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
