you asking questions to prove your worth as a nurse or because you’re genuinely interested?’
The deliberate dig took her breath away but before she could get into a fierce, and probably very loud, argument with him, he added, ‘I’m sorry, that was unfair. I’m so damned mixed up right now.’
He sighed, dark eyes troubled, then touched her lightly on the shoulder.
‘The thing about Buruli is that it produces a toxin called mycolactone that destroys tissue. We have the patient on antibiotics but they are taking time to work, so we’re going to clean it up in the hope that we’ll kill off any myolactone spores.’
Caroline’s mind switched immediately to nurse mode. They’d need local anaesthesia, scalpels, dressings, dishes to take the affected skin to be disposed of in the incinerator.
And she had no idea where that was or, in fact, where any of the other things were kept. Instead of prowling around in the dark with Keanu last night, she should have been checking out the hospital.
She must have sighed, for Keanu said, ‘It’s okay, Mina will have everything set out for us.’
He was still reading her mind!
And, given some of the thoughts flashing through it, that could prove very dangerous—and downright embarrassing.
The ulcer was inflamed and looked incredibly painful, but the young man was stoic about it.
Keanu injected local anaesthetic into the tissue around the wound, then checked the equipment while he waited for it to take effect.
‘I want to keep as much of the skin intact as I can,’ Keanu said, speaking directly to her for the first time. ‘I’ll trim the edges and try to clean beneath it. I’ll need you to swab and use tweezers to clear the damaged bits as I cut.’
Caroline picked up a pair of forceps. The wound was long but reasonably narrow, and she could see what Keanu hoped to do. If he could clean out the wound he might be able to stretch the healthy skin enough to stitch it together.
‘If you stitch it up, would you leave a small drain in place?’
He glanced up from his delicate task of scraping and cutting and nodded. Seeing his eyes above the mask he was wearing made her heart jittery again.
This was ridiculous. She was a professional and any interaction between them, at least at the hospital, had to be just that—professional!
She selected another pair of forceps and lifted the skin towards which he was working.
He continued to cut, dropping some bits in one dish and some in a separate one.
Intrigued, she had to ask.
‘Why the two dishes?’
He glanced up at her with smiling eyes and any last remnants of hope about professionalism flew out the window—well, there was no window, but they disappeared. That smile re-awoke all the manifestations of attraction that she’d felt earlier, teasing along her nerves and activating all her senses.
‘I think I mentioned Sam’s a keen bacteriologist,’ Keanu was explaining while she told herself she was being ridiculous. ‘He’s never made Buruli a particular study but he’ll be interested to look at it under a microscope. The more people around the world peering at it the better chance we have of developing a defence against it. It’s not so bad here in the West Pacific but in some African and Asian nations when it’s not treated early it attacks the bone and causes deformities or even loss of limbs.’
‘I don’t want to lose my leg,’ their patient said firmly, and Keanu assured him that no such thing would happen.
‘We’ve got you onto the drugs early enough and once we clean it up you should be fine.’
Keanu was being professional—purely professional.
Until he looked up, caught her eye, and winked.
‘I think that’s it,’ he said, much to her relief. It had been an ‘I’m finished’ wink, nothing more.
Yet her reaction suggested that keeping things purely professional between herself and Keanu would prove impossible—from her side at least.
No way! She was stronger than that. And she had plenty to occupy her mind. The sooner she could get the back payments for the miners sorted out, and get the mine closed until it could be made safe, the better it would be for the hospital, and if she concentrated on that—
‘Okay, I’ll get Mina to do the dressing. I think we deserve a coffee.’
She glanced at the clock—they’d been standing over their patient for more than two hours and probably did deserve a coffee.
Well, she could do coffee …
Except he was smiling.
Possibly not.
‘What I need more than coffee is a tour of the hospital so I know where everything is and what patient is where. I’ll do the dressing then maybe Mina can show me around.’
Keanu could hardly argue, although he could alter the plan slightly.
‘Let’s stick with Mina doing the dressing and I’ll show you around instead.’
Caroline’s reaction wasn’t what you’d call ecstatic.
More resigned, if anything, but after being distracted by the telling of his mother’s distress and their departure from the island earlier, he was hoping to have a chat about the situation at the mine—to find out what she was thinking.
Because she was thinking of something she could do to help matters. He’d known her too long and too well not to have picked that up.
But he could hardly ask about it while touring the little hospital and introducing patients, so he’d have to find another time.
‘There are four wards, if you can call small two-bed spaces wards. Three on this side, with sliding doors that can close each of them off, although most of the time we leave it open for the breezes.’
He led her into the first of these, which, at the moment, had two patients, young men from another island who had taken the tide too lightly and had been injured when the boat they’d been in had overturned on the reef. ‘As you can see,’ Keanu pointed out, ‘one has a broken arm, the other an injured ankle, and both have quite bad coral grazes—’
‘Which can easily become infected if not treated promptly and continually.’
Keanu nodded. Anyone who grew up in the islands knew about infections from coral so he wasn’t going to give her any brownie points for that. But walking with her, talking with her—even professionally—was so distracting to his body he couldn’t help but resent her presence.
If she wasn’t here—
No, he was glad she was here.
She belonged here, just as he did. He just had to get
