Prescription-One Husband

by Marion Lennox

  How could it make a difference?

  It couldn’t make a difference at all.

  ‘There are solid reasons for staying married for another few months or so…’

  Fern returned to her car slowly, her mind turning over and over what she’d been told.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Unless Jess was pregnant?

  That was on the cards, too, Fern thought grimly, thinking of Jessie’s exhausted look. She’d seen that look occasionally on girls who suffered badly from morning sickness.

  What a mess!

  Well, whatever the mess, she wanted out.

  She steered the car out of the hospital car park and slowed.

  There was a man…

  Fern frowned.

  Surely she was imagining things. She slowed as she passed an area of deep bush two hundred yards from the hospital entrance. The figure she had seen had disappeared.

  You’re crazy…

  No.

  Her internal conversation lasted the whole of five seconds. Swearing, she hauled the car to a halt, did a U-turn and headed back to the little township half a mile on the other side of the hospital.

  Straight to the police.

  Fern had known the police sergeant since she was a teenager. Sergeant Russell was big and gentle and deceivingly placid. Many a crook had misjudged that easy smile as the look of a man who wasn’t prepared to make an effort.

  There was no man who could move faster in an emergency.

  He listened to Fern’s story and doodled little scrawls on a pad beside him.

  ‘You say whoever it was had a gun,’ he said at last, sinking back into his chair. ‘What sort of gun, do you know?’

  ‘I don’t.’ Fern shook her head. ‘Something long…Look, I might be mistaken. It just made me uneasy, that’s all. I didn’t recognise him. If he’s a stranger to the island and he’s shooting in the reserves…’

  ‘If he’s shooting that close to the hospital we risk pellets going through the hospital windows,’ the sergeant said thoughtfully. He sighed and pulled his cap from the top of the filing cabinet. ‘Guess I’d better get on with it.’

  ‘Thanks, Sergeant…’

  He smiled and held the door for her. ‘My pleasure, Fern. It’s good to have you back again-if only for a week or so. Oh, and Fern…’

  ‘Yes?’

  The big policeman paused, his eyes troubled.

  ‘I was sorry about you and Sam. But…’ He hesitated and then took courage into both hands. Courage was not something Sergeant Russell lacked. ‘Fern, there are whispers going round the island about you and Doc Gallagher. There’s nothing in it, is there, girl?’

  Fern sighed. ‘No, Sergeant,’ she sighed. ‘There’s nothing in it.’

  He nodded, his placid eyes watching her face. Fern wondered just how much of what she was thinking could be read there.

  ‘He’s married,’ the Sergeant said heavily and Fern knew he’d read heaps.

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘You going back to the mainland soon?’

  ‘On Friday.’

  He nodded again. ‘Just as well, Fern,’ he said grimly. ‘You’re best well out of that lot-believe me.’

  What had he meant by that?

  Fern drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she finally drove back to her uncle’s. The thoughts stayed with her for the rest of the day.

  ‘You’re best off out of that lot…’

  It had been a definite warning. Fern knew Sergeant Russell well enough to understand that.

  Why?

  There were things going on she didn’t understand. Undercurrents…

  Why was the policeman involved?

  The shadows under Jessie’s eyes drifted through and through her mind. They’d been there since the time Fern had first met her.

  Jess hadn’t come to Fern’s wedding. Surely she’d been invited with her husband?

  Why hadn’t she come?

  There was an insistent little voice starting up in the back of Fern’s head and she didn’t like it one bit.

  During her training, Fern had visited a women’s refuge-one where women sought sanctuary from violent men.

  The shadows on their faces matched Jessie’s.

  No. It didn’t fit. Every nerve in her body screamed out that it didn’t fit-yet what else made sense?

  Nothing made sense. Nothing made sense at all.

  That night Fern swam until her body ached with exhaustion-and still she swam.

  Her dolphins swam with her but their leaping had ceased. They swam silently by her as if sensing that she was in no mood to play.

  They sensed that they couldn’t help.

  Fern hardly saw them. The magic of the night was wasted on her.

  She swam as if escaping from a thousand demons and they never relented.

  When she finally dragged herself from the water they were still with her.

  So was the man with the gun.

  As Fern towelled herself dry she glanced up to where sand met the grass verge and the low shrubs started pushing up from the sandy soil.

  It was too dark to see him properly but she was sure that it was the same figure-a lean, tall figure with a gun, pointing to the sky.

  She rang the sergeant when she got home, her uneasiness increasing.

  ‘I haven’t a clue who he is,’ the policeman said, worrying with her. ‘I checked the bush by the hospital after you reported it and found nothing. No signs of shooting. No spent cartridges. Nothing. A heap of tourists landed last Monday-about two hundred of them-and he must be one of the group; but there’ve been no reports of shooting or damage and without that I can hardly get warrants to search every one of them for a gun. Maybe he just carries a gun because it makes him feel macho.’

  He hung up and Fern knew that the policeman believed what he’d said no more than Fern had.

  She had him worried, too.

  She didn’t see Quinn until Thursday night.

  Fern packed for her aunt and herself in dreary silence. The joy had bubbled out of her world.

  Quinn was leaving her alone and in one sense she was grateful.

  She should be grateful.

  She wasn’t.

  She was as lost as she had ever been-as lost as she’d been in those awful weeks after her parents died.

  There was nothing to look forward to.

  She fell into bed late on Thursday night, knowing that she wouldn’t sleep. At midday tomorrow she and her aunt would leave.

  Would leave…

  The words rang over and over in her head like a death knell, and it took five or six rings of the phone before the new sound finally pierced the rhythm of her inner dirge.

  Finally it did, though.

  Fern glanced at her watch. It was close to midnight. Her uncle wasn’t home. As miserable as Fern at the thought of his wife’s operation and the thought that he couldn’t leave the farm untended to accompany her, he’d told Fern at eleven that he was going for a walk.

  ‘A long walk,’ he’d warned her. ‘I might get full round the island before I’m tired enough to sleep tonight.’

  The phone…The phone, therefore, had to be answered and there was only Fern to do it.

  Fern padded down the hall and lifted the receiver.

  ‘Fern?’ Quinn.

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Fern, I need you.’

  Ha! Fern nearly put the receiver straight back onto the cradle-but, of course, she didn’t. Of course…

  ‘Fern, I have Pete Harny here. Can you come?’

  Pete. The ten year old haemophiliac.

  Fern closed her eyes, envisaging trouble.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘He’s been shot’

  Not this sort of trouble. Fern’s eyes opened with a start. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘His parents brought him in an hour ago,’ Quinn said grimly. ‘I’m still not sure what happened but he has shotgun pellets in his calf and I’ll have to put him to sleep
to clear them. With his likelihood of internal bleeding, the sooner I get them clear the better. I’ve given him factor eight and pre-med and pain relief to make him dozy so if you come straight in we can do him immediately.

  ‘Jessie will gas if she must but she won’t do it if there’s someone more qualified on the island. So…’

  So.

  Quinn’s voice sounded strained almost to breaking point. Fern frowned. If Quinn had factor eight on the island-the mixture kept on hand whenever haemophilia was a problem-then there should be no worries with a simple surgical procedure.

  So why was he so stressed?

  ‘How bad is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Just come.’ It was an order, hard and forceful.

  ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’

  She had no choice. Pete was a great kid.

  There was no enthusiasm at all in Fern’s voice. Sure, she’d do this for Quinn-or do it for Pete and his parents. But that would be the end.

  Fern met Sergeant Russell in the hospital car park. The police sergeant was striding down the hospital steps towards the police car as Fern pulled up. His face was grim and angry.

  ‘What on earth happened?’ Fern asked and the policeman shrugged.

  ‘I’m betting it’s your character with a gun,’ he told Fern savagely. ‘And shooting Pete, of all kids…’

  ‘But…but why?’

  ‘God knows.’ The policeman shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Seems Pete thought he heard shots down near your cove, Fern. He loves those dolphins nearly as much as you do-and he took off out of his bedroom window to investigate without telling his parents.

  ‘He reckoned he saw a man aiming out to sea-and he could see the dolphins. Pete yelled out and the man turned and fired. Hit him in the leg. He only just made it back home before collapsing through blood loss.’

  ‘But…Who’d want to shoot Pete…or shoot the dolphins?’

  ‘That’s what I want to know,’ the policeman said grimly. ‘I’m going down to the cove now. Good luck with Pete. Poor little blighter.’

  It was a nasty piece of surgery.

  Pete’s leg was a mass of shotgun pellets and each had to be carefully removed. Quinn worked swiftly and surely, tension etched deep on his face.

  He hardly spoke to Fern-or to the nurses. Except for words of encouragement to the small boy as Fern’s anaesthetic took hold, he hardly spoke at all.

  He seemed…He seemed angry. Angry to the point of explosion.

  Why?

  Was it the senselessness of what had happened? Six months ago, before Quinn came to the island, the chance of saving Pete’s life with a wound like this would have been minimal. As a haemophiliac Pete would simply have bled to death. Quinn was prepared now, though-obviously keeping stores of factor eight at hand for just such emergencies.

  They worked on. Despite the undercurrents in the small theatre they worked with precision and skill.

  Fern’s misery was put aside as she concentrated.

  Most of her thoughts were of the job in hand-but Pete wasn’t so ill that other niggles couldn’t intrude.

  Quinn had been gentleness itself with the injured Pete. Despite his tension, he’d managed to reassure the frightened child to the point where it was easy to anaesthetise him.

  How could a man with so much gentleness in his soul treat Jessie the way he did?

  Did he have a child of his own on the way? Was Jessie pregnant?

  Was that why the marriage had to stay together?

  Quinn glanced up and found Fern’s eyes on him and his eyes snapped in anger.

  ‘Blood pressure, Dr Rycroft?’ he growled, and Fern knew that he didn’t need to know.

  He was under more pressure than Fern. There was something going on here that she didn’t understand in the least.

  Finally, the last pellet lay in the kidney bowl, waiting, no doubt, to be taken proudly to school for show and tell. Quinn dressed the wound with care and grunted with satisfaction.

  ‘I reckon we have clotting already,’ he said. ‘Reverse, please, Dr Rycroft.’

  Five minutes later Fern removed the endotracheal tube and watched Pete’s breathing revert to normal.

  ‘There’s no need for you to wait, Dr Gallagher,’ she said shortly. ‘I’ll finish.’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  Geraldine was watching in the background. Fern fairly gritted her teeth.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

  Quinn shrugged. He didn’t move. As the little boy’s eyelids fluttered open and his breathing stabilised, Quinn motioned to the nurse.

  ‘Take him out to his mum now, Sister. He’ll be frightened when he wakes…’

  ‘Not Pete,’ Fern said solidly. She gripped Pete’s hand and held hard. ‘Awake, Pete? It’s over. We dug shotgun pellets out of your leg but you’re fine now.’

  Pete’s eyes focused.

  ‘H-how many?’ he whispered and Fern raised her eyebrows in query at Quinn.

  ‘Eight.’ Quinn smiled, and it was the first smile that Fern had seen that night.

  ‘D-don’t throw them away,’ Pete ordered. Then he grabbed Fern’s hand. ‘Fern, the dolphins…’

  ‘Sergeant Russell’s gone to check now,’ Fern assured him, ‘but I wouldn’t mind betting they’ve had more sense than to get shot as well.’

  ‘Stupid, mindless idiot,’ Pete whispered, as his eyes closed again. ‘Stupid, mindless idiot…’

  He drifted back into sleep and Quinn motioned to Geraldine to wheel him out.

  ‘I’m going, too,’ Fern said abruptly as the stretcher disappeared towards waiting parents. She hauled off her gloves, mask and gown. ‘Unless you need me for anything else, Dr Gallagher?’

  ‘I’ll always need you,’ Quinn said bleakly. ‘You know that, Fern.’

  ‘I don’t know anything of the kind,’ Fern whispered. She closed her eyes, pain washing through her in waves. Somehow she had to find the courage to walk out of this room-walk out of Quinn Gallagher’s life for ever.

  She took a step forward and then another.

  Quinn didn’t try to stop her.

  His face was as bleak as winter.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FERN didn’t sleep.

  This was her last night on the island.

  What was she leaving?

  Towards dawn she rose, pulled jeans and a blouse on over her swimming costume and made her way down to her cove.

  There were traces of blood on the path where Pete had run the night before.

  Stupid twit, she thought savagely. What sort of mindless idiot would shoot at dolphins and then turn the gun on a child when he was discovered?

  If he was that stupid, surely Sergeant Russell would catch him. Whoever was responsible needed to be locked up fast.

  She shed her jeans and walked steadily into the water, welcoming the cool surf on her tense body, and then swam strongly out to deep water. This would be her last swim…

  Two hundred yards out she floated over on her back and looked back at the island.

  Her home…

  It wasn’t her home. She didn’t have a home. She’d never had one and she never would.

  Quinn Gallagher was her home.

  The errant thought crept into her mind, unbidden, and she blinked back tears. He said he loved her and the tone in his voice made her believe him. She’d never had love like that. Never.

  ‘I’ll always need you,’ he’d said.

  But he needed Jess and he was married to Jess.

  He was married to Fern’s friend, a girl who Fern couldn’t hurt if her life depended on it.

  Maybe…maybe, in years to come, if he and Jess were divorced…

  Oh, yes. After the baby-or whatever was holding them together…

  Fat chance.

  She closed her eyes again, drifting lazily in the currents, and only opened them when a black form nudged her side.

  A dolphin…

  ‘Hi.’ Fern managed a smile. ‘Where’s your mate?’r />
  She searched the water for the dolphin she had seen time and time again. The two normally swam as a pair.

  She’d never seen just one.

  ‘I hope that clod last night didn’t do any damage,’ she whispered and then she drew in her breath.

  Her searching eyes had caught something black. Something lying on the shore at the far end of the cove where the headland started to rise from the beach.

  Maybe it was only a lump of seaweed.

  Maybe not.

  The lone dolphin nudged Fern again and then again, as if imparting an urgent message.

  They weren’t stupid, these creatures.

  Not as stupid as the cretin who’d been firing at them last night.

  ‘OK,’ she whispered to the dolphin, and Fern turned towards the beach. She put her head down and swam and the solitary dolphin followed her almost to shore.

  It was the dolphin.

  Of course it was the dolphin. As Fern neared the beach the mound on the sand focused into gleaming black. By the time she was wading through the shallows she could see its movement.

  It was alive but stranded, thrashing uselessly on the dry sand.

  ‘Oh, no…’

  Fern ran swiftly up the beach and squatted on the sand beside the stranded creature. Out to sea, its companion swam round in tight, anxious circles.

  How on earth had it been beached?

  The gun…

  Of course it was the gun. A deep laceration ran through the flesh of the dolphin’s back, marring the gleaming body.

  It had been shot. In pain and confusion it must have tried to escape the stinging hurt and ended up beached.

  Fern bit her lip. She looked down at the laceration again. It was deep-but not too deep. If she could get the dolphin down to the water again…

  She couldn’t. The dolphin must weigh as much as she did and it was a hundred times more slippery.

  The creatures didn’t come with handholds.

  So…

  ‘So, let’s get you wet,’ she muttered savagely, anger at this wanton act of cruelty welling through her. The dolphin’s skin was drying and if he was dry for long then he’d die. The sun was already warm.

  Swiftly she ran to the other end of the beach where her jeans and blouse lay abandoned. She took them quickly into the water, soaked them and then carried them up to the dolphin.

  Taking care to avoid the dolphin’s breathing hole, the small crescent-shaped hollow on his back, she wrung the sodden clothes out over him and then raced to the water again.