New Doc in Town

‘A double carport so you can keep your van under cover,’ his guide said, waving her left hand to indicate the covered parking spaces. She reached above the door for a key, saying, ‘I know I shouldn’t keep it there,’ before inserting it in the lock and opening the door.

The flat was as different from the minimalist-style house as it was possible to be. Roses, not giant cockroaches! The roses dominated the small space. They bloomed from trellises on the wallpaper, glowed on the fabric covering the small lounge suite, while silk ones stood in vases on small tables here and there.

‘Ha!’ Cam said, unable to stop himself. ‘You wanted a fortyish woman to fit in with the furnishings, although … ‘

He turned towards his new boss and caught a look of such sadness on her face he wished he hadn’t opened his mouth. Though now he had, he had to finish what he’d been about to say or look even more foolish than he felt.

‘Well, one of my sisters is forty and roses definitely aren’t her thing.’

The words came out strained, mumbled almost under his breath, but he doubted Joanna Harris heard them. She’d moved across the small room and opened the sliding glass windows, walking out through them onto the deck.

The way she stood, hugging herself at the railing, told him she wanted—perhaps needed—to be alone, so he explored the neatly organised domain, finding two small bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen had been fitted somehow into the tiny flat. The configuration of the bathroom made him wonder. There was a shower above a tiled floor, no cubicle, just a floor waste where most of the water would go. The basin was set low, no cupboard beneath it.

This and a silver bar screwed onto the wall at waist height suggested the room had been built for someone with a disability and now he looked around he realised the doorways were wider than normal—to accommodate a wheelchair?—and hand-grips had been installed in other places.

Jo had spoken of a sister …

A disabled sister?

He looked out at the figure standing on the deck, a hundred questions flashing through his mind, but the way she stood—the way she’d handled his arrival and their conversation since—told him he might never have those questions answered.

A very private person, Jo Harris, or so he suspected, although on an hour’s acquaintance how could he be judging her?

She should have redecorated the flat, Jo chided herself. She should have done it as soon as she’d moved into it after Jilly died—yet she’d always felt that changing the roses her sister had loved would have been letting go of her twin for ever.

A betrayal of some kind.

And surely ‘should’ was the unkindest word in the English language, so filled with regrets of what might have been, or not been. Should have done this, should not have done that. Her own list of shoulds could go on for ever, should have come home from Sydney sooner being right at the top of it!

Jo hugged her body and looked out to sea, waiting for the view to calm her, for her mind to shut away the memories and consign the shoulds to the trash bin she kept tucked away in her head. Coming into the flat usually upset her—not a lot—just brought back memories, but today, seeing the stranger—Cam—there, he’d looked so out of place among the roses Jill had loved, it had hurt more than usual.

‘I’ll bring my car up.’

He called to her from the doorway and before she could turn he was gone. Good! It would give her time to collect herself. Actually, it would give her time to scurry back to her place and hide from the man for the rest of the day, though that was hardly fair.

She found a little notebook on the kitchen bench and scribbled a note. ‘Will meet you in the carport in half an hour, we can get a bite to eat in town and I’ll show you around.’

A bite to eat in town.

It sounded so innocuous but within an hour of being seen down the street with him the word would be all over town that Jo Harris had finally found a man!

As if a man who looked like him—like the picture of him anyway—would be interested in a scrawny redhead.

Of course once the locals realised he’d come to work for her, the talk would settle down, then when he left …

She shook her head, unable to believe she’d been thinking that maybe it would be nice to have a man around.

A man or this man?

She had a sneaky suspicion the second option was the answer but she wouldn’t consider it now. Instant attraction was something for books, not real people—not real people like her, anyway.

The man would be her colleague—temporary colleague—and right now she had to show him around the town. She’d reclip her hair and smear on a little lightly coloured sunscreen, the only make-up she ever used, but she wouldn’t change—no need to really startle the town by appearing in anything other than her usual garb.

Unfortunately as she passed through the kitchen she saw his résumé, still open on the bench—open at the photo …

She added lipstick to the preparations. After all, it, too, had sun protection.

Leaving the house, she drove down to the clinic first, showing him around the consulting and treatment rooms, proud of the set-up and pleased when he praised it. Then back in the car, she took Cam to the top of the rise so he could see the town spread out below them.

‘It’s fairly easy to get around,’ she explained to him. ‘As you can see from here, the cove beach faces north and the southern beach—the long one—faces east.’

‘With the shopping centre running along the esplanade behind the cove, is that right?’

He pointed to the wide drive along the bay side, Christmas decorations already flapping in the wind.

‘There’s actually a larger, modern shopping mall down behind this hill,’ Jo told him. ‘You just drive up here and turn right instead of left. We’re going the other way because the best cafés are on the front and the hospital is also down there. Until the surfing craze started, the cove beach was the one everyone used. It’s only been in relatively recent years that the open beach has become popular and land along it has been developed for housing.’

Explaining too much?

Telling him stuff he didn’t need to know?

Yes to both but Jo felt so uncomfortable with the stranger in her car, she knew the silence would prickle her skin if she didn’t fill it with talk.

‘Can we eat before we visit the hospital?’ her passenger asked, and although there was nothing in his voice to give him away, memories of her own surfing days came rushing back to Jo. When the surf was running, food had been the last thing on her mind, so she’d return home close to lunchtime, starving.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t had breakfast?’ she wailed. ‘I realised you’d come straight from the beach but … ‘

She turned so she could see his face.

‘You should have said,’ she told him, mortified that she’d been proudly pointing out up-to-date equipment while all he wanted was something to eat. ‘I could have offered you food at the house—cereal or toast or something. It was just so late in the morning I didn’t think of it. Or we could have gone straight to the café instead of doing the clinic tour first.’

She’d turned her attention back to the road but heard the smile in his voice when he replied.

‘Hey, don’t go beating yourself up about it. I’m a big boy. I can look after myself.’

‘Hardly a boy!’ Jo snapped, contrarily angry now, although it wasn’t her fault the man was starving.

She pulled up opposite her favourite café, a place she and Jill had hung out in during their early high-school days.

‘They do an all-day big breakfast I can recommend,’ she told Cam, before dropping down out of the car and crossing the road, assuming he would follow. As she heard his door shut, she used the remote lock and heard the ping as the car was secured.

‘A big breakfast will hit the spot,’ Cam declared as he studied the blackboard menu and realised that the combination of eggs, bacon, sausages, tomato, beans and toast was just what he needed to fill the aching void in his stomach.

If only other voids in other parts of him could be filled as easily …

‘I’ll have a toasted cheese and—’

‘Tomato sandwich and a latte,’ the young girl who’d come to take their orders finished.