by Cindy Dees
“You’re on, Doc,” Katie announced. “The one on the left is in labor. Older one is her grandmother. Says she’s worried because her granddaughter is young and small.”
“How young?” he bit out.
Another exchange of words. Then Katie answered grimly, “Fourteen. Her first baby.”
One of the burka-wrapped shapes bent over just then and gave a low moan. Grandma propped up the girl as the contraction gripped her.
All the deliveries had been routine so far. Adult women, mostly on at least their fourth kid. But a first-timer barely into her teens? This could get interesting. His training in obstetrics was superficial; he was primarily a trauma surgeon. But all doctors were required to pull an obstetrics rotation in medical school. The men in prison with him who had constituted much of his on-the-job medical experience hadn’t given birth to a hell of a lot of babies—which was to say, any babies.
He’d pulled a short stint in a maternity ward to deliver a few more kids before he’d been sent out here. But he’d never seen a case like this. Nothing like trial by fire to earn his stripes as an obstetrician.
“Get the girl onto a cot. I need her out of her clothes but covered enough to keep her warm. I’ll crank up the heater while you ladies take care of all that,” he instructed.
It was forbidden for males of any stripe, even doctors, to look at any part of a woman in this part of the world, especially where he’d have to look to deliver a baby. But with all the local midwives dead, he was the only show in town. The Doctors Unlimited folks in Washington, D.C., had explained that it would be a death sentence for him and his patients to be caught. But the D.U. staff had believed—correctly—that local women would risk it anyway.
Crazy thing, that. Women wanting to have a fighting chance at surviving childbirth. What were they thinking? He snorted sarcastically as he turned up the propane heater. Without proper care, one in three women in this part of the world died in childbirth or soon after from complications. Doctors Unlimited and other aid organizations had spent the past several decades training midwives, and the mortality rate had dropped to rates commensurate with the West. Until this past winter and the midwife massacre.
He commenced meticulously scrubbing his hands and forearms over a bucket of water so cold it made his fingernails turn blue. How in the hell was he supposed to work under these conditions?
A muttered argument ensued behind him, and Katie announced, “The girl doesn’t want you to examine her or help unless things go badly.”
“And how am I supposed to know things are going badly if I can’t look at my patient?” he snapped.
She sighed. “They want you to tell me what to look for.”
“That’s absurd. You have no medical training whatsoever.”
“That’s what I told them. She’s adamant, though. And embarrassed.”
“But I’m a doctor—”
“And she’s a young, terrified girl who cannot read or write and will be beaten to death by her husband if he catches her here.”
“Then why did she come?” he demanded, low and angry.
Katie came over to stand directly in front of him. Her eyes were huge and beseeching as she looked up at him. “Because she’s more scared of her baby dying than of dying herself.”
He stared down at her, seared by the zeal in her eyes. He grumbled, “This sucks.”
“Welcome to life as a female a thousand years ago.”
He just shook his head. “The first thing to do is see if the baby’s presenting headfirst. You’ll have to use a speculum and a flashlight since it’s so dark in here.” The lone lantern was barely bright enough to read by, let alone perform surgery by.
Katie gulped and headed for the laboring girl, who was moaning again. He glanced at his watch. Contractions were under two minutes apart. “Do you know what a speculum is?” he asked.
“Every woman who’s ever had an ob-gyn exam knows what one is,” Katie replied frostily.
His lips twitched with humor, and he was glad her back was turned to him. “How far is she dilated?” he asked.
“There’s about a silver-dollar-sized opening,” Katie reported a moment later. “What does a head look like?”
“Like a wet, hairy balloon pressed against the cervix.”
“Then we’ve got a problem. I’m seeing pink skin. And it’s kind of pointy. Maybe bony. Like, umm, a baby bottom?”
“Breech presentation,” he bit out. “You’re going to have to talk our reluctant patient into letting me help.”
But Mama was having no part of it. It was outrageous that he had to stand there and do nothing when he could be attempting to turn the baby before it entered the birth canal. Although given how small Mom was, that would be a dicey proposition at best. He really needed to consider a C-section sooner rather than later.
“Tell her I want to discuss a C-section.”
Nope. Abruptly hysterical Mama was having none of that. Grandma wasn’t keen on the idea, either—something about not being able to hide the evidence of a doctor helping her granddaughter.
This was no way to practice medicine.
The tension in the tiny space mounted over the next hour as the girl’s labor progressed and her moans turned into sharp cries of pain. “Don’t let her push!” he ordered. “At all costs, she mustn’t push.”
The cries turned into screams muffled by a pillow the grandmother pressed over the girl’s mouth. God, this is barbaric.
“I can set an epidural. Give her painkillers. At least let me put a heart monitor on the baby,” he all but begged.
“I’m sorry, Alex. She’s not budging.”
“Katie,” he ground out urgently. “Find a way. Make her understand that she and her baby are in grave danger. This is why she came to me. Let me do my job!”
His impotent fury mounted as the girl’s screams turned into long, keening moans indicative of exhaustion and delirium. He didn’t need anyone to tell him the patient was no longer progressing in her delivery. Katie finally turned to the grandmother and said something sharp.
“Okay, Alex. Grandma says to ignore her granddaughter and come help.”
Thank God. As he expected, the girl was so far gone into the agony of a difficult birth that she barely noticed him working frantically to shift her baby into some sort of birthable position.
“I need her to push with the next contraction.”
Katie stood by the girl’s head, translating his instructions, although he doubted the mother was paying the slightest attention at this point. The girl’s body heaved of its own volition, and he went to work. He pulled the baby’s slippery ankles clear and hung on desperately until the next contraction. The girl screamed, one long continuous keen of agony as he all but tore the child from her body. It was that or risk the child suffocating in the birth canal.
“It’s a boy.” He suctioned the baby’s nostrils and rubbed the child vigorously. Finally, the infant drew a shuddering breath and let out a wail. Not as lusty as Alex would have liked, but the kid was alive. He cut the cord and thrust the child at Grandma to wrap up and warm up. He had bigger problems at the moment.
This girl was too narrow-hipped and too damned young to be having babies, and the delivery had torn the crap out of her. She was bleeding heavily, and one supply he and Katie had not been able to haul in had been refrigerated whole blood.
He went to work fast, racing against time. The mother’s screams quieted. Not that he wasn’t causing her intense pain. She was merely bleeding out. Dying.
“Tell her to fight,” he ordered.
Katie leaned down to speak in the girl’s ear.
“Say it like you mean it,” he growled.
Katie raised her voice and began demanding that the girl open her eyes. That she live for her son. And while Katie tiraded like a drill sergeant, he fought like hell, his hands flying to stem the worst bleeders. It took a full five minutes to avert disaster, and nearly a half hour to stabilize the girl. Once the meatball work was don
e, he settled down to the slower and more meticulous business of cleaning up the mess.
Of course, Grandma told him to make sure all the stitches were internal and hidden. There mustn’t be any evidence of modern medicine, no sirree.
After another hour, Grandma asked something and Katie translated. “She wants to know if they can go soon. They’ve got to get the girl back home before dawn.”
“She can’t move!” he exclaimed. “I just sewed her back together. I don’t need her up, running around and tearing out all her stitches.”
Katie threw his own words back at him. “We have to find a way to get her home.”
Sonofabitch. “Where do they live?” he asked in resignation.
A short conversation. “Family compound on the edge of the Karshan village.”
“I’ll carry her as far as it’s safe,” he announced.
Katie’s eyes flickered in surprise. “None of it is safe.”
He rolled his eyes and scooped the girl up off the cot. Aware of how rough the terrain was going to be for their little trek, he elected to haul the mostly unconscious girl in a fireman’s carry, slung across his back. Grandma led the way. Katie followed behind her, carrying the baby in a cloth sling in front of her. The child had yet to nurse and he had no idea if the difficult birth had injured the infant. But he was given no chance to examine the baby. The sky was lightening behind the mountain peaks across the valley.
The hike down to the river was hellish. It was frigid and dark, and the ground was slippery with frost. Plus, every stray noise could be a local religious hard core with a gun and no sense of humor about their presence in this valley. Grandma’s cough worsened in the cold night air, although the sound might work to their advantage by announcing that their little party was locals.
At least the sound of rushing water muffled it as they reached the valley floor. Grandma led the way along a footpath beside the river for nearly a mile. But then she stopped and whispered something to Katie, who translated.
“Their compound is over the next rise. She’ll take her granddaughter from here.”
He eyed the short, heavyset woman. “How?”
Katie’s answer was sober. “She’ll find a way.”
Reluctantly, he transferred the new mother to the old woman’s back, draping the girl’s arms over Grandma’s shoulders while Katie looped the cloth sling holding the baby around her neck so it hung down her front. The old woman nodded her thanks and slowly trudged away from them under her load.
Madness. This is utter madness. He muttered, “It will be light any minute. We need to get under cover.”
He gestured for Katie to lead the way back. Or more accurately, he took the rear guard position that put his body between her and the most likely direction gunfire would come from. The hike back to their hidey-hole seemed to take forever. Maybe it was because his shoulder blades kept anticipating a bullet between them. Or maybe it was because he’d gotten no sleep last night. Or maybe it was because he was more than half convinced the two of them weren’t going to make it out of this damned valley alive.
* * *
GLANCING FURTIVELY AROUND the mobile command post to make sure no one was close enough to overhear him, Mike McCloud pinged Alex Peters’s satellite phone and scribbled down the current GPS coordinates on a scrap of paper. As soon as he had it memorized, he would destroy it.
“Hey, Mikey,” someone said behind him. He forced himself not to whirl around guiltily and greeted the uniformed soldier casually. He checked his watch. Too late to set out tonight. But tomorrow he’d track down Peters and his little sister and set up surveillance on the mysterious doctor.
Why in the hell a man with a past like Alex Peters would wander out here to deliver babies—as if it was actually some sort of humanitarian calling for the brilliant bastard—was anybody’s guess. Maybe Katie, who’d been sent in to live with the bastard, would catch wind of what Peters was really up to at the end of the world.
But in the meantime, he’d be damned if he was letting his baby sister get hurt on his watch.
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER THE FIGHT to save the girl, something changed between her and Alex. But she had no idea what, exactly, it was. He watched her more than before. Studied her, even. He still didn’t talk much, but his interest was tangible. Had he finally figured out she was a reasonably attractive person of the female persuasion, or was he merely observing her like bacteria growing in a petri dish?
The next few days settled into a pattern for Katie. Haul water up from the river. Haul supplies up from the Land Rover. Sleep. Eat. Attempt to wash herself, her hair, her clothes. And at night, help deliver babies. Women came from all over the valley to have them. Most times, they brought someone with them—a mother or sister or cousin.
Alex taught the companions all he could about the basics of childbirth and safe aftercare while Katie translated for him. She got good enough at the speech that she could do it without prompting from him.
She slept mornings and evenings, and he slept most of each day, which left her at loose ends to entertain herself much of the time. She had a fully charged tablet reader she’d loaded up with books before she’d come up there. The battery was supposed to last several weeks, but at the rate she was using it, the charge would run out in a week. She dreaded not knowing what she would do to keep herself from going stir-crazy then. Never in her life had she been anywhere this completely disconnected from...everything. No television, no internet, no phones, no electricity, no people. It was just her and Alex. The last two people on earth until some laboring woman crept to their door. No wonder Adam and Eve had been tempted. Sheer boredom would have driven them to having sex if the serpent hadn’t tricked them. Goodness knew, her own mind was wandering in that direction more frequently than she’d like. It was hard not to think about sex with a man as hot as Alex living in such close proximity.
That flash of fire she’d seen in him when he’d fought off death and saved that girl and her baby riveted her. She was a little ashamed to admit to herself that she’d taken to teasing him. She went out of her way to brush close to him, to incidentally touch him now and then. But he remained frustratingly unresponsive in the face of her broad hints. The man was a machine of self-control. Frankly, it made her a little crazy. Just once, she’d love to see him let go and show her that passion again.
Sometimes, she watched Alex sleep. His face looked completely different then. Relaxed and open, his features were handsome. More striking than ever. His hair was coffee-colored, hovering between brown and black, and his skin retained a hint of a tan.
Must be nice. She had two skin colors: porcelain white and lobster red, the latter achievable by either unfortunate sun exposure or the ever-popular “see who can make Katie blush the worst” game. If she was really careful, summertime yielded enough freckles close enough together that, from a distance, she could pass for a little tan. But that was as good as it got.
Parked on the camp stool, she planted her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands to study Alex Peters, M.D. She guessed he was around thirty. Although his eyes sometimes looked like he’d lived hard for that age. What was his story? Mike hadn’t told her much. And she’d been so desperate to get out of the wreck of her love life and move on to a fresh new start that she’d let her brother talk her into coming halfway around the world—literally—with a total stranger.
Alex Peters remained a mystery to her. Why would a guy like him shift from math to medicine? Where was he from? What was his family like? Did he have any hobbies? What kind of women did he prefer? What kind of sex?
She started as his eyes opened without warning; his gaze drilled into her like a silver laser. “Is there a problem?” he rasped. His voice was husky with sleep and so sexy her toes curled in her clunky hiking boots.
“Nope,” she answered cheerfully to hide her embarrassment at being caught staring at him. She hastily opened her tablet reader and turned it on.
“You were looking at me.”<
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She looked up innocently. Not a chance she could lie her way out of it. He’d caught her red-handed. So instead, she took the direct route. “I wasn’t aware that’s a crime.”
He took his arms out of his sleeping bag and linked his fingers behind his head. His naked arms. The upper reaches of his bare chest peeked out of the nylon shell. A sprinkling of dark hair was visible on it. And muscles. Lots and lots of mature-man muscles that, truth be told, she found intimidating. The guys she’d dated had been college types or recent grads who still acted and looked like students. She revised her opinion of Alex from lean to deceptively muscular. The guy must wear a tuxedo like a god.
“You’re staring again,” he announced.
“It’s rude of you to point it out,” she retorted. “Ladies are allowed to look.”
“Are gentlemen allowed also?”
If she didn’t know better, she’d say the doctor geek was flirting. Would wonders never cease? She fanned the tiny flame carefully by flirting back slightly. “Hello? It’s expected that guys will check us out. Why else would we girls go to so much trouble to look so good?”
“I haven’t gotten the impression that you’re a big primper.”
“That’s because there’s no power outlet for my blow-dryer, and the wind makes my eyes water too much to keep on eye makeup long enough to make it worthwhile.”
“You brought a blow-dryer out here?” he blurted. He had the bad grace to burst into laughter.
She scowled at his amusement. “Hey, I brought power converters. In my world, primitive camping is a motel instead of a Marriott. Nobody told me there would be no electricity at all in this godforsaken place. I was under the impression there would be, oh, I don’t know, walls and a roof for us.”
“You don’t need to primp. You’re fine the way you are,” he replied.
Hark, a compliment out of the good doctor! “Apology accepted,” she replied magnanimously.
He blinked, startled, like he hadn’t meant it that way. The man might be as hot as a god, and he might be smart as a whip, but he had a lot to learn about women. He reached for his sleeping bag’s zipper, and she turned away hastily. Who knew how far down his nakedness extended? She’d already figured out that, as a doctor, he wasn’t tremendously inhibited about the human body.
