Chapter Twenty
‘Wow, look at you.’ Noah whistled as Carrie climbed out of her car and onto the petrol station forecourt. Just outside Magnolia Creek she knew she didn’t have enough fuel to make it all the way into the city. ‘Not sure about the choice of footwear though.’
Her heart raced seeing him so unexpectedly. She looked down at her feet. Instead of a bath she’d had a speedy shower, then tugged on her clothes and flown out the door as quickly as she could, but she hadn’t forgotten to grab some decent shoes. ‘Don’t worry, the thongs will be replaced by some fancy heels, but not for driving. I have my limits.’ She smiled at him.
‘I’m sure you do.’
His look sent shivers up her spine and she turned round to remove the petrol cap.
‘Allow me.’ Noah took the nozzle from the pump, inserted it and did the honours. ‘Not because I think you’re a princess and too good to fill up your car with fuel, but because you’re immaculate and I’m assuming you’re off somewhere important looking like that.’
‘I have an interview, so thank you. I really appreciate it.’ Dressed in a pinstripe trouser suit with a crisp white shirt, her hair pinned up in a chignon and makeup applied carefully, she was all ready to tackle whatever today threw at her. She felt unfazed now she’d seen Brenda and they’d talked. ‘I don’t want to fall at the first hurdle and turn up looking like a grease monkey.’
‘I don’t think that’ll ever be possible.’ Petrol glugged into the tank. ‘How’s the piano playing going? I heard you a while back,’ he explained, ‘and you’re not bad.’
‘You heard me?’
He nodded. ‘I didn’t knock; I didn’t want to intrude.’
‘I’m a bit rusty. I haven’t played in a long time.’ She wondered when he’d heard her, how long he’d listened for.
‘It’s a beautiful piano – it deserves to be played.’
‘It was a gift, but I never really had much time for it, until now.’
Noah’s grip changed when the pump clicked. He returned the nozzle and screwed on the petrol cap. ‘That’s the extent of my help; you’ll have to take care of the payment.’
‘Thanks, Noah.’
‘No worries.’ His gaze drifted up to hers.
‘I had a visitor.’ Her heart thumped at the revelation. ‘Lucas’s mum.’
He whistled through his teeth again and Carrie realised how familiar the gesture had become. ‘How did it go?’
‘It went well – better than I expected when I saw her at the door. And you were right: she didn’t think those things she said, not really. She was angry, devastated. She still is, but she says she can see how it wasn’t my fault.’
He smiled. ‘What did I tell you?’
‘OK, no need to look so smug.’
‘Can I assume you’ll go to your interview a bit more together than you might otherwise have been?’
‘I feel like it’s given me some closure. It was always hanging over me so now I feel I can tackle the interview as myself.’ Whether herself was the same woman she used to be, Carrie wasn’t so sure.
‘So now you can move on, go back to where you were before.’ He wasn’t asking her. ‘I’ll bet Lachlan is made up you’re going back. I never picked him out as much of a lover of the country.’
‘No, he doesn’t really appreciate it. I think he’ll always belong in the city.’
‘Good news for the hospital.’
‘Yeah.’ When their gazes locked again she looked past him to his pick-up. ‘Is that Hazel I can see waiting for you?’
‘She’s my new recruit, goes everywhere with me. Although she’s a lot livelier than Norma, given how much younger she is, and it’s taking a bit of getting used to.’ He seemed just as relieved at the turn in conversation as Carrie was.
‘Is she behaving herself?’
He leaned against the bonnet of the Mercedes. ‘She’s not bad – needs a bit of training, but nothing I can’t handle.’
‘I went to see Tyler this morning.’
‘I’m heading that way myself.’
‘It doesn’t seem real, what happened at the house.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
She wondered if he was talking about the emergency that night or, like her, he was thinking about the connection between them both as they’d worked together.
‘Let’s hope that’s the last of the storms and emergency baby deliveries in Magnolia Creek,’ he agreed. ‘So, you’re really doing it?’
‘What?’
‘Going back to the city.’
She looked down at her feet, the red toe-nail polish that stood out against the white, sparkly thongs. They were the pair she’d been wearing when she first met Noah and the memory cascaded through her, making her jittery in his presence. ‘It’s just an interview; I don’t know what I’ll do yet. Do you think I’m ready to go back?’
His look softened.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t be asking you. I should pull myself together and start making some decisions of my own.’
‘You don’t always have to do that.’
‘What?’
‘Operate as a one-woman band…people need people and I’m guessing you’re no different.’
‘I was brought up to be independent.’
‘Let me guess. Top private school, all girls, all high achievers.’
‘Well, yes, you’re right.’
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ he said, ‘but also nothing wrong with being anything outside of the norm. School shapes you but real life knocks out all the kinks and makes you into the person you are.’
Before she could saying anything else, some guy yelled from the truck behind. ‘Get a room! Just give her one, mate – move it along and we can all get home! Today!’
Noah grinned and waved a hand to the man in the truck queuing up behind Carrie’s car. ‘You’d better go and pay. And good luck.’
‘Thanks, Noah.’
*
‘It’s great to see you back!’ Stella ran into Carrie in the corridor of the hospital. ‘How was the interview, when do you start?’
‘Slow down,’ Carrie laughed. It was strangely settling to see so many familiar faces and comforting to have so many people ask her when she was returning to work permanently. ‘The interview went well and they offered me the position.’
‘That’s fantastic – I’m really happy for you.’ Stella tugged off her pager from where it was clipped on her belt and looked at the display. ‘I’ve got to run. But keep in touch.’ She was walking away already. ‘We’ll do lunch, the second you’re back in the city.’
Carrie couldn’t deny it. She’d actually missed the buzz, the busyness of the job. The interview had gone really well. It was for a year’s contract in the same position she’d had before, so same job description with similar responsibilities. The blip in her career hadn’t really taken anything away at all – in fact, Carrie felt as though it had strengthened her resolve. She’d even ended up telling the interviewer about Lucas, about how she’d coped, how she hadn’t. She’d been forthcoming about Megan, too, and when she was offered the position on the spot, Carrie wondered if her honesty and tell-all approach was what had swayed it in her favour. She’d been completely open, not because she had to be but because she wanted to be. Acknowledging the past was the only way she would be able to move past it.
Carrie met Lachlan and they made their way from the hospital, through the buzz of the city, over to one of the restaurants they’d been to plenty of times before. Tucked away in a side street, they shared tapas and doctor-talk until it was almost time for him to get back to work.
‘How’s your friend and her baby?’ He ate the last olive stuffed with goat cheese when Carrie declined.
‘Rosie and Tyler.’ She smiled. ‘They’re both doing really well. It was thankfully a straightforward birth.’
‘I bet you’re the talk of the town,’ he beamed. He’d always held her in high esteem and seemed comfortable now she was in his life the way she’d been before.
‘I think I might be, you know. I don’t really like it though. I’m not good at being in the spotlight.’
‘Well, you deserve to be. I bet Rosie is grateful she was with you rather than anyone else.’
Time to change the subject. She hadn’t told him the extent of Noah’s involvement that night and she didn’t really want to. ‘I had a visit from Brenda today.’ A smile broke out across her face – she couldn’t help it. She would be forever grateful she’d seen Lucas’s mum again.
‘Who’s Brenda?’
‘Lucas’s mum.’
‘Ah, yes.’ He leaned forward, conscious to keep everything above board when it came to his career. ‘I did get in touch with her, but only the once and she was under no obligation to contact you. I was breaking the rules and I wasn’t entirely comfortable.’
‘But you did it. You did it for me, and you’ve no idea how much it means to me. Seeing her helped me get through the interview today and I can see a way forward, at last. Why are you grinning so much?’ He didn’t seem all that interested in the details of Brenda’s visit.
He dabbed his mouth with his napkin and reached across the table for her hands. ‘I’m very proud of my girlfriend, that’s all.’
‘Lachlan…’ In the moment, the way he was looking at her, everything seemed to fall into place; at least, everything apart from one thing. Noah. Because he was the man she’d confided in, who’d helped her work through her feelings. It hadn’t been the grand gesture of making contact with Brenda, but he was there to talk to, to listen, to understand. Carrie knew Noah’s words were what had helped her to even contemplate coming back to the city for the interview, even before she saw Brenda. When she’d first passed through those corridors of the hospital, remembering her time here before, it had been Noah’s voice saying she could do this, Noah who was in her head.
‘I have something to show you.’ Lachlan took out his phone and, oblivious to her confusion, passed it to Carrie.
She looked at a photo of a stunning house with a stone façade and imposing tall windows.
‘Scroll through to the right,’ Lachlan urged.
She did as he suggested. ‘It’s gorgeous. There’s a pool!’
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’
She nodded, because she knew exactly what was coming. Or she thought she did.
‘I bought it,’ Lachlan announced.
OK, she hadn’t been expecting that. Maybe a suggestion they look at it together, think about buying it when she started her new job. But he’d leapt in and gone ahead with the purchase without so much as a word.
Another grand gesture.
‘It’s for us,’ he said excitedly. It’s kind of a compromise. It’s not apartment living, it’s not country living, it’s something in between. You’re going to love it, Carrie. It’s got a huge kitchen, all mod cons, even a built-in coffee machine. What do you think?’
Carrie was stunned. This grand gesture was working the wrong way. He was trying to win her heart over, but instead it was doing the opposite.
‘I know it’s sudden, but I feel like you’ve turned a corner in the last few weeks. It’s like the old Carrie is back again, the one who knows what she wants. I’ll rent my apartment out – I’ve got the finances to do so – and with your little holiday house up in Magnolia Creek we’ll have quite the property portfolio.’
He seemed to have everything organised but the next part of his plan took her completely by surprise.
He reached down and put a hand into the pocket of his jacket, which was hanging on the back of his chair, and out came a small, black velvet box. All Carrie could think was grand gesture, grand gesture, grand gesture!
He opened the box. ‘Carrie, will you marry me?’ He took her left hand, pulled it towards him, so confident of her answer. ‘We always said we didn’t need to make it official, but I want to show you how committed I am.’
This was everything she’d ever wanted. The city life, the job she’d worked so hard for, the partner working his way along his own successful career path. She’d have a getaway cottage up in Magnolia Creek, a house in one of Melbourne’s most prestigious suburbs. She’d have everything, except…
‘Carrie, you’re making me nervous.’ Lachlan looked to the next table because people were beginning to notice the sparkling diamond still slotted into its soft cushioning, the outstretched hand that had yet to slip it on.
‘I’m sorry, Lachlan.’
‘Sorry for making me nervous, or sorry for not wanting to marry me?’ Self-consciously, not a state she ever saw him in, he closed the box and covered it with his hand.
‘I could marry you, Lachlan. But…you deserve more.’
‘That’s funny, because I thought you were what I deserved.’
Carrie had turned down dates before, she’d finished with guys when things weren’t going all that well. She’d seen disappointment, she’d seen anger, but never before had she ended it with someone she’d thought was so right for her for such a long time.
‘When I met you I couldn’t have been happier,’ she began. ‘But when I lost Lucas —’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. Would you give that up already! We all lose patients, it doesn’t go away, it’s part of the job. I find it hard sometimes, but you have to carry on. It’s what we all do in our profession. How can you not see that?’
She gritted her teeth and hoped his insensitivity was more to do with being hurt than being so callous as to brush the loss aside. In the whole time they’d been together she’d never known Lachlan to refer to a patient’s family. He talked about people in medical terms, as though they were characters in a case study rather than real people. But then he was a great surgeon, he was top of his game. Maybe that’s how he did it, how he got through the day, and you couldn’t fault him for his professional performance.
‘When I lost my patient, it knocked me sideways,’ Carrie began, because she needed to be completely open with him. ‘And, yes, I got too emotionally involved. But, you see, on the one hand the loss has hardened me to cope if…when it happens again, but on the other hand it’s made me see that it’s the type of person I am. I can’t shut down my emotions; I can’t just taper them off. I can’t pretend I’m OK losing a patient, one whom I’ve spent many hours interacting with and getting to know. It would be a lie and disrespectful to the career I’m trying to build. I went into paediatrics because I had a passion for it, and I think that passion came from deep down in here.’ She put her hand across her heart. ‘I can’t apologise for that. I thought it was wrong, I thought it was me and my inability to cope, but it was my individual way of preparing for the road ahead, sending me back to a career I love and enabling me to grow stronger.’
‘And what does this have to do with why you won’t marry me?’ People in the restaurant were no longer staring, they were going about their business as usual, eating their meals and chatting away as though the man on the next table hadn’t just proposed and wasn’t in the process of being turned down.
‘Getting away, up to Magnolia Creek, really let me take a good look at my life – where it is, where I want it to be.’
‘So you don’t want the big house in the suburbs now, or the career you’ve worked so hard at.’
‘I still want the career, although I’m giving it a year here in the city and then I’ll know how I feel, whether I still want that pace of life or whether I want to rethink and perhaps head out to a country hospital.’
‘Has Serena offered you work?’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘Absolutely not, she knows you wanted me back here and I don’t think she’d ever try to poach me.’
He smiled at her then. ‘You’re too good for a small hospital. You need to be in amongst it, use your talents.’
‘I’m not rushing into anything.’ She fiddled with the napkin still in her lap. ‘I think a part of me went away from this life here in the city because my home life wasn’t right either. Perhaps deep down I knew we wouldn’t be good together long-term.’
‘So you’ve turned all country now and want to have chickens, take up gardening and have a bunch of kids.’
‘You’re getting ahead of yourself. I’m not sure about the chickens.’ When he grinned she remembered the easier times, when they’d had a good laugh together and their relationship was uncomplicated, until life threw something into the mix that only highlighted their incompatibilities. ‘I never wanted to hurt you, Lachlan, please know that.’
The waiter delivered their bill and Carrie wondered how much he’d heard of their conversation. Had he appeared by coincidence or did he sense that their meal as well as their time together had just come to an end?
Outside the restaurant Lachlan pulled her to him. ‘Maybe when you’re back in the city you might see things a little differently.’ He planted a kiss on her lips that all of a sudden felt completely wrong. His confidence irked her. It was as though everything she’d just said had meant nothing. He was hurting, she knew, and he did love her. Who else would put their career on the line and contact a patient’s mother to help their girlfriend through one of the most difficult times in her life, to ensure she didn’t throw everything away?
‘Lachlan, there’s no going back.’ She put a hand to his face and for some reason, feeling she had no other choice, she told him, ‘I’ve found a happiness that I never thought I’d find. I was never looking for it before and it took me by surprise.’
‘Carrie…’ Exasperated, he shook his head, shoved his hands in his pockets. He pulled out the box containing the ring, confident again, as though every time he had a wave of superiority and she made it crash down, he could just build it right up again, knowing that at some point it would be epic in its proportions and he would win. ‘You, me, a ring, a house…it’s simple.’
He went one step further and took out the ring, lifted her hand and slipped it on her finger. ‘Marry me, Carrie. I’d do anything for you – you must realise that by now.’
She did, but she kept picturing Noah’s face every time she saw the glint of the diamond against the winter sunshine. She wiggled the ring off her finger. It was a surprisingly good fit and she wondered how he’d managed to do it. He was nothing but prepared.
When she passed him the ring he pushed it into the gap in the velvet cushion and snapped the box shut. ‘Is this about him?’
‘Who?’
‘Noah.’
She couldn’t deny she had feelings for Noah, but this was about so much more. ‘It’s not about Noah. It’s about us, about our differences that we can’t ignore. I know you bent the rules to get in touch with Brenda for me and I’ll be forever grateful, but you deserve more than my gratitude.’
He seemed to mellow but not for long. ‘Be honest with me. Do you have feelings for Noah? It’s a simple yes or no question.’
Her hesitation confirmed it.
‘The bastard.’
‘There’s no need for that. He’s a good friend; nothing more has ever happened, I swear.’
‘But you want it to.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘He swore he’d back off.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Him, Noah! He came to see me, desperate he was. He begged – not a pretty sight for a grown man – for me to pull some strings, as he put it, and sort this mess out with Lucas’s mum. He was so sure of himself – that he knew the woman had been so full of grief she would’ve said things she didn’t mean. Should’ve heard him, Carrie, it was pitiful.’
‘Pitiful he was trying to help me?’ She tried to swallow the realisation that all along it hadn’t been Lachlan but Noah who had instigated the whole thing.
‘Quite frankly, yes. He’s following you round like a love-sick puppy. He wanted me to help, and in return I made him swear he’d back off, leave you alone.’
‘So I can’t make my own friends now?’
‘Friends, yes; friends who you want to turn into more, no.’
‘You make it sound so calculated. I never planned on getting close to him.’ She reached out to touch his arm but he swiped it away before she would make contact, as though she were a poison that could burn through his skin. ‘Lachlan…’
He looked her straight in the eye. ‘Goodbye, Carrie.’