Читать книгу Wildfire Island Docs - Алисон Робертс - Страница 14

THE PREVIOUS EVENING Hettie had disappeared by the time Caroline had finished talking to Jack, so she wasn’t sure if she was employed or not. Deciding she had to find out, she walked down to the hospital at seven-thirty the next morning.

It was already hot and the humidity was rising. Jack’s mention of cyclones had reminded her that this wasn’t the best time of the year to return to the island—although she’d spent many long summer holidays here and survived whatever the weather had thrown at her.

Hettie was in a side ward with the patient she’d brought in the previous evening, and it was, Caroline decided, almost inevitable that Keanu would be with her as she examined the wound.

‘Will you have to cut away the ulcerated tissue?’ she asked, walking to the other side of the bed and peering at the ulcer herself.

Hettie looked up, beautiful green eyes focussing on Caroline.

Focussing so intently Caroline found herself offering a shrug that wasn’t exactly an apology for speaking but very nearly.

‘I came down to see if you had work for me to do—a slot in the roster perhaps, or some use you could put me to?’

Hettie was still eyeing her warily, or maybe that was just her everyday look. She was neat—a slim figure, jeans and a white shirt, long dark hair controlled in a perfect roll at the back of her head—and attractive in a way that made Caroline think she’d be beautiful if she smiled.

‘What do you know about Buruli ulcers?’ Hettie asked, and, breathing silent thanks for the instinct that had made her look them up on the internet, Caroline rattled off what she’d learned.

Then, aware that the internet wasn’t always right, she added, ‘But that’s just what Mr Google told me. I haven’t had any experience of them.’

To her surprise, Hettie smiled and Caroline saw that she was beautiful—that quiet, unexpected kind of beauty that was rare enough to sometimes go unnoticed.

‘You’ll do,’ Hettie said. ‘Welcome aboard. It’s hard to work to rosters here, but there’s always work. Maddie, one of our FIFO doctors, usually does the checks on the miners but she didn’t come in and the checks are due—or slightly overdue. You’d know the mine, wouldn’t you? Perhaps you and Keanu could do that today?’

Excitement fizzed in Caroline’s head—the perfect excuse to go down to the mine.

‘What kind of checks do we do?’ she asked Hettie, ignoring Keanu, who was arguing that she was too new in the job to be going down to the mine.

‘Just general health. They tend to ignore cuts and scratches, although they know they can become infected or even ulcerated. And we’ve got a couple of workers—you’ll see their notes on the cards—who we suspect have chest problems and aren’t really suited to working underground. But you know men, they’re a stubborn lot and will argue until they’re blue in the face that they haven’t any problems with their lungs.’

‘Stubborn patients I do understand,’ Carolyn said, smiling inwardly as she wondered if seemingly prim and proper Hettie had experienced many run-ins with stubborn men in her own life. She certainly seemed to have some strong opinions when it came to men in general.

‘As a matter of course,’ Hettie continued, ‘we check the lung capacity of all the men and keep notes, and those two aren’t so bad we can order them out of the mine. Yet. The hospital is, in part, funded by the Australian government, and the health checks at the mine are a Workplace Health and Safety requirement.’

‘More paperwork for Sam,’ Caroline said, and Hettie smiled again.

‘He does hate it,’ she agreed before turning to Keanu. ‘You’re not tied up, so you can take Caroline down there. You can show her where all the paperwork is kept, and the drugs cabinet we have down there.’

‘If Ian didn’t pinch it when he left,’ Keanu muttered, but Caroline couldn’t help feeling how lucky they were, to both have this excuse to visit the mine.

And although more time with Keanu was hardly ideal, this was work, and all she had to do was concentrate on that.

If she was gathering whatever impressions she could of what was happening at the mine she’d hardly be aware Keanu was there.

Hardly.

Stick to business!

‘So, who do you think will be in charge of the mine now Ian’s gone?’ she asked Keanu as they took the path around the house that led to the steps down to the mine.

He stopped, turning around to take her hand to help her over a rough part of the track where the stone steps had broken away.

‘Ian’s never really been hands-on, leaving the shift bosses to run the teams. Reuben Alaki is one of the best,’ he said, speaking so calmly she knew he couldn’t possibly be feeling all the physical reactions to the touch that were surging through her.

‘I remember Reuben,’ she managed to say, hoping she sounded as calm as he had, although she was certain there’d been a quiver in her voice. ‘His wife died and he had to bring his little boy to work and your mother looked after him. We treated him like a pet dog or cat and he followed us everywhere.’

Fortunately for her sanity the rough bit of track was behind them, and Keanu had released her hand.

‘That’s him, although that little boy is grown up and is over in Australia, getting paid obscene amounts of money to play football.’

Then of course Keanu smiled, which had much the same result on her nerve endings as his touch had.

‘Good for him,’ Caroline said cheerily. ‘Maybe you should have gone that way instead of becoming a doctor.’

Then you wouldn’t be here holding my hand and smiling at me and totally confusing me!

Lost in her own thoughts, she didn’t realise Keanu had stopped. He turned back to face her, his face taut with emotion.

‘We had an agreement,’ he reminded her, and now a sudden sadness—nostalgia for their carefree past, their happy childhood—swept over her.

‘What happened to us, Keanu?’ she whispered, forgetting the present, remembering only the past.

‘Ian happened,’ he said bluntly, and continued down the path.

Guilt kept him moving, because he could have kept in touch with Caroline, but in his anger—an impotent rage at his mother’s pain—he had himself cursed all Lockharts.

Of course it had had nothing to do with Caroline, but at the time fury had made him blind and deaf, then, with his mother’s death, it had been all he could do just to keep going. Getting back in touch with Caroline had been the last thing on his mind.

‘All the files are in the site office,’ he said, all business now as they reached the bottom of the steps.

He pointed to the rusty-looking shed sheltering under the overhang of the cave that led into the mine.

‘That’s Reuben there now. Let’s go and see him.’

He knew Caroline was close behind him, aware of her in every fibre of his body, yet his mind was crowded with practical matters and he needed to concentrate on them—on the now, not the past …

The rumbling noise from deep inside the tunnel told him the mine was still being worked, but who was paying the men? And the crushing plant and extraction machine were standing idle, so they could hardly be taking home their wages in gold.

‘Who’s paying the men?’ Caroline asked, as if she’d been following his train of thought as well as his footsteps.

‘Reuben will tell us.’

Reuben stepped out of the shed to shake Keanu’s hand, then turned to Caroline.

‘New nurse?’ he asked.

‘But old friend, I hope, Reuben. It’s Caroline Lockhart.’

Reuben beamed with delight and held out his arms to give Caroline a hug.

‘You’ve grown up!’ Reuben said, looking fondly at her. ‘Grown up and beautiful!’

And from the look on Caroline’s face, it was the first friendly greeting she’d received since her return.

‘And your father? How is he?’ Reuben asked.

‘Working too hard. I hardly see him.’

‘Working and caring for that poor brother of yours, too, I suppose. Same as always,’ Reuben said. ‘Me, I did that when my wife died but later I realised pain didn’t go away with work. I have a new wife now and new family, and my big boy, he’s rich and famous in Australia—sends money home to his old man even.’

‘That’s great, Reuben,’ Caroline said, and Keanu knew she meant it. Her affinity for the islanders had always been as strong as his, and they had known that and loved her for it.

‘So, what’s happening here, Reuben?’ he asked to get his mind back on track. ‘Well …’

Reuben paused, scratched his head, shuffled his feet, and finally waved them both inside.

‘The men working the bulldozer and crusher and extraction plant hadn’t been paid for more than a month so they walked off the job maybe a month ago.’

He paused, looking out towards the harbour where machinery and sheds were rapidly disappearing under rampant rainforest regrowth.

‘The miners are in the same boat, but they believe they’ll eventually be paid. I think their team bosses sent a letter to your dad some weeks ago and they’re waiting to hear back, hoping he’ll come. They’re happy to keep working until they hear because most of them—well, they, we—don’t need the money for food or fancy clothes. It just puts the kids through school and university and pays for taking their wives on holidays.’

The words came out fluently enough but Keanu thought he could hear a lingering ‘but’ behind them.

‘But?’ Caroline said, and he had to smile that they could still be so much on the same wavelength.

‘The miners—they mine. It was the crusher team that did the safety stuff. Your uncle’s been putting off staff for months, and he started with the general labourers, saying the bulldozer boys and crusher and extraction operators could do the safety work when the crusher wasn’t operating, but now they’ve gone.’

‘Then the miners shouldn’t be working,’ Keanu said. ‘You’ve got to pull them out of there.’

Reuben shook his head.

‘They’ve got a plan. They’re going to stockpile enough rock then come out and work the crusher themselves for a month and that way they can keep the mine going. The miners, they’re all from these islands, they know the hospital needs the mine and they need the hospital and the clinics on the islands. Because they’re younger, a lot of them have young families—kids. Kids have accidents—need a nurse or a doctor …’

Keanu sighed.

He understood that part of the situation—but nevertheless the mine would have to shut! Safety had to come first and their small hospital just wasn’t equipped should a major catastrophe like a mine collapse happen.

Caroline’s heart had shuddered at the thought of the miners working in tunnels that might not have been shored up properly, or in water that hadn’t been pumped out of the tunnels, but the best way to find out was to talk to them.

‘Well, if there are people working here, shouldn’t we start the checks?’ She turned to Keanu, and read the concern she was feeling mirrored in his eyes. ‘How do you usually handle it?’

But it was Reuben who answered her.

‘I’ll ring through to the team and they send one man out at a time—we do it in alphabetical order so it’s easier for you with the files. I’m a bit worried about Kalifa Lui—his cough seems much worse.’

‘Should we see him first?’ Caroline asked, but Keanu shook his head.

‘He’ll realise we’ve picked him out and probably cough his lungs up on his way out of the mine so his chest’s clear when he gets here. Better to keep to the order.’

Reuben had placed a well-labelled accident book in front of Caroline and a box of files on the table where Keanu sat.

Index card files?

Caroline looked around the office—no computer.

Ian’s cost-cutting?

She didn’t say anything, not wanting to confirm any more Lockhart inadequacies or bring up Ian’s name unnecessarily.

Keanu was already flipping through the files, and Reuben was on the phone, organising the check-ups, so Caroline opened the book.

But she was easily distracted.

Looking at Keanu, engrossed in his work, making notes on a piece of paper, leafing back through the files to check on things, she sensed the power of this man—as a man—to attract any woman he wanted. It wasn’t simply good looks and a stunning physique, but there was a suggestion of a strong sexuality—maybe more than a suggestion—woven about him like a spider’s web.

And she was caught in it.

The memories of their childhood together were strong and bitter-sweet given how it had ended, but this was something different.

‘Aaron Anapou, ma’am.’

Jerked out of her thoughts by the deep voice, she looked up to see a dust-smeared giant standing in front of her.

‘Ah! Hi! Actually, Keanu’s doing the checks. I’m Caroline—I’m the nurse.’

She stood up and held out her hand, which he took gingerly.

‘You should have gloves on, ma’am,’ he said quietly.

‘But then I might miss a little gold dust sticking to my fingers.’

Aware that she’d already held up things for too long, she waved him along the table towards Keanu, who already had the first card in front of him.

Reuben had helpfully laid out the medical implements between the two of them—a stethoscope, ear thermometer and covers, and a lung capacity machine. So what did she do? Act as welcoming committee? Wait for orders?

Behind her desk Reuben had also opened the doors on what looked like a well-stocked medical cabinet.

Maybe she did the dressings.

But, in the meantime, there was the accident book to go through. She looked at the recent pages, then flipped back, interested to see if there were always so few accidents recorded.

It wasn’t hard to work out when the crushing and extracting operations had closed down as most of the reported accidents had been caused by some chance contact with some piece of the machinery.

In the background she heard Keanu chiding men for working in flip-flops instead of their steel-capped boots, listened to explanations of water not being pumped out, and her heart ached for the days when the mine had been a well-run and productive place.

‘If you’re done, you can give me a hand.’ Had Keanu guessed she’d been dreaming?

The next miner hadn’t tried to hide the fact he’d been working in flip-flops—they were bright green and still on his feet. The skin between his big toe and the second one, where the strap of the sandal rubbed, was raw and inflamed, and a visible cut on his left arm was also infected.

Caroline worked with Keanu now; he cleaned and treated wounds, handing out antibiotics, while she did the lung capacity tests and temperatures.

‘I’m surprised there are any antibiotics to give out,’ she said when there was a gap between the miners.

‘I keep the keys of the chest and no one but me can ever open it,’ Reuben said firmly. ‘I suppose it was too big for Mr Lockhart to take away and he couldn’t break the bolt, although I think he tried.’

Caroline sighed.

Her uncle had left a poisonous legacy behind him on what had once been an island paradise.

And, given her name, she was part of the poison.

‘We definitely have to close the mine.’ Keanu’s voice interrupted her dream of happier times, and she realised the parade of miners—a short parade—from the mine to the table had ceased. ‘It would be irresponsible not to do it.’

‘And that will damage the Lockhart name even more,’ Caroline muttered as shame for the trouble her uncle had caused made her cringe.

He touched her quickly on the shoulder. ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ he said, pulling the accident book from in front of her and checking the few notes she’d made.

‘Given the state of the mine, there’ve been remarkably few accidents,’ he said. ‘Unless, of course …’ he looked at Reuben ‘… you haven’t been recording them.’

Reuben’s indignant ‘Of course I have,’ was sincere enough to be believed, especially when he added, ‘But remember, not all the men are working. Only this one team at the moment.’

‘But even if there haven’t been many accidents, that doesn’t mean there won’t be more in future,’ Caroline said, seeing the sense in Keanu’s determination that the mine should close.

So what could she do?

Find out whatever she could?

‘Reuben, would you mind if I looked at the accounts and wages books?’

He looked taken aback—upset even.

‘I’m not checking up on you, but it would help if I could work out how much the miners are owed. I know Dad would want them all paid. Do you have the wages records on computer?’

‘It’s all in books, but I keep a copy on my laptop,’ Reuben told her, disappearing into the back of the office and returning with the little laptop, handing it over to her with a degree of reluctance.

‘We do have to close it down,’ she admitted to Keanu as they climbed back up the steep steps to the top of the plateau. She was clutching the laptop to her chest.

‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘but do you think the men will stop working just because we say so? I’ll phone your father—he’s the one to do it, and if he can’t come over, he can send someone from the Mines Department, someone who might carry some weight with the miners. They could come on Friday’s flight.’

Keanu got no answer to his common-sense suggestion. She’s plotting something, he realised as they climbed back up the steep steps to the top of the plateau.

He knew Caroline in this mood and more often than not whatever she was up to would be either rash or downright dangerous.

But he had worries enough of his own. The elders had placed their faith in him to save the livelihood of the island and the continuation of medical facilities.

‘Do we have to go straight back to the hospital or can we sit down with a coffee and work out what to do? I can try to get in touch with Dad,’ Caroline said as she led the way towards the house, as if assuming he would agree.

Keanu followed, but hesitated on the bottom step of the big house, his mind arguing with itself.

Of course he could go in—it was just a house, the place where he’d spent so much of his childhood.

Yet his feet were glued to the step.

Caro turned back.

‘You’re not coming? Do you think we should go back? Bessie would get us some lunch and we could have a talk.’

Then, as if they’d never been apart, she guessed what he was thinking, headed back down to where he stood, took his hand and gently eased him down onto the step, sitting close beside him, her arm around his shoulders.

‘Tell me,’ she said, and although she spoke softly, it was an order, and suddenly he needed to tell, as if talking about that day would help banish the memories.

He looked out over the island, down towards the sea surrounding it, green-blue and beautiful.

Peaceful …

‘I came home on an earlier flight. One kid had measles just before the holidays so they closed a week early. I didn’t tell Mum, wanting to surprise her.’

And hadn’t he surprised her! The memory of that ugly, desperate scene lived on in his nightmares. He concentrated on the view to block it out of his mind even now …

‘I walked up from the plane and into the house. I knew Mum would be in there—dusting or cleaning—she loved the house so much.’

Had Caro heard the break in his voice that her arm tightened around his shoulders?

‘They were in the living room, on the floor, on one of your grandma’s rugs, like animals.’

He turned to Caroline, needing to see her face, needing to see understanding there.

‘I thought he was raping her. I dragged him off, yelling at him, trying to punch him, and …’

‘Go on.’

The words were little more than a gentle whisper but now he’d gone this far he knew he had to finish.

‘He laughed!’ The words exploded out of him, his voice rising at remembered—and still lingering—anger. ‘He stood there, pulling up his shorts, buttoning his shirt, and laughed at me. “Do you think she didn’t want it?” he said. “Wasn’t begging for it? Go on, Helen, tell him how desperate you were to keep what was nothing more than an occasional kindness shag going.”’

‘Oh, Keanu! I can only imagine how you felt and your poor mother—’

‘I lost it, Caro! I went at him, fists flying, while Mum was covering herself and gathering clothes and telling me to stop, not that I did much good. At fifteen I was a fair size, but nothing like Ian’s weight. He eventually pushed me to the ground and told me to get out, both of us to get out. He’d ask the plane to wait so we could pack then be out of there.’

‘But it was your home, Keanu. It always had been. Grandma had promised that before I was even born!’ Caro hauled him to his feet and hugged him properly. ‘Anyway, after I arrived Helen was employed by Dad, not Ian.’

Keanu put his hands on her shoulders and eased her far enough apart to look into her face.

‘Ian’s words destroyed Mum. She refused to talk about it except to say she’d always known she wasn’t the only one. I realised then it had been going on for some time. But to humiliate her like that, in front of me—it was more than she could take! When we got back to the house in Cairns she phoned your father to say she wouldn’t be there to look after you during the holidays and that she’d retired. No other explanation no matter how often he phoned, even when he visited. With the admiration she had for your father, there was no way she could have told him about it. She just shut herself away from life, then only a few years later she was gone.’

Caro drew him close again, wrapping her arms around him, holding him tightly.

‘Oh, Keanu,’ she whispered, the words soft and warm against his neck. ‘At least now I understand why you deserted me. How could you have had anything to do with any Lockhart after Ian’s behaviour to your mother?’

Was it the release of telling her the story, of her finally knowing why he’d cut her off that made his arms move to enfold her?

He didn’t know—he only knew that he held her, clung to her, breathing in the very essence that was Caroline—his Caro. And like a sigh—a breath of wind—something shifted between them … an awareness, tension—

Attraction?

You’re married.

Probably.

He didn’t actually leap away from her embrace, but the space between them grew.

They were friends, but whatever this new emotion was, it hadn’t felt like friendship.

Had Caro felt it?

Were warning bells clanging in her head?

For once he had not the slightest idea of what she was thinking, but deep inside he knew that, whatever lay ahead, he couldn’t do anything to hurt her, not again, which meant not getting too involved until he knew he was free.

Something had obviously happened between her and Steve because she was back on the island and he could see she was hurting.

Abandoned again by someone she loved?

Wouldn’t he have to do that if his divorce didn’t go through?

Get out of here and sort it out!

‘You have lunch here,’ he said, aiming for sounding calm and composed—sensible—although his whole body churned with emotion. ‘I’ll go back to the hospital and talk to Sam. He’ll know the best way to close down the mine.’

Caroline nodded. ‘Yes, good idea.’

Perhaps she hadn’t felt what he’d felt when they’d hugged, because she’d never sounded more together—practical, professional—putting the past firmly behind her.

But then, she’d always been a superb actress, having grown adept at hiding her feelings.

Though usually not from him …