‘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 if it’s in a position that would have caused tendon damage.’
‘Why does that make a difference?’ Now he was pain-free—if only temporarily—the patient was becoming impatient.
‘It makes the difference between pulling it out and cutting it out.’
‘No cutting, just yank the damn thing out,’ the patient said, but Keanu ignored him, going quietly on with the job of setting up the head of the unit above the man’s foot.
Intrigued by the procedure—and definitely in nurse mode—Caroline had to ask.
‘I thought the hospital had a designated radiography room,’ she said, remembering protocols at the hospital where she’d worked that suggested wherever possible X-rays be carried out in that area, although the portables had many uses.
Keanu glanced up at her, his face once again unreadable.
‘There is but I doubt you and I could lift him onto the table and with his leg already numb he’s likely to fall if he tries to help us.’
Which puts me neatly back in my place, Caroline thought.
‘Move back!’
Ignoring the peremptory tone, she stepped the obligatory two metres back from the head of the machine, watched Keanu don a lead apron—so protocols were observed here—and take shots from several angles.
That done, he wheeled the machine to the corner of the room, hung his apron over a convenient chair and checked the results on a computer screen.
‘Come and look at this. What do you think?’
Assuming he was talking to her, not the immobile patient, she moved over to stand beside him—beside Keanu, who had been the single most important person in the world for her for the first thirteen years of her life. Important because, unlike her father, or even Christopher, he’d always been there for her—her best friend and constant companion.
Until he’d disappeared.
But this Keanu …
It was beyond weird.
Spooky.
And, oh, so painful …
‘Well?’ he demanded, and she forgot about the way Keanu was affecting her and concentrated on the images.
‘By some miracle it’s slipped between two metatarsals and though it’s probably hit some ligament or tendon, because the bones are intact it shouldn’t impact on the movement of the foot too much.’
‘And don’t look at me like that,’ she muttered at him, after he’d shot yet another questioning glance her way. ‘I am a trained nurse, and have been a shift supervisor in the ER at Canterbury Hospital.’
‘I don’t know how you found the time,’ he said as he headed back to the patient.
She was about to demand what the hell he’d meant by that when she realised this was hardly the time or place to be having an argument with this man she didn’t know.
Her friend had been a boy—was that the difference?
It certainly was part of it given the way her body was reacting to the slightest accidental touch …
‘Okay, so now I need you to swab all around the nail then hold his foot while I try to yank the nail out. I’d prefer not to have to cut it out.’
Caroline put on new gloves, cleaned the areas above and beneath the foot, changed gloves again and got a firm grasp of the man’s foot, ready to put all her weight into the task of holding on if the nail proved resistant.
But, no, it slid out easily, and as the wound was bleeding quite freely now, it was possible the risk of infection had been limited.
‘Antibiotics and tetanus injections in the locked cupboard,’ Keanu told her as he examined the wound in the patient’s foot. ‘And bring some saline and a packet of oral antibiotics as well. Everything’s labelled as we get a lot of agency nurses coming out here for short stints. I’ll use the saline to flush the wound before we dress it.’
He worked with quick, neat movements, cleaning the wound, putting the dressings on—usually, in her experience, a job left to a nurse—before administering the antibiotic and a tetanus shot. He even pulled a sleeve over the foot to keep the dressings in place and keep them relatively clean.
‘Now all we have to do is get you back to your accommodation,’ Keanu said. ‘Keep off the foot for a couple of days and find your workboots before you go back on the job. If you don’t have any you can phone the mainland and have some sent out on tomorrow’s plane. Nurse Lockhart and I will help you out to a cart and I’ll run you back down the hill.’
‘I’ve got workboots,’ the man said gruffly. ‘And I’ll phone my mate to come and get me, thanks. The foreman on the job doesn’t like strangers on the site.’
‘Strangers on the site? What site? What’s happening at the research station, Keanu?’
He touched her on the arm.
‘Leave it,’ he said quietly, and the touch, more than his words, stopped her questions.
Since when had her body reacted to a casual touch from Keanu’s hand?
It was being back on the island …
It was seeing him again …
Remembering the hurt …
Caroline closed her eyes, willing the tumult of emotions in her body to settle. She was here to heal, to find herself again, but she was also here to work.
She cleaned up, dropping soiled swabs into a closed bin marked for that purpose and the needles into a sharps box. Their patient was now sitting on the examination table, chatting to Keanu about, she found as she edged closer, fishing.
Well, it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss right now, and as she needed time to sort out her reactions to seeing Keanu again, she slipped away, heading back down the track to the airstrip to collect her suitcase.
She