to a place out of town-someone’s rolled a tractor-and the fleet’s in.’
‘The fleet’s in?’
‘The weather’s blowing a south-westerly,’ Claire explained, ‘That means all the fishing boats have headed back to town. Most of these guys spend three or four weeks at sea at a time and they come up with all sorts of nasties. Tropical waters. Heat. A scratch becomes septic. And they spend their spare time on board dreaming up symptoms. Not only that, but while the weather’s bad these guys have all the time in the world to sit round here waiting for a consultation. If I tell them to come back in the morning I’ll be wasting my breath. Alistair will have his hands full until midnight.’
Sarah stared round at the waiting room, stunned. And guilty. Alistair had taken time out he could ill afford this morning, and she knew half the reason he’d come was that he was concerned about Barry’s behaviour. Which rightly was Sarah’s responsibility.
She remembered the way he’d cleared the path for her on the way back and how he’d held her as she’d leaned into the plane. He’d made her work easier. Maybe she could do the same. She was a trained doctor, after all.
‘Can I help?’ she said-tentatively-and Claire grinned as if Sarah had just walked straight into a baited trap.
‘You surely can. I thought you’d never ask. Can you treat a septic finger?’
‘I really enjoy a good septic finger,’ Sarah told her, discovering she was grinning in response. The nurse’s cheerful good humour was infectious. ‘A nice little bit of ooze-it’s principally why I became a doctor.’
Claire’s smile broadened. ‘And then you became a forensic pathologist-that’d give you more ooze that even I want to think about.’
They were both smiling now. Claire was a woman in her early thirties-maybe a little older than Sarah, but not much. She was a squat little woman who looked competent and funny and…nice. She could be a friend, Sarah thought, and then she thought suddenly and irrationally that friendship was something she should work on. It was something that was lacking in her life. She didn’t let people close. Not since Grant…
No. Not since Grant. So maybe friendship wasn’t a good idea. She needed to move on.
‘Show me a room with equipment and a prescription pad,’ she said, breaking the moment with resolution. ‘Ooze, eh? Let me at them.’
‘Okay.’ Claire turned Sarah round so she was facing twenty fishermen. ‘Right, you guys, here’s your new lady doctor. Sarah’s not only competent but she’s also a pathologist. That means she knows how to cut up bodies. So no one had better give her any cheek. Sarah, don’t take anything from any one of them-if they step one inch out of line offer them a place on your mortuary slab. Let’s go.’
She worked solidly for three hours. Claire ushered patients in one after the other, and, to her astonishment, Sarah found she was enjoying herself immensely.
This was real medicine. It was medicine she hadn’t practised for five years, and even then she’d started her initial training as a paediatrician in a city hospital. Paediatrics wasn’t this sort of medicine.
The fishing crews were rough, tough, but underneath as worried as mothers with newborns about their myriad ills. Most of them had been at sea for weeks, and in those circumstances-three weeks of thinking of nothing but sea and fish-minor complaints had a habit of growing in the mind if not in reality. A freckle on a forearm became a melanoma. A little deafness in one ear became a tumour. Sarah found most of her time was spent in reassurance. And apart from that, there were the festering sores that had been neglected for too long…
She worked through, being given an inquisition by each patient.
After Claire’s good-natured injunction to behave with respect, they treated her with caution-but also with immense curiosity. ‘How can you possibly be a forensic pathologist? We’ve seen what they do on telly. Why would anyone as pretty as you want to do that stuff?’
This community was heavily male-oriented. Single women were scarce as hen’s teeth, and she was propositioned by at least five fishermen. She ended up chuckling as she saw out the last fisherman, listening to his impassioned plea to go out with him that night as she tried to close the door behind him.
‘Yeah, I know we haven’t got any restaurants, but I know this great secluded little cove, and I’ll bring lobster and as much beer as we can drink.’
She grinned at him and declined, and was still laughing when she turned to find Alistair watching her, an expression of stunned incredulity on his face.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
She didn’t stop smiling. ‘I suspect I’m protecting my virtue. If he hasn’t got more than lobster and beer on his mind then I’m a monkey’s uncle.’
‘I mean-’ he wasn’t smiling ‘-seeing my patients.’
‘It’s unethical, isn’t it?’ she agreed. ‘But Claire said you were snowed under. You needn’t worry. The people I saw only had minor worries. Anything that I was the least concerned about I saved for you, or told them to come back in the morning for a repeat consultation with a real doctor. For instance you.’
‘Thank you very much,’ he said dryly, and her smile faded.
‘Well, I think you
‘While you should be out solving crime?’
‘As far as I know there’s no crime to solve. There are missing people I’m doing my best for, but there’s not a lot I can do but wait.’
‘And do nothing?’
‘And do your work.’ Her anger was building.
‘I didn’t ask you-’
‘I offered. I’m not incompetent, Alistair. I’m not sure why you came with me this morning, but-’
‘I’m not suggesting you’re incompetent, either.’
‘Then let’s leave it,’ she snapped. ‘We’re both competent doctors. You help me and I’ll help you. That’s fair.’
‘I don’t need help.’
‘No? You could be just starting clinic now and coping with everything else all on your own. If I was anyone else but me would you be so ungracious?’
He hesitated. Then met her gaze square-on. ‘No,’ he admitted.
‘Then why-’
‘There’s too much history, Sarah. What you did…’
She closed her eyes. What she did… It hung over her like a great black fog. An admission of guilt she could never escape.
When she opened her eyes Alistair’s expression had changed. ‘Sarah…’ His brows had snapped down as if he was suddenly uncertain. That was a change, she thought bleakly. The black cap of judgement had been replaced by something that had just the faintest shade of grey about it.
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. What this man thought of her was totally immaterial.
‘I need to go through my notes with you,’ she told him.
‘Why?’
‘If there’s something you disagree with then you can dash out and change the medication before I kill someone else.’
And Alistair’s face changed yet again. Acknowledging the pain she had no hope of disguising.
‘You’ve lived with the guilt of Grant’s death for six years,’ he said softly, and she didn’t say anything at all. Nothing. There was nothing to say.
If she’d wanted to say something then the time to do that had been six years ago, she acknowledged bleakly. Not now. Not now, when it was far, far too late to change a thing.
‘Sarah, I-’
‘Leave it,’ she said, more roughly than she’d intended. ‘Alistair, we agreed to shelve it. We need to work together for the next couple of days, until we sort this out, and then we can move on. We don’t have to see each other again after this. But for now we need to be civil. The way I see it, the only way we can do that is if we avoid the subject completely.’
‘There are unresolved issues-’
