Prescription-One Husband

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 guessing 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.’

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.