The Man She Could Never Forget

So she wasn’t the only one feeling this was beyond bizarre.

‘Okay, let it down,’ he said, the words another order.

Maybe she’d been wrong about the confusion.

Only then he added, ‘Please,’ and suddenly he was her old Keanu again, teasing her, almost smiling.

And the confusion that caused made her wish Jill hadn’t taken off again so quickly. She had come here for peace and quiet, to heal after the humiliation of realising the man she’d thought had loved her had only been interested in her family money.

What was left of it.

‘Here’s a key.’

Keanu’s fingers touched hers, and electricity jolted through her bones, shocking her in more ways than one. ‘You’ll find phials of local anaesthetic in the cupboard marked B, second shelf. Bring two—no, he’s a big guy, maybe three—and you’ll see syringes in there as well. Antiseptic, dressings and swabs are in the cupboard next to that one—it’s not locked. Get whatever you think we’ll need. I’m off to find a saw.’

The patient gave a shriek of protest but Keanu was already out of the room.

Slipping automatically into nurse mode, Caroline smiled as she unlocked the cupboard and found all she needed.

‘He’s not going to cut off your foot,’ she reassured the man as she set up a tray on a trolley and rolled it over to the examination table. ‘Hospitals have all manners of saws. We use diamond-tipped ones to cut through plaster when it has to come off, and we use adapted electric saws and drills in knee and hip replacement, though not here, of course. I’d say he’s going to numb your leg from the calf down, then cut through the nail between your flip-flop and the wood. It’s easier to pull a nail out of rubber and flesh than it is out of wood.’

Their patient didn’t seem all that reassured, but Caroline, who’d found where the paperwork was kept, distracted him with questions about his name, age, address, any medication he was on, and, because she couldn’t resist it, what he was doing on the island.

‘Doing up the little places down on the flat,’ was the reply, which came as Keanu returned with a small battery-powered saw and a portable X-ray machine.

‘The research station,’ he said, before Caroline could ask the patient what little places.

‘They’re doing up the research station when there’s not enough money to keep the hospital running properly?’

The indignation in her voice must have been mirrored on her face, for Keanu said a curt, ‘Later,’ and turned his full attention to his patient.

After numbing the lower leg—Caroline being careful not to let her fingers touch Keanu’s as she handed him syringes and phials—he explained to the patient what he intended doing.

‘Nurse already told me that,’ the man replied. ‘Just get on with it.’

Asking Caroline to hold the wood steady, Keanu eased it as far as it would go from the flip-flop then bent closer to see what he was doing, so his head, the back of it, blocked Caroline’s view. Not that she’d have seen much of the work, her eyes focussed on the little scar that ran along his hairline, the result of a long-ago exercise on her part to shave off all his hair with her grandfather’s cut-throat razor.

Fortunately he must have been able to cut straight through the little bar of the nail, for he straightened before she could be further lost in memories.

Caroline dropped the wood into a trash bin and returned to find Keanu setting up a portable X-ray machine.

‘We need to know if the nail’s gone through bone,’ he explained, helping her get back into nurse mode. ‘And the picture should tell us if it’s in a position that would have caused tendon damage.’

‘Why does that make a difference?’ Now he was pain-free—if only temporarily—the patient was becoming impatient.

‘It makes the difference between pulling it out and cutting it out.’

‘No cutting, just yank the damn thing out,’ the patient said, but Keanu ignored him, going quietly on with the job of setting up the head of the unit above the man’s foot.

Intrigued by the procedure—and definitely in nurse mode—Caroline had to ask.

‘I thought the hospital had a designated radiography room,’ she said, remembering protocols at the hospital where she’d worked that suggested wherever possible X-rays be carried out in that area, although the portables had many uses.

Keanu glanced up at her, his face once again unreadable.

‘There is but I doubt you and I could lift him onto the table and with his leg already numb he’s likely to fall if he tries to help us.’

Which puts me neatly back in my place, Caroline thought.

‘Move back!’

Ignoring the peremptory tone, she stepped the obligatory two metres back from the head of the machine, watched Keanu don a lead apron—so protocols were observed here—and take shots from several angles.

That done, he wheeled the machine to the corner of the room, hung his apron over a convenient chair and checked the results on a computer screen.

‘Come and look at this. What do you think?’

Assuming he was talking to her, not the immobile patient, she moved over to stand beside him—beside Keanu, who had been the single most important person in the world for her for the first thirteen years of her life. Important because, unlike her father, or even Christopher, he’d always been there for her—her best friend and constant companion.

Until he’d disappeared.

But this Keanu …

It was beyond weird.

Spooky.

And, oh, so painful …

‘Well?’ he demanded, and she forgot about the way Keanu was affecting her and concentrated on the images.

‘By some miracle it’s slipped between two metatarsals and though it’s probably hit some ligament or tendon, because the bones are intact it shouldn’t impact on the movement of the foot too much.’

‘And don’t look at me like that,’ she muttered at him, after he’d shot yet another questioning glance her way. ‘I am a trained nurse, and have been a shift supervisor in the ER at Canterbury Hospital.’

‘I don’t know how you found the time,’ he said as he headed back to the patient.

She was about to demand what the hell he’d meant by that when she realised this was hardly the time or place to be having an argument with this man she didn’t know.

Her friend had been a boy—was that the difference?

It certainly was part of it given the way her body was reacting to the slightest accidental touch …

‘Okay, so now I need you to swab all around the nail then hold his foot while I try to yank the nail out. I’d prefer not to have to cut it out.’

Caroline put on new gloves, cleaned the areas above and beneath the foot, changed gloves again and got a firm grasp of the man’s foot, ready to put all her weight into the task of holding on if the nail proved resistant.

But, no, it slid out easily, and as the wound was bleeding quite freely now, it was possible the risk of infection had been limited.