Page 8 of A Country Practice Christmas
Well, sure it was. Less pay, for starters. A fraction less study. More hands-on and up-close-and-personal and less antibiotic scripts and dispassionate conversation.
‘I’m not open for business at the moment.’
‘Why?’
Jodie didn’t want to answer that. Hadn’t Mum filled Carol in on the bare bones? Talking about it felt like ripping adhesive strapping tape from a very hairy limb. She couldn’t face it.
Carol just kept looking at her, steadily, patiently, as though it was all one to her if the two of them sat there at her green Formica table until the end of the world if Jodie didn’t answer.
Damn it. She crumbled. She rushed through the bad stuff in as few words as possible. ‘My physio practice in Katoomba had to be sold. My business partner died in a car accident, and without him bringing in fees too, I couldn’t meet the loan repayments for the property we’d bought and the refit we’d had done.’ And she’d been in no state to work. It wasn’t just Peter’s fees that had dried up to zilch.
‘So what have you been doing with yourself?’
Nothing, was the answer, but Jodie couldn’t bring herself to say the word out loud. Not here in Carol’s kitchen, where it was hard to imagine a day where ‘nothing’ had ever been allowed to happen.
She shrugged. ‘Just … getting by,’ she said at last.
Her great aunt would pat her hand any minute now, Jodie knew it. Carol was fierce, but she waskind. She’d let her go back to sleep in her mustard and violet floral sheets and hide away until she was ready for more.
‘Well, it’s about time you reminded yourself what being a physiotherapist feels like. I’d like you to pop over to the pub this afternoon and see what you can do for Will.’
But … what about the sleep-out? The pretty sheets? The time she needed? Jodie felt breathy and shaky and shocked all at once. ‘No way am I doing that.’
‘You are absolutely going to do that. We help each other in this town. We don’t justwalk offwhen someone’s been injured.’
I’minjured, she wanted to say.
‘Who do you think built those fancy new steps at the front of my house?’
‘A handyman?’ Jodie said hopefully.
‘Will. His sister Daisy helped, and so did his little niece. Out of the goodness of their hearts, Jodie.’
‘My heart’s not in great shape, Carol.’ It was pulp. Not a skerrick of anything whole, let alone goodness, to be found.
Carol’s hand rested on hers. ‘It’s not going to get into any better shape lying in my spare bed until the day’s half over.’
‘I’m dealing with my—stuff—in my own way.’
‘Now, the pub is quiet in the afternoon,’ Carol steamrolled over her, ‘so I’d recommend popping over at two o’clock.’
‘You’re not listening, Carol,’ Jodie said, ignoring her tear ducts, which had given in to the pressure within and were now overflowing. ‘I’m not capable at the moment. Of doing anything. I don’t know why Mum thought I’d be in any fit state to pack boxes and help you move, even. I couldn’t even pack asuitcase.’
Carol took the lid off a tin beside the teapot and passed her a biscuit. Jam drops. Jodie’s favourite. She sniffed as she bit into one.
‘What say,’ Carol said, ‘you and I make a deal?’
‘What’s the deal?’
‘You go to the pub this afternoon and see if you can help Will, and give me a hand with the projects I have on the go, and I will agree to visiting—just visiting!—the old fogeys’ home.’
‘But you were so adamant you were never going there.’
‘That’s because I’m not senile or incapacitated, so there’s no need for me to go live in some institution that smells like boiled cabbage and denture cream.’
‘Well,I’mnot helpful or good in the heart, so there’s no need formeto go to the pub and inspect some publican’s probably trivial injury.’
Silence fell, broken only by the sound of Jodie biting into a second jam drop.
