Encounter with a Commanding Officer

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘Just get the suture kit and do your damned job, Major, if you can keep your hands to yourself for that long. Then we can both get the hell out of here.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘WHAT HAVE WE GOT?’ Fliss jumped off the heli to speak to the medic on the ground as her team hauled the casualty on board.

  ‘Fusilier Bowman, nineteen, was playing football with the local lads when two of them had a collision and Bowman fell on his shoulder and broke his clavicle.’

  Already she could see her team checking the airway, breathing, and circulation, one of her crew moving behind the casualty to examine the clavicle itself, including any signs of deformity.

  ‘Oscillate and percuss the lung fields to exclude pneumothorax and carry out a neurovascular examination, particularly for upper limb pulses, decreased perfusion and muscle power,’ she called out. ‘Okay, let’s see the other lad involved.’

  A brief check confirmed the other player had got off lightly. More than likely the break had occurred on impact with the ground rather than with the other player. Still, Fliss wanted to rule out the possibility of a head injury.

  Satisfied, she was on her way back to the heli when a voice halted her.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  Fliss stopped, turning to the trio of soldiers eagerly approaching.

  ‘We heard Colonel Stirling is in Razorwire now; he was on a MERT shout yesterday?’ one of them asked.

  Fliss nodded, wishing her whole body didn’t react at the mere mention of his name.

  ‘Are you likely to see him, ma’am?’

  She plastered a pleasant smile on her lips. ‘Doubtful, gents. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The lads looked disappointed, and before she knew it she was being drawn in.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just that... Would you just tell him...?’

  ‘That it’s a bit quiet here without him,’ the second lad interjected.

  Fliss pressed her lips together. It wasn’t what the lads were saying so much as what they weren’t saying. This was the closest these guys got to saying they missed someone. It said a lot about the Colonel. Her expression softened.

  ‘He was your company commander?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ The second lad shook his head. ‘He was only a captain when we knew him, our recce platoon commander. Before he got himself blown up.’

  Her heart bounded around her ribcage.

  ‘The grenade? You were there?’

  They looked like kids.

  ‘Yeah, of course. Six years ago. The boss saved our lives,’ the first lad announced proudly. ‘Mick, Jonesy and me, ma’am. And some others who are going to be mad they aren’t here now.’

  ‘I see,’ she acknowledged. ‘I knew the Colonel had been involved in a grenade incident but I’m afraid I don’t know the details.’

  ‘Let me guess, the boss doesn’t like to talk about it, ma’am? Claims it was no big deal and he was just doing his job? That sounds about right.’

  ‘You don’t agree, gentlemen?’

  ‘No, ma’am, we don’t,’ the second lad declared. ‘A bunch of us wouldn’t be here without him.’

  Their pride and admiration was infectious and Fliss couldn’t help herself. She could pretend it was professional interest. She knew better.

  A few days ago she wouldn’t have even considered discussing Ash’s injury but, after what had happened in the supply room, she couldn’t shake the part of her which was desperate to know more.

  ‘I understand the injury is extensive; the blast got under the body armour.’

  ‘Yeah. We’d been ambushed, ma’am, pinned down in a small courtyard. He had about six seconds between the grenade rolling in and it going off to make a decision. If he’d told us to make a run for it we’d have all got caught by the blast or the shrapnel. But the boss being the boss, he grabbed a small daysack, threw it on the grenade and threw himself on top of that.’

  ‘He was in pretty bad shape, ma’am,’ another confirmed. ‘Aside from the blast injuries themselves, he had some twenty fractures or breaks from the body armour. We didn’t think he was going to make it.’

  ‘He got transferred out and I think he was recovering for about a year, ma’am, before they placed him with a new unit and made him fly a desk for three years. I think he hated every second of it.’

  Fliss absorbed all the information. It certainly explained why he was finding it so hard to work in the new role as colonel, as well as why he had such an impressive reputation. But, before she could answer, one of the QRF ran over to her.

  ‘Reports coming in of another shout,’ he yelled, as Fliss had already started running alongside him back to the heli.

  ‘A series of explosions involving gas canisters used by the local school for cooking. Multiple casualties, they’re sending both MERTs out. Kids were caught in the first blast and locals and soldiers there as rescuers in the second blast.’

  ‘Fine,’ she yelled as she leaped back on board. ‘We’ll take this casualty back to camp and head straight back out.’

  All she could do was hope against hope that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.

  * * *

  Ash spotted her the moment he reached the rooftop, her hunched up shape silhouetted against the horizon as she sat in solitude watching the last of the sunset over the desert.

  ‘They said you’d be up here.’

  If she heard his voice, she didn’t react.

  He inched along the concrete terrace, ducking low until he reached her. Her shoulders stiffened awkwardly as she finally turned, discreetly brushing at her cheeks as though they were damp and wiped a finger under each eye. Something twisted inside him to see her in distress.

  ‘Mind if I sit down?’

  There was a moment of hesitation before she inclined her head, but they both knew he’d have sat anyway.

  ‘Want to talk about it?’

  Another hesitation and this time she shook her head.

  ‘Okay,’ he acknowledged, folding his arms and allowing them both to lapse back into silence.

  But at least now she wasn’t alone.

  He’d heard about the incident and could well imagine the grim scenario. He knew that was why she was up here alone, to vent some emotion in private without bringing down the morale of the rest of the camp. The other members of her team could console each other but he knew Fliss would feel that, as their major and leader, she had to stray strong. She could be there for them, but not the other way around.

  An ingrained sense of responsibility and duty. Just like her uncle, the General. Just like him. He should respect that. He should just tell her the little sliver of good news he had and then he should leave.

  He didn’t get involved, he reminded himself brutally.

  ‘Anyway—’ Ash broke the silence ‘—I came up here to tell you about Corporal Hollings—the soldier from the RTA yesterday?’

  ‘I remember who Corporal Hollings is.’ She nodded quietly. ‘Andy Hollings.’

  Ash wasn’t surprised. He had a feeling she remembered every single soldier she rescued. All her casualties mattered to her. Not that he hadn’t met plenty of trauma doctors who cared before now, but there was something...more about Major Felicity Delaunay.

  ‘I figured it must be pretty unpleasant sometimes, being on the MERT. You see those who don’t make it, but you never get to find out what happens to those soldiers you keep alive long enough to get to the hospital.’

  ‘Yeah, sometimes,’ she agreed jerkily. ‘The rush of saving a life is the greatest feeling and I love my job, I wouldn’t change it for the world. But sometimes...’

  ‘Yeah, so I thought you’d like to know that Hollings’ operation went well yesterday. He’ll be stable enough to be leaving on a plane back t
o the UK hospital within the next twelve hours. He’s still alive, thanks to you.’

  ‘And you. If you hadn’t got us into that shelter...’

  ‘We made a good team.’

  He didn’t realise how intimate that would sound until the words were out. Yet with anyone else it wouldn’t have held any deeper significance. By the loaded silence, Fliss thought the same.

  ‘Thanks,’ she managed at last. ‘I mean, for coming to tell me.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Another silence pressed in on them. He ought to leave. He straightened his legs, ready to get up.

  ‘Wait.’

  He paused. Stopped.

  ‘How did you know about Andy Hollings?’

  Ash didn’t know how best to answer her.

  ‘It’s not as though you’re around the hospital much.’

  ‘I just happened to be there,’ he offered.

  Her shrewd look seemed to pierce through him, boring into his armour, creating cracks where none should be.

  ‘Do you mean you went in there specifically to check on the lad’s progress? You couldn’t just leave it, could you? You hoped he had pulled through the operation.’

  ‘It isn’t a big deal.’

  She clicked her tongue. ‘They really were right about you.’

  ‘Don’t read so much into it,’ he warned uneasily. ‘Who was right?’

  ‘No one, forget it.’

  Ash clenched his jaw. The problem was that her looks, her words, her touch, all chipped away at the guise he had painstakingly built up over the years. She was getting behind it and reaching for the man in there and he was finding it harder and harder to resist.

  But he had to resist. He was having enough trouble resisting the physical attraction as it was, without her throwing in the dangerous complication of emotions.

  He should leave. He’d said what he’d come up to say. Ash tried to make a move but a heaviness had set in, bone-deep, and he stayed exactly where he was.

  ‘I’ve never seen the sunset from this height before,’ he commented, his tone deliberately casual. ‘It’s impressive.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve taken several photos over the last few months. And this is one of several safe rooftops around camp—at least for now. Back when I was still in training, I used to have to go to a FIBUA training area back home, near where I lived. We had exercises where the soldiers would be practising their Fighting in Built-Up Areas skills, and doing casualty evacuation scenarios, and I would play out treating the casualty. I...didn’t have the best childhood so I’ve always found it hard to talk to people. But there was a rooftop similar to this—different view, of course—which was deserted after hours so it always seemed such a peaceful place to go in order to think, to process.’

  He couldn’t help it. Instantly, Ash wondered what had happened in her childhood. He could bet it hadn’t been anything like his. A kid like her, with a general for an uncle and Army blood running through her veins, always destined to be a commissioned officer, wouldn’t know what a bad childhood was. Not the way he did. Not the way a huge number of the infantry soldiers, still kids themselves, did. He waited for the habitual bristle of resentment which always seemed to get to him when people who’d had it relatively easy thought they’d had it bad.

  But for once it didn’t come. Instead, he found himself trying to empathise with her. Trying to see that it was all relative and, from her point of view, it might have felt like a difficult time growing up.

  ‘You come up here to process events like today,’ he repeated carefully. ‘I understand that.’

  She hunched her shoulders, neither confirmation nor rebuttal.

  ‘It’s more than that. One day at the FIBUA an over-eager soldier fell out of a second-storey window during a routine house clearance. I ended up treating a casualty for real and performed my first emergency tracheotomy. I saved my first life and I didn’t freeze, I didn’t panic. The adrenalin was pumping, yes, but other than that it just came naturally. It was the moment I realised I could really do it, I could be an army trauma doctor—I could be a great army trauma doctor. The rooftop was where I finally let go of the past and embraced a new, positive future.’

  ‘So you come up here after bad days like today to try to recapture that sense of victory,’ he realised.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘To remember what it feels like to get it right. Saving a life is a rush like no other; it’s an unbeatable feeling. But losing one is devastating. And the nature of the MERT means that sometimes you lose more than you win.’

  Yes, he could certainly understand that, just as he understood her need to come up here and have her moment of weakness out of sight of the others, her reluctance to shed a tear in front of her team. He understood her sense of propriety that, as their team leader and a major, she should stay strong for them.

  It was a degree of staying in control he recognised all too well.

  So why was he still up here instead of leaving her alone?

  Because he felt as if he could help her, Ash realised. Some part of him needed to help her. It wasn’t about this inexplicable chemistry between them, although that had probably been the catalyst. It was about the way they had clicked, working in the field together the previous day. In all his experience, he had never fallen into such harmonious synchronicity with someone in such a short time, almost pre-empting each other’s needs as they’d worked towards the common goal of saving that corporal’s life.

  ‘Felicity, you know you did everything you could today. You...’

  ‘We lost them all,’ she choked out, interrupting him. ‘All of them. It wasn’t enough.’

  ‘And you aren’t to blame,’ he stated firmly.

  She didn’t answer immediately, simply stared angrily out over the sunset. When she did finally speak, her voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘It’s bad enough when it’s a warzone. When there are IEDs and enemies. I’ve been to enough of them; I’ve dealt with explosions, and fatalities, and soldiers requiring multiple amputations. And all I can do, every shout, is know that I’ve done my utmost to get them back as much in one piece as I can.’

  ‘I know,’ he murmured reassuringly.

  Her voice was choked and he knew she was close to the edge. He had no idea why, but he found himself putting his arm around her shoulders and drawing her in. She stiffened at first, resisting him, and then allowed herself to be shifted, still fighting to hold back her sense of failure.

  ‘But here we’re not in a warzone. It was an avoidable accident and it killed so many. And there was no one I could help. Not a single person. Not even one child.’

  Before he could stop himself, or tell himself that this wasn’t keeping control of his emotions around her, Ash twisted her around to cradle her. It was more than a colonel being there for another soldier, it was personal, and inappropriate, and dangerous.

  He rubbed his hand up and down her back to soothe her. And for several long minutes she let him.

  Finally, as the tears subsided and she fought to regain control, she shifted away from him as he reluctantly let her go. A dark shadow he didn’t care to identify stole over his chest, pulling a tourniquet around his guts and clenching his fist.

  He rubbed a hand over his face. For two people who valued their self-control, neither of them seemed to have been doing particularly well since they’d met.

  What was it about this woman that was so different to anyone else?

  For years he’d succeeded in keeping people at arm’s length, maintaining a barrier between himself and the rest of the world. Only Rosie and Wilf had been the exception. He’d known that the only sure-fire way never to lose control of his emotions, the way his father had, was to ensure he didn’t let people close enough to generate those emotions in the first instance.


  Yet here he was, on the roof with a woman he’d met barely seventy-two hours earlier, wondering what it might be like to have someone like this in his life. To have a bond with her that was more than the one they’d forged out there in the field the previous day.

  She turned to him, then returned her gaze to the front. He twisted again to study her elegant profile—the long neck whose sweet scent he could still recall if he closed his eyes.

  ‘So are you here as Colonel Stirling, CO of the QRF team? Or Ash, the man who nearly kissed me in that supply room yesterday?’ she managed hoarsely, still not turning to face him again.

  ‘Whichever you’d prefer.’ Ash kept his voice low and even, blocking out the fact that the same question was tumbling around his own head.

  Why had he felt so compelled to seek her out?

  Part of him wondered if it had anything to do with the news he’d received today about his foster mother. Something threatened to bubble up inside him, and Ash swiftly closed it down to concentrate on Fliss. Willing her to give him the answer he shouldn’t want to hear.

  The silence felt like an eternity.

  ‘Tell me about the grenade scar,’ she said quietly, by way of response.

  He stuffed down the black storm which immediately began to batter the lid of the box he kept it in. Only this time it didn’t seem to rage with quite the power it had in the past.

  ‘I told you, it was nothing.’

  ‘So you say, but I ran into some of your old platoon in the field, and they didn’t seem to think it was nothing.’

  Ash frowned. ‘My old platoon?’

  ‘Mick, Jonesy and another guy...they called him Donald but I don’t think that was his name.’

  The names rushed through his head, leaving a trail of memories in their wake.

  ‘Donaldson,’ Ash said quietly. ‘His younger brother had died in an ambush a couple of months earlier.’

  ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t know.’

  ‘How could you have?’