Prescription—One Husband

by Marion Lennox

  Quinn nodded. ‘I think that’s wise,’ he told her gently. ‘Run to your aunt. But, Fern…’

  ‘Y-yes?’

  ‘Surely an almost married lady should run to her intended? Unless…unless her intended was never that in the first place.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THERE was no danger of Fern going to sleep after that. She lay staring at moonbeams on the ceiling and her mind twisted on a tortuous path she had no way of escaping. The fact that Aunt Maud’s pulse beat strongly and regularly under Fern’s fingers hardly made her feel better at all.

  It was a real relief when morning came.

  At six the ward door opened and a middle-aged lady appeared, bearing a tray. Fern recognized her at once. Geraldine Hamstead, a near neighbour of Fern’s aunt and uncle and one of the island’s few trained nurses.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ Geraldine-whispered cheerfully, and bent to check Maud. ‘Oh, she’s still sleeping…’

  As if to give the lie to the statement, Maud’s eyes flicked open. Maud stared up at Geraldine and then looked across at Fern in bewilderment.

  ‘Geraldine…Fern…’ And then the events of the previous day flooded back and Maud’s face crumpled into tears.

  ‘Oh, Fern, your lovely wedding. Oh, Fern…’

  ‘Now, you’re not to fret yourself over a silly wedding, Auntie,’ Fern said soundly, slipping from her own bedcovers to give her aunt a swift hug. There were still monitors attached to Maud’s breast and a saline drip was attached to her arm but it was more important to hug the elderly lady at this stage than to worry about leads and tubing. ‘I can get married any old day,’ Fern smiled.

  ‘But not on the island. I know you won’t get married on the island after this.’ Fern’s aunt gulped back tears. ‘It was Lizzy, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fern agreed. ‘We might have known she’d do something silly. Forget her now, though, Aunt. What’s done is done and Geraldine has a good strong cup of tea here that needs drinking. Do you feel like it?’

  ‘Y-yes, please…’

  There were still weak tears sliding down Maud’s face. She struggled to sit up but Geraldine and Fern were there before her, sliding their arms in behind, supporting her and helping her to hold the cup as she sipped.

  ‘You shouldn’t have to do this, Geraldine…Fern…’ Maud whispered as, tea finished, she sank gratefully back onto her pillows.

  ‘My pleasure.’ Geraldine smiled fondly down at her neighbour. ‘I should have been here last night but I was so darned crook with those dratted oysters! So was Barbara and we’re the only two trained nurses on the island free to help at the hospital. It was a blessing Doc Gallagher and Jess didn’t go to your wedding lunch, too. Now…’ Geraldine turned her starched smile onto Fern ‘…I’m intending to give your aunt a wash, Fern Rycroft, so be off with you and let us get on with it. Dr Gallagher wants a word.’

  A word…

  She had to face him some time. Fern would have liked to slink off home and reappear in about a year. She didn’t feel up to facing Quinn Gallagher yet.

  Geraldine had turned to fill a bowl with warm water from the basin on the wall. Smiling still, she jerked her head to the door.

  ‘Doc Gallagher’s a busy man, Fern,’ she warned. ‘I wouldn’t keep the good doctor waiting. He’s in the office down the corridor to your left. And don’t worry,’ she added, seeing Fern’s hesitation and misreading the reason, ‘your aunt’s in good hands.’

  Fern threw up her hands in mock surrender and managed a smile. ‘OK, OK. I know when I’m not wanted.’

  Quinn was waiting for her. He was sipping black tea from a huge chipped mug and he gestured to a teapot the size of which Fern had never seen in her life. It was vast.

  ‘Now I know how you keep yourself awake,’ she told him, only just containing the tremor in her voice.

  ‘Beats amphetamines.’ Quinn rose from his desk and looked quizzically down at Fern. ‘I told you, I’m used to sleep deprivation—but you look dead beat.’

  ‘I hardly had a restful night,’ Fern said bitterly and then wished she hadn’t.

  ‘Is that tone of voice inferring that you had a restless night because of me?’ Quinn’s eyebrows rose in polite incredulity.

  ‘You didn’t help.’

  ‘Dr Rycroft, I hardly think you’re fitted for married life if a fleeting kiss can be described as disturbing.’

  ‘“Fleeting”…’ Fern’s breath was dragged in as a gasp of outrage.

  ‘OK.’ Quinn spread his hands placatingly. ‘It wasn’t fleeting. It was, in fact, most satisfactory. Would you care for a repeat performance?’

  ‘I would not!’ Fern backed like a frightened rabbit ‘Pity.’ Quinn’s dark eyes gleamed with dangerous humour. He didn’t pursue it, though, but sighed in mock resignation. ‘Never mind. There’s time to spare. How about if I keep dreamboat chained to his bed for weeks while I have my wicked way with you?’

  ‘If you mean Sam…’

  ‘But of course I mean Sam.’ Quinn’s eyes widened in innocence. ‘How many dreamboats do you have, Dr Rycroft?’

  It was all Fern could do not to slap his smiling face. The man laughed down at her with warmth and admiration in his eyes and she felt her world shift crazily on its axis. She was badly out of control and she knew it.

  ‘You…you wanted to see me?’ she asked stiffly.

  ‘I certainly did.’ Quinn’s innocent gaze gave way to laughter once again. ‘For a lady who’s slept in her clothes you’ve come up looking remarkably presentable, I must say.’ He leaned forward and smoothed down an errant flaming curl wisping over her forehead. ‘Even cute!’

  ‘I am not cute!’ Fern was perilously close to stamping her foot. She fought frantically for dignity and control and somehow found it.

  ‘OK, then,’ Quinn agreed. ‘Not cute.’ His smile faded. ‘Let’s make that efficient and professional and businesslike, shall we, Dr Rycroft? Tell me what you’re going to do about your aunt.’

  Fern stared. ‘Why…? What do you mean?’

  ‘She won’t go to the city,’ he told her. ‘We had that out long before she had this heart attack. She has no intention of seeing a specialist anywhere but on this island. She says that the stress of travelling to Sydney and putting herself through all those “damned fool tests” would be the death of her—and she may even be right, at that. She has severe ischaemic heart disease, Dr Rycroft.’

  The anger drained from Fern in a sickening rush. She groped for the back of a chair and sat down hard.

  ‘How…how bad?’

  ‘You want to see the ECG?’ Without waiting for an answer Quinn reached back to his desk and produced the tracing. He handed it to Fern without a word.

  Fern studied it in silence. Above their heads a clock ticked with monotonous regularity. Like a time bomb…

  ‘This ECG was taken last week,’ Quinn told Fern as she laid the tape down. ‘She’s been seeing me on and off for chest pain and I’ve been doing my damnedest to keep things under control. Your fiasco with the wedding from hell was too much, though. Heaven knows what the ECG will look like now. She’ll have suffered considerably more damage after last night.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was this bad…’

  ‘Because you haven’t been home.’

  ‘I guess…I guess that’s right.’ Fern thought back to all those cheerful letters she’d received from her aunt—with never a hint that there were problems. Her uncle’s letters were few and far between—but Fern remembered now a couple of phone calls that had sounded stilted and absurdly formal. She’d guessed that he was worried but, when pressed, Al had just passed it off as concern over a heifer or a fence needing urgent repair down in the bottom paddock.

  ‘So, what do you intend to do about it?’

  ‘“Do”?’ Fern stared. She picked up the tape again and looked along its length, willing it to tell her something different. ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘She’s a candidate for a bypass.’

 
‘She won’t go to Sydney for it,’ Fern said definitely. Then she frowned and stared again at the tape. ‘How do you know a bypass would help?’

  ‘I ran tests myself and sent the results to Sydney. A friend of mine’s a heart specialist there. He says he’s willing to book her in for angiography and probable bypass on the strength of my information.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘But she won’t go without your persuasion,’ Quinn said. ‘And if she stays here…Well, if she stays here without the operation I reckon she’ll be lucky if she lives twelve months.’

  ‘I’ll try and persuade her,’ Fern said miserably, knowing that her chances of doing any such thing were zero. Her aunt had been off the island once when she was ten. She’d been seasick and homesick in equal proportions. The thought of aeroplanes made her almost sick with horror and nothing could persuade her to repeat the experience.

  ‘And if you can’t?’

  Fern fingered the tape. ‘There’s nothing…’

  ‘You could stay with her.’

  ‘It won’t help,’ Fern said miserably. ‘It won’t make her live longer.’

  ‘No.’ Quinn’s voice softened. ‘It won’t’ He reached out and took the tape from Fern’s fingers and then his strong hands clasped hers together and held them still. Quinn wasn’t talking to her as another doctor. He was talking to her as a frightened relative who had to be made to face facts.

  ‘But your uncle’s not strong enough to cope with his wife’s death alone, Fern, and I’ve checked. You’re his only family. You’re all he has, Dr Rycroft, and your place, for the next twelve months or however long it takes, is within easy reach of the people who love you.’

  ‘But…but I can’t come back. I can’t stay here.’ It was a frightened wail.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Sam…’ Fern’s mind was twisting like a cornered animal, searching for a way of escape. ‘I’m marrying Sam and Sam won’t stay…’

  ‘Sam doesn’t love you,’ Quinn said brutally. ‘That bag of wind has a heart only big enough for himself.’

  ‘That’s not fair. He…’

  ‘Dr Rycroft, why don’t you want to come back to the island?’

  Quinn’s flat demand cut across Fern’s rising panic. It stopped her almost in mid-flight.

  There was a long, long silence.

  ‘It’s almost as if you’re afraid,’ Quinn said slowly. ‘Of what, I wonder?’

  ‘I’m not…Don’t be ridiculous…’

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous.’ Quinn’s dark eyes were searching her face, seeking clues behind her shadowed eyes.

  ‘Your aunt tells me you lost your parents,’ he said gently. He ignored Fern’s gasp and her sharp tug on her hands and went on as though thinking aloud. ‘You lost your parents and your sister in the one dreadful car crash. It must have been hard to take for a kid of fifteen.’

  ‘Look, it’s…’

  ‘None of my business?’ Quinn finished for her. ‘I know. But I’m starting to guess all the same, Fern Rycroft. Would I be right in believing you’ve made a personal vow never to leave yourself so exposed again? Never to admit to loving? Because if you admit to loving then you face the risk of that awful pain again.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Is that why you’re scared to death of staying any nearer Al and Maud than you have to? Of staying on the island where people are fond of you? And is that why you’re marrying that bag of wind? So you can have safety and security without the risk of pain if he leaves you?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Fern wrenched futilely at her hands. Her green eyes were flashing daggers. The man was so right that it hurt—and yet he was saying things that she’d hardly admitted to herself. ‘No!’

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I, Dr Rycroft?’ Quinn asked gently. His clasp on her hands tightened, as though he was trying to impart strength for what she had to do. ‘But there’s a responsibility you can’t escape from, my lovely Fern. Your aunt and uncle love you, regardless, and they need you. Your place is here.’

  My lovely Fern.

  The words twisted deep down into Fern’s heart and pierced like a blade. There was pain coming at her from all sides and some of it was to do with the way she felt about the man holding her hands.

  She wrenched again.

  ‘Let me go. I don’t have to listen to this.’

  ‘You have to face it.’

  ‘I couldn’t stay here even if I wanted to,’ Fern snapped. ‘There’s no room on the island for more than one doctor—and I’d hate to do you out of a job.’

  ‘I’d hate you to do me out of a job, too,’ Quinn said thoughtfully. He was still holding her hands in a grip of iron but it was almost as though he had forgotten that he was holding them. ‘So, what do we do about that?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘I’d be prepared to offer you a partnership.’

  A partnership.

  Fern stared at the man before her as if he had finally lost his head. He stared right back and his eyes were as calm as a safe harbour after a storm.

  His hands were still holding hers. She stared down at them and, seemingly reluctantly, Quinn released her.

  ‘It could work,’ he said gently.

  ‘The island’s not big enough.’

  ‘It is, you know,’ he told her. ‘The township’s growing and there are plans for a two-hundred-bed hotel on the foreshore. The local airline has applied for a licence to increase its runs and with tourists there’s a huge increase in workload. I didn’t come here to be run off my feet—so I’ll need help. Now I have an established service I’ll advertise on the mainland—but I’d prefer an islander. I’d prefer you.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’ Fern asked abruptly.

  Quinn just smiled and shook his head. He lifted a hand to run his fingers through his already tousled hair. ‘It doesn’t make any difference why I came. The point is that I’m here; I intend to stay for quite a while; I’d like to make this the best medical practice I possibly can afford to provide; and I have on the island a qualified doctor with inside knowledge of every one of the islanders. I’d be a fool to pass you over, Dr Rycroft.’

  His laughing eyes were saying more than that and Fern flushed crimson.

  ‘I don’t want to be your partner, Dr Gallagher,’ she snapped and her voice dripped ice.

  ‘Why ever not?’ That dangerous innocence flashed out again and Fern was lost.

  ‘I…I don’t…’ She fought for breath and dragged herself to her feet. This was getting way out of hand. ‘Look, it’s a great offer and I appreciate it. But my life—my plans—have nothing to do with you and I’ll thank you to butt out. Now…’

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now I’m going home to have breakfast,’ she snapped.

  ‘It’s already cooked.’ Quinn followed her to his feet, his long body stretching lazily. ‘Heck, morning already.’ He glanced down at his watch. ‘Seven a.m. and I can smell bacon. Come and see what Jessie is cooking.’

  ‘I don’t want breakfast.’

  ‘You mean you don’t mind offending Jessie?’ He smiled down at her. ‘She’s done the right thing by helping with your aunt; she’s cooked you breakfast and now you’re going to leave without even tasting it. I don’t know where you were raised, Dr Rycroft, but where I was brought up that would have been classed as bad manners. Almost up there with belching in public or being seen with your hair in curlers.’

  ‘I’m not…’ Fern fought for dignity but lost it somewhere between tears and laughter. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake…You’re blackmailing me.’

  ‘That’s the plan,’ he said easily. He took her hands in a grip that brooked no protest. ‘Breakfast, Dr Rycroft,’ he said firmly. ‘A woman can’t consider the best offer she’s had in years on an empty stomach.’

  Jessie wasn’t in the kitchen.

  She’d hardly have known if Fern had eaten her breakfast. The back door was swinging shut as they walked through from the corridor and
the pan of bacon sizzled untended on the stove.

  A note lay on the table.

  Didn’t like to disturb what was obviously a tête-àtete. One of Chris Ming’s horses sounds like he’s broken his hock. Gotta go. Hi, Fern. Quinn, could you feed Walter? Leave me a bit of bacon. I’ll eat it cold.

  There was enough bacon to feed a small army. Fern stood by the door and stared as Quinn walked over to the stove and started flipping it over.

  ‘You do share…’ she started cautiously. The relationship between Quinn and Jessie was unexplained If it wasn’t for Quinn’s kiss last night she would have guessed they were married.

  ‘We have separate kitchens,’ Quinn told her, seeing her doubt. ‘Separate everything, in fact. It’s only Jessie’s cooking that drives me in here. Finally, she’s taken pity on me and feeds me—as long as I help look after her babies.’

  ‘Babies?’

  ‘Walter,’ Quinn grinned. ‘Well, Walter for one.’ He leaned over beside the stove and lifted a small woollen pouch that had been hanging behind a chair. An electric cord looped out from the pouch and ran to a nearby socket.

  ‘Would you like to meet Walter, Dr Rycroft?’ he asked, and held open the pouch.

  It was another wallaby—but a little one only half the size of the joey Fern had met the night before. It was still pink, its skin only slightly fuzzed with the beginnings of soft brown fur.

  ‘Walter’s mum was burned when one of the local farmers lost control of a burn-off,’ Quinn explained. ‘Jess had to put the mum down and the little one darn near died as well. He was suffering smoke inhalation and even without it at that age they’re hard to keep alive.’

  Quinn abandoned the bacon, handed the pouch to Fern and crossed to the fridge. On the top shelf were a series of what looked like doll’s bottles—bottles Fern had only seen before being used to feed very premature babies. ‘Sit down,’ he told Fern. ‘You can feed the baby while I finish breakfast. Fair division of labour.’

  ‘I don’t know how…’ Fern peered dubiously into the bag. Lining the pouch was a tiny electric blanket, making a cocoon of warmth to imitate the mother’s pouch. From the depths peered two tiny eyes and they looked just as anxious as Fern’s did.