Prescription-One Husband

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.’