‘Daddy…’ It was both an accusation and a cry of pain and Jessie saw Niall Mountmarche flinch like a man struck.
Silence stretched out. There was something going on here that Jessie had no idea of.
All she could do was to stand and wait.
And watch…
Finally, Niall seemed to come to a decision. He gently moved Harry in his arms so that he and not Jessie was supporting the injured pad. Then he carried the dog over to where Paige stood, stooping so that the child could see the injured animal.
‘Paige, I know I promised you no one would come,’ Niall said softly, and his voice reminded Jessie of the tone she used with wild creatures. ‘I promised it would be just you and Hugo and I. But this is Harry. He’s a three-year-old Border collie and his leg’s been caught in a rabbit trap. You can see that he’s dreadfully hurt.
‘Now, this lady is Dr Harvey and she’s the local vet. She’s been searching for Harry. If it’s OK with you I’m going to drive Dr Harvey and Harry down to the veterinary clinic and help her operate on Harry—but if 1 keep my promise to you and keep us completely to ourselves then I can’t help and Harry might die. It’s up to you, Paige.’
What on earth was he doing? Jessie looked from man to child in bewilderment.
The child was obviously almost as confused as Jessie. She looked from Jessie to the dog in her father’s arms and then back to Jessie. Her eyes didn’t trust Jessie one inch.
‘She’s…she’s a dog doctor?’ The voice was trembling.
‘Dr Harvey’s a dog doctor.’
The little girl looked down at Harry and her hand went out in involuntary compassion.
‘He’s…The doggie’s hurting.’
‘Yes, Paige,’ Niall told her, still in that low, gentle tone, as if expecting the child to turn and run. ‘He’s hurting badly. You can see that.’
‘And…and you can help the lady doctor make the dog better.’
‘You know I’m a doctor, too, Paige,’ Niall said gently. ‘It’s my job. If you agree.’
The child touched the dog’s soft ears.
‘He really could die?’
‘He really could die.’
The little girl sighed—the sigh of someone letting something precious go out of sight and not knowing if she’d ever see it again—but willing to take the risk. For something as priceless as the life of this dog.
‘You’ll be longer than when you go to the shops?’
‘Much longer, Paige. But Hugo will still be here.’
‘OK,’ Paige whispered. ‘But…But hurry back…’
The drive to the clinic was in near-silence. Jessie sat on the passenger side of Niall Mountmarche’s gleaming Range Rover with the dog cradled against her and let a thousand questions crowd through her mind as Niall drove.
There were answers to none of them.
The dog whimpered and stirred in her arms and Jessie’s hold on him tightened.
‘Soon,’ she whispered to the big collie.
It couldn’t be soon enough for Harry.
They operated on Harry fifteen minutes later.
‘Instructions, please,’ Niall said briefly as they carried the dog into Theatre.
Niall listened with care as Jess outlined the anaesthetic procedure. It wasn’t so different from human intubation. Niall flung fast questions at her and Jess began to relax as she responded. She not only had a skilled doctor here. In Niall Mountmarche, Jess had found someone who was prepared to learn and learn fast.
There was minimal delay.
As soon as the anaesthetic took effect the dreadful trap was removed, allowing Jessie to see what she was facing.
It was bad—but it could have been worse.
Swiftly, moving as a team with this strange new doctor, Jessie staunched the blood flow and X-rayed. Three of the metacarpals were fractured which meant that she’d have to fix the bones. There was necrotic tissue on the front of the pad and up the dog’s foreleg, as though infection had spread, but Niall was right. There was still circulation.
There was still hope.
Niall Mountmarche intubated the dog with skill, moving his obvious skills with human anaesthesia to the animal arena with thoughtfulness and intelligence. The questions he needed to know he asked before Jessie thought of telling him and she was left alone to concentrate on the wound.
It was enough.
She never could have coped with such a severely traumatised dog and vicious wound if she’d had to do the anaesthetic herself. Over and over in her head as she operated Jessie was offering silent prayers of thankfulness for this man’s arrival.
The dog would be dead without him.
It was a nasty piece of surgery, requiring all her skill.
The rotten flesh had to be cut away and dirt, grass and hay seeds carefully cleaned from the festering wound. It was a time-consuming task, made more difficult by the small number of blood vessels remaining viable.
Then the metacarpals had to be fixed into position with K-wire. If only one of the outer metacarpals had been broken Jess could have let it be but with three fractured the dog would lose function if they weren’t fixed.
A huge job…
Jess could amputate if she had to—but the shock of such radical surgery could be enough to kill an already weakened, frail animal. Even taking the trap from his foot without an anaesthetic might have been enough to send him over the edge.
At least the pad still had circulation because, miraculously, the rotten flesh hadn’t invaded the major blood vessels. Yet…Another half a day and it would have been too late.
Too late for both the leg and for Harry, Jessie thought grimly as she worked. He would have been dead from starvation and infection.
Not now…Please…If they gave him maximum dose antibiotic and intravenous fluid to rehydrate the body…
Niall Mountmarche had given the dog a chance at life. She had to be grateful.
Niall…
Even though her whole concentration was needed for the job in hand, Jessie couldn’t help being aware of the man working silently by her side. He was watching everything she did, she knew, and the thought, instead of making her feel nervous, in fact steadied her.
What on earth was such a man doing in a place like this? Growing wine? The thought seemed ridiculous and yet only hours ago the thought of him being a doctor had seemed ridiculous. And what was wrong with the little girl?
Such questions had to be put aside until later…Much later.
Finally, she’d done all she could. Carefully she dressed the wound and moved to help Niall reverse the anaesthetic.
Now…
Now it was up to Harry.
Jess smiled as she finally stepped back from the table and stripped off her gloves. ‘Thank you, Dr Mountmarche,’ she said simply. Her face was showing more exhaustion than she knew.
‘It’s the least I can do,’ Niall Mountmarche told her brusquely. He’d adjusted the antibiotic through the intravenous drip and was now looking at Jess as if he couldn’t really believe what he was seeing. ‘That was a fine piece of work, Dr Harvey. I’m sorry I doubted your qualifications.’
Jessie stared. An apology from the Ogre of Barega. What next?
‘You don’t make such a bad vet yourself,’ she smiled at him. ‘For a human doctor.’
For a human doctor…
All of a sudden he was. Immensely human.
And immensely male.
He smiled then, his smile reflecting her relief, and Jess felt her heart give an unexpected jolt. What a smile…
Crazy…
She turned swiftly to the sink before her colour began to rise.
Or maybe it already had.
Maybe it was too late to disguise what she was feeling.
Niall Mountmarche was watching her with a look that she didn’t understand in the least. It made her feel…
Vulnerable.
And slightly afraid.
She struggled with the tapes of her gown and Niall moved s
wiftly to release them. The gown was lifted away, revealing once more her dust-stained shorts and shirt and bare arms and legs.
‘Back to Jessica Harvey, adolescent in need of a good bath,’ Niall grinned, and Jessie was forced to smile.
‘It’s hard being clinically clean when you’re a vet.’
‘There are not a lot of vets I know who crawl round under grapevines looking for patients.’ Niall motioned to Harry. ‘Will you leave him here?’
‘I’ll take him into the kitchen,’ Jessie told him. ‘It’s warm by the stove and I can watch him recover and make myself lunch at the same time.’ She hesitated and glanced at her watch. It was almost two in the afternoon. ‘Would you…would you like some lunch?’
‘No. I have to get back.’
Back to being the Ogre of Barega. Back to Paige.
‘Please…’ Jess put out a hand and laid it on his bare arm—and then wished she hadn’t. The feel of his skin against her fingers did something odd to her legs.
She lifted the hand away but made herself repeat the word.
‘Please…Before you go. Come and see Frank with me. He’s the owner of the dog and he’s here in the same building—only over the other side.’
‘Yes, I heard you had twin animal and human hospitals,’ Niall grinned. ‘A Health Department nightmare.’
‘What the heart doesn’t know…’ Jessie said demurely and matched his grin. ‘We’re a long way from officialdom here, thank heaven, and the arrangements have worked well until now.’
‘And now?’
‘Dr Hurd doesn’t like my animals.’ Jessie shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can be very separate when we try. Will you come and see Frank?’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Paige will be waiting…’ Then he looked up at Jess and smiled, that heartwarming, heart-stopping smile that was all the things that Jess considered most dangerous in a man.
‘Ten minutes, Dr Harvey,’ he smiled. ‘Ten minutes more of human contact before I go back to being the Ogre of Barega.’
He knew. He knew of his reputation.
Jessie felt herself flush crimson but Niall Mountmarche was smiling in a way that showed he didn’t mind the title in the least—in fact, by the look of it, he rather liked it!
They wheeled Harry down to the kitchen and settled him into a cage beside the big slow combustion stove. Jess worked with swift efficiency but Niall Mountmarche stopped at the kitchen door and stared in amazement.
‘Good grief!’
‘What?’ Jess was lifting the dog from trolley to cage, careful not to tangle his intravenous line, and Niall recovered from shock enough to move to help her.
‘It’s hardly a clinically clean kitchen—pristine for cooking,’ Niall told her. He hooked the bag of saline above the cage.
‘It’s clean enough for me.’
Niall shook his head. Having settled the dog, he stood and stared around the room.
It certainly was unusual. The house had been built with mass entertaining in mind and now, even though it was separated into two wings—hospital and vet clinic—Jess had been able to keep the original kitchen for her own use. She used every inch of it.
The vast slow combustion stove was the kitchen’s heart but surrounding it was ordered jumble. Bags of animal formula were heaped along one wall; there were tiny woollen bags with heating pads—obviously used for injured wildlife—hanging from chairs and, above their heads, bunches and bunches of sweet-smelling lavender hung like fragrant clouds.
‘You eat your cornflakes in here?’ Niall demanded incredulously and Jessie smiled. Her fingers were smoothing Harry’s soft ears, settling him from anaesthetic to deep, natural sleep. The longer he slept now the better. He wouldn’t worry the intravenous line and she could get maximum fluid and antibiotic into his starving body.
‘I like it,’ she said, and her voice was a little defensive. Separate your work from your home life, they’d told her at vet school, but Jess had never quite managed it.
‘I think I like it too,’ Niall smiled. He bent down over a woollen pouch. ‘Anyone home?’
There was. A moist, pinkish-brown nose emerged, followed by two huge brown eyes. The baby wallaby checked the intruder out, cast a doubtful glance across at Jessie as much as to say, ‘What are you doing letting us be disturbed when it’s not dinner time?’ and squirmed back down into his cocoon of wool.
‘For heaven’s sake…’ Niall Mountmarche’s normally grim face was transformed. He straightened and stared round the room. ‘Four pouches. Are they all…’
‘Only two are in use,’ Jessie told him. ‘I’m…I’m not taking new orphans at the moment.’
‘Not taking…’ Niall frowned. ‘You mean these aren’t pets?’
Jessie shook her head. ‘They’re wild creatures found orphaned or injured. The islanders know I care for them so they bring them to me. But I can’t cope with any more than two babies without help.’
‘And you’re without help?’
Jessie shrugged. ‘I do have a little,’ she admitted. ‘One of the nurses’ daughters comes in for emergencies. Lucy plans to be a vet and I’ve taught her to prepare and give formula. Lucy fed these two this morning while I searched for Harry. But I was lucky it was a school half-holiday. Lucy goes to school and doesn’t do night feeds and two-hourly feeds get a bit much when you’re by yourself.’
‘But you haven’t always been by yourself?’
Niall Mountmarche was prowling the room, fingering equipment and formula bags as though fascinated. He threw the question at her from the other side of the room.
‘My cousin and his wife are the normal island doctors and when they’re here they live on the other side of the hospital,’ Jessie told him. She was still absently stroking Harry but Harry was beyond feeling. Safe and warm, he was sleeping the sleep of the angels. ‘They help—but without them it’s difficult. For the next six months…’
‘Oh, yes.’ Niall nodded. ‘For the next six months you have the horrid Lionel Hurd who doesn’t like animals. I would have thought you would have written that into the job description.’
‘We didn’t have a choice,’ Jessie said tightly. ‘It was Lionel or nothing. And I guess he’s better than nothing.’
‘But you’re not sure.’
Jessie shook her head. ‘Sometimes I’m not,’ she admitted, thinking of the last time that she’d had words with Lionel. The man gave her the creeps.
She pushed the thought away and crossed to the sink to wash her hands. It was impossible to think of Lionel when Niall Mountmarche was in her kitchen. Impossible to find two such different men…
The feel of Niall Mountmarche in her home was sending strange sensations through Jess—sensations that she wasn’t at all sure she should be encouraging. He stood looking at the domestic chaos around him and Jessie felt the weight of the past six months shift focus—as though here was someone to share her burden.
Who cared like she did…
Ridiculous. This was the Ogre of Barega she was thinking of—not some knight in shining armour charging into her life, stethoscope flying, to take over the medical cares of the island.
‘Will you come and see Frank before you go back to Paige?’ Jess asked for the second time and was aware that her words sounded abrupt. She couldn’t help it. She was suddenly badly unsettled.
Niall nodded. He glanced at his watch again.
‘I have five minutes,’ he told her. ‘Five minutes more of being a doctor before 1 transform again. Lead on, Dr Harvey. Whither thou goest, I will follow.’
Odd. There was a tone in his voice that suggested that he was only half joking.
Jess led the way through to the hospital side of the building with a light heart. She’d left Frank Reid desperate this morning. The elderly farmer had been beside himself when he knew that Harry had disappeared, furious with the girl who’d been caring for Harry for being afraid to tell him sooner that the dog was missing and furious with himself for not being well enough to go home.
‘Danged leg,’ he’d sworn, and thrown in a few more expletives besides. ‘Get me a wheelchair, Jess, and I’ll look for him myself.’
Only Jessie’s absolute assurance that she’d search as thoroughly as Frank himself would had made him lie back on his pillows again and his face when Jess had left was of total misery. He knew what the dog’s absence of almost a week most probably meant.
But now…Now the news that Jess could give the old man was a lot better than she could have expected. She pushed the ward door open with a smile and stopped in dismay.
Frank was in no condition to receive visitors.
The old man was vomiting. He’d been vomiting for a while, Jess could see, as he was past the stage where he was able to sit and hold the kidney basin for himself. He was dry-retching, heaving uselessly as the nurse watched helplessly beside him.
Jess stared down in dismay.
This was no normal gastric upset. Frank’s eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. His skin was parchment dry and the hand clutching the coverlet was gripping convulsively.
‘What’s happening, Sarah?’ Jess asked quickly, moving across to Frank’s side. Frank was so far gone that he didn’t even try to acknowledge her presence.
‘I don’t know.’ The middle-aged nurse shook her head in indecision. ‘I don’t like it, Jess, and that’s the truth. He’s been vomiting since just after you left. He was so upset about the dog—and then he lost his breakfast and he’s just kept on being sick.’
‘Have you rung Dr Hurd?’
Sarah shouldn’t be coping on her own here, Jessie knew. The nurse had done basic training twenty years ago but had been involved in little medicine since. She’d only just started back at the hospital after raising her family, filling in while one of the regular nurses was on holiday.
‘I rang Dr Hurd twice,’ the nurse whispered. ‘He said to give metaclopramide—which I’ve done—but it’s not helping. I rang him again half an hour ago and he just said to give him more. He’ll be in later…’
Later…
Jess stared down at Frank and knew without doubt that there was no ‘later’. She knew what death looked like.
Prescription—One Bride Page 3