“I’m sure you will. Thank you.”
Pamela nodded, a quiet smile hovering on her lips. “Good job, Dr. Fleming.”
“You too, Mrs. Vandenberg.”
For a moment, the artifice of it all hovered in the air between them. The doctor and the librarian, both helping a patient. Then the sound of Fleur’s voice smashed all of that to smithereens. Fleur wasn’t just a patient to him, however many times he told himself so.
“Is your bag too heavy for you?” Ellie had been dragging her bag of books across the floor.
Ellie nodded, and Fleur bent toward her, hanging onto her crutch with one hand and taking the straps of the bag from Ellie’s hand to lift it off the floor. A small thing, done to help a child, but Rick couldn’t imagine Fleur doing it two days ago. They were getting somewhere.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE LAST COUPLE of days had wreaked a change. Fleur’s room at the clinic was no longer the tidy, anonymous place that it had been. Plans and drawings littered the bed, and piles of fabric, their colors and textures inviting touch, were stacked on the chest of drawers. Both Alex and Cody had noticed, and commented on it, but neither of them seemed to mind the mess. Fleur was taking a hold on her life again.
“I want to check on those exercises you’re doing today.” Rick made it a habit to oversee all his patients’ physio sessions from time to time. Seeing how a patient moved, how their bodies reacted to stress helped him to assess their injuries.
“Give me five... I just want to finish this, or it’ll all fall apart.” Fleur was running tacking stitches along a piece of silver-gray material.
“Okay.” Rick removed a bundle of fabric scraps from the chair and sat down.
“I’m not trying to get out of it... I’ll be along in a minute.”
“That’s all right, I know. You’re no longer my most awkward patient.”
She shot him a smile. “Really? Maybe I’ll have to try a bit harder.”
“Try all you like. Mr. Harrington’s got you beaten hands down.” Salty Harrington had been the hero of the hour when he’d taken his fishing boat out into a fierce storm on New Year’s Day to rescue staff and patients who had been stranded on the damaged ferry, which had become marooned on a rocky outcrop. He’d broken both major bones in one of his legs in the process and Rick reckoned that the iron determination he’d shown that day was also what made him the clinic’s most awkward patient.
“I guess I’m not much of a match for Young Salty...” She looked up from her stitching.
“Salty I get. Young...?” Most people called Salty Harrington Old Salty.
“Well, he was young when he first got the name. His father was Old Salty. My dad says that Old Salty Harrington was a force to be reckoned with.”
“Even saltier than his son?” Rick teased, settling back into his seat. Fleur had a million stories, about the island and everyone on it, and he was starting to enjoy hearing them.
“My dad says that Old Salty was a real terror. Young Salty’s a darling by comparison. What’s he done now?”
“He told me he sleeps with his eyes open, so there’s no need to wake him up when I’m talking to him.”
Fleur chuckled. “There probably isn’t. Sleeping with your eyes open isn’t such a bad thing when you’re at sea. I used to love Salty’s sea stories when I was a kid.”
“So does Ellie. Apparently he paid a visit to the daycare center the other day, and told them all a story about sea monsters.”
“The one where the crew danced and sang sea shanties, and it calmed the monster and he joined in? Because he was just lonely?” Fleur grinned, fastening off her tacking and carefully folding the fabric she was working on.
“Nothing quite so positive. I think everyone got eaten in this one.”
“Perhaps he’s easing them all in gently. Young Salty’s not so bad, you know...” She slid to the edge of the bed, reaching for her crutches. “You know the story about him? I think it’s rather sad.”
“No. What’s the story?” Rick was under no illusions that Fleur would probably tell him anyway.
“When Salty was young, he and a girl from the island were in love. Everyone used to say that he was the most romantic young man on the island.”
“Sounds improbable. But go on...”
“They had it all planned out. The Harringtons were a naval family and Salty was going to sign up and when he’d done his first year’s service they were going to get married. They wrote to each other every day, but then suddenly her letters stopped arriving. Salty never spoke about it when he returned, but he also never looked at another woman. Everyone said his heart had been broken.”