The Doctor's Billion-Dollar Bride, page 4
‘I won’t need a defibrillator,’ he said but he didn’t release her shoulders. ‘He has one fitted.’
Damn. How stupid was she? Basic medicine. If Arthur’s heart faltered, the implants would do what an external machine would do.
She flushed. ‘I know that. Sorry,’ she muttered, but he was still reading her face. Questioning.
‘You’re exhausted.’
‘It’s been a long night.’
‘What else has happened?’
‘Nothing,’ she snapped, and it was impossible to stop the weariness coming through. ‘But I couldn’t leave your uncle.’
‘You don’t have backup? Nursing staff?’
‘Not this weekend.’
‘So you slept here?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘If you could call it sleeping. Arthur’s through here.’
Once again, she tried to pull back but his hands still held.
‘The grazes... How...?’
‘I pulled him out of the sea,’ she said, goaded. For heaven’s sake, what was happening here? Why was she being held? She just wanted to get rid of the pair of them and get some sleep. ‘If you want to know, my surf class was full, your uncle was angry I wouldn’t take him so he stole one of my surfboards. Then he went into one of the most dangerous places to surf on the island and was immediately washed onto rocks. I had to go in after him. Our local taxi driver helped me haul him out, but for a while it was touch and go.’
‘The driver dived in, too?’
‘Mack has more sense,’ she said. ‘All of us in the water? We’re not idiots. Anyway, your uncle lost consciousness, but only momentarily. He’s broken his arm—I have that strapped. I’ve started antibiotics and kept him on IV fluids plus intravenous pain meds. His lungs will need to be checked on the mainland, as will the lacerations he’s received. We have a transport stretcher—can you and your pilot help move him? I can call our nurse if I must, but on a Sunday morning I won’t call Martin in unless it’s really necessary.’
That brought a moment’s silence, loaded with incredulity. He let go of her shoulders and stood back, staring at her in disbelief.
‘He washed onto rocks—yet you dived in?’
‘There wasn’t a choice,’ she said bitterly. ‘The punishment for stupidity and arrogance shouldn’t be death.’
‘He’s eighty-six.’
‘So you wouldn’t have dived in?’
‘I probably would, but he’s my uncle.’
‘So why weren’t you there watching? Someone should be looking after him.’
And that brought more silence. He raked his hair, his long fingers pushing through already unruly deep brown waves. She thought suddenly, his face was almost too thin, too drawn. He looked...as tired as she was?
Or maybe not. A different form of tired?
A tiredness that seemed bone-deep.
‘I do my best,’ he said at last. ‘But he’s not...family.’
There was that word again. Family. That sounded like a rabbit hole she had no intention of heading down. It was not her place to care for the two of them.
‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘Let’s get him transferred.’ Oh, the thought of them both leaving. She might not even make the effort to walk back to her own little house. She might just sink onto the spare clinic bed and sleep right here.
But then the phone rang. The clinic phone. Her own phone buzzed at the same time.
Work.
Medical calls came through to the clinic, but they were also directed to the private phone of the doctor on call. This synchronised ring meant this was a medical call, and at the weekend the islanders knew only to call in cases of real need. She sighed, glancing longingly through at the spare bed, but she had no choice but to answer.
‘Excuse me,’ she told Seb and turned away.
Her last call on the desk handset had been to a pharmacy supplier, and she’d been left on hold for fifteen minutes. Therefore, the phone was still on speaker, which meant the man’s voice at the other end came through as clearly as if he was in the room.
‘Doc?’ She heard the immediate anxiety. ‘It’s Cliff Michaels.’
She knew Cliff—he and his wife ran a surf shop in Kirra’s little township. ‘Hey, Cliff. What’s the problem?’
‘It’s Ruby. She and her mates decided to build a cubby. Seems they found a sheet of tin, blown off from somewhere during the storm. They got into my shed and got nails. She’s thumped a nail into tin and something’s slivered off. Gone into her eye. She’s in real trouble, Doc. A lot of pain and there’s bleeding. Can I bring her in?’
‘Of course,’ she told him, and had to suppress the urge to groan. There went her chance of sleep. ‘I’m at the clinic now. Bring her right in.’
She disconnected and sighed.
She turned and found Seb was now looking at her with speculation. That impression, that he was somehow reading her thoughts, seemed to intensify.
‘So...’ he said slowly. ‘Lacerated eye?’
‘Yeah,’ she said wearily. ‘Ruby’s ten, a tough little kid. If Cliff says she’s in trouble, then she really is. If it’s serious... I’ll do what I can but she’ll probably need to go to Brisbane.’ She frowned, thinking forward. ‘I’d ask you to take her back with you, but I’m not sure yet about her flying. There’s a ferry at midday...’
‘I can help.’
‘Really?’ She hadn’t meant that to sound like it did—as if the thought of him being useful was absurd. His uncle’s attitude must have embedded itself, she thought. But then...if he truly was an ophthalmologist...
‘Your uncle needs transfer,’ she said.
‘I understand that’ he told her, still watching her face. ‘But Arthur’s choice was to wait here overnight, so unless things are deteriorating, he might as well wait another hour. Are things deteriorating?’
‘I... No.’
‘Well, there you go then,’ he told her and he smiled. And that smile...
It changed his face. He’d been looking questioning, but before that he’d seemed grim, angry that his weekend had just been interrupted by an idiot uncle. His initial approach, a man in a hurry to get this over with, had left her with a feeling of distaste. But this smile...it changed things. It made him seem...gentle? Kind?
How could one smile do that? And why was it making her feel...like she didn’t understand what she was feeling?
‘I know what my uncle thinks of me and maybe he’s right,’ he was saying. ‘But just occasionally my qualifications come in handy. It seems I’m in the right place at the right time, and maybe I owe you. Maybe my uncle and I both owe you. So I’ll go see him and tell him we need to pay a debt, and if things seem stable then he can wait a bit longer. Then I need to see what equipment you have. Right, Dr Tavish, let’s deal with Ruby together.’
* * *
Arthur might consider his great-nephew a waste of space, but five minutes after Ruby’s arrival Jodie was having a serious rethink.
Ten-year-old Ruby was a wiry, scrappy kid, one of the gang of island kids who travelled as a pack. Her parents’ surf-hire business right on the beach made the Michaelses’ home a base for most of them.
Jodie had met Ruby a few times before, and it was mostly for trauma, falling out of trees, slicing her leg on the fin of a surfboard, cutting her feet on shells. Normally she arrived blasé—even belligerent—her attitude was that injuries were a nuisance, and her parents had no right to mess with her day by dragging her to the doctor—but today she came in huddled against her dad, holding a cloth to her eye, looking bedraggled and scared.
‘Hey,’ Seb said, before Jodie could introduce him. He stooped so he was on eye level with the child. ‘You’re Ruby? I’m Seb and I’m an eye doctor. It’s a fluke that I’m here visiting Dr Jodie when you’ve hurt your eye. I’m guessing it must be hurting a lot, so the first thing we need to do is give you something to make you feel better. Then we need to fix it. Can we pop you up on the couch so Doc Jodie and I can take a look?’
It was exactly the right approach, direct, reassuring, positive. Cliff lifted his daughter onto the couch and Ruby’s tough little persona reacted to Seb’s direct approach. Where most kids would cry and cling, Ruby sank onto the pillows and calmly waited for him to follow through.
And he did. The lid of her left eye was lacerated, still sluggishly bleeding, but the deep scratch—and the pain—showed something had gone past the eyelid.
Ruby wasn’t the most voluble kid. Jodie had expected to have trouble drawing her out, but Seb did it in minutes.
‘So what sort of a cubby are you making?’ he asked as he worked. ‘I used to make big ones when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time overseas, in a place called Al Delebe. When I was about your age my mates found a hole at the back of our local rubbish dump, and we found all sorts of cool stuff. We never found enough iron for a proper roof, though. We used an old mattress once—it took four of us to drag it home. We propped it up on bricks. It made a great roof until we had a thunderstorm with really heavy rain. The whole thing collapsed and stuffing went everywhere. We had to admit where we’d got it from, and Dad had to hire a trailer and pay to take it back to the dump. We all had to help collect the stuffing. Boy, was I in trouble.’
And he had Ruby fascinated.
He had Jodie fascinated as well.
With Cliff sitting nervously in the background, close enough for Ruby to know her dad was near, Seb was doing a careful examination, with Jodie assisting.
Their little clinic was well equipped, and Seb had done a thorough check of what they had while they’d waited for Ruby to arrive. He’d also incidentally queried Jodie on what she was comfortable with him doing and what she could do herself. Now there was no hesitation.
He was wearing loupes, the specialist magnifying eye glasses they kept in their well-stocked equipment store. In between chatting—and Ruby was relaxing enough to chat—he had her focusing on a particular point in the ceiling. ‘Dr Jodie will waggle her fingers above my head. Can you count how many fingers she’s holding up? Now I’m just going to ask her to gently, very gently, hold your eyelids apart so you don’t blink on me. Patients always blink. Can you try not to?’
And then... ‘Yep, I see it. It looks like a tiny sliver of metal. It must have bounced up when you hit the tin. Wow, Ruby, you must have hit that nail really hard. Good arm muscles, huh? But the good news is that it doesn’t seem to have gone into the inner eye—the part of your eye that makes you see.’
He looked for a little longer, checking and rechecking until he was sure he’d seen enough. Then he sat back, motioning Jodie to release Ruby’s eye. ‘Okay, team, we need to talk,’ he said, and in those six words he’d pulled Cliff, Ruby and Jodie into a shared consultation.
Most doctors wouldn’t do this, Jodie thought. They’d leave the room, take the parent outside, talk to their colleague separately. But Seb...this was some bedside manner.
‘The sliver doesn’t seem too deep but it’s still a bit deep for me to tweezer it out,’ he told them, and he was looking at Ruby as he spoke. Treating her like an adult. ‘And also, where it is...it’s important for us to get it out as fast as we can. It looks sharp and we don’t want it working its way in further. Ruby, we could send you to Brisbane but that’ll waste time. Luckily, I’m a specialist eye doctor and I can do it here. I’ve given you a painkiller—you’re probably already feeling a bit better—right? That’s great but pulling the sliver out might hurt a bit more. If Dr Jodie agrees, what I think should happen is that we use more of the anaesthetic and make you sleepy.’
‘Ruby had an anaesthetic six months back when she cut her feet on oyster shells,’ Jodie told him. That was an accident that happened often on Kirra—surfers ending up on the oyster beds. The damage to their feet was often extensive and needed rigorous cleaning, so with nervous kids, or even some adults, a light general anaesthetic was often the way to go.
‘So you’ll know the process,’ Seb said cheerfully. ‘I give you a pinprick in your arm, the stuff in the needle will let you go to sleep for a few minutes, and I can pull out the sliver without you feeling a thing. Dr Jodie will help me. Is that okay with you, Ruby? Okay with you, Cliff?’
It seemed it was fine. So, twenty minutes later, with Cliff settled beside Arthur with instructions to call if needed—Kirra locals were used to this sort of all-hands approach to medicine—Jodie found herself assisting while Seb did as swift and neat a piece of ocular surgery as she’d seen.
Not that she’d seen much. This was the sort of injury she’d normally send on to Brisbane, and send on fast. Speed was vital here. Even if there was no penetration into the inner eye, foreign bodies moved, they caused infection and the chance of Ruby losing her sight in that eye—or it even causing a sympathetic loss of sight in the other eye—was real.
But because of Seb that risk was minimised. She watched in appreciation of his skill as he mounted a needle on the end of a cotton tip, bending it with sterile forceps. Then, with his hand resting on the sleeping Ruby’s cheek, using only the very tips of his long fingers, holding the blade tangentially to the eye surface, he deftly lifted the offending sliver up and away.
The sight of that tiny sliver was such a relief... What a gift, she thought as he irrigated, scrupulously checking and washing out any residual foreign body material, then applying antibiotic ointment and a double eye patch, doubling the inner pad to prevent the eyelid from opening.
‘She’ll still need to come to Brisbane,’ he said. ‘I need to repeat fluorescein staining and check vision with the right equipment, but that can wait until tomorrow. As soon as she’s awake and the IV’s finished, if Cliff can assure us she can be kept quiet for the rest of the day I see no reason why she can’t go home now and come across to Brisbane on the ferry tomorrow. A night in hospital might be stressful for the whole family and I think it’s avoidable.’
‘But it takes weeks—months—to get an appointment with an ophthalmologist,’ Jodie said. She knew the drill. Patients who needed urgent care were admitted to hospital. Then the specialist could see them on their morning or evening rounds. It was much more efficient—for the specialist. She also knew ophthalmologists’ fee structure. She thought again of Arthur’s description of this man as a waste of space—and thought of the doctors whose career plans seemed to be making as much money as possible.
Today this man could be surfing or making money. Donating this morning to his uncle—and now Ruby—must be some sacrifice.
But it seemed he’d made the decision to be generous.
‘I’ll make time for Ruby,’ he told her. ‘I’ll take details and have my receptionist ring Cliff first thing tomorrow. She’ll organise a time after the ferry gets in.’
‘That’s...kind.’
‘Not as kind as saving my uncle.’ He smiled again, but this time his smile was rueful. ‘Though what you did was kindness to my uncle, not to me. The old man gives me such grief...’
His smile died, but then he gave a decisive nod—moving on? ‘Right, then. You agree? I’ll go talk to Cliff. As soon as Ruby’s drip’s through and she’s nicely awake we’ll all let you sleep.’
‘Thank you,’ she managed.
And then he frowned. ‘Will you sleep?’
‘I guess. As long as nothing else happens.’ She caught herself then, aware there was a note of pathos in her voice, and he must have heard it. What was she doing, feeling sorry for herself? ‘It shouldn’t though,’ she told him. ‘It’s a small island. I’ll be back surfing in no time.’
‘Because that’s the way you like it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘But he was still watching her, still frowning. ‘So no other commitments? You don’t have six kids and two dogs waiting at home for Sunday lunch?’
‘Heaven forbid,’ she said, trying to lighten her voice. ‘I don’t even have a goldfish, and Angus and Misty—the island’s other two doctors—will be back this afternoon so I can go back to being a part-time doctor.’
‘You love surfing more than medicine?’ He was watching too closely for her liking. What was with the inquisition?
‘You like surfing too,’ she said, a bit too tartly. ‘And your uncle says you don’t do family. I suspect we’re birds of a feather.’
‘And I suspect that we’re not,’ he said, and his voice was grim again. ‘But moving on...let’s go see if Cliff has managed to annoy Arthur yet. It doesn’t take much to annoy him. He’s done more than annoy you, though, so I suspect the sooner we’re gone the better you’ll like it.’
Which was very true, she conceded, but as he gave her a rueful smile and headed out to deal with his great-uncle...why was she feeling an inexplicable sense of loss?
CHAPTER FOUR
Five months later
‘MARRIAGE! YOU HAVE to be kidding.’
This morning Arthur Cantrell had been buried. Given his way, Seb would have organised a small private ceremony but, as per Arthur’s prepaid instructions, a very expensive funeral consortium had conducted an over-the-top ceremony that would have done any of the politicians who’d attended proud.
And there had been politicians. And company directors. And pretty much the entire who’s who of Australia’s financial world. They’d arrived for the ceremony, shaken Seb’s hand—there were no other family hands to shake—and then departed with all possible speed.
None had had any personal affection for Arthur, and at his age his sudden death from a catastrophic heart event had surprised no one. The attending suits had had only one thing in common—they wanted to know who’d now be controlling the massive Cantrell Holdings.
Which could be him. Cue incredulity. Given the animosity between himself and his uncle, he’d never thought of such a possibility.
But now...
He was currently facing a trio of lawyers. With a fortune like this at stake, they’d obviously decided that giving this news was too much responsibility for one man. The law firm’s senior partner had just read out his uncle’s will, and it had left him stunned.
