Rescued By The Single Dad Doc

She obviously couldn’t find a word to describe Christine. Neither could he. Maybe there wasn’t one, but he and Christine were obviously grouped together. Dr Tilding’s look said Tom’s position in the hierarchy of life on earth was somewhere below pond scum.

‘Never mind,’ she snapped. ‘You can give me all the excuses in the world after we’ve seen to Kit’s hand. Let’s get him to Theatre. Now.’

CHAPTER TWO

AND THEN THINGS reassembled themselves. Sort of. This was a small country hospital but it was geared for emergencies, and many emergencies involved rapid blood loss.

Kit had lost so much that cardiac arrest was still a real possibility. Treatment of his hand—apart from stemming the bleeding—had to wait until that threat was past.

And in Rachel he had a godsend. She was an angry godsend, judgemental and furious, but she was a doctor.

Maybe he could have coped alone—maybe—but he was acting on autopilot. A part of his brain seemed to have frozen. The sight of one little boy, unconscious, a child he’d learned to love, had knocked him sideways.

It was an insidious thing, this love. It had crept up and caught him unawares, and loving came with strings. He couldn’t care for these kids—and love them—without his heart being wrenched, over and over again.

It was lurching now, sickeningly, and after that one incredulous look, that one outburst of anger, Rachel had subtly taken control.

As he went to put in the IV line his hand shook, and she took the equipment from him. ‘Get the monitors working,’ she told him. ‘I’ll take over here.’

The cardiac monitors… He needed to set them up. He did, with speed. A shaking hand could manage pads and monitors.

‘Pain relief and anaesthetic,’ she said. ‘Do you have an anaesthetist?’

‘There’s only me,’ he told her.

‘Two of us, then,’ she said curtly. ‘Or one and a half if you’re emotionally involved. But I’m trusting you have a good nursing staff.’

‘The best,’ Roscoe growled, and she nodded acknowledgement. This was no time for false modesty and she obviously accepted it.

And then Kit’s eyes flickered open again, fighting to focus. Falling on Rachel first. Terror came flooding back, and Rachel saw.

‘Hey, we found your Tom,’ she told him. ‘And here he is.’ Her anger and her judgement had obviously been set aside with the need for reassurance. She edged aside so the little boy could see him. ‘Kit, we’re going to fix your hand. The bleeding’s made you feel funny, and I know it hurts, but we’re giving you something that’ll make you feel better really fast. Tom’s just going to test your fingers. Will you do what he tells you?’

And she stepped back, turning to the instrument tray, setting the scene so Kit could only see Tom.

She was impelling him to steady. She was pushing him to do what he had to do.

He had to focus and somehow he did.

Appallingly, he was still seeing terror as well as pain in the little boy’s eyes. Legacy of his ghastly grandparents?

‘Hey, Kit, you’re here now, with me,’ he said as they rolled the trolley into Theatre. He touched the little boy’s face, willing the fear to disappear. ‘You’ve cut your hand but we’ll fix it. I know it hurts, but we’ll stop it hurting really soon.’

‘I broke… You’re not mad…?’

‘Dr Rachel tells me you broke her window,’ he managed. ‘I broke four windows when I was your age. I used to tell my mum and dad the cat did it. They didn’t believe me but they weren’t mad and neither am I. Accidents happen. Kit, can you tell me what you feel when I touch your fingers? Can you press back when I press? Here? Here?’

He was now in professional mode—sort of—but the lurch in his stomach wasn’t going away.

And the information he gained from Kit as they settled him into Theatre wasn’t helping.

He was checking for damage to the tendons that ran through the palm and attached to the finger bones. Secondly, for nerve damage, which could result in permanent loss of function or sensation. Tom was applying gentle pressure to the tips of Kit’s fingers, asking him to push back.

The responses weren’t good.

And Rachel got it. She was focusing on the IV, on getting pain relief on board, but she was listening to Kit’s quavering answers. Knowing what they meant.

‘Okay, Dr Lavery, tell me the set-up,’ she said as Tom’s testing finished. ‘Do you have anyone here who can cope with paediatric plastics? Or someone who can get here fast?’

‘No,’ he said shortly. Stemming the bleeding seemed straightforward. It looked as if the radial artery had been nicked—it must have been to cause this amount of bleeding. They could fix that. But what his examination had told them was that Kit needed a plastic surgeon or a vascular surgeon or both if he wasn’t to lose part or all of the use of that hand.

That meant evacuation. It was eight hours by road to Melbourne, ten to Sydney or Canberra. Shallow Bay wasn’t the most remote place in Australia but its position, nestled on the far south-east coast, surrounded by hundreds of miles of mountainous forests, meant that reaching skilled help could be a logistical nightmare.

‘Where?’ Rachel said, and he had to give her credit for incisiveness.

‘Sydney.’

‘You have air transfer?’

‘It’ll take medevac an hour to reach us in the chopper, but yes.’

‘Can someone organise that?’ she said to Roscoe. ‘Now?’ And then she turned back to the child she was treating and her voice gentled. ‘Kit, we’re going to get your hand bandaged now, and stop things hurting, but there’s a bit of damage deep inside that might make your fingers not as strong as they should be. We need to take you to a big hospital to get your hand mended.’

‘Tom can fix it.’ Kit’s voice quavered.

‘He can,’ she said, injecting her voice with confidence. ‘I know that. And so can I, because Tom and I are both doctors. If Tom agrees, I’ll do the first part now. But have you ever seen Tom sew something that’s ripped? Like a pair of jeans?’

‘He did once,’ Kit managed, trying gamely to sound normal. ‘Big stitches. It came apart again.’

‘Hey, how did I guess?’ she said, smiling down at him. ‘So Tom’s not very good at sewing and neither am I. Kit, there are things in your hand called tendons which make your fingers work. You’ve hurt them, so what you need is a doctor who’s really good at tiny stitches. Don’t worry, we’ll give you something that stops you feeling what we need to do. We’ll make sure nothing hurts, I promise. You’ll end up with a neat scar you’ll be able to show your friends, but a good needleworking doctor will make sure your fingers end up stronger than ever. So what that means is that we need to take you to Sydney.’

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘I understand that,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ve just arrived at Shallow Bay and it looks a great place. But have you ever been in a helicopter?’

‘I… No.’

‘Then what an adventure. Your friends will be so jealous. Tom, will you be going with Kit, or is there someone he needs more?’

And she looked straight at him.

So did Kit.

Is there someone he needs more?

Her eyes were challenging. Angry? He didn’t get the anger, but he couldn’t afford to focus on it now.

Kit needs his mother, he thought, and it was the belief he’d had reinforced about a thousand times in the last two years. But Claire was dead.

Kit’s father was who knew where? Steve had been Claire’s folly. The responsibility was never going to be Steve’s.

Kit’s grandparents? Claire’s parents? They’d glory in this drama. They’d use it against him and his fight for custody would start all over again.

So he had to go with Kit, but to leave Shallow Bay… To leave two more needy children…

‘There’s no one but me,’ he said, and it nearly killed him to say it.

‘We’ll manage.’ It was Roscoe, gruff, stern, decisive. ‘You need to go, Doc. And hey, we have another doc here now.’

‘But Marcus. Henry. I can’t.’

‘They can stay at home,’ Roscoe told him. ‘We’ll find someone to stay with them.’

‘Not that childminder.’ When Rachel spoke to Kit she was gentleness itself but when she faced Tom he saw judgement that he’d left the kids with such a woman. ‘She’s unfit.’

‘She’s awful,’ Kit quavered. ‘I don’t like her.’

‘It’s okay,’ Tom said, feeling helpless. He took Kit’s good hand and squeezed. ‘I’ll fix this.’ But how?

‘Their normal minder is Rose,’ Roscoe told Rachel. ‘She hurt her hip yesterday but she’s great. The kids love her. She’ll stay with them.’

‘She can’t,’ Tom said, option after option being discarded with increasing desperation. ‘Not by herself. Not with her hip, and I can’t trust Christine to help her. And with the field day at Ferndale—how many people are free this weekend?’ He sounded desperate—he knew he did—but he was torn in so many directions. Kit needed him, but so did Marcus and Henry. As a parent, he was failing on all counts.

‘We’ll find someone,’ Roscoe said, but he was starting to sound unsure. He turned to Rachel, explaining Tom’s dilemma for him. ‘The annual show at Ferndale is a huge deal and almost all the locals go. There’s an added problem, too. These kids have had a bit of a tough time in the past and they need to stay in their own beds. Farming them out’s not an option. I’d offer but my wife’s almost nine months pregnant. What if she goes into labour?’

‘You can’t do it,’ she said bluntly. She was still looking at Tom as if he was something she’d found at the back of the fridge, something that had been mouldering for months. ‘So who can these boys depend on?’

‘Me,’ Tom said bleakly.

‘Which is why we have one child with a sliced hand and two children with no carer.’

‘We’ll find someone,’ Roscoe said again, but Tom felt ill. Rachel’s disdain was obvious and he deserved it. Who could he ask, given this amount of notice?

But the expression on Rachel’s face had changed. She looked…as if she was about to step into a chasm? It was a momentary look and then her expression became one of resolution. As if a decision had been made, but the decision was scary.

‘Okay, then,’ she said briskly, as if what was about to be said needed to be said before she changed her mind. ‘Decision. If there’s no other option, I’ll accept responsibility. The boys don’t know me, but I’m dependable. I can’t imagine you’ll need to stay in Sydney for more than a couple of days.’

‘I can’t… They won’t…’

‘I’m not offering to do this on my own,’ she said, still brisk. ‘Nor should you agree if I did. There’s no way you should trust me. But if Rose of the hurt hip is otherwise okay… Would she agree to stay with the boys to give them the security they need? If she’s willing, then I’ll stay too. I can do housework, anything physical, and I can care for Rose as well as the boys. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor if I need to. I’ve had experience of living with kids. I can cope with anything they throw at me.’

‘I can’t ask that of you,’ Tom said, but she skewered him with a look that said he needed to get his act together.

‘So what are your options?’

There weren’t any.

‘Rachel, with Tom away, we’ll be needing you as a doctor,’ Roscoe said, sounding stunned. ‘I know you’re not supposed to start until Monday but there’s no one else. You know our last doc left us in the lurch. She had one of those scholarships you’re on, but bang, she got herself pregnant and her fiancée paid her way out. So there’s only Tom. And now there’s only you.’

Then his face cleared. ‘But maybe it would work. Rose isn’t disabled, just sore. She lives in the third cottage down on your bay and she’s slept at Tom’s before. There’s a spare bedroom, and I imagine you could use Tom’s bed. There’s an intercom from Tom’s living room to the nurses’ station here, so someone can always listen in if you need to be at the hospital. That works if Tom has to fix a drip or something at three in the morning. Tom works around his family. I guess you can, too.’

‘I guess I can,’ Rachel said.

‘I can’t ask…’ Tom managed, but he was cut off.

‘You have no choice.’ Once again he heard anger, but she was moving on. ‘Okay, Kit, let’s get your hand fixed up ready for your helicopter ride. Dr Lavery, I’ll need your help to stabilise things, but then you need to go home and pack.’

‘You’ve only just arrived,’ Tom said. He was feeling as if the ground beneath him was no longer solid. Who was in charge here? Not him. ‘You can’t…’

‘Dr Lavery, I have no idea yet of what you can and can’t do,’ she said with asperity. ‘But me… Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do without seeing me in operation. Do you or do you not need a childminder to stay with Rose?’

‘I… Yes.’

‘And is Rose dependable?’

‘Of course.’

‘So if I turned out to be a terrible person…would she kick me out?’

‘She would,’ Roscoe said from behind them. He was starting to smile—problem solved? ‘If she was worried I dare say she’d boss me and Lizzy to move, with or without our new baby. She’s one strong lady.’

‘And so am I,’ Rachel retorted. ‘So, Dr Lavery, if you don’t want me to stay with your boys then say so, but don’t tell me I’m not capable.’

‘I guess… I’m starting to think you’re very capable,’ Tom told her and tried to smile.

‘Thank you,’ Rachel told him, but there was no hint of a smile in return. He was still hearing anger. ‘Now, Kit, let’s get this hand fixed and show your stepdad I’m capable there as well.’

What had she promised?

Argh!

If there was one thing Rachel Tilding had learned in her twenty-eight years it was not to get involved.

Eight years ago she’d applied for the Roger Lavery Scholarship because it was the only one which offered to pay her entire way through medical school. Her education was sketchy, to say the least. She’d officially left school at fifteen. Since then she’d worked where she could, odds and sods for years, before ending up on night shift in a metal fabrication factory. She’d couch-surfed with anyone who’d put up with her, all the time saving, doing whatever she could to get the marks and the money to enter medical school. The day she’d heard she’d won the scholarship she’d been so tired she’d wept over the assembly line all night.

But then, thanks to the scholarship, things had eased. She’d been able to find somewhere permanent to live. She’d had security and a future, which was more than she’d ever dreamed of. The only cost to her was a contract at the end of her internship to work for two years in this end-of-the-earth place.

‘Two years?’ She thought of one of the other students on her med course, of his appalled reaction when she’d told him her plans. ‘Shallow Bay? A tin-pot hospital with no specialists, in the middle of the National Park, cut off by bushfires in summer, floods in winter? I’m guessing you’ll be married with babies by the end of the two years because there’ll be nothing else to do.’

‘I’m not into families.’ She’d snapped it before she could stop herself, almost a fear response.

‘You will be if you go there,’ her fellow student had said. ‘My uncle’s a county doctor, on call twenty-four-seven. His wife and kids hardly see him, but he says they’re the only thing that keeps him sane.’

A family? Keeping her sane? As if.

And now she’d offered to be part of one.

But it was only for a couple of days. She could do this. After what she’d been through, she knew she could pretty much do anything she needed.

But this was what someone else needed. Tom.

A stepfather. A man who’d left his kids with someone totally irresponsible.

So why had she made the offer? It wasn’t her fault the kid had hurt his hand. She didn’t get involved—she never had. And yet here she was, two minutes after arriving at Shallow Bay, putting her hand up to move in with a house full of kids. It was so unlike her it left her stunned.

Was it the thought of kids being left with a stepfather? After all this time, the word still made her feel sick to the stomach.

She was overreacting, she knew she was. Cinderella’s stepmother… Her own stepfather… They’d given the roles such a bad name.

One was a fairy story, she told herself, but her own…

Get over it.

Luckily she had medicine to distract her. It was a relief to move back into treating doctor mode. She was using local anaesthetic. Kit was awake and terrified, so she needed Tom to be Kit’s support person.

Roscoe had set up a screen so Kit couldn’t see her work. Tom could see over the screen but she had to block both Tom and Kit out. It was only Kit’s hand that mattered.

The anaesthetic block was cutting off sensation and Tom was keeping the little boy still. Conscious all the time of doing no more damage, she started removing slivers of glass. Left in situ, they could move during the flight and cause more damage.

There was enough damage already. He must have dragged his hand backward as he’d felt it cut. The glass had sliced from palm down to wrist and then across as he’d jerked back out of the shattered window.

She was focusing fiercely. Broken glass was appallingly difficult to clear from wounds, as its transparency made it notoriously hard to see. Roscoe was in the background, handing her what she needed, but Tom was right there. One of his hands was under Kit’s head, cradling like a pillow. The other was on Kit’s elbow, stopping it moving.

Despite her concentration on the wound, she couldn’t quite block out his presence. He was holding the little boy still but hugging him at the same time.

‘This is going to be an amazing scar,’ he was telling Kit. ‘You’ll need to make up a great story to go with it. Maybe we could get Dr Tilding to make marks that look like crocodile teeth to go with it. Then we could tell everyone that instead of staying with your grandparents last year you went croc hunting. Maybe one attacked Henry and you fought it off with your bare hands. I think it was a whopper, twenty feet long with teeth the size of my hedge-cutters. But you fought and fought and finally it held up its hands—paws?—what do crocodiles have? Anyway, your crocodile surrendered. And you told him it’d be okay as long as he said sorry and let you have a ride on his back.’

And to Rachel’s astonishment the little boy managed a weak chuckle. ‘That’s silly,’ he quavered. ‘Kids don’t ride crocodiles.’

‘I bet superheroes do,’ Tom said. ‘This scar looks like a superhero scar. Does it look like a superhero scar to you, Dr Tilding?’

She’d just fielded a sliver of glass. She held it still for a moment in her forceps, making sure her grip was secure before she tried to shift it, then transferred it to the kidney dish.

‘It’ll definitely be a superhero scar,’ she agreed. ‘You might need to buy a new T-shirt, Kit. One with Batman on the front?’

‘Batman?’ Kit said, with a brief return of spirit. With scorn to match. ‘Batman’s old.’ And then his face crumpled as he recalled another grief. ‘My meerkat T-shirt… It’s all bloody.’

‘We’ll try and fix it,’ Tom told him, but even Rachel could hear the doubt. And Roscoe grimaced behind him. To get monitors on the little boy’s chest they’d simply sliced the T-shirt away, not only to get fast access but also to check there were no other lacerations underneath. The T-shirt was now a mangled mess.

But she could fix this. Rachel’s splinter skill was internet shopping. Or, to be truthful, internet window-shopping—years of dreaming of what other kids could buy.

There’d been a great library in her neighbourhood and the librarian had been kind. She hadn’t seemed to notice just how much time Rachel spent there—or that when her books got too much for her she’d just sort of sidled to one of the computers. Patrons were supposed to pay for fifteen-minute slots, but when the library was quiet…well, Maureen was a librarian with a kind heart and she didn’t seem to notice. Sometimes Rachel had been asleep in a cubicle. Sometimes she’d been at the computer, dreaming of stuff she could never buy.

But she could buy stuff now, and memories of a weird search came back to her at just the right moment.

‘Hey, I have a solution,’ she told Kit. She was almost done. There’d still be tiny slivers in the wound but it would be up to the plastic surgeon in Sydney to retrieve them. The shards that could have done more damage were gone, and if she foraged more she risked making that damage worse.

‘A solution?’ Tom said.

‘A meerkat superhero.’

‘There’s no such thing.’

‘Of course there is. Kit, you tell him.’

‘I haven’t seen…’ Kit said doubtfully.

‘You haven’t? You’re obviously looking in the wrong places.’

Meerkats had been a bit of a thing for her during her teens; they had fascinated her, taken her out of her bleak world for a while. She still had a sneaky affection for them, and even now her internet browser seemed to find them almost by itself.

‘You must know there are online comics,’ she said. ‘I bet there are even online movies and I definitely know there are meerkat superhero T-shirts. I could order you one this very night, if you want. It’ll need to come from overseas so you might need to wait for a few weeks, but something like that would be worth waiting for, don’t you think?’

‘A meerkat superhero…?’

‘Marvel the Meerkat?’ she mused. ‘I’m thinking that’s who I saw. Maybe I have the name wrong. We’ll have to wait and see.’

‘But I broke your window,’ Kit quavered, sounding astounded.

‘So you did. So you’ll have to pay.’ She was closing, with steristrips because stitching a hand that needed further surgery was pointless. She glanced at Tom and saw the look of strain on his face. More than strain. She’d seen this reaction before, during her internship in an emergency department in Sydney. It was the reaction of parents whose foundations had been shaken after injury to their kids.

The look set back her prejudices a little. He cared?

So what was with the neglect? If he was a stepdad, where was Mum?

It wasn’t her business. Focus on Kit. She’d just told him he’d have to pay.

‘Can you fish?’ she asked the little boy, guessing what the answer would be. She’d already noticed fishing rods stacked outside the next-door garage.

‘Tom showed us how,’ Kit said, confused.

‘There you are then,’ she said decisively. ‘I can’t catch fish but I love eating them. When your hand’s better I demand three fish for payment. What’s your favourite fish to catch?’

‘Whiting,’ Kit said and then looked doubtfully at Tom. ‘Tom would have to help me.’

‘I don’t mind who helps,’ she said. ‘But I’m charging three fresh fish for my damaged window. Not all at once because I can only eat one at a time and I like them fresh. Then I’ll charge two more for the new meerkat T-shirt I’ll order tonight. Is that a deal?’

‘D-deal,’ Kit said and even managed a watery smile.

‘That’s that, then,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to unpack a few more boxes before I’m needed again.’

And she smiled at Kit, at Roscoe, but not at Tom, and then she headed out of the door.

He caught her just as she reached her car.

Her car… He saw her stop in dismay as she saw the mess, as she realised just what damage had been done. He saw her face go blank, almost as if she’d been slapped.

Back in his office he had a file on this woman. The file was in his possession not because she was a future colleague; he had it because Rachel Tilding was the recipient of the scholarship his grandfather had endowed, and as Roger Lavery’s grandson he was one of the trustees of that endowment. Every two years a scholarship was awarded to a student who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend medical school but had shown determination and rigour to get where they were.