The Doctors' Christmas Reunion
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Meredith Webber
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CHAPTER ONE
ELLIE FRASER STUDIED her husband across the breakfast table.
Rather stern profile, with a straight nose and high forehead—until he smiled, of course, when the crinkly lines fanning out from his eyes made you want to smile back at him.
Brown, those eyes were, and she knew them both warm and soft as a cuddly blanket and hard as stones.
Dark hair, cut stubble-short—a number one, but due for a cut, so nearly a number two at the moment. It would feel like the fuzz on her old teddy if she ran her hand across it, but it had been a while since that had happened.
And that funny little whorl of hair, just on the hairline above his left eyebrow. A whorl she’d touched so often, twirled around her fingers, back when his hair was longer...
Her heart ached, just from looking at him.
She’d loved Andy. She knew that with the deep certainty that had been with her from the day he’d asked her to marry him.
She loved him still—she knew that, too—but she had somehow lost him, and along with him the oneness of them as a couple that had seemed so normal for so long.
Ellie and Andy. Andy and Ellie. All through university; through the almost soul-destroying work schedules of their internship; through their volunteer work in Africa—where they’d seen the worst that human beings could do to each other—their oneness had remained. Their goals, dreams and futures had been inextricably entwined in a way she’d thought would never fray, let alone be pulled apart.
And yet right now they couldn’t have been further apart, for all that Andy had asked her up to his flat in the top section of the old house to discuss some idea he had about a soccer team that he was setting up, which seemed to be of far more interest to him than the split in their relationship.
Or was it a useful diversion from it?
She’d thrown herself into work, but still had far too much time to think of the past and what might have been...
Andy had even cooked her breakfast, though she could have done without the pain that the pretend intimacy of eating together brought with it.
‘So I thought I’d have a barbecue here on Saturday—about lunchtime, before the game. Until we get a proper clubroom there’s nowhere else. I’ll ask some of the older team members to organise the food—just sausages and onions and bread, or bread rolls.’ He looked up at her and grinned. ‘And, yes, I’ll make sure the boys do some of the shopping, not just send the girls.’
Heaven help me! We’ve barely spoken for months, apart from work stuff, and still that grin makes my stomach churn...
Ellie swallowed a sigh along with the last of her toast, left the dirty dishes on the table—after all he had invited her as a guest—and made her way downstairs to her own flat, with its well-set-up medical surgery, enclosed under the old timbered home.
Ellie and Andy had moved to Maytown six months ago—she pregnant at last and Andy excited to be back in his home town, doing the job he’d always dreamed of doing: providing medical care for people in the often harsh Outback.
Maytown, a small town in the mid-west, had been established when settlers had brought sheep to the area, although now it was mainly cattle country. A large coal mine, opened twenty kilometres north of the town, had brought in extra business in recent years, with some of the mining families settling in the town while other workers lived in the on-site camp, flying in and flying out from places on the coast, working shifts of two weeks on duty then one week off.
Ellie had become as keen as he was on the town, both from Andy’s talk of growing up there and her visits to his family, so they’d leapt on Andy’s parents’ suggestion they buy the old house and practice. Andy’s parents had both been doctors, his mother running the practice, his father working at the hospital. The senior Frasers had wanted to move closer to the coast, cutting back on their workloads as they prepared for retirement.
To Andy and Ellie, it had seemed a magical coincidence—a little bit of serendipity—because they’d both wanted to bring up their longed-for child in the country. And it had been an ideal situation, with Ellie working from the surgery downstairs, knowing when she had the baby she’d get help but would still always be on hand, while Andy took over his father’s post at the hospital.
They’d moved in late July, and Ellie had practically danced through the old house, imagining it festooned with Christmas decorations. With the baby due in November, their first Christmas in their new home would be spent celebrating his or her—they hadn’t wanted to know the sex—first Christmas, too.
Just the three of them this year, a family...
It should have been perfect.
Until, at twenty-three weeks, when they’d settled in, and everything seemed to be going so well, she’d lost the baby and somehow, in the ensuing pain and anguish, lost Andy, too.
They’d turned to each other for comfort and support in those first hard weeks, and had also discovered that they were part of a very caring community. The local people had helped them through their grief with comforting words and little acts of kindness, flowers left on the front steps, a picture drawn by a kindergarten child, and more food than they could ever eat.
And, slowly, they’d made their way back to a different kind of peace, each wrapped in their private sorrow, but together still.
Until, six weeks after the loss...
Ellie sighed again.
Had she been wrong?
Pushed too hard?
She didn’t know.
But when she’d talked to Andy about one last attempt at IVF—not immediately, of course, but when her body was ready—Andy’s response had staggered her.
He had been adamant—enraged, really. His answer had been an adamant no.
Their two—well, three now—failed IVF attempts had already cost them too much, both financially and emotionally, and no amount of arguing was going to change his mind. He was done.
Completely done.
And if she thought they needed a baby to make their marriage complete then it couldn’t be much of a marriage.
Stunned by his pronouncement, Ellie’s immediate reaction had been to pack her bags and head back to the city, but she’d grown far too fond of the town and its people to just walk out and leave them without a GP.
Early on, she and Andy had tried to talk—one or other of them calling a truce—but the talk had soon become a row and now too many bitter, hurtful words hung in the air between them. Although Ellie could concede in her head that they would never have a child, she found it so much harder to accept it in her heart.
Even harder to accept that Andy wouldn’t consider trying...
So she’d opted to stay, but had packed her bags, moving into the flat downstairs, built to house the locums his parents had hired to replace Andy’s mother during her own maternity leave.
Did the townspeople know?
Was there gossip?
Ellie assumed they did and that the gossip existed as it did in all country towns, but few attempted to discuss their situation, although she often felt the warmth of their compassion.
The separate living and work situation had turned out for the best, Ellie thought glumly as she made her way through to the surgery and nodded a good morning to Maureen, her receptionist-cum-nurse, who was busy hanging tinsel along the front of her desk.
Dismissing the idea that it could possibly be that close to Christmas when she herself felt so bleak, her thoughts tracked back to Andy... But how were they going to cope with Christmas?
Didn’t the very word conjure up togetherness?
Joy and laughter and sharing...
Happiness, and hope for the future...
Could they carry on with Christmas celebrations as if nothing had ever happened? Sit at one of their tables—just the two of them—with silly paper hats on their heads, reading even sillier jokes?
The ache in Ellie’s heart deepened, but suddenly she knew.
She couldn’t do Christmas, not here, not with Andy—she couldn’t go on with things the way they were. If she advertised now, she might find a young doctor, fresh out of GP training, who’d like the challenge of working in the bush. Or a skilled, well-qualified migrant, happy to spend three years working in the country before applying for permanent citizenship.
She was sure there’d be someone.
She wouldn’t actually get a new appointee until January, when staff changes were generally made, but if she stayed until just before Christmas, then Andy could manage any emergencies for a week or two.
She’d go—
Where would she go?
Where the hell would she go?
Back to the city?
To what?
Ellie shook her head. That idea had zero appeal to her.
And she’d grown to love this town and its people so maybe she should go to another country town—one without Andy in it!
Ellie could feel her heart weeping at the thought, but she had to accept they couldn’t go on as they were.
‘What’s Andy up to with this soccer club idea of his?’
Maureen interrupted her gloomy thoughts as she pushed the final tack into place on the tinsel and fetched Ellie the mail.
Ellie shook her head, clearing Christmas—and leaving—from her mind.
Why had Andy started the soccer club? Had he told her while she was busy checking out all the familiar bits of the man she knew so well?
Loved, even?
‘I know he’s having a barbecue for them on Saturday; our side veranda seems to have become the unofficial clubhouse. And some of the kids I’ve seen coming and going are far from athletic types, so I guess he’s doing it to raise their fitness levels.’
‘My Josie’s joined,’ Maureen said, ‘and you know the worry I have with her weight. I would have thought she’d be the last person picked for any team, so maybe fitness is behind it.’
Ellie thought of the motley lot she’d seen on the side veranda from time to time, and for the first time wondered just what Andy was up to with this soccer club he’d started. The ones she’d noticed were a very mixed bunch.
There were a couple of gangly Sudanese lads from the group of refugee families who’d been re-settled in the country town, a young teenage girl who was often in trouble with the police, two girls from a remote aboriginal settlement who boarded in town for schooling, and a rather chubby lad she suspected was bullied at school...
Ellie took the mail through to her consulting room, aware yet again of the painful arguments that had split their oneness, and the gulf that had widened between them. Once Andy would have shared his interest in the team, and she’d have shared his enthusiasm...
This was no good, she needed to focus on work.
Ellie scanned the patient list, surprised to see Madeleine Courtney back again. Madeleine was a puzzle—one she would have shared with Andy had things been different.
But they weren’t, she reminded herself sharply, stamping down on the little kernel of unhappiness inside her before it could open, overwhelming her with memories and grief...
Only one other name stood out—Chelsea Smith. She frowned, trying to remember a patient of that name, then rubbed at her forehead because she knew she’d be frowning and it wouldn’t be long before she had permanent frown lines, and became known as Grumpy Doc Fraser.
‘Who’s this Chelsea Smith?’ she called to Maureen.
‘She’s a new patient. She phoned earlier so I put her in that space you leave every morning for emergencies.’
Thanks a bunch, Ellie thought, but she didn’t say it. New patients always took longer to treat as Ellie had to gather as much information as possible from them.
But Maureen had done the right thing, they made a point of never turning anyone away.
Shrugging off her rambling thoughts, she sorted through the mail, setting bills aside and tossing advertising bumf into the bin.
Andy sat in the tiny space that was his hospital ‘office’, scanning the internet for videos of soccer coaching, although images of Ellie as she’d sat in the kitchen again kept intruding. The hospital was quiet—too quiet—leaving him far too much time to think of Ellie and the mess their marriage was in.
Shouldn’t losing a child have brought them closer together, not thrown up a wall between them?
It was because thinking of Ellie caused him physical pain that he had thrown himself into establishing a Maytown soccer team, allowing soccer to block out all but his most insistent thoughts.
Would their son have played soccer?
The wave of pain that accompanied that thought sent Andy back to the videos.
How could he not have known how much it would hurt—losing the baby, losing his son?
He took a deep breath and went back to the videos. He needed to do something constructive and worthwhile.
The call to the emergency room—hardly big enough to deserve the name ‘department’—sent him in search of work, which was an even better diversion than the soccer team.
Although the ghost of Ellie always worked beside him, for this had been their dream: to work together in the country, bringing much-needed medical services to people who’d so often had to go without.
The patient was a child, a young boy—maybe twelve—bravely biting his lip to stem the tears while he clutched at his injured side.
‘Bloody fence strainers broke,’ a man Andy assumed was the father said. ‘The barbed wire whipped around him like a serpent. I’m Tim Roberts, and this here’s Jonah.’
Andy shook hands with the pair, then leant over to examine the wound. A red weal showed where the wire had hit the boy, but the serious wound was just above his right groin.
‘Bit of a barb got in there, but the wife pulled it out with tweezers and put some cream on it last night, but you can see how it is now.’
The area was red, swollen, and obviously infected.
‘I’ll need to open it up,’ he said. ‘We’ll just give Jonah light sedation and clean out the wound.’
There was no need to mention there could be damage to the bowel, but Andy would have to look carefully, which was why he’d chosen to give an anaesthetic over a local pain injection.
His mind ran through the roster of staff on duty. Tony was a good theatre nurse but Andrea—who was the only nurse trained to give anaesthetic—was off duty. He’d have to phone Ellie to come in and do it.
And the stupid flip of his heart when he even thought her name reminded him that the love he felt for his wife had never gone away.
Yes, they’d parted—pushed apart by the pain of loss—but the love he felt for her was as strong as ever.
Or was it longing more than love...?
‘I won’t be able to operate until later,’ he told Tim. ‘If you’ve other things to do in town, Jonah will be quite safe here. In fact, he’ll probably be thoroughly spoilt by the nurses.
Ellie was about to tackle her first patient of the day when her cellphone rang.
Her heart leapt when she saw it was Andy.
‘Sorry, El, love, but could you grab a half-hour later in the day to do a mild anaesthetic for me? Kid with infection just above the right groin. X-ray shows foreign object in there. He’s had breakfast so I’m happy to wait a few hours. How’s your day looking?’
Ellie switched back to her patient list.
‘I could do eleven-thirty,’ she said. ‘That would run into my lunch break so there’d be no rush.’
‘Grand!’
And he was gone, so suddenly that Ellie found herself peering at her cellphone as if it, rather than Andy, had caused the abrupt farewell.
Grand?
How could their love have grown so cold that ‘grand’ had become ‘goodbye’?
She was being silly, of course. It had been months since a telephone conversation had finished with ‘love you’.
Although he had called her ‘love’, the way he always had done...
That was just habit, she told herself firmly and hauled her mind back to work.
For all their separate lives at home, their professional lives had barely changed, their work lives remaining stable as they followed their usual routine, assisting each other when needed, discussing patients they shared.
They were even enjoying the togetherness of that side of things—well, Ellie did and she thought Andy seemed to...
Although that would stop—and soon—if she went ahead and moved.
Even thinking about it caused her pain.
Putting the mail aside for later, she powered up her computer, checked test results that had come in, then switched to her appointments list.
Back in work mode, she speed-read down the appointments, putting asterisks against the patients who’d be coming in for test results so she could be sure she’d re-read the results before the patient arrived.
Busy with the list, she barely heard the outer door open, but Maureen was greeting the first arrival, no doubt handing her the patient information forms to fill in.
She pressed the buzzer, and heard Maureen tell Chelsea to go on through.
It was a pregnant young woman who came in. A very young, not very pregnant woman, slight and blonde, who seemed strangely familiar.
‘Don’t I know you?’ she asked, smiling at the obviously nervous young woman.
A nod in response.
Ellie smiled again as she asked, ‘Do I have to guess how, or will you tell me?’
Another nod, then Chelsea drew in a deep breath.
‘I thought Andy might be here,’ she said, ‘although Aunty Meg always worked here and Uncle Doug at the hospital.’
Aunty Meg, Uncle Doug: Andy’s parents?
Light dawned.
‘Of course I know you! You’re Chelsea Fraser. I’m so sorry I didn’t recognise you, but you’ve kind of grown since you were flower-girl at our wedding. Did you come here to see Andy?’
Chelsea frowned.
‘Well, I came to see both of you really. I’m pregnant, you see, and I wondered whether I could stay with you until I have the baby, because you probably heard Mum and Dad split up and Mum’s gone off to find herself, whatever that means. She’s in India, or maybe Nepal, and Dad’s gone to Antarctica again, and Harry—you remember my older brother Harry?—well, he’s supposed to be looking after me but he’s at uni most of the time or out partying so he’s never there.’
‘You’re all on your own?’ Ellie asked.
‘Well, Alex—that’s my boyfriend—he comes over...’
Tears began to stream down Chelsea’s face, and Ellie left her chair to walk around and wrap her arms around the unhappy, lonely child. Ellie held her tightly and let her cry out her tension, handing her the box of tissues when the sobs became hiccups as the tears dried up.
‘I didn’t mean for this to happen,’ Chelsea whispered, patting the bump. ‘But I was so lonely and Alex loves me, and I was on the Pill but must have forgotten to take it or something and then I wasn’t sure, you see... But of course I was pregnant and Alex wanted to tell his parents and have me come and live with them, but then they might think Mum and Dad are really awful parents, and they’re not, you know, they’ve just kind of lost their way.’
Tell me about it! Ellie thought, but didn’t say, although she did think Chelsea’s mother could have waited a little longer to find herself. She shook the thought away and pressed Maureen’s buzzer twice to warn her the next appointment would be late.
‘They brought us up to be independent,’ Chelsea explained, ‘and to think for ourselves, but I didn’t want everyone at school to know about this, or the cousins and all, so I thought if you and Andy let me stay here until the baby’s born, then I can go back to school and no one would know.’
Except there’d be a baby somewhere, Ellie thought, but didn’t say.
‘No one back home knows because it’s been cold and I’ve been able to wear baggy jumpers back at home. I told my friends my uncle needed me out at his place in the bush and here I am.’
She’d so obviously practised what she was going to say that it came out in a slightly garbled rush, and Ellie had to be careful not to smile.
‘Does anyone know where you are?’
Chelsea nodded.
‘I told Harry and he thought it was a good idea. He said there wasn’t anything Mum or Dad could do to help at the moment and at least I’d be safe with you and Andy.’
‘Of course you will be,’ Ellie assured her, then, after a niggle of doubt, added, ‘I’ll have to talk to Andy, but I’m sure he’d be happy to have you. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of bedrooms in the old house.’
‘And there’s the little flat downstairs. We often stayed in it when we came for Christmas.’
My little flat.
And with Chelsea here how long would it take for word to travel along the family grapevine and Andy’s parents to realise things had gone wrong between her and Andy? They’d kept it from them while Meg had been going through chemo for breast cancer and they hadn’t wanted to heap more worries on her head.
Meg had become more of a friend than a mother-in-law for Ellie, who’d known from the first time she’d met Andy’s family that she’d love to be one of their warm, happy household. Her own father was dead, and her mother drifted from one country to another, one man to another, much as Chelsea’s mother appeared to be doing. Family had been a big gap in Ellie’s life.
So upsetting Meg with the story of their split had never even been a consideration.
And now here was Chelsea, and there was no getting away from it, despite the current circumstances, the Frasers were Ellie’s family now, so Chelsea was her responsibility as well as Andy’s.
‘I should be examining you, not chatting,’ she said. ‘Do you want to hop up on the couch? Nothing invasive, I just need to feel what’s going on then we’ll take some blood for tests, and check your blood pressure and pulse, and Maureen will make an appointment for you to come in for a scan later in the week.
‘Relax!’ she told Chelsea as her patient lay rigid on the couch. ‘Do you know how pregnant you might be?’
A quick shake of the head was the only answer.
‘No worries!’ Ellie told her gently. ‘We can do a measure of what we call the fundal height and that will give us an approximate time. It’s not entirely accurate, and is a better guide after twenty weeks, but let’s see.’
The measurement of fourteen centimetres gave her a gestation period of twelve to sixteen weeks.
‘Does that seem about right to you? Can you remember when you had your last period?’
Chelsea shook her head.
‘I was so sad and lonely when Mum went away, and then Dad did, too. Alex has been my boyfriend for ages, and he comforted me and stayed over a few times and it just happened.’
Of course it did, Ellie thought, but didn’t say. Poor kid must have been totally lost, with her parents not only breaking up but taking off. Mum heaven knew where, and Dad—who Ellie remembered now was a climatologist—heading off to the ice and snow at the very bottom of the world.
I need to talk to Andy.
This thought had passed through Ellie’s head earlier, but now it became insistent.
‘Well, you seem totally fit to me,’ she told Chelsea, ‘and as you know there’s plenty of room for you. How did you get here? Did you bring clothes?’
‘Train, and not much, to answer both your questions. The train got in this morning, and as far as clothes, I knew it would be hot, and I didn’t really know what to get.’
Of course, the train had come in this morning; it was the big weekly event in the town, for it not only brought people but fresh fruit and vegetables.
‘Well, how about you go upstairs and choose a room along the back veranda—Andy uses the side one for his soccer club and people come and go along the front one. Have a shower and then, if you’re up to it, you could walk uptown—it’s only two blocks—and check out the limited array of clothes in the general store. I’ll phone them and tell them to put anything you want on our account.’
‘Oh, no, I’ve got my own credit card,’ Chelsea protested. ‘But I’d like to get a few things.’
‘Great! And when you get back you can help yourself to anything in the kitchen. There’s bread and ham and cheese for sandwiches, and plenty of salad things. I might be late back for lunch as I have to help Andy with an op, but just look after yourself. And come and see Maureen down here if you need to ask anything. I know that doesn’t sound very hospitable, but I’ve got patients all morning. Will you be okay?’
To Ellie’s surprise, Chelsea flung her arms around her neck and hugged her hard, tears in her voice as she said, ‘You’ve been so kind. I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m really grateful!’
‘Of course you deserve it,’ Ellie said, a little choked up herself. ‘You’re family!’
How best to help her?
What would Andy advise?
