New Doc in Town. Meredith Webber
on the beach all day.’
Which was true enough, but although she watched the people on the beach, her mind was churning with other things.
Common sense dictated that if she was employing another doctor for the practice it should be a man. A lot of her male patients would prefer to see a man, especially about personal problems they might be having. Elderly men in particular were reluctant to discuss some aspects of their health, not so much with a woman but with a woman they’d known since she was a child.
She’d ignored common sense and asked for a woman for a variety of reasons, most to do with the refuge. Not that her practice and the refuge were inextricably entwined, although as the only private practice in town she was called in whenever a woman or child at the refuge needed a doctor.
Mind you, with a man—she cast a sidelong glance at the man in question, wolfing down his bacon, sausages and eggs—she could run more effective anti-abuse programmes at the high school. The two of them could do interactive role plays about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour—something she was sure the kids would enjoy, and if they enjoyed it, they would maybe consider the message.
The man wasn’t staying.
And toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches were really, really boring.
‘Tell me about the refuge while I eat.’
It had been on her mind, well, sort of, so it was easy to talk—easier than thinking right now …
‘It began with a death—a young woman who had come to live in the Cove with her boyfriend who was a keen surfer. They hired an on-site van in the caravan park and had been here about three months when the man disappeared and a few days later the woman was found dead inside the van.’
Her voice was so bleak Cam immediately understood that the woman’s death had had a devastating effect on Jo Harris.
But doctors were used to death to a certain extent, so this must have been more traumatic than usual?
Why?
‘Did you know her?’ he asked. ‘Had she been a patient?’
Jo nodded.
‘No and yes. I’d seen her once—turned out she’d been to the hospital once as well. Perhaps if she’d come twice to me, or gone to the hospital both times … ‘
He watched as she took a deep breath then lifted her head and met his eyes across the table, her face tight with bad memories.
‘She came to me with a strained wrist, broken collarbone and bruises—a fall, she said, and I believed her. As you know, if you’re falling, you tend to put out a hand to break the fall, and the collarbone is the weak link so it snaps. Looking back, the story of the fall was probably true but if I’d examined her more closely I’d probably have seen bruising on her back where he’d pushed her before she fell.’
Cam stopped eating. Somehow he’d lost his enjoyment of the huge breakfast. He studied the woman opposite him and knew that in some way she was still beating herself up over the woman’s death—blaming herself for not noticing.
‘And when she was found in the van? She’d been battered to death?’
Jo nodded.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt such … ‘ She paused and he saw anguish in her face so wasn’t entirely surprised when she used the word.
‘Anguish—that’s the only way to describe it. Guilt, too, that I hadn’t helped her, but just total despair that such things happen.’
He watched as she gathered herself together—literally straightening her shoulders and tilting her chin—moving onward, explaining.
‘After she was dead some of the permanent residents at the park told the police they’d heard raised voices from the van but, like most domestic situations, no one likes to interfere. Her parents came up to the Cove and we found out they’d known he was abusive. In fact, he’d moved up here because she had often sought refuge with her parents and he’d wanted to isolate her even more. They offered a donation—a very generous donation—for someone to set up a refuge here. I … ‘
She looked out to sea, regret written clearly on her face.
‘It was as if I’d been given a reprieve. I might not have been able to help one woman, but surely I could help others. My friend Lauren, a psychologist, had just returned home to work at the Cove and together we got stuck into it, finding out all we could, bringing in people who could help, getting funding for staff.’
She offered him a rueful smile before adding, ‘Getting the house turned out to be the easy part.’ Then she sighed and the green eyes met his, studying him as if checking him out before telling him any more.
Had he passed some test that she continued, her voice low and slightly husky, as she admitted, ‘My sister had just died so, in a way, setting up the refuge helped me, too.’
She smiled but the smile could certainly not be classified as perky, as she admitted, ‘It became a passion.’
‘And?’ he prompted, for he was sure there was more.
One word but it won a real smile—one that lit her eyes with what could only be pride in what she and her friend had achieved, although there were still shadows in them as well. Of course there would be shadows—the memory of the woman who died, then the connection with her sister’s death.
A sister who’d loved roses?
He brought his mind back from the roses and shadows in eyes as Jo was talking again.
‘Isn’t there a saying—build it and they will come? Well, that’s what happened with the refuge. It’s sad it happened—that places like it are needed—but on the up side, at least now women at risk anywhere within a couple of hundred miles’ radius have somewhere to go. I’m connected to it in that I’m on the committee that runs it, and also we, by which I mean the practice, are the medical clinic the women staying there use. Problem is, to keep the refuge open we need ongoing funding from the government to pay the residential workers and that’s a bit up in the air at the moment. The powers that be keep changing the rules, requiring more and more measurable ‘objectives’ in order to attract funding, but … ‘
She nodded towards his plate. ‘This is spoiling your breakfast. Some time soon we’ll visit the house and you can talk to Lauren, who runs it, and you can see for yourself.’
Cam returned to his breakfast but his mind was considering all he’d heard. He could understand how personal the refuge must be to Jo, connected to the woman who’d died, as well as to her sister. In a way it was a memorial—almost sacred—so she’d be willing to do anything to keep it going. Even before she’d admitted that the refuge had become a passion he’d heard her passion for it in her voice and seen it in her gleaming eyes as she’d talked about it.
Passion! Hadn’t it once been his driving force? Where, along the way, had he lost his?
In the battlefields, of course, treating young men so badly damaged many of them wished to die. Dealing with their minds as well as their bodies. No wonder he’d lost his passion.
Except for surfing. That passion still burned …
He brought his mind back to the conversation, rerunning it in his head. He found the thing that puzzled him, intrigued in spite of his determination not to get too involved.
‘How would employing a middle-aged female doctor in the practice help save the refuge?’
He won another smile. He liked her smiles and was beginning to classify them. This one was slightly shamefaced.
‘It wouldn’t do much in measurable objectives,’ she admitted, ‘but it does bother me, personally, that some of the older women who use the house—women in their forties and fifties—might look at Lauren and me and wonder what on earth we could know about their lives or their problems, or even about