Sam raised his head and looked at her.
‘He’s a great man, your father. He does the best he can. Lobbying for government support, fundraising. Ever since the mine stopped paying its promised share for the hospital, I think he’s put his entire salary into it. I just do what I can.’
‘So, do I get a job?’
Sam studied her a little longer.
‘The nurse who was coming was a FIFO—Fly-In-Fly-Out—the term more commonly used in mining communities. It means you’re on duty for two weeks then off for one, and you can take the flight to the mainland for that week off if you wish.’
‘Which leaves you with only one nurse—Anahera—for a week?’
‘Not really. The FIFOs overlap and we have another permanent. You haven’t met Hettie yet—Henrietta de Lacey—only don’t dare ever call her Henrietta, she’ll lop off your head with the nearest implement. She’s our head nurse and is permanent staff and she’s the one you should be speaking to about this job, but she’s doing another clinic run. It’s not usual to do two in one week, but there’s a lot to sort out. The clinic on Raiki is short of drugs, not to mention a nurse, so Hettie’s gone out there to replace the drugs then scour the islands to see if she can get one of the nurses from another island to cover Raiki for a while. How are you in a helicopter?’
Caroline was wondering what had happened to both the drugs and the nurse from Raiki when she realised she’d been asked a question. She grinned at him.
‘Do you mean can I fly one or do I throw up in one?’
‘Definitely the latter. Pilots we have.’
‘I’ll be fine, but do nurses always do the clinics or do the doctors go out to the other islands as well?’
‘Doctors too,’ came the swift reply, although Caroline had already forgotten what she’d asked as she’d sensed a presence in the room behind her, and every nerve in her body told her it was Keanu.
‘Sorry to butt in, boss.’
His deep voice reverberated around the room.
‘But Alkiri, the old man you brought in from Atangi, is having difficulty breathing—I think his end is very near. Okay with you if I sit with him?’
Sam nodded, then turned to Caroline.
‘If you want to start work now, go sit with Keanu. Just see Alkiri is propped up in a comfortable position and moisten his lips for him if he needs it. Turn his head a little—’
‘So saliva can drain out,’ Caroline finished for him. ‘I have done this before, you know.’
Sam nodded again, then added softly, although they were already alone in the room, ‘I’d like you there for Keanu. He’s known the old man all his life. He’s the elder who asked Keanu to come back to the islands. It will be hard for him.’
Caroline nodded.
‘Alkiri would have known he was dying,’ she murmured, remembering the uncanny sense the islanders seemed to have about death. ‘Maybe he wanted Keanu by his side.’
She left the room to be with Alkiri and Keanu, though she doubted he’d take comfort from her presence.
Sitting on the opposite side of the bed from her childhood friend, she took the old man’s dry hand, feeling bones as fragile as a bird’s beneath the papery skin.
‘It’s Caroline,’ she said very quietly. ‘Do you remember teaching me to weave fish traps?’
To talk or not to talk to the dying was a much-argued topic, but Caroline thought Alkiri deserved to know she remembered, and perhaps to let his mind drift back to happy times he’d had with the two children.
‘Then you’d take us out in your old boat to show us where to put them up against the reef.’ Keanu took up the story equally quietly, but looking at him, Caroline wondered if the sadness in his eyes was not all caused by the elder’s approaching death.
Caroline swabbed the saliva from the old man’s mouth, while Keanu started a story about Alkiri’s frustration at not being able to teach Caro to split a coconut properly.
‘I still can’t,’ Caroline admitted, ‘although they’re everywhere in the city shops now and people are going crazy for coconut water.’
‘I’ve been looking into that and have talked to the elders,’ Keanu said quietly. ‘Wondering if the craze for it might provide a viable source of income for the islanders. After all, it’s not just the water but every bit of a coconut is used in one way or another. I’ve got an accountant who’s done a lot of set-up work on new businesses looking at the figures.’
Her thoughts hadn’t quite got that far but the splitting of coconuts had started her thinking that way.
She risked a glance towards him. Surely they were not still going to be able to read each other’s thoughts, especially now, when her thoughts, since meeting him again, had been almost wholly taken up with how magnificent he looked.
Keanu was as fine a specimen of manhood as she’d ever seen, and although just looking at him generated unwelcome reactions in her body, she couldn’t resist a sneaked glance now and then as she tried to analyse her reactions.
She turned her attention back to Alkiri, speaking quietly again, more memories tumbling into her head. Keanu offered some of his own, adding to hers—shared lives.
At some stage she heard a plane come in—bringing stores but not the staff that had been expected, Caroline guessed. Then some time later it took off again. They talked on …
There were long silences between Alkiri’s rattly breaths, some so long she feared their old friend had already died. Until suddenly he roused, opened his eyes and looked from one to the other, smiling.
‘With both of you here, I am at peace. Please keep me here when I am gone. Wildfire was always my true home,’ he whispered in a thin papery voice, and then the breathing did stop.
For ever.
Caroline couldn’t bring herself to pull the sheet up over the old man’s face. Very gently, she closed his eyes, and straightened the sheet across his body.
‘Can we bury him here or would his family want him back on Atangi?’ she asked, finally meeting Keanu’s eyes across the bed.
Keanu shrugged, and, sensing the grief he was trying hard to hide she went to him, unable not to offer comfort to her old friend, and put her arm around his wide shoulders.
‘Come on, let’s have a cup of tea while we think about the arrangements.’
He walked with her, but blindly, although the fact that he was not aware of her didn’t bother Caroline one bit. She was far too busy battling all the reactions just touching Keanu’s body had caused in hers—hoping the deep breaths she was taking to suppress the weird emotions were going unnoticed by her companion.
But her heart raced, her head spun, and every nerve in her body tingled with excitement.
Ridiculous, she told herself. This was ‘old friend’ reaction and not sexual at all, although it did feel …
Sexual?
Vailea was in the kitchen. She took one look at Keanu’s stricken face and pulled out a chair for him.
‘I heard you were back,’ she said, her voice cold enough to douse the fires just touching Keanu had set alight. ‘Come to bring more trouble to us?’
‘No, of course not.