Prescription-One Husband

CHAPTER SEVEN

FERN slept the sleep of the dead.

When finally she woke the sun was pouring in over her bedcovers and Jessie was walking towards the bed carrying a tray.

‘Bacon on toast and coffee,’ she smiled. ‘Hungry?’

‘Y-yes.’ Fern rubbed her eyes.

Then she rubbed them again. Jessie seemed to have grown a new breast in the night.

As she stared, the middle breast wriggled.

‘OK, you,’ Jessie said placidly, cradling the extra breast in the cup of her palm. ‘I know it’s time for another feed.’

She grinned down at Fern’s look of astonishment.

‘I’ve won another baby in the night,’ she said. ‘A

tiny wombat. One of the local farmers found it in his back paddock when he went to check on a calving. I’m not sure of its chances-it seems badly shocked-but this way at least it has a hope. My movement, warmth and heartbeat are the closest approximation I can get to his mum.’

‘I…see…’

This place was a madhouse. Hospital, home, veterinary clinic, orphanage…

They were so busy. It was great of Jessie to bring her breakfast. Fern glanced at the bedside clock.

And glanced again.

Eleven o’clock!

It couldn’t be.

‘It sure is,’ Jessie smiled, seeing Fern’s look of astonishment. ‘I thought if you didn’t have this now you’d be running breakfast into lunch. Besides…’ she sat down on the bed in comfortable companionship, still stroking her wriggling extra breast ‘…the air ambulance is due in half an hour to take Sam to the mainland and we thought you’d want to say goodbye.’

‘Oh…Of course…’ Fern took the mug of coffee with gratitude. She sipped and sipped again and her crazy world finally tilted back to the right way up. ‘How is…how is Sam?’

‘His obs are good so far,’ Jessie told her. ‘Quinn has the morphine so topped up he’s hardly conscious-but his blood pressure’s holding and Quinn’s happy with his electrolytes and his haemoglobin level. Things are looking good.’

‘And Lizzy…?’

Jessie cast her a sideways look. ‘She’s packing.’

‘Packing!’

‘That’s what I said. Quinn told her an hour ago that Sam was being taken to Sydney for plastic surgery and she flew out of bed and headed home. She said she’d be back with a suitcase and if we let Sam go without her she’d murder the lot of us.’

‘Oh…’

‘It seems Sam Hubert has some decisions to make,’ Jessie said gently, her eyes warm with sympathy, but Fern shook her head.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think he has.’

Her clothes from the night before were disgusting. Jessie had lent Fern a nightgown to sleep in and now she offered a light skirt and blouse.

‘It’s lucky we’re almost the same size,’ Jessie smiled, and Fern shook her head.

‘Your blouse hangs loose.’ Fern grimaced and gave the top button of the skirt up as a lost cause. ‘You’re too darned thin.’

‘Yeah, well, I haven’t always been this thin. There are silver linings to every dark cloud,’ Jess said enigmatically.

Once again Fern looked at the dark shadows around Jessie’s eyes and wondered.

It was none of her business but the warmth she was feeling towards Jessie made her wish very much that Jessie, one day, would tell her what was causing the shadows. Fern had the feeling that in Jessie there could be a friend.

Quinn met them as they emerged into the corridor.

His eyes lit at the sight of Fern. Even for a man trained to cope with sleep deprivation there was weariness around Quinn’s eyes this morning.

Fern’s heart stirred at the sight of it. It was all she could do not to put her hand up to smooth away the lines of fatigue.

‘You should be in bed, Dr Gallagher,’ she said gently. ‘I can take over now.’

He smiled down at her, his smile a caress, and the wrenching sensation in her heart turned to something else entirely. Something like jelly.

‘Let’s get rid of your Sam and then we’ll think about bed.’ His smile deepened and Fern gasped. There was no mistaking the gleam of wickedness in those eyes.

‘Dr Gallagher…’ she whispered unsteadily.

‘Dr Rycroft!’ His voice was a parrot-like imitation of her shocked tone. He motioned to the door. ‘You’ll be wanting to see Sam before he goes. He’s awake-just-and he has the ward to himself. We let Frank go home this morning. He was whinging that a man couldn’t get any sleep in a place like this and I reckon if Frank’s well enough to whinge he’s well enough to go home. So you have privacy.’

‘Th-thank you.’ Fern walked uncertainly forward.

Quinn opened Sam’s door for her and let her pass.

‘Go and bid your love goodbye, Fern,’ he said softly. ‘Though I don’t think that’s really right, is it, Dr Rycroft? Go in and say goodbye to your friend.’

Sam was drifting in and out of sleep.

The nursing sister was sitting by the bed. Geraldine looked up and smiled as Fern walked in and then rose and left.

It was as though Quinn had given her orders to leave Sam and Fern alone.

‘Call me when you leave him,’ the nurse whispered, ‘and I’ll come back.’

Fern nodded.

She took the seat the nurse had just vacated, leaned over and touched Sam’s hand.

Sam’s eyes flicked open.

‘Fern…’

‘I’m here,’ she whispered. ‘You’re OK. The plane will be here soon to take you to Sydney-the plastic surgeons there can do a better cosmetic job than we can. You’ll need a skin graft to replace some of your torn skin.’

‘Where’s Lizzy…?’

Fern took a deep breath. ‘She’s gone home to pack. She says she’s coming with you.’

Sam’s eyes widened at that. ‘Lizzy…She wouldn’t do that…Would she? Leave the island?’

‘She won’t let you go alone.’ Fern took Sam’s big hand in hers. ‘Lizzy loves you, Sam. I don’t know what you’re going to do about it but there it is…’

Sam took a deep breath. He stirred, winced and closed his eyes. ‘I’m going to marry her,’ he said, and his voice, despite his injuries, was firm.

Silence. The room was warmed with the morning sun still streaming in the windows. Sam’s words drifted round and round like the end of a story.

A ‘happy ever after’ ending…

Strange. This conversation should be uncomfortable, at the very least. Sam was Fern’s fiancé and here he was, announcing that he’d changed his mind. Announcing that he’d marry another…

Fern had never felt uncomfortable with Sam, though.

He was her friend.

Not her love.

She only had room in her heart for one…

‘Don’t let Lizzy blackmail you into it,’ she teased lightly and Sam gripped her hand, opened his eyes and met her look.

‘I won’t let her do that. Fern, I’ve been thinking…’

‘What have you been thinking?’

‘Well…’ Sam’s voice died away as if gathering strength but his lawyer’s ability to argue a case won the day.

‘You and me…We’re fond of each other. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘But you’d never poison people on my behalf…or try to drown yourself…’

Fern’s lips twitched. ‘No,’ she agreed, her voice a trifle unsteady. ‘I’d never do that.’

‘I think I want that.’

Fern swallowed. She nodded wisely and fought for the right words. ‘You don’t…you don’t think you might find poisoning and drowning just…just a trifle unsettling?’

Despite her fight for control, Sam heard the laughter bubble through Fern’s words and the lawyer managed a smile in response.

‘Hell, Fern, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if I do,’ he whispered. ‘But…but last night I nearly lost here. And I realised…I realised what I was losing…’

He broke off.

The door had opened behind them. There was a tiny whimper of sound and Sam’s gaze shifted to see who had just entered.

It was Lizzy. His love…

‘Lizzy, love…’ Sam whispered, acknowledging finally what Lizzy had always known, and Fern was forgotten.

Lizzy must have heard every word.

She’d come in looking defiant but now…now every trace of defiance on the girl’s face crumpled to nothing. With a sob the girl ran across the room and buried her face on the coverlet.

‘Oh, Sam…Oh, Sam…’

‘Don’t cry, Liz,’ Sam whispered, his hand releasing Fern to stroke Lizzy’s hair. ‘It’ll be right. I guess we have to sort things out after this-so we can stay together. I can come back to the island and practise law. Somehow…somehow being a big-shot city lawyer doesn’t seem such a good deal-after last night.’

‘I’ll live in the city with you,’ Lizzy sobbed. ‘I was crazy to say I wouldn’t. You don’t have to come home because of me.’

‘We’ll see,’ Sam whispered.

Fern smiled again. She could see what was in Sam’s mind. The havoc Lizzy Hurst could wreak in the city could be horrendous. Poisoning a whole island of people could be cast into insignificance.

‘I’ll leave you, then,’ she said, and neither of them heard.

She had no place here-between lovers.

‘Thank you, Fern,’ Sam whispered, as he finally realised she was leaving, but he had eyes only for his Lizzy.

‘So, how does it feel to be a jilted bride?’

Quinn was waiting for Fern in the corridor, his words sympathetic but his eyes still dangerous.

Lizzy had left the door open.

Quinn must have heard enough.

Fern smiled right back. Right at this minute being jilted didn’t seem all that bad. It was somehow as if a rather large weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Her world was very much the right way up this morning.

With Quinn smiling at her like that, miracles were possible.

Miracles were probable.

She laughed up into his taunting, laughterfilled eyes.

‘It’s mortifying,’ she said and made her voice low and mournful. ‘And the worst thing is, Dr Gallagher, that I’ve just realised I’m a born spinster.’

“A born”…’ Quinn folded his arms across his chest and his wicked eyes asked a million questions. ‘Why?’

‘Because Sam asked me if I’d poison people for him-or drown myself for love-and I’ve realised that I wouldn’t do that for any man. No one!’

‘Not even for me?’

The words caught her by surprise. Fern’s eyes flashed up to his, expecting more laughter, but the laughter was softened by something behind his eyes that was deadly serious.

Fern’s own laughter died.

‘Not…not even for you, Quinn Gallagher,’ she whispered, and her voice trembled.

‘Not even a little bit? Not even a dose of Epsom salts in the punch to win your love?’

He sounded so disappointed that Fern almost choked. The laughter bubbled again, unbidden.

She fought for gravity-for some sort of control of a situation that was reeling way out of control.

‘I thought you were going to bed,’ she said darkly.

‘I’ve told you.’ Quinn’s voice was mock innocent. ‘I’m getting rid of your fiance first. And then…’

And then…

Before she knew what he was about, Quinn stepped forward and caught her in his arms. She was ruthlessly kissed with a speed that left her gasping-that left her weak as butter in his hold-but was then released with equal speed.

It might never have happened.

Two seconds later Quinn was standing nonchalantly back against the wall as Geraldine swept around the corner. He looked for all the world like the cat that had won the cream-but to the passing nurse it could seem as if he hadn’t touched anyone…Dr Gallagher and Dr Rycroft were indulging in formal conversation-no more…

‘Now, about that future appointment…’ Quinn said to Fern-his eyes wicked with laughter, his look delighting at the crimson suffusing her cheeks-and then turned his attention to Geraldine.

‘Ah, Sister…’ His voice was bland and impersonal. ‘Looking for me?’

The nurse looked from Fern’s crimson face to Quinn’s bland one and back again and Fern knew that she wasn’t totally deceived. The island would be buzzing with gossip by nightfall.

‘The air ambulance has landed, Doctor,’ the nurse said primly, her voice a little severe. She didn’t like people trying to pull the wool over her eyes, Geraldine didn’t. ‘Is Mr Hubert ready?’

‘I’ll make sure he is.’ Quinn pushed himself from lounging against the wall to an upright stance and

straightened his white surgical coat. ‘It’s a serious duty-to get Mr Hubert off the island. Enough of this nonsense, Dr Rycroft,’ he said sternly. ‘You appear to be distracting me from my duty. There’s work to be done.’

Enough of this nonsense…

While Quinn prepared Sam for travel and briefed the two doctors who had come on the plane to escort Sam to Sydney, Fern walked down and sat with her aunt.

Maud was sleeping.

Her aunt’s obs were steady and her colour wasn’t as bad as the day before but she certainly didn’t look healthy.

What on earth would Maud say when she found out that Fern and Sam had broken their engagement?

She’d be heartbroken.

‘I’ve just broken my promise to you,’ Fern whispered down to her sleeping aunt, the consequences of the morning flooding in. ‘How can I marry on the island now?’

There was one possibility that refused to be suppressed.

If she couldn’t marry Sam, then who…?

Enough of this nonsense…

It took almost an hour before the air ambulance team were satisfied that Sam was stable enough to travel. Then he was carefully lifted out into Quinn’s makeshift ambulance to be taken out to the airstrip.

Fern stood at the hospital entrance and watched him go.

‘Good luck, Sam,’ she whispered as he passed, reaching down to squeeze his hand in a grip of farewell.

Sam’s eyes flicked open from his drug-induced sleep and he focused on her face.

‘Fern…’ He grabbed her hand hard and held it, making the two men carrying him pause.

‘Fern, you know I can’t marry you now,’ he whispered.

‘I know that.’ Fern leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘We never should have agreed to marry in the first place. We’re friends, Sam. Just friends. I hope we always will be.’

‘But, Fern…’ Sam’s grip still held tight. ‘Your aunt…’

He’d remembered.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Fern assured him, feeling far from sure herself. ‘I’ll persuade her to have the operation somehow.’

‘You’ll just have to marry another islander,’ Sam muttered. ‘Or how about marrying Dr Gallagher? He seems sweet on you!’

Even Sam had noticed, then.

There was a deathly silence.

Both ambulance bearers had heard, as had Lizzy walking beside the stretcher. And so had Quinn, following behind.

‘Don’t be silly, Sam,’ Fern said and her voice was a trifle breathless.

‘Yeah, Sam.’ Lizzy was carrying a suitcase and sticking close by Sam’s stretcher. She flashed a glance at Fern that was still a bit unsure-still a bit jealous. ‘Don’t be silly. I hope…I sure hope Fern does find someone…But it won’t be Doc Gallagher.’

‘Why not?’ Argumentative as ever, Sam had his teeth in a good idea and he was sticking to it ‘Doc Gallagher seems a decent bloke and there’s nothing wrong with our Fern.’

Our Fern. Islander talk.

Islander talk for one of them.

‘Of course there’s not,’ Lizzy agreed kindly. She could afford to be generous now. ‘But she still can’t marry Dr Gallagher. How can she marry someone who’s already married?’

Quinn married…

The group around the stretcher moved on and Fern stood aside to let them pass.

She stood absolutely still on the hospital steps as Quinn supervised Sam into the makeshift ambulance. Lizzy and the two doctors disappeared into its cavernous interior and Quinn closed the doors behind them.

He cast a doubtful look back at Fern.

Had he heard what Lizzy had said?

He must have. His doubtful look was for how Fern would take it.

There was no time for talk now. Quinn raised a hand in a gesture of farewell, swung into the driver’s seat and then the ambulance and its load disappeared down the road toward the airstrip.

He’d be gone for twenty minutes or more.

Breathing time.

There was nothing to breathe for.

Still Fern didn’t move. If someone was watching from the hospital windows they’d assume she was bereft-a white-faced girl staring after an ambulance as though it held everything she held most dear.

They’d assume she was grieving for Sam.

Married!

Her world tipped and tipped again.

Finally it came the right way up.

Lizzy might be wrong. Maybe Lizzy was making assumptions about Jessie-because they were sharing a house…

Slowly Fern turned and made her way through the house-cum-hospital to the kitchen.

Jessie was feeding her wallaby, the tiny wombat still an incongruous lump on her breast. She looked up as Fern walked in the door and smiled.

‘OK?’ she asked.

‘OK.’

‘You look…You look like you’ve just been kicked in the stomach.’

It was how she felt. Fern shook her head, trying to make her voice sound normal.

‘Well, it’s not every day I lose an intended husband…’

‘Quinn said he didn’t think you’d mind too much.’ ‘What would Quinn know?’ Fern said savagely and turned away to the sink. She fiddled with taps and kettle, keeping her face carefully averted. ‘Jess, is Quinn married?’

There was a long silence. It seemed that the room held its breath. All Fern could hear were the tiny gulping sounds made by the little joey as he sucked his milk-that and the sounds of her heart thumping

against her breast.

‘Why, yes, he is,’ Jessie said at last, and Fern could tell by her voice that she was wondering why Fern was asking.

‘Who…who is he married to?’

The silence deepened. Then Jessie carefully placed the little joey back into the pouch, bending carefully over him and just as carefully not looking at Fern.

‘To me, of course,’ she answered.

Of course.

There was no ‘of course’ about it, Fern thought miserably. Of course it was the obvious assumption when they were sharing a house but Quinn had carefully made it clear that they were separate right from the start.

They didn’t share a bedroom. They’d split the house into his and hers and just shared a kitchen…

And a life.

There were marriages and marriages, Fern thought bleakly, but regardless of how separately they lived Jessie and Quinn were still man and wife.

Because they didn’t share a bedroom-because Quinn was an arrant flirt-it didn’t make them any less married.

Fern felt sick to the stomach. Her world was no longer tilting. It had shrivelled into something puckered and ugly and somehow…somehow tainted…

Numbly Fern gathered her bloodstained clothes from the night before and bade Jessie farewell.

This was where she bowed out.

She should go back to Sydney, she thought bleakly as she made her way out of the hospital, but her aunt was still desperately ill. There were fine strings of duty holding Fern to the island.

Not duty, Fern acknowledged at last, feeling the pain she had been trying to avoid since her family were killed.

She loved her aunt. She couldn’t leave. The bonds of duty had become bonds of love.

She loved Quinn!

‘I do not,’ she said savagely to the silence as she started the long walk back to her uncle’s farmhouse. Fern’s car was still down at the harbour from last night and to have asked one of the hospital staff-or Jessie-for a ride would have choked her.

It was a half-hour walk. Fern kept off the road, knowing that Quinn would return this way from the airstrip.

She didn’t want to see Quinn Gallagher ever again.

Quinn might be able to take his marriage vows lightly but if he did that…If he did that then how much truth was there in what he told her?

Somehow she had given her heart to a base cheat who was playing with the emotions of two women.

Two?

Who knew? There might even be more. Who knew what was causing those shadows under Jessie’s eyes?

The girl looked haunted.

Fern thought back to the night before and mentally cringed. Quinn hadn’t even let Fern go when Jessie walked in on them and he had put Fern to bed with all tenderness while Jessie was forced to watch.

‘She doesn’t have much time for people,’ Quinn had said of his wife and Fern was starting to see why.

‘He’s a toad!’ she said savagely to a lone cow peering over a fence. ‘Toad, toad and double toad.’

The cow, heavy with calf and sleepy with the midday sun, closed her eyes and swayed as though she was in complete agreement.

How to get through the next few days?

How to persuade her aunt to leave the island?

There were no easy answers. Fern cleaned the house yet again for her uncle and then tackled his dry garden. The drought meant that there was no water for luxuries like watering the lawn so the front garden was a brown and dismal sight, but digging in the caked dirt was work suited to Fern’s bruised soul-no matter how useless.

Finally, towards evening, when her uncle had disappeared again to visit his wife Fern donned her bathing suit and headed to the beach.

Beneath the house was a tiny cove. ‘We had it put there just for you,’ Fern’s uncle had told her when Fern had first come to the island, and it was such a magic place-and so private-that Fern had almost believed him.

A tiny strip of soft white sand ran down to the water’s edge. Out to sea a shelf of rocks deflected the worst of the surf so what had formed was a huge, natural swimming pool. Fern never swam alone. There were masses of glittering subtropical fish swimming beside her every stroke she took.

There was usually other company and tonight was no exception. Out to sea a pair of dolphins rolled lazily in the swell and then nosed their way in to find out who was intruding in their territory. The presence of the dolphins meant that sharks kept well away and the fluorescence of the leaping dolphins in the moonlight was enough to make Fern almost weep with their beauty.

Even the dolphins couldn’t work their magic tonight, though.

Fern had come down here and swum and swum in the months after her parents’ death, searching for some comfort in the steady rhythm of surf and sea and the companionship of the same two dolphins who seemed to use this cove as their permanent base. They had soothed her finally-but it had taken years.

Would it take years now?

Fern swam for what seemed an hour, until the sun was just a flickering memory of fire on the horizon.

Finally, reluctantly, she turned to shore.

Quinn was waiting.

How long he had been there she couldn’t tell. He was sitting on the sand beside her towel, watching her with eyes that knew trouble when they saw it. His open-necked shirt was rippling in the soft night breeze, his jeans were rolled to the knees and his feet were bare.

His eyes never left Fern as she walked up the beach toward him.

Amazingly, there was compassion behind those dark eyes.

‘I thought you’d turn to a prune,’ he said gently, as she faltered and stopped. He stood and held out her towel. ‘You and Lizzy…You’re like fish…’

‘Why are you here?’

It was a flat accusation and it cut across the night like a whip.

‘I wanted to see you.’

‘Well, you’ve seen me,’ Fern snapped, snatching her towel from his hands and wrapping it round her wet bathing costume in a childish gesture of defence. ‘Now leave.’

‘What’s wrong, my Fern?’

‘I am not your Fern!’ Fern turned away from him and stalked two yards up the path toward the house but suddenly she stopped, fury surging. She wheeled back to face him, green eyes flashing fore. ‘How dare you make love to me, Quinn Gallagher? With Jessie present, even…How dare…?’

‘I know why I dared,’ Quinn said softly. He was watching her as a man might watch a dearly loved time bomb. He loved what he was seeing but he just knew that she was going to self-destruct.

So let her self-destruct…

‘You’re married to Jessie.’ As explosive as any bomb, Fern’s words shattered the peace of the cove. They echoed round and round them, awful in their truth.

There was a deathly silence.

‘That’s right,’ Quinn said finally, as though confessing to something he had no part of. ‘But that doesn’t mean…’

‘Doesn’t mean what?’ Fern asked in fury. ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t have a bit on the side-and I’m the bit? And is Jessie supposed to sit back and watch? No wonder she looks like she has ghosts haunting her, Quinn Gallagher. With you as a husband, who needs ghosts?”

‘Fern, you don’t understand.’ Quinn took a step towards her but Fern took a hasty step back. And another. ‘It’s just a marriage of convenience. Jess and L…We need to be married for all sorts of reasons-reasons I can’t explain-but we’re free to lead our own lives.’

‘Well, from where I stand,’ Fern said grimly, ‘that looks like a really, really good deal for Quinn Gallagher. And a lousy one for Jess. But it doesn’t matter, anyway, Dr Gallagher. I’m not the least bit interested in another woman’s husband-even if I was interested in you in the first place. You’ve made me feel dirty. Jessie’s lovely. She doesn’t deserve my betrayal-as well as her husband’s. You touch me once more and I’ll scream sexual harassment so loud you’ll hear it from the mainland. Now get off the beach before I start screaming.’

‘Fern, you don’t understand.’

‘No?’ Fern mocked, her anger building to the point where it was due to explode. ‘You’ve got your lines wrong, Dr Gallagher. It’s supposed to be “my wife doesn’t understand me”. Not “my latest floozie doesn’t understand me”.’

‘“Floozie”…’ Quinn’s voice was blank.

‘“Floozie”,’ Fern said through gritted teeth. ‘Woman of ill repute. The sort of woman who makes love to others’ husbands while wives are cringing in pain and mortification…’ Fern took a deep breath.

‘I can’t apologise deeply enough to Jess for what I let happen between us. But I’m telling you now, Quinn Gallagher, whatever I feel-whatever I felt-nothing is going to happen between us again. Ever.’

‘“Ever”, Fern?’ Quinn’s voice was suddenly almost as desolate as hers.

There was real pain in his voice.

It took an iron will not to step towards the pain in Quinn’s tone but somehow she found it.

‘“Ever”,’ Fern whispered bleakly and turned to walk up the beach.

The hundred yards until she was out of sight were the longest hundred yards she had ever walked.

Quinn didn’t follow.