Nurse Iris O'Neal Medical Centre on Virgin Gorda. Photo: GIS/File

The building was there. Lights on. But when they got to the door... a security guard. No doctor. No nurse. Closed. He died the next day.

I don't know how to make sense of that. The clinic opened in 2020. They had the ribbon-cutting. They made the speeches. And the second floor? Never opened. Six years now. Six years that floor sat empty while the roof leaked and the water came through.

Now they have a tent out there. A tent. That's where Virgin Gorda goes for healthcare now.

Someone told me last week that not one elevator was working at the hospital. Not one. I think about the elderly. The ones who can't take stairs. What are they supposed to do? The emergency room keeps running out of supplies. Our nurses leave for Cayman - they pay nearly double what we offer here. Can you blame them? Ninety per cent of the nurses in our system now are from overseas. Our own people can't afford to stay.

An oncologist - one doctor in private practice - diagnosed almost 400 cancer cases in four years. Four years. In a place this small, that should alarm somebody. When they asked if the government would study why... the answer was no. No study planned. I don't understand that. I really don't.

They find money for things. They always do. Festival. Concerts. The things that feel good for a weekend. But Bucky is gone. And the clinic roof still leaks. And the elevators still don't work. And I'm tired of pretending this is normal.

I used to think that if we just waited, if we just trusted, things would get better. I don't know what I think anymore. But I know this - buildings don't save people.

Bucky's friends carried him to a building. The building was there. He still died.