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 onto the table and stared down at her fingers, as if she couldn’t believe she was about to make the commitment that in truth she’d made the moment she’d heard her sister whisper, ‘Renal cancer.’ It was done. It was over. ‘I’m not taking compassionate leave,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’m going to the island for ever.’
It shocked him. It shocked him right out of compassionate doctor, caring lover mode. All the things he was most good at. His brow snapped down in surprise, and his deep, dark eyes went still.
‘You can’t just quit.’ Grady’s job was his life, Morag thought hopelessly, and she could understand it. Until an hour ago she’d felt the same way. But she had no choice.
‘Why can’t I quit?’ And then, despairingly, she added, ‘How can I not?’
‘Surely your sister wouldn’t expect you to.’
‘Beth expects nothing,’ she said fiercely. ‘She never has. She gives and she gives and she gives.’ Their meal arrived at that moment and she stared down at it as if she didn’t recognise it. Grady leaned across to place her knife and fork in her hands—back to being the caring doctor—but she didn’t even notice. ‘Petrel Island needs her so much,’ she whispered.
‘She’s their only doctor?’
‘My father and then Beth,’ she told him. She stopped for a minute then, ostensibly to eat but really to gather her thoughts to continue. ‘Because my father was a doctor, more young families have come to the island, and the community’s grown. There’s fishing and kelp farming and a great little specialist dairy. But without a doctor, the Petrel Island community will disintegrate.’
‘They could get someone else.’
‘Oh, sure.’ It was almost a jeer. ‘A doctor who wants to practise in such a place? I don’t think so. After…after Beth dies, maybe…I’ll try to find someone, but it’s so unlikely. And Beth needs my promise—that the island can continue without her.
‘So you see,’ she told him, cutting her steak into tiny pieces that she had no intention of eating. It was so important to concentrate. It was important to concentrate on anything but Grady. ‘You see why I need to leave?’
There was a reason she couldn’t look at him. She knew what his reaction would be. And here it came.
‘But…you’re saying this might be for ever?’ He sounded appalled. As well he might.
‘I’m saying for as long as I’m needed. Do I have a choice?’
He had the answer to that one. ‘Yes,’ he said flatly. ‘Bring your sister here. You can’t tell me there aren’t far better medical facilities in Sydney than on Petrel Island. And who’s going to be treating physician? You? You know that’s a recipe for disaster. Caring for your own family… I don’t think so.’
‘There’s no one else.’
‘There’s no one else in Sydney?’ he asked incredulously.
‘No. On the island. Beth won’t leave the island.’
‘She doesn’t have a choice,’ Grady said, the gentleness returning to his voice. Gentle but right. Sympathetic but firm. ‘You have a life, Morag, and your life is here.’
‘And Robbie? Her little boy? What of his life?’
‘Maybe he’s going to have to move on. Plenty of kids have a city life. It won’t hurt him to spend a couple of months in Sydney.’
‘You mean I should bring them both here while Beth dies.’
‘You have a life, too,’ he told her. ‘It sounds dreadful—I know it does—but if your sister is dying then you have to think past the event.’
‘Take care of the living?’
‘That’s right,’ he said, his face clearing a little. ‘Your sister will see that. She sounds a pragmatic person. Not selfish…’
‘No. Not selfish. Never selfish.’
‘You need to think long term. She’ll be thinking long term.’
‘She is,’ Morag said dully. ‘That’s why she rang me. She’s been ill for months and she’s been searching for some way not to ask me. But it’s come to this. She doesn’t have a choice and neither do I. Without Beth the community doesn’t have a doctor. Robbie doesn’t have a mother. And I’m it.’
Silence. Then… ‘Your mother?’
‘You’ve met my mother. Barbara take care of Robbie? He’s not even her grandchild. Don’t be stupid.’
He looked flatly at her, aghast. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting you throw everything up here?’ he demanded. ‘Take over the care of a dying sister? Take on the mothering of a child, and the medical needs of a tiny island hundreds of miles from the mainland? Morag, you have to be kidding!’
‘Do you think I’d joke about something like this?’
‘Look, don’t make any decisions,’ he said urgently. ‘Not yet. Get compassionate leave for a week or two and take it from there. I’ll come over and do some reorganisation—’
‘Some reorganisation?’
‘I’ll talk to the flying doctor service. We’ll see if we can get a clinic over there once a month or so to keep the locals happy. I can organise an apartment here that’d accommodate your sister. Maybe we can figure out a long-term carer for the kid on the island. He can go to day care here while his mum’s alive, and then we’ll find someone to take him over long term.’
Great. For the first time since Beth had telephoned, Morag felt an emotion that was so fierce it overrode her complete and utter devastation. She raised her face to his and met his look head on. He was doing what he was so good at. Crisis management. He was taking disaster and hauling it into manageable bits.
But this was Beth. Beth!
‘Do you know what love is?’ she whispered.
He looked confused. ‘Sure I do, Morag.’ He reached forward and would have taken her hand again but she snatched it back like he’d burn her. ‘You and I—’
‘You and I don’t have a thing. Not any more. This is Beth we’re talking about. Beth. My darling sister. The woman who cares for me and loves me and who put her own life on hold for me so many times I can’t think about it. You’d have me repay that by
