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
