Doctor on Loan Read online

  Why on earth was he here?

  Hugo was dressed—sort of—in a green hospital gown. His leg was out on a support in front of him, a drip stand was attached to the back of the chair and he looked every inch the invalid. Except for his determined expression.

  “Mr. Tallent, I’m busy,” Christie told him brusquely. “Could you please return to your room? Now!”

  “You’re attempting a cesarean on your own.”

  “Yes, but what—”

  “You can’t do it alone. You need an anesthetist.”

  “I don’t have one,” she snapped. “Will you get back to bed?”

  “You do have one,” Hugo told her, his eyes resting on hers. His look was steady, sure and strong, telling her that he spoke the absolute truth. “And no, I won’t go back to bed. I’m a qualified anesthetist and I’m here to help.”

  Dear Reader,

  Last year I took a holiday in northern Queensland, Australia, and visited some of the glorious tropical islands. As magical as they were, some had problems. One of the islands was inhabited by an aging group of fishermen of European descent, and the other was a settlement of indigenous Australians struggling with the shift to “modern” society after thousands of generations living as hunter-gatherers.

  The medical needs of both groups were enormous, yet their struggle to keep a full-time doctor on the island was almost impossible. So my imagination went into overdrive. That’s something it has a nasty habit of doing, especially when my family is considering important things—like what’s for dinner! How could I get two doctors on my island, give my island a happy medical solution and give my readers a heartwarming romance all at once?

  Doctor on Loan is the result. Christie and Hugo lovingly solve everyone’s needs—apart, that is, from my family’s needs for a decent home-cooked meal. Sigh…

  Marion Lennox

  Doctor on Loan

  Marion Lennox

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  SO THIS was heaven.

  There were bright lights and too much white. A pain behind his eyes was dully threatening, but he could easily ignore it. Why? Because the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen was smiling straight down at him.

  She was young, he thought, but it was tough to tell how young and his brain wasn’t up to deep thought. Her hair was a riot of glossy, shoulder-length brown curls and she had the most beautiful green eyes! Her pert nose sported just the right number of freckles, and her wide, warm smile was enough to kick a man sideways.

  As for the rest…He let his confused mind drift as he took in the whole package. She was of middling height and deliciously curvy. Her clothes were simple—a crimson fisherman’s guernsey and faded, figure-hugging jeans. The women in Hugo Tallent’s life were normally more sophisticated than this, but it did her no harm in his eyes at all. In fact, he’d never seen a woman so lovely!

  Especially since he’d expected to never see anything again. He’d expected to be dead.

  ‘Hi, there. Ready to wake up?’

  Her voice matched her smile—light and lovely—but maybe this wasn’t heaven after all, he thought dazedly. The pain in his head was suddenly very, very real.

  She saw it. The beautiful eyes, sea green and twinkling, creased in sympathy, and her hand took his. It was strong for a woman, and warm. It was infinitely reassuring.

  ‘I’ve given you something for the pain. It’ll take effect soon. Don’t fight it. Relax. Things are only going to get better.’

  So, no, this wasn’t heaven. This was a real, live, fleshand-blood woman, smiling down at him with sympathy, and her loveliness was growing by the minute.

  ‘Things are only going to get better,’ she’d said. It was a good thought. As memory surfaced he tried to collect his bewildered thoughts, and he winced. Things could hardly be worse than they’d been the last time he’d been conscious. He hadn’t expected to be here now, wherever he was.

  Why wasn’t he dead? Who had hauled him from his nightmare?

  He looked up at the strange woman. Her eyes were still calmly watchful, and her hand still held his. This, then, was his saving angel and there was nothing for it but to offer his all.

  ‘Marry me?’ he asked.

  The lovely eyes widened in astonishment. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. Laughter flashed in, but she didn’t withdraw her hand. She was watching him as if she was expecting some sort of interesting symptoms. Brain damage?

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘If you pulled me out from under the boat…’ His voice was a husky whisper, laced with pain, but it wasn’t brain damage that was making him say what he was saying. He’d never meant anything so much in his life. ‘If you hauled me from the sea…I’m offering my hand in marriage, half my worldly goods—no, dammit, you can have everything. Name it and it’s yours.

  ’Her smile faded.

  ‘It was no thanks to me that you were saved,’ she told him softly, and the warmth was still in her voice, but with it was the shadow of the terrors of the night before. She hesitated, as if wondering whether he was fit enough to listen, and then decided to go on. ‘Ben Owen and his mates were checking for prawns in the estuary when they saw your boat heading for the entrance. The estuary’s sheltered but the harbour entrance certainly isn’t. They thought they must be dreaming. To approach our harbour in last night’s storm was suicidal.’

  It was. He’d known that—too late. It would have been safer to head for the rocks.

  ‘Ben risked his life to save you,’ she told him, and there was the faintest trace of censure in her tone. ‘He’s fourteen years old. He dived under the boat and hauled you up, and God must have been watching over the pair of you. You’re both complete dopes. You for trying to use the harbour and Ben for risking his life saving you. He’s in the next ward.’

  ‘The next ward.’ That shook him, and for the first time he looked about him. Really looked. This was a ward? He was in hospital?

  First things first. The throbbing pain in his head was easing a bit, letting him think.

  ‘A boy…saved me? And he’s here? He’s hurt?’ His words were clipped with fear. A fourteen-year-old—risking all to save him!

  ‘He has a gashed hand and he’s still suffering from shock,’ she said quickly, watching his face. ‘That’s all. I gather you were caught in your safety harness under the boat. Ben wears his hunting knife everywhere, like a talisman. It’s my belief he wears it to bed strapped over his pyjamas. He managed to cut you free but it took some doing.’

  ‘And this was…underwater?’

  ‘Yes. Underwater.’

  ‘Dear God.’ He closed his eyes and unconsciously his hand tightened on hers, taking comfort from the warmth of her touch. The realness of her. To come so close…

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  ‘Try not to think about it,’ she said gently, and her fingers disengaged. ‘It’s over and you’re both safe. But…’ She took a deep breath, dreading what she had to ask, but knowing she must. ‘We didn’t find anyone else. Was there anyone with you in the boat? Please—’

  ‘No.’ That had been the whole problem. Damn his baby brother! But at least it had only been himself here. ‘There was no one else.’

  ‘Then you’ve been incredibly lucky,’ she told him, sighing with relief. She could tell the searchers there were no bodies to find, and she’d been filled with dread all night. ‘You’ve had a crack on the head which I’v
e stitched but it looks like causing no long-term damage. You’ve water on your lungs, which means you’re staying right where you are until we can clear it, you have enough bruises to make you look interesting for weeks…and you dislocated your knee.’

  ‘My knee.’ For the first time he let himself think about his body. The painkiller—whatever she’d given him—was settling the throbbing to a dull ache. He assumed she’d given him something earlier and had topped it up now, but there was definitely pain all around. Including his left leg. Maybe his leg was the worst, though it was competing hard with his head. He tried to move his leg and it felt heavy and wooden.

  ‘I’ve managed to put it back into position, and I’ve strapped it,’ she told him. ‘But I’m afraid it’s badly bruised and the swelling’s still coming up. Don’t try to move it. As I said, you’ve been incredibly lucky.’ She touched his hand again, and the warmth went right through him. The shock of the night was still with him and his need for human contact was almost overwhelming.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I need to go,’ she said. She looked around as the door opened and a nurse appeared. ‘Mary-anne will sit with you for a bit and tell you all you need to know, but it’s better if you sleep. Tell Mary-anne if the pain gets worse, or if you feel dizzy or ill.’

  She hesitated then, unsure. ‘What I’d really like is to send you to the mainland,’ she admitted, ‘but until this storm dies I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. And with Grandpa. And Grandpa says you’ll be fine so we’ll just have to trust his judgement.’

  And with another of her lovely smiles, a smile that contained just the faintest hint of anxiety, she took herself out of his room.

  ‘I should send him to Brisbane.’

  Dr Stan Flemming was perched in his favourite chair in the nurses’ station—a position where he could see everyone who came and went from Briman Island’s tiny hospital. Since his stroke he spent most of his days here. Now he looked at his granddaughter from under craggy eyebrows and grimaced.

  Christie was bone weary. She was twenty-eight years old, and this was no life for a woman. Or for anyone! She’d been up all night and the pressure was hardly likely to stop now. She took too much on herself. Trying to protect him…

  It made him feel angry—and helpless—just to think about it, and he was venting his anger on the patient causing her worry. ‘With this storm, sending him anywhere’s impossible. Don’t worry about him,’ he growled. ‘Damned mainlander. He looks as strong as a horse.’

  ‘He was unconscious for too long, Grandpa. I know his vital signs are OK, but if he has an intracranial bleed building…I want a scan.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get a scan on Briman Island.’ The old doctor snorted. They were lucky to have simple X-ray facilities here and, heaven knew, he’d fought long and hard enough to get those. ‘Christie, his pupils are fine, his reactions are OK and there’s no sign of a skull fracture. He got one lousy head knock and swallowed too much water, but I’ve seen many a fisherman with injuries worse than his live to tell the tale. And you say he’s sensible now.’

  ‘Well, almost sensible.’ Christie couldn’t stop a trace of colour creeping into her face. ‘If you call asking me to marry him two minutes after he regained consciousness sensible.’

  Stan chuckled. ‘It sounds entirely sensible to me. I’d do it myself if I were forty years younger and I wasn’t your grandpa.’

  ‘And you weren’t biased? I don’t think so.’ Christie grinned, then sighed and ran her fingers through her mass of unruly curls. She felt strange. It must be fatigue, she thought. There’d been no sleep last night. She’d been coping with young Mary Adams’s asthma attack and Liz Myers’s threatened premature labour when the call had come through at about midnight that someone was in the water in the harbour.

  Luckily she’d had Mary’s asthma settled and Liz’s labour pains had eased. There’d been a crazy drive down to the harbour with Ben’s father in the driver’s seat almost mad with fear.

  ‘They said Ben just dived straight in. They can’t find him. God help me, Christie, if anything happens to that kid…’

  The harbour-master had been out by then, alerted by the other kids who’d been with Ben, and almost every able-bodied man on the island had been called to help. A flotilla of fishing boats had joined the search, risking darkness and appalling weather to search for one of their own.

  ‘They wouldn’t have searched outside the harbour wall if it hadn’t been for young Ben,’ Stan growled, watching her face. He’d caught up on what had happened by now and was appalled by it. ‘The fishermen took some huge risks—and you did, too, going out with them.’

  ‘Mmm. I know.’ The horror of the search would stay with Christie for a long time. Ben had been washed out through the harbour mouth, and the boy had spent almost an hour treading water in the open sea, fighting for breath and clinging to his unconscious burden as though his own life had depended on it.

  It had been a miracle they’d found him, and it was a miracle they were both still alive.

  ‘The boy must’ve been a mess,’ Stan probed, and Christie nodded.

  ‘He was.’ She’d been well and truly seasick herself by then in her lookout position on the harbour-master’s boat, but she’d forgotten everything else once the two bodies had been dragged into the boat.

  Ben had been hysterical. Exhausted beyond belief, he’d collapsed sobbing and shaking on the deck. His father had held him and sworn over and over again while Christie had tried to revive the man he’d just rescued.

  ‘He mustn’t die. Don’t let him,’ Ben had sobbed as Christie had put everything she knew and a bit more into CPR. ‘Doc, don’t let him…’

  ‘It would have hit him doubly hard after what happened to his mother,’ Stan said softly, and Christie nodded.

  Ben’s mother had drowned when Ben was eight years old and the memories were still there, rising to haunt him. But there’d been little she could do for Ben last night.

  ‘I couldn’t help him much,’ she said wearily.

  ‘Dave said this chap’s heart stopped?’ Dave was the local harbour-master who’d co-ordinated the search.

  ‘It did.’ He must have stopped breathing just as they’d hauled him into the boat. Christie had put every ounce of strength and skill she possessed into resuscitation, while Ben had sobbed and shaken and looked on with eyes that had expected death.

  But then the stranger had coughed and spluttered and fought his way back to life, and in the next ward Ben could still hardly believe the miracle. But still he shook. The sedative Christie had administered was barely reaching him.

  Stan could see the worry on his granddaughter’s face. ‘You should have woken me,’ he growled. ‘Hell, girl…’

  ‘I was fine.’ In truth, she hadn’t been fine at all, but since her grandfather’s stroke she’d diverted the house phone to her mobile. Nights for the old doctor were for sleeping now. Nothing else.

  ‘So who is he?’ she asked wearily. ‘Do we know?’

  ‘You didn’t ask?’

  ‘He’s barely conscious,’ she said. ‘He needs to sleep. I figured it can wait.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you his name,’ Stan told her. He was obviously annoyed that he’d missed the drama of last night, and his frustration showed. ‘His boat’s called Sandpiper. Dave’s just phoned with information. He’s been on to the authorities in Cairns. The boat’s registered to a Charles Tallent, but it’s logged as being skippered by his son, Hugo. He left Cairns on Thursday, heading to Brisbane. He should’ve taken cover in the Whitsundays when this storm blew up—heaven knows why he didn’t.’

  ‘I guess he’s regretting it now.’ Christie grimaced. ‘So…it’s Hugo Tallent.’ She thought back to the man she’d just left. The name suited him, she thought. He was a big man, reaching the end of the bed with his bare feet, which would make him over six feet tall, and he looked as if he was in his mid thirties. Tanned, with a mop of unruly jet-black curls, he was sun-weathered and strongly built. He was a
ll brawn and no brain, she guessed, or why would he have put the boat at the harbour mouth on such a night? Good looks or not, he must be a fool!

  So…why had the feel of his hand, the sight of his gorgeous body and the look of admiration in his pain-filled eyes made her insides do back flips?

  The sensations came to her out of left field, totally unexpected and confusing. Which was bizarre! Dr Christie Flemming didn’t think like that. She didn’t have time for such nonsense.

  So concentrate on other things, she told herself fiercely. Practicalities. ‘Did Dave say what’s happened to his boat? I guess he’ll want to know.’

  ‘He’s managed to get it beached,’ Stan told her. ‘Seems it finally righted itself. It’s lost its mast—Dave reckons that’s maybe why he tried to run for cover in the harbour. It was thumping itself to bits on the harbour wall. They dragged it off and it’s now up in dry dock. There’s a heck of a lot of damage, but it’s salvageable.’

  ‘Our Mr Tallent’s luckier and luckier,’ Christie said dryly. She sighed. ‘So all we need to do is patch him up and send him on his way—and then try and cope with the damage he’s done to young Ben.’

  ‘Our Ben’s a hero,’ Stan growled, and Christie shook her head.

  ‘He might be, but he’s a hero with scars. Last night will have opened a Pandora’s box for him. I just hope to heaven we can close the lid again.’

  It was three that afternoon before Christie found time to visit Hugo. He’d been specialled until then, which meant that he hadn’t been left alone for a minute. She could hardly spare the nurses but, with the spectre of intracranial bleeds hanging over her, Christie was taking no chances. His vital signs had been checked over and over, and any slight change would have been reported instantly.

  There had been no such worry—thankfully because she was busy enough and worried enough anyway—and by three o’clock she was feeling confident that the old doctor must have been right. The man must be OK.

  He was asleep as she entered. Mary-anne stood up from her chair beside the bed and Christie motioned to the door.