She closed her eyes against the memories—the crash, the fear, the blood …
It hadn’t been Harry’s fault, of course, but how could she remember that meeting without all the horror of it coming back—not when she was healing, not on the island that had brought peace to her soul.
But right now that man was in pain.
She reached him and slipped to the side of what was his obviously injured foot, taking his arm and hauling it around her shoulders to steady him.
‘What happened?’ she asked, once they were stabilised in the now knee-deep water.
‘Trod on something—agonising pain.’
The man’s face was a pale, grimacing mask.
‘Let’s get you back to civilisation where we can phone the hospital,’ she said, hoping she sounded more practical than she felt because the warmth of the man’s body was disturbing her.
In fact, the man was disturbing her, and, if truth be told, the memory of her chance meeting with him at the cocktail party had been niggling inside her for the past six weeks. Reminding her of things she didn’t want to remember …
But reminding her of other things, as well.
Not that he’d know that.
‘I’m Sarah. We met at the cocktail party.’
‘Harry!’
The name came out through gritted teeth but they were out of the water now and heading slowly, step hop, step hop, for the first of the bures in the resort.
‘Did you see what it was?’ Sarah asked, thinking of the many venomous inhabitants that lurked around coral reefs.
‘Trod on it!’
They’d reached the door.
‘That probably means a stonefish. They burrow down into the sand or camouflage themselves in rock pools so they’re undetectable from their surroundings. You should be wearing shoes. Is your hot-water system good? Water hot?’
The man she was helping—Harry—seemed to swell with the rage that echoed in his voice.
‘Need a shower, do you?’
Sarah decided that a man in pain was entitled to be a little tetchy so she ignored him, helping him to a chair and kneeling in front of him to examine his foot.
‘You’ve got two puncture wounds and they’re already swelling. I’ll get some hot water and then phone the hospital. Hot water, as hot as you can stand, should ease the pain.’
Sarah looked directly at him, probably for the first time since she’d arrived at the bottom of the rock fall. Even with gritted teeth and a fierce expression of pain on his face, he was good looking. Tall, dark, and handsome, like a prince in story books. The words formed in her head as she hurried to the small kitchen area of the bure in search of a bowl and hot water.
No bowls, but a large beaten copper vase. The stings were in the upper part of his foot—he could get that much of his foot into it.
Back at the chair, she knelt again, setting down the vase of hot water but keeping hold of the jug of cold water she’d brought with her.
‘Try that with the toe of your good foot,’ she said. ‘If it’s too hot I’ll add cold water but you need it as hot as you can manage.’
He dipped a toe in and withdrew it quickly, tried again after Sarah had added water, and actually sighed with relief as he submerged the wounds in the container and the pain eased off.
Looking up at her, he shook his head.
‘How did you know that?’
But she was on the phone to the hospital and someone had answered, so she could only shrug in reply to his question.
Quickly she explained the situation, turning back to Harry to ask, ‘Is the pain travelling up your leg?’
He nodded.
‘Like pins and needles that turn into cramp, although it’s easier now.’
Sarah relayed the description to Sam, who was on the hospital end of the phone.
‘We’ll pick up a few things and be right down,’ Sam said. ‘Put his foot in hot water.’
Sarah smiled to herself as she hung up, glad some tiny crevice of her brain had come up with the same information, although it had been at least ten years since she’d practised general medicine and, having been in England, had never encountered a stonefish sting before.
Grabbing the jug, she returned to the kitchen for more hot water, knowing that as the water cooled, the pain would return.
‘I did know you before the cocktail party,’ her patient said as she returned, his dark eyes on her face, unsettling her with the intensity of his focus. ‘I remember now. You were at the talk I gave at GOSH on the use of transoesophageal echocardiography for infants. We had a coffee together afterwards.’
His voice challenged her to deny it a second time!
Great Ormond Street Hospital—GOSH—of course she’d been there. How could she ever forget? She’d been so excited to be invited because back then she’d been considering paediatric surgery, and listening to the mesmeric speaker—this man—had crystallised her ambition.
But further memories of that fateful day brought such anguish she couldn’t stop herself hitting out at the man who’d provoked them.
‘The man I had coffee with was one of the foremost paediatric surgeons in the world, an innovator and inventor, always finding new ways to help the most vulnerable but important people in our society—children. I know you’ve been sick, but still there’s so much you could offer.’
She shouldn’t have let fly like that, and knew it, so guilt now mixed with the anguish churning inside her. The recipient of the tirade just sat there, eyes hooded and spots of colour on his cheeks as warning signs of anger.
‘The cart from the hospital is here, I’ll go,’ she said, her voice still taut—angry—hurt …
Ashamed?
Yes, very, but—
She thought she might have got away, but as she stalked out the door, jug of hot water still clenched in her hand, the man spoke.
‘Well, the woman I met was ambitious to do the same work!’
Sarah closed her eyes, feeling stupid, useless tears sliding down her cheeks, almost blinding her as she made her way back to the beach to collect her things.
She’d deserved that comment, lashing out at him the way she had, but his insistence she remember that day had brought back far too many memories—just when she was beginning to think she’d healed.
How could he have said that?
Something so personal, and obviously very hurtful.
Because her words had struck a nerve?
More like a knife in his chest, directly into the similar doubts he had about himself.
Doubts he refused to face …
Which was no excuse for him to hit back at her!
What was happening to him that he could say such a thing?
‘Done something stupid, have you?’
Sam Taylor, senior doctor at the hospital, charged into the bure.
It was impossible to brood with Sam around! He was a cheerful, capable man,