Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption

Well, she’d saved his dog.

She was trying to get a handle on it. She was trying to fit the evening’s events into the impersonal. Nurse saves doctor’s dog, nurse angry at doctor for leaving dog on beach, nurse hits doctor, doctor hugs nurse.

It didn’t quite fit.

‘I’m normally quite sane,’ she ventured as he pulled up outside a convenience store.

‘Me, too.’ He grinned. ‘Mostly. What sort of milk?’

‘White.’

His grin widened. ‘What, no unpasteurised, low-fat, high-calcium, no permeate added…’

‘Oi,’ she said. ‘White.’

He chuckled and went to buy it. She watched him go, lean, lithe, tanned, muscled legs, board shorts, T-shirt, salt-stiff hair—everything about him screaming surfer.

He was pin-up material, she thought suddenly. He was the type of guy whose picture she’d have pinned on her wall when she’d been fifteen.

She’d pinned these sorts of pictures all over her wall when she’d been a kid. Her parents had had a board they’d brought in to her various hospital wards to make her feel at home. She’d had pictures of surfing all over it. She would lie and watch the images of lean bodies catching perfect waves and dream…

But then Sam was back with her milk and she had to haul herself back to the here and now.

‘My purse is in my car,’ she said, suddenly horrified.

‘I’ll fix it,’ he said. ‘You’ll get it back tonight.’

She knew he would. I’ll fix it.

She actually didn’t like it all that much. Other people fixing stuff for her…

She had to get a grip here. Getting her purse and paying for her milk were not enough to start a war over.

She subsided while he drove the short distance to the hospital apartment car park. The parking space he drove into indicated it belonged to ‘Mr Sam Webster. Paediatric Cardiology’.

Mr. That meant he was a surgeon.

Paediatric cardiology. Clever.

She glanced across at him and tried to meld the two images together—the specialist surgeons she’d worked with before and the surfer guy beside her.

‘I clean up okay,’ he said, and it felt weird that he’d guessed her thoughts. ‘I make it a rule never to wear board shorts when consulting. Hey, Callie!’

A woman was pulling in beside them—Dr Callie Richards, neonatal specialist. Zoe had met this woman during the week and was already seriously impressed. Callie was maybe five years older than Zoe but a world apart in medical experience. In life experience, too, Zoe had thought. She’d seemed smart, confident, kind—the sort of colleague you didn’t want to meet when you were looking…like she was looking now. She’d also seemed aloof.

But Sam was greeting her warmly, calling her over.

‘Callie, could you spare us a few minutes?’ he called. ‘We’ve had a bit of a traumatic time. Bonnie was hit by a car.’

‘Bonnie!’ Callie’s face stilled in shock and Zoe realised she knew the dog. Maybe the whole hospital knew Bonnie, she decided, thinking back to those trusting Labrador eyes. Bonnie was the sort of dog who made friends.

‘We think she’ll be okay,’ Sam said hurriedly, responding to the shock on Callie’s face, ‘but I need to get back to the vet’s. This is Zoe…’ He looked a query at Zoe. ‘Zoe…’

‘Payne,’ Zoe said. She was on the opposite side of the Jeep from Sam and Callie, and knowing how she looked she was reluctant to move.

‘I know Zoe,’ Callie said, smiling at her. ‘New this week? From Adelaide?’

That was impressive. One brief meeting in the wards, doctor and nurse, and Callie had it.

‘Yeah, well, she’s had a baptism by fire,’ Sam said grimly. ‘I was out in the surf when Bonnie was hit, and she saved her life. We’ve just spent two hours operating and Zoe rocks. But now she’s covered in gore and she’s got a bit of delayed shock. I don’t want to leave her but I need—’

‘To get back to Bonnie—of course you do.’ And Callie moved into caretaker mode, just like that. ‘Go, Sam, I’ll take care of Zoe.’

‘I don’t need—’

‘Let Sam go and then we’ll discuss it,’ Callie said, and Zoe hauled herself together—again—and gave a rueful smile. Sam handed Callie Zoe’s milk, as Zoe climbed out of the Jeep. Then, he was gone.

Callie was brisk, efficient and not about to listen to quibbles. She ushered Zoe into the lift and when it stopped on the first floor to admit a couple of nurses she held up her hand to stop them coming in.

‘Closed for cleaning,’ she said, and grinned and motioned to Zoe. ‘Or it should be. Catch the next lift, ladies.’

The lift closed smoothly and they were alone again.

When they reached the apartment Zoe realised her keys were in her purse. No problem—one phone call and Callie had the caretaker there, and he didn’t ask questions either. There was something about Callie that precluded questions.

Or argument. Zoe gave up, let herself be steered into the bathroom, stood for ten minutes under a steaming shower and emerged in her bathrobe, gloriously clean. Two plates of toast and eggs were on her kitchen counter with two steaming mugs of tea, and Callie was sitting over them looking as if this was completely normal, like they were flatmates and it was Callie’s turn to cook.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘But I’m starving, and there’s nothing in my apartment. I was going to ring for pizza but you have enough to share.’

Zoe smiled and slid into a chair and thought she should protest but she was all protested out.

And the toast smelled great. She hadn’t realised she was hungry. They ate in what seemed companionable silence. Zoe cradled her tea, her world righted itself somehow and when finally Callie asked questions she was ready to answer.

‘How’s Bonnie?’ she asked first, and Zoe thought she was right in her surmise that Bonnie was a beloved presence in this hospital.

‘She has a fractured leg, now plated. Lots of lacerations and two broken ribs, but Doug—the vet—seems confident that she’ll be okay.’

‘Thank God for that,’ Callie said. ‘Half the hospital would break its collective heart if she died—not to mention our Sam. Those two are inseparable.’

‘He left her on the beach,’ Zoe said carefully, trying not to sound judgemental, ‘while he surfed. She was hit by a dune buggy.’

Callie closed her eyes. ‘Damn. But that beach is closed to anything but foot traffic.’

‘You know where we were?’

‘Sam always surfs at the Spit at the Seaway. The surf’s great, dogs are permitted off leash and it’s the safest place for Bonnie.’

‘He still shouldn’t have left her,’ Zoe said stubbornly, and Callie shrugged and started making more tea.