The Doctor's Proposal. Marion Lennox

from an Australian doctor, with a patient she didn’t know, on his territory—but Jake’s body language said go right ahead. ‘And let us give you some pain relief,’ she added, guessing instinctively that if he was refusing oxygen, he’d also be refusing morphine. ‘We can make a huge difference. Not only in how long you’re likely to live but also in how you’re feeling.’

      ‘How can you be knowing that for sure?’ he muttered.

      ‘Angus, I have a patient back home in America,’ she said softly. ‘He’s been on oxygen now for the last ten years. It’s given him ten years he otherwise wouldn’t have had—ten years where he’s had fun.’

      ‘What fun can you have if you’re tied to an oxygen cylinder?’

      ‘Plenty,’ she said solidly. ‘Cyril babysits his grandson. He gardens. He—’

      ‘How can he garden?’ Angus interrupted.

      And Kirsty thought, Yes! Interest.

      ‘He wheels his cylinder behind him wherever he goes,’ she told him. ‘He treats it just like a little shopping buggy. I’ve watched him weeding his garden. He used a kneepad ’cos his knees hurt, but he doesn’t even think about the tiny oxygen tube in his nostril.’

      ‘He’s not like me.’

      ‘Jake says you have pulmonary fibrosis. He’s just like you.’

      ‘I haven’t got a grandson,’ Angus said, backed into a corner and still fighting.

      ‘No, but you’ll have a grand-niece or-nephew in a few weeks,’ she said with asperity. ‘I do think it’d be a shame not to make the effort to meet him.’

      The effect of her words was electric. Angus had been slumped on the bed, his entire body language betokening the end. Now he stiffened. He stared up at her, disbelief warring with hope. The whistling breathing stopped. The colour drained from his face and Kirsty thought maybe his breathing had totally stopped.

      But just when she was getting worried, just when Jake took a step forward and she knew that he’d had the same thought as she had—heart attack or stroke—Angus started breathing again and faint colour returned to his face.

      ‘A grand-nephew.’ He stared up, disbelief warring with hope. ‘Rory’s baby?’

      ‘Susie’s certainly pregnant with Rory’s child.’

      ‘Kenneth would have said—’

      ‘Kenneth—Rory’s brother—doesn’t want to know Susie,’ Kirsty told him, trying to keep anger out of her voice. ‘He’s made it clear he wants nothing to do with us. So we came out here hoping that the Uncle Angus who Rory spoke of with affection might show a little affection to Rory’s child in return.’ She steadied then and thought about what to say next. And decided. Sure, this wasn’t her patient—this wasn’t her hospice—but she was going in anyway. ‘And you can’t show affection by dying,’ she told him bluntly. ‘So if you have an ounce of selflessness in you, you’ll accept Dr Cameron’s oxygen—and maybe a dose of morphine in addition for comfort—you’ll say thank you very much, and you’ll get a good night’s sleep so you can meet your new relative’s mother in the morning.’

      But he wasn’t going so far yet. He was still absorbing part one. ‘Rory’s wife is pregnant.’ It was an awed whisper.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And I need to live if I’m to be seeing the baby.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You’re not lying?’

      ‘Why would she lie?’ Jake demanded, wheeling back to the bed. ‘Angus, can I hook you up to this oxygen like the lady doctor suggests, or can I not?’

      Angus stared at him. He stared at Kirsty.

      His old face crumpled.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, please.’

      Jake had an oxygen canister and a nasal tube hooked up in minutes. He gave Angus a shot of morphine and Angus muttered about interfering doctors and interfering relatives from America and submitted to both.

      Within minutes his breathing had eased and his colour had improved. They chatted for a little—more time while Kirsty noticed Jake didn’t so much as glance at his watch again—and finally they watched in relief as his face lost its tension. He’d been fighting for so long that he was exhausted.

      ‘We’ll leave you to sleep,’ Jake told him, and the old man smiled and closed his eyes.

      ‘Thank God for that,’ Jake said softly, and ushered Kirsty out the door. ‘A minor miracle. Verging on a major one.’

      ‘You really care,’ she said, and received a flash of anger for her pains.

      ‘What do you think?’

      There was only the matter of Susie’s omelette remaining.

      ‘I can do it,’ Kirsty muttered as Jake led her down to the castle’s cavernous kitchen. Somewhat to her relief, Deirdre’s love of melodrama and kitsch hadn’t permeated here. There was a sensible gas range, plus a neat little microwave. And a coffee-maker. A really good coffee-maker.

      ‘I’m staying here for ever,’ Kirsty told Jake the moment she saw it. She hadn’t seen a decent coffee since Sydney. ‘Dr Cameron, I can take over now. We’ll be fine.’

      ‘Call me Jake.’ Boris had followed them into the kitchen. The man and his dog were searching the refrigerator with mutual interest. ‘If you take your sister an omelette, will she eat it?’ he demanded. She stopped being flippant and winced.

      ‘Um…no.’

      ‘How did I guess that? I’ll take it.’

      ‘But you have more house calls.’

      ‘The girls will already be asleep,’ he muttered. ‘I may as well stay.’

      ‘Your wife goes to bed early?’ Kirsty asked, and he looked at her as if she was stupid. Which, seeing she was hugging a coffee-maker, might well be a reasonable assumption.

      ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘You. Toast. Me. Omelette.’ And he grinned down at the hopeful Boris. ‘And you—sit!’

      ‘Fair delineation.’

      ‘Speaking of delineation—you don’t want a medical partnership, do you?’ he asked, without much hope and from the depths of the refrigerator.

      ‘You don’t even know me,’ she said, startled.

      ‘I know you enough to offer you a job.’

      ‘You can’t be so desperate you’d offer a strange American a medical partnership.’

      ‘I’m always desperate.’ Backing out from the fridge with supplies, he separated eggs and started whisking the whites as if they’d offended him.

      Kirsty cast him a sideways glance—and decided his silence was wise. She’d be silent, too. She started making toast.

      For a while the silence continued, but there was obviously thinking going on under the silence. Kirsty was practically exploding with questions but Jake exploded first.

      ‘Where are you expecting Susie to have her baby?’ he asked at last, and his voice held so much anger that she blinked. He’d moved on from offering partnerships, then. He was back to thinking she was a dodo.

      ‘Sydney,’ she told him. ‘We’ve booked her into Sydney Central.’

      ‘You mean you’ve thought it through.’

      ‘I’m not dumb.’

      ‘You’ve towed a wounded, damaged, pregnant, anorexic woman halfway round the world—’

      ‘I told you. I had no choice. She was dying while I watched.