Resisting Her Rebel Doc by Joanna Neil

handy too.
    ‘You’re off home?’ Brodie walked with her to the exit doors.
    ‘Yes, in a few minutes. I have to drop these lab forms off in pathology first. I thought I would take a shortcut through the quadrangle.’
    He walked with her, stopping by the bench seat in the dappled shade of a silver birch. ‘I’m due a break,’ he said. ‘Do you have time to sit for a minute and tell me what’s going on with your mother? I’ve been to see her, but she always says she’s fine, and I know she isn’t.’
    ‘Oh...of course, I’m sorry. You must be worried about her too. I keep forgetting how close you were back when...’ Her voice trailed away. He wouldn’t want to keep being reminded of the time when his life had taken a nosedive. ‘She has some pulmonary emboli that are causing her problems—they’re not too large, and the consultant’s starting her on anti-coagulation therapy, so that should help things to get better.’ They sat down beside one another on the bench.
    ‘I’m sorry, Caity.’ He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. ‘I could see you were upset when you came back down to the unit. If there’s anything I can do to help you, tell me—it must be a shock, everything that’s happening.’
    She nodded wearily. ‘Things seem to be going from bad to worse. I thought I’d have her at home by now, Brodie.’ She gazed up at him in despair. ‘She was always so active, into everything; it feels so strange, seeing her the way she is now.’
    ‘Her consultant’s a good man. I’m sure he’ll soon have her on the mend.’ He ran his palm down her back in a comforting gesture. ‘She’ll be back home with you before too long, you’ll see. She’s a fighter, your mum. Things will soon be back to how they were.’ He smiled. ‘You were always such a loving family unit—you, your mum and your dad.’
    ‘Yes, we were.’
    He sighed. ‘I’m almost ashamed to say I envied you back then—you seemed to have everything I was missing out on.’
    She looked at him in surprise. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘There was always something not quite right between me and my dad.’ He shrugged. ‘I think your mother recognised that and that’s why she took me under her wing—David too, of course, after Mum died, though somehow he seemed to cope a bit better than I did. Yet your mother must have gone through agonies when your dad passed away.’
    ‘Yes, it was bad. It was very sudden, a heart attack that took him before we could realise what was happening. But she managed to hold things together. I think she felt she had to, for my sake...and yours. David’s too.’ She glanced at him. ‘My father’s death helped bring you and I closer together, didn’t it? It gave us a stronger bond...and my mother sensed that. I think she was pleased that we talked a lot because she knew we could be good for each other. She knew you were deeply troubled—not just about your mother—and she wanted to help.’
    ‘We needed all the support we could get. She’s a lovely woman. She was like a mother to me after my mum passed away. I always felt I could talk to her. She listened—she didn’t always offer advice, but she was there for me whenever I was wound up, wanting to hit out, needing to offload because of some new quarrel with my dad. She usually managed to calm me down somehow.’
    Caitlin frowned. ‘What did you argue about, you and your dad? I never understood it. You were the oldest child, the firstborn—I’d have expected things to be very different. But, like you said, you and your father never seemed to get on.’
    His mouth flattened. ‘No, we didn’t. I was never sure why, but nothing I did was ever good enough for him. The one, constant feeling he showed towards me was...irritation. In the end I learned to be guarded around him, I suppose. I tried to toe the line...until, one day, we had a terrible argument and everything came to a head and boiled over. I’d had enough at that point and I decided I