Marion Lennox - Prescription-One Bride

‘Maybe…maybe if you’d been in closer contact with your uncle-if I could have found you quickly-but as it was we didn’t know Louis Mountmarche had a living relative…’

‘Are you saying it’s my fault the dog had to die?’

‘I’m saying, given that there was no owner, I had no choice,’ Jessie snapped. ‘As I have no choice now.’

‘But this dog has an owner and he’s younger.’ Niall’s attention had changed focus again-from anger back to concentration. He bent over the wounded pad and examined it with care, seemingly not repulsed by the stinking flesh. ‘How old, Dr Harvey?’

‘He’s only three,’ Jessie said sadly. She shook her head. ‘I know…Given different circumstances…’

‘What different circumstances?’

‘An assistant who can given an anaesthetic.’ Jessie sighed. ‘You’re right. Maybe-maybe if I could put him under an anaesthetic and clean up the mess then he’d have a chance. But he’s in dreadful condition. It’s going to take me ages to set the bones and clean up the mess.

‘He won’t tolerate the intravenous anaesthetic I can give myself-and there’s no way I can operate on a dog as sick as this and intubate at the same time. Intubating and operating by yourself is like drunk driving-OK if conditions are perfect and nothing goes wrong. But there are already major things going wrong here. So…I think it’s kinder to acknowledge defeat now.’

Niall Mountmarche’s dark brow snapped down. ‘Don’t you have a trained vet nurse?’

‘This is a tiny island,’ Jessie told him. ‘What I really need is another vet-but, no, I don’t even have a trained nurse.’

‘But…’ Niall’s fingers had moved to fondle the dog’s soft ears. The big collie seemed almost unconscious. He’d gone past fear. He lay, passive and trusting, and Jessie’s heart went out to the magnificent animal. ‘What about the island human medical services? Surely there’s a doctor and nurses on the island who could help out?’

‘There are.’ Jessie’s face set. ‘But the nurses haven’t the training to give anaesthetic. And the doctor won’t.’

‘“Won’t”?’

Niall echoed the word blankly and it hung between them in the soft morning sunshine. A question…

‘“Won’t”,’ Jessie repeated. She held out her hand in silent demand. ‘Please…Could you pass me my bag?’

Niall Mountmarche ignored her. ‘What do you mean, “won’t”?’

Jess sighed. ‘The island’s two trained doctors-a husband-and-wife team-are away for twelve months doing further training on the mainland. The locum replacing them had to leave because of family problems and the present locum-well, Lionel Hurd won’t touch animals. He says it’s not in his contract and he’s right.’ She sighed again. ‘I can’t force him.’

‘So Harry dies.’

‘So Harry dies,’ Jess said sadly. She looked up at Niall then and met those dark, angry, eyes full-on. ‘Unless you have any other suggestions, Mr Mountmarche?’

There was a long, long silence.

‘Hand me my bag,’ Jess said finally again into the stillness-but Niall Mountmarche shook his head.

He touched the injured dog’s leg once more and gentle fingers carefully probed the rotten flesh. His touch was so gentle that the dog didn’t so much as flinch.

Finally Niall nodded, as if coming to a hard decision.

‘I do have an alternative suggestion,’ he told Jess, his voice firming as he spoke.

‘Which is?’ Jessie sounded sceptical, she knew. Her voice was flat and hopeless-but she loved this dog.

‘I’ll give the anaesthetic.’

‘You!’

He shrugged. ‘I can do it.’

‘But how…?’ Jess looked down at those long, sensitive fingers, skilfully and gently examining the wound. ‘You’re not…’

‘A vet? No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not. So you’re going to have to talk me through it, Dr Harvey. But I do have medical skills. I’m a doctor.’

A DOCTOR…

Jessie’s jaw sagged. It took a real effort to haul her mouth closed again.

‘I don’t believe…’ she started and then, at the look on Niall Mountmarche’s face, she stopped.

He hadn’t believed that she was a vet-and now she was showing the same distrust.

A doctor…

From Ogre of Barega to medical doctor-like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde…

‘What…what sort of a doctor?’ she asked cautiously, and for the first time she saw a glimmer of a smile touch Niall Mountmarche’s face.

‘Not a doctor of philosophy,’ he reassured her. ‘Or of basket-weaving, for that matter. A people doctor. Doctor of medicine with a piece of paper from London University to prove it.’

‘An English doctor!’

‘I’ll confess I’m an English doctor,’ he agreed. ‘Does that make me less qualified?’ The smile deepened. ‘You colonials really are getting uppity.’ Then Niall looked down at the dog on Jessie’s lap and the smile faded. ‘Enough. We’re wasting time: Let’s get this trap off and move him. Is your car near the gate on the ridge?’

‘Yes.’ Jessie’s mind was working at a hundred miles an hour. ‘But…’

‘But what?’ Niall had risen and was standing over girl and dog, looking down. ‘Now what, Dr Harvey?’

‘You really are a doctor…?’

‘I really am.’ Once more that glimmer of a smile. The Ogre took a giant step back, to be replaced by someone altogether more human.

‘Then…’ Jessie hesitated. ‘My car is fifteen minutes’ walk-more if we’re carrying Harry without jolting him. I don’t want to remove the trap until I have Harry under anaesthetic. It may bleed like crazy and I’ll have to work fast. But I don’t want him carried far with the trap in place. Do you have a car at your home?’

‘Yes.’ His face had lost expression.

‘Then can we take him to your place?’

‘You mean you want me to drive him to your clinic? Is that what you’re suggesting?’

Jessie took a deep breath. She glanced down at Harry and the very limpness of his body strengthened her resolution. The Mountmarche house-and Niall Mountmarche’s car-was a few minutes’ walk away. Taking Harry to Jessie’s car meant a rough fifteen minute walk with the trap in place-or taking the trap off now and risking further bleeding.

And if Niall Mountmarche could give the anaesthetic then the dog had a chance!

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘If we carry him together then we can move him with little jolting to the pad.’

Niall’s smile had faded once more, gone as if it had never been. ‘I don’t like strangers at my house,’ he said shortly, and Jessie flinched at the coldness of his words.

Back cometh the ogre…

‘I thought I introduced myself,’ she made herself say, replacing his smile with one of her own. ‘That makes me not a stranger, Dr Niall Mountmarche.’

She was fighting here. For Harry…

For a moment she expected a stinging rebuff. He wanted to give her one-she could tell.

Then Niall looked down again at the dog in Jessie’s arms and his look softened. If he was fighting a war then he was losing. Somewhere inside was a soft core.

‘I guess you’re not,’ he said slowly and in his voice was a small note of discovery. ‘Well, Dr Harvey. If you’re not a stranger then I suggest you act like a medical colleague. And we’ve got a job to do. So let’s get on with it.’

He stooped and took the dog from her as though the creature was weightless and, as Jessie supported the trapped pad, Niall swung Harry gently up to lie cradled against his body.

The impression of a man of compassion was stirring and beginning to grow. Jessie looked up at man and dog-and there was something else stirring within that she didn’t want to think about.