The Doctor's Unexpected Family Read online

  The emotion in the room was palpable—anger as well as tears. The sister glared at Alison, her lips pressed shut, her jaw shaking, her eyes red and swollen. Alison didn’t look at her. Staring stony-eyed into the air, she seemed locked in her own private hell, and Caroline felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  Declan must have noticed the atmosphere, but this didn’t show from his manner.

  ‘I’m Dr McCulloch,’ he said. ‘And this is my technician, Caroline. We’re going to be drawing some material from your breast. Your right breast, isn’t it?’

  ‘She won’t let me see it,’ the sister said. ‘She wouldn’t show me, but I made her come in.’

  ‘You bullied me, Megan.’

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me that!’

  ‘It sounds as if you’ve done the right thing to seek some help,’ Declan assured both women in a neutral tone. ‘Can we get you to lie down, Alison? This won’t take long.’

  Although at this rate, the seconds would stretch. A fine needle aspiration wasn’t usually this tense.

  Caroline checked her trolley. Slides, fixative, staining solutions, rinser, all present and correct. Declan would need syringe and needle first. She put on gloves and took the items from a drawer to hand to him.

  Alison had tears rolling down her cheeks again. Although she’d lain down as Declan had asked, she still had the gauze pressed to her breast. ‘We’ll need you to lie flat now, and to take your hand away,’ he told her.

  She gave a sharp little nod, closed her eyes, tightened her mouth into a creased slit and carefully lifted her hand and the blood-soaked gauze pad from her breast. Looking up from her trolley, Caroline felt ill at what she saw, and Megan gasped and swore and almost screamed.

  ‘My God, Alison, my God, my God!’

  ‘Leave me alone, OK?’

  Declan somehow managed not to betray the horror they all felt. This woman had a lump on her breast the size and consistency of an overripe plum. It was weepy and boggy and bleeding, and the patient must have known for months that something was seriously wrong.

  ‘Why did you let this happen?’ her sister said on a harsh whisper. ‘My God, I used to be a nurse. If you’d shown me…Why?’

  ‘How do I know why? It got away from me. It didn’t seem to matter. After the divorce…’

  ‘Is Eddie the only person who counts? And the fact that he left? I am so angry with you! I am so unspeakably angry! What about the rest of us? How dare you hurt Mum and Dad, and me and Lukey and everyone by letting this happen, Alison?’

  ‘Alison,’ Declan’s voice came in quietly. ‘I need you to lie still for me now so I can see if we’ve any chance of getting a sample. Caroline, can you pass me a fresh dressing? I’m going to see if I can clean the skin around the area. And, Alison, I’m going to have a little press, here, to see what’s going on.’

  He did his best, palpating the distended side of the breast in search of a distinct tumour, but Caroline wasn’t at all surprised when he announced, after a minute or two, ‘No, we’re not going to go ahead with the procedure, Alison.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ she rasped out. ‘Are you sending me home?’

  He broke the thick silence after just a second or two. ‘No, I’m not sending you home. Not for long, anyway. I’m sending you—’ He broke off. ‘Forgive me, I’m new around here. Where are we sending her, Caroline?’

  ‘Canberra. Dr Cassidy will want to send her to Canberra.’

  ‘Of course. To Canberra. You’ll be referred to an oncologist there, who will decide on the best course of treatment. You’ll most likely receive a course of radio-and chemotherapy to try and shrink the mass before surgery. It’ll take around six weeks, on an outpatient basis. You’ll be able to talk to someone here about how to arrange accommodation near the hospital.’

  He raised his eyebrows at Caroline and she confirmed with a quick nod that, yes, that was the way it would work here.

  ‘So it’s c-cancer?’ Alison’s jaw shuddered.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alison. It’s a sizeable malignant mass. There’s no point in my trying to soften the news.’

  ‘How can you even ask him that?’ Megan cut in, almost yelling at her sister. ‘Now you ask? Now you act like this is a shock?’

  Alison closed her eyes again and a fresh brimming of tears squeezed out. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense. I know I’ve been stupid. Which doesn’t make it easier, Megan, believe me. Knowing I should have done something about it. Showed you. Believe me, it doesn’t make it any easier.’

  ‘Listen, we’ll do everything we can, OK?’ Megan’s voice came on a harsh whisper, cracking with every second word. ‘I’ll come to Canberra with you, at least for the first couple of treatments. We can beat this. It may not have spread.’

  Caroline and Declan left the sisters still talking in a whirl of dark emotion. The squeaking wheel of the trolley provided an incongruous note of banality as Caroline nudged it through the doorway to return it to where it lived.

  ‘Is there any chance she can beat it?’ she murmured to Declan as they headed for the nurses’ station to speak to Nell.

  He shook his head slowly. ‘I wouldn’t be very optimistic. A mass that size. It has to have spread elsewhere. They’ll scan her for secondaries in Canberra, of course. It was granulated, inflamed…’

  ‘Carcinoma. Why did she let it happen? I understand exactly how her sister feels! There are obviously people who care about her who are going to be devastated by this.’

  ‘She’s devastated now, herself, I think.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘People play games with themselves, Caroline. They stick their tongues out at death and fate and love. Her self-esteem was obviously low after the divorce.’

  ‘And the lump grew one day at a time, I guess. There was always tomorrow. It wouldn’t be that much worse, she probably thought, if she did something about it tomorrow, and not today.’

  ‘Exactly. Too many tomorrows, coming one at a time. Well, we’re just philosophising here, psychoanalysing. It’s bewildering. That’s one of the more extreme cases of denial that I’ve seen.’

  Nell looked up from the notes she was scribbling. ‘Could you do anything with it?’

  Declan shook his head. ‘There’s no palpable tumour, nowhere to stick the needle even if there’d been a hope of getting an uncontaminated sample.’

  ‘So, Canberra.’

  ‘So Caroline tells me.’

  ‘Radio, chemo, then back here for a biopsy, to see exactly what we’re dealing with. Her odds aren’t good, are they?’

  ‘No, and she knows it.’

  ‘Did the sister see it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alison wouldn’t let her in before. I nearly gasped out loud, when I got her to show me.’ Nell shook her head, and though the movement was as brisk and cool as usual, Caroline could tell that her old friend had reacted the same way she had herself.

  ‘The sister screamed,’ Declan said. ‘I got the feeling it might do Alison good to find out how much her family cares.’

  ‘There are better ways to find out that people care,’ Nell said.

  She was right, and after that statement there didn’t seem to be anything more left to say. Caroline and Declan headed along the walkway toward the other building, and neither of them spoke until they’d reached the stairs. Steph came past, on her way out, and wished them both a nice weekend. Caroline’s reply came out stiltedly, but Steph was in too much of a hurry to notice. She had car keys already jingling in her hand.

  ‘Are you all right now, Caroline?’ Declan asked.

  ‘I’m fine. I’ll go home to Josh and give him a big hug.’

  ‘He’s a nice kid, I bet.’ Although it was just a polite line, he sounded as if he meant it. Caroline couldn’t help checking his face with a quick, covert glance. She knew she’d begun to look at him too often…though not as often as she wanted to.

  ‘Well, I think so,’ she answered, looking away again. ‘But moth
ers aren’t very objective. What about you, Declan? Is Suzy coming down this weekend? I hope you’re not going home to an empty house.’

  ‘She’s still in Sydney.’

  ‘Oh. That’s a pity.’

  She almost blurted out an invitation.

  Come home and have dinner with Josh and me.

  She could almost believe that he wanted her to. He’d stopped, just in front of the door that led into the department, as if he was waiting. He had a smile on his face. Barely there, really. Just a tiny upward flick at the corners, and a softening around his unlined eyes. Warmth flooded her.

  She took in a breath. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’ll tidy my desk.’

  ‘Mmm. Is the House of Siam any good, do you know?’

  ‘I’ve had take-away from there, with Josh, and we liked it. But we’re both good with spicy food.’

  ‘Whereas Irishmen only like stew and potatoes?’ Now he was really smiling, teasing her for her unthinking reliance on stereotypes.

  ‘Sorry!’ she said.

  He clicked his tongue. ‘I’ll see you on Monday, Caroline.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Emma said. ‘Can I go to sleep now?’

  ‘No,’ Kit answered, merciless. ‘I want my turn.’

  ‘Same here,’ Caroline agreed.

  ‘I now realise,’ Nell mumbled, ‘that having first turn was a mistake.’

  ‘What does the book say?’

  “‘Draw the massage peacefully to a close, on an outward breath”,’ Caroline read. “‘Gently cover the patient with a warmed towel. Invite him/her to rest for a few minutes before rising from the massage table.” Reading between the lines, and leaving out the fact that we’re not using massage tables, I interpret that to mean you’re not allowed to go to sleep.’

  ‘Wait till you’re in our position!’ Nell mumbled again.

  Nell was the one who’d bought the teach-yourself-massage book and suggested that it would be a fun thing to do together over the course of several weekends. This sort of thing had become a keynote to the friendship between the four women over the past year. They’d actively challenged the notion that for single women there was ‘nothing to do’ in an Australian country town of Glenfallon’s size by generating their own entertainment.

  Last year’s winery tour had been the first item in their informal programme. Emma had given them several French cooking lessons following a three-month break from nursing spent at an école de cuisine in Paris. Kit was researching setting up a book group under the auspices of the local library.

  Caroline thought they ought to do more with movies than simply each rent something separately from the video shop at the last minute on a Sunday evening and take it home to watch in solitary state at home.

  Of course, Kit and Emma weren’t solitary any more. They each had a lovely man to snuggle up with in front of their movies.

  Caroline knew Nell well enough to perceive that beneath her often caustic exterior she was frightened about this—frightened of being the last one left, of losing all her female friends to widened horizons and changed lives.

  I don’t think she has too much to worry about in my case, Caroline thought as she stripped to the waist and lay face down on the towel-covered camping sleep-mat on Emma’s living-room floor. She adjusted a couple of rolled up towels against her torso so that they accommodated the press of her breasts, and was comfortable.

  And marriage hadn’t taken Kit and Emma away, in any case, her train of thought continued. Or not yet. They’d loved the massage idea.

  Gian and Pete weren’t around this afternoon. They’d been co-opted into Tom’s social men’s tennis programme with poor Declan. Bonnie was with her grandmother, and Pete’s girls had gone to Canberra for the weekend to spend some time with his ex-wife, Claire. With the house all to themselves, it was very pleasant to have soft music in the background while they went through the book’s step-by-step instructions on how to massage the back, shoulders and spine.

  Caroline abandoned herself to the relaxing sensations and soon understood exactly why Nell and Emma had pleaded so shamelessly for sleep. Time stopped. She hardly heard the music. Didn’t think about her worries concerning Robert and Josh. Didn’t think about anything. She just relaxed…

  “‘Stroke firmly outwards with both hands from the base of the spine to the hips, then recommence the effleurage movement at the shoulders”.’ Emma had a soothing, musical voice as she read each instruction aloud to Nell.

  ‘It’s a bloody nuisance.’ Feet drummed without warning on the wooden floorboards of the veranda at the front of the house. Their rhythm was irregular, and unmistakably male. Caroline had only vaguely heard a car somewhere close. A groan sounded. ‘I hope I can drive tomorrow, or Emma’s going to have to ferry me to and fro. Thanks for doing this, Declan.’

  That was Pete’s voice. They weren’t supposed to finish their tennis this early. And apparently Declan was with him. ‘It’s only a few streets out of my way,’ he said.

  Caroline heard Pete’s key rattle in the lock and both men entered. Without opening her eyes, Caroline could hear that one of them was hobbling. Pete, apparently.

  Emma’s hands stilled on Caroline’s shoulder blades. Her sensitised skin could feel the slippery film of massage oil between her back and Emma’s fingers, and the lavender and rosemary essences in the oil rose strong and spicy-sweet to her nostrils.

  ‘Sprained my damned ankle, Emma,’ Pete said in the doorway. ‘Oops.’

  ‘Oops’ was right, Declan thought, beside him.

  The scene that greeted the two men was very innocent, yet somehow very private. He’d met Pete and the others at the tennis club, and hadn’t known that at home Emma would have company. Or a class, or whatever it was. A massage class, apparently. He’d heard Emma’s voice, through the open living-room window, reading out something about effleurage, just before Pete hobbled onto the veranda.

  That was Caroline Archer in the middle of the floor, and Nell Cassidy, head of Glenfallon Hospital’s emergency department, bending over another female body which he didn’t want to look at any more closely in its current state of undress.

  Anyway, it was Caroline who drew his attention.

  She’d swept her loose dark hair up from her neck so that it didn’t get caught in the massage oil. Tendrils of hair streaked across her face and onto the rolled towel that supported her cheek, creating a strong contrast of colour and making her look as if she’d fallen asleep after some wild session of love-making. Her eyes were closed, and the planes of her face looked still and relaxed.

  Her arms lay at her sides, bent slightly outward. Her fingers were curled and soft, and her skin looked as tender as a baby’s. Her back glistened with oil, from her shoulders all the way down her spine. A towel was draped over her legs, reaching almost to her hips and exposing the stretch of skin where her buttocks began to swell.

  ‘We’ll leave you to it,’ Pete concluded. ‘Beer, Declan? Out the back, I think.’

  ‘That’d be great,’ Declan answered.

  And quickly, please, he added to himself, before anyone realises that I was staring, and that there’s a tightness across the front of my shorts that shouldn’t be there.

  He stepped back from the doorway and offered his shoulder for Pete to lean on as he hobbled along the corridor towards the back of the house. Pete passed him two cans of beer from the fridge, grabbed a packet of frozen peas for his ankle and they manoeuvred their way to the shady back veranda. Declan sank into a wooden outdoor chair with a groan of relief, just as Pete did, but for different reasons.

  Sure, what he’d just experienced had been a normal, physical, male reaction that no man ever expected to be able to fully control. It came, and it passed, and it wasn’t a problem…except when a man hadn’t seen his girlfriend for two weeks and wouldn’t be seeing her for at least five days more.

  In such a situation as that, it…no, still wasn’t a problem. The reaction had subsided now, and he hadn’t the remotest intention of acting on it,
or reading more into it than simple male physiology.

  But it was annoying.

  He hadn’t expected so much vagueness and uncertainty from Suzy as to when she’d be able to get down here. Before he’d moved from Sydney, she’d spoken blithely about commuting up from Glenfallon for script meetings and doing most of her actual writing here.

  So far, that hadn’t happened.

  Apparently she needed to consult more closely and more frequently with script editors and other writers than she’d anticipated. Her episodes were set in Sydney, too, and she needed to visit some of the locations in order to accurately envisage certain scenes.

  That made sense.

  Declan supported her career, and understood it as far as Suzy was able to explain it to him. But he liked to be able to make plans. He’d had a chaotic childhood, full of unpredictable streaks of hard times and equally unpredictable spells of good fortune, with an ongoing sense that you never knew which way the financial wind would blow next.

  Would Mum have a job? Would Dad win on the horses? Would they be celebrating this time next week? Or scraping the mould off the bread and hiding the dodgy taste and stale texture of it beneath a puddle of cheap jam?

  Was Suzy coming down at the end of the week, or not?

  If so, he could relax a bit. If not, he wanted to know as soon as possible, so he could get used to the idea.

  She didn’t seem to understand any of this. ‘I’ll let you know,’ she’d said last night, when he’d talked to her on the phone.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Well, before I get in the car, Dec, OK? Is that good enough?’

  ‘Sure. It’s fine. Whatever you can manage.’

  He drank his beer quickly. Pete looked grumpy and restless, and kept glancing back into the house, obviously hoping that the massage session would finish soon so that he and Emma could be alone. Declan understood exactly how he felt.

  ‘Will you be all right now?’ he asked Pete, after downing the last third of the can in one draught.