He helped Harry out to the small electric cart that was the common transport on the island, and drove them up the hill from the resort to the neat little hospital.
Out of the hot water, the analgesic yet to work, the cramping, burning pain returned to both Harry’s foot and his lower leg. But his mind had other things to handle.
Despair that he’d flung those words at Sarah Watson returned. Ultra childish, that’s all it had been. Her words had stung, probably because there was an element of truth in them. In fact, they’d gone so deep he’d hit back automatically, and from the way her face had grown even paler, he’d hurt her badly.
She hadn’t deserved that, for all she’d earlier denied knowing him. She certainly hadn’t deserved it after getting him back to the bure and providing pain-relieving first aid. With agonising pain shooting up his leg, he’d not have made it alone.
‘You brooding over something or is it just the pain?’ Sam asked, as they pulled up at the small hospital.
‘I don’t brood!’ Harry snapped, then regretted it.
More to brood over!
‘I didn’t think so,’ Sam said cheerfully. ‘Come on, we’ll get you inside.’
Keanu Russell, the second permanent doctor at the hospital, had appeared and with Sam helped Harry through the small emergency room and into a well-equipped treatment alcove.
Harry checked out the paraphernalia by the bed.
‘All this for a sting? Or are the spines lodged in my foot? Is it one of the deadly marine creatures that seem to flourish in these parts?’
Sam smiled and shook his head.
‘You’re here because we have good monitoring equipment in here. We can hook you up to oxygen, use a pulse oximeter, and a self-inflating blood-pressure cuff. And with a few wires on your chest, the screen will tell us all we need to know. And no, it’s not deadly. Just painful.’
‘Tell me about it!’ Harry grumbled. ‘I see myself as a tough guy but it was all I could do to not whimper while Sarah was helping me to my bure.’
‘Going to keep him in?’ Keanu asked Sam, as the two men efficiently attached him to the monitoring equipment.
‘Nah, he’s strong, and he just told us he’s tough, so he’ll survive. We’ll drip the antivenin in, let him rest for a while, check everything’s working as it should be, then send him home. He might only be a surgeon but I reckon he knows enough general medicine to yell for us if he has any further problems.’
Harry had to smile at the laid-back, teasing attitude of these men who worked on the island. They did enormous good, providing medical assistance and support to the whole M’Langi group of islands. It was a complicated programme of clinic visits, preventative medicine, rescue work and emergency callouts, yet they made everything seem easy.
Maybe if he stayed here long enough, he might pick up some of the relaxed island vibe.
Impossible right now, though. The woman he’d just hurt was walking into the room, still in the long white shirt she wore over a black bathing suit, a black and white striped beach towel slung over her shoulder, and an obviously anxious expression on her face.
Anxious about his well-being?
Well, she was a doctor!
‘Is he okay?’ she asked Sam.
‘Ask him yourself,’ Sam retorted, and the sea-green eyes set in that pale creamy skin turned towards him, narrowing slightly.
‘Are you?’ she demanded.
‘Hey, be nice. He’s a patient,’ Sam reminded her.
‘Yours, not mine. I just happened to be there when he strolled through reef waters without anything on his feet.’
She didn’t actually add the idiot, but the words hung in a bubble in the air between them.
But even with her contempt there for all to see, she was beautiful. He knew it was probably her colouring that he found so fascinating: the vibrant hair, the pale skin, the flashing green eyes. Things he’d noticed way back when they’d first met.
But now he sensed something deeper in her that drew him inexorably to her.
Hidden pain?
He knew all about that.
Didn’t it stab him every day when he felt the tremor in his hand as he shaved?
So grow a beard, a mocking voice within suggested, and Harry closed his eyes, against the voice and the woman.
‘I just popped in to make sure he’d made it safely up here,’ the woman said. ‘So, see you two tomorrow.’
Sam stopped her retreat with a touch on her arm.
Harry suppressed a growl that rose in his throat. It had hardly been a lover’s touch and, anyway, what business of his was it who touched her?
‘Actually, Sarah,’ Sam was saying, ‘if you could spare a few minutes, I’d like you to stay around until the drip’s finished. We were actually at a staff meeting up at the house and your phone call switched through to there. Mina’s here for the other patients, but I think Harry should be watched.’
I have to watch him?
Sarah nodded in reply to Sam’s request, telling herself it didn’t mean watch watch, just to check on him now and then.
But watching him—he’d opened his eyes briefly as Sam spoke but they were closed again—actually looking at him might be a good idea. She could start by confirming her impressions of his physical appearance and maybe that would help sort out why the man made her so uneasy.
Why he stirred responses deep inside her that she hadn’t felt for four years …
For sure he was good looking. Olive-skinned, dark-haired, strong face, with a straight nose and solid chin. The lips softened it just a little, beautifully shaped—sensual—
Get with it, Sarah!
Stop this nonsense!
‘Are you looking at me?’
Surprisingly pale eyes—grey—opened, and black eyebrows rose.
‘Not looking, just watching—that’s what I was asked to do, remember.’
‘Not much difference, I’d have thought,’ the wretch said, with the merest hint of a smile sliding across those sens—
His lips!
She turned her attention to the monitor. The blood-pressure cuff was just inflating, so at least she had something to watch.
A little high, but the pain would only just be subsiding, so that was to be expected.
‘Tell me if you feel any reaction to the antivenin,’ she told him. ‘Nausea, faintness …’
He opened one eye and raised the eyebrow above it as if to say, is that all you’ve got?
She almost smiled then realised smiling at this man might be downright dangerous, so she walked out into the main room and found a magazine that was only four years old, grabbed a chair, and returned with it to the emergency cubicle to sit as far as possible from the man as she could get in the curtained alcove and still see the monitor.
He appeared to be asleep, and she tried hard to give her full attention to an article about the various cosmetic procedures currently in vogue in the US.
And failed.
The stonefish wound was in his right foot, so it had been his right arm she’d had around her shoulder as she’d taken some of his weight to get him back to the bure.
Had she felt a tremor in it?
Looking