Cort Mason - Dr Delectable

‘Someone will be in shortly.’

‘Could you not have been a bit gentler with them?’ Ruby asked when they were outside.

‘Why?’ Cort asked. ‘Soon they’re going to be approached to consider organ donation …’

‘Excuse me.’

He watched as she walked quickly to the patient toilet and he thought of waiting till she came out, but it wasn’t his problem. Instead he went and spoke to Connor then gave ICU a ring. He then found Jamelia in tears in his office and dealt with her as kindly as he could. Vomiting nurses and emergency doctors who couldn’t deal with emergencies really weren’t his problem.

He actually felt sorry for Jamelia.

A temporary locum, she had worked mainly in the country and simply wasn’t used to the volume of patients that came through Eastern Beaches’ doors. She was filling big shoes too—Nick, a popular locum, was on his honeymoon, and though their paths had never crossed, Cort knew the energy and fun he had brought to this difficult place. Jamelia told him that after Nick, and with Cort now back, she felt as though she was a disappointment to everyone. So after a long chat with Jamelia he headed to the kitchen, where someone had made a pot of tea. He poured himself a cup, then frowned at the watery fluid and opened the lid of the pot, only to see a pile of leaves and herbs. He made a mug of coffee instead and headed for the staffroom.

‘Why is there a garden growing in the teapot?’ he asked, and sat down.

‘Ruby’s herbs!’ Siobhan, another nurse on duty, rolled her eyes. ‘Just in case your immune system needs boosting.’

‘I’ll stick with caffeine, thanks.’

He glanced over to where Ruby sat, reading a book on her coffee break, her complexion a touch whiter than it had been in the suture room.

‘Where’s Jamelia?’ Doug, the consultant, popped his head in. ‘Hiding in the office again?’

‘Go easy,’ Cort sighed.

‘Someone has to say something,’ Doug said.

‘I just have.’

‘Okay.’ Doug nodded. ‘I’ll leave her for now.’

‘You know what they say …’ Siobhan yawned and stretched out her legs. ‘If you can’t stand the heat …’

And Ruby couldn’t stand this place.

They just spoke about everything and anyone wherever they wanted, just bitched and dissected people, and didn’t care who heard. She couldn’t stand Siobhan and her snide comments, and she really thought she might say something, just might stand up and tell her what an absolute bitch she was, that any normal person would be sitting in an office sobbing when a twenty-three-year-old was going to die. That laughing and joking and eating chocolate and watching television as the priest walked past the staffroom was bizarre behaviour.

‘Ruby.’ It was Sheila who popped her head round the door now. ‘Are you finished your break?’

‘Yes.’ She closed the book she had seemed so focused on, except she had never turned a page, Cort realised as she stood up.

‘Come into my office then—bring a drink if you want to.’

‘Sure.’

He could see two spots of red on the apple of her cheeks, could see the effort behind her bright smile as a couple of staff offered their best wishes as she headed out of the room, then Siobhan called out to her as she reached the door.

‘Ruby, can you empty out the teapot when you use it?’ Siobhan said.

‘Sure.’

‘Only it’s annoying,’ Siobhan said. ‘Perhaps you could bring in your own teapot?’

Cort watched the set of her shoulders, saw her turn and look over at Siobhan, and for a second she looked as if she was about to say something less than pleasant, but instead she gave that wide smile. ‘Fine,’ Ruby said, and headed off for her assessment.

‘Love to be a fly on the wall!’ Siobhan smirked. ‘Sheila’s going to rip her in two.’

Someone else sniggered and Cort just sat there.

‘What is it with her bloody herbs?’ Siobhan just would not let up and Cort was about to tell her to do just that, but he knew what would happen if he did—there’d be rumours then that he was sticking up for a certain nurse, that he fancied her.

But Siobhan was still banging on and his mood was less than pleasant.

‘Her immune system probably needs all the help it can get in this place,’ Cort said as he stood up and headed out of the staffroom. ‘Given how toxic this place can be at times.’

CHAPTER THREE

THEY could fail her.

Ruby tried not to think about it as she stalled the car coming out of the staff car park. There were new boom gates and the car was so low that, as she leant out of the window to swipe her ID card, it stalled and, grinding the gears in the shiny silver sports car all the way home she wished, not for the first time, that her brother had bought an automatic.

Normally she walked or took the bus to work, but it was Saturday and she’d promised her housemates to get home as soon as she could and meet them at the Stat Bar, so had taken the car. But as she pulled into Hill Street, the temptation to change her mind and forgo the rapid change of clothes and mad dash out was almost overwhelming—a noisy bar was the last place she wanted to be tonight.

Far preferable would it be to curl up on the sofa and just hide, but she’d had two excited texts from Tilly already, urging her to get there ASAP because she had some wonderful news.

Ruby let herself into the house and could smell the perfume her housemates had left behind on their way out. There was a bottle of wine opened on the kitchen table and a box of chocolates too. How much nicer it would be to pour a glass of wine and sit in the darkness alone with chocolate than head out there, but then they’d ring her, Ruby realised, and as if to prove the point her mobile shrilled.

‘Where are you?’ Tilly demanded.

She was about to say that she was going to give it a miss, but could not face the barrage of questions. ‘I’m just getting changed.’

‘Well, hurry. I’ll look out for you.’

Ruby trudged up the stairs, had a rapid shower then tried to work out what to wear—nothing in her wardrobe, or over the chair, or on the floor, matched her mood.

And it wasn’t just what Sheila had said that was upsetting her. As she’d headed away from her hellish shift and a very prolonged assessment, she’d passed the young man’s family, comforting each other outside the hospital—and worse, far worse, the daughter had come over and thanked her.

For what? Ruby had wanted to ask, because she’d done absolutely nothing.

‘You were lovely with Mum,’ the daughter had said, and only then had Ruby recalled that when Cort had asked them about the priest she’d found herself holding the woman’s hand.

Their grief was so palpable, so thick and real that it seemed to have followed her home, and despite the shower it felt as if it had seeped into her skin.

‘Come on, Ruby,’ she told herself. She turned on some music and danced around the room for a moment, doing all she could to raise her spirits.

And it worked a bit because she selected a nice cream skirt and a backless halter-neck top, pulled on all her silver bangles and put big silver earrings on. Looking in the mirror, Ruby decided that with a nice dash of lipstick she could pass as happy.

She didn’t feel quite so brave, though, as she walked down Hill Street, turned the corner and walked past the New-Age shop she had worked in for two years after finishing school. She’d been happy then, if a little restless. Her desk had been stuffed with nursing brochures and forms and she had tried to pluck up the courage to apply to study nursing, telling herself she could do it, that even if didn’t appeal, she could get through her general training and then go on to work in mental health.

It would seem she’d been wrong.

She could hear the noise and laughter from the beer garden, knew her friends were wondering where she had got to, and she stood outside for a moment and pretended to read a text on her phone. She looked out at Coogee Beach and longed to walk there in the darkness and gather her thoughts.

‘Ruby!’ Tilly, her housemate, caught her just as her decision to wander was made. ‘Finally you’re here!’ Tilly said, and then frowned. ‘Are you okay?’ Tilly always looked out for her, for all the girls really. Ruby wondered whether she should just come out and say that Sheila had warned her that unless things improved she was going to have to repeat her Emergency rotation, except Ruby remembered that Tilly had news of her own and was desperate to tell her friend.

‘I’m fine. So what’s your news?’

Tilly’s face spread into a smile. She was a redhead too, but there the similarities ended. Her hair was lighter and much curlier than Ruby’s and Tilly was taller and a calmer, more centred person. Also unlike Ruby, she was totally in love with her work. ‘I delivered an unexpected breech today. Ruby, it was brilliant, the best feeling ever.’ Tilly was a newly qualified midwife and babies, mothers, bonding, skin to skin were absolutely her passion. Even if Ruby could think of nothing more terrifying than delivering a breech baby, she knew this was food for Tilly’s soul.

‘That’s brilliant.’ Ruby didn’t force her smile and hug. She was genuinely thrilled for Tilly.

‘I just saw this little bottom …’ Tilly gushed. ‘I called for help but as quickly as that he just unfolded, his little legs and hips came out and he just hung there. Mum was amazing. I mean just amazing …’

Ruby stood and listened as Tilly gave her the first of no doubt many detailed accounts of how the senior midwife had let her finish the job, how the doctor had arrived just as the delivery was complete.

‘I’m talking too much,’ Tilly said.

‘You’re not!’

‘Come on,’ Tilly said. ‘Your mob are here too.’

‘My mob?’ Ruby asked as they walked in. ‘You’re my mob!’

‘There are loads from Emergency here.’

God, that was all she needed. Half of Ruby’s problem with Emergency was that she didn’t like the staff. Okay, it was probably an eighth of her problem, but they were just so confident, so cliquey, and so bloody bitchy as well, and close proximity to them was so not needed tonight.

Ruby walked in and straight over to her friends, deliberately pretending not to even see the rowdy Emergency crowd and hoping that they wouldn’t see her. Not that there was much chance of that. With her long auburn hair she always stood out, but they’d hardly be wanting a student nurse to join them, she consoled herself.

‘Here she is!’ Jess, another housemate, had already bought her a beer and Ruby took a sip as Jess asked how her shift had gone.

‘Long,’ Ruby said, and she did what she always did and smiled, because she was a happy person, a positive, outgoing, slightly flaky person—it was just Emergency that affected her so much. ‘Where’s Ellie?’

‘Chatting up “the one”.’ Jess grinned and nodded over to the bar, where Ellie was sitting on some guy’s lap, the pair earnestly talking, utterly engrossed and oblivious to everyone around them. Ruby laughed, because for the next few weeks he would be all they heard about. Ellie, determined to find her life partner and get the family she craved, drifted happily from boyfriend to boyfriend in her quest for ‘the one’, but as Ruby turned back to Jess and Tilly, her eyes drifted to the emergency table, and inadvertently she caught Connor’s eye.

‘Ruby!’ Connor waved for her to come over and she was about to pretend she hadn’t noticed but knew it would be rude, so she beamed in his direction and gave a wave. ‘I’ll just be two minutes,’ she said to her friends. ‘Any longer and you have to come and rescue me.’

‘Where did you get to at work?’ Connor asked as she came over. ‘I never saw you after supper. I thought you were down to work with me in Resus?’

‘My assessment took a bit longer than expected,’ Ruby answered.

‘Yeah,’ Connor joked, ‘you’ve always got an excuse.’ He was just chatting and joking, he certainly wasn’t there to talk about work, or tell her off, except inadvertently he had echoed Sheila’s words. It seemed to have been noticed that any patient that needed to be taken to the ward, Ruby put her hand up. Any stores or laundry that needed to be put away, Ruby was already onto it and, yes, people had noticed.

‘So?’ Connor asked. ‘How was it?’

‘How was what?’ Ruby said, biting into her lemon.

‘Your assessment?’

‘Oh, you know …’ She forced a smile and rolled her eyes. ‘Must try harder.’

Her face was burning, but she certainly wasn’t going to share with Connor all that had been said and stupidly she felt as if she was going to start crying. God, Ruby thought, she should have had that walk on the beach before she’d come in. Her eyes darted for escape, for a reason to excuse herself, and suddenly there he was. Cort Mason was back in her line of vision. This time, though, his tie was loosened and he was sitting next to a doctor she vaguely recognised. He gave her a very brief nod, or did he? Ruby couldn’t be sure, and then he turned back to his conversation but, not that she could have known it, his mind was on her.

It had been since she’d walked into the bar and perhaps, Cort admitted to himself, for a while before that.

‘Hey, Ruby!’ He pretended not to be looking, except his eyes roamed the bar and his ears were certainly not on Geoff’s conversation as Ruby’s friend came over. ‘We’re supposed to be celebrating with Tilly …’

‘Sorry, Jess!’ Ruby smiled, glad they’d remembered to rescue her! ‘Just coming … See you, Connor.’ She glanced over to the table but everyone was busy with conversations of their own, but she did, Cort noticed, make an effort. ‘Catch you guys.’ She gave a brief unreturned wave that had the light reflecting off all her silver bracelets and then as she drifted off he saw her back and there was a lot of back because she was wearing a halter neck that showed her white shoulders and way down her spine. She was also wearing a small skirt and flat sandals and for the fist time in a very long time Cort noticed everything. Then he glanced across the table and saw Siobhan’s eyes on him, watching him watching Ruby, and Cort knew to be more careful than that. So very deliberately he didn’t look out for her again after that. Instead, he chatted to Geoff and the rest of the table, yet she was there in the background, laughing and happy, a blaze of colour in the middle of the bar. Though he tried not to notice, he still did, so much so that he was aware the minute she left.

‘Leaving?’ Siobhan asked as he drained his drink.

‘No,’ Cort said, even though it had been his intention. ‘Just getting another.’

And he headed for the bar rather than for home, but though still packed, the Stat Bar felt empty now. Well, not empty, Cort thought as he squeezed his way back to the table, it just felt pointless, he decided as he sat down to wait it out.

‘We’re going to Adam’s,’ Geoff said a little while later, when Cort really was about to head for home. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Adam?’ Cort asked.

‘Adam Carmichael.’

‘Oh!’ He’d worked with Adam in the past and even if they kept only loosely in touch as Cort commuted between Melbourne and Sydney and Adam roamed the globe, working for Operation New Faces, Cort considered him a friend. ‘Is he back?’

Geoff didn’t answer. Everyone was drifting off and Cort was about to do the same, but that morning, before he’d pulled on the brown suit and chosen a lighter tie, he’d walked along a beach just a couple of suburbs from here and he’d made a promise, not to his sister, but to Beth, to say yes.

To live this life.

Except, now that he was starting to, Cort so did not want to be doing this.

One drink and he’d be out of there, Cort decided as they turned into Hill Street.

It was a nice house, Cort thought as Geoff opened the creaking gate. Sure, it needed a bit of work, but it was a lovely older building and just a two-minute walk from the beach. Who cared if it was in need of a little TLC?

There was a small decked area and the front door was open. Suddenly the music was turned on and wafted out to greet them, and as he walked in through the hall Cort wanted to turn around and walk back out, because there was a dangerous vision walking towards him.

She looked the same from the waist up as she had in the pub, though instead of a beer she was holding a glass of milk and a bag of pistachio nuts and her auburn, or rather titian, hair was now loosely clipped up.

He noticed, he really noticed, because if he didn’t then his eyes would flick down and he really didn’t want to notice that her sandals and skirt were off, that she was wearing lilac boy pants and that there was a gap between the top of them and her top, which showed a soft, pale stomach.

She’d been crying—her eyes were red and the tip of her nose was too.

‘Are you okay?’ her friend asked.

‘I’m fine, Tilly, just watching a sad movie. I didn’t realise there’d be a home invasion tonight—I’ll go and get dressed.’

She slipped past him and up the stairs and Cort headed through to the lounge—a large area with lots of sofas and magazines and a little pile of tissues. Emergency registrars sometimes made good detectives, because for reasons that shouldn’t matter to him, as someone handed him a beer, Cort put his hand on the turned-off television and confirmed what he suspected—it was cold.

And why should it even matter to him that Ruby was sitting at home crying Cort would rather not explore, he had more than enough troubles of his own to be dealing with.

No, he didn’t, Cort told himself, at least, not any more.

‘Where’s Adam?’ Cort asked Ruby’s friend.

‘He’s away.’ She smiled. ‘He’s hardly ever here …’ She must have seen him frown, and she took a moment to explain. ‘I’m Tilly, there’s Jess.’ She pointed to a blonde and then to another one. ‘And that’s Ellie.’

‘And …’ Cort started and then stopped, because what business of his was it if there had been a redhead in her underwear in their lounge just a few moments ago?

‘Oh.’ Tilly smiled. ‘There’s also Ruby—she’s the one who’s just gone to get changed. We rent the house from Adam.’

He was at a student nurses’ party.

He so did not need this.

Okay, they weren’t all students. Tilly was telling him now that she was a graduate midwife and that she’d had her first breech today, and as he tried to stop his eyes from glazing over as she went into detail, Cort decided to excuse himself and leave just the second that he could—he’d done enough ‘must get out more’ for one night.

He was just about to slip away unnoticed when Ruby came downstairs.

Whatever had been upsetting her had clearly been taken care of because there was no evidence of tears and she was back to happy now. She turned up the music and started dancing, and Cort was determined to leave, except she really was lovely to watch, all sort of loose limbed and free, and what’s more she was dancing her way over to him.

‘You look how I feel,’ Ruby said, because if ever someone didn’t want to be there it was Cort Mason. He belonged in that suit, Ruby had decided before their encounter today. He belonged behind a stethoscope, or peering down his nose at minions, except he hadn’t been like that today and she’d revised her judgement. Though she loathed Emergency and most of the staff that came with it, Cort wasn’t like the others, he was just aloof.

‘You look like I never would,’ Cort said in return, and he wasn’t sure if that made sense, but even without the hellish last five years, even a decade ago, when he had belonged at student parties, he’d been the boring one. He would never stand in a room and dance alone with others watching, had never been as free as she appeared tonight. She must have caught his words because she smiled up at him.

‘Takes practice,’ Ruby said, and she picked up one of the many little bowls that Tilly was dotting about the place and offered it to him. He should have just said no, should have made no comment, or just taken a handful, but he screwed his nose up at the Bombay mix, and maybe her attitude was somehow catching because a teeny, tiny corner of it seemed to have worked its way over to him.

‘I’d rather have some pistachios,’ Cort said, which told her he’d noticed her when he’d walked in.

‘Ah, no.’ Ruby shook her head. ‘They’re not to be put out for the general public, you get the Bombay mix. I’ve hidden my pistachios.’

‘Sensible girl,’ Cort said, and he wanted to pause time for a moment, have a little conversation with himself to ask himself if he was flirting. But he wasn’t, he quickly told himself, because, well, he just didn’t do that and certainly not with student nurses.

‘Not generally.’

‘Sorry?’ He was too busy thinking to keep track of the conversation.

‘I’m not generally considered sensible.’

‘So why?’ Cort asked, when really he shouldn’t, when really he should just leave. ‘Do you feel how I look?’

‘You first,’ Ruby said. ‘Why do you look like you’re about to head off?’

Cort didn’t answer.

‘Why should I tell you what’s upsetting me, only to have you leave five minutes later?’

‘Fair enough,’ Cort said, because what right did he have to ask her what was on her mind when soon he’d be out of there? Anyway, he knew she was in trouble with work, but would that really matter to a flighty little thing like her?

‘How was your holiday?’ It was Ruby’s turn to probe, but she’d been in Emergency for four weeks now and he’d just been there for only one of them.

‘It wasn’t really a holiday,’ Cort said.

‘Oh.’

‘Family.’ Cort certainly wasn’t about to tell her the truth. Hardly anyone at work knew, just his direct boss and a couple of people in Admin, but he had always been private and in this he was intensely so, not just for his sake but for Beth’s.

There really wasn’t that much to talk about anyway. It didn’t feel quite right that he was even here, except he was and he asked her something now about her family, if she was local, but didn’t quite catch her answer and had to lower his head a bit to hear.

‘At Whale Beach,’ Ruby said. ‘About an hour or so from here.’

And he could have lifted his head then—after all, he’d heard now what she had said—except he was terribly aware of the sensation of her face close to his, just as he had been in the suture room.

Something tightened inside Ruby as she inhaled the scent of his hair again, and she was sure, quite, quite sure that if she just stayed still, if she did not move, if she could somehow now not breathe, whatever was in the air between them would turn his mouth those few inches to hers—and she wanted it to.

‘I think I should go.’ Strange that he didn’t lift his head, strange that still he lingered.

‘Hey, Cort …’ He heard his name and turned to see that another mob from Emergency was arriving and he couldn’t believe how close he’d come, how very careless he had almost been, especially as there was motor-mouth Siobhan too, so for Ruby’s sake he was relieved when she quickly excused herself and slipped away.

Ruby, too, had seen them arriving and a busman’s holiday she did not need, so as they blocked the stairs, talking, Ruby stepped out onto the veranda, her heart hammering just a little bit harder than normal, her lips regretting the absence of Cort’s, and her problems, which she’d momentarily escaped from, caught up with her all over again. She could hear the noise and the throb of the party and decided she would pop over next door tomorrow morning just to check that Mrs. Bennett wasn’t upset about the party. The old lady insisted she didn’t mind a bit, but it was always nice to have a reason to pop over.

Maybe she could talk to her a little, Ruby mused. Mrs. Bennett was so lovely and wise, except … Ruby closed her eyes … nothing any one might say could actually change things. Quite simply, she was terrified to go back to work and terrified of failing too. Sheila’s ominous warning replayed in her mind for perhaps the two hundred and fifty-second time that night.

‘It’s a pass or fail unit, Ruby.’ Sheila was immutable. ‘If you don’t pass, you’ll have to repeat.’