Lilian Darcy - The Surgeon's Love-Child

In fact, she’d actually planned to indulge in the painfully luxurious release of being able to cry for hours, as stormily as she wanted to, without the possibility of interruption.

But, no, she didn’t want to cry now after all.

Mom was the one who had suggested this whole thing. Mom, the redoubtable, loving Elaine West.

‘Couldn’t you go away, darling?’ she had said five months ago, when Candace had gone to her with the blind pain of a wounded animal, freshly ripped apart by the news of Brittany’s pregnancy.

‘I don’t know if I can stand it, Mom,’ she had gasped, barely able to speak. ‘She’s radiant, while he’s…oh…already shopping for cigars. Not literally, but—’

‘I know what you mean, Candy.’

‘They had prenatal testing and they already know it’s a boy. Suddenly it turns out that Todd has “always wanted a son”. To me, he spent years arguing that one child was enough. Expensive enough. Sacrifice enough. Career-threatening enough. For his sake, I gave away the bassinet and the baby clothes. I told myself he was right. That Maddy was enough. But, oh, I wanted another baby! And now—’

‘Couldn’t you go away?’ Elaine said.

‘Away?’

‘Some kind of professional fellowship or exchange. Or a temporary position. In Alaska, or somewhere.’

‘Alaska?’

‘You don’t need them on your doorstep, Candy.’ Her mother was the only person in the world who was ever permitted to call her Candy, and even then only at times, when she needed to feel six years old again, nourishing her soul with a mother’s wisdom. ‘You don’t need to run into Brittany at the gym—’

‘Ha! As if I still go to the gym!’

Eighteen months ago, Todd had taken out a family membership, saying they both needed to get fitter. Brittany, aged twenty-five to Todd’s forty-four, taught aerobics there. Todd had quickly become very fit indeed. End of story. Candace felt personally insulted that the whole thing was such a cliché.

‘Or at the hospital.’

‘The hospital?’

‘Prenatal check-ups. Your OB/GYN has her practice in the hospital’s adjoining professional building, doesn’t she?’

‘Of course, you’re right. I know I’ll see her. Todd and I have a daughter together, remember? Occasionally we actually pass her back and forth at his place, instead of on safe, neutral terrain like school or the mall. Occasionally we even speak to each other.’ The words were hard with bitterness.

‘Maybe Maddy would like to get away, too?’ Elaine had suggested.

But when Candace had remembered Terry Davis’s comment, at a recent international medical conference, that rural Australia was chronically short of medical specialists, and had teed up this temporary appointment, Maddy had elected to stay behind with her father.

It hadn’t been in any sense a rejection of Candace. She knew that. It was about friends and routine, not about choosing one parent over the other, but it still hurt all the same.

She’s growing up. I’ll miss her more than she misses me. But Mom was right. This was probably the best thing I could have done.

After finishing her iced water, she found the phone by the bed. Called Maddy first. Heard Brittany’s perky voice, which quickly crystallised into glassy, high-pitched politeness when she realised who was on the other end of the line.

Candace had a brief conversation with Maddy, then called her mother, who said ‘See!’ in a very satisfied voice when she heard about the beachfront cottage and the acres of sea and sky. ‘Have you explored?’

‘I haven’t even unpacked!’

‘Dr Davis met you on time?’

‘Uh, no, he had to delegate to a colleague, but it worked out fine.’

And I managed to avoid mentioning Steve’s name, which I’m relieved about, and I know exactly why I didn’t want to mention it, which is unsettling me like anything…

When Candace had put down the phone, she looked at the suitcases and the box, stuck her tongue out at them and said in her best new millennium teen-speak, ‘You think I’m gonna unpack you right now, when there’s that beach out there? Like, as if!’

She walked the length of the beach twice, breathing the air and letting the cool water froth around her ankles. Then she unpacked, showered, made and ate scrambled eggs on toast, and conked out at seven in the evening in the big, comfortable bed with the sound of the sea in her ears.

She fell asleep as suddenly as if someone had opened up a panel in her back and removed the batteries.

IT WAS the best night’s sleep Candace had had in months, and it lasted until almost five the next morning. This meant she had plenty of time to iron a skirt and blouse, have another shower and eat breakfast on the deck, watching the sun rise over the sea. She was ready for Steve Colton at eight-thirty.

He was prompt, and if she’d had any sort of a theory overnight that yesterday’s intuitive sense of chemistry had been only a product of her jet-lagged disorientation, that theory was knocked on the head at once.

The chemistry was still there, invisible, intangible, lighter than air, yet as real as a third person with them in the room. Neither of them acknowledged it in any way. They didn’t get close enough to touch. Any eye contact they chanced to make was snapped apart again in milliseconds.

But, oh, it was there, and she was convinced he felt it, too.

She spent half an hour with Terry at the Narralee District Hospital. He had earned a certain seniority, having been a visiting medical officer in general surgery here for over twenty-five years, but in fact there wasn’t the official hierarchy of medical staff that Candace was used to.

There wasn’t very much that she was used to at all! It was quite a contrast to come from a 600-bed high-rise American city hospital to this low, rambling, red-brick building, which housed a mere fifty beds.

‘And six of those are political,’ Terry said darkly.

‘Political?’

‘They’re not beds at all, in most people’s definition. We have six reclining chairs where day-surgery patients recover until we’re satisfied that fluids are going in one end and coming out the other. But those six chairs make the numbers look better, so beds they’ve become and beds they’ll remain.’

He sounded tired and tense, and Candace longed to urge him, Go. Someone else can show me around.

Steve Colton, maybe? He’d muttered something about ‘errands’ after he’d deposited her into Terry’s care, and then he had disappeared. She was disturbed to realise that she was wondering, in the back of her mind, when she’d see him again.

She wanted to tell Terry, The tour can wait. I know you’re anxious to be on your way.

Terry was taking his wife, Myrna, up to Sydney today for a consultation with a top oncologist. The result of her second mammogram and fine-needle aspiration had come back yesterday afternoon, and there was no longer any doubt about the diagnosis. It was breast cancer.

They could only hope that it had been caught early, and Terry was clearly racked with worry. He was also behaving stubbornly in his insistence on a tour and a talk. He must feel as if he had let Candace down by not meeting her at the airport yesterday, and was determined to make up for it.

Accepting that she would only delay his departure if she kept apologising for her bad timing, Candace tried to ask a few intelligent questions and keep the pace brisk.

‘No full-time doctors here at all?’

‘No, we manage purely with Visiting Medical Officers. The local GPs cover the emergency department and the on-call roster, assist with surgery and handle anaesthesia. Steve probably mentioned that.’

‘Yes, he did, but not in any detail.’