guess it’s not.’ Grady was watching her face. Waiting. Knowing that she was taking her time to say what had to be said, and knowing she needed that time. He lifted her hand again and gripped her fingers, looking down at them as if he was examining them for damage. It was a technical manoeuvre, she thought dully. Something he’d learned to do. ‘So Beth’s the island doctor…’
‘She’s great.’ She was talking too fast, she thought, but she couldn’t slow down. Her voice didn’t seem to belong to her. ‘She’s ten years older than me, and she was almost a mother to me. She’d turn up unexpectedly whenever I most needed her. If I was in a school play and my mother couldn’t make it—which she nearly always couldn’t—I’d suddenly, miraculously, find Beth in the audience, cheering me on with an enthusiasm that was almost embarrassing. And when she decided to be a doctor, I thought I could be, too.’
‘But not like Beth?’
‘Beth wanted to go back to the island. It tore her apart to leave to do her medical training, and the moment she was qualified she returned. She fell in love with a local fisherman and the island’s her home. She loves it.’
‘And you?’ he probed.
‘The island’s never been my home. I love it but I never thought of living anywhere but here.’ She attempted a smile but it was a pretty shaky one. ‘I guess I have more than a bit of my mother in me somewhere. I like excitement, cities, shopping…life.’
‘Like me.’
‘My excitement levels don’t match your excitement levels,’ she told him ruefully. ‘I like being a surgeon in a bustling city hospital. I don’t dangle out of helicopters in raging seas, plucking—’
But Grady wasn’t to be distracted. The background had been covered. Now it was time to move on. ‘Morag, what’s wrong?’ His deep voice cut through her misery, compelling. Doctor asking for facts, so he could treat what needed to be treated.
Her voice faltered. She looked up at him and then away. His hand tightened on hers—just as she’d seen him do with distressed patients. For some reason the action had her tugging away from him. She didn’t want this man treating her as he’d treat a patient. This was supposed to be special.
This was supposed to be for ever.
For ever?
The prospect of for ever rose up, overwhelming her with dread. Somehow she had to explain and she had to do it before she broke down.
‘Beth has renal cancer,’ she whispered.
She’d shifted her hand back to her side of the table. Grady made a move to regain it, but she tucked it carefully under the table. It seemed stupidly important that she knew where her hand was.
He didn’t say anything. She swallowed while he waited for her to go on. He was good, this man. His bedside manner was impeccable.
And suddenly, inexplicably, his bedside manner made her want to hit him.
Crazy. Anger—anger at Grady—was crazy. She had to force herself to be logical here. To make sense.
‘I haven’t been back to the island for over a year,’ she managed. ‘But last time I went Beth seemed terrific. She had a bad time for a while. She married a local fisherman, and he was drowned just after Dad died. But she was recovering. She’s thirty-nine years old and she has a little boy, Robbie, who’s five. She seemed settled and happy. Life was looking good.’
‘But now she’s been diagnosed with renal cancer?’ His tone was carefully neutral, still extracting facts.
‘Mmm.’
‘What stage?’
‘Advanced. Apparently she flew down to Melbourne last month and had scans without telling anyone. There’s a massive tumour in the left kidney, with spread that’s clear from the scans. It’s totally inoperable.’
And totally anything else, she thought bleakly as she waited for Grady to absorb what she’d told him. He’d know the inevitable outcome just as clearly as she did. If renal cancer was caught while the tumour was still contained, then it could be surgically removed—removing the entire kidney—but once it had spread outside the kidney wall, chemotherapy or radio-therapy would make little difference.
‘She’s dying,’ she whispered.
‘I’m sorry.’
Her eyes flew up to his. He was watching her, his eyes gentle, but she wasn’t imagining it. There was that tiny trace of removal. Distancing.
‘I need to go to the island,’ she told him. ‘Now.’
‘Of course you do.’ He hesitated, and she could see him juggling appointments in his head. Thinking ahead to his frantic week. It was what she always did when something unexpected came up.
Until now.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ he asked.
Did she? Of course she did. More than anything else in the world. But…
‘I can call on Steve to cover for me for the next week,’ he told her. ‘If we could be back by next Sunday—’
‘No.’
His face stilled. ‘Sorry?’
And now it was time to say it. It couldn’t be put off one moment longer.
‘Grady, this isn’t going to happen,’ she said gently, as if this would hurt him as much as it hurt her. And maybe it would.
‘My sister’s dying. She has a little boy and she’s a single mother. She has a community who depend on her.’
His face was almost expressionless. ‘What are you saying?’
‘That it’ll be a lot…a lot longer than a week.’
‘Can you take more than a week off?’ His face changed back to the concerned, involved expression that was somehow turning her away from him. It was making her cringe inside. It was his doctor’s face.
‘I guess you must,’ he said, thinking it through as he spoke. ‘The hospital will organise compassionate leave for you for a few weeks.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ll come for a week now, and then again for—’
‘The funeral?’ she finished for him, and watched him flinch.
‘Morag…’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said—’
‘Oh, the funeral’s going to happen,’ she said, her anger directed squarely now against the appalling waste of cancer. ‘Inevitably it’ll happen. But as for taking compassionate leave…I can’t.’
He frowned, confused. ‘So you’ll come back in a week or so?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ She lifted her hands back
