Chapter Twenty

W hen surgery finished on Monday evening, Lydia was so tired she could barely move. The combination of a full day at work and of tiptoeing around Cordelia was getting to be too much.

She was an idiot, that much was very clear to her. She should have either stopped things before they started or gone all in. The dancing around was where things got dicey.

Unfortunately, two other things were also clear. One was that Cordelia was a lot more fragile than she seemed. And the second was that Lydia very, very much liked her. As in, she woke up at night thinking about that kiss up against the hallway wall. The kiss she really shouldn’t have started. The kiss that she was beginning to think was going to rule the entire rest of her life.

“Come on, bubba, let’s get you home,” she said, picking Toby up off the changing mat on the floor of her office.

He giggled and grabbed for her hair. “Boo dog?”

“You can watch Blue Dog after dinner,” she said, lifting him onto her hip. Which reminded her, there was absolutely nothing to eat in the house. She’d been planning to go to the big supermarket on the outskirts of town but just hadn’t had the chance.

“Boo dog?” Toby said again, hopefully.

“Let’s see what Cordelia has to say, shall we?”

“Dee-la. ”

Lydia paused and looked at him. “What did you say?”

“Dee-la?”

Lydia started to grin, hurrying with him into the waiting room where Cordelia was packing up the high chair and some toys. “Cordelia, listen.”

Cordelia turned just as Toby pointed and said “Dee-la, Dee-la.” A smile spread across her face and for a second, the room lightened and Lydia started to laugh. “Dee-la,” said Toby again, laughing too.

“Oh, you little monster,” said Cordelia, holding out her arms. Toby laughed harder as he wriggled away from Lydia and Cordelia took him, holding him close.

For an instant, Lydia thought she saw a glimmer of tears in Cordelia’s eyes, so she turned politely away. This was all ridiculous, so ridiculous. What was she waiting for? Why was she not just going for what she wanted? For what she thought Cordelia wanted too? Because it wasn’t in some stupid plan? Because for once she didn’t know what the future held?

It bit deep into her, the idea that this could be hers. Someone like Cordelia, holding a child that might be hers, in a doctor’s surgery that might be hers.

She took a deep breath. They were both adults, they needed to work this out. They would work this out. Cordelia wasn’t a china doll that could get broken, not as long as they were both careful and sure about what they wanted.

Lydia nodded to herself. Tonight, once Toby was in bed, they’d talk. She’d talk. They’d both be sober, both clear, and they could set some boundaries, some rules to how this was going to work.

She grinned.

“What are you doing over there like the Cheshire Cat?” Cordelia demanded, still jogging Toby up and down on her hip.

“Thinking,” Lydia said.

“About?”

“You,” said Lydia simply.

Their eyes connected across the waiting room and Cordelia’s eyebrows rose slightly and Lydia shrugged. “We’ve had a couple of days of sulking and licking our wounds. Maybe it’s time we talked about things like adults?”

Cordelia sniffed. Her hair was wild, flopping over her face and almost obscuring one eye, but her lips were red and swollen again and Lydia very much wanted to kiss them. But this was not an appropriate place.

Lydia cleared her throat. “I was also thinking about the fact that we don’t have anything in for dinner and, to be honest, I’m not at all sure that I can be arsed to go to the supermarket.”

“Right, well, this one has food at home, so how about I take him back and get him fed and you pick up something from the pub.”

The world seemed like a nicer place, suddenly, brighter and lighter and Lydia couldn’t stop smiling. “Yeah, okay, that sounds like a plan.”

THE PUB WAS bustling and Lydia had to wait her turn at the bar.

“Hello there.”

She turned and saw blue hair. “Hello yourself. Does everyone around here drink on a Monday?”

Mila laughed. “I think we’re all recovering from a boring weekend,” she said. The woman next to her was smiling expectantly. “Ah, you won’t have met. This is my business partner, Anthea. Ant, this is the new doctor, Lydia.”

Lydia shook hands. “Temporary doctor,” she said.

“Mmm,” Mila said, non-committally.

“Oops, gotta go,” said Ant, smiling at Lydia. “My wife’s just come in.”

“And that would be Adelaide Park, famous crime novelist and Ant’s wife,” Mila said. “Whitebridge’s most famous resident. Well, if you don’t count Billie Brooke, the violinist.”

“Who would be my wife,” said the blonde bartender, coming to take Lydia’s order. “What can I get you ladies.”

Lydia placed her order then turned back to Mila. “So, um, is everyone here gay or…”

“We do seem to have a little lesbian enclave here,” Mila laughed. “There’s Hope and Ava over at the school too, but you won’t have met them, they’re both healthy as horses. I’m straight, if that helps.”

Lydia nodded. “Any news from Max?”

Mila shook her head. “Not that I’ve heard. But he’ll be in later if you want to stick around and ask him yourself.”

“Don’t have time,” said Lydia. “I need to get food home, Cordelia will be starving. And then it’s reading and bathtime and bedtime.”

“For Toby, rather than you?”

“For all of us, I think,” Lydia said. “It’s all a bit exhausting.”

“And yet such a kind thing to do,” said Mila. “We do all appreciate what you’re doing for Toby. And what you did for Sylv at the shop as well.” She looked Lydia up and down. “Don’t suppose you’d think about staying in Whitebridge?”

“You have a doctor already,” Lydia said, thinking that was probably the easiest way to answer the question without actually answering the question.

Mila quirked one eyebrow, then leaned in. “There’s not much that goes on around here that I don’t know about, or that I don’t find out about eventually. And I’ve got a feeling that you know too. So, on the off-chance that Doc Morris doesn’t come back, well, there’ll be a position to be filled here, won’t there?”

Lydia looked at her, thoughts flying through her head. This wasn’t the job she was looking for. It was too small, too independent. There were no colleagues, a smaller population meant fewer interesting cases.

But what about the other considerations?

What about Cordelia?

For god’s sake. She couldn’t base a life-changing decision on someone she barely knew. Someone who could just end up being a fling.

Which meant she really didn’t know what to say to Mila.

Fortunately, the barmaid placed a bag on the bar in front of her and in the flurry of paying and leaving, Mila’s question got forgotten and Lydia escaped the pub.

SHE COULD HEAR the screams as she walked up the street toward the house. She’d be surprised if half the town couldn’t hear the screams. She started to jog, then run, as Toby’s high-pitched crying rang through the night.

Her hands fumbled with the keys and she dropped the food just inside the front door, not caring if the bag was upright or not, and ran into the kitchen.

Cordelia looked disheveled, her face flushed, her forehead sweating. Toby was in his high chair, face red and mouth wailing.

“I don’t know what happened,” Cordelia said. “One minute he was fine, then this started.”

Lydia looked at the normally placid child and went into automatic mode. She checked his skin, felt his temperature, pulled him up out of his chair and palpated his stomach and felt up and down his legs and arms.

Still, Toby cried, his screams turning into hoarse cries as snot bubbled from his nose.

“Have you got ice lollies in the freezer?” Lydia asked.

Cordelia hurried to the freezer and grabbed one, Lydia took it and smashed it against the table, breaking it. Then she opened the package and took out a chunk of colored ice, pressing it against Toby’s mouth.

In an instant, he stopped screaming, his lips smacking, then he grabbed the ice and began gnawing on it. Lydia lifted him and put him back in his chair.

“What is it?” Cordelia asked.

“Dunno,” said Lydia. “But there’s nothing obviously wrong with him other than he’s a bit hot. Did you check the temperature of his food before you gave it to him?”

“You think I burned the child’s mouth? I’m not that stupid,” snapped Cordelia .

Toby started to wail again and Lydia quickly gave him another chunk of ice. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”

“It sounded like it.”

“There’s a bottle of Calpol in his bag,” said Lydia, ignoring the jibe. “I’ll give him a dose, cool him down. Then let’s see if he’ll eat and we can get him to bed. Maybe the poor thing’s just tired.”

“Aren’t we all,” Cordelia said, but she broke off another piece of ice as she said it.

It wasn’t until Lydia opened up the toddler’s mouth to dose him with bright pink medicine that she saw his gums were irritated and red. She groaned.

“What?” asked Cordelia.

“He’s teething.”

“He has teeth already, look,” said Cordelia.

“Right, but he doesn’t have all of them,” Lydia said. She was so tired she could lie down on the couch and sleep right now. “I think it’s going to be a long night.”

And it was her night too, her turn to have Toby sleeping in her room. She straightened herself up. She could do this. She’d suffered worse when she was a resident, working shifts on no sleep at all. Toby sniffled and started to cry again, the screams drilling through Lydia’s skull.

She closed her eyes and when she opened them, Cordelia was looking at her, head tilted. “It’ll be alright,” Cordelia said. “It’ll be fine. We’ll do this together.”

The dread in Lydia’s heart lifted just a little. She smiled. “Together.”