Wildfire Island Docs

CHAPTER THREE

A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG woman with long, lustrous, dark hair piled up beneath a dodgy-looking nurse’s cap, and wearing what was apparently a uniform of green tunic and green three-quarter-length pants greeted Caroline with a smile and, ‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m looking for Sam,’ Caroline explained.

‘Rather you than me,’ the woman replied. ‘He’s in the little room he calls his office, probably setting fire to the paperwork. Straight along the passage and on the left.’

Caroline turned to follow the directions.

‘I’m Anahera, by the way, but everyone calls me Ana,’ the dark-haired woman added.

Caroline turned back.

‘Oh, I’ve met your daughter. She’s adorable. I’m Caroline Lockhart.’

Caroline held out her hand but couldn’t miss the hesitation or the look of wariness in Anahera’s eyes before she took the proffered palm and shook it.

But ‘Oh!’ was all she said, turning back into the small ward behind her where Caroline could see four occupied beds.

Farther down the passage she found the room, knocked briefly then answered a peremptory ‘Come in.’

‘Caroline Lockhart, I presume?’

The good-looking man behind the desk looked up briefly from the paperwork he was shoving from one pile to another, then frowned down at it.

‘Never become an administrator,’ he muttered, pushing the lot back together into an untidy heap.

‘Don’t like paperwork?’ Caroline asked, but she was smiling as she said it. There was something immensely likeable about this man.

‘Who does? The problem is I’m already short on staff and I’ve still got to waste time doing blasted paperwork.’

‘Can’t you get the dog to eat it? Isn’t that the classic homework excuse?’ Caroline suggested, seeing the warm brown eyes of the Labrador lying on Sam’s feet under the table.

Sam flashed her a grin.

‘I did try that but the wretch keeps spitting it out. Hospital dogs are too well fed. But let me introduce you. This lazy, too-well-fed beast is Bugsy, Maddie Haddon’s dog. Maddie is one of our FIFO doctors but rather than fly Bugsy back and forth she leaves him here. Unfortunately she can’t make today’s plane and as he usually knows when she’s due in, he’s decided I’m the best substitute for his owner.’

Sam paused and studied Caroline for a moment.

‘I’m also a nurse short, and Keanu told me you were here. Want a job?’

‘As long as it doesn’t involve sorting that mess you’ve made of those papers you’re shuffling. I can certainly help in other ways.’

Humour lit his eyes.

‘Nice back massage? Rub my feet?’

‘In your dreams!’ Caroline retorted, deciding she quite liked this rather strange man.

‘But I could fill in for your missing nurse,’ Caroline added, refusing to be beguiled by gleaming eyes. ‘I’m a nurse and you’re apparently one nurse short.’

‘Keanu said you’re a socialite.’

One more black mark against the man who’d hurt her so badly.

‘Well, you may not have noticed but there’s not that much social life around here, and a socialite without a social set is superfluous to requirements, while a nurse might just fill in for the one who isn’t coming, if you’re willing to give me a chance.’

Now she had his attention.

‘Touchy, are you?’ He looked her up and down. ‘I suppose you have the right bits of paper—degree, references.’

‘Right here,’ she said, pulling the paperwork she’d grabbed and stuffed in her back pocket before leaving the house.

Caroline began to relax.

Well, not relax relax—that would never happen with Keanu somewhere near—but some of the tension she’d been feeling drained slowly out of her.

‘It seems you’ve been away from the island for a long time,’ Sam said, riffling through the papers but, she suspected, speed-reading every word. ‘Why have you come back?’

‘I don’t think that’s relevant but I did hear the island was in trouble.’

‘And you thought coming here to nurse would cure things?’

Caroline shook her head.

‘Boy, are you a grump! I didn’t even know there’d be a nursing position available, although I had intended working here for nothing if necessary, but this place was my home—is my home—and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit back and let it fall apart without at least trying to find out what’s been happening and what can be done to save it. My dad would be here as well, only he—Well, there’s a family problem.’

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. I’ve come to work.’ Caroline tried to sound reassuring, but Vailea’s words and attitude had stung.

What on earth had been going on? Was it more than Ian’s poor management? Selling off the family heirlooms wouldn’t have affected anyone outside the family, so what else had happened or was happening? What had Bessie said about the new housekeeper? Something about Ian …

‘I’ve come to make Keanu a cup of tea,’ she said as Vailea’s eyes continued to study her, a malevolence Caroline couldn’t understand clear within them.

‘I’ll take care of him,’ the older woman snapped, and Caroline, only too pleased to escape the extremely uncomfortable atmosphere, left the kitchen.

‘Boy, this is going to be fun,’ she muttered to herself as she made her way out of the hospital.

Keanu could deal with Alkiri on his own—do whatever needed to be done. She was damned if she was going to stay around and be insulted. Once Hettie, the head nurse, returned later today and gave Caroline her roster, she could work out how best to avoid Vailea altogether.

Vailea and Keanu.

Although there was something about Vailea’s reaction to her that seemed more personal than a general hatred of all Lockharts …

Keanu walked up to the house at six. He’d spent two hours talking to the elders on Atangi, making arrangements for Alkiri’s funeral. The elders had agreed he could be buried on Wildfire and they would send over people to help with the practicalities and some cooks to prepare the food.

‘Is there somewhere we can all gather?’ the man he’d been speaking to had asked. ‘I think the little church and its hall would be too small.’

Keanu thought of the big longhouse that had once been the centre of the research station and assured the elder that somewhere could be found. There was always the Lockhart house if nothing else worked out.

They settled on a service at ten in two days’ time.

Now, given that they might need the house, he had to make peace with Caro, although he doubted he could ever explain his angry reaction to her arrival—far too complicated and quite unwarranted, really.

Caroline was sitting on the veranda, watching the sun sink into the sea, dropping below the western cliffs lit up with the brilliant fiery red that gave the island its name.

He took the steps three at a time in long, deliberate strides, then slumped down on the top one, not looking at her but out at the dying colours of the sunset.

‘Why did you come back?’ he asked, almost gently, although being this close to her had started all the physical reactions again, and the confusion of that made him feel …

Angry?

Not really, more unsettled …

‘Why did you?’ she countered.

‘I was asked,’ he said, trying desperately to pretend that this was just a conversation between two old friends. Which, of course, it was—wasn’t it?

‘The island was in trouble, the community was in trouble. It’s my home and I love it. Of course, I had to come back.’

‘And yet you ask me why I came? To tell you the truth, I didn’t know things were this bad until I got here. I just wanted—needed—to come home.’

‘And now you’re here?

She turned towards him, her eyes alight with determination.

‘I have to find out what’s been happening. How everything’s gone so terribly wrong. Do you honestly believe the island means less to me than it does to you? That this isn’t my community as well?’

Her gaze drifted back to the sunset, so he guessed there was a bit more to the answer than that. But whatever it was it had caused a break in her voice and he wanted more than anything in the world—more even than saving the livelihood and well-being of the islanders—to comfort her, to take her in his arms, hold her close, smell the Caro scent of her, and never let her go.

Like she’d want that!

He also wanted to ask her about Christopher. She hadn’t answered earlier. But he knew it was too painful a subject to bring up when they were so estranged, so he stuck to practicalities.

‘So, what do you think you can do?’ he asked instead, his voice rougher than it should be as it scraped past the emotion in his throat.

‘Find out what’s been going on, for a start,’ she said. ‘All the predictions from the geologists showed the mine had many years to run. I don’t doubt Ian’s been embezzling the money it’s been earning but it can’t just be that.’

Keanu hid a smile. That sounded so like the young Caroline—his Caro—on the trail of some possible crime—suspected cruelty to some chickens being only one of her campaigns.

Memories were dangerous things …

Better to stick with the present and practicalities, discuss what facts he did know, although they were few enough.

‘Did you know Ian leased out the research station?’ he asked.

‘He’s leased the research station? Why on earth would he do that?’

‘Money, why else! It had been run-down for a while. Fewer and fewer people using it. Then he somehow found this wealthy Middle Eastern guy who wants to set up an exclusive resort. The local residents are a bit uneasy about it, but heaven knows we need all the income and employment we can get.’

‘Well, it explains the guy with the nail in his foot. Does my dad know?’

‘I assumed he did but the negotiations certainly went through Ian, and no one here seems to know anything about it.’

‘Dad would never have trusted Ian to negotiate, and he’d never have made a decision without consulting the elders. He sent Ian here mainly to keep him out of trouble. It’s the way Dad feels about family. He thinks even the black sheep deserves a chance to redeem himself, but from all I’m hearing about our particular black sheep, it’s impossible.’

She sighed then added, ‘The guy with the nail in his foot—he’s working there? Work’s going on now?’

Keanu nodded. ‘And has been for some time.’

‘I want to have a look.’

‘You can’t. The whole place is fenced and gated. That patient yesterday wouldn’t even let us drive him back down there. He had his mate come back to the hospital, remember?’

‘But this is our home! We can go wherever we like.’

Keanu hid a smile. This was Caro at her most imperious. And hearing her, hearing the old Caro sent a piercing pain through his chest.

‘You want to argue with the guards? They’ll never accept your authority. Besides, legally, I would think now this man has leased it, it’s his land for as long as the lease states.’

‘But Dad doesn’t know anything—if he did he’d have told me. Come on, Keanu, you must know something.’

‘All I know is that some rich man is turning it into a resort. A chap called Luke Wilson was doing some research here a few years ago and apparently this rich bloke knew Luke from somewhere. That was enough for Ian to make contact with him and that’s what happened.’

Keanu paused, trying to think—to get it right.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already achieved his aim for the resort—there’s been a hell of a lot of activity going on around the place. Container loads of stuff taken off huge ships and ferried ashore on barges, imported workers everywhere.’

‘But the research station? That was my great-grandfather’s legacy to the whole of M’Langi, designed to provide facilities and housing to anyone who wanted to investigate or study ways to improve the health of the islanders through science. Your father was one of the first to work there. I know my grandfather and Ian resented putting money into it, but I’m sure it was legally tied up so the mine had to keep supporting it.’

‘And if the mine couldn’t?’ Keanu asked. ‘Isn’t it better to lease it to someone with money than let the idea die completely?’

Caroline stared at him, trying to work out what might be going on behind this conversation.

As far as she was concerned, there was a lot of very strange stuff lingering in the deep recesses of her mind and fluttering along the nerves in her body, yet Keanu was sitting there, about as sensitive as a boulder.

Whatever. She was finding out things she needed to know so she had to set aside all the physical manifestations of the boulder’s presence and seek more information.

‘You mean this mystery millionaire is going to keep the research station going? So why build luxury accommodation?’

Keanu shrugged.

‘Who knows, but that’s what’s happening because Sam’s been carrying on with some of Luke’s research into why the islanders don’t suffer from encephalitis to the extent their counterparts in other island groups do and he’s been wanting to use the laboratories there. Apparently, they’ve said he can as soon as the renovations are completed.’

‘Weirder and weirder,’ Caroline muttered, but the worst of the weirdness was what was going on in her body. She’d been, what, thirteen when she’d last seen Keanu? And with her isolated life on the island then boarding school, had probably been a late developer. And although his disappearance from her life had devastated her—even broken her heart—it had been a child’s heart that had been broken, a child’s love betrayed.