The Doctor's Rebel Knight by Melanie Milburne

several patients lined up to see you,’ he said. ‘As soon as they heard there was a doctor in town, they booked in. Linda Brew is the clinic receptionist. She’s been on the phone,fielding calls all morning. Oh, to be so popular!’ He beamed. ‘I wish it worked like that for me when it came to council elections.’
    Fran’s smile turned to a grimace. She could see worming her way out of this was going to take more flexibility than that of an Olympic gymnast. She thought of the patients who had their hopes up, probably already sitting there on the edges of the waiting room chairs, eagerly anticipating her attendance. What if one of them was like Jacob’s mother, in desperate need of pain relief? How could she say no? It wasn’t as if a drug-crazed maniac was going to barge through the doors out here. This was Pelican Bay, a quiet seaside village, not the centre of Melbourne’s nightclub scene. The sort of stuff she would be dealing with here would be things like chickenpox, for example, or chest infections, the occasional laceration, maybe some broken bones like Candi Broderick’s, but hopefully no more near-drownings like little Ella Pelleri’s. Maybe she could do it as a once-off, a sort of favour to the town, but that was all.
    ‘Look, Mr McLeod, I’m not making any promises or anything, but since there are patients already wait—’
    ‘So we’ll expect you at, say…‘ Nigel McLeod checked his watch ‘…ten-thirty?’
    She nodded in resignation, a sigh escaping her lips. ‘Ten-thirty it is.’
    Fran put her shopping in the boot of her car but didn’t notice the parking infringement ticket tucked under her left-hand windscreen wiper until she was behind the wheel with the engine already running.
    She sucked in a breath and got out of the car. Limping across, she snatched up the ticket, peering at the officer’s signature at the bottom. The handwriting was virtually impossible to read, but she could make out an H and a K withoutany difficulty. She seethed with anger as she got back behind the wheel. She had just enough time to take her shopping back to the house before going down to the station to have it out with Sergeant Jacob Hawke.
    ‘You have a visitor, Sarg,’ Nathan Jeffrey announced via the intercom.
    ‘Who is it?’ Jacob asked as he lifted the ice pack off his eye, wincing when he saw he was still bleeding high on his cheekbone.
    He hadn’t expected Wayne Clark to be quite so aggressive about his bald tyres.
    Jacob knew things were tough on some of the locals who tried to make a living off the land backing onto the bay. Wayne was one of them. The rain that fell on the coast didn’t always fall on the hinterland. Like Jim Broderick, Wayne had lost his wife, not from death but from desertion to another man, leaving him with a son who had a record of petty crime and a daughter who had played truant more days from school than she had attended during the last term.
    ‘Dr Nin,’ Nathan said.
    Jacob gave an inward groan. That was just what he needed right now. ‘Send her in,’ he said, holding the pack to his throbbing eye again.
    Fran stepped into the office and frowned when she saw the ice pack on Jacob’s face. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked.
    He looked at her with one steely eye. ‘Nothing that should concern you since you’re so determined not to practise medicine.’
    She gave him a slitted-eye look. ‘Which you have very cleverly circumvented by making it virtually impossible for me to refuse to conduct at least one clinic, if not more.’
    He leaned back in his chair, the ice pack on his eye like a pirate patch. ‘I take it our hard-working mayor, Nigel McLeod, has been putting the hard word on you.’
    She planted her hands on her hips. ‘No doubt at your command.’
    He leaned forward in his chair. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’
    She stared at him, her mouth set in a tight line. ‘I don’t believe you.’
    He leaned back and pressed the pack even more firmly