Page 6 of A Country Practice Christmas
Working on autopilot, Jodie put her arm into the crook of the publican’s, grabbed his bicep and used her body weight as a counterbalance to get him to his feet.
‘Can you walk?’ she said, uncomfortably aware of just how close they were standing. She didn’t want to be close to anyone. Ever again. Physically, mentally or any other way. Especially not someone about whom she’d had dreamy on-again, off-again what-if thoughts since she was an adolescent.
‘Let’s find out,’ he said, taking a tentative step, then almost, but not quite, buckling. ‘I can walk. Perhaps two ibuprofen and a liedown will sort me out.’ He started tentatively off down the path in the direction of the grand old weatherboard pub.
Jodie opened her mouth to start parroting on about small hamstring tears versus ruptures, ice to combat swelling and post-injury soft tissue massage to inhibit scar adhesion, but then she remembered she was a mess. She couldn’t help anyone, even Hero Boy.
‘Perhaps it will. See ya,’ she said. Did she mean to parrot the (slightly dismissive) words he’d said to her all those years ago? Surely not. Surely she wasn’t that petty. Surely a person who was emotionally raw and abraded didn’t even have petty left in her arsenal.
But she did say those words. And—here’s the weird thing—she remembered Carol hugging her in the little house on Lillypilly Street and the glimmer of good she’d felt then for the first time in what seemed like forever …
SayingSee yato Will ‘Hero Boy’ Miles and then strolling off?
It felt kinda good, too.
Chapter 4
‘Wait,’ said Carol. ‘Wait, wait,wait.’
Will had spent the weekend laid up in bed hoping the swelling in his thigh would sort itself out, calling in favours from Fergus, his sister Daisy, his brother Red Ant and anyone else who’d pulled a shift at the pub in recent history, and he was now finally back on deck.
Sort of. If you ignored the way he was walking like a lopsided emu and had to wince manfully every time he went up the stairs to his apartment above the bar.
Going to a hospital was about as low on his priority list as it was possible for a list item to be, and he’d rather crawl up the stairs on his hands and knees than front up to an outpatient clinic. He’d call a GP if he had to, but also, not keen. Will wasn’t sure what the sight of a stethoscope or an eye chart or any other medical paraphernalia would do to his hard won state of contentment, and he wasn’t game to find out.
His plan had been to reassess his mobility or lack thereof once the morning chores were done—the daily stocktake, the weekly food and bevvy orders—and once the Christmas Twilight Markets committee meeting was done. Will’s committee role wasn’t official—he was all about living a low-drama life, and there was nothing low drama about the Twilight Markets committee—but the annual event was a hugely profitable day for the pub, despite the market stalls taking their share of cash out of the pockets of the people who came. His role was to be the voice of the pub at the meetings, the voice that said ‘okay’ to ideas like Santa rocking up on the fire truck at six pm, and ‘hell no’ to a jumping castle.
‘You’re telling me you injured yourself while saving my great niece, Jodie, from a fall on a slippery path?’
‘Yep. It’s not her fault. I’d asked Fergus to pressure wash the walkways out in the beer garden, but I hadn’t spelled out how to do it. He’d used dishwashing detergent for some unfathomable reason, and the path was slippery.’
‘But … she didn’t help you when you were injured?’
‘She helped me up. What more could she have done? I was fine once I made it to my bed.’ A lie, but Carol seemed worked up.
‘She’s aphysiotherapist, Will. Attending to injuries is what she does.’
Oh. He thought back a few days, trying to recall if she’d given some suggestion that expert help was on offer but he’d just been too clueless to notice. He was pretty sure there had been no expert help on offer. Plenty of other stuff: moodiness and some intense eye-to-eye contact that had definitely had subtext that had gone straight over his head (literally, as he’d been sprawled on a damp footpath at the time), but she’d not explained what that subtext might be.
Carol swelled—visibly—on her side of the table. ‘There is something going on with that girl. I knew it the instant I laid eyes on her. I cannot believe she would be soselfishas to not help you after all you’ve done for me, Will. Don’t think I’ve forgotten you were the one who fixed my front steps.’
‘It’s not a big deal, Carol.’
‘What did the doctor say about your leg?’
He hesitated. Admitting to Carol he had an aversion to hospitals and doctors would be inviting her to ask the obvious question: why?
‘I’m pretty sure it’ll heal itself,’ he prevaricated.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s what I told myself after my fall, pet, right up until a surgeon knocked me out cold and gave me a titanium upgrade. You know the other thing?’
He shook his head.
Carol leaned in and lowered her voice. ‘She’s here because her mother—that’s my niece, Janelle, averybossy sort of woman—thinks I need to move into the old fogeys’ home.’
‘Oh.’ Janelle must be either very brave or totally deluded to think Carol would ever do anything that Carol did not want to do, but at least they’d moved off the topic of doctors.
‘As though one measly hip replacement means I can’t look after myself.’
