Marion Lennox - City Surgeon, Small Town Miracle

‘You’ve done… John’s done…’

‘Nothing you can’t undo,’ he said, smiling, and smiling was all he had to do to have her so deeply in love she could never climb out. ‘All you need to do is say the word,’ he said. ‘John and I didn’t want to say anything to you until we knew it was possible, but we’re almost sure now. So sure I’ve quit.’

‘You’ve quit.’

‘You sound like a parrot,’ he said, and his smile widened. ‘My beautiful parrot. Yes, I’ve quit.’

‘Wh-why?’

‘Because I want to be a baby doctor again,’ he said, simply and surely. ‘Maggie, I want to deliver babies. There’s a huge population of young families locally, and if Anton and I are here then the mothers won’t need to go to Sydney for their confinements. So that’s what I want. It’s what I want almost as much as the thing I want most in the world. The really big thing. The thing on which everything else depends.’

‘I don’t… I don’t…’

‘You don’t know what that is?’ He paused, a long drawn-out silence where the world stretched out before them, infinite in its possibilities.

‘I told you the night Rose was born,’ he said softly. ‘I’m saying it again now. Maggie, we’ve both been battered,’ he said softly. ‘But we both know what love is and how wonderful it is that we’ve found it again. It’s time now we acknowledged it, took it in both hands and never let it go. The night Rose was born I knew that you had my whole life in your hands. I love you, Maggie, with all my heart. For now. For ever.’

His words took her breath away. It was like there were suddenly a thousand gifts, showering down like the Christmas morning of a child’s dreams, only better and better and better.

‘I also want to live here,’ he said, and it was like a tiny prosaic jolt that had her thinking, no, this wasn’t dreaming. This might even be true.

Why didn’t he move? Why didn’t he take her in his arms? Was this a dream? She couldn’t quite believe it could be real.

‘John’s found another farm,’ Max said, and there was that in his eyes that said he understood exactly what she was feeling. Maybe he was feeling like that, too. ‘He’s put in a provisional offer.’

‘Provisional…’

‘Provisional on you marrying me.’

She loved this man.

Marriage.

‘So…so let me get this right,’ she stammered. ‘You want to leave Sydney and come here. For…always?’

‘I never wanted to live in Sydney anyway,’ he said, and his smile was a caress all by itself. ‘When Alice died I walked away from my career and I didn’t much care what direction I was heading. There’s a few of us like that at Sydney South. John, escaping from the troubles in Zimbabwe. Anton, who came from France after a broken love affair and never left. And then there’s John’s friend, the surgeon. There’s a whole queue, waiting for you to say the word.’

‘The word?’

‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘Just say yes.’

There was too much to take in.

She’d spent three months trying to work out how to break a promise, yet here was the man she loved with all her heart telling her she needn’t break it. That the dream that had started with William was still precious, but he was willing-no, he was demanding-that she share it.

It was too big. It was making her head explode.

‘You’d seriously come here to live?’ she whispered, awed.

‘And work. It’s what I should be doing, Maggie,’ he said, his smile fading. ‘I should be taking care of mothers having babies. That’s what I’m trained for. And I should be taking care of you.’

‘I don’t need-’

‘To be taken care of? I think you do. But, Maggie, if I can take care of you I promise to let you take care of me right back.’ He said it quickly, as if he seriously thought she was going to argue. ‘I want you to yell at me if you think I’m spending too much time working and not enough time with you. I’d even like you to yell at me if I squeeze the toothpaste the wrong way. I might yell back but if that’s what you want…a spot of yelling…I don’t see me objecting. I want you to teach me to surf, and I want us both to teach Rose. I want to help Angus with his tractors. I want to help train Bounce. I want us to have more babies.’

‘You want…’

‘Most of all I want what you want, Maggie,’ he told her. ‘I want a happy beginning. A family. Love and laughter from this day forth. So what do you say, Maggie? Will you marry me?’

‘You’re too far away,’ she whispered, and he was with her before she finished saying it. Taking her in his arms. He smiled down at her, loving her with his smile, and then suddenly he was kneeling before her.

And suddenly Margaret, with Rose in her arms, and John and Sophie and Paula were out on the veranda again. Not making a sound. Bearing witness.

Suddenly the removalists had put the desk down to watch.

And suddenly Angus was standing up on the tractor, holding a dog firmly under each arm, as if he was afraid they might interrupt.

Nothing interrupted.

‘Marry me,’ Max said again, and he took her hand in his and held it to his lips.

This was crazy. Mad.

It was muddy. He was kneeling in the mud, asking her if she’d marry him.

She had an audience hanging on her response.

Joy began to well up inside her-clearly, this could be no dream.

She knelt down, too.

‘Your dress,’ he said, in mock horror.

‘Blue and brown’s great,’ she said, and her eyes were inches from his. She had both his hands in hers. She had him right where she wanted him.

‘Ask me again,’ she said.

‘I think I’ve forgotten. What was the question?’

‘Something about marriage.’

‘Right, that,’ he said, sounding dazed. And then he swore. ‘I knew I forgot something. Hang on a minute.’ And he reached round to his back pocket and found a box. A tiny crimson box.

He flicked it open.

It wasn’t a ring. It was a single diamond, perfect, sparkling in the sunlight. Making her catch her breath with wonder.

‘I didn’t know how you’d like it set,’ he said. ‘So I thought… There’s so much you’ve done because you had no choice. I thought if you said yes…’

‘If I said yes…

‘If you said yes,’ he went on resolutely, ‘we can get it set any way you want. We can surround it with rubies. We can embed it in gold or mount it on platinum. You can have a woven plait band or a smooth one. Anything you like, my love. As long as you take me.’

‘A package deal, huh?’

‘A package indeed,’ he said, and cast an amused look around at their audience. ‘A family. A medical centre. A medical partnership. Love. All or nothing, my beautiful Maggie. So I’m asking you again, and I’m thinking surely this time you need to answer. Maggie Croft, love of my heart, please will you marry me?’

And what was a girl to say to that?

She put her hands on his face. She drew a deep breath and she smiled into his loving eyes.

And she cast her future to the wind, to blow where it willed, with this man beside her.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, I will. My love. My heart. My life.’