An Unexpected Proposal Read online

  ‘I believe there was a second…?’ Marcus prompted after some time had elapsed and Madeline hadn’t continued.

  She made a supreme effort to drag her eyes away from his mouth and concentrate on the conversation.

  ‘Yes. Secondly…’ she cleared her throat, her chin jutting determinedly ‘…it will be a cold day in hell before I will allow you to practise this…quackery, this medieval…mumbo-jumbo, right next door to our practice. My partners and I will not legitimise this hocus-pocus by allowing you premises next to ours.’

  Marcus stared intently at Madeline Harrington, listening carefully as she laid down the law. Two red spots of colour stained her cheeks and there was a breathy quality, almost a tremble, making her voice husky. He wondered what it would be like to have her breath trembling against his skin. His loins stirred again and he had to remind himself she was not on the market.

  ‘And just how do you propose to stop me, Maddy?’

  She opened her mouth to lay down exactly how she intended to stop him and stopped abruptly at his casual familiarity. No one, but no one had called her that since Abby. Sorrow and pain lanced through her as an image of her younger sister formed in her mind. Why did it still have the power to take her breath away?

  ‘The name is Madeline,’ she snapped.

  ‘Maybe. But I think I’ll call you Maddy anyway,’he stated, and enjoyed the glitter he caused in her emerald depths.

  ‘You won’t be getting the chance, Dr Hunt. You’re being evicted first thing Monday.’

  ‘I have a lease, Maddy.’

  Madeline laughed coldly even as her insides melted at the way he said her name. Almost a sigh. A purr. ‘My partners and I own this building, Dr Hunt. Once they discover that a quack has set up shop next door, you won’t last five minutes. Not even your magic wand will be able to help you. Why not leave graciously now? Go perform your witchcraft elsewhere.’

  Madeline glowed triumphantly, having placed her trump card on the table. He smiled back at her, obviously unconcerned.

  ‘Why stop at eviction, Maddy? Why not just burn me at the stake and be done with it?’ he enquired softly.

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’

  Oh, she tempted him all right. ‘What are you afraid of? Have you forgotten that Hippocrates was a homoeopath? Surely this world is big enough for both conventional and alternative medicine?’

  ‘Not in this street it isn’t.’ Madeline turned on her heel, head high, and made for the door.

  He chuckled. ‘See you, Maddy.’

  She shivered despite the blast of invading heat.

  ‘Count on it,’ she muttered, and stepped into the street.

  Madeline breathed in great refreshing gulps as she walked the short distance next door to the GP surgery. She was quaking inside at the confrontation with Marcus Hunt and confused at the nagging sense of longing still crashing around inside her from when she had first spied him on his skateboard.

  She let herself through the front gate of the inner-city terrace house that had been given a recent facelift, as had all the terraces in the area. The practice had been here for almost all of Madeline’s life, her father having bought the row of five terraces before she’d been born and setting up with two other partners. The practice now took up two of the terraces, then there was the soon-to-be-empty-again one next door and the last two were leased by solicitors.

  She looked at the gold lettering on the wooden door—Dr Blakely, Dr Baxter, Dr Harrington and Dr Wishart. Strangely, today she didn’t feel the pride seeing her name in gold lettering usually engendered. She felt…disconnected. Unfulfilled.

  She shook her head to clear the vague feeling of disquiet. Madeline had never wanted to do anything else. Most of the people that she’d been through med school with had been horrified at her lack of ambition. They’d been keen to specialise in the more glamorous areas of medicine. But she had grown up seeing the difference a good general practitioner could make to their patients’ lives and had never considered anything else. And after her father’s death she had grown even more determined to continue his legacy.

  She pushed the door open. There was twenty minutes before closing.

  ‘Madeline! Oh, my God,’ squealed an excited Veronica from behind the front desk. The receptionist jumped from her chair and enveloped Madeline in an enthusiastic hug.

  Veronica was one of the changes that Madeline had made since starting at the practice. Reasons for dwindling patient numbers had been multi-factorial, the new twenty-four-hour health centre in the next block being one but an aging reception staff not helping either. Veronica was twenty-five and a total godsend. She was bright and perky with a sparkly personality. The patients adored her.

  ‘Fine,’ Madeline responded distractedly. Not even Veronica’s enthusiasm could curb her indefinable restlessness. ‘Who’s on today? George, Andrew or Tom?’ Madeline asked, looking around at the empty waiting room.

  ‘George. He’s at a house call.’

  George Blakely had been her father’s partner since the dawn of the practice. He and his wife Mary had also taken Madeline and Abby under their wing when their parents had died within a year of each other in Madeline’s final year of high school.

  Andrew Baxter had also been one of the founding partners. Thomas Wishart was a newer edition, a thirty-three-year-old father of four, brought in by Madeline a year ago. He was an excellent practitioner who Madeline had first met at med school. They had desperately needed new blood to bring in new clients and Thomas, who lived locally, had been perfect.

  Both George and Andrew would be retiring in the next five years so it was important to put strategies in place for that eventuality. Thomas had been an excellent start. The practice was building back up again and Madeline hoped that it would be thriving when George and Andrew hung up their stethoscopes.

  ‘Quiet day?’ Madeline asked.

  ‘Forget that!’ said Veronica, her blue eyes sparkling merrily, ‘tell me all the gossip. I want to know everything!’

  ‘I went to an international general practitioners’ symposium, Veronica. No gossip to tell.’

  Veronica rolled her eyes. ‘In London, Madeline, London! Don’t tell me you didn’t take my advice?’

  Madeline smiled. ‘About the rebound sex?’

  Veronica nodded her head vigorously. ‘Those English lads love Aussie girls.’

  ‘Ah, it’s not really me, Veronica.’

  ‘Well, of course it’s not,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘That’s the point. Simon dumps you just before a six-week overseas working holiday. It’s perfect for rebound sex. Anonymity. Perfect.’

  Madeline smiled at Veronica’s grab-life-by-the-balls attitude and envied the younger woman. She herself was more tiptoe through life cautiously. One-night stands, rebound sex…she’d been with one guy for ten years. And, besides, their split was just temporary.

  ‘I didn’t really fancy anyone,’ she said lamely as Veronica continued to look at her expectantly. Now, if Marcus Hunt had been there…

  ‘Madeline,’ Veronica sighed.

  ‘Hey, no one offered either,’ she said defensively.

  ‘I don’t reckon that helped,’ said Veronica, tapping Madeline’s ring with the end of her pen.

  Madeline looked down at the two-carat diamond. It had been part of her hand for four years, and even if it was really over between them, she wasn’t ready to take it off yet. And truth was, it did keep men away. If she counted Simon, that was four people she’d loved and lost, and she wasn’t sure she would be capable of ever loving again. She felt emotionally frigid. Her heart buried in a block of ice.

  She glanced at her watch. It was five. ‘Why don’t you go home? It’s time. I’m going to do a bit of catching up, I’ll lock up on my way out.’

  ‘OK, I get it, I get it. Mind my own business,’ Veronica grumbled good-naturedly as she gathered her stuff. She gave Madeline a quick peck on the cheek and left.

  Alone, Madeline walked around the surgery, absently re-familiarisi
ng herself with the tastefully decorated waiting area. She checked the appointment book and whistled out loud, recognising quite a few of her regulars. It was going to be a busy Tuesday! Her colleagues had insisted she didn’t start work again until then, to fully recover from her jet lag.

  Madeline felt the odd restlessness again and found it difficult to concentrate on the book. She yawned—she was tired but it was still too early for bed. She wandered into her office and sat in her chair. She picked up the various drug company ‘toys’ she kept on her desk to amuse children and opened her drawers, checking she had plenty of prescription pads and stationery.

  The checks done, she sat back in her ergonomically designed black leather swivel chair and her tired mind drifted to Marcus Hunt. She saw the flecks of paint in his hair and heard his wicked laugh, and her nipples hardened at the image of his sheer masculine beauty. She’d never met a man who’d had such an instantaneous effect on her. Marcus Hunt was potent. Marcus Hunt was lethal.

  Madeline’s gaze fell on the framed photo of Simon. Something else she hadn’t been able to bring herself to dispose of just yet. She remembered Veronica’s pursed disapproving lips. It was all right for her. She’d spent her teens and twenties having a good time, experimenting with men and life, secure in the arms of a loving family. Madeline had spent them reeling from one tragedy to another while trying to study hard and be there for Abby, too. Simon had stuck by her side through all of it.

  She traced her fingers over his face. So he wasn’t skater boy but he had a nice smile and despite everything she still loved him. They’d been together for ever—since they’d been twenty. You couldn’t just wipe that love out overnight. And she’d be damned if she’d let some inexplicable attraction to a bit of rough derail her conviction that the split with Simon was just temporary.

  She heard the bell ding over the door and was pleased at the distraction. She thought it would probably be George back from his house call so she was surprised to see young Brett Sanders looking as white as a ghost, supporting his very grey, very sweaty mother.

  Madeline hurried over. ‘Mrs Sanders, what’s wrong?’ she demanded, quickly assessing the woman’s cool, clammy skin, breathlessness and racing pulse.

  ‘It’s her indigestion,’ said Brett. ‘I wanted to take her to the hospital but she said she was fine and that you were closer. But she got worse in the car…’ He trailed off, his voice cracking with fear and unshed tears.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Madeline soothed, sitting Mrs Sanders down next to the emergency trolley near the front desk. It was basic, holding just oxygen, an ambubag, some adrenaline mini-jets and a portable defib unit. She quickly assembled a face mask and placed it on her patient’s face, cranking up the oxygen. She hoped it wasn’t too little too late. Mrs Sanders was in a lot of pain and it was extending down her left arm.

  ‘Brett, go and ring the ambulance on the phone at the desk. Triple zero.’

  Even at seventeen, people in a panic could forget the number that had been drummed into them since they could talk. And Brett Sanders was about as panicked as she’d ever seen anyone.

  ‘Tell them that your mum is having a heart attack. OK, Brett? Do you understand?’

  He looked at Madeline, alarmed, and she thought he was about to cry. ‘Brett.’ Madeline shook him. ‘I can’t leave your mother. You must do it now.

  You’ve done so well. I need you to do this.’ Her voice was calm but firm.

  He got up and made the call, while Madeline took Mrs Sanders’s blood pressure. Suddenly, the woman let out a pained moan, clutched at her chest and lost consciousness. Madeline knew immediately without having to feel for a carotid pulse that the woman was in cardiac arrest. With Brett’s help she dragged the obese Mrs Sanders onto the floor, rolled her on her side and cleared her airway.

  ‘Brett, run next door. There is a doctor there called Dr Hunt—get him. Go now, Brett—now.’ Madeline knew from experience that CPR was much easier with two people. She just hoped he’d be able to see past their earlier confrontation. The youth took one look at his mother and fled.

  Madeline dragged the recently purchased semi-automatic external defibrillator off the trolley, switched it on and followed the electronic voice prompts. She ripped open Mrs Sanders’s blouse, buttons flying everywhere, cut open her bra with scissors from the trolley and slapped the two defib pads in the right positions on her chest.

  While the machine analysed her patient’s heart rhythm, Madeline assembled the mask-bag apparatus and hooked it up to the oxygen to deliver mechanical breaths to Mrs Sanders as soon as the machine had analysed the heat rhythm.

  ‘Shock not recommended,’ the electronic voice announced. ‘Commence CPR.’

  Madeline was in the middle of chest compressions when Marcus and Brett came through the door.

  ‘What happened?’ he demanded, shirt flapping wide.

  ‘Fourteen, fifteen,’ Madeline counted out loud with each downward compression of the sternum. She passed him the bag-mask and was grateful that he expertly took over the respirations, holding the mask and the patient’s jaw with the practised ease of an anaesthetist.

  ‘Myocardial infarction. She’s arrested. The ambulance is on its way.’

  They worked together as a team. Marcus gave one breath to Madeline’s five compressions, stopping every two minutes for the defib to analyse the rhythm again.

  ‘Shock recommended,’ the voice said after nearly ten minutes.

  Madeline almost cheered. They’d gone from an unshockable rhythm to one the defib deemed it could help. Had she moved from asystole into VF? Were they making real headway with their CPR?

  Madeline checked they were well clear of Mrs Sanders’s body before she pushed the shock button.

  ‘Brett,’ she said, ‘why don’t you go and wait for the ambulance outside? They’ll be here soon.’ The poor kid had seen enough today and was barely holding it all together. He didn’t need to see how his mother’s body would jump as the current arced through her chest.

  ‘I don’t want to leave her.’ The boy’s voice cracked with emotion he was desperately trying to keep in check.

  ‘Brett,’ Marcus said calmly, ‘we have everything under control here.’ He gave a reassuring smile. ‘You can be a bigger help by greeting the ambulance and guiding them to us.’

  Brett nodded miserably and left reluctantly.

  ‘Stand clear,’ said Madeline in a loud voice as they both backed away from the patient, making sure no part of them was touching Mrs Sanders in any way.

  Madeline hit the green ‘deliver shock’ button and they both watched as the patient’s chest bucked with the electricity. The machine told them to wait as it reanalysed.

  ‘We need IV access,’ Madeline said, slightly puffed from the exertion of depressing the patient’s sternum. Her arms were beginning to ache.

  ‘Shock not recommended,’ the defib pronounced.

  ‘Intubation gear, too,’ said Marcus, as he resumed his position at Mrs Sanders’s head.

  She admired his skill but found herself wishing he’d do up his buttons. ‘What? No eye of toad or wing of bat, Dr Hunt? No magic wand?’ she taunted unreasonably, going back to her compressions. It was bitchy and uncalled for, given his willingness to help after she had called him a quack, but puh-lease! How could she even be thinking about his barely dressed body at such a time?

  ‘Too late for that now, Maddy,’ he stated, his lips tightening. Her gibe might have been amusing at another time but he too was way more distracted than he should have been by how her skirt had ridden up, exposing a generous length of thigh, and the way the silk of her blouse pulled tautly, sliding seductively over her pert breasts with each downward compression. There was a time and a place and this was definitely not it!

  Madeline heard the sirens wailing somewhere close by and breathed a sigh of relief. Locked in this battle with Marcus to save Mrs Sanders’s life seemed deeply intimate and she was pleased that other health-care professionals would soon join them and br
eak the connection.

  The two ambulance officers were there within the minute and Madeline explained what she knew and the four of them worked together. One of the ambulance team worked on intravenous access while Madeline and Marcus continued CPR. The other drew up first-line drugs.

  ‘We need to intubate,’ said Marcus when the machine recommended no shock again.

  The officer handed him a laryngoscope and Marcus inserted the cold heavy metal into the patient’s mouth as he manoeuvred her head with his other hand. The light on the instrument shone down her throat and Marcus angled it around slightly until he could visualise the white vocal cords.

  ‘Size eight endotracheal tube, please.’

  Marcus skilfully inserted the plastic airway into the trachea and removed the mask from the bag-mask apparatus, connecting the bag to the top of the tube and squeezing oxygenated air into the lungs. The paramedic tied the tube in place.

  The machine reanalysed again and everyone moved back as it recommended a shock and Madeline pushed the green button. They moved back in and Marcus felt for a pulse.

  ‘Got one,’ he said.

  There was no time for congratulations. ‘Let’s load her and go,’ said the paramedic who had established the intravenous access. They swapped the defibs for one of theirs, which had a full-screen cardiac monitor attached, and Madeline helped load their patient onto the trolley as Marcus continued to administer breaths.

  Madeline noted the tachycardia, relieved that they had got Mrs Sanders back, but she was having runs of VT and Madeline knew that her condition was still critical and unstable. They had her ready for transport quickly and Madeline put her arm around Brett who was silent and pale, obviously shocked by everything that had just happened.

  ‘Come on, son,’ Marcus said gently, passing over the bag to the paramedic. ‘You can ride up front.’ Brett nodded absently, following his stretchered mother like a zombie.

  ‘I’d like to ride in the back with her—is that all right?’ Madeline asked the paramedics, who gave her a nod. If she arrested again, another pair of hands would be helpful.