The Surgeon's Love-Child

‘Or at the hospital.’

‘The hospital?’

‘Prenatal check-ups. Your OB/GYN has her practice in the hospital’s adjoining professional building, doesn’t she?’

‘Of course, you’re right. I know I’ll see her. Todd and I have a daughter together, remember? Occasionally we actually pass her back and forth at his place, instead of on safe, neutral terrain like school or the mall. Occasionally we even speak to each other.’ The words were hard with bitterness.

‘Maybe Maddy would like to get away, too?’ Elaine had suggested.

But when Candace had remembered Terry Davis’s comment, at a recent international medical conference, that rural Australia was chronically short of medical specialists, and had teed up this temporary appointment, Maddy had elected to stay behind with her father.

It hadn’t been in any sense a rejection of Candace. She knew that. It was about friends and routine, not about choosing one parent over the other, but it still hurt all the same.

She’s growing up. I’ll miss her more than she misses me. But Mom was right. This was probably the best thing I could have done.

After finishing her iced water, she found the phone by the bed. Called Maddy first. Heard Brittany’s perky voice, which quickly crystallised into glassy, high-pitched politeness when she realised who was on the other end of the line.

Candace had a brief conversation with Maddy, then called her mother, who said ‘See!’ in a very satisfied voice when she heard about the beachfront cottage and the acres of sea and sky. ‘Have you explored?’

‘I haven’t even unpacked!’

‘Dr Davis met you on time?’

‘Uh, no, he had to delegate to a colleague, but it worked out fine.’

And I managed to avoid mentioning Steve’s name, which I’m relieved about, and I know exactly why I didn’t want to mention it, which is unsettling me like anything…

When Candace had put down the phone, she looked at the suitcases and the box, stuck her tongue out at them and said in her best new millennium teen-speak, ‘You think I’m gonna unpack you right now, when there’s that beach out there? Like, as if!’

She walked the length of the beach twice, breathing the air and letting the cool water froth around her ankles. Then she unpacked, showered, made and ate scrambled eggs on toast, and conked out at seven in the evening in the big, comfortable bed with the sound of the sea in her ears.

She fell asleep as suddenly as if someone had opened up a panel in her back and removed the batteries.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS the best night’s sleep Candace had had in months, and it lasted until almost five the next morning. This meant she had plenty of time to iron a skirt and blouse, have another shower and eat breakfast on the deck, watching the sun rise over the sea. She was ready for Steve Colton at eight-thirty.

He was prompt, and if she’d had any sort of a theory overnight that yesterday’s intuitive sense of chemistry had been only a product of her jet-lagged disorientation, that theory was knocked on the head at once.

The chemistry was still there, invisible, intangible, lighter than air, yet as real as a third person with them in the room. Neither of them acknowledged it in any way. They didn’t get close enough to touch. Any eye contact they chanced to make was snapped apart again in milliseconds.

But, oh, it was there, and she was convinced he felt it, too.

She spent half an hour with Terry at the Narralee District Hospital. He had earned a certain seniority, having been a visiting medical officer in general surgery here for over twenty-five years, but in fact there wasn’t the official hierarchy of medical staff that Candace was used to.

There wasn’t very much that she was used to at all! It was quite a contrast to come from a 600-bed high-rise American city hospital to this low, rambling, red-brick building, which housed a mere fifty beds.

‘And six of those are political,’ Terry said darkly.

‘Political?’

‘They’re not beds at all, in most people’s definition. We have six reclining chairs where day-surgery patients recover until we’re satisfied that fluids are going in one end and coming out the other. But those six chairs make the numbers look better, so beds they’ve become and beds they’ll remain.’

He sounded tired and tense, and Candace longed to urge him, Go. Someone else can show me around.

Steve Colton, maybe? He’d muttered something about ‘errands’ after he’d deposited her into Terry’s care, and then he had disappeared. She was disturbed to realise that she was wondering, in the back of her mind, when she’d see him again.

She wanted to tell Terry, The tour can wait. I know you’re anxious to be on your way.

Terry was taking his wife, Myrna, up to Sydney today for a consultation with a top oncologist. The result of her second mammogram and fine-needle aspiration had come back yesterday afternoon, and there was no longer any doubt about the diagnosis. It was breast cancer.

They could only hope that it had been caught early, and Terry was clearly racked with worry. He was also behaving stubbornly in his insistence on a tour and a talk. He must feel as if he had let Candace down by not meeting her at the airport yesterday, and was determined to make up for it.

Accepting that she would only delay his departure if she kept apologising for her bad timing, Candace tried to ask a few intelligent questions and keep the pace brisk.

‘No full-time doctors here at all?’

‘No, we manage purely with Visiting Medical Officers. The local GPs cover the emergency department and the on-call roster, assist with surgery and handle anaesthesia. Steve probably mentioned that.’

‘Yes, he did, but not in any detail.’

‘Then there are about half a dozen of us who handle various specialities, travelling between several small hospitals in the region, as you’ll be doing. You can work out your own timetable, within certain constraints. Linda Gardner has space in her rooms, and will share her staff with you.’

‘Yes, Steve told me. Thanks for arranging it. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’

‘You’ll like her, I think. She’s married with two teenagers.’

‘We’ll have something in common in that area, then!’

‘Basically, you’ll probably want to operate one day a week here in Narralee, and a day every fortnight at Harpoon Bay and Shoalwater.’

‘A slower pace than I’m used to.’

‘Enjoy it!’

‘Oh, I intend to.’

The hospital had already created a pleasing impression. Its red-tiled roof had pale green lichen growing on it, attesting to its comfortable age. Above what must once have been the main entrance, the date ‘1936’ was carved. Mature eucalyptus trees shaded thick couch-grass lawns, and windows tinted with a gold reflective film ran all along one side of the building.

Most of the windows were open, providing a volume of fresh, mild air that was unheard of in Candace’s experience. In Boston, winters were arctic, summers were steamy and hospitals had air-conditioning.

With its pink walls and mottled linoleum floors, the place was too clean and cheerful to be called shabby, and there was an atmosphere of peace, underlaid by a low buzz of unhurried activity which suggested that hospitals didn’t have to be nearly as dramatic and hectic as they always seemed on prime-time television.

Terry doggedly tramped the building from one end to the other on their tour. He showed Candace the eight-bed maternity unit, which opened onto a shaded veranda. He took her through the four-bed high-dependency unit, the agedcare rehab beds, day surgery, the pharmacy, Emergency and Physio. He even took her past the tiny chapel and even tinier kiosk, which was open for just one hour each day. Finally, he pointed out the electrical plant room.

It was a relief to both of them when he finally announced, ‘And now I must pick up Myrna. She’ll be packed and waiting. Steve should be back before too long. Find someone to make you a coffee, and—’

‘I can do coffee on my own, Terry,’ Candace said gently. Several strands of his grey hair had fallen onto the wrong side of his parting, and he was rubbing his stomach as if he had heartburn. ‘Just give Myrna my very best and have a safe trip.’ She almost pushed Terry out through the administration entrance.

She had no trouble over the coffee. Found the nursing staffroom and was at once invited in. She hadn’t finished her mug of unremarkable instant by the time Steve appeared in the doorway ten minutes later, but it didn’t matter.

‘Now, what do you need to get done?’ he asked. ‘Because I’m not seeing patients today, and you know Terry will have my guts for garters when he gets back if I haven’t been looking after you.’

‘He’ll have your…what?’

‘Guts for garters.’ He grinned.

‘That sounds violent.’

‘So you’d better let me look after you, then, hadn’t you?’

‘Apparently!’

‘Good decision.’

‘Right, well, I need to get groceries, open a bank account and buy a car,’ she announced.

Steve raised his eyebrows and grinned, appreciating the way she’d ticked off each item on her finger with such assurance. Perhaps he shouldn’t have teased her with that piece of colourful Australian idiom just now. She didn’t need him to entertain her so deliberately.

‘Need to learn how to drive on the wrong side of the road, too?’ he suggested.

‘Well, yes.’ Now she looked less confident, but the effect was just as attractive.

His expectations for the day notched themselves a little higher, and he was aware that they’d been high enough to begin with.

‘I’ll give you a driving lesson,’ he offered.

OK, now she looked quite panicky. She gave a shriek, but she was smiling as widely as he was. ‘This is going to be a treat for my fellow road-users!’

‘Is that where we should start?’ he asked. ‘With the driving lesson? I can take you somewhere quiet first off then, when you’ve got some confidence, you can do the shuttling round to the bank and the supermarket. I’ll just sit in the passenger seat and give a terrified hiss every now and then…’

‘And slam your foot onto an imaginary brake pedal on the floor. I get the picture. Is it an automatic?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘And is it insured?’

‘Comprehensively.’

‘OK, let’s do it before I start thinking of excuses. How’s the public transport around here?’

‘Not good enough for commuting between three hospitals more than fifty kilometres apart, every week.’

‘Thought not.’

So he gave her a driving lesson, and it wasn’t nearly as hair-raising as either of them had feared.

I’m not flirting with her, Steve realised. Why is that? I’d planned to.

He had acquired some skill in this area over the years. He was nearly thirty-three, now. His brother Matt, three years his senior and married since the age of twenty-five, kept telling him, ‘Get serious. Don’t miss the boat. Stop going after women who have a use-by date.’

‘Use-by date?’

‘Like Agnetha. Women that you know are going to leave and let you off the hook. There was that other girl from Perth, too. Agnetha wasn’t the first. Settle down!’

And he always found himself thinking, Yeah, obviously. Of course I will…I’m not a hardened bachelor. But not yet. Don’t think I’ve quite come to grips with the married man’s job description yet. When he took on a responsibility—and he was in no doubt that marriage was that—he liked to be sure it was one he was fully equipped to handle.

To prove to himself, and perhaps to Matt as well, that he hadn’t missed the boat, be it kayak or cruise ship or ferry, he flirted with a variety of women. Mutually enjoyable. Nothing heavy-handed. Not threatening to anyone.

He kept it very light, never trespassed into the sorts of overtly sexual references and double meanings that he, along with most women, would have considered sleazy. He conceded that there was probably some truth to Matt’s observation about women with a use-by date as well, although he didn’t like the way his brother had worded it.

Candace Fletcher was only here for a year, and he was fully aware of the fact.

So perhaps this is flirting, he decided. We’re laughing. Teasing each other a little. Only it’s even lighter than usual, so I’m calling it something else.

Why?

Because I don’t want to scare her off.

There was something in her eyes, something in the way she held that full, sensitive mouth. Coupled with the fact of her divorce, he was pretty certain that she would want a man to take things carefully, no matter how sudden and strong the spark was between them, no matter that she was leaving after a year.

Perhaps the spark was a little deceptive, too. They might both feel it, but that didn’t mean acting on it would be a good idea. Some instinct told him to tread carefully, and to think before he acted in this case.

I didn’t think twice with Agnetha, and neither did she…

The thought flashed through his mind and disappeared again.

They spent an hour on the quiet roads of Narralee’s newest housing development before Candace announced that she was ready for downtown.

‘Yes, I know you don’t call it that,’ she added.

‘Just town will do.’

‘Tell me how to get there.’

She parked without difficulty in the car park behind the bank and opened her account, then he showed her the supermarket nearest to Taylor’s Beach and they tooled down the aisles with a big metal shopping trolley, which she filled to the brim.

Always an instructive experience, shopping with a woman for the first time. What secret vices did she display in the confectionery aisle? Did she actually cook, or merely reheat in the microwave? Agnetha had lived on rabbit food, Steve considered. Celery and nuts and carrots. Horse food, too. Various flaky things that looked and tasted like chaff.

Candace’s diet held more promise and less obsessiveness. She smelled a rock melon—‘canteloupe’ she called it—with her eyes closed and a heaven-sent expression on her face. Then she put two of them in the trolley, right on top of the frozen chocolate cheesecake. She selected some delicate lamb cutlets and a medallion of pork, and they ended up lying next to the five-pack of lurid yellow chicken-flavoured two-minute noodle soups. She apparently drank hot chocolate, tea, three kinds of juice and four kinds of coffee.

He thought he’d been reasonably subtle in his analysis of her purchases, but he was wrong. When they stood waiting at the checkout, she tilted her head to one side and demanded, ‘So, Doctor, how many points did I lose? About fifty for the cheesecake and the cookies, obviously, but I believe I do have all the food groups represented in reasonable proportion.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘You were, too! Silently analysing everything that went in the cart. Comparing me to—well, to whoever.’

Agnetha. He almost said it, but managed to stop himself. Felt colour rising into his neck and thought in disbelief, My God, I’m blushing!

‘I thought so!’ said Candace under her breath.

It was a type of audition. She teetered on the edge of resenting it. He had no right to judge and draw conclusions like that!

Then, with more honesty and less bluster, she decided that she was doing exactly the same thing herself. Auditioning him for this imaginary, unlikely affair she couldn’t get out of her head.

So far, he seemed like exactly the right candidate for such a thing, if she was going to consider the question in such cold-blooded terms. He would be easygoing, physical, fun to be with. He’d also possess certain shared understandings that didn’t need talking about, because they worked in the same profession.

Yes, quite definitely an ideal candidate for an affair.

Is this what Mom was thinking about when she told me to go away? That I’d meet someone and have a crazy fling, get my socks sizzled off and come home as revitalised as if I’d been to a health spa for three months? That I’d be over Todd and Brittany? Dear God, over it. That it wouldn’t hurt any more, and twist me up inside with bitterness and resentment and regret…?

The idea was both terrifying and dangerously alluring.

With her breathing shallower than usual, she asked, ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else you need to do today? This is taking a long time.’

‘My schedule’s clear, so don’t worry about it. Shall we take this lot home to your place and unpack it, then grab some lunch before we do the car?’

‘Sandwiches? We have the makings for them now.’

‘Yep. Great.’

They got to the first car dealership at two, after a lunch so quick and casual Candace might have been sharing it with Maddy. The salesman then spent half an hour addressing himself exclusively to Steve, even when it ought to have been quite clear to him that Candace was the prospective buyer.

‘Do you think he realises why he didn’t make a sale?’ Steve asked her when they left.

She laughed. ‘I handled it. In fact, it was useful. He talked to you while I had an uninterrupted chance to think about whether I really wanted the car.’

‘I take it you didn’t?’

She waggled her hand from side to side. ‘Probably not. Let’s keep looking.’

At the second and third dealerships, she test-drove two vehicles and finally decided on a compact European model, with very low mileage on the odometer. She felt exhilarated and slightly queasy at having parted with so much money so quickly. Still, it didn’t make sense to delay. She was only here for a year. She needed to get organised, get her life sorted out, hit the ground running.

Did this apply to arranging a quick, therapeutic fling as well?

‘Now you just have to drive it home,’ Steve said, reminding her that in all spheres of life, actions had consequences.

‘I don’t know the way,’ she answered.

‘Which is why you’ll follow me.’

By the time they reached home, it was late afternoon. Steve suggested an evening meal at a local Chinese restaurant, and that sounded fine.

Sounded fine.

In reality, it was harder. When someone was seated a yard away and facing in your direction, it wasn’t as easy to avoid eye contact as it had been during driving lessons and grocery shopping. Candace drank a glass of red wine and regretted it. Jet-lag swamped her again, and the lighting in the restaurant was warm, inviting and intimate. She felt woozy, smily, relaxed and far too conscious of him.

When their eyes did meet, it was like tugging on a cord. She was a marionette and he was controlling the strings. He was making her nod and smile and listen with her chin cushioned in her palm and her elbow resting on the table.

‘Hey, are you falling asleep?’

‘No…’

‘You will be soon. I’d better take you home.’

‘You’re making my decisions for me,’ she retorted.

‘Only tonight,’ he said softly. ‘Promise you, the rest of the decisions will be all yours.’

Perhaps he hadn’t meant it to sound like such an intimate threat, but Candace panicked anyway. Her sleepiness vanished and she pulled herself to her feet, grating the legs of the chair on the restaurant’s scratchy carpeting.

‘Damn right they will!’ she said, and saw his startled expression.

‘Candace, I didn’t mean—I meant it, OK?’

‘I—I know. I’m sure you did.’

She turned away from him, felt his fingers slide in a quick, feather-light caress from her shoulder to her wrist, and was absolutely positive that she’d end up in his arms tonight. The idea was so breathtakingly terrifying that she didn’t wait for him to pay for their meal. She simply stumbled out of the restaurant, hurried along the sidewalk and stood by the driver’s side door of her new car until he caught up to her.

Steve didn’t say anything about it. Not then. Not for the next few days. And he didn’t kiss her.

He had more than one opportunity. Terry and his wife were still away, but the rest of Narralee’s small medical community gathered to welcome her at a barbecue at Linda and Rob Gardner’s on Saturday evening. She enjoyed meeting everyone, and laid some tentative foundations of friendship.

As Terry had predicted, Linda was going to be nice. She had a no-nonsense haircut, a chunky build, a throaty laugh and a wicked sense of humour. She was down to earth in her opinions, happy with her career and open in her love for her children and her even more down-to-earth husband.

Getting over her jet-lag, Candace stayed until ten o’clock and drove herself home, then saw Steve’s car breeze past her house as she stood on the deck, watching the moonlight over the water.

He glanced across, saw her there, slowed down and waved. She almost wondered if he would come over. They’d had a long conversation at the barbecue. Lots of laughs in it, and some quiet moments, too. If he did come, she would offer him tea or coffee, while secretly quaking in her shoes…

But, no, he didn’t show up.

The next morning, they met on the beach. Candace hadn’t swum in the ocean in years, but loved it again at once. Taylor’s Beach was patrolled and flagged in the Life-saving Association’s colours of red and yellow, so she felt very safe swimming between the flags. Had no desire to go out as far as those surfers, though, in their slick black wet-suits.

One of the surfers was Steve.

She didn’t recognise him until he came to shore with his creamy fibreglass board tucked under one arm, and he didn’t see her until he’d put the board down, pulled his wetsuit to his waist and towelled himself.

He did this with rough energy, like a dog shaking off the water, then he caught sight of her, slung his towel over his shoulder and came over. Dropping her gaze, she was treated to the sight of his bare, tanned legs still dripping with water from the knees down, and his feet, lean and smooth and brown, covered with sand.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘You’re not afraid of sharks out there?’

‘Only when I see a fin.’

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘We get dolphins here sometimes. They like surfing, too.’

‘Now you’re definitely joking!’

‘No! Their bodies are perfect for it. They catch fish around here, too.’

‘I’m going to look out for them. Still don’t quite believe you…’

‘You’ll see them,’ he predicted. ‘If you spend any time on these beaches. The shape of their fin is different to a shark’s, and so is the way they move in the water, but when you first glimpse one, before you’ve had time to work out whether it’s shark or dolphin every hair stands up the way it does on a cornered cat. I tell you!’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘Yes, a couple of times I’ve been damned scared!’

He was still a little breathless. His hair stood on end and looked darker than it did when it was dry. The coarse plastic teeth of the zip on his wetsuit had pulled apart to just below his navel. She could tell by his six-pack of stomach muscles that he kept himself fit, and by his tan that he didn’t always surf in his wetsuit.

My God, he’s gorgeous! she thought, her insides twisting. Who am I kidding, that he’d want an affair? With me? Sitting here in my plain black suit. He’d probably flirt like this with my grandmother. Oh, I mean, was it even flirting? It was only friendliness. He was making me welcome very nicely, as Terry would have done, and I—Oh, lord, I’m so raw, right now, I actually felt nourished by it. Totally misunderstood it, obviously.

A girl in an extremely small orange bikini wandered past. She was as blonde as natural silk, sported a tan the colour of fresh nutmeg and looked about twenty-five. For one crazy moment, Candace was tempted to reach out, haul her across by a bikini strap and park her right in front of Steve.

Here you go. Much more suitable. My apologies for trespassing on your personal space by even contemplating that you and I might have—

‘Ready for another dip?’ he said. He had taken no notice of the orange bikini, or the body inside it, and now the girl had gone past.