Page 24 of Stranded with the Surgeon

‘I’m not rich and I’m hardly famous. Outside the world of emergency medicine, I’m a nobody. What’s more, I’ve worked incredibly hard to get where I am and I’m not ashamed of it.’

‘I never suggested you should be.’

‘Your tone suggested it.’

‘All I’m saying is that we’re very different people. We may as well live on different planets as far as our daily lives and backgrounds go.’

‘What makes you so sure?’ Jennifer let her breath out in an exasperated huff. ‘For your information, I grew up in the country. On a dairy farm on the outskirts of a one-horse town in Taranaki. My dad was a sharemilker and my mum died when I was eight. We had nothing. My dad worked to help me get a better life and I got up at 4a.m. every day so I wouldn’t let him down. I helped milk the cows. I worked hard enough at school to get labelled a nerd and had no real friends. I left my dad living alone so I could go to university and med school. He wasproudof me.’

‘I’m sure he was.’ Guy added some more sticks to the fire. ‘Did you ever want to go back?’

‘Of course. I went home to visit Dad as often as I could.’ Which hadn’t been nearly often enough in recent years. And now it was too late.

‘I meant to live.’

‘That would have defeated the whole purpose of escaping.’

‘And that’s what makes us so different.’ Guy nodded. ‘I wanted to escape as well when my mother died. I was eighteen. It was Digger who persuaded me to go to med school and helped me fund it. He knew I’d have to go back one day, even if it did take me ten years to realise how much I hated the city.’

‘If you hated it so much, why did it take so long?’

‘Med school kept me pretty focused. And then I had another reason I couldn’t leave.’

‘Which was?’

‘I got married.’

‘Oh.’ Jennifer blinked in surprise. Of course. Why wouldn’t he be married? He probably had his wife and several kids tucked away in a country cottage behind a white picket fence covered in roses. Then she remembered his tone. ‘You make it sound like a problem.’

‘Turned out that way.’ Guy snorted. ‘I made the mistake of picking one of your lot.’

‘My lot?’

‘A townie.’

‘I just told you I wasn’t a townie.’ Jennifer could well remember the insult levelled at city dwellers who decided they wanted to join a rural community. A single word, but it spoke volumes about their ignorance and unacceptability.

‘You are by inclination. You couldn’t wait to escape. You’ve never gone back.’

Jennifer was silent. There was no argument there. The isolation of rural life held no appeal whatsoever. She didn’t want their conversation to end just yet, however. The feeling of companionship was too valuable.

‘Youwent back,’ she observed quietly. ‘What about your wife?’

‘She tried it for a while. Said it would kill her if she tried any longer.’ Guy’s tone was bitter. ‘It had already killed her love for me.’

‘But not yours for her?’ It was an incredibly personal question, and Jennifer wouldn’t have been surprised if Guy told her to mind her own business. She was quite ready for a rebuke when he finally spoke, but, again, he surprised her.

‘You can’t keep loving someone if it has to be on their planet and the atmosphere’s incompatible with your own.’ Guy cleared his throat, which came across as a kind of verbal shrug. ‘She’s happy now. Married to a plastic surgeon and living in Sydney. I believe they’ve got a holiday house on some Fijian island for when they want a break from the rat race.’

Guy started banking up the fire as he spoke. ‘It’s all ancient history.’ He moved back to lean on a boulder and closed his eyes. ‘Get some sleep, Jenna. I intend to.’

That was the end of the conversation. Sleep wanted to claim Jennifer’s exhausted body now, but her brain held on for a few more minutes. No wonder Guy didn’t think much of her. It fitted. The impression she’d had earlier that it would take a lot to break this man’s loyalty returned. How much stronger would that loyalty be to a woman he loved? One that he had made a commitment to spend the rest of his life with? The pain of having that union destroyed was quite likely great enough to have prevented him ever risking his heart again. Or even trusting a woman, let alone a townie, on a personal basis. She was also aware of a sneaking sympathy for the woman involved in that shared history.

At this point in time she herself might be sharing this man’s planet, but he was quite right. The atmosphere was incompatible for long-term survival and she’d be stepping off at the first opportunity. Once she reached safety and civilisation, she doubted that anything would make her want to return.

Ever.

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