Marion Lennox - Prescription-One Bride

‘But you haven’t always been by yourself?’

Niall Mountmarche was prowling the room, fingering equipment and formula bags as though fascinated. He threw the question at her from the other side of the room.

‘My cousin and his wife are the normal island doctors and when they’re here they live on the other side of the hospital,’ Jessie told him. She was still absently stroking Harry but Harry was beyond feeling. Safe and warm, he was sleeping the sleep of the angels. ‘They help-but without them it’s difficult. For the next six months…’

‘Oh, yes.’ Niall nodded. ‘For the next six months you have the horrid Lionel Hurd who doesn’t like animals. I would have thought you would have written that into the job description.’

‘We didn’t have a choice,’ Jessie said tightly. ‘It was Lionel or nothing. And I guess he’s better than nothing.’

‘But you’re not sure.’

Jessie shook her head. ‘Sometimes I’m not,’ she admitted, thinking of the last time that she’d had words with Lionel. The man gave her the creeps.

She pushed the thought away and crossed to the sink to wash her hands. It was impossible to think of Lionel when Niall Mountmarche was in her kitchen. Impossible to find two such different men…

The feel of Niall Mountmarche in her home was sending strange sensations through Jess-sensations that she wasn’t at all sure she should be encouraging. He stood looking at the domestic chaos around him and Jessie felt the weight of the past six months shift focus-as though here was someone to share her burden.

Who cared like she did…

Ridiculous. This was the Ogre of Barega she was thinking of-not some knight in shining armour charging into her life, stethoscope flying, to take over the medical cares of the island.

‘Will you come and see Frank before you go back to Paige?’ Jess asked for the second time and was aware that her words sounded abrupt. She couldn’t help it. She was suddenly badly unsettled.

Niall nodded. He glanced at his watch again.

‘I have five minutes,’ he told her. ‘Five minutes more of being a doctor before 1 transform again. Lead on, Dr Harvey. Whither thou goest, I will follow.’

Odd. There was a tone in his voice that suggested that he was only half joking.

Jess led the way through to the hospital side of the building with a light heart. She’d left Frank Reid desperate this morning. The elderly farmer had been beside himself when he knew that Harry had disappeared, furious with the girl who’d been caring for Harry for being afraid to tell him sooner that the dog was missing and furious with himself for not being well enough to go home.

‘Danged leg,’ he’d sworn, and thrown in a few more expletives besides. ‘Get me a wheelchair, Jess, and I’ll look for him myself.’

Only Jessie’s absolute assurance that she’d search as thoroughly as Frank himself would had made him lie back on his pillows again and his face when Jess had left was of total misery. He knew what the dog’s absence of almost a week most probably meant.

But now…Now the news that Jess could give the old man was a lot better than she could have expected. She pushed the ward door open with a smile and stopped in dismay.

Frank was in no condition to receive visitors.

The old man was vomiting. He’d been vomiting for a while, Jess could see, as he was past the stage where he was able to sit and hold the kidney basin for himself. He was dry-retching, heaving uselessly as the nurse watched helplessly beside him.

Jess stared down in dismay.

This was no normal gastric upset. Frank’s eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. His skin was parchment dry and the hand clutching the coverlet was gripping convulsively.

‘What’s happening, Sarah?’ Jess asked quickly, moving across to Frank’s side. Frank was so far gone that he didn’t even try to acknowledge her presence.

‘I don’t know.’ The middle-aged nurse shook her head in indecision. ‘I don’t like it, Jess, and that’s the truth. He’s been vomiting since just after you left. He was so upset about the dog-and then he lost his breakfast and he’s just kept on being sick.’

‘Have you rung Dr Hurd?’

Sarah shouldn’t be coping on her own here, Jessie knew. The nurse had done basic training twenty years ago but had been involved in little medicine since. She’d only just started back at the hospital after raising her family, filling in while one of the regular nurses was on holiday.

‘I rang Dr Hurd twice,’ the nurse whispered. ‘He said to give metaclopramide-which I’ve done-but it’s not helping. I rang him again half an hour ago and he just said to give him more. He’ll be in later…’

Later…

Jess stared down at Frank and knew without doubt that there was no ‘later’. She knew what death looked like.

Dear heaven…

‘Ring him again, then,’ she said harshly. ‘Tell him Mr Reid’s in real trouble and he must come now!’

‘He’s at Clinic,’ the nurse told her. ‘He yelled last time when I disturbed him. He said he’d come when he was ready and not before.’

Instinctively Jess looked to Niall.

Niall Mountmarche had followed her into the room and was surveying the room with a face that was totally devoid of any expression. It was as if he was deliberately holding himself apart.

He didn’t want to get involved.

‘Dr Mountmarche…’ Jess started.

‘Yes?’ It was a clipped, clinical reply. It could have meant anything.

‘Please…’ Jessie said helplessly and then, at the look on that cold face, she went further. ‘Frank’s…Frank’s my friend…’

‘I’m not practising medicine here, Dr Harvey-especially on someone else’s patient. It’s none of my business.’

‘Then Frank will die.’

The words hung in the air and everyone in the room knew that they were absolute truth.

Niall looked down at the man on the bed for a long moment. Frank hadn’t acknowledged their presence in any way. His frail body was heaving as if it was trying to rid itself of a poison that was overwhelming.

‘Damn him,’ Niall Mountmarche said savagely and Jessie knew that he wasn’t talking of Frank. He was talking of the absent Lionel Hurd. He walked over to the bed and lifted the chart. ‘He’s diabetic, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ Jessie was hardly breathing.

‘What’s his blood sugar?’ Niall snapped at the nurse and the nurse faltered.

‘B-blood sugar?’

‘Blood sugar, Nurse,’ Niall said and his voice was dangerously calm. Jessie had a sudden vision of Niall in a large teaching hospital, with students behind him. The image of the Ogre of Barega was thoroughly replaced now. There was clinical calm-and clinical, icy professionalism.

‘The patient is diabetic, Nurse,’ Niall snapped. ‘You must be doing blood-sugar readings?’

‘Dr Hurd didn’t tell me to…’

‘Well, I’m telling you,’ Niall snapped. ‘When was the last one done? Yesterday?’

‘I don’t know…I mean…We give him his pills for diabetes but I didn’t know we had to do blood sugars…’

The nurse was close to tears.

‘Well, do one now, Nurse,’ Niall said with that same icy calm. ‘Fast.’ He lifted the chart from the end of the bed. ‘History. Dr Harvey, do you know it?’ The nurse was already scurrying for the diabetic testing kit, sniffing back tears, and Niall had obviously given her up as a source of useful information.

‘Frank was admitted to hospital a week ago with a bad leg,’ Jess told him. ‘It doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I’m not…Dr Hurd doesn’t discuss his treatment with me. That’s all I know.’

Niall flicked up the blankets. Frank was wearing short pyjamas and his leg was exposed on the white sheet. The right leg from ankle to knee was red and swollen.