Rescued By The Single Dad Doc / The Midwife's Secret Child

He set the stubbies in the sand and waited. Stay or go? He was aware, suddenly, that he was holding his breath. Hoping?

Why? She was simply a colleague, paying her dues for two years before she got on with her life.

Or…what? Was that a tiny sliver of hope? A resurrection of something he’d once taken for granted?

Like a love life.

Heather’s words came back to him. Dumb. Ridiculous. He knew it.

Still, he kind of hoped she’d stay.

‘I don’t mind a beer,’ she said tentatively, and he grimaced.

‘Lady, you’re going to have to do better than that. I carried two stubbies all the way down here. That’s a fair commitment on my part. So now I’m offering to share, but not with someone who “doesn’t mind a beer.” It has to be “I’d love a beer” or nothing.’

And suddenly she smiled. He’d seen her smile before, greeting patients, being pleasant, but her smiles had been tight, smiles to put people at ease. This one, though, was something much more. It was a wide, white smile with a chuckle behind it.

Cute.

More than cute. Gorgeous.

‘My lukewarm response was simply because you pre-empted your kind invitation with a vision of piña colada and umbrella,’ she admitted and, splendidly, she sat herself down on the sand again. But where most women—most anybody—would set the towel down and sit on it, she kept it firmly wrapped around her arms, a cover for what lay beneath.

‘Where in Shallow Bay would I get a piña colada?’ she asked, and he had to stop thinking about scars on arms and focus on what was important. Piña coladas.

‘Dougal’s pub doesn’t run to them, that’s for sure,’ he said. ‘I had to twist his arm to stock low-alcohol beer. Apparently, it’s for sissies.’

‘Or doctors on call.’

‘As you say. So…beer or no beer?’

And her smile flashed out again. ‘I really would love a beer.’

That smile… He found himself grinning to match, though he wasn’t actually sure what he was grinning about. She disconcerted him and he didn’t understand that either.

So back to basics. He twisted the ring-pull and handed her a bottle, then did the same for himself. ‘Here’s to the end of your first week,’ he told her, clinking bottles. ‘May your next week be not so exciting.’

‘Apart from the first couple of hours when your son tried to stab himself to death, it hasn’t been very exciting at all,’ she told him. She took a swig of her beer and seemed to enjoy it. ‘I suspect it’s been a lot more exciting for you, and I’m so glad it’s turned out well.’

‘You and me both. And I’m incredibly grateful. I wish it could have been piña colada.’

‘I told you, I’d love a beer.’ She held up her bottle and regarded it with affection. ‘The fact that I’ve been on the beach for two hours and forgot my water bottle—and there’s no piña colada in sight—has nothing to do with it. Beer’s great.’

And there was the smile again. He liked it. A lot.

‘But wouldn’t you be more comfortable drinking your beer at home?’ she queried, and he thought, She’s made the decision to come down here—alone. It confirmed what he was learning of her. She was a woman who valued her own company, which made what she’d offered to do last weekend even more extraordinary.

‘The kids are at home,’ he said. ‘Added to that, they have a video game which requires at least three players. It involves bombs and flames and dragon babies turning into things I don’t want to think about.’

‘So…’ she said cautiously. ‘They play it a lot?’

‘Is that a judgement?’

‘Hey, I’m no judge. I’m just happy to have intact windows.’

‘Yeah,’ he said morosely. ‘You and me both. The game’s okay. Fun, even. But, right now, they can’t play because, stupidly, I bought a game that needs at least three players. I bought it so they’d be forced to include Henry, who often gets left out. Unfortunately, Kit’s now away. Rose holds up her knitting like armour whenever they approach, so I’m their only available third man. It’s a wonder they didn’t have you playing last weekend.’

‘They tried,’ she said. ‘I was busy.’

‘Is that what you said?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then why doesn’t that statement work for me?’

‘You’re obviously a softie,’ she told him. ‘But if you don’t like playing with them…’

He knew what she was asking. It was the question that he asked himself more than a dozen times a day. ‘You want to know why I took them on?’

‘It’s none of my business,’ she said hastily, and he sighed and took another swig of beer and wished he’d had the forethought to buy a dozen.

‘I do like playing with them,’ he admitted. ‘Mostly. But that’s what got me into trouble in the first place.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Their mother was my best friend,’ he said simply. ‘We were mates from pre-school, right through med. school and beyond. Never lovers, though. Claire had appalling taste in men, from the time she kissed Terry Hopkins behind the shelter sheds when she was ten. Hopkins used to squash snails down girls’ dresses. Why did she not see that could only end in tears?’

‘She married a snail-squasher?’

‘She escaped Terry Hopkins but she did worse. She married a serial cheat and a bully. Claire’s parents are loaded. Her father’s something huge in the financial world. My parents are wealthy enough, but they’re nothing compared to Claire’s. Steve took one look at only-child Claire’s inheritance prospects and moved right in. But as soon as they were married he reverted to the slimeball he was. He had affair after affair, treating Claire like dirt.’

‘Which left you as a friend.’

‘I’m godfather to each of them,’ he said, trying to eke out his beer to last through a bleak story. ‘And they’re great kids. Claire and I worked in the same hospital as interns. It was easy to help her out in emergencies. I didn’t mind taking them to soccer on Saturdays, doing the occasional childminding. It was even fun.’

‘Until…’

‘Until.’ He gave up on his stubby, planting it in the sand. It was still a quarter full but maybe he’d need it at the end.

He usually hated telling this story, but he glanced at Rachel and saw only casual interest—the sort of interest a doctor might show a patient describing symptoms. She wasn’t emotionally involved. She was simply a colleague who was…asking.

Strangely, it made it easier to keep talking. Every one of his friends had reacted to his story with dismay, horror, sympathy. Rachel was asking—because she’d like to know? Or because she thought she ought to ask. The differentiation was hard to make but somehow he appreciated it.

Her detachment made the story easier to tell.

‘Claire was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy when Henry was two,’ he told her. ‘She collapsed at work. Dramatic. Awful. If she hadn’t been in a hospital when it happened she would have died but she pulled through. Just. By this time Creepy Steve was almost a thing of the past and her illness was the last straw. He never had time for the kids and when Claire fell ill, when her parents made it clear there’d be no money for him, ever, he signed over rights to access to his kids and was heard of no more.’

‘Which left Claire alone.’

‘Yeah.’ He stared into the middle distance, remembering her terror. Remembering his own fear. ‘She had irreversible pulmonary hypertension, a contraindication for a heart transplant, but a transplant did end up buying her enough time to think about the boys’ future without her. While she was ill her parents took her and the boys back into their home. She had enough time to accept the boys could never be happy with her parents as sole carers.’

‘Why not?’ Weirdly, once again she seemed detached. The way she was, he wouldn’t be surprised if she produced a clipboard from her beach bag and started taking notes.

But her detached manner helped. He found himself wanting to outline the events that had propelled him here.

‘Her parents are…overpowering,’ he told her. ‘Because we’d been friends for so long I already knew that. Claire had been pushed as a child, really pushed. Ballet, piano, violin, gym—polo, for heaven’s sake—and she was expected to be brilliant at everything. To be honest, I suspect that’s why she fell for Creepy Steve and the other creeps before him—it was a dumb attempt to rebel. I gather, after she fell ill, the relationship with her parents grew more strained. Anyway, even before she had the transplant she knew the odds—she knew she wasn’t going to be around long-term for the boys. In the end she was desperate for me to have some influence in the way they were raised—so she asked me to marry her and adopt them.’

What followed was silence. Normally friends or colleagues jumped in at that point in the story. Not Rachel. She seemed to be taking her time to think it through.

‘That was some ask,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t imagine how it made you feel.’

‘We were good friends,’ he said diffidently. ‘And it wasn’t as if marrying and settling down was my style.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I worked, I surfed, I had fun. Family wasn’t on my radar. And we thought—Claire and I both thought—that it’d be simple enough. If by some miracle she survived long-term then we’d divorce. If she died, then her parents would do the hard yards of parenting—they saw the boys as their responsibility and had already made it clear that’s what they wanted. I’d just be around on the edges, giving them another long-term person for security, but with enough legal authority to step in if her parents pushed too hard.’

‘Still, it’s a big deal.’

‘You wouldn’t have done it?’

‘You said marrying wasn’t your style. It’s so far off my radar it’s another world. That kind of involvement—any kind of personal involvement—isn’t my scene.’

‘Really?’ He eyed her curiously and once again that sense of a clipboard between them came into his mind. ‘Yet last weekend you were there for me.’

‘There wasn’t a choice. Not that I minded. It was a finite commitment with the end in view. What you’re describing… Long-term involvement seems a given.’

‘There was no way I thought it’d interfere with my Friday nights though,’ he said with another rueful look down at his beer. ‘But look at me now.’

‘So what happened?’

‘She died,’ he said simply. ‘She tried for another transplant, which went horribly wrong—she was never going to be strong enough to deal with it and she knew it, but her parents were fighting with every means they had. When it was over the boys stayed living with them and I tried to take up where we’d left off, seeing them occasionally, taking them to soccer. Only it didn’t work. The kids got quiet. You know the rule in Emergency? Triage? A kid comes in screaming its lungs out and a kid comes in limp and silent. Which one needs attention? The limp one every time, and they were limp.’

‘So…a problem.’

‘Claire had given me custody in her will,’ he said. ‘She didn’t think I’d need it. All she’d asked is that I accept the power to override her parents if they did anything I knew she’d hate. So I kept hanging out with them, being a mate rather than a dad. But the months wore on and they kept getting quieter. I knew things weren’t right, but I couldn’t nail it.

‘And then one night I went around and they’d just brought their school reports home. School reports for kids. Henry was in infant class. You know the kind of report? Henry: A+ for finger painting, A+ for tying shoelaces. But Kit, who was two years older, had a slightly more precise report. Kit is struggling a little. B-for reading. The housekeeper let me in, and I could hear a row. I walked into the study and Claire’s dad had them lined up, waving reports in his hand and blasting Kit. Almost spitting into his face. “You let a five-year-old beat you. What are you? A pansy? You take after your no-good father. No grandchild of mine lets a five-year-old beat him, you good-for-nothing little…”’

He fell silent, remembering the sick horror as he’d realised what had to be done. By him.

Friday nights were the least of it.

‘They’d been authoritarian with Claire in her childhood,’ he said, speaking almost to himself rather than Rachel. ‘That’s why she worried, but she knew they loved her, and she thought they loved her boys. But when she died… I think their grief has left them a little unhinged. It doesn’t help that the boys all have Steve’s red hair—they look like him. I’m no psychologist but it seems there’s a part of them that can’t bear the boys to be…not Claire? I looked at them that night and saw no softness, only determination that the boys fall into line. And the things the old man said when I tried to defend them… It was almost like he was blaming the boys for her death.’

‘So you stepped in.’

‘It couldn’t continue,’ he said heavily. ‘They were determined to keep control, but I had the authority and I had them out of the house almost before they realised what I was doing. That night we sat up and watched dumb movies and ate junk food and didn’t talk about report cards once. I had a one-bedroom hospital apartment. They slept on the floor and I didn’t hear a complaint. I was then hit by a battalion of lawyers, plus Charles and Marjorie practically hounding the boys. Losing control was unthinkable. They were at the school gates, demanding the boys come home with them. They were calling me everything under the sun…’

He broke off. It was too much to recall—his struggle to explain that if they’d just back off, give the boys a bit of space, let them be kids, then things could work. His realisation that it wasn’t going to happen. The acceptance that his life had to change.

‘In the end I knew it’d never work,’ he said. ‘I started looking for another apartment, but when the old man hired a couple of thugs to collect the kids from school, thugs who were prepared to see me off with force, I just…’ He stopped, closed his eyes, then forced himself to go on. ‘I quit at the hospital. I knew this place was here. My grandparents built this house and it still belonged to me. I knew Shallow Bay could use any doctor they could get, so here we are.’

‘Safe,’ she said softly, almost a whisper.

‘Not quite safe,’ he told her. ‘Charles and Marjorie have applied for custody. Claire’s death might have left them a little unhinged, but as blood relatives they have a case and they’re powerful. They say their daughter was mentally unfit when she signed the adoption papers. I’m single, I work long hours, I need to use childminders. Regardless, my lawyers tell me they have little chance unless they can prove I’m an unfit parent. Which is why it’s important they don’t find out about Kit’s hand.’

‘That was hardly your fault.’

‘They won’t see it like that.’ He was confronting his worries now. There was something about this place, this woman…

No. It was simply that there’d been no one to talk to for so long. With Rachel… She seemed dispassionate, almost like a psychoanalyst, letting him go where he willed with no judgement. It was a weird sensation and he wasn’t sure why he was reacting to it, but the need to talk was almost overpowering.

‘Marcus is too serious,’ he told her. ‘He blames himself for Kit’s hand. He blames himself for everything. When his grandfather looked like he was about to hit Kit, Marcus shoved himself in between. ‘Hit me instead,’ he was yelling. ‘My report’s worse.’ Only of course it wasn’t, and afterwards he even asked me if he should try and fail a few tests at school to make Kit feel better.

‘Henry’s littler, less complicated, but he has nightmares. I carry a radio in my pocket. If I’m called out at night Rose listens in and so do I. It’s not great, not even totally safe, but it’s the best I can do when I’ve been on call twenty-four-seven. So Rose and I hear the minute he wakes and it’s a race to see who can get there first. Because of what I do, it’s usually Rose but he holds himself rigid, sweating, until I get there.’

He paused. Was he waiting for her to comment? She didn’t, just watched him, waiting for him to continue.

He wasn’t even sure if she was interested but… What was it with this woman?

‘And then Kit,’ he said. ‘Left alone… Well, his cut hand is the least of it. Sometimes he wants me to be there for him, but not often. Tonight he hugged me, but that’s unusual. There’s a part of him that actively tries to drive me away. It’s like he’s testing me, expecting me to leave like his parents, thinking the sooner it happens the sooner he’ll get it over with. So how do I break through that?’

Once again she didn’t answer. He finished his beer and stared at the empty bottle. Rachel gazed out over the ocean, watching the water turn a soft tangerine with the reflections of the setting sun. Somehow she seemed to be melting into herself, folding, tucking herself neatly away—to where no one could touch her? To where personal stories didn’t hurt?

‘Your parents?’ she said, almost absently, and why should he answer that? But he did.

‘Loving but absent,’ he told her. ‘Overseas. Caught up in their careers. These kids have nothing to do with them.’ And for the life of him he couldn’t keep his voice from sounding bleak.

He heard it and he flinched. He sounded needy. Him. He didn’t need anyone.

Except he did need help for the boys, and he didn’t know where to begin to ask.

The silence stretched. It seemed they were both staring into the future. Or the past?

What was her story? She wasn’t saying.

‘Kids are resilient,’ she said at last, breaking the spell. She stood up and brushed the sand from her legs. ‘You’re doing the best you can. They’ll survive.’

‘Like you survived?’

She froze at that. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Cigarette burns,’ he said neutrally. ‘Unmistakable once you’ve treated them.’

‘And none of your business.’

‘So I spill my all to you…’

‘And I don’t spill back.’ She shrugged. ‘You’ve been generous but one low-alcohol beer does not a contract make. I need to go home. I’m hungry.’

‘We have hamburgers at my place.’

A glimmer of humour returned and her lips twitched. ‘So you’re asking…what? You’ll give me a hamburger in return for me being third man in Dragon Doom or whatever?’

‘Hey, I never said…’

‘You didn’t need to. I guessed. So, no, thank you.’ The smile was still there. ‘I have home-made lasagne, which will heat while I’m in the shower. Then I have a date with a movie. So while Dragons are tempting, sorry. Bye.’

Home-made lasagne. A movie. Maybe a bottle of wine. It was like a siren’s song and it was so far out of his list of possibilities that he couldn’t even think about it.

He rose as well, aware of emptiness. Of leaving without her.

And then his phone vibrated.

He closed his eyes for a second, but this was almost inevitable, a call on Friday night. Why not?

He snagged his phone from his pocket. Unknown number. Local.

Work.

‘Dr Lavery.’

‘Doc? It’s Col Hunter here.’

His phone was set on loudspeaker—he set it every night as he left work because of the times he had to listen over the racket the kids were making. Col’s voice was deep and booming, disturbing the silence of the beach, but Tom left it on loud. After all, Rachel was a colleague.

‘How can I help you?’ Already he knew there was trouble. Underlying Col’s booming voice he could hear pain.

‘I fell over the pig,’ Col managed. ‘Got her in, got her fed, thought she had her snout in the trough and then suddenly she’s shoving her way between me and the gate, trying to get out again. It’s me ’taters she wants, Doc. Spent all bloody summer trying to get a decent crop. She’s been watching me water ’em, fertilise ’em and now she wants ’em. Dutch Creams—the best ’taters you can get—and Mavis isn’t bloody having ’em.’

‘You’ve hurt yourself.’ Cut to the chase, Col.

‘It’s me hip,’ Col said. ‘Had to crawl inside. Managed to get the sty gate shut though, so I won. Bloody pig.’

Tom almost grinned but didn’t. Col was in his eighties and had suffered osteoarthritis for years. A fall, a damaged hip…

‘Is there anyone with you?’ he asked.

‘You know Pat left me years ago,’ Col managed. ‘“The pigs or me”, she said and off she went with some life insurance fella. Kids are both in Melbourne. Doc, I can’t seem to pull meself up. Reckon I need you, mate.’

‘I reckon you do, too,’ Tom told him. ‘Your place is right up the top of Bellbird Ridge, right?’

‘You got it. I remember you coming here with your grandpa when you were a little fella.’

‘I’m coming again now,’ Tom told him. ‘It’s probably best if you don’t move until I get there.’

‘You don’t need to tell me that, Doc,’ Col said. ‘Passed out twice getting to the phone. Not risking that again. But…could you make it fast?’

‘I’ll make it fast,’ Tom said. ‘Grit your teeth, mate. I’m on my way.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

Where had that come from? She wasn’t on call. She and Tom had sat down last Monday and defined their call duties. Tonight she was off—unless for emergencies.

This was hardly an emergency—an old man falling, possibly breaking a hip. Shallow Bay had an ambulance service of sorts, a vehicle equipped with stretchers, manned by volunteers trained in first aid. Tom could easily assess the damage and call her in if he needed her.

So why was she offering?

She had no idea. Maybe it was the slump of Tom’s shoulders as he disconnected, a slump that spoke of regret.

Why, though? If he was back in Sydney she’d understand it. He’d be leaving his friends, his good time. Here, this call would mean little more than being home late for children who weren’t his, children who were already being adequately cared for.

Except he did care. That was the part she was struggling with. Taking children from their grandparents when they were being obviously mistreated—that was understandable. He’d had no choice. But she’d met Rose. She knew that lady was a carer in a million. The boys were safe.

Tom had already confessed he didn’t want to play their video game. This was the perfect excuse. So why the shoulder slump?

She didn’t understand—but neither did she understand the imperative urge to help.

‘Rachel, thanks, but I need to go now.’ Tom was gathering the empty bottles, turning towards the track.

But she’d already hauled her dress over her swimsuit. She grabbed her beach bag and headed after him.

‘I can cope,’ he said as she fell in beside him. ‘There’s no need for you to come as well.’

‘You have trained paramedics?’

‘You know we don’t, but…’

‘But you’re sure I’d be useless? Tom, I can get you home to the boys faster. I’d go by myself but I don’t know the way and risk getting lost. Plus you’ve already told him you’re coming and it sounds as if he knows you.’

‘Everyone in Shallow Bay knows me,’ he said. He hadn’t eased his stride to accommodate her but she was keeping up.

‘Because you came here as a child?’

‘The people here loved my grandparents,’ he said, talking briskly as he walked. ‘My grandpa cared for everyone. My grandmother wasn’t a doctor but she cared even more. They only had the one child, my dad, but that didn’t stop their house being stuffed to the plimsoll line with people in need, stray dogs, pot plants Grandma was looking after for people in hospital—whatever. I was supposed to have my own bedroom in the school holidays, but in the end I carved out a niche in the attic and called it mine. I told Grandma if ever I found a needy anything in there, animal, mineral or vegetable, I was heading straight back to Sydney.’

‘Did you mean it?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘And now you’re right back in the chaos.’

‘As you say,’ he said briefly.

They’d reached his car, parked outside his cottage. He paused. ‘I’ll duck in and tell Rose what’s happening. But there is no need for you to come.’

‘You don’t want help?’