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.
CHAPTER TEN
FERN didn’t sleep.
This was her last night on the island.
What was she leaving?
Towards dawn she rose, pulled jeans and a blouse on over her swimming costume and made her way down to her cove.
There were traces of blood on the path where Pete had run the night before.
Stupid twit, she thought savagely. What sort of mindless idiot would shoot at dolphins and then turn the gun on a child when he was discovered?
If he was that stupid, surely Sergeant Russell would catch him. Whoever was responsible needed to be locked up fast.
She shed her jeans and walked steadily into the water, welcoming the cool surf on her tense body, and then swam strongly out to deep water. This would be her last swim…
Two hundred yards out she floated over on her back and looked back at the island.
Her home…
It wasn’t her home. She didn’t have a home. She’d never had one and she never would.
Quinn Gallagher was her home.
The errant thought crept into her mind, unbidden, and she blinked back tears. He said he loved her and the tone in his voice made her believe him. She’d never had love like that. Never.
‘I’ll always need you,’ he’d said.
But he needed Jess and he was married to Jess.
He was married to Fern’s friend, a girl who Fern couldn’t hurt if her life depended on it.
Maybe…maybe, in years to come, if he and Jess were divorced…
Oh, yes. After the baby-or whatever was holding them together…
Fat chance.
She closed her eyes again, drifting lazily in the currents, and only opened them when a black form nudged her side.
A dolphin…
‘Hi.’ Fern managed a smile. ‘Where’s your mate?’
She searched the water for the dolphin she had seen time and time again. The two normally swam as a pair.
She’d never seen just one.
‘I hope that clod last night didn’t do any damage,’ she whispered and then she drew in her breath.
Her searching eyes had caught something black. Something lying on the shore at the far end of the cove where the headland started to rise from the beach.
Maybe it was only a lump of seaweed.
Maybe not.
The lone dolphin nudged Fern again and then again, as if imparting an urgent message.
They weren’t stupid, these creatures.
Not as stupid as the cretin who’d been firing at them last night.
‘OK,’ she whispered to the dolphin, and Fern turned towards the beach. She put her head down and swam and the solitary dolphin followed her almost to shore.
It
Of course it was the dolphin. As Fern neared the beach the mound on the sand focused into gleaming black. By the time she was wading through the shallows she could see its movement.
It was alive but stranded, thrashing uselessly on the dry sand.
‘Oh, no…’
Fern ran swiftly up the beach and squatted on the sand beside the stranded creature. Out to sea, its companion swam round in tight, anxious circles.
How on earth had it been beached?
The gun…
Of course it was the gun. A deep laceration ran through the flesh of the dolphin’s back, marring the gleaming body.
It had been shot. In pain and confusion it must have tried to escape the stinging hurt and ended up beached.
Fern bit her lip. She looked down at the laceration again. It was deep-but not too deep. If she could get the dolphin down to the water again…
She couldn’t. The dolphin must weigh as much as she did and it was a hundred times more slippery.
The creatures didn’t come with handholds.
So…
‘So, let’s get you wet,’ she muttered savagely, anger at this wanton act of cruelty welling through her. The dolphin’s skin was drying and if he was dry for long then he’d die. The sun was already warm.
Swiftly she ran to the other end of the beach where her jeans and blouse lay abandoned. She took them quickly into the water, soaked them and then carried them up to the dolphin.
Taking care to avoid the dolphin’s breathing hole, the small crescent-shaped hollow on his back, she wrung the sodden clothes out over him and then raced to the water again.
Five, six times she went until the dolphin was wet all over, its eyes watching her with weary vigilance.
‘OK, sweetheart,’ Fern whispered, laying the soaking clothes over him. Hopefully the wet cloth would keep most of him moist and the sun from burning his skin. ‘I’m going for help.’
