From Bachelor to Daddy Read online

  The words rattled out of her mouth, and the pleasure she felt when he agreed was all to do with making friends—well, a friend.

  And having worked with him and seen him with his family, she knew he’d be a good friend to have.

  Or so she told herself.

  But he would be a good friend to have, an inner voice insisted. Hadn’t he introduced one of the nurses to her husband?

  Surely she wasn’t thinking he might do the same for her? This from the more sensible of her inner voices...

  And she didn’t really want a husband, did she?

  The thought reminded her once more of loss and pain—first her mother, then Simon. No, she couldn’t go through that again, the pain of loss was just too much to bear. But it would be nice to have a father for the boys.

  The voices stopped arguing as the helicopter touched down back in Braxton, and Marty transferred wet clothes and the picnic goodies to his four-wheel drive.

  Although now a slight uneasiness had crept into Emma’s head to replace the argument.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake! Sensible inner voice to the rescue. You’re only going to share a meal with a colleague, what the hell is wrong with that?

  ‘Wow, you live in this place?’ Marty said as they drove up the street towards the big house. ‘I’ve often wondered about it because for years it seemed abandoned, then suddenly it came to life again.’

  They pulled up outside the old federation house, with its fresh white paint, wide verandas and dark green roof, and Emma saw it through Marty’s eyes—the front steps climbing up to the veranda, the wide hall with its gleaming polished floorboards leading off it, living and dining rooms off to one side, bedrooms and bathrooms off the other. And at the end of it the kitchen, already the heart of the home.

  ‘It was Dad’s aunt’s place and she was ill for a long time before she died. Dad grew up in Braxton—a little further up the hill. The four of us, me, Dad and the boys, had been crammed into a tiny flat in Sydney so when this became available we couldn’t move fast enough. I think we’d have come even if I hadn’t been able to get the job. Moved here, and just believed something would eventually come up.’

  ‘I doubt any country hospital would turn away a doctor—particularly an ED specialist.’

  Having heard them arrive, her father had turned on the light over the front steps and was waiting at the top of them.

  ‘Dad, this is Marty...’ Emma stopped and turned to her companion. ‘Do you know, I’ve no idea of your second name. But my father’s name is Ned, Ned Hamilton.’

  Somehow they sorted out the confusion, Marty supplying an unexceptional surname of Graham, and explaining about the food.

  After which, as always seemed to happen these days, Dad took charge, bringing out plates, and napkins, cold beer and a bottle of chilled white wine, a couple of wine glasses dangling precariously between the fingers of one hand.

  Emma took her wet clothes through to the laundry and glanced in at the sleeping boys before joining the party. Her father was telling Marty that he was kept fairly busy by the boys during the day but was slowly reconnecting with old school friends.

  ‘The boys will be in kindergarten from the beginning of next term so he’ll get more free time,’ Emma put in, but her father and Marty had discovered an acquaintance in common. One of Marty’s older foster sisters—one of the first children fostered by Hallie and Pop just over forty years ago—had been at school with Ned.

  ‘Carrie has twins too,’ Marty said to Ned—and just when had he found out her boys were twins? She tried very hard not to refer to them as ‘the twins’ as though they were one entity.

  She tuned back into the conversation and found that this unknown woman’s twin daughters were in their final year at high school and very experienced babysitters.

  ‘In fact,’ Marty said, as Emma poured herself a glass of wine and selected a sandwich, ‘I could check whether they’re already booked for Saturday week. It’s the annual barn dance for the animal shelter just outside town. A barn dance is a bit old hat for teenagers these days so they won’t be going to it, but for you, Ned, it would be a chance to catch up with other old school friends, and I’m sure you’d enjoy it, too, Emma. I’d be happy to take you both. I always go.’

  Which certainly wasn’t a date, Emma realised, while her father was agreeing enthusiastically to this plan, and reminiscing about the good times he’d had at the annual event.

  ‘It’s been going that long?’ Emma asked, and Marty laughed.

  ‘Your father’s not exactly ancient,’ he reminded her. He glanced at Ned. ‘You’d be, what, mid-fifties?’

  ‘Spot on,’ her father replied. ‘I took early—well, very early—retirement when Emma needed a bit of help, though for a few years I did a lot of supply teaching, filling in for absent teachers.’

  Marty was delving into Hallie’s basket as her father explained, and now produced a paper plate piled with home-made biscuits and another with slices of chocolate cake.

  ‘Heavens!’ Emma said. ‘There’s enough food here to feed an army.’

  ‘Or two always hungry little boys who’ll love these leftovers.’ Her father smiled as he spoke.

  ‘Though, really, Marty should take it,’ Emma suggested.

  ‘And deny the boys Hallie’s chocolate cake? I think not!’

  Laughing blue eyes met hers across the table and for a moment the air caught in her throat, just stuck there, as if she’d forgotten how to breathe.

  Of course she could breathe!

  In, out, in, out—simple as that.

  But it seemed to take forever to get it sorted...

  Not that her absence from the conversation was noticed as her father was now exclaiming about Hallie and Pop still being in Wetherby.

  ‘I met them, you know, quite a few times when I was a member of the surf club, and seeing a bit of Carrie.’

  ‘Small towns,’ Marty said, smiling again, but this time, thank goodness, at her father. ‘Carrie was one of the first children they took in, she was about twelve at the time so she was their first teenager. My lot—me, Izzy and Stephen, both of whom Emma’s met—and a couple of others were the last. I think all of us being teenagers together finally convinced them they’d done enough.’

  ‘What didn’t kill them made them stronger,’ her father remarked with a smile.

  ‘Dad was a high-school teacher so he knows all about teenagers,’ Emma explained, mostly to prove to herself she could speak as well as breathe...

  The evening ended with complicated arrangements being made for her father and the boys to meet up with Carrie and her twins, the potential babysitters, and her father walked out to the car with Marty while Emma cleared the table and put everything away.

  ‘Well, that was fun,’ her father said, wandering back into the kitchen a little later.

  The words sent a sharp pang of guilt spearing through Emma.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’ve been so selfish, letting you give up your life to help me out, first when Simon died and I lost the baby, and then with the boys. I hadn’t realised quite how selfish I’ve been until tonight.’

  Her father put his arms around her.

  ‘You needed me back then, so where else would I have been? And wasn’t it me who talked you into having the boys, and didn’t I promise to look after them for you?’

  He kissed her on the top of her head, adding, ‘And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, but tonight, meeting Marty, and sitting out there just talking about nothing in particular, has shown me how restricted our lives have become. That was natural when the boys were small and very demanding, and the flat was really no place to be entertaining, but we both need to get out a bit more now, and the barn dance is a splendid idea.’

  He was voicing the feeling she’d had back at Izzy and Mac’s place—voicing the fact that their lives had become too c
onstrained, too centred around work and childcare.

  She moved a little away from him and kissed his cheek.

  ‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘It’s time for both of us to get out and about. Who knows what’s waiting for us out there in the wild country town of Braxton?’

  Her father chuckled and they parted for the night, Emma going quietly into the boys’ room and watching her sons sleep for a few minutes before dropping a kiss on each of their heads and taking herself off to bed.

  Where, exhausted as she was, sleep was a long time coming.

  Mainly because every time she closed her eyes she saw an image of a pair of laughing blue eyes.

  She’d no sooner banished this image—with difficulty—when the barn dance hove into her mind. Though with Dad going too, the gossip mill could hardly slot her into the ranks of one of ‘Marty’s women’.

  Could it?

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WAS SOMEWHERE during this mental argument that she fell asleep, to be woken by two very excited boys telling her God had brought them a puppy.

  ‘We’ve been praying and praying,’ Xavier was saying, while Hamish, usually the leader, echoed the words.

  ‘Praying and praying?’ Emma muttered weakly, then remembered the playgroup her father and the boys had attended at a local church in Sydney.

  But praying for a puppy?

  It was the first she’d heard of it!

  The boys were now bouncing on her bed so any thought of going back to sleep was forgotten, while their combined pleas to come and see it dragged her reluctantly out of bed.

  The ‘puppy’, sitting quietly in the kitchen listening to a lecture from her father on a dog’s place being in the yard, was the size of a small pony. It leapt up in delight when it saw the boys and lolloped towards them.

  And her, where it slobbered enthusiastically all over her pyjamas.

  However, that gave her more time to check it out. For all it had, at some time, been well cared for, it was painfully thin and none too clean.

  ‘Sit,’ she said, and was surprised when he obeyed immediately. He’d definitely been cared for by someone who’d taken the time to train him.

  But a dog?

  A strange dog?

  ‘I think we should leave him outside until he’s had a bath,’ she said, which brought wails from both boys.

  ‘Well, go and play with him on the veranda,’ she compromised, following them as far as the door so she could keep an eye on all three of them, mainly the dog.

  ‘We can’t keep him,’ she said to her father over her shoulder. ‘He’ll just be something else for you to look after. Besides, he’s sure to belong to someone. We can take a photo, put up posters, maybe ring the local radio.’

  Her father nodded.

  ‘I’ll do all that, and I’ll take him to the vet, get him checked out. He might be micro-chipped. But if no one claims him, well, the boys do love him already and he’d be great for them. I’ve been watching him closely and he’s certainly not dangerous. The yard’s all fenced and he’s big enough to handle two rough little boys.’

  Emma shook her head, then realised the dog had taken up far too much time already and if she didn’t hurry she’d be late for work.

  But a dog?

  Were they settling in to country life so quickly?

  The ED was quiet when she arrived, not quite late but close, and the chat about the triage desk was of the forthcoming barn dance—apparently one of the big events in the Braxton social calendar.

  Maybe the animal shelter would take the dog.

  She was about to ask when the radio came on—an ambulance ten minutes out. Sylvie lifted the receiver to her ear so the whole room didn’t have to hear, relaying information to Emma as it came through.

  ‘Atrial fibrillation, blood pressure not too bad but pulse of one hundred and forty.’

  Emma’s mind clicked into gear. Amiodarone drip. The cardiologist she’d always worked with recommended an initial IV treatment of one hundred and fifty mg over ten minutes, followed by sixty mg an hour over six hours and thirty mg an hour over eighteen hours.

  But...

  ‘Is there a local cardiologist?’ she asked Sylvie, although she was reasonably sure the town would be too small to support one.

  ‘No, but we have a fly-in-fly-out cardio man. He does two days a week in his office in Retford, then flies around about six country towns each fortnight. We usually phone him with any problems, and, without checking to be sure, I think he’s due here tomorrow.’

  Emma nodded. Presumably she could phone him, as she’d have done in the city, although down there the specialist she’d phoned had usually been in the same hospital or in rooms close by. It was strange the shift from a huge city hospital to a small country one, but the work remained the same.

  ‘Could you get him on the phone for me?’ she asked Sylvie as she walked away to meet the ambulance and its passenger.

  ‘It happens every so often,’ the patient told her cheerfully, obviously unfazed by the sudden onset of fibrillation. He was a man in his late thirties or early forties, she guessed, and sensible enough to know when he needed medical help.

  She walked with the trolley into a cubicle and asked Joss to help their new patient into a gown then get an ECG started, a blood sat clip on one finger and a cannula in his arm.

  ‘Do you see the visiting cardiologist?’ she asked her patient, now introduced as Rob Armstrong, who nodded, while Joss bustled about, sticking pads for the electrodes on the man’s body.

  Sylvie walked in with a phone in her hand, and Emma moved outside the cubicle to take the call.

  After introducing herself, she told him about the patient, whom he apparently knew quite well.

  ‘And what would you do?’ he asked, and she felt a rush of pleasure. Many specialists would simply dictate their preference.

  She told him what she’d do, and was even more delighted when he said, ‘Well done, you! I love knowing efficient ED doctors. It makes for a far better outcome for the patient. Go ahead exactly as you thought, and I’ll be there tomorrow. Unfortunately, he’s got one of those stubborn hearts that will probably need cardioversion to shock it back into normal rhythm but we always try the drugs first. It’s up to you, and available bed space, but I can do the cardioversion in the ED if you decide to keep him there.’

  A few pleasantries, a promise from him to phone later for a report, and he was gone. A nice man, Emma decided. She’d look forward to meeting him.

  In the meantime, she had a patient to see to. Joss had already taken a list of the medications he was on, and Emma was pleased to see blood thinners on the list.

  ‘We need to take some blood for testing before we attach the drip, and a chest X-ray—’

  Damn, she hadn’t asked the specialist if he wanted an echocardiogram as well.

  Decided to leave it. She’d ask him when he phoned and could do it then if he wanted one.

  She wrote up the details of the drug delivery, and, as a radiographer came in with the portable machine, she explained it to Joss.

  ‘No worries,’ Joss assured her. ‘I’ve been here long enough to have seen Mr Armstrong a few times now. He’s lucky the cardiologist is coming tomorrow. When he can’t have the cardioversion within forty-eight hours, he has to go on drugs to keep him as stable as possible for about a month, not that he complains.’

  She hesitated and Emma had a feeling she was being assessed.

  ‘Actually, he’s a great guy, Rob Armstrong—that’s our patient—he’s an engineer with the local council. Single too.’

  Emma frowned at the nurse.

  ‘And I might be interested in that information, why?’

  Joss wasn’t the least abashed by Emma’s cool demand.

  ‘Oh, just that you’re single, and those boys of yours—well, I think
boys probably need a father, you know, to kick a football around with and stuff—so I was just saying...’

  ‘Take blood for testing then start the drip,’ Emma told her, but Joss’s smirk suggested she hadn’t spoken nearly sternly enough.

  Because that little seed of an idea that the boys might need a father had been slowly spreading its roots in her mind?

  Because she’d found meeting men in the city fraught with danger and doing just that had been one of the reasons she’d been happy to move to Braxton?

  So what if it had been? She was fairly certain it wasn’t written across her forehead.

  And she certainly wouldn’t be eyeing up patients as prospective husbands—very unethical—although in a small town most of the men she was likely to meet would be prospective patients!

  Yet here she was, on only her second day at work, with someone doing a bit of very unsubtle match-making.

  And adding to her confusion over what exactly she did want in the future...

  Seeking distraction, she phoned Retford Hospital to enquire about the man with the burns.

  He was doing well, she was told, mostly second-degree burns, and he’d now been identified and a friend tracked down. He was, as she’d suspected, a backpacker, walking the track on his own after his friend had picked up casual work at the last village they’d visited.

  The person on the other end of the phone already knew who she was—did small town gossip travel from town to town so quickly?—and enquired how she was enjoying Braxton, laughing when Emma explained it was only her second day.

  But the conversation made her feel...as if she belonged? As if she’d somehow come home?

  Weird!

  Not that she had time to consider the strange feeling of belonging, for the day got busier, with a farmer coming in with the skin on his left hand lacerated from being caught in a baling machine he was fixing.

  ‘Not an everyday thing in a city hospital, I bet?’ he said to her as she cleaned the wound and stitched the tattered skin back together.