Caroline realised she’d have to rethink the laid-back, handsome doctor who ran the hospital. He obviously had hidden depths because even the simplest of biological tests was painstaking work.
They’d reached the hospital and, unsure of her part in whatever lay ahead, she followed the troop inside.
The patient was young, maybe just reaching teenage years, from French Island, so called, Caroline knew, because a French square-rigged sailing vessel had once foundered there, the sailors staying on, intermarrying with the locals, until rescued many years later.
Caroline concentrated on the now instead of on the past. The boy, Raoul—French names still being common—had been lifted onto an examination table, and Sam, assisted by one of the nurses’ aides who had been waiting at the hospital, was carefully removing the light dressing Hettie had used to cover the wound.
Caroline swallowed a gasp. This was no small nodule like a mosquito bite but a full-blown leg ulcer, the edges a mess of tattered skin and deeper down, tender, infected flesh.
‘I’m going to take a swab,’ Sam was saying to the patient, ‘but even before I test it, I’m going to start you on antibiotics.’
‘It generally responds well to a combination of rifampicin and streptomycin,’ Keanu explained quietly. ‘If that doesn’t work, there are other combinations of drugs we can use, usually with the rifampicin. The other combinations haven’t been fully tested but the options are there.’
Tension she hadn’t been aware she was feeling eased a little, but she hated the thought of the possibility of this young lad losing a leg.
‘Okay, everyone out except Mina,’ Sam said, using a shooing motion with his hand. ‘She and I can handle it from here. Keanu, you might introduce our newest staff member to Jack. And Hettie, if you’re not too tired, I’ve left Caroline’s details on your desk, but you might want a chat with her yourself.’
Great, Caroline thought. A perfect end to a perfect day—an interview with a woman who obviously hated her entire family.
But Keanu had taken her elbow, and all thoughts but her reactions to his closeness fled from her mind.
‘Come out and meet Jack Richards,’ he said. ‘There’s a staffroom through here—we can have a coffee or a cold drink.’
A bit social for an introduction, Caroline thought, but apparently the pilot called Jack usually made for this staffroom when he returned from a flight. And, yes, he was sitting there, legs outstretched on a tilting lounge chair, draining the last dregs from a can of cola.
With his head tilted back, she could see a jutting jaw, and the breadth of his shoulders suggested muscle rather than fat. Here, in the light, she saw he was tall, but solid rather than rangy. His dark hair was cropped close to his scalp as if he ran an electric razor over it every now and then by way of hairdressing.
He had a strong face, a slightly skewed nose that suggested football in his youth, and smooth olive skin. But by far his most arresting feature was a pair of dark blue eyes, which, Caroline guessed, missed very little.
He set the empty can down on a small side table.
‘God, I needed that,’ he said. ‘The day was a disaster from beginning to end. First the consequences of the disappearance of the drugs and the nurse from Raiki. You can imagine how angry the residents were. Then we headed over to Atangi because there are two nurses there and Hettie hoped one of them would cover Raiki until we got someone.’
‘Did you get someone?’ Caroline asked, intrigued by this idea of a helicopter flitting between the islands as casually as a city commute.
‘Yes, I think so. Hett’s still negotiating. Anyway, who do we find but a mum who’d mistaken clinic days and brought in a toddler for vaccination? A toddler who hated needles. Poor kid, who doesn’t? He screamed like a banshee as Hettie gave him his triple antigen. Of course, the father came in and got stuck into Hettie and the scene developed into something like an old-time TV comedy, only it wasn’t really funny because the poor kid was genuinely terrified.’
‘Then French and the ulcer,’ Keanu said, turning from the urn where he’d been making a coffee—holding out the cup to Caroline, who shook her head.
‘Yeah, we had a call from the nurse there, whipped over and collected the lad, then to top it all off we were caught in a very nasty crosswind on the flight home. I know we have to expect that at this time of the year—it’s the start of cyclone season—but heaven help us if there’s an emergency call tonight.’
‘You’re the only pilot?’ Caroline asked, sitting down on the couch across from Jack.
‘Sorry, I’m supposed to make the introductions,’ Keanu said. ‘Jack, this is Caroline, new nurse. Caroline, this is Jack Richards and, yes, at the moment he’s our only pilot. Although there’s relief on the way Friday when the second flight for the week comes in. That’s right, isn’t it, Jack? A FIFO coming in to give you a break?’
‘Yeah, young Matt Rogers is due to come in on Friday’s flight.’
‘You don’t like him?’ Caroline asked, unable to not hear the distaste in Jack’s voice.
‘Only because he’s younger, and fitter and better looking than our Jack here,’ Keanu teased, ‘and they both share a very keen interest in the beautiful Anahera.’
‘Who at least ignores us both equally,’ Jack said with such gloom Caroline had to smile.
‘I can’t blame any man being attracted to her—she is beautiful,’ Caroline said, now wondering if the nurse was ignoring these two suitors because she had her eye on someone else.
Someone like Keanu?
And if Vailea’s daughter fancied Keanu and Vailea was thinking him a good match, maybe that’s why she’d shown such animosity to Caroline. Everyone on the island would know the two of them had grown up together …
She must have sighed, for Keanu said, ‘Come on, you’re tired. I’ll walk you up to the house.’
Jack straightened up in his chair.
‘The house?’ he said. ‘Like the Lockhart mansion? Since when did our nurses get lucky enough to stay there while important blokes like me sleep in little better than prefabricated huts?’
‘Since their surname is Lockhart,’ Keanu said, enough ice in his voice to stop further speculation. ‘And all the hospital buildings are prefabricated, as you well know. It makes it much easier to pack them into shipping containers and land them here, then it only needs a small team of men to put them together.’
He turned to Caroline.
‘Prefab or not, the staff villas are really lovely so just ignore him.’
Jack was ignoring them both. He was still staring at Caroline.
‘You’re a Lockhart?’ he said with such disbelief Caroline had to smile.
‘Did you think we all had two heads?’ she asked, but Jack continued to stare at her.
Maybe she had grown a second head.
But two heads would give her two brains and she only needed one—even a part of one—to know she didn’t want Keanu walking her home. Her feelings towards him were in such turmoil she doubted she’d ever sort them out.
For years she’d hated him for his desertion. Hadn’t he realised he’d been her only true friend? Even after they’d both gone to boarding school, he’d still been the person to whom she’d poured out her heart in letter after letter.
Her homesickness, the strange emptiness that came from being motherless, the pain of her time spent with Christopher, who couldn’t respond to her words of love—writing to Keanu had been a way of getting it out of her system.
So he knew everything