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‘Angus won’t use oxygen because he’s decided to die,’ Jake said, still roughly. ‘Just like your sister. Just like Susie.’
‘Susie wants to die?’ Angus gasped. ‘Rory’s wife wants to die? Why?’
‘The same reason you do, I expect,’ Jake growled. ‘No point in going on.’ Then, as Angus started coughing again, he lifted the old man’s hand and gripped, hard. ‘Angus, let us help. Stop being so damned stubborn.’
Kirsty took a deep breath. She glanced sideways at Jake—and then decided, Dammit, she was going in, boots and all.
‘You know, the way you’re looking, without oxygen you could well die in the night,’ Kirsty said softly. ‘Susie’s travelled half a world to meet you. She’d be so distressed.’
‘I’m not… I’m not likely to die in the night.’
Kirsty cast another cautious glance at Jake but for some reason Jake had turned away. Go ahead, his body language said. This may be none of her business but he wasn’t stopping her.
‘Jake’s told you I’m a doctor,’ she said, and Angus took a couple more pain-racked breaths and grunted.
‘Aye. Too many of the creatures.’
‘He means two too many,’ Jake said. He’d crossed to the window and was staring out at the sea. ‘Until you arrived I was the only doctor within a hundred miles. Why he should say there’s too many doctors when he won’t even agree to see a specialist…’
‘No point,’ Angus gasped. ‘I’m dying.’
‘You are,’ Kirsty said, almost cordially. ‘But don’t you think dying tonight when Susie’s come all this way to see you might be just a touch selfish?’
There could have been a choking sound from the window, but she wasn’t sure.
‘Selfish?’ Angus wheezed and leaned back on his pillows. ‘I’m not… I’m not selfish.’
‘If you let Dr Cameron give you oxygen then you’d certainly live till morning. You might well live for another year or more.’
‘Leave me be, girl. I won’t die tonight. No such luck.’
‘Your lips are blue. That’s a very bad sign.’
‘What would you know?’
‘I told you. I’m a doctor. I’m just as qualified as Dr Cameron.’
He gasped a bit more, but his attention was definitely caught. The veil of apathy had lifted and he seemed almost indignant. ‘If my lips were blue then Jake would be telling me,’ he managed.
‘Jake’s told you,’ Jake muttered from his window, and glanced at his watch. And did his best to suppress a sigh. And went back to staring out the window.
There was a moment’s silence while Angus fought for a retort. ‘So my lips are blue,’ he muttered at last. ‘So what?’
Kirsty considered. Back home she worked in a hospice and she was accustomed to dealing with frail and frightened people. She could sense the fear in Angus behind the bravado.
Maybe he wasn’t ready to die yet.
Another glance at Jake—but it seemed he was leaving this to her.
‘Let us give you oxygen,’ she said, wondering how she was suddenly taking over 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. Susie’s my twin and I love her and I wasn’t going to let that happen.’
‘So what did you hope to achieve here?’
‘Susie loved Rory so much. I thought she might just find echoes. And maybe she will yet,’ she added a trifle defiantly, flipping the toast onto a plate. ‘Angus’s smile…when he smiles, it’s Rory’s smile.’
‘He was very fond of Rory,’ Jake said, relenting a little.
Maybe he’d been afraid she’d intended dumping Susie’s pregnancy on him, she thought, and if she were a medical practitioner in such a place, maybe she’d be angry, too.
‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ she said. ‘You know, this castle is just the sort of crazy extravagant thing Rory might have built. Tell me about it.’
‘It saved this district’s soul,’ Jake told her and she paused in mid-toast-buttering.
‘Pardon?’
‘This is a fishing town,’ he said, flipping the omelette then moving in to remove her toast crusts with meticulous care. Boris moved in to take care of the waste. ‘The town was dependent on ’couta. Fish,’ he told her when she looked mystified. ‘Nearly all the boats were designed to catch barracouta, but forty years ago the ’couta disappeared, almost overnight. The locals say there was some sort of sea-worm that decimated them. Anyway, the boats all had to be refitted to make them suitable for deeper sea fishing but, of course, no one had savings. The locals were desperate—half the town was living on welfare. Then along came Angus, Earl of Loganaich, and his eccentric, wonderful wife. They took one look at the place and decided to build their castle. The locals called it a crazy whim, but now, after knowing Angus for so long, I’d say it’s far more likely he knew the only way to save the town was to give the locals a couple of years’ steady income while they worked on their boats part time and regrouped.’
‘You think that’s what happened?’
‘Who knows? But the locals won’t have a word said against him. No one laughs at this castle. Do you think this’ll do?’
She looked down at his plate. He’d cut two pieces of toast into perfectly formed triangles, without crusts. He’d flipped his perfect omelette into the centre.
‘Whoops,’ he said, and crossed to the back door. Seconds later he was back with one tiny sprig of parsley. It looked wonderful.
The man wasn’t a doctor. He was a magician.
‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I need to feed my patient. You reckon she’ll eat it?’
‘I…um, I reckon,’ she whispered. Her stomach rumbled.
‘The rest is for you,’ he told her, motioning to the remaining eggs. ‘I’d do it for you, but I really am busy.’
‘Sure,’ she said, but he was already gone, striding toward the bedroom where Susie lay, not wanting to eat.
I’d eat, Kirsty thought, dazed. If Jake was standing over me having cooked me a meal…
