Dear Doctor, page 10
‘Well, I’ll wear a jacket there and back,’ Kirsten said, ‘even though it’s been hot enough today to fry eggs on the pavement, and it’s not likely to be much cooler tonight.’
She went back inside for a jacket, checked she had the tickets, then met Gabi, Alex and Grant in the foyer.
Down at Mickey’s, Graham and Madeleine Frost, who had the penthouse on the top floor, were already settled at a table, and Alana had just joined them. Gabi introduced Grant to the Frosts, explaining to him that Graham was also a doctor at Royal Westside, then everyone settled into chairs.
Which brought Kirsten, who’d been not exactly hiding behind Grant but certainly keeping out of sight, into view.
When she’d had enough of the ribald comments about the neckline and had fielded half a dozen ‘blonde’ jokes, Kirsten turned the conversation to other matters.
‘I tried to talk Daisy into coming, but she’s got some special programme on tonight—doing a street crawl interviewing youngsters who should probably be at home in bed. And Marg on the third floor is on duty.’
Speaking of other medically related tenants prompted Gabi to ask Madeleine, whose father owned the building, about the new arrivals on the first and third floors.
‘I’ve only met the dentists on the first floor a couple of times,’ Madeleine told her, ‘and the fellow who had taken the other flat on three can’t take it right now so it’s vacant at the moment.’
She glanced around the group.
‘Do you know anyone who’s looking for a place?’
‘I heard someone talking about a new specialist physician,’ Alex said. ‘Someone just back from a stint overseas. I’ll ask around and if I can track him down, mention the building.’
‘If it’s Rory Forrester, don’t bother!’ Alana said. ‘He’s the original disappearing man. So far, no one’s set eyes on him, but the shock waves of his arrival have been spreading.’
There was enough bite in Alana’s voice to surprise Kirsten, as the nurse was usually super-cool. But right now she wanted to get the conversation off medical matters—after all, Grant was here as a favour to her and she didn’t want him bored stiff before they even reached the dance.
She might not want to be engaged to him, but he certainly deserved her consideration!
She switched the conversation to the party ahead of them, thanking them all for buying tickets and making an effort to dress up. Then it was time to order, and a discussion of food and wine took over at the far end of the table. Alex asked Grant how the shearing had gone, and the technical conversation that followed between Gabi and Grant over the fineness of the wool kept Grant happy down this end.
Which left Kirsten free to think, for the first time today, of the commitment she’d made to Josh.
Could you call agreeing to a brief affair a commitment?
And was she mad to have even suggested it?
But surely something was better than nothing?
She rubbed her thumb across the inner band of her engagement ring—that had to be sorted out as well. Perhaps because she’d been tired she hadn’t explained things clearly to Grant. She’d try again in the morning.
The thought made her sigh.
Grant’s arm came round her shoulders and he gave her a quick hug. He was so aware of how she was feeling—wasn’t that worth saving?
She hadn’t really given him a fair go, given the engagement a chance…
‘You can’t sort it out overnight,’ he murmured, leaning close so only she would hear the words. ‘So stop fretting and live for the moment.’
‘Repeating a silly cliché like that doesn’t make things any easier,’ she snapped, guilt making her edgy.
‘No?’ he said, and smiled, and she decided she’d try to go along with it, nodding reluctantly and concentrating on her meal.
They walked to the hospital, a loose group with the configurations of twos and threes changing several times. The oohs and aahs of surprise when they saw the decorated gym was very gratifying to Kirsten, and after a glass of wine and a lively dance with Grant, she relaxed enough to forget her problems with her cleavage and begin to enjoy herself.
Until she danced past Josh and saw his scowl, which deepened as they drew close enough for him to see more of her than he usually did.
Except for that one time!
‘So that’s the man,’ Grant murmured, surprising Kirsten with his perception. Then he drew her closer and added, ‘I definitely won’t give you up for him. He looks a bad-tempered brute and you deserve the best.’
He was joking, or she hoped so, but she did notice that whenever they happened, in future dances, to gravitate anywhere near Josh, Grant always held her closer.
‘Now you’re back on the committee, you’d better come and meet the rest of us.’
Jill Clarke, who’d been in charge of straw bales and the general decorating, grabbed Kirsten as the band stopped for a break.
Gabi excused herself and followed Jill towards a table at the far end of the room. Two tables, in fact—the first with members of the fund-raising committee and the second with an impressive collection of senior staff including a full roll call of Phillipses. The old man, Dr Harold, sat at one end; two other men Kirsten vaguely recognised as Josh’s brothers were either side of him, with austerely attractive women seated by their sides. None had made the slightest concession to the ‘bush’ theme, though Josh, at the far end, opposite his father, was in jeans and a checked shirt, with a worn and sensible wide-brimmed hat, much beloved of Australian bushmen, hanging from the back of his chair.
Kirsten nodded to him as she followed Jill to the committee’s table, and though her hands positively throbbed with the need to pull her dress higher, she wasn’t willing to draw even more attention to her neckline.
At the fund-raisers’ table, Kirsten greeted women she’d met earlier in the day, then was introduced to their partners and finally to an older woman, elegantly dressed as a pioneer woman of the west. Joy someone, the surname lost as the members of the bush band tuned up their fiddles once again.
Joy patted a vacant seat beside her.
‘Come and sit a minute. I know you’ve been dancing since you arrived.’ She grinned at Kirsten. ‘I couldn’t help but notice you. Dolly’s one of my favourite singers.’
‘She’s the last person I’d have thought of being,’ Kirsten admitted. ‘I left it up to a friend to get a costume for me.’ Feeling safer now she was seated, she gave the bodice a hitch upward. ‘Some friend!’
Joy chuckled then said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think you’re carrying it off extremely well. People see far more flesh on the beach—why, most of the young women go topless there. And as for television…even the ads are becoming close to X-rated.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Kirsten said. ‘I rarely watch it—I’d prefer to read—but I saw one the other day…’
They talked of ads and of books they enjoyed, books for light relief and books that made them think.
‘I read a mix of both,’ Kirsten admitted. ‘With me it’s a mood thing. Do I want escapism or something I can get my teeth into?’
Josh walked past at that moment and, presumably hearing her words, raised an eyebrow, but in spite of the eyebrow, he was still scowling so she ignored him.
‘Poor Josh.’ Joy’s soft exclamation claimed all Kirsten’s attention.
‘Why poor Josh?’ she demanded. ‘After all, he’s just got the unit he’s been wanting, with this committee working to keep it in the public eye. He’s adored by all his patients, by their parents and by the staff who work with him. What more could a dedicated doctor want?’
Joy turned to Kirsten.
‘Nothing, I suppose. Certainly that’s all my husband wanted—a successful career. Oh, he wanted children but that was a dynastic thing, continuing the line and all that rubbish. But—what’s the expression they use now? He got off—is that right? He got off on the power and on the adulation of those around him. On being a kind of god, omnipotent.’
Kirsten didn’t hide her surprise.
‘But no doctor is omnipotent,’ she protested.
Joy smiled faintly.
‘No, of course they’re not, but that doesn’t stop some thinking they are.’
‘Josh doesn’t!’ Kirsten said, stoutly defending the man in spite of the scowls—or was she defending the doctor, not the man?
Joy’s smile was brighter this time.
‘No, he doesn’t, does he?’ Then the smile faded and she added, ‘But that doesn’t stop him worrying that one day he’ll turn into his father.’
Oh!
Kirsten looked more intently at the woman. She had short, greying hair which could once have been brown. Her eyes were also brown, not vivid blue, and her features were nothing like Josh’s. Yet now Kirsten studied her, there was something there—maybe the carriage, the tilt of the head or the breadth of brow.
‘You’re his mother? Heavens, I could have been saying all kinds of terrible things about him.’
‘I wouldn’t have let you,’ Joy said, patting Kirsten’s hand. ‘And I thought you’d know.’
Why the hell would I know? Kirsten wanted to shout. He certainly didn’t bother to introduce me when I was out at your place earlier today.
And why—?
No, damn it all, she’d ask the next question out loud.
‘Why aren’t you at the other table—with your family?’
The brown eyes darkened with a kind of sadness.
‘Being on the fund-raising committee makes it easy for me to still be part of Josh’s success without actually joining in a grand Phillip’s appearance. While the children were growing up—in fact, until they were all established in their careers—I came along to functions and stood by my husband’s side, entertaining when asked, playing the dutiful wife. But now?’
She shrugged her scarf-draped shoulders.
‘I won’t pretend any more. I thought I could do it—that I could bring up my children so they never felt the lack of a father’s love and presence—and I thought I’d succeeded. But I look at the older two and realise I’ve failed. They’re replicas of their father and are following in his footsteps. Dutiful wives, beautifully presented children, to all appearances a perfect life, but Brad’s wife drinks and Harry’s wife has a succession of lovers. It’s no wonder Josh is terrified of marriage—and also terrified of hurting someone the way he suspects I was hurt.’
The words were like shards of ice piercing Kirsten’s heart. Listening to this unhappy woman, she could follow Josh’s thought processes. He loved children—a blind man could have seen that much—but he had the double curse of a job that would often take him from his home after normal working hours so his children would be denied a lot of his time—his company—and the examples of his father and brothers as total failures in the happy families department.
Joy talked on about other things—the horses she bred, the life she’d made for herself—but Kirsten only half listened because, in her heart of hearts, she’d been ignoring Josh’s repeated warnings that their affair wouldn’t last.
Foolishly, somewhere inside her had dwelt a tiny bud of hope, and within its tightly furled leaves she’d packed a dream of happy ever after, and for ever and ever, and all the other phrases used to end the best romantic stories.
‘Dance, Dolly?’
The subject of her thoughts had materialised beside her. He reached out, took her left hand and ran his thumb across the ring.
She retrieved her hand and didn’t bother to tell him that, as far as she was concerned, the ring was making its final appearance.
Though Grant’s behaviour was another worry…
‘No,’ she said, though the usual tremors his presence caused made it hard to deny him. ‘I’ve left Grant to the mercy of all the single women here tonight for quite long enough.’
She excused herself to Joy and walked away, oblivious now of the revealing costume, because these new insights into the man she suspected she loved were outweighing all other considerations.
Josh watched her sashay off, then returned to his table in time to hear Harry’s wife declaring, in her cool, well-bred tones, that she didn’t know what the hospital was coming to, when staff could dress like that at an official fund-raising function.
‘It’s supposed to be fancy dress,’ Josh told her, and heard his other sister-in-law titter.
‘Fancy dress for a fancy lady—isn’t that what they used to be called in the Wild West?’
Punching either of his female in-laws would be considered bad taste, but Josh didn’t have to sit and listen to their bitchy nonsense. He excused himself and crossed to his mother’s table, asking her to dance and refusing to accept any excuses.
‘Did Grandfather’s wife and the other in-laws always make you feel uncomfortable?’ he asked her, as they whirled slowly around the edges of the crowd. ‘Is that why you opted out of Dad’s social life as soon as you felt you’d done your duty?’
‘Your father opted out of my life, Josh, not me out of his. And, really, while I might have been intimidated by them early on, as I grew older I felt more sorry for all my in-laws.’ She grinned at her son. ‘Because they had to live with Phillips men.’
‘Very comforting!’ Josh said, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t picture Kirsten, even not in Dolly-mode, sitting at the Phillips table.
Though it was alarming he should even try!
At midnight, the band played its final bracket, and almost before the last guests had departed, the cleaners moved in. They were there voluntarily so no one argued as they ushered the lingerers out the door.
Kirsten’s group walked around the building, through the spacious hospital grounds, heading for the road that would take them home. The night was quiet, and for a time at least no sirens split the silence. They drifted along through the soft air, reliving the evening’s highlights.
The sweet perfume of night-scented jessamine permeated the air, stealing into Kirsten’s soul and making her think things she shouldn’t think—things about romance and love and relationships that grew and developed and strengthened with time.
As if attuned to her thoughts, Grant put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close.
‘It’s a night for love, isn’t it?’ he murmured. ‘Only we’ve both had the bad luck to fall for the wrong person.’
Kirsten rested her head against his shoulder, accepting the comfort and understanding he was offering.
‘I can’t keep the ring,’ she murmured, wishing with all her heart things could have been different—that this man could have been the one.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE mood on the ward the following week was sombre. Jack’s treatment was so debilitating it seemed that whatever strength had been left in his disease-ravaged body was now being drained away.
With the rooms the unit would eventually use still under modification, Kirsten did what she could, finding big pictures of trucks, tractors and diggers to tape on the glass observation panel in the wall of the isolation room, leaving enough room for people to peer through but filling in most of the big area. She changed these several times a day, so at least, when he turned his head that way, Jack would have something different to look at.
Then, because the other children seemed affected by the atmosphere, she gathered up those not confined to their beds by treatment regimens and started a story game, where they all vied with each other to make the continuing story more and more ridiculous.
‘If nothing else, being in hospital expands their imaginations,’ one of the parents remarked, as she joined the group.
‘We should write down this story,’ Alistair suggested. He was a thirteen-year-old who was receiving treatment after having a tumour removed from his abdomen, and at an age when he was fretful over this delay into adolescence.
‘Good idea,’ Kirsten told him. ‘I’ve got a small recorder, but we’ll have to start again tomorrow. Then every night I’ll type what we’ve made up into the computer.’
She looked around the group.
‘Maybe we can find some pictures to illustrate it and make it into our own book.’
The younger children, who’d been contributing the more bizarre suggestions, decided they’d rather look for pictures while a couple of older ones thought they’d try the drawing and painting programmes on the computer to see if they could do the illustrations they’d need.
The group broke up, and Kirsten began her visits to the other children, checking on the little things that came within her work area. Because weakness limited a patient’s range of movement, it was important to check what they could and couldn’t reach from the bed when they were hooked up to drips and not well enough to move about with a mobile drip stand. And to provide toys that promoted some muscle movement as well as a bit of diversion.
Squeezy rubber balls, some with strands of rubber hair and others with faces that could be contorted into truly awful expressions, were good for these children, while puzzles could help fill the empty hours.
A little before twelve, she went through to the cloakroom, where she shed the bright T-shirt she’d been wearing, changing into a softly tailored blouse, then adding a jacket, transforming her casual hospital wear into ‘smart businesslike’ and giving her confidence to tackle the first two of her possible donors.
‘Lunch date?’
Of course, she would run into Josh, even though he’d been so busy lately she hadn’t had time to tell him she’d finally made Grant accept the ring—and the fact that the engagement was over. And as she hadn’t ever worn the ring while working on the children’s ward, he was probably assuming she was still engaged.
‘With the lucky fiancé no doubt?’ he said, his voice as close to a sneer as she’d ever heard.
Ah, well, her assumption had proved correct!
‘Not that it’s any of your business but, no, it’s not Grant—he’s gone back to the property. As it happens, this is work-related.’
Kirsten whirled away and Josh, who could have bitten out his tongue for letting some of his pent-up emotion erupt into unrehearsed conversation, turned to watch the way her legs were enhanced by the ridiculously high-heeled sandals she habitually wore, and the way that same footwear made her body move with a swaying motion he found totally mesmerising.
