Read Chapter 25: The Nurse's Role

The first clear day after the storm brought a hard, bright light off the water. Freya stood at the end of the clinic's stone jetty with her hands in her jacket pockets, watching the supply ferry sit lop-sided in the harbour. Its engine housing was open like a split ribcage. She'd heard the mechanic's verdict from two dockhands on the way over: the shaft bearing was gone, and the replacement wouldn't arrive for ten days minimum.

Emma's regular supplies had been running thin for a week. Alistair had said as much at breakfast—his hand had hovered over the community board's notice, crossing out dates, adding question marks.

Freya turned away from the harbour to find Mairead standing on the jetty's edge, a plastic crate of saline bags at her feet. The nurse's face was flushed from the walk uphill. She was trying to lift the crate herself.

"Let me," Freya said, crossing the stones. She reached for the handles, and Mairead straightened, wincing.

"Have you the arms for this, lass?"

"I've hauled camera rigs across worse terrain than this hill." Freya hoisted the crate. It was heavier than she'd calculated, and she adjusted her grip quickly so Mairead didn't notice. "Where's this going?"

"Alistair's surgery stockroom. But this is only the first load." Mairead looked at the ferry, then back toward the clinic's steep track, and her shoulders dropped. "There'll be half a dozen more boxes below, and a cold-chain shipment gone warm if we don't manage it right."

Freya set the crate down. "Why wasn't this brought up before?"

"Because the ferry's been fine until now, and because I've been doing it myself for six years." Mairead's jaw tightened. "I can still manage."

"I'm not doubting that. But is there fuel in the clinic's RIB?"

Mairead blinked. "The rigid inflatable? It's been in the boathouse since last summer. Needs a service before it's anywhere near the water, and even then—"

"Can Alistair run it?"

"Alistair doesn't sail worth a damn." Mairead almost smiled. "He's a city boy like yourself, when it comes to the sea."

Freya looked at the water. The channel between the island and the mainland was about forty minutes by RIB on a calm day like this. She'd sat in this same water a hundred times over two years, waiting for a better angle of light to catch the lighthouse's rotation. She knew the rip tides along the north ridge. She knew the sandbar at low water.

"I can run it," she said. "I've spent enough hours in boats to know what I'm doing."

Mairead's expression shifted from surprise to something more careful. "You're offering to make the supply run?"

"Not one run. The regular one, until the ferry's fixed." Freya picked up the crate again. "I'm not filming anymore. I've got time, and it needs doing."

She carried the crate up the track without waiting for an answer. By the time she'd reached the clinic's back door, Mairead had caught up and taken the crate from her to see it stored properly. Freya wiped her hands on her jeans and went to find Alistair.

He was in the exam room, marking a chart in his careful, slanted writing. The same green jumper he'd worn the night of the storm. He'd trimmed his beard since then, close to the jaw, and it made him look less guarded about the mouth. But he didn't look up when she came in.

"The supply ferry's down," she said. "Ten days minimum."

"I know. I've rearranged prescriptions twice today." He capped his pen. "Mairead's already told me she'll manage."

"I'm going to run the boat."

That made him look up. Everything in her, the old filmmaker instinct, noted the micro-movements: the flinch in his jaw, the hard recalibration in his eyes. He set the chart down slowly.

"The clinic boat is older than your camera collection, and it hasn't been run in a year," he said. "You're a documentary maker, not a fisherman."

"I grew up on the Clyde. I've crewed for a skipper friend on herring runs for three summers. I can handle a RIB in protected water." She kept her voice even. "I checked the forecast. Flat sea for the next four days. It's a service, not an expedition."

Alistair didn't answer immediately. His hand moved to his watch, the habit she'd come to know as the way he bought himself time when emotions pushed too close. Outside, the sunlight picked up dust in the air between them.

"Mairead's been doing your ferrying and climbing and lifting for years on top of her nursing work," Freya said. "Let me take that weight."

"From guilt?" His voice came low. "Because you think if you help enough, I'll trust you fully again?"

"No." Freya felt a spark of frustration but swallowed it. She leaned against the doorframe, keeping space between them. "Because I'm here, and Mhairi Armstrong's insulin runs out in forty-eight hours, and the ferry won't run until the bearing arrives. It's about logistics, Alistair. It's about what the island needs."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he closed the chart and looked at her properly.

"The RIB's fuel lines need replacing. The battery's been disconnected since October. You'll need the mainland's chandlery to sign off on a safety inspection before I let you carry medical cargo."

"I can call the chandlery. I know a man there from the filming permit paperwork."

Alistair breathed out through his nose. It might have been a laugh if there'd been any humor in it. "You know a man everywhere, don't you?"

"I've gathered a few willing contacts in ten years of travelling. They're not much use if I can't deploy them somewhere that matters." She met his eye. "I'm not asking for your approval in some grand sense. I'm asking you to check the boat with me, because you'll be more comfortable knowing it's sea-worthy."

He took a step toward the door. She could see him deciding—the physical weight of the decision moving through his shoulders before he made it. Then he nodded once.

They spent the afternoon in the boathouse together. Freya cleaned the fuel filters while Alistair rewired the battery terminals, working in the quiet company of two people who had crossed most of the obvious bridges and were now learning the smaller ones. He passed her tools with care, and she tested each fitting out loud so he knew she understood what she was doing.

At low tide, they launched the boat into deeper water and ran it around the east bay. Freya let the engine idle, listening for the cough that would indicate trapped air. Alistair sat at the bow, hands loose on the safety rail, watching her with a kind of measuring respect that made her chest loosen just a fraction.

"Where'd you learn to handle a prop like that?" he asked across the noise of the water.

"Warren. The skipper." She pulled the throttle back to neutral. "He liked to say the boat knows what you're thinking, so think steady thoughts."

Alistair almost smiled. It didn't quite reach his eyes, but she saw it. "I might borrow that philosophy for the clinic."

They came back in at golden hour. The lighthouse keeper's beam had already begun its slow, patient rotation across the water, cutting a path toward them on the return.

The next morning, Freya packed the cold-chain box with insulin, antibiotics, a handful of prescriptions Mairead had flagged, and a spare battery for Eilidh's mobile heart monitor that they'd requisitioned from the mainland pharmacy. Mairead supervised the cargo stow like a ship's quartermaster. Morag came down to the jetty to watch the launch, arms folded, her expression unreadable.

"Never thought I'd see an ex-filmmaker running medicine for this island," Morag said.

"Never thought I'd find a reason to stay." Freya looped the mooring line. "People surprise you."

Morag snorted, but she stayed on the jetty until Freya was out of the harbour mouth and running through the channel toward the mainland.

The clinic was half way through a family who had driven down from the mainland only to miss the ferry, and the woman was asking Freya whether the clinic would take payment by card. Alistair fielded the collection of prescription notes and loaded the boat himself with Mailaid's help, checking off a list on a chipped clipboard.

Freya delivered the supplies to the harbour clinic, then stayed the length of the trip with the new pharmacist to watch her unpack and clear up an error in the delivery order that would have sent Emma's wound-care stock to the wrong island. It was small, unglamorous work. It had nothing to do with truth or career or the story that had taken her to this place.

But for the first time in weeks, Freya slept without dreaming of Edinburgh, and when she woke the sky was full of dawn and the lighthouse was still turning. On the edge of her phone, dark and dead, the history of Fingal's unanswered calls sat like a gravestone.

Then her phone buzzed. The clinic's landline had been set to forward to her mobile since she'd helped Mairead with the rota. She answered without checking.

"Is this Freya MacLeod?" A woman's voice, clipped, mainland accent. "I'm calling from the Scottish Coastal Care Trust. We need a medical boat operator with your credentials to make a one-off run to Innis Beag tomorrow—an emergency airway equipment delivery."

"I'm not officially accredited—"

"You'll be paid in full, expenses included. We have your name from Dr. MacGillivray's preliminary application for the hub grant." A pause. "He listed you as the project's dedicated transport coordinator."

Freya stared at the wall. Alistair had listed her. He'd put her name on the application.

"I'm your operator," she said. "What's the cargo?"

She took down the details, hung up, and sat in the stillness of the morning with the boat keys warm in her palm. The weight of the day settled over her—not heavy, but anchoring. She had been trying to prove she was of use. It seemed Alistair had decided she already was.