The Heroic Surgeon

by Olivia Gates

  Dante!

  She froze.

  Was her mind playing tricks on her? Was it summoning his image to rescue her from the frustration? She blinked and he remained there, motionless, his eyes on her. Only her. Fierce, full. Then he began to walk towards her, his steps slow, filled with his effortless grace. Illusion or not, she’d bolt towards him. Something anchored her. Emilio’s grasp.

  “Take him to the tent, OK? I’ll give you an hour, and then we’ll have to start setting up our operation.”

  Her dazed gaze went to Emilio’s face, his words replaying in her mind. How kind he was. How she wished it could have been different. It couldn’t. She’d pushed him away, afraid of caring, of losing. But she now knew she’d been able to only because he wasn’t the one. When it was, fear had had no say, no place. Giving her heart had demanded no safety nets, no conditions.

  Emilio smiled at her and she saw it. Something new. Acceptance, ease. And something gone. That sickness of longing that had long tainted his soul. God, please, let him be cured. Let him find the one who’ll be his own, for better or worse.

  She kissed his hard cheek. “Thank you—my friend!”

  He moved away and she swung round to Dante. Oh, Dante. Her indescribable Dante. How she loved him. Loved him. And he was here. Here.

  But why had she even assumed it was her right to run to him? Did she think he was here for her? He had ended it before it had started. He’d said when it would end, hadn’t bothered to say why. And she’d sworn she’d never cling to him. Never ask him for what he wouldn’t give in total freedom. And why would he want to give her anything? What was she but another woman from an underprivileged world whom he’d met in catastrophic circumstances and who’d given him fleeting sexual relief?

  The left side of her face throbbed with the woman’s blow. The rest of her followed suit, with futility.

  She stopped a foot from Dante, looked way up into his beloved face. He had another hideous scarf around his head and more lines to his face. Had to be the harsh sunlight.

  Throw yourself in his arms anyway. Beg him for anything, for any length of time.

  No. You’ve already done that once. It’s up to him now.

  “Dante…” She escaped his unfathomable gaze, made a gesture, preceded him into the tent. She turned to him the moment he followed, tears rising. Keep it light. “You always know how to make an entrance.”

  His eyes dropped to his feet, studied the large sneakers with great absorption. Then he exhaled. “Is that praise or criticism?”

  She huffed a failed attempt at a chuckle. “You’re no slouch in the exit department either. So, what brings you here? Passing through, looking for crises to defuse? You missed today’s crisis by mere minutes.” She brushed her hair aside, rubbed her face, winced.

  He took four storming steps towards her, stopped, his fists clenched. Then he gently removed her hand, replaced it with his, examining her. She saw murder in his eyes. It did have shape and color. “Who did this? One of the men here? Emilio? Tell me who!”

  “So you’ll beat the hell out of them?” She chuckled for real this time. He might not feel anything special for her, but he would still defend her to the death. Her shaved, fasting knight. “No, thank you, Dante. I just gave a hysterical speech about violence not being the answer.” It was no use. She was too weak. She pressed her cheek into his beloved palm. “And Emilio? How could you even think it? Emilio is my dearest friend. My longest lasting, too.”

  His fingers, gentle, soothing, ran over what she assumed was the outline of a spectacular bruise. “He’d like to be more than that.”

  “And he went into a rage and hit me because I’m not co-operating?”

  His eyes darted away, his jaw clenched. “You’re not?”

  She nuzzled his hand like a cat. “I already told you I never will. It’s just not possible.” His eyes swung to her, the fierceness rekindled, doubled with…uncertainty? About her words? No, she knew he’d always believe her—so was it about Emilio? “Oh, Dante, Emilio is one of the good guys. The best guys.” His eyes did that weird glowing thing again, fire in their depths. Jealous? Oh, please, let him be. She was self-indulgent enough to want him to be, however little, for whatever reason. She’d take his attention any way she could get it. “It was a woman, by the way. Contesting my right to be here after I’d killed fellow Badovnans. You’d probably upset them even more, being the Azernian national hero that you are.”

  “That is a concern I’ve discussed with camp leaders at length. They assured me no one here supports Molokai and his criminal methods and everyone is just thankful to have us here. Clearly not everyone is, though. Hopefully you dealt with your confrontation diplomatically?”

  “So you missed the part where I told you I hysterically lectured them?”

  And he laughed. Full and deep. Peal after peal of virile laughter. “Ah, Gulnar, you unpredictable bambola!”

  All her artificial lightness drained. It was just too painful.

  He took her fully in his arms, anxiety blazing from his eyes. “What is it? Are you in pain? Feeling dizzy? What did she hit you with?”

  “Just her hand. But let me tell you, that woman forges swords with her fist.” It was spectacular seeing his unwilling smile defeating his frown. Then he kissed her, exploratory touches, tasting her, keeping his eyes open, asking her. Her answer was instant and total surrender. A profound sound rose from his gut, filled her, shook her, relief and hunger made audible. Then he devoured her.

  Dante. Dante. Being without him had to be worse than death.

  “Gulnar, I couldn’t stay away…”

  Oh, God, no! He was saying the lines she’d imposed on him in her fantasy. Was she hallucinating again? Had it all been a delusion again?

  She snatched herself from the hands running over her in a fever, groped all over his face. He caught her hand, took it to his mouth, kissed and suckled.

  She shoved her hand harder between his teeth. “Bite me!”

  His laughter rang out again, his eyes melting with indulgence. “You’re way beyond unpredictable, amore mio.” And he bit her. Her whole body jerked with pleasure, with the debilitating relief of homecoming. He was really here.

  Dante couldn’t believe he was really here and holding her again. It had taken all his courage, and all his weakness, to risk coming back.

  He breathed her in, angled his mouth against hers. Then he sank. He felt life rush through him, passion cresting in dark, overwhelming waves, crashing inside him. Magic. And love. More. Adoration and beyond. His Gulnar…

  “We have an hour!”

  Her moan reverberated inside him, made no sense. He raised his head, gasped, “What?”

  “Emilio gave us an hour.”

  He did, huh? Well, well. “And do you want to devour me, like I want to devour you in that hour, Gulnar?”

  Her eyes rivaled the sea in its most violent rages, slamming him with her answer. Then she said it.

  “Yes.”

  He hauled her back to him and she tore at his scarf, running grasping hands all over his head, his back, her kisses deluging him.

  He snapped his head back again, cupped her face with both his hands, his thumbs smoothing her lips, catching her fervent kisses. He wanted to feel them all over him, cherishing and consuming. But he had to do something first. Something ugly, but the one thing that would make this possible. “Rules. Rules first, Gulnar. You may tell me to go to hell when you hear what I have to say…”

  Her eyes stopped caressing him, her arms slipped off his body, then she stepped away, removing her face from his grasp and all warmth from his body.

  It was spectacular, the way she turned off. Even more the way it hurt, the way he’d come to depend on her. Being deprived of her focus, even momentarily, almost wrecked him.

  His jaw clenched, suppressing the pain as she moved away from him and shrugged. “I know what you’ll say. This is temporary. Anything else?”

  She was OK with it, then? She really felt no
thing beyond sex? It crippled him to know that, but it was for the best. Her best. It was what had made returning possible. He shouldn’t wish for more. Should pray there was no more.

  “I’ve taken the helm at the Sredna camp operation. I’ll be here for two months. And I want to spend every possible free second soaking up your nearness, your eagerness—drowning in you, Gulnar.”

  “Then we say goodbye.”

  He nodded, the movement slow, hard. “It’s the only thing to do. I don’t do commitment, and you don’t either. Two months, then I’ll move on.”

  She looked away, stared into space. “What if it burns out way before that?”

  Dante’s lips twisted. He hadn’t thought of that, had he? He’d thought she’d barely be able to tear herself away at the end. Like he would. Was she telling him there was a strong possibility she’d be sick of him inside a week?

  Something tore inside him. He gritted his teeth. Just another blow to endure, to survive. He’d take that week. “No strings, Gulnar. None. You have enough, just walk away. I won’t even ask what’s wrong, won’t try to persuade you to extend our time together.”

  “This applies to you, too, of course.”

  Would he ever have enough of her? With her taste and essence and love embedded in his cells and echoing in his mind, there was no way in hell or on earth he’d ever have enough of her. But he’d have no more than the two months. They would have to be enough. “We both have total freedom and there will be no recriminations whatsoever when either one wants to end the affair.”

  He waited for her to say something, felt the slow constriction of his heart, the vice that would keep on tightening until it cut it in half.

  Maybe he shouldn’t be doing this. What if he couldn’t walk away as he intended? He’d failed once already. He’d come back and was excusing it by telling himself he’d walk away again. What if kept doing that? Inventing wilder schemes every time to be with her? What if she pushed him away and he clung?

  No, he wouldn’t. One reason would always remain that would hold him back, keep him away. This time for ever.

  She remained silent, her eyes downcast, and suddenly a horrible suspicion hit him. What if she just wanted one more night—less, that “hour”—and that was all? “Stop me any time, OK? If the night we shared doesn’t mean the same to you as it does to me, if it wasn’t the best sex of your life, the most magnificent thing that has ever happened to you, if you don’t stay awake at night reliving…aching for every moment and touch and sensation of our love-making…” Her magnificent eyes widened. Because she was the one used to being forward? He went on, “If you don’t walk around daydreaming about me, if you’re not going crazy not having me, just tell me to go to hell. We’ll just work together, no harm done.”

  It was only when tension almost had him knocking down the central tent pole that she let out a tremulous exhalation. “You feel all that and you’d just get it all under control and work with me as only a colleague, no problems?”

  “There’d be problems. Big problems. But they’d be mine. You don’t have to worry about them. I promise I wouldn’t even look at you longer than necessary.”

  Oh, the way she looked at him. What did it mean? Was she going to laugh in his face now? Was it possible…?

  Her words braked his roiling thoughts. “Our night together was the best thing that ever happened to me, Dante—period. And the only real sex I’ve ever had. If you only knew how much I want you, you’d probably run.”

  He laughed. His first laugh of unbridled joy. Ever. And he wanted to weep, too. He pulled her back into his arms, slowly, savoring the heart-aching feel of her filling them, life ebbing back into him with each inch of contact. “I’ll only run to you. Show me how you want me, give me all you got, amore mio.”

  “The hour is ticking by.” A quivering smile lit her magnificent face, lit up his world as one hand dipped into his shirt, caressed his healed wound.

  He captured it, buried his grateful lips in the soft, strong palm, then he nipped it. He caught her cry of pleasure in his mouth, poured all his longing into her eager lips. “Gulnar, I missed feeling you, tasting you—missed you. I can’t wait, amore. I just want to take you, hard and fast, just taking the painful edge away. Then we’ll have the rest of the hour, all the time we have together for slow and thorough and world-shattering. What do you say?”

  An unrestrained giggle of pure delight burst from her lips as she tugged him back hard to her. “I say if you don’t live up to your promises right away, I may hurt you!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “DOES this hurt?”

  “Yes!”

  Gulnar removed her hands, stood back.

  She assessed her patient again. Thirty-three, under-weight, pale—but not exactly the paleness of anemia, at least not only of anemia, which most of the camp inmates suffered from anyway.

  They’d been treating hundreds of cases with gastrointestinal complaints, which was also expected in their nutritional and hygienic state. Diarrhea, malnutrition, all sorts of dysentery. She shuddered again as she recalled the desperate time when a cholera epidemic had swept the camp during her time with Lorenzo and Sherazad. Even with the hundreds of ailments they treated per day, even a few dozen cases of typhoid, at least there was no true epidemic.

  Most patients had been straightforward cases. This one wasn’t. From the moment he’d walked in, he’d been so inconsistent, so whiny, she had at first suspected he was a hypochondriac. He complained of too many unrelated symptoms, and when she’d examined him, he’d hurt everywhere.

  Her mind raced, unwilling to dismiss him as a malingerer. Think!

  She put her hands back on his concave abdomen and palpated gently. He moaned with each dip. But it was when she palpated his liver that his moans were louder. She ventured a deeper dip and he keened. She disregarded his squirming and dipped deeper and…Hmm. The liver consistency wasn’t as it should be. She could only feel it now she’d stopped being intimidated by his thrashing around.

  OK, if she dismissed his accounts of hurting down to the last phalanx of his little finger, this looked like a lead. That and that yellowish tinge to his skin. She couldn’t be sure it wasn’t their horrible lighting giving him that cast, so she took off her glove and contrasted her hand to his color.

  No. Yellowish. Definitely. All right. Now to look for other confirming signs. He was coughing, had a very low-grade fever and wasn’t eating because he always felt full. He said he passed strange “stuff” in his stools, had vomited it once, too. And he was itching madly. She’d thought he had an infestation at first, was starting to get sympathetically itchy, but now…

  This could be something that would need Dante’s intervention.

  And as usual, like it had been all through the past five weeks, whenever she thought of him, he was there. He was there all the time.

  He’d stepped out of their shared examination tent to perform a quick procedure in the surgery tent, had only needed their anesthetist, Sam Hiller. He’d been gone thirty minutes. And now he was back, walking into the tent, snatching her heart with pride and joy. He was hers. For now.

  He met her eyes, reconnecting with her, their escalating intimacy there for all to see in his. Her patient let out an exaggerated moan the moment he saw Dante.

  “Any help?” Dante gave her a quizzical glance.

  “Please!”

  He snapped on fresh gloves and only then noticed that she had one of hers off. “Tell me you haven’t touched him without a glove! If you have, disinfect your hands right now. Don’t bring them anywhere near your face until you do! Hell, disinfect your face.”

  “Hey take it easy—”

  “Do it, Gulnar! The guy has jaundice and, until we know how he got it, I have to assume he’s infectious!”

  My. Just one look and he reached the diagnosis she’d agonized over!

  “I didn’t touch him, darling. I was just contrasting the colors of our skin to decide if he does have jaundice.”

&
nbsp; “Well, he does. And humor me, OK?” He looked over his shoulder to the other exam station. “Who’s behind that curtain?”

  “It’s Helena.” She was their only Badovnan nurse.

  “Tell her to do it, too, just in case.”

  She signed in resignation, did as she was told. She came back from Helena’s station, sticking her tongue at him. “Over-protective despot!”

  “And you love it.” Her heart quivered her consent. She loved everything he did and was. She knew he knew it, saw it, felt it. His eyes told her he did, before he disengaged his teasing, tenderly devouring gaze from hers and smiled down on their patient. “Mr. Khurdi, isn’t it? Nice to meet you. Sorry for the lack of direct communication.” The guy must have understood something for he gave him a nodding grimace. Dante tilted his head at Gulnar. “History?”

  She recounted Mr. Khurdi’s complaints and her findings. Dante nodded and started conducting his own examination. “Hmm.” He finally stepped away, took her aside and raised one eyebrow at her. “Your diagnosis?”

  “Are you testing me, darling?”

  “As if you need a test, amore!”

  Her heat shot up with mortification. “I needed one yesterday when I couldn’t diagnose that ectopic pregnancy!”

  She shuddered, remembering the emergency surgery that had followed her delay in diagnosis, the hemorrhage, almost losing the woman and having to sacrifice one Fallopian tube when the patient’s other one was obliterated by adhesions.

  It had been a bone-melting relief when the woman had burst into tears of thankfulness on being told! She had five children and had been going to pieces with the thought of any more. There hadn’t been consistent birth-control measures since she’d come to the camp and she’d had two unwanted pregnancies during that time. One had resulted in twins.

  “It was very misleading,” Dante said dismissively. “With her history of ulcerative colitis, severe abdominal pain usually means a recurrent attack of inflammation. And you did diagnose it in the end, you just took longer to sort out the differential diagnosis.”