needed you-just like I never needed Dad and I never needed Kevin. You’re not to stay on my account.’

What was behind this? Anna thought, puzzled. There was more history here than a brother antagonistic toward a sister’s partner.

But Jonas was shaking his head, and smiling at his sister as if he was reassuring her that he really didn’t want to intrude-that things were as she wanted them.

‘I’m not staying because of you-Stoopid,’ he told her.

‘I wish you’d stop calling me that silly name.’ Unconsciously Anna’s hand clenched so that the whites of her knuckles showed through her skin. She was too thin, Em thought. Too young and too tired and too battered by life.

‘OK.’ Jonas’s smile died. He stood and, surprisingly, he moved to stand behind Emily. His hands dropped down to grip her shoulders but he still spoke to his sister. ‘I won’t call you Stoopid any more.’

‘Fine. And you don’t have to stay.’

‘I do have to stay,’ he said gently. ‘Because Em needs me.’

‘Em?’

‘I couldn’t believe what Em was facing this morning,’ he told his sister, with his big hands still resting lightly on Emily’s shoulders. ‘You saw yourself what a strain she was under, and it knocked me sideways. I know I’m due to leave for overseas, but I’ve decided to put it off. I’m staying put.’

‘With…with Dr Mainwaring.’

‘With Emily,’ he corrected her. ‘With one of the most hard-working, beautiful, desirable lady doctors I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. Em and I have it all worked out.’

‘I don’t believe this.’

Neither did Em. Heavens, the way he talked-the way he was holding her-the man sounded as if he was in love with her!

And he did exactly nothing to change that impression.

‘Em and I have spent the last two hours on the beach,’ he told Anna. ‘We’ve been working things out. It may be sudden, but it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.’ The grip on Em’s shoulders tightened-either in affection or as a warning. Even afterwards, Em couldn’t quite figure out which.

‘I’m not leaving Emily,’ he told his sister. ‘We’re partners.’

‘I-’

‘So I’m here for you as well,’ he told her, his voice brooking no argument. ‘But mostly I’m here for Em. And I’m here for as long as she wants me. Whether you want me or not.’

‘Jonas-’

‘Leave it, Anna,’ he told her roughly. ‘For now let’s just get these damned tests done. But I’m staying in the town-with Emily-for as long as it takes. And maybe even longer.’

‘You’re nuts!’ Back in the car, Em looked at the man beside her as if she were regarding a lunatic. ‘You’ve implied it was love at first sight between us.’

‘I did it beautifully,’ he said smugly, and she could have slapped him.

‘You did it intentionally?’

‘Sure.’

She sat back and gazed straight ahead. Doctor encountering lunatic and wondering where the nearest strait-jacket was. How was she supposed to react to this?

‘Um…do you have a reason?’ she asked finally, and her voice came out sort of as a surprised squeak. It didn’t sound in the least like a doctor soothing a lunatic. He heard it and he grinned.

‘There’s no need to take this personally.’

‘Oh, sure.’ Still the squeak. Em coughed and got her voice back under control-almost. ‘Sure. You imply to your sister that you’re in love with me and I’m not supposed to take it personally.’

‘Do you have any more work to do tonight?’

‘Stop changing the subject.’

‘No, but do you?’ Jonas was gently insistent. ‘Because if you have any more calls, I can take you there before I drop you back at the hospital.’

‘So you can fit in a spot of love-making on the side,’ she said nastily, and the twerp actually laughed.

‘Hey, there’s an idea.’

‘A very bad idea.’ She glowered.

‘You don’t approve of love-making?’

‘With men I like and trust,’ she retorted, and he winced at that.

‘Ouch.’

‘So there you go. Take me home.’

‘You do know I have my reasons,’ he said slowly, and she was forced to nod.

‘I guess I do. You can’t be totally unhinged or they’d never had given you your medical degree.’

‘There is that.’ His smile faded and he looked at the road ahead. ‘Em, you know Anna won’t let me close. I’ve battled every inch of the way to get her this far, and it’s only because she’s terrified that she let me come with her this morning. She was ready to clutch anyone. Once Anna has her head sorted again, I’ll be thrust back on the sidelines. She doesn’t want me.’

‘I’d assume she has her reasons.’

‘Maybe.’

Silence. The laughter had faded completely, and for once Jonas had his face set in grim lines. He wouldn’t tell her unless she asked, Em thought, but, then, she was a family doctor. She was accustomed to asking hard questions.

‘And the reasons would be…’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘I want to know everything about my lover’s family,’ she said primly, and got a wry smile for her pains.

‘Touché.’

‘So tell me.’

More silence. Anna’s house was on the far side of the headland to the hospital-about ten minutes’ drive. They were driving along the coast road. The moon was glinting off the sea, and the sound of the surf was thrumming into the open windows of Jonas’s lovely car. It was a night for lovers, Em thought inconsequentially. And Jonas had declared he was one.

But it was a lie. It had been said for a purpose-to achieve something. And that something was nothing to do with Emily.

‘My father was an alcoholic,’ he said at last, and Em frowned into the night.

‘Tough?’

‘Very tough.’ There was grit in his words, and a lifetime of pain behind them. ‘Our mother couldn’t take it. She wasn’t what you call a strong character. When I was twelve and Anna was nine, she met someone else and simply walked away. Leaving us with Dad.’

There was silence while Em thought this one through. She knew what an alcoholic parent meant-she had a couple of troubled kids in her practice for just that reason-and she didn’t like what she was thinking.

‘You want to tell me about it?’ she said at last, and he nodded.

‘Not much, but maybe I need to if you agree to play onside.’

‘You mean, pretend to be your lover.’

‘Pretend to need me.’ Once more that quick, inconsequential grin and Em’s insides did that funny lurch again. She loved this man’s smile. ‘Not that you don’t, of course.’

‘Of course,’ she said primly. ‘But just medically.’

‘And not in your bed.’

‘I have an ancient mutt called Bernard,’ she told him, making her mouth stern. ‘I rescued him from the pound when he was about a hundred which makes him about a hundred and ten now. He acts as my bedwarmer, and he’s all I need.’

‘Lucky old Bernard. Has he seen you with your hair down?’

‘Dr Lunn, are you going to tell me what the problem is with Anna, or are you going to let me out of the car?’ Em snapped. ‘I’m getting fed up here.’

‘Whereas I’m enjoying myself. And I don’t much want to talk about my father.’

‘But you need to tell me.’ She was a doctor, after all, and pressing a point home was what she was good at. It had to be if she was to survive a morning’s surgery without being swamped by inconsequential gossip.

‘There’s nothing much to tell.’ Once more the laughter faded, and Jonas concentrated on the road ahead. ‘My father was charming, handsome, kind, witty…’

Just like his son, Em thought, but didn’t say so.

‘And he was also an irretrievable drunk. He could charm anything out of anybody. Anna loved him so much that even if our mother had wanted us to go with her-which she didn’t-I don’t think Anna would have gone. She believed in him, you see. He lied to her over and over, and every time he let her down she made excuses for him. After our mother left, most of those excuses centred around me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He lied all the time,’ Jonas said bleakly. ‘Until recently-just before he died when he told me so much I didn’t know-I wasn’t aware how badly. But he’d promise Anna a party dress and then say I’d spent all his money that week. Or he’d swear he’d take her out for her fifteenth birthday and then tell her he had to be away because I was in trouble at university. I was paying my way through uni, taking every job I could, but Dad never told Anna that. Sure, she knew I worked, but Dad always implied all his spare money went to me. So there was nothing for her. Ever.’

‘Oh, Jonas…’

‘There was worse,’ Jonas said grimly. ‘But you don’t want to know. Enough to say that I was always the evil one. Dad treated me like that all the time. He blamed me for my mother going. It got worse when I applied to stop his pension and funnel it through social welfare. That meant Anna had at least enough to eat. And even as a student, some of the money I worked for went to him. But he hated it. He hated that I was in any sort of control.’

‘But someone had to be.’

‘As you say.’

She took this on board, thinking of another child she knew with an alcoholic father-one of her patients, and a child so much older than his years that she ached for him. ‘And then…’ she prodded gently.

‘And then Anna met Kevin-who was just like Dad.’ Once more, Jonas’s voice was filled with bitterness. ‘Kevin was handsome and he made her laugh and he drank like a fish. And he depended on her. Like Dad.’

He shrugged slowly into the dark. ‘Anna and I…we’ve been taught the hard way not to depend on people, but we don’t mind people depending on us. Like our parents. So she fell blindly in love, or she thought she did, and when I tried to intervene she hated me for it. And the more right I was, the more she hated me.’

‘That must have been hell!’

‘It was,’ he said bitterly. And then added, ‘It still is.’

‘She still holds it against you?’

‘I guess.’ He shrugged. ‘But I love my little sister, Em, and I’m doing everything I can to get her life back on track. Now Kevin’s gone I have a chance. Unless this bloody disease…’

‘Hey!’ Unconsciously Em’s hand flew across to rest on his on the steering-wheel. ‘Hey, Jonas, you know the odds. They’re very, very good.’

‘Yeah, but it’s a scary word-cancer,’ he told her, and she pressed his hand once more.

‘Try cyst, then,’ she said softly. ‘Until tomorrow.’

‘You don’t think it’s a cyst. It’ll be cancer and maybe it’ll have spread. Good things don’t happen to our family.’ His hands clenched and clenched again and again on the steering-wheel, and she could feel the strain in the muscles under her hand. ‘Good things don’t happen to Anna.’

‘I think they do,’ she said softly.

He gave a harsh laugh. ‘And how do you figure that one out?’

‘Because she has you,’ she said gently. ‘Because you’re with her every step of the way.’

‘She won’t let me be.’

‘As my partner, you can’t be anywhere else,’ she told him.

‘You agree-to play along?’

‘I agree that I need you,’ she said simply. ‘For as long as it takes.’

And that was that.

Only it wasn’t quite as simple as he had made out, Em thought as she lay waiting for sleep that night. Blessedly the hospital was quiet. Last night’s twins had been airlifted to Sydney, Henry Tozer’s gallstones, which had troubled both Henry and Em last night, had finally settled and peace reigned over the wards.

Bernard was snoring peacefully at the foot of the bed. All was right with his world.

Em should have done the same. Instead, she lay and stared into the darkness and wondered about the promise she’d just made.

If indeed Anna’s lump turned out to be malignant, then Jonas might well want to stay for her operation and afterwards, for the further weeks of radiotherapy and possibly chemo. Em figured it out in her head. It’d take at least three months, she thought. She could have him here for three months.

And all the time he’d be pretending he was staying for Em’s sake, and not Anna’s.

That was all very well, she thought, but where did that leave her?

Bernard stirred and whoofled in his sleep-which amounted to the ancient mutt’s complete exercise for the day. Em hauled him close and hugged his portly frame, but he was already asleep again. She arranged him back at her feet, like some huge, hairy pyjama-bag, then lay back and fingered her firmly braided hair.

She was close to thirty, she told herself, and here she was, sleeping in a single bed with a dog who stayed awake all of sixty seconds per day! And that was to eat. All of a sudden she had an almost irresistible urge to unbraid her hair and shift the snoring Bernard out of the room.

‘But I won’t do it,’ she told the battered old dog, and she knew she wouldn’t. ‘You’re my constant, Bernard Heinz. Bay Beach needs a dedicated doctor, and I’m it. Now Charlie’s gone, you’re the only male in my life, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Now and for ever.’

For ever…