LITMIR.BIZ

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over her. “Good morning. My name is Laka.”

      Susan smiled at the bright-faced young woman coming through the door. Hawaiian obviously, with long flowing black hair and a smile that nearly lit up the room, the woman glided over to the bed with the smooth flow of an ocean wave, and stopped short of it. “Doc Etana thought you might like some breakfast before you leave this morning, so I’m here to take your order.”

      “My breakfast order?” Like in room service? As nice as Ridgeway hospitals and clinics were, they didn’t offer room service.

      Laka nodded. “We can fix almost anything you’d like, but my suggestion would be pa’i palaoa hala kahiki.”

      They didn’t bill you for services here, and they catered your breakfast? She was growing to like this place more and more with each passing minute. “Pa’i pala…” She shook her head, shrugging. “I can’t pronounce it, but if that’s what you’d recommend, that’s what I’ll have,” she said cheerfully, amazed by how such a simple thing was brightening her morning.

      “It’s a pineapple cake,” Laka explained. “A recipe from Doc Etana’s mother.”

      “Who’s Doc Etana?” Susan asked. “I’ve heard that name mentioned before but I haven’t met him.”

      Laka looked surprised. “He’s Dr Makela. His first name is Etana, and that’s what most of us call him.”

      One name for the natives, one for the outsiders? Briefly, Susan wondered if Grant, or Etana, kept his lives separated that way, much the way she did. She was Susan Ridgeway, yet she was Susan Cantwell. “Is he around this morning?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant, even though she was anxious to see him.

      “He’s never around this early. He has his morning routines, but he’ll be here soon enough. If you’d like to see another doctor, Dr Anai is here from Honolulu today. Should I call him for you?”

      Susan shook her head. “No, that won’t be necessary.” It was a bit of a disappointment. She’d wanted to see Grant Makela before she left, to thank him and to…well, she didn’t know what else. It looked like that wasn’t to be the case, though. Maybe that was a good thing, because there was no medical need to see him. She simply wanted to, no reason. In a life like hers, there wasn’t room for any of that, so it didn’t matter, even though she felt a little let down.

      “Would you like to have breakfast on the lanai?” Laka asked. “Lovely view of the water from there. And the gardens, too.”

      The water. Another of her fantasies—her surfer Adonis. It was time for his morning visit to the beach, and she was missing it, which was a sure sign that matters were getting too far out of control with her. Come to paradise and forget all inhibitions, apparently. At least, that’s what she was doing. It was also what she was going to put a stop to this very instant. “The lanai sounds very nice,” she said, trying to mount resistance to fend off all these whimsies and wishes assaulting her. They were just another symptom of being overtired. The real reason she needed this holiday.

      “Your clothes are in the closet,” Laka said on her way out the door.

      Her clothes—a swimsuit, and a baggy shirt to cover it. That didn’t fit the occasion, but neither did the typical faded blue hospital gown she was wearing at the moment. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of surgical scrubs handy, would you?” she asked before the nurse got away.

      “We do, but no one around here ever uses them.”

      As Susan had noticed. Even the nurses wore Hawaiian-print dresses. “Well, if you could dust me off a pair…”

      Ten minutes later, Susan seated herself on a white-painted bamboo chair at a white-painted bamboo table, glad to be outside in the fresh air again. Relaxing like this and getting outside was something she had no time for at home. Her communing with nature usually consisted of a minute or two on the way from the car to the building or the building to the car. So now any time spent with Mother Nature was a treat.

      “Wonderful,” she said to Laka, after taking a sip of passion fruit juice and finally allowing herself to relax.

      “We specialize in wonderful here,” Grant said from behind her, as Laka walked away.

      A huge tingle crept up Susan’s spine as a slight smile crept to her lips. “What’s disappointing is that I may have to leave here, cut short my holiday and return to work,” she replied, trying to be cautious about her galloping shivers lest she did something else to draw his attention to the goose bumps rising on her arms.

      “On the mainland?” Grant stepped out from behind the hibiscus and stopped directly in front of the table. He looked fresh from the shower…wet hair glistening in the sun, shirt open a few buttons down and a bare chest with a few lingering droplets of water. She caught herself staring openly, and shifted her gaze to her glass of juice, grabbing it in both her hands just to steady herself.

      “Actually, I’ll be in Honolulu for a few weeks. On business. And I may get straight to that and skip the last of my holiday. There doesn’t seem to be much point in it now.” That much was true. There didn’t seem to be reason any more. Her heart for it was gone.

      “You mentioned you were an administrator—is that for a clinic or medical practice?”

      She shook her head. “I…um…I work for a company in Dallas that buys struggling medical facilities and brings them back up to standard. I oversee medical operations, but more from an administrative perspective.”

      “That wouldn’t be Ridgeway Medical, would it?” he snapped, his friendly expression turning into dark thunder.

      She looked up at him, saw the deep frown on his face signal the change in his mood. “You’ve heard of us?”

      “Heard of you? I’ve done nothing but hate you for the past six weeks. You’ve made my life pure hell ever since I knew that you existed.” His words were angry, yet his voice was controlled and quiet.

      That took her aback. Kahawaii Clinic wasn’t on her current acquisitions list. She was sure of that. So what was this about? “Why? What have we ever done to you?” she asked, trying to tamp down the surge in her own temper. No need to fight him when she didn’t know what it was about.

      “Other than buying the clinic—what I hoped would be my clinic—and changing everything we’re about?”

      “But we’re not! Yes, we’re in the process of a nice deal on Oahu, but I know what properties we’re looking at and this isn’t one of them.” It would be an ideal place for one of their clinics, she had to admit, but the Kahawaii name wasn’t on the list.

      “The hell it isn’t! Mrs Kahawaii is in negotiations now, and she’s indicated to me that she intends on signing the deal within the next couple of weeks, if I can’t come up with a way to make a deal of my own. And she’s signing with Ridgeway Medical.”

      “Kahawaii Clinic?” she asked, clearly perplexed.

      “Officially, it’s Hawaii North Shore Clinic, which we renamed it unofficially after its founder when he died.”

      That was a name she recognized. Susan sucked in an acute breath and immediately went on the defensive. “What’s wrong with Ridgeway Medical?” she asked. “We upgrade medical care in areas where it’s inadequate, and it’s good medical care. We have excellent standards. We keep hospital doors open that would otherwise close, depriving a community of medical care, and we equip small clinics like this with the best medical technology money can buy. What’s wrong with that?”

      “You run roughshod over small clinics like this, forcing on them a standard that doesn’t fit. You don’t take into consideration the individual communities, and the people living there…what they need, what they want, what they’ll accept. Your emergency doctors won’t accept a haircut from a patient who can’t pay in money but who has too much pride to take charity, and I doubt that any of your patients love their clinic

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