Читать книгу Love Islands: Summer Kisses - Joanna Neil - Страница 15

RACHEL STRETCHED OUT on the sun lounger and wiggled her toes, the only part of her currently in the sun. The last few days had been odd. After the hiccup on the first day and Darius’s minor injuries on the challenge, things had pretty much been how Lewis had promised. A few hours’ work every day followed by hours and hours to kill. That would be fine if they were staying at a luxury resort, or in the middle of a city. Instead, they were on an island with a distinct lack of facilities and where the only entertainment was the Z-list celebrities. The days seemed longer than ever.

The challenges had been going well. Frank, the sportsman, had aced the diving challenge around the coral reef without managing to do himself any damage. The next challenge had been to scale a thirty-foot tree to reach a fake bird’s-nest. Billy X, the rapper, had proved surprisingly agile but Darius had obviously been annoyed that he’d not been voted for by the public.

His wound was gradually healing and the antibiotics seemed to have warded off any sign of infection. He still wasn’t looking any better though and Rachel had started to wonder if they should be monitoring his weight. The celebrities had to prepare and cook their own food over a campfire and, even though there weren’t excessive amounts of food, there was still enough to keep them sustained. Maybe Nathan was right—maybe there was something else to worry about?

She shifted uncomfortably on the sun lounger. If Darius’s non-Hodgkin’s relapsed he would be in big trouble. He had already relapsed twice. Each treatment plan had been more intense than the one before. She knew firsthand exactly what these treatment plans involved. He wouldn’t be able to keep his illness a secret much longer.

She heard muffled voices up in the trees around her. The crew were gossiping again. She smiled. They were a great bunch but sometimes it was like being trapped on an island with a bunch of teenage girls.

Thankfully, no one seemed to have picked up on the tension between her and Nathan. Or, if they had, she hadn’t heard anyone mention it.

Ron caught her eye as he walked slowly towards the medical centre. Rachel had asked him to come in twice in as many days and she was glad he’d finally showed up. Nathan was on duty and would check him over.

As he reached out his hand towards the door he winced. His face was bright red. He almost looked as though he could burst.

She hesitated for a few seconds. Nathan was an experienced A & E doctor. He could handle this—she knew he could. If she went in now, he might be resentful of her interference.

But the expression on Ron’s face couldn’t let her sit there much longer. She sat up and dug her toes into the sand for a second as she reached underneath the lounger for her sandals. She wasn’t getting much of a tan anyway. She was too worried that if she took her sundress off and just wore her bikini people might ask questions about her scar.

She wasn’t normally self-conscious and if Nathan hadn’t been on the island she would have worn her bikini without a second thought. But suddenly she was wishing she had a schoolgirl-style swimsuit in her backpack—one that covered all parts of her back and front. It might not be stylish but would stop any awkward questions.

She shook the sand from her feet and pushed them into her sandals. Ron. That was who she needed to concentrate on now. It was time to stop fretting about the future and put her professional head back into place.

Nathan was feeling restless. The last few nights he hadn’t been able to sleep. Lying in a cabin with only two thin walls separating him and Rachel was driving him crazy. Every time he heard the shower running he imagined her soaping her smooth skin under the spluttering water. He imagined the water running in rivulets down her straight spine, in long lines down to her painted pink toes.

The pink toes had been haunting him. It was practically the only part of her skin that could freely be seen. Unlike the rest of the crew on the island, Rachel had kept herself well covered up. T-shirts and long shorts coupled with socks and hiking boots were the flavour of the day. Even in the evening she wore long pants and long-sleeved T-shirts. The only part visible were her toes.

All his memories of nights with Rachel had revolved around short satin nightdresses and shoestring straps. There certainly hadn’t been a lack of skin.

And it certainly wasn’t helping his male libido. His imagination was currently working overtime. He needed to find himself a distraction, a hobby. But finding something else to do on this island was proving harder than he’d thought.

He’d put a call through to Len to see what his plans were for later. Maybe a hike around the island would help him think about other things.

Nathan was just replacing his phone when the door opened. Ron walked in, panting heavily, with a strange expression on his face and his signature sweat marks on his grey T-shirt.

He really didn’t look great. His face was highly coloured with beads of sweat on his brow. Nathan stood up quickly and helped him over to the examination trolley, lifting his legs up onto it and helping him to rest back.

He could hear Ron rasping for breath so he switched on the monitoring equipment, connected it and pulled an oxygen mask over Ron’s face.

‘How long have you been feeling unwell?’

‘Just … today,’ Ron wheezed.

The blood pressure cuff started to inflate. ‘Ron, are you having any chest pain?’

Ron frowned. ‘Not really. Well … maybe a little.’

Great. He’d suspected Ron wasn’t feeling great but he hadn’t responded to any of Nathan’s invitations to be checked over. Right now, he had heart attack written all over him.

Nathan looked at the reading on the monitor and opened the drug cabinet, taking out an aspirin. First line treatment for an MI. Actually—the only treatment they had on this island. Not ideal. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry. ‘Here, take this.’ He handed Ron the tablet and a glass of water.

‘Not really pain.’ Ron continued. ‘Just indigestion.’

‘Indigestion? How often?’

Ron thumped the glass of water back down; even taking a sip had been an effort. ‘Every day,’ he gasped.

Nathan raised his eyebrows. ‘Ever had problems with your blood pressure?’

Ron gave a nod.

‘Does your indigestion come on when you’re working?’

Another nod.

‘Does it ever go down your arm?’

Ron’s high colour started to pale. The oxygen was finally getting into his system and his heart rate was starting to steady.

‘How bad is your indigestion today?’

‘B … bad.’

‘Feels like something is pressing on your chest?’

Nathan stood at the side of the examination trolley. He watched the monitor closely. It gave a clear tracing of Ron’s heart rate. The PQRS waves were all visible. No ST elevation. ‘The good news is you’re not having a heart attack. The bad news is you’ve probably got angina—and had it for quite a while. I’m going to give you a spray under your tongue to see if that eases the tightness across your chest.’

It only took a second to administer the spray and another few minutes for it to take effect. Nathan frowned. In a way it was a relief that angina was Ron’s problem but on an island this would be difficult. Uncontrolled angina could easily lead to a heart attack. Ron really needed to be reviewed by a cardiologist. Chances were, an angiogram would reveal blocked arteries that would need to be stented and cleared. He could just imagine how Ron would take the news. But keeping him here would be dangerous. They didn’t have the equipment that would be needed if Ron did have a heart attack. Apart from aspirin, they didn’t have any clot-busting drugs.

‘Ron, I think you probably know this isn’t indigestion you’ve been having. It looks like angina. You need a twelve-lead ECG, a cardiac echo and an angiogram—none of which we can do here.’

Ron waved his hand. ‘I can get all that when we get back to the mainland. I’ll be fine until then.’

Nathan sat down next to the examination trolley. ‘It’s too big a risk. Tell the truth, Ron; you’re having angina every time you exert yourself.’ He nodded at the monitor. ‘Your blood pressure is too high and you’re constantly out of breath. Your heart is working too hard because the blood vessels aren’t clear. You need to see a cardiologist.’

Ron shook his head. ‘Forget it. I’ll be fine.’

‘No, you won’t.’ Nathan turned at the voice. Rachel was standing at the doorway, wearing her trademark pink. This time it wasn’t a T-shirt and long shorts. This time it was a pink summer dress. She must have been down on the beach. His eyes went immediately to her painted toenails, visible in her flat jewelled sandals.

She walked over next to the trolley and put her hand in Ron’s. He met her gaze immediately. Rachel had the people-person touch. In A & E you rarely got a chance to form any kind of a relationship with your patients. Medical physicians were different. They frequently saw their patients year on year.

‘Ron, it’s time to look after yourself. This really can’t wait. Tell me honestly—how long have you been having these symptoms?’

Ron hesitated. His breathing had gradually improved. ‘A few months.’

‘Have you seen anyone about this?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve just kept taking my blood pressure tablets.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I did think it was indigestion.’ He pulled a pack of a well-known brand of antacids from his pocket. ‘I’ve been going through half a packet of these a day.’

Nathan could tell that Rachel was hiding a wince behind her smile. ‘If your symptoms have been getting worse then it’s definitely time for some investigations. We don’t need to call a medevac to get you off the island, but we can arrange for you to go back by seaplane. We can arrange that for tomorrow. In the meantime I’ll give you a spray and some instructions on how to use it. I don’t want you going back to work. I want you to rest.’

Nathan watched carefully. For some reason Ron seemed to relate better to Rachel’s instructions than his. She had a gift for talking to patients. Her tone was firm but friendly. He liked it.

His time working for Doctors Without Borders had been fraught. There had hardly been any time for conversations like this. As soon as he finished patching one patient—he was on to the next. There was barely time to think, let alone speak.

He sucked in a breath for a second. Something else had just struck him. He’d spent five years working with people, but not getting close—never staying in one place long enough to form true relationships. That thought started to chip away at his brain as he watched Rachel empathise and relate to Ron.

Rachel squeezed Ron’s hand. ‘Stay here for the next few hours, then I’ll take you down to the canteen for dinner. We can have a further talk about things then.’

It was almost as if a giant weight had been lifted from Ron’s shoulders. He sighed and rested back on the examination trolley, letting his eyes close. ‘Dinner with a beautiful woman,’ he muttered. ‘I’d be a fool to say no.’

Rachel shot Nathan a smile—a smile that sent a little jolt all the way down his body. Maybe it was her humanity that was drawing him in. Even though he knew better, he’d spent the last few years labelling Rachel as heartless in his head. It had been easier to do that—because he’d never been able to get his head around the way she’d walked away and left him and Charlie.

He’d known her for seven years. The first few years of university they hadn’t dated—just casually flirted. The five years after that, they’d been inseparable. Rachel had never seemed heartless to him. That just wasn’t her. That wasn’t how she worked. No one could spend five years with someone and not know them. It just wasn’t possible to put on a good enough act to hide all your flaws and character traits for that long. He did know her. Or at least he had known her.

So why had she done something so out of character? What on earth had happened?

Their eyes locked. Chocolate-brown, framed with dark lashes, her eyes had always been one of his favourite parts of her. Her tan was deepening slightly after a few days on the island. Her dark hair was pulled up at either side of her face and tied in a rumpled kind of knot, the rest sitting on her shoulders. And the pink sundress covered everything, just giving enough of a hint of the soft curves that lay underneath. Pretty as a picture. Those were the words he’d always used for Rachel in his head. And no matter how angry he’d been with her—still was with her—some things were just buried too deep. The underlying frustration and resentment was still there.

No one had hurt him like Rachel had. What she’d done was unforgivable. But now he was in her company again he kept having little flashes of the good stuff. The way she tilted back her head and laughed when she was joking with some of the crew. The way she frequently reached out and touched someone when she was talking to them. The way that every now and then she drifted off, thinking about something else. All sparked waves of memories for Nathan. Memories of good times … memories of better times. Five years of shared memories.

Why had she walked away?

She wiggled her toes, the sand from the beach obviously caught between them. He dragged his eyes away from her painted toes and stood up. ‘I’ll stay with Ron for the next few hours. Come back and take over at dinner time.’

She gave a nod and glanced around the cabin. ‘I promised Tallie I’d get her some petroleum jelly for her dry skin. She’s trying to ward off an eczema flare-up. Do you know where it is?’

He looked up from Ron’s notes and pushed the stool towards her. ‘There’s not enough storage in here. I think it’s at the top of the cupboard over there.’

‘Great, thanks.’ She dragged the stool over to the counter and climbed on top to open the cupboards. Nathan glanced at Ron. Thankfully, his eyes were still closed and he wasn’t watching Nathan fix on Rachel’s bare legs and backside as she rummaged through the cupboard. The corners of his mouth turned upwards. Most of the prescribed medicines were easily accessible but the more routine things had to be packed away wherever there was space.

After a few minutes she finally found what she was looking for. ‘Here it is.’ She bent down and placed the container on the counter at her feet, ready to jump back down. But her rummaging had dislodged a few of the precariously stacked items in the cupboard and, as she looked back up, a few packages of bandages tumbled from the cupboard, bouncing all around her. It was pure instinct. As the items started to fall, Rachel lifted her hands, crouched down and curled into a ball.

The movement made her dress ride up, and not just a little. She was wearing a bikini under her dress—pink, of course. He’d already noticed the straps tied around her neck. But this time he got a flash of something else. The bright pink bikini bottoms covered some, but not all, parts of her. She was quick to grab at her dress and pull it back down, colour flooding into her cheeks.

She spun around as he got to his feet to come over and help. She lifted her hands quickly. ‘Oops. Bit of a disaster.’ She couldn’t meet his gaze as she jumped down from the stool and made a grab for the wrapped bandages that had landed all around her. He bent to help, their hands brushing.

He saw her gulp as for a split second he caught her gaze. ‘Just as well you’ve seen it all before,’ she said quickly.

He didn’t reply. He couldn’t. He was still crouching down as she grabbed some of the bandages and set them on the counter. ‘I’ll let you get the rest. I’ll take this to Tallie and be back in a few hours.’

She rushed towards the door, still talking nervously as she made a quick exit. Nathan still hadn’t moved. He sucked in a deep breath as he reached for the last few bandages.

He couldn’t be sure—he just couldn’t be sure. But he’d seen more than enough battle scars in his time. He’d definitely seen something. But what it was he just couldn’t fathom.

He’d seen Rachel’s bare body a thousand times. He knew every contour of her body, every blemish, every mark. What he didn’t know was the flash of a surgical scar just above her right hip. He’d no idea how far it went; she’d pulled her dress back down much too quickly. And it had only been the tiniest flash. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was reading too much into something.

He closed his eyes for a second, trying to visualise what he’d just seen. It wasn’t ragged; it was clean. It couldn’t be from an accident. It had to be deliberate. It had to be surgical.

Rachel had always been in perfect health. She still looked in perfect health today. So where on earth had the scar come from and what was it?