‘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.
