to go home and sleep.
Maybe a bit of IVF research would be good …
And the squirmy feeling in her stomach was probably indigestion.
Fate dictated that her first three patients of the afternoon were babies. Two were in for injections, which one of the nurses would give, and six-month-old Kaylin, a gurgling bundle of delight had decided she didn’t need to sleep.
Ever!
‘She’s okay now because she’s been in the car and she always sleeps in the car,’ Kaylin’s mother, Amy Bennett, explained. ‘But we can’t drive around all night so she gets some sleep because it means we don’t get any. We’re getting desperate, Jo, and Todd gets so cranky when he doesn’t get his sleep and I know I’ll lose my milk if things don’t settle down. With the dairy we can’t avoid the milking every morning and with a hundred milkers Todd needs my help. In the beginning Kaylin was good, she’d just sleep in the capsule down at the dairy while we worked, but that only lasted about a month. Remember I came in to talk to you before … ‘
Amy’s voice trailed away.
Jo thought about it as she dug through files in the cabinet behind her for information on the sleep programme offered from time to time at the local hospital in conjunction with various government departments.
Any number of babies had problems developing regular sleep patterns, but Kaylin had so far defied all the tried and trusted methods of training babies to sleep and not only was Amy looking stressed and worn out, but the baby, too, was suffering.
Think laterally! Jo reminded herself of her father’s words. Running a successful practice in a small coastal town meant understanding the dynamics of her patients’ lives. A pregnant woman with complications might refuse to go to the more specialised hospital in the nearest regional city unless someone—usually the family doctor—organised someone to look after her older children.
She’d learnt this from her father even before she studied medicine, hearing him discuss options for patients’ welfare that went beyond straight doctoring.
So as far as sorting things out for Amy went, Kaylin’s sleeping pattern was only part of the problem.
‘I can arrange for you to stay at the hospital while the expert works with you and Kaylin,’ Jo explained as Amy leafed through the information, ‘but it means Todd will have to get someone in to give him a hand with the milking. You’ve still got that old house on the property, haven’t you? The one you’ve rented out from time to time?’
Amy nodded.
‘Then maybe you could offer it rent free to someone in exchange for help with the milking. That will give you more time to spend with Kaylin. Now she’s getting too big for the capsule, you’d have to find an alternative way to keep her safe while you’re helping Todd, in any case.’
Amy looked doubtful.
‘You know we did it once before,’ she murmured. ‘I think it was your dad, just before he left, that arranged for the Scott family to have the house.’
‘Oh, dear, not so good a suggestion, then,’ Jo replied, remembering the complicated plan she and Lauren had cooked up to get Mrs Scott and the two little Scotts out of the house and into the recently opened refuge when the man Todd Bennett had employed had turned out to be an abusive husband.
Jo shuddered at the memory, thinking of the volunteer who’d driven the wife and children to safety and who had later been targeted by Bob Scott. The volunteer’s house had been peppered with eggs and tomatoes.
‘But then again, it’s hardly likely you’d get another couple like the Scotts.’
Amy shrugged.
‘You just don’t know, do you?’ she said, but after Jo had checked out both her and Kaylin, Amy agreed she’d talk to Todd about it and let Jo know if she wanted to stay in the hospital for the sleep programme.
‘Do you know where Mrs Scott and the kids went?’ she asked as Jo was walking with her back to the reception area.
‘Back to Mr Scott,’ Jo told her, remembering how wary she’d been when the woman had made that decision. ‘Mr Scott completed a programme they were running in Port to help men like him and I think he joined a support group, so hopefully it all worked out.’
Amy waved goodbye and Jo turned to go back to her room to check who was next. She ran smack bang into a broad chest.
‘Men like him?’ the owner of the chest repeated. ‘Abusive?’
Jo nodded, her mind still full of the uneasiness that thinking about the Scotts had caused.
‘And the man went to Port? There’s a refuge but no programme for men here?’
Jo had backed away from him, and now his persistence forced her to look up into his face.
‘The Scotts were gone two years ago, why the interest?’
Cam beamed at her, his smile so warm she felt it radiate against her skin.
And set alarm bells clanging in her head!
‘It’s something I can do,’ he announced, still beaming with delight at whatever he was thinking. ‘Something I can set up. If not a regular programme at least a support-slash-discussion group.’
It was an excellent idea, and something she and Lauren had often discussed, but why was Cam being so helpful?
So he’d have to stay on?
‘You’re only here for a couple of months,’ she reminded him.
‘On trial for a couple of months.’ His retort was so swift she knew he’d followed her thoughts. ‘Anyway, if it doesn’t work out here at the clinic, I could always stay on in town and surf for a few more months, maybe pick up some shifts at the hospital. Tom said yesterday that they could probably get funding for a part-time doctor, and after the holidays I can live in my van in the caravan park so I wouldn’t be bothering you.’
Bothering her?
Had he guessed how she was reacting to him? Well, not her so much but her body …
Whether it was his proximity—the hall was getting narrower by the minute—or the thought of Cam being around for longer than was absolutely necessary, Jo didn’t know. All she knew was that she feeling extremely flustered and she did know she didn’t do flustered.
Ever.
‘We’ve both got patients to see,’ she reminded Cam, and stomped away, even more put out because the soft-soled sandals she wore didn’t make satisfactory stomping noises.
Hmm.
Cam watched her go.
Had he flustered her?
Jo Harris didn’t strike him as a woman who flustered easily.
And why was he thinking about her—in particular, why was he thinking about her as a woman? He may not have PTSD, but he certainly wasn’t in any state to be
