Marion Lennox: Bachelor Cure

‘I have to go,’ he told them as he replaced it. ‘The Murchisons’ cows have got out again and they’re all over the road near the river bend. If I don’t get down there soon, someone’s going to hit one.’ He looked closely at Tess. ‘I knew that Henry had a grandkid in the US, though, and you sure have his hair. We need to talk, but maybe…’

‘Not now,’ Mike told him. ‘Tessa, you’re past talking.’ He stared down at the girl before him, his quick mind figuring out what to do for the best here. ‘Sergeant, could you use the radio to ask the vet to come out here and see Doris? She’ll need antibiotics straight away and I don’t have a clue as to dosage. If Jacob stays here to help, he should be able to treat her. If Tessa doesn’t mind sharing my passenger seat with Strop, I’ll take her into town.’

Strop… Tess shook her head, confused. ‘I’m staying here,’ she said.

‘I don’t blame you.’ The policeman grinned. ‘You wait till you meet Strop. Sharing a passenger seat, indeed…’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Strop that a good vacuum cleaner can’t fix,’ Mike said with dignity. ‘Strop is my dog, Tess, and he’ll be very pleased to meet you.’ He hesitated as her look of confusion increased. This girl was in no fit state to be making decisions. She could barely hear him, and she certainly wasn’t fit to spend the night alone in a deserted farmhouse. ‘You’ll spend tonight in hospital and let me have a good look at that arm,’ he said firmly. ‘You can come back tomorrow, if you’re up to it.’

‘Doc, are you saying I have to stay here?’ Jacob demanded incredulously. ‘Are you saying you expect me to stay with the pig and wait for the vet?’

‘After scaring Miss Westcott stupid, it’s the least you can do,’ he said blandly. ‘And I know you, Jacob. You always do the least you can do. Besides, in the last year I’ve made five house calls to your place in the middle of the night for your sick kids, and every one of them could have waited until morning. Call this payment of a debt.’

Jacob shook his head, confused, and to her amazement Tess felt herself start to smile. She’d blinked at Mike’s curt orders, but she needn’t have worried. Jacob wasn’t the least bit offended. He thought Mike’s words through and then nodded, acknowledging their fairness.

‘We need to go now,’ Mike told Tess, only the faintest trace of humour behind his deep eyes telling Tess that he was also laughing gently. ‘I have a patient in labour myself. She was in the early stages when I left and she isn’t likely to deliver until morning, but she needs me all the same. OK, Tess?’

She looked as if she was operating in a daze. Nothing seemed to make sense. ‘I…’ She was forcing herself to focus. ‘I guess.’

‘That’s fine, then.’ He smiled down at her. ‘I’m sure Jacob and the vet will take the greatest care of Doris. Bill Rodick, the vet, is very competent, and Jacob’s a fine farmer. So… You can visit Doris tomorrow if she’s up to receiving callers. Now, though… Strop makes a great chaperon. That’s his principal mission in life-to obstruct as many things as possible. So do you trust Strop and me enough to let us drive you to town?’

Trust him?

Tess looked up, and she gave Mike a shaky smile-and then, before she could realise what he intended, she was swept up into a pair of strong, muscled arms and held close against his rough sweater. She gasped.

‘No. Please… I can walk…’

‘I dare say you can,’ he told her firmly. This girl had enough courage for anything. ‘But it’s dark outside. I know where my car is. I’m sure-footed as a cat and I don’t want you stumbling with that arm, especially if Strop’s abandoned his leather armchair and is back at his old trick of obstructing things. He’s the type of dog burglars fear most because they’re at risk of tripping over him in the dark. So shut up and be carried, Miss Westcott.’

Shut up and be carried…

It seemed there was nothing else to be done-so Tess shut up and was carried.

Mike carried the girl out to his car and tried to figure just what it was about her that made him feel strange.

Like he was on the edge of a precipice.

THE girl was quite lovely.

The clock on the wall said three o’clock, and Tessa’s hospital bed was bathed in afternoon sunlight. Mike had stuck his head around the door three or four times during the morning but each time Tess was still sleeping soundly. Now she opened her eyes as he entered, blinked twice and tried to smile.

Tess was in a single hospital ward, small and comfortably furnished, with windows looking out over a garden to rolling pasture beyond. It was cattle country, if she had the energy to look.

She didn’t. She stared across at Mike as if she was trying to work out just who he was.

This was a different Mike to the one she’d seen the night before. He’d told her he was a doctor and, after his treatment of her shoulder, Tess had had no grounds for disbelief. But now… In clean clothes, his black curls brushed until they were almost ordered, a white coat over his tailored trousers and a stethoscope swinging from his pocket, he was every inch the medico.

He still had the bedside manner she remembered from the night before. He stood at the door and smiled, and Tess was forced to smile back.

And then her gaze dropped in astonishment. A vast liver and white basset-hound was sauntering into her room beside him.

‘Awake at last?’ Mike’s lazy smile deepened as he strolled over to her bed, trying not to appreciate her loveliness too much as he did. The fact that the look of her almost took his breath away didn’t make for a placid doctor-patient relationship at all. ‘Welcome to the land of the living, Miss Westcott.’ His eyes were warm and twinkling. ‘How’s the shoulder?’

‘It seems fine.’ She kept on staring at Strop. ‘So there really was a dog,’ she said. ‘I thought he was part of my nightmare.’

‘What, Strop?’ Mike grinned. ‘He’s no nightmare. He’s solidly grounded in reality. So well grounded, in fact, that if he gets any closer to the ground we’ll have to fit him with wheels.’

‘You keep a dog in the hospital?’

‘He’s a hospital dog. He has qualifications in toilet training, symptom sharing and sympathy. Just try him.’

Strop looked up toward the bed. His vast, mournful eyes met Tessa’s, limpid in their melancholy. He gave a faint wag of his tail, but went straight back to being mournful.

‘Oh, I can see that.’ Tess chuckled. ‘He’d make any patient feel better immediately. Like they’re not the only ones feeling awful, and they couldn’t possibly be feeling as awful as that!’

Strop flopped himself wearily down on the bedside mat. Mike shoved him gently aside with his foot-the dog slid under the bed without a protest as if this was what happened all the time-and then Mike turned his attention back to his patient.

That wasn’t hard to do.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Strop steals my limelight all the time. Your arm, Miss Westcott. How is it?’

Tess wriggled it experimentally and winced. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s bruised but it’s fine. You must have put the humerus right back in or it’d hurt a lot more than this.’

‘The humerus…’ Mike’s face stilled. Last night he’d suspected she had obstetric knowledge, and now… ‘You’re a nurse, then?’

‘Nope.’ She smiled and it was like a blaze of sunshine. ‘Guess again.’

‘A physio? An osteopath?’

‘Try doctor.’

‘A doctor!’ He stared.

‘Females can be,’ she said, still smiling. Her voice was gently teasing. ‘In the States, medicine’s about fifty-fifty. Don’t tell me you still keep women in their place down under.’