He turned to her then but still he didn’t touch her. Quinn Gallagher was holding himself back with an iron will.
‘Are you saying you don’t feel this, too?’ Quinn asked gently, and the gentleness in Quinn’s voice was close to Fern’s undoing. ‘Because I don’t believe you. You looked at me in that church and whatever hit, it hit both of us-with just as much force as those damned oysters. Only the effects are much more long-lasting-aren’t they, Fern?’
‘The effects just mean I have to get back to Sydney-fast,’ Fern whispered. ‘Surely you can see that?’
‘You mean you can feel it, too?’ There was a trace of relief in Quinn’s voice as though he’d been sure-but not too sure.
‘Oh, I can feel animal attraction,’ Fern said bitterly. ‘But that’s all this is. We’d go to bed and it’d be over in a week.’
‘Want to try and see?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Fern’s face whitened and her fingers clenched again. ‘Quinn Gallagher, are you or are you not married to Jessie?’
There was a long, long silence. Quinn Gallagher was facing some sort of internal war and when it was over the defeat was back in his voice.
‘Jessie’s and my marriage is in name only.’
‘But she’s here, she’s still your wife and she has no intention of leaving the island. Where does that leave me in your plans, Dr Gallagher? A bit on the side-or are you planning on installing me as second bride?’
‘Jessie understands. She knows how I feel. Believe me, Fern…Or if you won’t believe me, ask Jess.’
‘Oh, sure.’ Fern thought back to Jessie’s white, shadowed face and mentally cringed. ‘Sure. Go and talk to Jessie. Ask her if she’d mind if I took over her husband…You’ve got rocks in your head. She’s a lovely, gentle person, Quinn Gallagher. She doesn’t deserve you.’
‘The marriage is finished.’
Fern shrugged. ‘There’s a law in Australia,’ she said conversationally. ‘It’s that married couples have to separate for at least twelve months before they can divorce. Separate, Dr Gallagher. Live in different houses. Have you any intention of doing that?’
‘We can’t,’ Quinn said heavily. ‘You must be able to see that.’
‘I don’t think I can see very much at all,’ Fern whispered, her voice breaking. ‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand what you’re saying we should do. I don’t understand what I’m feeling. I only know…I only know that I have to get away fast. I can’t cope…’ She struggled with the doorhandle. ‘Quinn, unlock the door. Let me go-please…’
‘Let you go?’ he said dully. He shook his head. ‘I told you, Fern. What I’ve caught is incurable. I’ll let you get out of the car-even go back to Sydney-but I can never let you go.’
He lifted his hand and touched her hair, as if he were touching a dear and fragrant memory. His eyes held the same bleakness and loss as a man looking at a lost love.
‘You’d better go, Fern,’ he said bleakly. ‘But not, please God, not for ever…’
CHAPTER NINE
FERN spent the night staring sleeplessly at the ceiling-and making some very hard decisions.
The next morning she again waited until Quinn was safely in Clinic and then returned to the hospital.
She visited Bill first.
The young man was sleeping deeply, obviously exhausted from the previous night’s drama.
To Fern’s relief his asthma seemed to have settled and he was breathing with relative ease. The dry, hacking cough was still there, though. It shook his body as he slept and his pillow was specked with blood.
She had to be right, Fern thought grimly. If she wasn’t…
She must be.
She lifted the chart from the end of the bed. Bill’s temperature was still high but it was too early to expect the pneumonia treatment to be working. It was TB…If they could keep him alive for the course of treatment to take effect…
It was Bill’s only chance at life.
Quinn was following her advice to the letter.
For one crazy moment Fern let her mind drift. What if…What if she considered Quinn’s mad proposal? She and Quinn running this hospital. Together…
With Jessie in the background!
‘Don’t be a fool,’ she said harshly to herself. Her decision had been made.
She left Bill without waking him.
Aunt Maud was propped up on pillows in the next ward, a magazine lying on the coverlet in front of her. She wasn’t reading, though. Maud lay staring out of the windows at the distant sea, as though soaking up every inch of view she could get.
Impulsively Fern crossed to the windows, throwing them wide to let the smell of the sea permeate the room.
Her aunt sighed with pleasure.
‘I wanted to do that myself, Fern, dear,’ she admitted, ‘but it seemed too much effort to get out of bed.’
Fern sighed. ‘Aunt, you must have the bypass surgery,’ she said softly. She walked back to the bed and took her aunt’s hands. ‘There’s no choice. The way it’s looking-well, to be blunt, I don’t like your chances of coming home unless you do.’
Her aunt nodded. ‘I know that.’ Maudie looked again out to sea. ‘I just wish…’
Fern stooped to give her aunt a swift hug. ‘You just wish it’ll all be here waiting when you get back. The sea. The island. They will be. I promise.’
‘And you? Fern, why won’t you come home?’
Silence.
Fern stepped back from the bed, searching for something to say. There were slow tears of distress and weakness sliding down her aunt’s cheeks.
‘I did come home,’ Fern whispered. ‘I always come home for visits. And I’ll take you to Sydney and then I’ll bring you back again. I promise.’
‘And leave again.’
‘I can’t practise here,’ Fern said gently. ‘Even if I wanted to now, I can’t. Dr Gallagher is the island doctor.’
‘He says he’s asked you to be his partner.’
Fern bit her lip. ‘Has he also told you he’s married?’ Fern’s aunt sniffed into a tissue, pulling herself back to her normal prosaic self with a visible effort. ‘Well, of course, he’s married,’ she said bluntly. ‘Jessie’s a lovely girl, too, even if she is painfully shy. But Fern, Dr Gallagher being married shouldn’t stop you being his partner. That’s silly.’
Silly…
She supposed it was.
The whole darned thing was silly. Silly to the point of hysterical!
‘Staying here’s impossible,’ Fern said at last. ‘Believe me, Auntie…’
‘Because we haven’t healed you…’
Fern’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t…I don’t know what you mean.’
Maud sighed. ‘Oh, Fern, we did so want children, your uncle and I. And when your parents were killed-well, we thought, at least we’d have a daughter. Someone we could love like our own. Selfish, really. Only…only we never really reached you. You’ve put up barriers so high…Fern, you’ve built those barriers and we can’t get through. No one can. It tears us in two-your uncle and I…’
Fern swallowed. ‘I…But I do love you,’ she said softly. ‘You know I do.’
‘But you won’t depend on us,’ Maud said. ‘The giving always has to be on your side. You won’t take. You think if you take, then you expose yourself to hurt again. You won’t take our love…’
‘I do…’
‘You don’t,’ Maud said gently. ‘And what I’m really fearful of, my Fern, is that you won’t take anyone’s. Are you going to depend on anyone, Fern-ever?’
‘I guess…I guess I have to say I hope not,’ Fern said, struggling to keep her voice light. If Maud only knew…If her aunt guessed how much her niece had changed in the few short days since the fiasco of a wedding…
All she wanted to do now was depend on someone-on Quinn Gallagher-for the rest of her life. She wanted interdependence like she wanted life itself. Two made one…
For the first time in her life, Fern was guessin
g what the words of the marriage ceremony really meant.
‘Will you come to Sydney and have this operation?’ Fern asked steadily, avoiding her aunt’s troubled eyes and changing the subject back to something safer. ‘The passenger plane comes in on Friday. We could organise your transport on that. I’ll stay with you all the time. I promise.’
‘But…’
‘But I thought about it last night-and I’ve decided to leave on Friday, regardless, Auntie Maud. But I think you should come with me.’
Maud sighed.
‘You’ll leave, anyway?’
‘I must.’
Silence.
‘And if I don’t?’ Maud whispered into the silence.
‘Then you’ll die.’ There was no point in promising anything else. Not with a heart as damaged as Maud’s.
‘But you’re not going to marry Sam.’
‘No.’
Her aunt sighed once more.
‘All right, Fern.’
Fern’s aunt closed her eyes as though she was in pain. She bit her lip. ‘I’ll come with you and have this dratted operation,’ she said sadly. ‘Even if it kills me. Your promise still holds good, though, Fern. When you marry, you marry on the island. I’m holding you to that.’
‘I don’t…’ It was better to be honest-wasn’t it? ‘I don’t think I’ll marry.’
Her aunt shook her head sadly. ‘Fern, love-no matter what happens to me…remember…’
‘“Remember”?’
‘It’s easier to give than receive,’ Maud whispered harshly. ‘You give and give and give…but if you don’t
learn it has to be both ways, then you’ll never be happy.
Sam wasn’t the man for you, dear, and you know that. The next man who comes along…Well, I’m agreeing to this operation because I don’t want to hurt your uncle with my death. I don’t mind so much for me-but we depend on each other. I need him and I know he needs me. Open yourself to that sort of love, Fern, dear. Try…’
Fern swallowed.
‘I’ll try,’ she whispered and she knew she was lying as deeply as she’d ever lied before.
She was trying desperately not to try at all.
Jessie met her on the way out of the hospital. The vet came running down the hospital steps to catch Fern before she pulled out of the hospital car park.
‘Fern, stop. I’ve been waiting for you,’ Jess called. Fern was already in the car but she paused and opened the car window when Jessie blocked her path. ‘Please…Please, I need to talk to you.’
‘I was just going home to make my uncle lunch,’ Fern said doubtfully, glancing at her watch. If she stayed longer she risked meeting Quinn as he finished morning clinic. Then, at the look on Jessie’s face, she relented. Jessie seemed almost pleading.
There was something different about Jessie this morning.
Jessie’s third breast had disappeared.
‘You’ve had a mastectomy,’ Fern teased, forcing lightness as she followed the girl back into the hospital. Then she winced at the look of distress flooding Jessie’s face.
‘My little wombat died this morning,’ Jess said sadly. ‘He never really stood a chance. He was shocked-and I think he’d been out of the pouch for some hours before he was found. He was badly dehydrated and needed antibiotics but I couldn’t get the mix right. Finally his diarrhoea was so bad his bowel ulcerated. The ulcers burst and he bled to death.’
Fern grimaced. The mixed blessings of medicine! It was the hardest lesson of being a doctor-that there were times when you just couldn’t win.
‘Do you know why he was out of his mum’s pouch?’ she asked gently. ‘Was his mum injured?’
‘I don’t know.’ Jessie was leading the way through the hospital corridor into the kitchen as she talked, ignoring Fern’s obvious reluctance. ‘Actually, they’re the babies that are the hardest ones to save-when there’s no obvious reason for them being abandoned. Even if I get them to adulthood, often I find something wrong-some defect that the mother sensed but I didn’t. This one may have been dumped for such a reason.’
‘So you’ve been awake nights for nothing,’ Fern ventured, seeing the deepening of the shadows on Jessie’s face.
‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Jessie stooped down and lifted the little wallaby Fern had helped Quinn feed from his pouch by the stove. ‘At least I tried. And I’m succeeding with this one. You don’t mind if I feed while I talk?’
‘Go right ahead.’ Fern sat down at the kitchen table and found herself immediately holding an armful of blanketed joey.
‘Quinn tells me you’re an expert already.’ Jess gave a forced smile. ‘If you feed Walter while I talk then I can prepare formula for my echidna at the same time.’ She handed over the tiny plastic bottle. ‘All yours, Dr Rycroft.’
It was all Walter’s. The joey saw the bottle coming, opened his mouth and sucked with fury. He nestled back in Fern’s arms in contented bliss while Jessie fiddled with mixtures on the bench.
It was as if she was buying time.
Fern watched, forcing herself to be patient, as Jessie finished stirring her formula, placed it in the fridge and then lifted a can of cat food from the shelf.
‘Cat food?’ Fern queried faintly. ‘Surely you don’t have a cat? There’s not one on the island-is there?’
‘It’s for my little rosella,’ Jessie told her, gesturing to the young parrot in the cage in the corner. ‘I use cat food and high protein baby cereal in equal proportions, mixed with a little calcium and multi-vitamin drops. It feeds him beautifully.’
‘So what medical textbook does that come from?’
‘No book, unfortunately,’ Jessie grimaced. ‘Trial and error.’ Jessie crossed to the cage and opened it, lifting the little parrot out and gently offering it the food. The rosella knew what was coming. The food went into his crop easily: he swallowed and looked for more.
Whatever Jessie wanted was taking a long time to surface.
‘Why did you want to see me?’ Fern said at last. Jessie’s back was to her, her attention seemingly all on the rosella, and Fern couldn’t see her face. She sensed tension, though-tension and distress.
‘Quinn says…Quinn says he’s asked you to stay-and you won’t because of me.’
Fern drew in her breath. Jess was still turned away, her shoulders hunched in misery, and Fern’s heart turned over.
How could Quinn do this?
‘That’s not true,’ Fern said steadily. ‘Quinn’s your husband, Jess. He has no right…no right at all to say that to you. It’s horrid and hurtful and…and it’s just not true.’ Her voice trailed off to nothing.
‘It’s not like…It’s not like we’ve a normal marriage,’ Jess whispered sadly, as though she hadn’t heard what Fern had said. The rosella was back on his perch and she stroked him with a gentle finger. ‘Quinn and I…Well, we’ve been friends for ever. He was my cousin before we married. And the marriage…Well, it seemed like an extension of the friendship, really. We do everything separately, though, Fern. If he wanted…if he wants to be with you then I don’t have the right…I don’t have the right to stop him.’
‘You do have the right,’ Fern said savagely. The tiny joey started in her arms and she forced her voice to remain even. ‘Quinn’s your husband. He’s not my husband. He doesn’t want to divorce you-does he?’
‘No.’ Jess shook her head. ‘But there are reasons,’ she said miserably. ‘There are reasons why we can’t divorce-yet. He wouldn’t have told me about you except I guessed. I’ve never seen him lit up like this before, Fern. Like he’s alive. He’s not like that with me.’
‘He doesn’t know me,’ Fern said softly.
‘If I went away…’ The words were being forced out, one after another. ‘If I went away,’ Jessie faltered, ‘would you marry him?’
‘No!’ It was a cry from the heart but instinctively Fern knew that it was true. Sure, Jessie could leave but what basis was that for a marriage between Quinn and Fern? Like murder…
It had the same awful feel.
‘It’s me who’s leaving, Jessie,’ Fern said savagely, tight with anger. Her words firmed as she felt how right they were. Quinn had no business putting this girl through the misery she was facing. If he was here…She’d like to slap his arrogant face, she thought bitterly-somehow make him realise what he was doing to his lovely young wife. What she felt for him was some sort of sick aberration. It had nothing to do with love. ‘I’m leaving on Friday.’
‘Leaving…?’
‘I live in Sydney. That’s where I’m going.’
‘But…but Quinn wants you to stay.’
‘And so do my aunt and uncle.’ Fern lifted the now empty bottle from the little joey’s mouth and spent a long time settling him back in his pouch. ‘But that doesn’t mean I belong on the island. My life-my career-are back in Sydney and that’s where I’m going. Whatever crazy notions Quinn has about me-well, that’s all they are. Crazy…’
‘He kissed you-the night of the shark attack.’
‘He did,’ Fern said grimly. ‘And for my pains, I let him. I was exhausted, mentally wrung out and I didn’t know he was married. One kiss between strangers. Whatever Quinn likes to think about it, that’s all there was to it. So…so you and Quinn have to decide what to do about your marriage but leave me out of the equation, Jess. No matter what you do, I don’t belong here.’
I don’t belong…
The old familiar words. They had lost none of their gall in the years since she’d first thought them.
‘OK.’ Jessie’s voice had lost none of its sadness. ‘But I would have liked…I wish, for Quinn’s sake…’
She broke off and turned to face Fern, her eyes steady.
‘I’d like Quinn to be happy,’ she said firmly, and her eyes held Fern’s with a strength Fern hadn’t known the girl possessed. ‘But when you say, “leave me out of it”…well, that’s true for me as well. Quinn and I…Well, we have solid reasons for staying married for another few months or so. But after that, Fern…after that we’ll go our separate ways and Quinn’s free to do as he wishes. I just wanted you to know that. In case it makes a difference.’
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