A Mother For His Child Read online

  They had reached her car, which was dark and new and American-made. She had bought it last year. The alarm and automatic lock whooped electronically as she pressed a button on her key-ring. Will knew she was in a hurry, didn’t open the door for her, just slid himself into the passenger seat in tandem with her own movement. Maggie buckled her seat belt, started the engine and threw the vehicle into reverse.

  Feeling alarmed and confused, she told him, ‘You can’t be serious about joining my practice.’

  ‘Can’t I? It’s what I want. What I need,’ he corrected, as if the distinction was important.

  She filed the word away, as something else to question him on later if he didn’t explain its use himself. For now, she just wanted him to keep talking, and he did.

  ‘The location is ideal. You didn’t look for a new partner after Mark died, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But that’s not because you were short of patients. Your books are overflowing, and you’re turning new patients away. You need someone. I can understand your hesitation. You and Mark must have worked well together. But it’s time, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s not about your needs, it’s about mine,’ she pointed out, her defensive instincts still strong.

  Maggie could smell the fresh maleness of him and was distracted by an absurd need to identify it. It was no pungent drenching of aftershave, just something clean and simple and subtle. Sandalwood shampoo? Hotel soap? A faint whiff of chlorine, too. He must have taken a swim in the pool, and hadn’t quite showered off the residue.

  They drove out of the hotel grounds and across the bridge which connected its island setting to the shore. Through the open car window came the sound of ropes playing music against the metal masts of boats in the night breeze.

  ‘Yes,’ she finished reluctantly, ‘it’s time I looked for a new partner.’

  She wasn’t looking forward to the process.

  ‘So you have an opening,’ he pointed out, his voice confident, ‘which is what I need.’

  ‘When you called, you said you’d be “in the area”. I got the impression you had business here.’

  ‘I do. An interview at a practice in Wayans Falls. But I like your set-up better.’

  ‘How do you know that? And how did you know about my patient load? Have you been…?’ She shifted in her seat and sat up straighter as she made a turn, ready to put on a cloak of indignation.

  He cut her off. ‘Have I been checking you out? Yes, but nothing sinister.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that!’

  ‘I called your office and asked for an appointment. I was told that, as a new patient, I’d have to wait at least six months. I was referred to a practice in Ticonderoga and one in Warrensburg. Your sign, out front, lists you as the sole practitioner. It was pretty easy to fill in the blanks.’

  ‘You’re avoiding my question, Will. Why Picnic Point? For that matter, why New York State? It’s a long way from Arizona.’

  He ducked the question. ‘How far is this patient’s house?’

  ‘Just up the hill, here, off a side street. Technically, we’re still in Cromer’s Landing. Will, you have to—’

  ‘This needs time, Maggie. There’s a lot to say.’

  Dear lord, he’d dropped into that serious voice again! The one that undermined her because it forced her to liberate him from the convenient box she’d placed him in so many years ago. She didn’t want to know that he could talk this way. She’d never heard him do so before.

  ‘I know you want better reasons,’ he went on just as soberly. ‘There are better reasons. Reasons that are going to make me tell you more about the collapse of my marriage than I remotely want to.’

  ‘And more than I’ll want to know?’

  ‘You and Alison were close.’ Not exactly a direct answer. ‘Can we wait until we’ve seen your patient?’

  She couldn’t help trying for more from him. ‘This is the reason for the divorce, then? Alison didn’t want to move?’

  ‘No, you were right before about the reason for the divorce.’ His tone was very light.

  She couldn’t tell if he was serious. He couldn’t be. It was just a line. What had she ever said or hinted about what she thought of his and Alison’s divorce and the reasons behind it? Nothing! She had her own scenarios, of course. None of those scenarios showed Will in a very good light. She hadn’t been uncomfortable about that fact until now.

  But she couldn’t give the matter any more of her attention. They’d just turned into Kathy Sullivan’s driveway. Kathy herself was silhouetted against the light that came through the screen door as Maggie and Will came up the concrete path that led to the entrance of the weathered clapboard dwelling.

  ‘Is that you, Dr Lawless?’ she said, peering out. The old door creaked.

  ‘Yes, it is, Kathy,’ Maggie called back. ‘And I’ve brought—’

  ‘Dr Braggett,’ he cut in, smiling. ‘Will Braggett. Dr Lawless and I are looking at the possibility of me joining her practice.’

  No, we’re not!

  Maggie bristled, but no one noticed.

  Will grabbed the screen door which Kathy had pushed slightly ajar, held out his hand for her to shake, ushered Maggie past him and then entered the front hallway himself. The series of fluid actions, on top of his confident explanation of his presence, took just seconds and left Maggie—as usual—breathless with something she wanted to call outrage.

  Wanted to. Couldn’t, in all honesty. He wasn’t deliberately attempting to overshadow her or crowd her out—he just did this charm stuff too well.

  Kathy was smiling, too. ‘Well, that would be just great, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘Dr Lawless needs someone.’ Then her face fell. ‘Come on in. He seems real sick. More than just flu, and it came on so fast. He was fine this afternoon. The rash is getting worse, and it’s such a funny colour. It don’t look like poison ivy no more.’

  She led the way, leaning her swollen hands heavily on a four-footed walking frame. She’d put on a little more weight. Maggie registered the painful stiffness of her walk, and the two inches of streaked grey showing at the roots of her long, braided coppery hair. Kathy’s great pride was her beautiful thick hair, and it was never the same colour for more than six months at a stretch. When she let the grey grow through like this, it meant the pain had been pretty bad. She had rheumatoid arthritis as well as fibromyalgia and struggled to maintain her quality of life.

  Fourteen-year-old Matthew was lying on the couch in a darkened living-room. The television flickered in one corner, providing the only light, but his eyes were closed and he wasn’t watching. Maggie slipped past Kathy and went immediately to him, touching the palm of her hand to his forehead.

  ‘I’m going to have a look at you, Matthew, to see why you’re feeling so bad,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll have to turn on the lamp here.’

  He didn’t reply. He was burning up, beneath a heavy quilt, and didn’t even acknowledge her touch. She turned on the table lamp, lifted his T-shirt and found the spreading patch of rash. It was purple and blotchy, and her heart sank. Had she been too concerned with saving Kathy’s budget when she’d decided against calling an ambulance at once? This wasn’t poison ivy on top of a dose of flu.

  Kathy was hovering in the background, and Maggie had to tell her, ‘I think he’s pretty sick, Kathy. He needs the hospital. I’m glad you called me early and didn’t wait this out.’

  ‘What is it, Dr Lawless?’

  ‘I’m afraid it looks like meningitis, Kathy.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that.’

  ‘There are several different types, some more dangerous than others. The meningococcal type is spread by saliva, and it’s so hard to get kids not to share drink bottles and lip salves, and that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ll call the ambulance,’ Will said behind Maggie. ‘Where will I find the phone?’

  ‘Kitchen wall,’ Kathy answered.

  ‘Kathy, you’ll want to come too, won’t you?’ Maggie
said.

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course you can,’ She touched Kathy’s arm. It was trembling. ‘Do you want to put together a few things you might need overnight, and make sure you’ve got some cash?’

  Kathy nodded, her mouth working. ‘Is he going to be OK?’

  ‘He’s going to get the best possible treatment, starting right now.’ It was all she could promise.

  Kathy made her slow way out of the room. Maggie opened her medical bag, and then heard Will’s return.

  ‘You’re not going to wait for the ambulance?’ he said. ‘It’s on its way.’

  ‘No, I’m not waiting. I’ll put in an IV and run in as much fluid as possible. And I have some new antibiotic samples in my bag. Could you check them for me?’

  ‘See if any of them are worth a try?’

  ‘Yes.’ She racked her brains. ‘Can’t remember what’s there.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty well up on that stuff.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, Will.’ The words just slipped out. Will was probably as surprised by them as Maggie was, but he didn’t say anything.

  Maggie got an IV kit out of her bag, found a good vein in the back of Matthew’s hand and swabbed the area. He stiffened and hissed as she slid in the cannula, but didn’t jerk away. Yes, it was safely in. She taped it in place and began to run in the fluid. There was nowhere to hang the IV bag.

  She held it awkwardly until Will said, ‘Wait a second.’ He slipped through to the kitchen and appeared again with a wooden-backed kitchen chair.

  ‘Hang it on this. Ambulance should be here soon, and the hospital knows he’s coming. Can I look at those antibiotics now?’

  ‘Please. They’re all oral. I don’t know if it’s worth it. He needs intravenous.’

  ‘At this stage, let’s go with the idea that it can’t hurt.’

  ‘How much time did I waste by not calling the ambulance immediately?’

  ‘Five, maybe ten minutes. It’s not significant, Maggie. The fact that Kathy called early is the important part. If she’d waited till morning, or even another hour or two…Kids do recover from this.’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘Let’s try this. It’s broad spectrum, and pretty powerful.’ Will produced a sample packet of capsules and they managed to get Matthew to swallow one successfully.

  The ambulance arrived within minutes, just as Kathy made her way back down the stairs. She put her swollen hand to her throat when she saw her son being carried out on a stretcher. Will held up the IV bag and Maggie took Kathy’s overnight bag and helped her to the vehicle.

  ‘I didn’t close up the house,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’

  ‘I’ll take care of that for you, Kathy,’ Maggie soothed.

  She expected Will to wait in the car, but instead found that he was following her back into the house as the ambulance pulled away, with sirens rising.

  ‘Better check that everything’s switched off,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look upstairs.’

  Maggie found some soup sitting in a pot on the stove. She poured it into a plastic container and put it in the fridge. Will appeared in the doorway just as she closed the door of the ancient appliance.

  ‘Any idea where she’d keep new batteries?’ he asked.

  ‘Batteries?’

  ‘The smoke alarm upstairs is yelping at me, which means it’s about to give out. And I bet the wiring in this place isn’t that great.’

  ‘No, probably not,’ she agreed. ‘Let’s try the drawers.’

  Cutlery, dish towels, paper bags…Will reached the drawer next to the one Maggie was checking, and as he pulled it out she felt the brush of his arm on hers, like a streak of warm paint. He said ‘Aha!’ a moment later, flourishing the small, box-shaped nine-volt battery.

  ‘Oh, good.’ Maggie’s voice came out a little too high, and she stepped back out of the thick potency of his aura. Will had no idea he did this to her, thank goodness!

  He added, ‘Now, I just need this chair again.’

  He grabbed the stiff-backed wooden kitchen chair with one hand and carried it out of the room as if it weighed as much as a plastic coffee-mug. Maggie stood there, leaning helplessly against the sink as she listened to him, still bathed in the aftermath of that one tiny, accidental touch.

  She heard his firm footfalls on the hardwood stairs, the scrape of chair legs, some clicks and snaps and rattles as he detached the smoke alarm, changed the battery and clicked it back into place. It was a job she’d done a few times herself since Mark’s death, but she always fumbled it, took three attempts to get the thing out and in again properly. She didn’t like it.

  Tasks like that daunted her more than they should, given her capability in other areas. She was intelligent, but that didn’t mean she was good at practical household maintenance tasks. She was always glad that the whooping warning signal was so damned annoying, because it forced her to tackle the matter immediately. Even gladder, tonight, that someone else was here to do it. Someone male and strong and sure of what he was doing.

  Will was back. He deposited the chair beside the table and said, ‘Done. Shall we go?’

  ‘Thanks, Will.’

  He shrugged. ‘No problem.’

  She wanted to push the point. Thanks for checking upstairs. Thanks for taking notice of that sound. Thanks for acting on it, when these aren’t your patients, and when a lot of people wouldn’t have bothered to make all those cognitive leaps. Dying alarm plus old wooden house plus slow-moving occupant equals unacceptable risk.

  She let him open the front door for her—ten years ago, she would have made a clumsy point of doing it herself—and he surprised her once more by pausing just before he closed it.

  ‘Does she have her keys with her?’

  ‘Well, I know she took her purse…’

  ‘Should I take a quick look around, just in case?’ He did so, but came back empty-handed.

  In the car once more, they were silent. Maggie’s thoughts were with Kathy and Matthew, speeding towards the hospital, and then something else began to nag at her—the two calls from Amy Pickford’s parents earlier, about her high fever.

  She hadn’t been concerned at the time. Going over the baby’s symptoms in a rational way, she still wasn’t—but what if she was wrong?

  ‘Will, I’m sorry,’ she said abruptly. ‘There’s another patient I want to take a look at. Five minutes’ drive. I’ll phone ahead now and tell the parents I’m coming. I know I’m being paranoid, but—’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he invited her calmly, and when she’d sketched out the details he said, ‘You’re right.’

  ‘That I should check the baby out, in view of Matthew’s illness, or that I’m being paranoid?’

  ‘Both. In medicine, as in real life—’

  ‘Oh, medicine’s not real life, according to you?’ she cut in.

  ‘No, it’s real life concentrated until it’s four times as thick…’

  Maggie laughed.

  ‘And in both, it’s not the likely odds of a particular outcome that count, it’s how serious the consequences are. From what you’ve said, I’m close to a hundred per cent certain this baby doesn’t have meningitis. But if she did, would you ever forgive yourself?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘So go and check her out. I won’t come in this time, and for a premium of around ten minutes of your time, you’ve insured yourself against a lifetime of losing sleep.’

  Maggie’s visit to the Pickford household unfolded exactly as she and Will had both predicted. The baby’s temperature had dropped significantly, she had developed a runny nose and she had no rash or neck stiffness. She was now sleeping peacefully, and when Maggie crept in to take a look, she was presented with the familiar sight of a baby with a developing cold.

  ‘Is the doctor feeling better now?’ Will asked when she came out of the house.

  He had got out of the car for some fresh air, and was pacing up and down the steep gr
avel driveway.

  ‘Much,’ Maggie answered. ‘Since the patient is feeling better.’

  ‘Good.’ He flung her one of his gorgeous smiles.

  ‘When did you get to be this thoughtful?’ Maggie asked without thinking. Not the sort of thing you should say aloud, but somehow with Will she always had.

  He stilled for a fraction of a second, then said lightly, ‘Around the same time as most guys, I guess.’

  ‘And when’s that?’

  ‘You tell me!’

  ‘With men like you, often it’s never!’

  This time, his stillness wasn’t momentary, but it was definitely threatening. ‘If I’m supposed to regard that as a backhanded compliment, Maggie, sorry, I don’t,’ he said. ‘That’s like telling a woman that she seems surprisingly intelligent for a blonde.’

  ‘Now you’re a feminist, too?’

  Oh, hell, what was wrong with her tonight?

  ‘I think what I think,’ he growled. He strode down the driveway towards the car, and the loose gravel rattled. In the neighbouring yard, a dog barked.

  Apologise, Maggie.

  ‘Can we…uh…rewind the tape a little?’ she asked. It was inadequate, but both her tongue and her brain stubbornly announced themselves incapable of doing better.

  ‘To what point in the conversation?’

  ‘To the place where I said thanks.’

  ‘Oh, right, yeah, you did,’ he drawled. ‘I’d almost forgotten.’

  ‘Sorry, OK? I’m sorry.’

  He sighed between his teeth. ‘Yeah, so am I. Look, shall we forget dessert? Obviously this joining your practice thing is a non-starter, so there’s nothing to discuss. Just drop me back at the hotel. Daniel sometimes wakes up around this time and I doubt he’ll react well to an unknown babysitter. I told the woman I wasn’t planning to leave the hotel.’

  Remorse burned on Maggie’s skin like steam in a sauna.

  ‘Will, do you have Daniel with you? Why didn’t you say? You didn’t need to come with me to see Matthew. I assumed he was at home in Arizona with Alison.’

  ‘Home in Arizona is with me,’ he answered slowly. ‘I have custody now. And Daniel is why I need to make this move.’

  ‘Listen, can we rewind the tape right back to where you first came up to me with those lovely flowers?’ Maggie caught up to him just as they reached the car, parked precariously in the steep, rutted driveway. She touched his arm, but let her hand drop again at once. ‘Daniel is the reason you were late, isn’t he?’