FERN spent the night staring sleeplessly at the ceiling-and making some very hard decisions.
The next morning she again waited until Quinn was safely in Clinic and then returned to the hospital.
She visited Bill first.
The young man was sleeping deeply, obviously exhausted from the previous night’s drama.
To Fern’s relief his asthma seemed to have settled and he was breathing with relative ease. The dry, hacking cough was still there, though. It shook his body as he slept and his pillow was specked with blood.
She had to be right, Fern thought grimly. If she wasn’t…
She must be.
She lifted the chart from the end of the bed. Bill’s temperature was still high but it was too early to expect the pneumonia treatment to be working. It was TB…If they could keep him alive for the course of treatment to take effect…
It was Bill’s only chance at life.
Quinn was following her advice to the letter.
For one crazy moment Fern let her mind drift. What if…What if she considered Quinn’s mad proposal? She and Quinn running this hospital. Together…
With Jessie in the background!
‘Don’t be a fool,’ she said harshly to herself. Her decision had been made.
She left Bill without waking him.
Aunt Maud was propped up on pillows in the next ward, a magazine lying on the coverlet in front of her. She wasn’t reading, though. Maud lay staring out of the windows at the distant sea, as though soaking up every inch of view she could get.
Impulsively Fern crossed to the windows, throwing them wide to let the smell of the sea permeate the room.
Her aunt sighed with pleasure.
‘I wanted to do that myself, Fern, dear,’ she admitted, ‘but it seemed too much effort to get out of bed.’
Fern sighed. ‘Aunt, you must have the bypass surgery,’ she said softly. She walked back to the bed and took her aunt’s hands. ‘There’s no choice. The way it’s looking-well, to be blunt, I don’t like your chances of coming home unless you do.’
Her aunt nodded. ‘I know that.’ Maudie looked again out to sea. ‘I just wish…’
Fern stooped to give her aunt a swift hug. ‘You just wish it’ll all be here waiting when you get back. The sea. The island. They will be. I promise.’
‘And you? Fern, why won’t you come home?’
Silence.
Fern stepped back from the bed, searching for something to say. There were slow tears of distress and weakness sliding down her aunt’s cheeks.
‘I did come home,’ Fern whispered. ‘I always come home for visits. And I’ll take you to Sydney and then I’ll bring you back again. I promise.’
‘And leave again.’
‘I can’t practise here,’ Fern said gently. ‘Even if I wanted to now, I can’t. Dr Gallagher is the island doctor.’
‘He says he’s asked you to be his partner.’
Fern bit her lip. ‘Has he also told you he’s married?’ Fern’s aunt sniffed into a tissue, pulling herself back to her normal prosaic self with a visible effort. ‘Well, of course, he’s married,’ she said bluntly. ‘Jessie’s a lovely girl, too, even if she is painfully shy. But Fern, Dr Gallagher being married shouldn’t stop you being his partner. That’s silly.’
Silly…
She supposed it was.
The whole darned thing was silly. Silly to the point of hysterical!
‘Staying here’s impossible,’ Fern said at last. ‘Believe me, Auntie…’
‘Because we haven’t healed you…’
Fern’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t…I don’t know what you mean.’
Maud sighed. ‘Oh, Fern, we did so want children, your uncle and I. And when your parents were killed-well, we thought, at least we’d have a daughter. Someone we could love like our own. Selfish, really. Only…only we never really reached you. You’ve put up barriers so high…Fern, you’ve built those barriers and we can’t get through. No one can. It tears us in two-your uncle and I…’
Fern swallowed. ‘I…But I do love you,’ she said softly. ‘You know I do.’
‘But you won’t depend on us,’ Maud said. ‘The giving always has to be on your side. You won’t take. You think if you take, then you expose yourself to hurt again. You won’t take our love…’
‘I do…’
‘You don’t,’ Maud said gently. ‘And what I’m really fearful of, my Fern, is that you won’t take anyone’s. Are you going to depend on anyone, Fern-ever?’
‘I guess…I guess I have to say I hope not,’ Fern said, struggling to keep her voice light. If Maud only knew…If 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.’