‘You…you wanted to see me?’ she asked stiffly.
‘I certainly did.’ Quinn’s innocent gaze gave way to laughter once again. ‘For a lady who’s slept in her clothes you’ve come up looking remarkably presentable, I must say.’ He leaned forward and smoothed down an errant flaming curl wisping over her forehead. ‘Even cute!’
‘I am not cute!’ Fern was perilously close to stamping her foot. She fought frantically for dignity and control and somehow found it.
‘OK, then,’ Quinn agreed. ‘Not cute.’ His smile faded. ‘Let’s make that efficient and professional and businesslike, shall we, Dr Rycroft? Tell me what you’re going to do about your aunt.’
Fern stared. ‘Why…? What do you mean?’
‘She won’t go to the city,’ he told her. ‘We had that out long before she had this heart attack. She has no intention of seeing a specialist anywhere but on this island. She says that the stress of travelling to Sydney and putting herself through all those “damned fool tests” would be the death of her-and she may even be right, at that. She has severe ischaemic heart disease, Dr Rycroft.’
The anger drained from Fern in a sickening rush. She groped for the back of a chair and sat down hard.
‘How…how bad?’
‘You want to see the ECG?’ Without waiting for an answer Quinn reached back to his desk and produced the tracing. He handed it to Fern without a word.
Fern studied it in silence. Above their heads a clock ticked with monotonous regularity. Like a time bomb…
‘This ECG was taken last week,’ Quinn told Fern as she laid the tape down. ‘She’s been seeing me on and off for chest pain and I’ve been doing my damnedest to keep things under control. Your fiasco with the wedding from hell was too much, though. Heaven knows what the ECG will look like now. She’ll have suffered considerably more damage after last night.’
‘I didn’t know it was this bad…’
‘Because you haven’t been home.’
‘I guess…I guess that’s right.’ Fern thought back to all those cheerful letters she’d received from her aunt-with never a hint that there were problems. Her uncle’s letters were few and far between-but Fern remembered now a couple of phone calls that had sounded stilted and absurdly formal. She’d guessed that he was worried but, when pressed, Al had just passed it off as concern over a heifer or a fence needing urgent repair down in the bottom paddock.
‘So, what do you intend to do about it?’
‘“Do”?’ Fern stared. She picked up the tape again and looked along its length, willing it to tell her something different. ‘I don’t know…’
‘She’s a candidate for a bypass.’
‘She won’t go to Sydney for it,’ Fern said definitely. Then she frowned and stared again at the tape. ‘How do you know a bypass would help?’
‘I ran tests myself and sent the results to Sydney. A friend of mine’s a heart specialist there. He says he’s willing to book her in for angiography and probable bypass on the strength of my information.’
‘But…’
‘But she won’t go without your persuasion,’ Quinn said. ‘And if she stays here…Well, if she stays here without the operation I reckon she’ll be lucky if she lives twelve months.’
‘I’ll try and persuade her,’ Fern said miserably, knowing that her chances of doing any such thing were zero. Her aunt had been off the island once when she was ten. She’d been seasick and homesick in equal proportions. The thought of aeroplanes made her almost sick with horror and nothing could persuade her to repeat the experience.
‘And if you can’t?’
Fern fingered the tape. ‘There’s nothing…’
‘You could stay with her.’
‘It won’t help,’ Fern said miserably. ‘It won’t make her live longer.’
‘No.’ Quinn’s voice softened. ‘It won’t’ He reached out and took the tape from Fern’s fingers and then his strong hands clasped hers together and held them still. Quinn wasn’t talking to her as another doctor. He was talking to her as a frightened relative who had to be made to face facts.
‘But your uncle’s not strong enough to cope with his wife’s death alone, Fern, and I’ve checked. You’re his only family. You’re all he has, Dr Rycroft, and your place, for the next twelve months or however long it takes, is within easy reach of the people who love you.’
‘But…but I can’t come back. I can’t stay here.’ It was a frightened wail.
‘Why not?’
‘Sam…’ Fern’s mind was twisting like a cornered animal, searching for a way of escape. ‘I’m marrying Sam and Sam won’t stay…’
‘Sam doesn’t love you,’ Quinn said brutally. ‘That bag of wind has a heart only big enough for himself.’
‘That’s not fair. He…’
‘Dr Rycroft, why don’t you want to come back to the island?’
Quinn’s flat demand cut across Fern’s rising panic. It stopped her almost in mid-flight.
There was a long, long silence.
‘It’s almost as if you’re afraid,’ Quinn said slowly. ‘Of what, I wonder?’
‘I’m not…Don’t be ridiculous…’
‘I’m not being ridiculous.’ Quinn’s dark eyes were searching her face, seeking clues behind her shadowed eyes.
‘Your aunt tells me you lost your parents,’ he said gently. He ignored Fern’s gasp and her sharp tug on her hands and went on as though thinking aloud. ‘You lost your parents and your sister in the one dreadful car crash. It must have been hard to take for a kid of fifteen.’
‘Look, it’s…’
‘None of my business?’ Quinn finished for her. ‘I know. But I’m starting to guess all the same, Fern Rycroft. Would I be right in believing you’ve made a personal vow never to leave yourself so exposed again? Never to admit to loving? Because if you admit to loving then you face the risk of that awful pain again.’
‘No…’
‘Is that why you’re scared to death of staying any nearer Al and Maud than you have to? Of staying on the island where people are fond of you? And is that why you’re marrying that bag of wind? So you can have safety and security without the risk of pain if he leaves you?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Fern wrenched futilely at her hands. Her green eyes were flashing daggers. The man was so right that it hurt-and yet he was saying things that she’d hardly admitted to herself. ‘No!’
‘I’m right, aren’t I, Dr Rycroft?’ Quinn asked gently. His clasp on her hands tightened, as though he was trying to impart strength for what she had to do. ‘But there’s a responsibility you can’t escape from, my lovely Fern. Your aunt and uncle love you, regardless, and they need you. Your place is here.’
My lovely Fern.
The words twisted deep down into Fern’s heart and pierced like a blade. There was pain coming at her from all sides and some of it was to do with the way she felt about the man holding her hands.
She wrenched again.
‘Let me go. I don’t have to listen to this.’
‘You have to face it.’
‘I couldn’t stay here even if I wanted to,’ Fern snapped. ‘There’s no room on the island for more than one doctor-and I’d hate to do you out of a job.’
‘I’d hate you to do me out of a job, too,’ Quinn said thoughtfully. He was still holding her hands in a grip of iron but it was almost as though he had forgotten that he was holding them. ‘So, what do we do about that?’
‘Nothing!’
‘I’d be prepared to offer you a partnership.’
A partnership.
Fern stared at the man before her as if he had finally lost his head. He stared right back and his eyes were as calm as a safe harbour after a storm.
His hands were still holding hers. She stared down at them and, seemingly reluctantly, Quinn released her.
‘It could work,’ he said gently.
‘The island’s not big enough.’