She turned, chin tilted, refusing to reveal the hurt his words had caused.
‘I’m a nurse, and I’ve come back to work, but I am surprised to see you here after the way you cut your connection to the islands so many years ago.’
Fortunately, as Caroline had just realised their driver was listening to this icy conversation with interest, they pulled up at the front of the hospital.
The patient was awake, obviously benefiting from the oxygen and the painkilling injection.
Keanu asked the driver to lend a hand, and the two of them eased the man out of the vehicle.
‘Sling your arms around our shoulders and we’ll help you in,’ Keanu said, and Caroline guessed he was concentrating on the patient so he wouldn’t have to look at her.
Or even acknowledge her presence?
What had happened?
What had she done?
Steely determination to not be hurt by him—or any man—ever again made her shut the door firmly on the past. Whatever had happened had been a long time ago, and she was a different person, had moved on, and was moving on again …
But walking behind Keanu, she couldn’t not be aware of his presence. This man who’d been a boy she’d known so well was really something. Broad shoulders sloping down to narrow hips, but a firm butt and calf muscles that suggested not a workout in gym but a lot of outdoors exercise—he’d always loved running, said he felt free …
She was looking at his butt?
Best she get away, and fast.
But once they had the man on the deck in front of the hospital, Keanu turned back towards her.
‘Well, if you’re a nurse, don’t just stand there. Come in and be useful. Hettie and Sam are on a clinic run to the outer islands and there’s only an aide and myself on duty.’
He stood above her—loomed really—the disdain in his voice visible on his features.
And something broke inside her.
Was this really Keanu, her childhood friend and companion? Keanu, who had been gentle and kind, and had always taken care of her when she’d felt lost and alone?
Back then, his mother’s mantra to him had always been ‘Take care of Caroline’, and Keanu, two years older, always had.
Which was probably why his disappearance from her life had hurt so deeply that for a while she’d doubted she’d get over it.
Head bent to hide whatever hurt might be showing on her face, she took the steps in one stride and followed the three men into the small but well-set-up room that she knew from the hospital plans doubled as Emergency and Outpatients.
Having helped lift the patient onto an examination table, the driver muttered something about getting back to work, and hurried through the door.
Which left her and Keanu …
Keanu, who was managing to ignore her completely while her body churned with conflicting emotions.
‘Nail gun?’ Keanu asked the patient as he examined the foot.
The patient nodded.
‘Never heard of steel-capped workboots?’ Keanu continued. ‘I thought they were the only legal footwear on a building job.’
‘Out here?’ the man scoffed. ‘Who’s going to check?’
‘Just hold his leg up for me, grasp the calf.’
An order to the nurse, no doubt, but even as he gave it Keanu didn’t glance her way.
‘No “please”?’ Caroline said sweetly as she lifted the man’s lower leg so Keanu could see just how far through the wood the nail protruded.
She must have struck a nerve with her words, for Keanu looked up at her, his face unreadable, although she caught the confusion in his eyes.
So she wasn’t the only one feeling this was beyond bizarre.
‘Okay, let it down,’ he said, the words another order.
Maybe she’d been wrong about the confusion.
Only then he added, ‘Please,’ and suddenly he was her old Keanu again, teasing her, almost smiling.
And the confusion that caused made her wish Jill hadn’t taken off again so quickly. She had come here for peace and quiet, to heal after the humiliation of realising the man she’d thought had loved her had only been interested in her family money.
What was left of it.
‘Here’s a key.’
Keanu’s fingers touched hers, and electricity jolted through her bones, shocking her in more ways than one. ‘You’ll find phials of local anaesthetic in the cupboard marked B, second shelf. Bring two—no, he’s a big guy, maybe three—and you’ll see syringes in there as well. Antiseptic, dressings and swabs are in the cupboard next to that one—it’s not locked. Get whatever you think we’ll need. I’m off to find a saw.’
The patient gave a shriek of protest but Keanu was already out of the room.
Slipping automatically into nurse mode, Caroline smiled as she unlocked the cupboard and found all she needed.
‘He’s not going to cut off your foot,’ she reassured the man as she set up a tray on a trolley and rolled it over to the examination table. ‘Hospitals have all manners of saws. We use diamond-tipped ones to cut through plaster when it has to come off, and we use adapted electric saws and drills in knee and hip replacement, though not here, of course. I’d say he’s going to numb your leg from the calf down, then cut through the nail between your flip-flop and the wood. It’s easier to pull a nail out of rubber and flesh than it is out of wood.’
Their patient didn’t seem all that reassured, but Caroline, who’d found where the paperwork was kept, distracted him with questions about his name, age, address, any medication he was on, and, because she couldn’t resist it, what he was doing on the island.
‘Doing up the little places down on the flat,’ was the reply, which came as Keanu returned with a small battery-powered saw and a portable X-ray machine.
‘The research station,’ he said, before Caroline could ask the patient what little places.
‘They’re doing up the research station when there’s not enough money to keep the hospital running properly?’
The indignation in her voice must have been mirrored on her face, for Keanu said a curt, ‘Later,’ and turned his full attention to his patient.
After numbing the lower leg—Caroline being careful not to let her fingers touch Keanu’s as she handed him syringes and phials—he explained to the patient what he intended doing.
‘Nurse already told me that,’ the man replied. ‘Just get on with it.’
Asking Caroline to hold the wood steady, Keanu eased it as far as it would go from the flip-flop then bent closer to see what he was doing, so his head, the back of it, blocked Caroline’s view. Not that she’d have seen much of the work, her eyes focussed on the little scar that ran along his hairline, the result of a long-ago exercise on her part to shave off all his hair with her grandfather’s cut-throat razor.
Fortunately he must have been able to cut straight through the little bar of the nail, for he straightened before she could be further lost in memories.
Caroline dropped the wood into a trash bin and returned to find Keanu setting up a portable X-ray machine.
‘We need to know if the nail’s gone through bone,’ he explained, helping her get back into nurse mode. ‘And the picture should tell us