He cared about this place. About the hardworking farming community that surrounded Cutler’s Creek. About the small, rural hospital he worked in. About Don Donaldson—the man who’d kept this hospital up and running for decades, like his father before him, in the face of repeated threats of closure.
That was why he’d made that call.
And he wasn’t going to call back and apologise. Because he wasn’t sorry.
Because tapping back into the ability to care again was precisely the reason Isaac had come to this quiet corner of the world in the first place. Not to care too much, mind you, because he knew only too well how that could leave devastation and burn-out in its wake. But caring enough for something to really matter—like the situation that had prompted him to make that phone call—was part of what made a life meaningful, wasn’t it? It was making Isaac feel human again. To hope, albeit cautiously, for a future that could provide contentment, if not happiness.
He slipped the phone into the pocket of the unbuttoned white coat he was wearing over his jeans and open-necked shirt. Would the woman he’d never met respond to that message? Did she care about any of the things that had become important to him in the last year? Probably not, so maybe it would do her good to hear what he had said. Everybody needed a wake-up call once in a while, didn’t they? Like the one he’d had that had prompted him to apply for the rural hospital job he’d found advertised in a tiny country at the bottom of the world that he’d barely heard about.
The senior doctor and medical director of Cutler’s Creek Hospital hadn’t been that pleased to see him when he’d turned up, mind you.
‘You’re over-qualified. Why the hell would we need a trauma surgeon with your kind of experience in a place like this? Why would you even want to live here? You’ll be bored stiff.’
‘I’m over big cities and war zones. I need a break from patching people up when what’s wrong with them wouldn’t have happened if people could be a bit kinder to each other. I can do general medicine along with trauma. I’ve been in plenty of situations where there’s been nobody but me to provide what’s needed.’
Maybe it had been due to the remnants of that kind of autonomy that had prompted him to take matters into his own hands and make that regrettable phone call. Well, it was too late to worry about any repercussions now and it was time he headed back inside. There was a chill in the air that suggested the forecasters hadn’t been wrong in predicting a storm that would usher in the first of the winter weather.
Isaac turned back towards the rambling, low-slung, wooden building that was Cutler’s Creek Community Hospital. They had a ten-bed capacity here, including maternity and geriatrics, an outpatients’ department, a main operating theatre that hadn’t been used for years, and a smaller one that was used for minor procedures and as their equivalent of an emergency department where they could assess and deal with accidents and medical emergencies with resources like ultrasound, ECG, X-ray and ventilation equipment. It was by no means a large hospital but it was more than enough to keep two doctors busy as the medical hub for a community of several thousand people.
The man who had kept this hospital going—thriving even, given that the community had raised the funds for their new ultrasound equipment only recently—was walking towards Isaac as he headed back inside. Don Donaldson was scowling but that was nothing new. He’d been scowling just like this the first day Isaac had met him when he couldn’t understand why he’d even applied for the job here. He knew a lot more about his boss now and, like everybody else, he accepted that this man’s heart of gold was well covered by grumpiness that could border on being plain rude, but who could blame him, given the cards that life had already dealt? He’d never remarried after his wife had walked out on him decades ago, taking his only child with her to the other side of the globe. He’d come home to find his father was terminally ill and there was nothing he could do to help, had then devoted his life—often single-handedly—to giving Cutler’s Creek a medical service to be proud of and now…
Well, now things might have just become a whole lot worse. It seemed that history was about to repeat itself.
‘Zac… Good. You’re still here.’
‘I wasn’t planning on heading home any time soon. I’m going to do another ward round while I’m waiting for Faye Morris to come in. Sounds like it’s not a false alarm for her labour this time. Debbie’s coming in with her so I’ll just be available if she needs backup. Given her experience and skills as a midwife, I’ll probably just be catching up on some reading.’
‘Right…’ The older man cleared his throat. ‘Well, I just wanted to make sure you’re not going to say anything. To anyone. You know how fast word gets around in a place this size and I do not want my mother upset—especially not now when she’s got a big celebration coming up. This is nobody’s business but mine and it’s up to me who I tell. And when.’
Too late, Isaac thought. He lifted his gaze to the mountains to avoid eye contact that might reveal his discomfort over the fact that he’d already betrayed what he’d known was a confidence, even if it hadn’t been stipulated as such at the time.
‘I still don’t agree with you, Don. You can’t just diagnose yourself with something like pancreatic cancer and then give up. Have you even thought about a differential diagnosis? You wouldn’t treat your patients like this so why do it to yourself?’
‘Because I watched my own father do exactly what you think I should do. He went and got a formal diagnosis. He got persuaded to get the surgery, and chemo and radiation and, okay, maybe he got a few extra months from that but what good were they to anyone, especially him? He was mostly bedridden and suffering, dying by inches…’ Don cleared his throat again but his voice still sounded raw, even after all these years. ‘I’m not going like that, thanks very much. I’ve got unfinished business here and I intend to do whatever I can for as long as I can.’
‘But you don’t even know that you’re right. Let me have a look at you and run a few tests. At the very least, let me do an ultrasound.’
‘I’ve got exactly the same symptoms my dad had. You know as well as I do that inherited gene mutations can get passed from parent to child. That as many as ten percent of pancreatic cancers are genetic. Look… I just know, okay? I’ve known for quite a while now. I’ve been diagnosing illnesses for the best part of half a century. Are you trying to tell me I’m no good at my job?’
‘Of course not.’ Zac suppressed a sigh. ‘And I’ll support you in whatever way I can, you know that.’
He wasn’t about to give up on this but he knew that continuing to push right now would only lead to Don shutting himself off completely. He was a private man and Zac could respect that better than most people, given that he was one himself.
‘I just need to know that you’ll keep this to yourself. I shouldn’t have said anything. I wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t come barging into my office like that. Without the courtesy of even knocking…’
‘Hmm…’ A sideways glance showed him that Don was now the one avoiding eye contact and he understood why. He still felt uncomfortable that he’d seen too much. He’d be just as embarrassed as his boss if the tables had been turned.
‘You caught me in a low moment, that’s all it was. It won’t happen again.’
A low moment? The man had been in tears. Trying to cover that up in the face of Zac’s unexpected appearance, he had dropped the archive filing box that he had been stretching to replace on a high shelf. Despite being told to get out, Zac had automatically stooped to help pick up the contents of the box, which appeared to be a collection of unopened letters and parcels. Not Known at