Marion Lennox - Prescription-One Husband

‘I’m not…’ Fern fought for dignity but lost it somewhere between tears and laughter. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake…You’re blackmailing me.’

‘That’s the plan,’ he said easily. He took her hands in a grip that brooked no protest. ‘Breakfast, Dr Rycroft,’ he said firmly. ‘A woman can’t consider the best offer she’s had in years on an empty stomach.’

Jessie wasn’t in the kitchen.

She’d hardly have known if Fern had eaten her breakfast. The back door was swinging shut as they walked through from the corridor and the pan of bacon sizzled untended on the stove.

A note lay on the table.

Didn’t like to disturb what was obviously a tête-àtete. One of Chris Ming’s horses sounds like he’s broken his hock. Gotta go. Hi, Fern. Quinn, could you feed Walter? Leave me a bit of bacon. I’ll eat it cold.

There was enough bacon to feed a small army. Fern stood by the door and stared as Quinn walked over to the stove and started flipping it over.

‘You do share…’ she started cautiously. The relationship between Quinn and Jessie was unexplained If it wasn’t for Quinn’s kiss last night she would have guessed they were married.

‘We have separate kitchens,’ Quinn told her, seeing her doubt. ‘Separate everything, in fact. It’s only Jessie’s cooking that drives me in here. Finally, she’s taken pity on me and feeds me-as long as I help look after her babies.’

‘Babies?’

‘Walter,’ Quinn grinned. ‘Well, Walter for one.’ He leaned over beside the stove and lifted a small woollen pouch that had been hanging behind a chair. An electric cord looped out from the pouch and ran to a nearby socket.

‘Would you like to meet Walter, Dr Rycroft?’ he asked, and held open the pouch.

It was another wallaby-but a little one only half the size of the joey Fern had met the night before. It was still pink, its skin only slightly fuzzed with the beginnings of soft brown fur.

‘Walter’s mum was burned when one of the local farmers lost control of a burn-off,’ Quinn explained. ‘Jess had to put the mum down and the little one darn near died as well. He was suffering smoke inhalation and even without it at that age they’re hard to keep alive.’

Quinn abandoned the bacon, handed the pouch to Fern and crossed to the fridge. On the top shelf were a series of what looked like doll’s bottles-bottles Fern had only seen before being used to feed very premature babies. ‘Sit down,’ he told Fern. ‘You can feed the baby while I finish breakfast. Fair division of labour.’

‘I don’t know how…’ Fern peered dubiously into the bag. Lining the pouch was a tiny electric blanket, making a cocoon of warmth to imitate the mother’s pouch. From the depths peered two tiny eyes and they looked just as anxious as Fern’s did.

‘Nothing to it.’ Quinn grinned. ‘Jess makes me do it and if I can do it then anyone can.’ He heated the bottle in the microwave, retrieved a piece of blanket from the warming drawer of the oven and brought both to Fern.

‘Sit,’ he said sternly and, slightly stunned, Fern sat.

Quinn laid the blanket on Fern’s lap and then, with fingers that looked as though they were handling a rare and precious piece of antiquity, he delved into the pouch and retrieved the baby wallaby. In seconds he had wrapped the tiny creature like a newborn infant so that it was lying on its back, its nose pointing up at Fern.

Fern had never met a man so gentle.

Quinn dripped a droplet of milk onto the inside of his wrist, checked it again and then lowered the bottle. The joey saw it coming. The tiny mouth opened in anticipation, the extended teat went down the little throat and he started to suck.

Fern stared down in amazement.

Her arms instinctively cradled her warm little bundle and she took the bottle from Quinn. Despite herself, her lips curved into a soft smile.

‘Jess does this all the time?’

‘We do this,’ Quinn grinned. ‘Now Jess has decided I’m trustworthy I get to share two-hourly feeds. You see why I’d like you to join the medical practice of Barega?’

Fern shook her head but her attention was all on the tiny mouth and those huge, trusting eyes, watching her…

‘I’ve never seen a wallaby so tiny…’

‘He isn’t due to leave the pouch for months yet,’ Quinn told her, turning back to the bacon. ‘Toast?’

‘Oh…Yes…’

‘Mind, it’s too early to say whether he ever will.’ Quinn held a piece of bacon up with tongs. ‘Will this do or do you like it crisp?’

‘Whatever…’ Fern had more on her mind than bacon.

‘Crisp, then,’ Quinn said definitely. ‘There’s nothing worse than soggy bacon, in my book.’

‘Why may he never leave the pouch?’ Fern asked cautiously. The soft warm bundle in her arms, Fern’s lack of sleep and the smells wafting round the kitchen were causing her mind almost to be disembodied. She felt as if she was floating slightly above where her body was sitting.

‘They’re deuced hard to raise,’ Quinn told her. ‘Even now we’re not out of the woods with this one. Jess carried the joey round in a pouch against her body for the first couple of weeks after we found him. The stress of being away from the movement and smell of the mother kills them quicker than anything else does. I couldn’t believe the trouble she went to. The joey even went to bed with her. Then we tried one antibiotic after another to get rid of the infection in the lung-it’s not completely clear yet-and we had an impossible time finding a formula that’d suit.’

‘We…’

Quinn grinned. ‘Well, it’s hard to stay completely divorced from proceedings. I use Jess for anything from holding a stroppy kid down while I check an ear to giving an anaesthetic in an emergency, and she responds by dabbling in my pharmacy cupboard as well as hers. In a restricted place like this there’s no such thing as total separation of animal medicine and people medicine.’

‘I see,’ Fern said faintly.

Quinn grinned. ‘A far cry from a city teaching hospital,’ he smiled. ‘Why don’t you join us and see how much fun it can be?’

Fun…Medicine, fun?

Fern had always taken her work so seriously-a way to escape the fears that had been with her for so long. The thought of medicine as fun was almost an anathema.

Yet…

She looked around this warm, cluttered kitchen and the thought of being part of it was so tempting that it was almost irresistible.

She looked up to find Quinn’s eyes watching her, his face creased with laughing understanding.

‘You could do it, you know,’ he said kindly. ‘It’s like jumping off the high board into a swimming pool on a hot day. So scary it makes your knees wobble but if you hold your nose and do it…Well, it’s a lot more comfortable in the water than staying for ever on the high board.’

Is that what she was doing? Staying for ever on the high board?

By marrying Sam, maybe she was. Maybe her knees were trembling almost as much now at the thought of marrying Sam and leaving…

Dear-heaven, where was her traitorous mind leading her? She had her life all mapped out. A husband. A job. When she returned to the mainland she was completing her training as a physician. A financially secure career in a huge hospital where she didn’t need to become close to people…

In her arms the little wallaby stirred and settled and his bright eyes closed in sleep. She could feel his tummy swollen with milk and for one absurd moment she had a vision that was totally crazy.

This man…this fireside, only instead of a joey a human baby-a baby with eyes the same as his father’s…

Well, that was one stupid, stupid thought. Fern gave herself a sharp mental kick. She lifted the empty bottle from the unresponsive mouth and knelt to place the joey back in his warm little pouch. No children! Sam agreed. They’d be in the way of his career path, he said, and they were certainly in the way of Fern’s need for no ties.

She stood stiffly, her eyes blank with fear. She was getting into deeper and deeper water and she wanted out.

‘Bathroom’s next door,’ Quinn said kindly, seeing her confusion and obviously deciding not to make it worse. ‘Have a wash while I do the eggs. Sunny side up?’

‘Y-yes, please.’

He smiled at her, his eyes sending out a message of reassurance as though he could read her fear.

‘Two minutes, then, Dr Rycroft. Or I’ll wolf the lot without you.’

IT WAS a weird breakfast.

Fern spent the meal trying to shake off the feeling that she belonged in this kitchen.

She felt as if she’d been here all her life.

It was crazy. Aunt Maud kept her kitchen as neat as a new pin and Fern’s hospital flat was clinically clean and uncluttered. No photographs. No sentimentality or memorabilia at all.

It was different here. The kitchen was vast. The centre point was a huge slow combustion stove that almost filled a wall and sent out a soft heat into the slight chill of the morning. The stove seemed the kitchen’s heart.

Around them was the semi-organised clutter of two professionals’ busy lives. There were not nearly enough shelves to hold all the different sorts of feed mixtures Jessie seemed to need. Bags of formula stood heaped along one wall and more were stacked by the stove. To complete the impression of confusion, from the ceiling someone had hung lavender. Maybe a hundred or more bunches were suspended to dry.

‘Jess loves the smell.’ Quinn smiled. ‘And I don’t object too much either.’ He motioned across at the open window to the sea beyond. ‘Especially when it’s mixed with the salt from the ocean.’

There was the smell of more than lavender and salt-and bacon. A bright mound of cut fuchsias and roses tumbled in disarray on the floor, giving off a heady scent of their own.

Maybe Jess had cut them before going out and had not had time to put them in vases, Fern decided-and then blinked as a tiny wombat burrowed out from its pouch somewhere behind her and snuffled over to chomp at the pile.