The Doctors’ Baby Read online

  ‘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…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  EMILY made the journey to Blairglen the following morning, specifically to see Anna at the end of her tests. She knew Jonas was with her but, if she could, she needed to be there, too.

  Luckily, it was Tuesday. Em had an arrangement with a doctor who worked south of Bay Beach. They were both overworked, but in emergencies they gave anaesthetics for each other, or covered if one was ill. They’d formalised this so that every Tuesday Chris was officially ‘on call’ for Em, and every Thursday she did the same for him.

  It didn’t give them time off. What it meant was that they could do house calls in outlying areas where the cellphones were out of range, and while they did it they knew the nursing staff had someone they could contact in an emergency.

  And this Tuesday it meant that Em could rise early, check her hospital patients, visit a patient on the northernmost tip of her district and then travel the extra distance to end up at Blairglen Hospital.

  Blairglen Breast Screen in particular.

  Anna’s mammogram had been scheduled for ten-thirty so Anna was well through the X-ray department by the time she got there. As referring doctor, Em asked to see the X-rays before she saw Anna, and her heart sank at what was put up on the screen.

  This didn’t look like a cyst.

  On the other hand, she told herself firmly, deliberately thinking positively, it looked a firmly contained mass. There was only the one small lump, and there was no other suspicious area.

  ‘Where’s Anna now?’ she asked the nurse in charge, and was pointed through into the procedures room.

  ‘They’ve done an ultrasound, and now they’re doing a biopsy,’ the nurse told her. ‘But she’s seen the X-rays and her brother’s explained what it means. He’s nice, isn’t he? He’s still with her.’

  Yes, he was nice, but Em was focused on Anna. ‘Can I go in?’

  ‘Sure,’ the nurse told her.

  So Em went in. Anna was lying on the procedure trolley, while a biopsy was taken. The medical team were taking tiny core samples of the tumour.

  They weren’t wasting any time, Anna thought. Which was good. By the end of today they’d have solid answers. That was something, at least, even if the answers weren’t the ones they’d hoped for.

  From the door, Em could hardly see Anna, but she saw Jonas at once. He looked up as she entered, and she saw straight away the strain and shock he was feeling.

  It was impossible to be doctor and brother at the same time, she thought, and her heart went out to him. What had the nurse said? He’d explained the X-rays to Anna? Surely that wasn’t his job.

  But her focus now still had to be on Anna. She crossed to the table, a nurse made room for her and she lifted Anna’s hand as the doctors worked on.

  ‘Hi,’ she told her. ‘Not great news, huh?’

  Anna shook her head, and a tear slipped down her cheek. She looked terrible, clothed in a pallid, green hospital gown, her face bloodless, and only her bright hair giving any vestige of colour. The doctor was taking a biopsy of her breast at that moment. Even though she was anaesthetised and there’d be no pain, Anna’s lips were clenched, and Em saw she was very close to the edge.

  Without a word Em grabbed a tissue, held it to Anna’s eyes, and then placed it in her hand. ‘The specimen’s been taken,’ she told her as the doctor moved away. ‘Anna, it’s finished. That’s the last of the tests.’

  ‘It’s cancer.’

  ‘Yes, it’s cancer. Anna, this is bad news, but not terrible. You hang on to that.’ She flicked a glance at the radiologist in charge, a woman in her fifties. ‘This probably won’t even mean a mastectomy, will it, Margaret?’

  ‘Not on the basis of what we’ve found.’ Margaret White was Blairglen’s senior radiologist. Normally, to do a mastectomy or not was a surgeon’s decision, but Patrick May, who did Blairglen’s breast surgery, worked hand in glove with Margaret and he didn’t mind if Margaret stepped in with early reassurance. ‘You’ll be using Patrick?’

  ‘That’s who I’ll be suggesting,’ Em said. She took Anna’s hand and smiled down at her. ‘Anna, Patrick May is one of the best surgeons I’ve met.’ She hesitated and then smiled again. ‘Apart from your brother, of course.’

  That brought a weak twinkle in response, as Anna looked up at Jonas’s strained face. ‘Of…of course.’

  ‘Patrick’s good,’ Em reiterated, for the benefit of Jonas, who was looking doubtful. ‘If you-and Jonas-are happy to use him and you have the operation here, we can transfer you back to Bay Beach Hospital for aftercare almost immediately. That means the kids can visit you.

  ‘But the chemotherapy…radiotherapy…how will I cope?’

  ‘Radiotherapy is just like having a chest X-ray once a day. And if the tumor’s as tiny and self-contained as it looks, then chemotherapy would be optional extra insurance. That’s all. Do it and get on with your life.’ Anna closed her eyes. ‘You’re not lying to me?’ she asked weakly. ‘You’re not all lying?’

  Em’s hand tightened on hers. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘How the hell did you manage it?’

  Anna was dressing, and Jonas had hauled Em out into the corridor, out of Anna’s hearing. ‘How did you get away from Bay Beach to be here for Anna?’ His voice was incredulous, as if he was having trouble taking everything in. ‘You could have floored me when you walked through the door.’

  ‘Miracles sometimes happen,’ Em said lightly, and glanced at her watch. ‘I work on producing them when they’re needed. But…’ She hesitated. ‘This miracle is due to end. I can’t be here for long.’

  ‘For long enough. You were the person she most wanted to see.’

  ‘I figured that,’ Em said seriously, accepting it as the truth. ‘Half the fear of this type of investigation is that it has to be done by strangers. So, when I can, I try to get here.’

  ‘You’d do this for anybody?’

  She stiffened. ‘You mean, I’d do it not just for your sister?’

  He gave a weary smile at that, and an apologetic shrug. ‘I guess you must. Anna is special to me, but to you she’s just a patient.’

  ‘No one’s just a patient,’ Em said roundly. ‘And if I ever feel like that, I’ll walk away from medicine and never come back.’

  There was a sudden silence. A nurse walked by, carrying a tray of pathology specimens, but she was ignored. Jonas was watching Em, and he had eyes for nobody else.

  ‘City GPs don’t do this for their patients,’ Jonas said slowly, and Em shook her head.

  ‘That’s unfair. How many family doctors do you know?’

  ‘It’s not unfair. It’s true.’

  ‘Then your knowledge of family medicine is biased,’ she told him. She smiled then, determined to keep things light. ‘What a good thing you’re going to be one for a couple of months.’

  ‘A couple of months…’

  ‘Three,’ she said promptly. ‘That’s how long at least Anna will need you.’

  ‘If she lets me.’

  ‘She’ll let you. So you’re facing three months of trying to be a good brother and a good family doctor. It’s going to be quite a learning experience.’ She shook her head and glanced at her watch. ‘Jonas, I really need to go.’

  ‘I know.’

  But she didn’t want to leave.

  And Jonas himself didn’t want her to go. She could feel it. There was a moment’s silence
while Em looked at the floor and Jonas looked at Em. Wondering.

  And then, before she could stop him, he reached out and took her hands in his. Both her hands. He held them tightly, looking down at them with a twisted, self-mocking smile.

  They were good hands, he could see. Em’s hands bore the scars of too much use-of being washed a hundred times a day, every day of the week, for years and for years as she moved from patient to patient. These weren’t the hands of the women he normally mixed with, he thought, but they looked wonderful hands to him.

  ‘Thank you, Emily,’ he said simply, and then he did the only thing he could think of to do-and he did it because he couldn’t bear not to.

  Right there and then, in the busy hospital corridor, with people striding by every few seconds, he pulled her into his arms and he kissed her.

  And by the time he’d let her go, Em’s life had changed for ever.

  ‘I do not care for Jonas Lunn!’

  Em said it to herself over and over, like a mantra, as she drove back to Bay Beach, and all afternoon and evening she worked with the same mantra ringing in her head. He’s a charismatic bachelor who’s drop-dead gorgeous. He kissed you out of gratitude, and it means absolutely nothing at all. And even if it did mean anything…even if he’s attracted to you like you are to him…he’s here for a short time while his sister is treated and then he’s off. He’s out of here, and you have to carry on with your life!

  But it wasn’t quite as simple as that. The mantra had flaws. Because…

  Because-‘He’s gorgeous!’ Lori said, as Em dropped by to treat her little burns patient that night. She was watching as Em changed dressings and made Robby’s small limbs do their exercises, but Lori’s mind wasn’t on Robby. It was definitely on Jonas. ‘He’s one of the best-looking men I’ve seen.’

  And then she watched with interest as her friend’s colour turned to a slow-burn crimson. Her eyebrows rose. ‘Hey, and you think so, too.’

  ‘But, then, I’m sex-starved,’ Em retorted, and she managed a grin. She was trying desperately to keep it light. ‘Me and my old Bernard have a thing going, but I’ll admit the relationship’s been rocky lately. Bernard’s snoring’s getting out of hand and, frankly, Jonas Lunn doesn’t look bad in comparison.’