‘Nothing to it.’ Quinn grinned. ‘Jess makes me do it and if I can do it then anyone can.’ He heated the bottle in the microwave, retrieved a piece of blanket from the warming drawer of the oven and brought both to Fern.
‘Sit,’ he said sternly and, slightly stunned, Fern sat.
Quinn laid the blanket on Fern’s lap and then, with fingers that looked as though they were handling a rare and precious piece of antiquity, he delved into the pouch and retrieved the baby wallaby. In seconds he had wrapped the tiny creature like a newborn infant so that it was lying on its back, its nose pointing up at Fern.
Fern had never met a man so gentle.
Quinn dripped a droplet of milk onto the inside of his wrist, checked it again and then lowered the bottle. The joey saw it coming. The tiny mouth opened in anticipation, the extended teat went down the little throat and he started to suck.
Fern stared down in amazement.
Her arms instinctively cradled her warm little bundle and she took the bottle from Quinn. Despite herself, her lips curved into a soft smile.
‘Jess does this all the time?’
‘We do this,’ Quinn grinned. ‘Now Jess has decided I’m trustworthy I get to share two-hourly feeds. You see why I’d like you to join the medical practice of Barega?’
Fern shook her head but her attention was all on the tiny mouth and those huge, trusting eyes, watching her…
‘I’ve never seen a wallaby so tiny…’
‘He isn’t due to leave the pouch for months yet,’ Quinn told her, turning back to the bacon. ‘Toast?’
‘Oh…Yes…’
‘Mind, it’s too early to say whether he ever will.’ Quinn held a piece of bacon up with tongs. ‘Will this do or do you like it crisp?’
‘Whatever…’ Fern had more on her mind than bacon.
‘Crisp, then,’ Quinn said definitely. ‘There’s nothing worse than soggy bacon, in my book.’
‘Why may he never leave the pouch?’ Fern asked cautiously. The soft warm bundle in her arms, Fern’s lack of sleep and the smells wafting round the kitchen were causing her mind almost to be disembodied. She felt as if she was floating slightly above where her body was sitting.
‘They’re deuced hard to raise,’ Quinn told her. ‘Even now we’re not out of the woods with this one. Jess carried the joey round in a pouch against her body for the first couple of weeks after we found him. The stress of being away from the movement and smell of the mother kills them quicker than anything else does. I couldn’t believe the trouble she went to. The joey even went to bed with her. Then we tried one antibiotic after another to get rid of the infection in the lung—it’s not completely clear yet—and we had an impossible time finding a formula that’d suit.’
‘We…’
Quinn grinned. ‘Well, it’s hard to stay completely divorced from proceedings. I use Jess for anything from holding a stroppy kid down while I check an ear to giving an anaesthetic in an emergency, and she responds by dabbling in my pharmacy cupboard as well as hers. In a restricted place like this there’s no such thing as total separation of animal medicine and people medicine.’
‘I see,’ Fern said faintly.
Quinn grinned. ‘A far cry from a city teaching hospital,’ he smiled. ‘Why don’t you join us and see how much fun it can be?’
Fun…Medicine, fun?
Fern had always taken her work so seriously—a way to escape the fears that had been with her for so long. The thought of medicine as fun was almost an anathema.
Yet…
She looked around this warm, cluttered kitchen and the thought of being part of it was so tempting that it was almost irresistible.
She looked up to find Quinn’s eyes watching her, his face creased with laughing understanding.
‘You could do it, you know,’ he said kindly. ‘It’s like jumping off the high board into a swimming pool on a hot day. So scary it makes your knees wobble but if you hold your nose and do it…Well, it’s a lot more comfortable in the water than staying for ever on the high board.’
Is that what she was doing? Staying for ever on the high board?
By marrying Sam, maybe she was. Maybe her knees were trembling almost as much now at the thought of marrying Sam and leaving…
Dear-heaven, where was her traitorous mind leading her? She had her life all mapped out. A husband. A job. When she returned to the mainland she was completing her training as a physician. A financially secure career in a huge hospital where she didn’t need to become close to people…
In her arms the little wallaby stirred and settled and his bright eyes closed in sleep. She could feel his tummy swollen with milk and for one absurd moment she had a vision that was totally crazy.
This man…this fireside, only instead of a joey a human baby—a baby with eyes the same as his father’s…
Well, that was one stupid, stupid thought. Fern gave herself a sharp mental kick. She lifted the empty bottle from the unresponsive mouth and knelt to place the joey back in his warm little pouch. No children! Sam agreed. They’d be in the way of his career path, he said, and they were certainly in the way of Fern’s need for no ties.
She stood stiffly, her eyes blank with fear. She was getting into deeper and deeper water and she wanted out.
‘Bathroom’s next door,’ Quinn said kindly, seeing her confusion and obviously deciding not to make it worse. ‘Have a wash while I do the eggs. Sunny side up?’
‘Y-yes, please.’
He smiled at her, his eyes sending out a message of reassurance as though he could read her fear.
‘Two minutes, then, Dr Rycroft. Or I’ll wolf the lot without you.’
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS a weird breakfast.
Fern spent the meal trying to shake off the feeling that she belonged in this kitchen.
She felt as if she’d been here all her life.
It was crazy. Aunt Maud kept her kitchen as neat as a new pin and Fern’s hospital flat was clinically clean and uncluttered. No photographs. No sentimentality or memorabilia at all.
It was different here. The kitchen was vast. The centre point was a huge slow combustion stove that almost filled a wall and sent out a soft heat into the slight chill of the morning. The stove seemed the kitchen’s heart.
Around them was the semi-organised clutter of two professionals’ busy lives. There were not nearly enough shelves to hold all the different sorts of feed mixtures Jessie seemed to need. Bags of formula stood heaped along one wall and more were stacked by the stove. To complete the impression of confusion, from the ceiling someone had hung lavender. Maybe a hundred or more bunches were suspended to dry.
‘Jess loves the smell.’ Quinn smiled. ‘And I don’t object too much either.’ He motioned across at the open window to the sea beyond. ‘Especially when it’s mixed with the salt from the ocean.’
There was the smell of more than lavender and salt—and bacon. A bright mound of cut fuchsias and roses tumbled in disarray on the floor, giving off a heady scent of their own.
Maybe Jess had cut them before going out and had not had time to put them in vases, Fern decided—and then blinked as a tiny wombat burrowed out from its pouch somewhere behind her and snuffled over to chomp at the pile.
Fern thought the flowers beautiful. The wombat thought them delicious.
‘How…how many animals does Jessie have here?’ Fern asked faintly and Quinn shook his head.
‘Too many.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘She has four littlies inside at the moment—the wallaby, this little wombat, a baby rosella she puts on the verandah during the day and there’s an echidna behind the stove…’
‘An echidna…’ Australia’s answer to the English
porcupine. ‘How…how cuddly!’
‘He is cuddly, too,’ Quinn smiled. ‘Did you know they don’t grow spikes till they’re twelve months old? Jess feeds him herself, thank heaven. Porcupines don’t use teats—they knead their mother’s belly and the milk oozes onto the sur
face for the baby to lick off. Feeding Oscar is therefore a messy business.’
‘R-really?’
Quinn grinned. ‘Shame on you, Dr Rycroft. What do they teach in paediatric medicine these days? Didn’t you know that?’
‘N-no.’ Fern’s feeling of unreality was growing and growing.
‘Oscar’s the most frail of the babies here so I won’t take him out of his warm pouch for show and tell,’ Quinn told her. ‘Jess has had a hard time settling his diarrhoea. With luck, next time you eat breakfast here it’ll be feed time.’
‘I won’t…’
‘Be eating with us again?’ Quinn raised disbelieving eyebrows. ‘You know, I’m very sure you will.’ He smiled. ‘Very sure, Fern Rycroft. Coffee?’
‘What, have you emptied your teapot?’ Fern quizzed in an unsteady effort to lighten what she was feeling.
‘I have coffee twice a day to wash the tea down.’ Quinn grinned. His smile faded. ‘Dr Rycroft, this partnership is a serious offer, you know. I’m sure we could work together and your aunt tells me you’ve done an anaesthetic residency. I’m a surgeon, so…’
‘A surgeon!’ Fern’s eyes widened. So she had been right. ‘But…’
‘But I’ve also specialised in emergency medicine.’ He saw the blatant disbelief in her eyes. ‘So…So, together we could provide a damned good service…’
‘But I don’t know why you came…’
Fern’s tone was almost an accusation—as though consideration of his offer was dependent on her knowing his reasons for being on the island.
‘No.’ Quinn nodded, his face thoughtful. ‘You don’t. But I had my reasons and they’re good ones. Sometimes you just have to take people on trust, Dr Rycroft.’
‘But…’ Fern stared at Quinn, baffled, and then tried a sideways tack.
‘OK,’ she said at last. ‘Jessie must have come at the same time as you. Why did she come to the island?’
Quinn’s face cleared. ‘Well, that’s easy,’ he grinned. ‘Jessie came here because cats are banned from the island, foxes don’t exist and even rats haven’t made their way to the island yet. It’s a wildlife utopia, and Jess has been looking for such a place all her life.’
‘You mean she came here because of her animals?’ ‘Jess is a vet, Fern.’ Quinn’s face grew thoughtful. ‘She loves her animals—and maybe, like you, Jess has cut herself off from people. She’s one of the few registered carers in the state allowed to both actively treat injured wildlife and then keep them to release. On the mainland she has to send them to bush shelters after treatment because there’s nowhere round the city where they can safely be released. Here…’
‘There are still dogs.’
‘That’s where our Jess is a resourceful lady.’ Quinn smiled. ‘She knew the island wanted a vet so she wrote with a few conditions when she offered to come. One is that all dogs—no exceptions—are carefully controlled and kept confined after dark and that rule is rigidly policed. The farmers here are so pleased to have a qualified vet they’d have granted her the moon. Keeping their dogs under control seemed easy in comparison.’
‘I—I see…’
Fern put down her half-finished coffee and stared at the floor. She couldn’t meet those eyes.
‘So, what do you say, Fern?’ Quinn asked gently. ‘Will you join us?’
Fern shook her head.
‘Because the high board’s too far up from the water?’ Quinn reached out and tucked a curl back behind Fern’s ear. ‘Maybe I’d be below waiting to catch…And maybe, just maybe, the water wouldn’t be too cold after all…It’s feeling pretty warm from where I stand.’
The silence grew. Fern felt the colour grow from white to fiery pink and back to white again.
Quinn withdrew his hand from her hair. He didn’t touch her again and she didn’t know whether she wished him to or not.
‘I have to go…’ she said finally and he nodded.
‘I guess you do.’ Then, at her look of surprise, Quinn glanced ruefully at his watch. ‘I have a clinic at nine and a ward round to do that’s almost respectably long this morning so, much as I’d like to, I can’t keep looking at you and turning my thoughts from medicine. Will you have dinner with me tonight?’
The invitation caught her by surprise.
‘No!’ It was a whisper of defiance. Fern stood abruptly and backed a foot toward the door.
‘How uncivil!’ Quinn shook his head but his dark eyes kept smiling. ‘My cooking’s not that bad,’ he said plaintively. ‘Will you reconsider if I ask Jess to cook?’
Fern backed another foot. ‘It’s…it’s very kind of you—of you and Jess—but I’ll have dinner with my uncle. I…I only intend to stay on the island for another couple of days so I should spend all the time I can with…with my family.’
‘OK, Fern.’ Quinn rose, stepped forward and brushed her cheek lightly with one finger, the smile fading for an instant. ‘You do that. But in the next couple of days you’d better start believing that Al and Maud are your family. They love you already, Fern, no matter how hard you hold yourself away from them; and there are more people around than just your aunt and Al who could love you—given half a chance.’
‘Don’t…’
She pushed his hand away in confusion and turned to the door.
‘I won’t,’ Quinn said softly as she disappeared fast down the corridor. ‘At least, not yet…’
Fern visited her aunt before she left and found Maud almost asleep again, her face devoid of colour against the pillows. She turned to the door as Fern entered and gave a tremulous smile.
Fern crossed swiftly, her heart jerking within at her aunt’s obvious frailty.
‘Oh, Aunt…’ She stopped to give her a swift hug. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about your heart? You should never have tried to cope with the wedding. If only I’d known…’
‘If you’d known it would have been a glorious excuse to have your wedding in some dingy registry office on the mainland,’ her aunt whispered and managed to smile. ‘Go on, Fern. Admit it.’
‘It wouldn’t have been an excuse.’ Fern sat on the chair beside the bed and took her aunt’s hand. ‘But I should have noticed things weren’t right when I finally did come home.’ She sighed. ‘Aunt, Dr Gallagher says you could be a candidate for a bypass operation—and a bypass could just save your life.’
‘What does he know?’ Maud’s lips compressed into a tight line.
‘He knows what’s best for you,’ Fern told her. ‘Auntie Maud, you’re an otherwise fit woman. You’re just sixty. You could have twenty or thirty good years if you have the operation.’
‘He can’t do it here.’
‘Well, no,’ Fern admitted. Coronary bypasses needed a team of skilled coronary surgeons and specially trained nurses. Such surgery on Barega was unthinkable.
‘So I’d have to go to Sydney?’
‘Yes.’ There was no point in dissembling. ‘But I’d go with you. I’d stay with you all the time.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘I’d bring you home to Barega. I promise.’
‘And then go back to Sydney?’
‘I must, Aunt,’ Fern said gently. ‘Sydney’s my home.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Maud said sadly. ‘Nowhere’s home. Not since your family died. You’ve never let this place be home and even when you marry Sam, Sydney will be just the place where you both get on with your careers. It won’t be home.’
‘Aunt, we shouldn’t be worrying about me,’ Fern said gently. ‘We’re talking about you—and about the probability of more heart attacks unless you do something about it.’
‘I’m not going…’
‘You don’t think that’s a little selfish?’ Fern tried, watching her aunt’s face. ‘Aunt, I don’t know how my uncle will cope without you and that’s the truth.’
‘He’ll have to.’
‘Do you want him to?’
Silence.
‘No,’ Maud said at last. ‘Of course I don’t’ S
he twisted in the bed and looked at Fern. ‘It was just so awful last time I went…’
‘Last time was fifty years ago,’ Fern said with asperity. ‘Last time your parents put you on a fishing boat in bad weather and it took a week to get to the mainland. Aunt, we can do better than that. We could even get a specially equipped hospital plane to land and transport you…’
‘A plane? One of those noisy tin cans that fall out of the sky…’
‘Believe it or not, they fall out of the sky once in a blue moon and I’ve been watching carefully of late. The moon’s not blue at all,’ Fern said. ‘You’d be surprised how comfortable they are now.’
‘My father went on a joyride once. He was green for weeks.’
‘That was forty years ago. Aunt, aviation has come a long way since then.’
‘I…’
‘Auntie Maud, you know you can get through this if you set your mind to it,’ Fern whispered, laying her cheek against her aunt’s. ‘Do it for my uncle. And for me. Please?’
‘For you…’ Aunt Maud’s hand came up to clasp Fern’s soft chestnut curls. ‘Oh, Fern, you don’t need me. You never have.’
‘I do.’
‘I wish that was true. But…’ A tear slid down Maud’s face. She closed her eyes. ‘Fern, you won’t even get married on the island now, will you?’
‘We’d be silly to,’ Fern whispered.
‘You mean you have a good excuse.’ Maud shook her head and her lips tightened. There was a long moment’s silence while she thought. Then her eyes flashed open again.
‘Fern, I still want you to marry on the island. Drat Lizzy and her tricks. I’m asking you to try again.’
‘But…’
‘No buts,’ her aunt said sternly, her voice strengthening with decision. ‘I’ll do you a deal.’
‘What…what sort of deal?’
‘If you promise to marry on the island then I’ll have this darned operation. Bring on your hospital planes, your helicopters…Bring on the army for all I care. I want to see you married, Fern, dear, and I want you to be married among your own. I want you to be married here. So…So is it a deal?’
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