The Surgeon's Convenient Fiancée (Medical Romance) (2 page)

‘I know it,’ he said, easing the car out into the traffic.

‘I do have a car,’ she said, feeling she ought to say something, ‘but it’s out of action.’

Renfrew Street was a quiet little backwater, several short streets away from the busier street on which the hospital was situated. It was a nice street, she had to admit that, and at first she had loved the house for many reasons, not least because it had seemed like home and because that was where the
children lived. Now she felt more and more claustrophobic in it.

Jerry’s dark good looks, his charm—which she had come to see was carefully cultivated and calculated—his obvious need of her to look after the children had bowled her over at first. Now it all seemed so obvious and hackneyed. What had been, and was, genuine was the need that the children had of her. Children could do much to make a house seem like a home. Now all she cared about was them… and that was the trouble.

‘What number?’ her companion asked as he turned his car into Renfrew Street.

‘Five three six,’ Deirdre said, reluctant to leave the warm cocoon of the luxury car. ‘Towards the other end.’

As they moved slowly down the street, she saw Jerry getting out of his car which he had parked on the street outside the house. From another car emerged three men who were obviously with Jerry and all four of them moved towards the front door of the house, intent on their animated conversation. The house was quite large, yet with no features to distinguish it from its neighbours on either side. It
was a showy yet bland house, rather like its owner. Built in the California style, covered with prefabricated stucco, it was not really appropriate for the rainy and often cool climate of British Columbia, Canada.

‘Oh, no!’ Deirdre whispered the words. As he so often did, Jerry had brought home some colleagues, clients or friends for drinks and dinner, without warning her in advance, expecting her to do the housekeeping and cooking bit, to provide a good dinner regardless of how much food she had in the house. That was also in spite of the fact that she had been engaged to take care of the children, to cook for them but not for him.

Gradually over time she had unwisely taken on more and more work, for which she was not adequately paid. Well, maybe now was the time to call a halt. Maybe now she was approaching her breaking point. Everyone had one, she knew that.

Instinctively, in an act of self-preservation, she slid down in the seat. ‘Please,’ she said to the man next to her, ‘drop me off at the end of the street. I’ve just seen someone I don’t want to meet.’

The man looked at her keenly. As well he might, she thought despairingly. He must think she was off her rocker. Doing as he was asked, he went to the end of the quiet, leafy residential street and pulled over to the kerb. It was almost dark now.

‘Hadn’t you better tell me what’s bothering you?’ he said quietly. He was looking at her with interest, as one might look at an intriguing specimen under a microscope. ‘Perhaps I can help in some small way. Often it helps to be able to talk to a stranger. Why are you crying? Perhaps we could start there. I’m a surgeon at the Stanton Memorial, by the way, in case you didn’t take in that card I was showing you.’

‘Thank you for the ride,’ she said, grateful for the semi-darkness that was penetrated inadequately by street lighting. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know your name. I couldn’t read the card.’ Of course, she didn’t have to know his name, although she would like to use it to thank him. In a few moments he would be out of her life as abruptly as he had entered it.

‘I’m Shay Melburne,’ he said. ‘And you?’

‘Deirdre,’ she said. ‘Deirdre Warwick.
Thank you, Dr Melburne, for your help.’ Suddenly she was very aware of him physically in the confined space, aware of his attractiveness. With that awareness came the realization that she had lacked the company of men she found attractive, as well as any decent relationship with one, in the two and a half years that she had been in her current job.

‘Deirdre of the Sorrows,’ he murmured. ‘Rather appropriate, I would say.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You could say that.’

‘A Gaelic name…like mine,’ he said thoughtfully, half-turned towards her as though he were seeing her really for the first time. ‘A lovely Irish name. Deirdre was a great beauty, so legend has it.’

‘So I believe…if she really existed.’

‘I believe she did. Why the tears, Deirdre of the Sorrows? Not because I almost ran you over, I suspect. Perhaps it was because you were crying that you didn’t look where you were going. Hmm?’

‘I wasn’t crying then,’ she said. ‘It’s a long story. I really can’t tell you. I don’t want to bore you. And…and…I don’t suppose you have the time.’

‘I have the time,’ he said.

‘Why would you bother?’ she said, not believing he could be interested in hearing her story.

‘Shall we say the interest of one fellow human in another?’ he said. ‘No other motive. I sense that you need help. I’m not saying I can provide it, but I can listen. Perhaps you can start with why you didn’t want to go into that house. I’ve got all the time in the world.’

Deirdre cast around in her mind for a good starting point to present to this stranger. Not wanting to go into the house seemed to her to be approaching an end point, a crisis.

‘I used to be a nurse,’ she blurted out, ‘working in the operating rooms at University Hospital.’ She named the hospital downtown in Prospect Bay, where they were now, the place that had been a stop on the way to gold-mining country in the late 1800s in British Columbia. It had started off as a one-horse town and had grown into a place large enough to be called a city, growing in fits and starts over the decades. ‘I loved that job. Don’t want to bore you with the ins and outs of it. Got laid off about two and a half years
ago…was given a pink slip, along with a lot of other nurses. In my case, it was last hired first fired. Cost-cutting…I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about that.’

‘No. It’s starting to go the other way,’ he said.

She went on to tell him how she had to earn a living, how she was helping her parents financially because her father had been ill and her mother had stopped work to look after him, how her parents had later decided to go to Australia for a long visit to see her brother, whom they had not seen for a long time. They were still there.

‘And you miss them?’ he asked astutely.

‘Yes…very much. Sometimes it seems that I don’t have parents, that they are a figment of my imagination,’ she blurted out. ‘Then I feel I’m going mad.’ Now she was getting somewhere.

It was easy to talk to him. He listened quietly, not moving, his eyes on her face as he was turned sideways towards her.

‘To cut a long story short,’ she went on, ‘a social worker at the hospital told me about a man, Jerry Parks, who had two children
whose mother had just died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. They needed someone to take care of them.’

‘The man you didn’t want to see just now?’

‘Yes. I was desperate for a job, so I applied and got it.’

For a few moments there was silence in the car as she wondered what to say next.

‘Do you care for him, this Jerry guy?’ Dr Shay Melburne asked her quietly.

‘Oh, no. I dislike him…intensely,’ she said, with a vehemence that she knew must have alerted him that something had indeed happened between herself and Jerry. ‘But I do love the children. That’s the trouble.’

‘I see,’ Dr Melburne said. ‘You want out, is that it? But you don’t want to leave the children. You’ve painted yourself into a corner, as it were.’

‘Yes, yes! That’s it exactly. And I don’t know what to do about it. Oh, God! What a mess,’ Deirdre moaned, with a rush of such emotion that she knew she was going to weep again in front of this stranger who would indeed think she was mad. She put her head in
her hands and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, rocking back and forth in despair.

‘I can’t leave them, you see…not now they’ve already lost their real mother. They love me, and I love them. When I first came to look after them they were so silent, so sad. Now they’re more like normal children. They trust me now and need me. I don’t know what to do.’ When she began to sob quietly, he pushed a handkerchief into her hand and just sat beside her. ‘Sorry…sorry…to lumber you with all this. I think I’m having some sort of breakdown. I…had a peculiar mental aberration just before you almost hit me with your car. That’s why I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

‘Tell me,’ he said quietly.

‘I couldn’t get off a bus…just couldn’t make myself…at the right place.’

‘Hmm,’ he said. Then he waited for her to compose herself. There was an air of calm about him, as though he did actually have all the time in the world. It felt good to have someone concentrate just on you, she thought, and to ask questions as though they were really interested in the answers.

Presently he took one of her cold hands and held it between the two of his. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. Deirdre somehow accepted the oddity of this situation; the whole day had been odd, and it was not over yet.

He waited until she had cried herself out. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’d like to take you out for a meal right now. You must be hungry, and I’m starving.’

‘Oh, no, you don’t have to take me for a meal,’ she protested, convinced that he was offering because he felt sorry for her.

‘I know I don’t have to. I want to,’ he said firmly. ‘Can you dump those groceries without encountering friend Jerry?’

‘I could leave them in the garage, off the back lane,’ she said. ‘That is, if Basil won’t get them.’ She said the last bit to herself, thinking aloud.

‘Who’s Basil?

‘Oh…he’s a rat.’

Dr Melburne laughed. Surprisingly, Deirdre felt her mood of abject misery lifting a little.

‘A pet rat?’

‘Oh, no. He’s wild, he just lives there in the
walls. I’ll take a chance with the groceries. I…I should cook the supper for the children, although they can cook for themselves. But I haven’t seen them since this morning…’ Her voice trailed off. Quite suddenly the most important thing for her in the world was to get away from her domestic situation for a while, to have a meal with this man who, she sensed, was safe and reliable.

‘How old are they?’

‘Mungo’s thirteen and Fleur’s twelve,’ she said, hearing her own voice soften as she said their names. ‘And another thing. He, Jerry, is not even their real father. He’s their stepfather.’ There was more that she could tell him, but that was enough for now. After all, this was private family information which was not just hers to divulge.

‘This gets more and more complicated,’ Shay Melburne said. ‘Can you phone the children? I’ll take all of you out. I know just the place. Have them meet us in the back lane.’

It was such a relief, for a change, to have someone else make the decisions, decisions that were also benign and in her own interests for once. ‘Thank you, it’s very kind of
you.’ Using his handkerchief, she blotted her face. ‘Let’s do it.’

With Deirdre directing, Shay drove around to the back lane behind the houses, one of many that the streets in the area had at the rear of the neat rows of dwellings. After letting herself in to the back garden through the gate from the lane, she put the groceries in the garage via the side door, then, using her mobile, she called Mungo on his mobile. At this moment he should be in his room, starting on his homework.

‘Wow!’ he said, after she had explained. ‘Are we going out to eat in the middle of the week?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Get Fleur and come out to the garage. I don’t want Jerry to know. Can you get out without him seeing you?’

‘Yeah, he has a bunch of guys in here for drinks as usual. They’re making so much noise that I can’t concentrate on my essay. He didn’t even check to see if we were here,’ Mungo said in an aggrieved voice.

‘Leave a note for him on the kitchen table, please, saying you’re out to eat,’ Deirdre instructed. ‘Be as fast as you can.’

‘You don’t want him to know we’re going—right?’

‘Right.’

As Deirdre waited in the drizzle for the children to appear, she knew that a corner of sorts had been turned. She was beginning to fight back. Maybe things would be easier if she just coped with the children and let Jerry fend entirely for himself, if she refused to do any work other than look after the children, which was what she had been hired for. He could fire her, perhaps, but it had been the children’s grandmother who had hired her, so perhaps Jerry was not in a position to dismiss her from the job. Their mother was dead, but the maternal grandmother was very much alive. They called her Granny McGregor when referring to her in her absence, although her name was Fiona and she liked to be called by that name.

It was a complicated story, she thought now as she waited. The children’s biological father had never been married to their mother, they had lived as common-law husband and wife, and he had been out of the picture for some time. That was why they had their mother’s
surname. As far as Deirdre could ascertain, he was in South Africa and did not even know that their mother was dead, as no one had thought to tell him. He had left shortly after the birth of Fleur.

Often Deirdre wished she had known their mother, who seemed to have been a woman of intelligence, common sense and flair, with a great love for her children. Certainly she seemed to have done everything during her long illness to ensure that they would not be homeless and destitute after she died. Deirdre sensed that the only reason Jerry remained in the picture was that he hoped to get his hands on some of the money that his wife had left in trust for her two children.

She went part way down the garden path towards the house to meet Mungo and Fleur as they came silently out of the back door. ‘What’s up, Dee?’ Fleur said to her.

‘We’re being taken out to supper at a restaurant by a doctor who works at the Stanton Memorial Hospital,’ she said, ad-libbing. ‘He gave me a ride home.’

They accepted that, as she had hoped they would, assuming that she knew the doctor
well. The last thing they needed to know was that she was approaching breaking point. ‘We won’t be long. I know you have to get at your homework. It just saves me having to cook.’