THEY’D WATCHED THE fireworks from the bluff, Dottie sitting between them in the deckchairs Charles had set up, eating fish and chips from cardboard boxes at Jo’s insistence that it was a summer carnival must.
The fish, freshly caught by one of the trawlers moored on the harbour wall at the mouth of the creek, was delicious, the chips hot and crispy.
Charles leant back in his chair and watched the rockets shoot into the sky, bursting into brilliant bouquets of light that reflected on the water below so the whole world seemed to glow with colour.
He watched Jo’s face, too, from time to time, surprising a child-like wonder in the gaze of this seemingly practical woman.
But he couldn’t sit and stare at Jo. Dottie would be sure to notice and right now whatever it was they had between them was too new and fragile to be put under Dottie’s blunt scrutiny.
He turned his thoughts back to his grandmother.
Her talk of seeing snow at Christmas had come as such a surprise he could barely take it in, but she’d said it, and it could only mean she’d accepted him as her grandson.
It might only be a small crack in the wall of silence she’d built around his mother, but it was there.
And was he thinking of Dottie so he didn’t have to think about too much about Jo—another woman he knew but really didn’t know? He was reasonably sure the attraction he felt ran deep—but for a virtual stranger?
He’d picked up snippets about her life here and there, and seeing her around the house, watching the consideration with which she treated Dottie, he knew she was kind, thoughtful and very caring.
But why the surrogacy?
Because she was kind and caring?
And what kind of life had she led before it?
Hadn’t Dottie mentioned a man?
A woman as beautiful as Jo would attract most men.
‘...no work clothes here, and I don’t want to disturb my locum and his family, so I might go into Anooka tomorrow and get some basic mix and match things there. The stores are all open seven days a week right through the holiday period.’
He’d missed the first part of the conversation. Had she asked if he wanted to go along?
The question lost relevance when Dottie said, ‘And while you’re away, Charles can take me down to the harbour, and we’ll walk along the jetty, and I can show him where the big boats used to come in when the town was first settled.’
‘Do you think she’s mellowing?’ he asked Jo when he’d put the deck chairs away and found her in the kitchen, making Dottie’s night-time cocoa.
‘Definitely,’ Jo said.
‘That was a “definitely” with a “but” hovering above it,’ Charles told her.
‘The “but” is your mother, isn’t it? You’re learning more about Bertie but, apart from the crystal ornaments, she’s still tight-lipped about your mother, though it’s hard to fathom why. Okay, so she ran off with someone Dottie didn’t approve of—or maybe it was Bertie who disapproved. Maybe it was he who determined she cut herself off from their daughter, for all my gran said he was a lovely man.’
She sighed, which made Charles smile.
‘There’s no point in our speculating, is there? Let us just hope she continues to mellow, and drop tiny pearls of information that will one day give me a picture of my mother.’
‘I think pearls make necklaces, not pictures,’ Jo said to him. ‘I’m taking this cocoa up to Dottie then going to bed myself. I’ll see you in the morning.’
He watched her walk away, his mother forgotten as a new worry struck him. Had Jo been doing too much? Surrogate or not, she was a woman who’d just had a baby, and yet she’d barely stopped since the baby was born. First in her frenzy of housework, then showing him around the place, and now she was due to go back to work on Monday. Had volunteered to go back to work!
Was she keeping busy so she didn’t have to think about the baby? Was she feeling loss, although she’d always known he wasn’t hers?
Why hadn’t he thought about it before, maybe talked to her about it—let her just talk...
He followed her up the stairs.
‘You should be resting more,’ he said, as she was about to disappear into Dottie’s room.
‘I’ll rest tomorrow,’ she said over her shoulder, and then she was gone.
* * *
Sunday dawned bright and clear and over breakfast Jo explained the hospital’s shift system.
‘Sam should have told you this but in most regional hospitals the day is divided into two shifts, eight to eight, though the day staff are lucky if they get away at eight, which is why staying at the flat makes sense. Becky emailed that we’re on at eight tomorrow morning, and while I’m in town today I’m going to pick up some basic foodstuffs for the flat and a few spare clothes and toiletry items to leave there.
She spoke so matter-of-factly Charles had to wonder if she hadn’t felt that shiver of excitement he’d felt at the flat—and did again now as she spoke about it.
He knew there wouldn’t be a full-blown affair, not right now, but with such a strong attraction between them there’d certainly more kisses—mind-numbing kisses like the last one beneath the tree...
His brain was stuck on mind-numbing kisses so it wasn’t until Jo had finished clearing the table and washing the dishes, and was about to leave the room, that she brought him back to the present with strict instructions to use plenty of sunscreen.
‘Down by the harbour with the sun reflecting off the water, you can get very burnt.’
And she was gone.
Taking her neat compact car!
He was stuck with the hearse, although this time Dottie condescended to sit in the front so she could give a running commentary on the residents of the houses they passed—drinks too much...lets her children run wild...has a lovely wolfhound...that dog bites.
But he had to admit that the little harbour was lovely. Fishing boats, brightly painted and hung with nets, lay moored beside each other.
‘We’ll buy some fresh prawns and eat them at the end of the jetty,’ Dottie suggested, and they did.
Charles was astonished at the nimble way this new-found grandmother of his got down so she could sit with her thin legs dangling over the water. He settled beside her—the ever-present ‘Did she do with this with my mother?’ question hovering in his head, but he wasn’t going to spoil the pleasure of either of them by mentioning it.
The prawns were fresh and sweet, the sun spread warmth right through his body, and as he wiped his hands on some wet wipes Dottie had produced from one of her capacious pockets and watched tiny fish swirling in the water below them, feeding off the discarded prawn shells, he knew he’d done the right thing in coming to this place.
‘We came here most weekends,’ Dottie said, ‘Bertie, Maggie and me. Bertie said a few hours in the fresh air—even with the smell of fish—would keep us all alive for ever!’
Maggie! His father had always called her Margaret, so this pet name was like a gift. He waited, wanting to hear more but afraid to ask—afraid to push Dottie into talking.
‘You’ll have to help me up,’ she finally announced. ‘I can get down, but attempting to get up would probably land me in the water.’
‘I’ll lift you, that’s the easiest way,’ Charles suggested, and his grandmother turned and looked up at where he now stood beside her.
‘Think you can?’ she said, her smile a challenge, but there was nothing of her and he lifted her gently to her feet, steadied her with his hands on her shoulders, then offered her his arm.
He was inordinately pleased when she took it...
And the signs of truce were strengthened in the afternoon when he returned from a long walk south along the headland and back through the bushland Jo called scrub. Dottie met him in the entry.
‘Jo’s staying in town for dinner with some friends, so will I make cheese on toast for you for supper, or will you make it for me?’
Another challenge, but he gauged her mood was still amenable and suggested, ‘Couldn’t we make it together? You can grate the cheese and I’ll do the toast.’
‘Pah to grated cheese, sliced is just as good.’
But she followed him into the kitchen and pulled out what they’d need, handed him the bread and set to work, slicing cheese.
But his hope that she might talk more about his mother came to nought, for she worked in silence until they’d grilled the toast and made her cocoa—Charles making tea for himself.
It was then she said, ‘I’m a little tired. I’ll take mine up to bed. Help yourself to some books from the library. Bertie had some good ones on Australian history, and Maggie’s head was always stuck in a book.’
She picked up her tray, ready to depart, but he took it from her.
‘The least I can do is carry it up for you. The way you go flying up the stairs on that death machine, you’d probably spill the lot.’
There was no reply, but as he took the tray from her unresisting hands he saw the faraway look in her eyes and he knew she was back in the past, perhaps sitting in the library with his grandfather and his mother, both lost in books.
* * *
‘Make the most of my last day as egg cooker,’ Charles told Dottie next morning, setting her place at the table and pulling out her chair, while Jo fussed around, making lists of phone numbers and checking there was plenty of food in the cupboards and fridge.
‘Stop that now, Jo. You know I’ve looked after myself perfectly well for years and will continue to do so until they carry me out of here in a box.’
‘Which might be sooner than later if you don’t slow down on the chair lift,’ Jo warned her.
‘Fiddle-faddle! Now, have your breakfast and leave me in peace. You’re both welcome back when you’ve days off, but it will be nice to have my house to myself.’
Which mustn’t have made Jo feel any easier about leaving her friend, Charles decided as they drove into town. Or was the tension he could feel radiating off Jo more to do with work?
Or the flat?
Sharing the flat?
As Jo parked in the staff area behind the hospital, he couldn’t help glancing towards the row of flats, particularly the one with the green door.
‘It’s called plunging right in,’ Jo said to him, as they walked into the emergency department. They’d come into the hospital through a side door, and Jo had shown him the lockers, the tearoom, and stock cupboard, where a supply of crisp, white coats was kept. He pulled one on over his T-shirt and jeans, adjusted his stethoscope around his neck, and followed her into mayhem.
The waiting room was packed, and nurses flashed from one curtained cubicle to the next.
‘Accident out on the highway, mini-bus and two cars,’ Fiona, who was at the triage desk, told them.
‘The most severely injured have been airlifted to major hospitals, but we’ve got six here, plus all the people who don’t want to spoil their weekend with a hospital visit so come on a Monday morning.’
She was checking her computer as she spoke, and looked up to say, ‘Jo, if you could take Cubicle Three, suspected appendicitis, and Charles—may we call you Charles?—take Cubicle Five, one of the RTA victims with serious cuts and abrasions, query damage to left arm and shoulder but X-rays should be back to the cubicle by now.’
Charles introduced himself to the patient, Ken, who was obviously in pain, his face grey and sweaty. He had an IV port open on the back of his right hand.
‘Hook him up to a monitor, we need an ECG,’ Charles told the nurse who’d been picking bits of gravel out of the patient’s leg. ‘Have you taken blood?’
The nurse shook his head.
‘Then I’ll finish what you’re doing, you take a sample and get a rush test on troponin levels.’
‘You think the shoulder pain could be his heart?’
Charles nodded, but as he attached the last lead and started the monitor for an ECG, the man stiffened and the monitor showed erratic rhythms then a flat line as the patient went into cardiac arrest.
Charles hit the emergency button, which had been the first thing he’d looked for as he’d entered the cubicle. He’d seen a resuscitation room on his tour with Jo, but there was no time to move the patient.
Jo came in with the crash-cart team and it was she who found the adrenalin they needed to get into the man as soon as possible to increase blood supply to the heart. Charles checked the syringe and used the open port on the man’s hand to administer it, Jo already drawing up another dose for when it was needed.
The crash team had the paddles of the defibrillator set up, and the ‘Clear’ command had them all standing back, eyes on the monitor, waiting for the black lines to appear—hoping, praying for a regular rhythm.
Lines appeared then disappeared and the operator cranked up the machine and shocked the man again, and this time the lines came up and stayed there.
‘More adrenalin, then we’ll move him to the resus room,’ a woman Charles now learned was Lauren, the ED registrar, said. ‘If he’s stable, we’ll move him to the coronary ICU later this morning.’
She turned to Charles and introduced herself.
‘You took blood?’ she asked, and he nodded.
‘Mainly to check his troponin levels when X-ray failed to show damage to his shoulder.’
Lauren nodded, then followed the patient as he was wheeled out of the room.
‘Well, you don’t waste any time getting noticed,’ Jo said. ‘All I’ve had is a suspected appendicitis who has gone to Theatre, and one of the RTA victims who’s gone for X-rays—possible fractured pelvis.’
Charles caught up with Lauren as the patient was hooked up to the equipment in the resus room.
‘I’ll leave a nurse here but keep an eye on him myself, so check with Fiona who’s next on the list. Hopefully it will be the child who’s been wailing since he got here. The noise is beginning to sound like a drill in my head.’
Charles smiled, although he hadn’t noticed the noise until she mentioned it, too caught up in the drama of his first Australian patient.
The child had earache, he discovered when he met Peter and his mum in a cubicle.
‘Have you given him anything for it?’ he asked the mother as they settled Peter on the examination couch so Charles could examine the ear.
‘Paracetamol this morning at about four,’ she said. ‘He went back to sleep after that but woke up with it still sore so I brought him in.’
‘So we’ll have to have a look, won’t we, Peter? How old are you?’
‘Seven,’ Peter told him, stopping his wailing so he could speak. ‘You talk funny!’
‘Peter!’ from his mother, but Charles only smiled.
‘I did all my studying in England and over there they do speak a bit differently. But they have the same instruments and this one’s called an otoscope.’
‘Like a telescope?’ Peter asked, checking out the instrument the nurse had handed Charles. ‘Only it’s got like a little TV on the end.’
He pointed to the screen that would give Charles a magnified picture of the inner ear.
‘That’s where I look to see what’s wrong,’ Charles told him. ‘Now, I have to move your ear a bit and it will hurt but not for long, then we’ll give you something to help the pain and you can have the day off school. How’s that?’
‘Silly, there’s no school, ’cos it’s holidays.’
‘Ah,’ Charles said, pleased that the conversation had allowed him to pull Peter’s ear gently up and back, and insert the otoscope.
‘Maybe your mother will think of another treat because you’re being so good.’
‘Ice cream, Mum?’ Peter asked and Charles smiled. Young Peter was obviously a child who didn’t miss any opportunities that came his way.
‘Your ear is infected,’ he told the lad. ‘We’ll give you something now to stop the pain and some antibiotics to take. They will clear it up in a couple of days, but no swimming until it’s better.’
‘But it’s the holidays,’ Peter complained as his mother helped him sit up on the couch.
‘Then you’ll have to find some other fun, like riding your bicycle maybe.’
‘Or my new skateboard—it’s awesome,’ Peter told him. ‘It’s red with a white stripe and the best wheels!’
‘Sounds great,’ Charles said, while behind him the nurse was asking Peter’s mother about allergies.
‘You really didn’t have much of an induction into this place.’ Charles looked around to see Jo standing just inside the cubicle. ‘Lauren was going to do it when you arrived, but with the RTA and usual Monday-itis you were thrown in at the deep end. For antibiotics, we write out a script—there’ll be a pad on the trolley—and the patient, or in this case...’ she smiled at Peter ‘...the patient’s mother takes it to the hospital pharmacy.’
She turned from Charles to Peter’s mother.
‘Do you know where that is?’
The woman nodded.
Charles wrote out the script and signed it, shook hands with Peter as he left, then turned to Jo.
‘You were good with him,’ she said. ‘Do you like working with kids?’
‘I suppose I do,’ Charles told her, ‘but what are you doing? Checking up on me or just skiving off?’
‘I’m actually your supervisor,’ she told him with a grin. ‘Apparently, you foreign blokes can’t just walk in here and start practising willy-nilly. You have to be supervised for a few weeks, or maybe it’s a month, Lauren did explain. And because I’m just filling in as well, I’ve been appointed to keep an eye on you.’
‘That will be nice!’ Charles teased, and was surprised to see colour creep into Jo’s cheeks.
Surprised, or pleased?
The question flitted through his head, but this was not the time for introspection...
‘Right now I’d better report to triage again or you’ll be giving me a bad report.’
Jo should have followed him, been given a patient for herself, but she felt unsettled. Had it had something to do with seeing Charles and the little boy that her arms began to ache and for a moment she felt the loss of the child that hadn’t ever been hers to lose.
‘Silly sentimentality!’ she muttered to herself, as she made her own way to triage to find Charles had already been given a new patient.
‘He’s in Cubicle Seven, if you want to check,’ Fiona told her. ‘Elderly woman with acute diarrhoea. I told him we should probably admit her.’
Jo laughed.
‘I don’t know what we doctors would do without the nurses in the ED. We’d certainly never manage.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ Fiona said. ‘But right now, if you think the new bloke is okay with diarrhoea, you can see Mr Bell in One. His daughter brought him in, says he’s got dementia.’
‘Of course she does,’ Jo replied, far too harshly. ‘It’s the holiday season and she’d like him put in hospital so she can have his house to herself.’
Fiona nodded, ‘But we still have to see him,’ she said, and Jo agreed.
She made her way to Cubicle One, knowing she could pull up the basic test for dementia on the screen in the cubicle but more worried about Allan Bell.
‘Hello!’ she said, as she walked in, hoping she sounded brighter than she felt. ‘Did you not like the locum that you’ve come to see me here?’
She spoke to Allan, not his daughter, who was staring at her with disbelief.
‘But you’re on leave,’ she said to Jo.
‘And filling in here,’ Jo said, as she took Allan’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
‘So what’s the problem?’ she asked him, but he couldn’t speak, the glassiness in his eyes revealing how emotionally upset he was.
‘He’s got Alzheimer’s,’ the daughter announced, and Allan shook his head.
‘The locum at my practice could have done a test,’ Jo told her. ‘Why bring him here?’
Silence!
‘I’ll do a test,’ Jo said. ‘Would you like to wait outside? We won’t be long.’
The daughter looked as if she was about to argue but eventually she flounced out.
Jo smiled at her old friend and patient.
‘Well, now you’re here I’ll have to check you out.’ She wound a blood-pressure cuff around his arm as she spoke. ‘But you know this situation isn’t going to get any better, don’t you?’
Allan nodded, his face drawn with worry.
‘You like Rosemary House and you’ve friends there, we’ve talked about it before.’
‘But I’d have to sell the cottage,’ he murmured, while the nurse wrote down his blood-pressure reading and swiped a thermometer across his forehead.
‘It’s your house,’ Jo reminded him gently.
‘But Barb lives there too now and where would she go?’
‘She can find a nice flat somewhere at Port, or here in Anooka, or she could go back to Sydney and be closer to her grandchildren. She has plenty of options, Allan.’
‘But she wants my house! If I sell it, she won’t get it when I die.’
‘No, but she’d get plenty of money when your place at Rosemary House is sold.’
Jo realised they’d had this conversation many times before but she persevered.
‘Or if you’re determined to keep the house, we can put in support services for you to make it easier to manage on your own, and Barb can go back to her family.’
‘She won’t!’ Allan said dolefully.
‘No!’ Jo said, then dutifully pulled up the early dementia test on the screen, handed Allan a notepad and pen and ran through the test, altering it slightly as he knew it almost by heart.
‘Is there someone else in the family who might come and stay with you, even just for a few weeks?’ she asked.
Allan shook his head.
‘Only one of Barb’s kids and that’s really what she wants, to have them all there over the holidays, but if one comes, they all come and that’s five adults and seven kids and there’s just not enough room. They have to sleep on the floor in the living room and in the garage. Barb says they don’t mind, but it’s too much for me to have them there for the whole six weeks of the holidays. I love them—well, most of them—but all of them at once, it’s—’
‘Hard,’ Jo finished for him, although considering the size of Allan’s cottage she thought impossible would be a more apt word, while the thought of an elderly man stepping his way over sleeping bodies to get to his own kitchen made her fearful for his safety.
‘I’ll talk to Barb now, if you don’t mind waiting outside.’
Allan looked a little apprehensive, but stood up, such a neat man, well shaven, hair brushed back, wearing belted shorts with his shirt tucked in, leather sandals on his feet.
‘So?’ Barb said to Jo as she walked back in. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me there’s nothing wrong with him.’
‘Not that I can find,’ Jo said quietly. ‘But I wonder if you need a break, Barb. We can organise support services for your father so you’d know he was being looked after, even put a carer in his house if you think he needs one there full time, and you could go down to Sydney and have Christmas with your family.’
‘He’s my family and we’re his, and all the grandkids want to have Christmas at the beach. They want to come here.’
‘Then they should rent a house—I know you probably won’t get one now, but plan for next year. Allan’s cottage is too small, and he finds it difficult when everyone is there, you must know that. So why not go to Sydney this year, then organise something up at Port for next Christmas?’
Barb’s glare told her what she thought of that idea.
‘So you’re saying there’s nothing wrong with him?’ she demanded, and Jo nodded.
‘Well, thanks for nothing!’
Jo watched her storm out, concern for Allan twisting her gut.
She could try to get a respite placement for Allan for few weeks, but when she’d done that once before, he’d returned home to his find his house like a deserted squat, and had been more distressed than angry.
In fact, having seen it, Jo had sent him back to respite for a week, while she and her fortnightly cleaning lady cleaned the place, even repainting a couple of walls the smaller children had drawn all over.
But right now she had to think about Barb.
She was muddling the situation around in her head as she entered the tearoom to find Charles standing by the urn, filling a mug with the steaming water.
‘Would you like a cup? There are teabags and instant coffee but at least the milk is fresh.’
‘Coffee, please, one sugar, no milk,’ she said, absentmindedly, although she did walk over to the cupboard and pull out the biscuit tin, hoping the night staff hadn’t scoffed the lot.
There were four left, so she took them out, sharing them with Charles, who had set her coffee down on the table.
‘If you’re going out later for a spare toothbrush, you might buy a couple of packets of biscuits as well. There used to be a bottle for staff to put money into for snacks but they gave up on that and now whoever finds the tin empty usually buys new ones.’
‘I’ll do that,’ he said, sitting down across the table from her. ‘In fact, Lauren said to take a break now, because the worst of the morning rush has cleared. But I think there’s more than biscuits on your mind.’
So as she drank her tea she told him about Allan, fit and spry in his late eighties and well able to take care of himself.
‘His daughter used his age as an excuse to come and live with him—to look after him, she said, but she’s never home, visiting friends or down at the club playing the pokies, so Allan not only looks after himself but her as well.’
‘Is he managing that?’ Charles asked, and Jo saw the empathy in his eyes.
‘Just about,’ she said. ‘He’s really very self-sufficient but come holiday time, she wants to bring all her family up to stay. Allan’s cottage really isn’t big enough and he hates having them all there at once, so she’d like him hospitalised—“for tests”, she says. But it’s mainly so her lot can have the run of the house, leaving their mess behind for Allan to clear up.’
Charles nodded.
‘I imagine the mess isn’t as bad as what he must feel when he sees how little respect the family has for the house he loves.’
‘Exactly!’ Jo said, and felt her frown deepening.
‘So?’ Charles prompted.
‘I worry that she’ll nag and nag and nag at him about it and it will wear him down—or wear him out so he does end up in hospital.’
‘A subtle form of elder abuse,’ Charles said quietly, and Jo nodded.
‘Well, we’ll just have to see that doesn’t happen,’ he continued. ‘They don’t know me, so I can turn up there from time to time, telling his daughter that because she had concerns about his mental health, I’ve been asked by the hospital to keep an eye on him. Tell her I have to make sure he’s safe, and comfortable, and coping well.’
‘Charles, that’s brilliant,’ Jo told him, smiling broadly as relief for Allan washed through her. ‘I might even get my locum to do the same so she’s never really sure when someone will come.’
‘That’s settled, then,’ Charles said. ‘So, moving on, do you have the key to the flat? I’ll get some spare toiletries and things and drop them off before I come back to work.’
It’s work, nothing more, and anyway the state you’re in, what could happen? Jo thought as she handed over the key to the green door.
But inside she still felt a little thrill, so her hope that once they got to work the silly attraction thing would go away was well and truly dashed.
She’d spent the previous day keeping out of his way, telling herself it would be good for him and Dottie to spend some time together—just the two of them—but deep inside she’d been avoiding Charles, thinking a whole day out of his company might cool the heat he could generate so easily within her.
It hadn’t worked.
Wouldn’t ever work, she suspected, but at least she’d tried...