Unlocking Her Surgeon's Heart
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Fiona Lowe
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CHAPTER ONE
‘WANT TO CLOSE?’
Noah Jackson, senior surgical registrar at the Melbourne Victoria Hospital, smiled behind his mask as he watched the answer to his question glow in the eyes of his surgical intern.
‘Do I support The Westies?’ Rick Stewart quipped, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. His loyalty to the struggling Australian Rules football team was legendary amongst the staff, who teased him mercilessly.
‘For Mrs Levatti’s sake, you need to close better than your team plays,’ Noah said, knowing full well Rick was more than capable.
There’d be no way he’d allow him to stitch up his patient unless he was three levels above competent. The guy reminded him of himself back in the day when he’d been an intern—keen, driven and determined to succeed.
‘Thanks, team.’ Noah stepped back from the operating table and stripped off his gloves, his mind already a long way from work. ‘It’s been a huge week and I’ve got the weekend off.’
‘Lucky bastard,’ muttered Ed Yang, the anaesthetist. ‘I’m on call for the entire weekend.’
Noah had little sympathy. ‘It’s my first weekend off in over a month and I’m starting it at the Rooftop with one of their boutique beers.’
‘I might see you there later,’ Lizzy said casually.
The scout nurse’s come-hither green eyes sparkled at him, reminding him of a previous good time together. ‘Everyone’s welcome,’ he added, not wanting to tie himself down to anyone or anything. ‘I’ll be there until late.’
He strode out and headed purposefully towards the change rooms, savouring freedom. Anticipation bubbled in him as he thought about his hard-earned weekend of sleeping in, cycling along the Yarra, catching a game at the MCG, eating at his favourite café, and finally seeing the French film everyone was talking about. God, he loved Melbourne in the spring and everything that it offered.
‘Noah.’
The familiar deep voice behind him made him reluctantly slow and he turned to face the distinguished man the nursing staff called the silver fox.
‘You got a minute?’ Daniel Serpell asked.
No. But that wasn’t a word an intern or registrar ever said to the chief of surgery. ‘Sure.’
The older man nodded slowly. ‘Great job on that lacerated liver on Tuesday. Impressive.’
The unexpected praise from the hard taskmaster made Noah want to punch the air. ‘Thanks. It was touch and go for a bit and we almost put the blood bank into deficit but we won.’
‘No one in this hospital has any doubt about your surgical abilities, Noah.’
Something about the way his boss hit the word surgical made Noah uneasy. ‘That’s a good thing, right?’
‘There are nine areas of competency to satisfy the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.’
Noah was familiar with every single one of them now that his final surgical exams were only a few months away. ‘Got them all covered, Prof.’
‘You might think that, Noah, but others don’t agree.’ He reached inside his jacket and produced a white envelope with Noah’s name printed on it.
‘What’s this?’
‘Your solution to competency number two.’
‘I don’t follow.’
The prof sighed. ‘Noah, I can’t fault you on technical skills and I’d trust you to operate on me, my wife and my family. You’re talented with your patients when they’re asleep but we’ve had complaints from your dealings with them when they’re awake.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We’ve also had complaints from staff.’
Noah’s gut clenched so tight it burned and the envelope in his hand suddenly developed a crushing weight. ‘Is this an official warning?’
‘No, not at all,’ the prof said genially. ‘I’m on your side and this is the solution to your problem.’
‘I didn’t know I had a problem,’ he said, not able to hide his defensiveness.
The professor raised a brow. ‘And after this, I hope you won’t have one either.’
‘You’re sending me on a communications course?’ The idea of sitting around in a circle with a group of strangers and talking about feelings appalled him.
‘Everything you need to know is in the envelope. Just make sure you’re ready to start at eight o’clock on Monday morning.’ He clapped a hand on Noah’s shoulder. ‘Enjoy your weekend off.’
As his boss walked away, Noah’s anxiety ramped up ten notches and the pristine, white envelope now ticked like an unexploded bomb. Not wanting to read it in public, he walked quickly to the doctors’ lounge, thankfully finding it empty. He ripped open the envelope and scanned the brief letter.
Dear Dr Jackson
Your four-week rotation at the Turraburra Medical Clinic commences on Monday, August 17th at eight a.m. Accommodation, if required, is provided at the doctor’s flat located on Nautalis Parade. Collect the key from the real estate agent in Williams Street before noon, Saturday. See the enclosed map and tourist information, which we hope will be of assistance to you.
Enjoy your rotation in Turraburra—the sapphire of South Gippsland.
Nancy Beveridge
Surgical Trainee Placement Officer.
No. No way. Noah’s intake of breath was so sharp it made him cough. This could not be happening. They couldn’t do this to him. Not now. Suddenly, the idea of a communications course seemed positively fun.
Relax. You must have read it wrong. Fighting the red heat of rage that was frantically duelling with disbelief, he slowly reread the letter, desperately hoping he’d misunderstood its message. As his eyes scrolled left to right and he slowed his mind down to read each and every word, it made no difference. The grim message the black and white letters told didn’t change.
He was being exiled—sent rural—and the timing couldn’t be worse. In fact, it totally sucked. Big time. He had less than six months before he sat his final surgical examinations and now more than ever his place was at the Victoria. He should be here, doing cutting-edge surgery, observing the latest technology, attending tutorials and studying. Always studying. He should not be stuck in a country clinic day in, day out, listening to the ramblings of patients with chronic health issues that surgery couldn’t solve.
General practice. A shudder ran through him at the thought. There was a reason he’d aimed high and fought for his hard-earned place in the surgical programme, and a large part of it was to avoid the mundane routine of being a GP. He had no desire at all to have a long and ongoing connection with patients or get to know their families or be introduced to their dogs. This was blatantly unfair. Why the hell had he been singled out? Damn it, none of the other surgical registrars had been asked to do this.
A vague memory of Oliver Evans bawling him out months ago flickered across his mind but surely that had nothing to do with this. Consultants yelled at registrars from time to time—usually during moments of high stress when the odds were stacked against them and everyone was battling to save a patient’s life. Heated words were exchanged, a lot of swearing went down but at the end of the day it was forgotten and all was forgiven. It was all part of the cut and thrust of hospital life.
Logic immediately penetrated his incredulity. The prof had asked him to teach a workshop to the new interns in less than two weeks so this Turraburra couldn’t be too far away from downtown Melbourne. Maybe he was just being sent to the growth corridor—the far-flung edges of the ever-growing city, the outer, outer ’burbs. That wouldn’t be too bad. A bit of commuting wouldn’t kill him and he could listen to his training podcasts on the drive there and back each day.
Feeling more positive, he squinted at the dot on the map.
His expletive rent the air, staining it blue. He’d been banished to the back of beyond.
* * *
Lilia Cartwright, never Lil and always Lily to her friends, stood on a whitewashed dock in the ever-brightening, early morning light. She stared out towards the horizon, welcoming the sting of salt against her cheeks, the wind in her hair, and she smiled. ‘New day, Chippy,’ she said to her tan and white greyhound who stared up at her with enormous, brown, soulful eyes. ‘Come on, mate, look a bit more excited. After this walk, you’ll have another day ahead of you of lazing about and being cuddled.’
Chippy tugged on his leash as he did every morning when they stood on the dock, always anxious to get back indoors. Back to safety.
Lily loved the outdoors but she understood only too well Chippy’s need for safe places. Given his experiences during the first two years of his life, she didn’t begrudge him one little bit, but she was starting to think she might need a second dog to go running with to keep fit. Walking with Chippy hardly constituted exercise because she never broke a sweat.
Turning away from the aquamarine sea, she walked towards the Turraburra Medical Centre. In the grounds of the small bush nursing hospital and nursing home, the glorious bluestone building had started life a hundred and thirty years ago as the original doctor’s house. Now, fully restored, it was a modern clinic. She particularly loved her annexe—the midwifery clinic and birth centre. Although it was part of the medical centre, it had a separate entrance so her healthy, pregnant clients didn’t have to sit in a waiting room full of coughing and hacking sick people. It had been one of the best days of her career when the Melbourne Midwifery Clinic had responded to her grant application and incorporated Turraburra into their outreach programme for rural and isolated women.
The clinic was her baby and she’d taken a lot of time and effort in choosing the soothing, pastel paint and the welcoming décor. She wanted it to feel less like a sterile clinic and far more like visiting someone’s home. In a way, given that she’d put so much of herself into the project, the pregnant women and their families were visiting her home.
At first glance, the birthing suite looked like a room in a four-star hotel complete with a queen-sized bed, side tables, lounge chairs, television, bar fridge and a roomy bathroom. On closer inspection, though, it had all the important features found in any hospital room. Oxygen, suction and nitrous oxide outlets were discreetly incorporated in the wall whilst other medical equipment was stored in a cupboard that looked like a wardrobe and it was only brought out when required.
The birth centre didn’t cater for high-risk pregnancies—those women were referred to Melbourne, where they could receive the high-tech level of care required for a safe, happy and healthy outcome for mother and baby. The Turraburra women who were deemed to be at a low risk of pregnancy and childbirth complications gave birth here, close to their homes and families. For Lily it was an honour to be part of the birth and to bring a new life into the world.
As Turraburra was a small town, it didn’t stop there either. In the three years since she’d returned home and taken on the position of the town’s midwife, she’d not only delivered a lot of babies, she’d also attended a lot of children’s birthday parties. She loved watching the babies grow up and she could hardly believe that those first babies she’d delivered were now close to starting three-year-old kinder. As her involvement with the babies and children was as close as she was ever likely to get to having a family of her own, she treasured it even more.
Lily stepped into the main part of the clinic and automatically said, ‘Morning, Karen,’ before she realised the receptionist wasn’t behind her desk. Karen’s absence reminded her that a new doctor was starting today. Sadly, since the retirement of their beloved Dr Jameson two years ago, this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. She remembered the fuss they’d all made of the first new doctor to arrive in town—ever hopeful he’d be staying for years to come—but he’d left after three months. Seven other doctors had followed in a two-year period and all of the staff, including herself, had become a bit blasé about new arrivals. The gloss had long faded from their hope that this one might actually stay for the long term and grand welcoming gestures had fallen by the wayside.
Turraburra, like so many rural towns in Australia, lacked a permanent doctor. It did, however, have more than its fair share of overseas and Australian general practitioner trainees as well as numerous medical students. All of them passed through the clinic and hospital on short stays so they could tick their obligatory rural rotation off their list before hot-footing it back to Melbourne or Sydney or any other major capital city.
The cultural identity that to be Australian was to be at one with the bush was a myth. Australia was the most urbanised country in the world and most people wanted to be a stone’s throw from a big city and all the conveniences that offered. Lily didn’t agree. She loved Turraburra and it would take a major catastrophe for her to ever live in Melbourne again. She still bore the scars from her last attempt.
Some of the doctors who came to Turraburra were brilliant and the town begged them to stay longer, while others were happily farewelled with a collective sigh of relief and a long slug of fortifying beer or wine at the end of their rotation. Lily had been so busy over the weekend, delivering two babies, that she hadn’t had time to open the email she’d received late on Friday with the information about ‘doctor number nine’. She wondered if nine was going to be Turraburra’s lucky number.
Chippy frantically tugged at his leash again. ‘Yes, I know, we’re here. Hang on a second.’ She bent down and slid her hand under his wide silver and indigo decorative collar that one of the patients had made for him. It was elegant and had an air of Russian royalty about it, showing off his long and graceful neck. She released the clip from the leash and with far more enthusiasm than he ever showed on a walk, Chippy raced to his large, padded basket in the waiting room and curled up with a contented sigh.
He was the clinic’s companion dog and all the patients from the tiny tots to the ninety-year-olds loved and adored him. He basked in the daily stroking and cuddles and Lily hoped his hours of being cosseted went some way towards healing the pain of his early life at the hands of a disreputable greyhound racer. She stroked his long nose. ‘You have fun today and I’ll see you tonight.’
Chippy smiled in the way only greyhounds can.
She crossed the waiting room and was collecting her mail from her pigeonhole when she heard, ‘What the hell is that thing doing in here?’
She flinched at the raised, curt male voice and knew that Chippy would be shivering in his basket. Clutching her folders to her chest like a shield, she marched back into the waiting room. A tall guy with indecently glossy brown hair stood in the middle of the waiting room.
Two things instantly told her he was from out of town. Number one: she’d never met him. Number two: he was wearing a crisp white shirt with a tie that looked to be silk. It sat at his taut, freshly shaven throat in a wide Windsor knot that fitted perfectly against the collar with no hint of a gap or a glimpse of a top button. The tie was red and it contrasted dramatically with the dark grey pinstriped suit.
No one in Turraburra ever wore a suit unless they were attending a funeral, and even then no man in the district ever looked this neat, tailored, or gorgeous in a suit.
Gorgeous or not, his loud and curt voice had Chippy shrinking into his basket with fear. Her spine stiffened. Working hard at keeping calm and showing no fear, she said quietly, ‘I could ask you the same question.’
His chestnut-brown brows arrowed down fast into a dark V, forming a deep crease above the bridge of his nose. He looked taken aback. ‘I’m supposed to be here.’
She thought she heard him mutter, ‘Worse luck,’ as he quickly shoved a large hand with neatly trimmed nails out towards her. The abrupt action had every part of her urging her to step back for safety. Stop it. It’s okay. With great effort she glued her feet to the floor and stayed put but she didn’t take her gaze off his wide hand.
‘Noah Jackson,’ he said briskly. ‘Senior surgical registrar at Melbourne Victoria Hospital.’
She instantly recognised his name. She’d rung her friend Ally about him when she’d first heard he was meant to be coming but Ally had felt that there was no way he’d ever come to work at Turraburra. At the time it had made total sense because no surgery was done here anymore, and she’d thought there had just been a mistake. So why was he standing in the clinic waiting room, filling it with his impressive height and breadth?
She realised he was giving her an odd look and his hand was now hovering between them. Slowly, she let her right hand fall from across her chest. ‘Lilia Cartwright. Midwife.’
His palm slid against hers—warm and smooth—and then his long, strong fingers gripped the back of her hand. It was a firm, fast, no-nonsense handshake and it was over quickly, but the memory of the pressure lingered on her skin. She didn’t want to think about it. Not that it was awful, it was far from that, but the firm pressure of hands on her skin wasn’t something she dwelled on. Ever.
She pulled her hand back across her chest and concentrated on why Noah Jackson was there. ‘Has the Turraburra hospital board come into some money? Are they reopening the operating theatre?’
His full lips flattened into a grim line. ‘I’m not that lucky.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I haven’t come here as a surgeon.’
His words punched the air with the pop and fizz of barely restrained politeness, which matched his tight expression. Was he upset? Perhaps he’d come to Turraburra for a funeral after all. Her eyes flicked over his suit and, despite not wanting to, she noticed how well it fitted his body. How his trousers highlighted his narrow hips and sat flat against his abdomen. How the tailored jacket emphasised his broad shoulders.
Not safe, Lily. She swallowed and found her voice. ‘What have you come as, then?’
He threw out his left arm, gesticulating towards the door. ‘I’m this poor excuse of a town’s doctor for the next month.’
‘No.’ The word shot out automatically—deep and disbelieving—driven from her mouth in defence of her beloved town. In defence of the patients.
Turraburra needed a general practitioner, not a surgeon. The character traits required to become a surgeon—a driven personality, arrogance and high self-belief, along with viewing every patient in terms of ‘cutting out the problem’—were so far removed from a perfect match for Turraburra that it was laughable. What on earth was going on at the Melbourne Victoria that made them send a surgical registrar to be a locum GP? Heaven help them all.
His shoulders, already square, vibrated with tension and his brown eyes flashed with flecks of gold. ‘Believe me, Ms Cartwright,’ he said coldly, ‘if I had things my way, I wouldn’t be seen dead working here, but the powers that be have other plans. Neither of us has a choice.’
His antagonism slammed into her like storm waves pounding against the pier. She acknowledged that she deserved some of his hostility because her heartfelt, shock-driven ‘No’ had been impolite and unwelcoming. It had unwittingly put in her a position she avoided—that of making men angry. When it came to men in general she worked hard at going through life very much under their radar. The less she was noticed the better, and she certainly didn’t actively set out to make them angry.
She sucked in a breath. ‘I’m just surprised the Melbourne Victoria’s sent a surgeon to us, but, as you so succinctly pointed out, neither of us has a choice.’ She forced herself to smile, but it felt tight around the edges. ‘Welcome to Turraburra, Dr Jackson.’
He gave a half grunting, half huffing sound and swung his critical gaze back to Chippy. ‘Get the dog out of here. It doesn’t belong in a medical clinic.’
All her guilt about her own rudeness vanished and along with it her usual protective guard. ‘Chippy is the clinic’s therapy dog. He stays.’
Noah stared at the tall, willowy woman in front of him whose fingers had a death grip on a set of bright pink folders. Her pale cheeks had two bright spots of colour on them that matched her files and her sky-blue eyes sparked with the silver flash of a fencing foil. He was still smarting from her definite and decisive ‘No’. He might not want to work in this godforsaken place but who was she to judge him before he’d even started? ‘What the hell is a therapy dog?’
‘He provides some normalcy in the clinic,’ she said, her tone clipped.
‘Normalcy?’ He gave a harsh laugh, remembering his mother’s struggle to maintain any semblance of a normal life after her diagnosis. Remembering all the hours they’d spent in numerous medical practices’ waiting rooms, not dissimilar to this one, seeking a cure that had never come. ‘This is a medical clinic. It exists for sick people so there’s nothing normal about it. And talking about normal, that dog looks far from it.’
She pursed her lips and he noticed how they peaked in a very kissable bow before flushing a deep and enticing red. Usually, seeing something sexy like that on a woman was enough for him to turn on the charm but no way in hell was he was doing that with this prickly woman with the fault-finding gaze.
‘Chippy’s a greyhound,’ she snapped. ‘They’re supposed to be svelte animals.’
‘Is that what you call it?’ His laugh came out in a snort. ‘It looks anorexic to me and what’s with the collar? Is he descended from the tsars?’
He knew he was being obnoxious but there was something about Lilia Cartwright and her holier-than-thou tone that brought out the worst in him. Or was it the fact he’d spent the night sleeping on the world’s most uncomfortable bed and when he’d finally fallen asleep the harsh and incessant screeching of sulphur-crested cockatoos at dawn had woken him. God, he hated the country.
‘Have you quite finished?’ she said, her voice so cool he expected icicles to form on her ash-blonde hair. ‘Chippy calms agitated patients and the elderly at the nursing home adore him. Some of them don’t have anyone in their lives they can lavish affection on and Chippy is more than happy to be the recipient of that love. Medical studies have shown that a companion pet lowers blood pressure and eases emotional distress. Like I said, he absolutely stays.’
An irrational urge filled him to kick something and to kick it hard. He had the craziest feeling he was back in kindergarten and being timed out on the mat for bad behaviour. ‘If there’s even one complaint or one flea bite, the mutt goes.’
Her brows rose in a perfect arc of condescension. ‘In relative terms, Dr Jackson, you’re here for a blink of an eye. Chippy will far outstay you.’
The blink of an eye? Who was she kidding? ‘I’m here for seven hundred and twenty very long hours.’
Her blue eyes rounded. ‘You actually counted them?’
He shrugged. ‘It seemed appropriate at three a.m. when the hiss of fighting possums wearing bovver boots on my roof kept me awake.’
She laughed and unexpected dimples appeared in her cheeks. For a brief moment he glimpsed what she might look like if she ever relaxed. It tempted him to join her in laughter but then her tension-filled aura slammed back in place, shutting out any attempts at a connection.
He crossed his arms. ‘It wasn’t funny.’
‘I happen to know you could just have easily been kept awake by fighting possums in the leafy suburbs of Melbourne.’
Were they comrades-in-arms? Both victims of the vagaries of the Melbourne Victoria Hospital that had insisted on sending them to the back of beyond? A bubble of conciliation rose to the top of his dislike for her. ‘So you’ve been forced down here too?’
She shook her head so quickly that her thick and tight French braid swung across her shoulder. ‘Turraburra is my home. Melbourne was just a grimy pitstop I was forced to endure when I studied midwifery.’
He thought about his sun-filled apartment in leafy Kew, overlooking Yarra Bend Park. ‘My Melbourne’s not grimy.’
Again, one brow quirked up in disapproval. ‘My Turraburra’s not a poor excuse for a town.’
‘Well, at least we agree on our disagreement.’
‘Do you plan to be grumpy for the entire time you’re here?’
Her directness both annoyed and amused him. ‘Pretty much.’
One corner of her mouth twitched. ‘I guess forewarned is forearmed.’ She turned to go and then spun back. ‘Oh, and a word to the wise, that is, of course, if you’re capable of taking advice on board. I suggest you do things Karen’s way. She’s run this clinic for fifteen years and outstayed a myriad of medical staff.’
He bit off an acidic retort. He hadn’t even met a patient yet but if this last fifteen minutes with Ms Lilia Cartwright, Midwife, was anything to go by, it was going to be a hellishly long and difficult seven hundred and nineteen hours and forty-five minutes in Turraburra.
