was no need for you to come up, I just had to wash and put on a clean top—it was dusty down there.’
Keanu nodded, just that, a nod, the story he’d shared with her like a glass wall between them.
Or had it been the hug?
Whatever, he’d turned away and started back towards the hospital, pausing only to explain, ‘Hettie’s done two trips the last two days so she’s taking a break, but the patient with the Buruli ulcer needs the skin around it debrided and the wound cleaned, and Anahera has her hands full with the other patients.’
Other patients?
Caroline realised with a start how little she knew about the hospital and what was going on there. She was a nurse, and the patients should be her first concern, not worrying how to pay the money owed to the miners.
She followed Keanu down the path, ignoring the hitch in her breathing at the breadth of his shoulders and the way his hair curled against the nape of his neck, catching up with him to ask, ‘Do we use the treatment room where I first saw him or the operating theatre?
‘He doesn’t need a full anaesthetic, just locals around the wound, but the theatre is more sterile so we’ll do it there.’
Caught up in what lay ahead, Caroline set aside the disturbances Keanu’s presence was causing and concentrated on the case.
‘Are we using the theatre because the ulcer bacteria are easily transmitted?’
Keanu shook his head.
‘We’ve no idea how it’s transmitted, although the World Health Organization has teams of people in various places working on it. Using the theatre is a safeguard, nothing more.’
‘And debriding tissue?’
He turned to look at her as they reached the hospital.
‘Are 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
