From Christmas to Forever? by Marion Lennox

Author:Marion Lennox [Lennox, Marion]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

SURGEONS WEREN’T TRAINED to cope with human conflict. Surgeons operated.

Yes, surgeons consulted pre-operatively. Yes, they visited their patients at their bedsides, but consultations were done within the confines of appointments, and patient visits were made with a nurse hovering close by, ready to whisk away all but the closest of friends or family.

Death, however, observed no such restrictions. Max Hurley had passed away peacefully in his sleep, aged ninety-seven. He’d been in the nursing home section of the hospital for the last twelve months, during which time his daughter Isobel had been a constant visitor, having nursed him at home for years. His wife had died ten years back. Hugo had assumed there was little other family.

Two hours after his death, he’d learned how wrong he was. A vast extended family had descended on the place like a swarm of locusts. Isobel, seventy years old and frail herself, was jammed into a chair at the edge of the room while her family railed around her.

One of the older men in the group looked almost ready to have a medical incident himself. He was red in the face and the veins on his forehead were bulging. ‘I can’t believe it!’ he was shouting. ‘He’s left her the whole blasted farm. She’s seventy. A spinster. What the hell...? It’s a family farm. It’s hard up against my place. The old man always intended the farms to be joined. We’ll be contesting...’

‘There’s no need!’ another man snapped. ‘Isobel will be reasonable, won’t you, Isobel?’ The men were standing over her, obviously furious. ‘But, as for your farms being joined... We’ll split, fair down the middle. You get half, Bert, and I’ll get the other half. Isobel, we can organise you a nice little retirement unit in town...’

Isobel was surrounded by her family, but what a family! She had a buxom woman sitting on either side of her. One was even hugging her, but she looked...

Small. He could think of no better adjective. Her father’s death seemed to have shrunk her.

Any man’s death diminishes me... It was a quote from John Donne and, looking down at the helpless Isobel, he thought, even though her dad had been almost a hundred, that diminishment was just as powerful.

‘Do you want everyone to leave?’ he asked Isobel, thinking she needed time to be alone with her father, but she shook her head.

‘N...no. These are my family.’

Family. This was her call, but oh, he felt for her. Trapped by loving...

But then, suddenly, standing at the door was Polly. Her white coat reached her knees, with the sleeves rolled up two or three times. Her freckles stood out in her still pale face, accentuating the flame of her curls, but her green eyes were flashing professionalism—and determination.

She was wearing a stethoscope around her neck. A red one. It was inscribed, he thought, fascinated. What the heck...?

Who had a personally inscribed stethoscope?

‘I’m sorry but I need you all to leave,’ she said and he stopped thinking about personalised stethoscopes and stared at her in amazement.

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