There was no time now to think about Fitz, but something had spooked him and she didn’t think it was just about the crash. She could feel emotion flowing off Fitz, hot then cold, colourless then vivid, still then raging. It seeped into her chest, pulling it tight, and it seeped into her head, making it feel ready to explode. A mass of contradictions, out of control. A mess. And nothing like the man Elle knew. She struggled to make sense of it and then, all of a sudden, it hit her.
Pain.
This was what Fitz had been stuffing down all this time. The barrier that had always stood between them. The wall she’d wanted him to tear down for as long as she could remember. The trench that had stopped him from trusting her, and which had made her feel as though she ought to think it was too soon after Stevie. But finally she couldn’t ignore the truth any longer. She was falling for Fitz. She’d probably started falling for him from the minute they’d met.
Fitz had been everything Stevie hadn’t been. She’d spent years acknowledging all the ways that Stevie wasn’t the right man for her, so when Fitz had come along she—or at least a part of her subconscious—had recognised in an instant all the qualities she knew she wanted in a man.
And now he was hurting and all she wanted to do was help, but there wasn’t time. She’d have to get to the bottom of it. Later. With a supreme effort, Elle pushed thoughts of Fitz from her mind and turned back to Roshan to ask where it hurt most and if there had been any blood. Despite the long metal shard in her abdomen, Elle conducted a quick visual triage knowing that the most obvious injury wasn’t always the most life-threatening.
As she finished, the interpreter hurried in with Jools. By the looks of them, the worst of the dust storm had passed, but that didn’t mean they were free and clear.
‘That looks bad. But then again, there isn’t much blood,’ the interpreter muttered quietly to her. ‘What do you want me to tell her?’
‘Nothing at the moment. There’s no way to know merely by looking. The lack of blood doesn’t prove anything. She’s breathing and talking, and she’s gesticulating so that’s good and I want to do a full primary check, but first I’d like to make sure she has no other injuries, specifically neck and back, and what state that penetrating injury is in, so that I can get her onto her left side.’
‘They keep telling her to stay on her back.’
‘Yes, I can see that, but I need you to explain that uterine compression on the inferior vena cava and aorta can aggravate shock in pregnant women, especially if they’re in the third trimester. Put it into whatever terms you need to in order to make them understand.’
She waved Fitz over. A darkness swirled in his eyes, almost mesmerising. But it seemed he still wasn’t going to speak. Elle stared in silence, feeling herself being drawn into their dangerous depths. She could drown in those depths and never realise it.
‘Can you get me a kit bag from the medical vehicle, blood-pressure monitor, blankets and maybe some kind of screen? Okay.’ Elle turned her focus to the mother with a soothing tone. ‘Let’s look after you.’
There was no point telling the woman everything would be all right. Although there was no evidence of vaginal bleeding or significant external bleeding from the penetration wound, Elle had no idea what was going on inside. The shard may or may not have caused direct trauma to the foetus, ruptured the placenta, damaged organs or caused internal bleeding. Yet the initial check was looking more positive than she’d feared.
By the time Fitz had returned with the bag, Elle was satisfied the woman’s pulse was strong, she wasn’t clammy or pale, and from the way she was describing the accident, frequently punctuated by sharp pleas to make sure her baby was all right, she didn’t seem confused or weak in any way.
‘What now?’ Fitz appeared suddenly at her shoulder, his voice uncharacteristically tight.
‘At this point I’m as satisfied as I can be that Roshan isn’t going into hypovolemic shock. Neitherr does she indicate any kind of abdominal pain, even from the metal shard. Now I can only hope the penetration wound isn’t as deep as I’d feared, but we still need to pack her carefully for moving her.’
‘You’re moving her?’ Fitz didn’t look happy.
‘With that shard in her side, I want to check the baby’s well-being then do a secondary check on the mother. We’ll have to get them to our hospital, Razorwire’s too far away or I’d call it in.’
‘If the baby’s alive, will you need to operate? To save it?’
‘A C-section? Not necessarily,’ Elle answered grimly. ‘Besides, until the hospital is up and running we have no incubators or anything to help. We don’t even have the new generators yet. But it’s too soon to tell what Roshan or her baby might need.’
Slipping in the earpieces of her portable foetal heart monitor just in case, Elle prepared herself as she searched for the heartbeat, her eyes locked to the screen. It was almost a shock when she found it, slightly slower than she would have preferred but strong and steady.
Clicking for a printout, Elle removed the earphones so that the woman could hear the sound of her baby for herself. She was rewarded with a flood of tears from the mother.
‘It’s alive,’ Fitz bit out.
‘Yes, not in any immediate distress.’
‘Then you’re leaving the metal in situ?’
‘I’d prefer to, yes,’ she confirmed, knowing he would understand that from combat injuries. ‘At the moment it doesn’t appear to be causing an issue and we’ll have more on hand back at the hospital, if anything goes wrong.’
‘So now?’
‘Now we make sure everyone else is okay.’
‘Already done. Jools and your team have taken the rest over to the other building. It’s calm outside now. They’ll deal with everyone and we’ve got anyone who needs further attention onto appropriate vehicles. Most look to be only superficial injuries, the only vehicle really damaged was the one carrying the woman and her husband and he has a head wound she wants you to look at.’
‘Great.’ Elle nodded, those black depths drawing her in again.
She struggled to break free. She would drown, that was the point, because Fitz would never throw her a lifeline. Not because he didn’t want to but because somehow he didn’t think he could. At least, not in his personal life. In his professional life as a leader Fitz not only lived up to but exceeded his responsibilities—she’d seen that for herself over the last couple of weeks. But in his personal life he appeared to have some ridiculous notion that he destroyed life, destroyed people. He was the one who needed a lifeline, and Elle couldn’t shake the belief that she was the only one who could offer it to him.
‘What was that about, Fitz?’ she asked softly.
‘It was nothing.’
‘I see.’
She didn’t push it immediately. His very choice of words acknowledged there had been something even as he tried to deny it. She let his unintentional admission sink into his own head.
‘It was nothing you should have to be concerned with.’
‘If it affects you,’ she answered simply, ‘I’m concerned.’
She knew he held himself responsible for his mother’s death, and his sister’s death, even though he hadn’t been there. She knew, too, that he held himself responsible for Janine’s convoy accident, even though he couldn’t possibly have had any influence over it. He was Royal Engineers, she’d been Logistics. None of it seemed to make sense, but the worst of it was that Fitz didn’t trust anyone—didn’t trust her—enough to confide in her.
And that hurt more than anything else.
Worse, because she knew she had no right to expect him to want to confide in her, but it didn’t stop her wishing he wanted to. It didn’t stop her falling for him.
Working with him over the last couple of months twenty-four seven had been eye-opening. In a job like this, especially in an environment like this, Elle
knew only too well how soldiers got to know the people working alongside them in a way no other profession allowed. They lived together, ate together, slept together. There was no escape, no chance to step away for a while.
It had also meant she’d spent more days in Fitz’s company than she’d spent with Stevie in probably the last five or six years they’d been together. And she liked the man Fitz was more than she’d ever liked the man Stevie had been turning into.
She couldn’t help it. She wanted to be there for Fitz, she wanted to show him he needed her. And he did need her. Hadn’t he already told her things he’d admitted he’d never told anyone else? Their connection was real, she wasn’t imagining it. It wasn’t just about the sex that first night.
* * *
Fitz spent the entire journey back oscillating between relief and frustration. Relief at the fact that Elle was in the ambulance with Roshan, giving him some much-needed breathing room, and frustration at the realisation that only Elle’s presence next to him would have calmed his uncharacteristically jangling nerves.
He’d been shocked when she’d mentioned Janine, but the anger he might have previously expected to flood out of him had gone, replaced by a deep-seated need to talk it through with someone. With Elle.
It was almost torture when she disappeared into the hospital with Roshan and he had to return to his office alone, searching for paperwork to occupy his racing thoughts. Yet at the same time he was immensely grateful to her for saving both the young mum’s life and that of her baby. As if somehow it made up for the baby he and Janine had lost.
He had no idea how much time passed until a light knock on his door wrestled him from his dark thoughts.
‘I thought you might like to know mother and baby are resting and are fine. I eventually removed the shard and incredibly it had missed the baby entirely and slid into a void between Roshan’s internal organs. They both handled the operation well and I’m hoping she’ll be able to carry her baby to term.’
‘How likely is that?’
‘If they get through the night without any complications, I’ll be a lot happier,’ Elle admitted. ‘Besides, the generators are due in the next few days, and as soon as we have them up and running the first incubators will arrive. If Roshan can at least hang on until then, it would be great.’
He took in her wan smile, the strain around her eyes giving her away.
‘You must be exhausted,’ he said quietly. ‘Thank you for coming to tell me.’
She blinked.
‘I thought you were going to...talk to me.’
Part of him wanted to. Another part thought he’d dodged that bullet for today.
‘I thought you might prefer to get some sleep. I can’t imagine you’ve had more than about ten hours over the last four days or so.’
‘Right,’ Elle conceded stiffly.
Still, she hesitated as though she wanted to say more. Instead, finally, she dipped her head and stepped towards the door. He should be grateful that she wasn’t trying to push the matter.
‘Janine was my ex-fiancée,’ he announced abruptly, watching as she froze with her hand on the doorhandle. Slowly, so slowly, she drew her fingers back, listening to him without turning around. ‘Not that I think you can call it an engagement really. It lasted less than twenty-four hours and it wasn’t exactly planned. There was a baby.’
She twisted her head back over her shoulder.
‘I don’t understand.’
He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t sure even he had ever understood it, everything had happened so fast.
‘Janine was a fellow officer. We met at Sandhurst. She was kind and generous and quiet, exactly the kind of girl I ought to like. To love. She understood the army and she loved me. I wanted to love her back.’
‘You wanted to?’
He could hear the confusion in her voice.
‘There was no reason why I shouldn’t have loved her. I liked her. But that was it. I couldn’t. That was when I realised I was flawed. I’m not like other people, Elle, I don’t feel the way other people do. I lack that empathy, that connection.’
‘I don’t believe that. You just weren’t right for each other.’
‘No, you don’t understand. I felt more for Janine than I have any other person but I couldn’t love her. It just wasn’t there. I was selfish, just like my father was.’
He watched her expression change from surprise, to shock, to disbelief.
‘You are not your father. How could you even think that?’
Her faith in him was humbling, the way her eyes stared so deeply into his as if she could somehow show him exactly how she saw him.
But he had to resist. He couldn’t fall for it. She knew about his cruel and violent father, she understood about the car crash, she soothed his guilt over not being there for his mother and sister. However, she didn’t know about Janine.
And it was time he told her. He owed Elle that much. That hard, unwieldy truth.
‘Elle,’ he began, ‘I don’t deserve your kindness. I never did. You think I’m a better man that I am. I wish you were right, but you’re not.’
‘Fitz—’
‘No.’ He stood up, cutting her off before she could object. ‘You keep insisting I’m this stand-up guy because that’s the army guy everyone sees. But you’re wrong. All of you. The man I seem to be able to be out here is the person I would like to be. The colonel I would like to be. I like who I am, what I’ve achieved, how much my men accomplish when inspired. It’s why I love my job. I’ve poured everything I have into my career.’
‘I know that,’ she began, but he refused to let her steer the conversation.
‘But I’m not that same man back home, out of Green, in my personal life. I never have been. God knows, I’ve tried.’
‘You are the same man. I saw it that night. You’re just too plagued with the demons of your past to see it. You signed up within weeks of that fatal car crash and you used the army to give you a new life, to reinvent yourself. And it worked, but in doing so you never allowed yourself time to grieve. I don’t think you ever properly grieved. So every time you go home you’re still stuck in the same place. Until you grieve you can’t let go, and until you let go you can never let yourself move on.’
Every one of her words slammed into him, like rounds into body armour. He wanted to believe her. But he still hadn’t told her everything. He sucked in a sharp breath.
‘Elle, stop talking for a minute,’ he said simply. ‘You need to listen, really listen, to what I need to tell you.’
He didn’t know why, but he began to move around the desk as she stepped closer. As if it was just him and her. And soon the ugly truth.
A sharp rap on the door startled them both.
‘Come in.’ It was an effort to conceal his frustration.
‘Colonel, we’ve just had a message from Major Howes. There’s a problem with one of his troops in the Zenghar Valley. He’s caught up with a complication at the railhead after the earthquake.’
The switch was immediate for Fitz. It had to be serious if Carl was calling at this hour.
‘The troop out there was building a bridge to link the railhead with this hospital.’
‘Yes, sir. They think the earthquake has affected the stability of the ground. Major Howes says there’s a large local population who live beneath.’
The risk of landslides in that region was already quite high without the additional danger of the aftershocks.
‘Potential for multiple fatalities if the ground gives way...’ he muttered, almost to himself.
‘We understand so, Colonel.’
‘Get me Brigade, Corporal,’ Fitz ordered quickly, his mind already engaging.
‘They’re already on the line, sir. In the ops office.’
He didn’t hesitate. He was heading out of the door behind
the young lad before he remembered Elle, and spun around quickly.
‘We will talk,’ he said quietly, knowing the corporal was too far away to hear.
‘Forget it.’ She shook her head, as though it didn’t matter in the slightest, though he’d seen the initial frustration in her eyes to match his. ‘Go.’
Without another glance, he went.
Chapter Thirteen
‘WELL, THAT WAS a really good morning.’ Elle congratulated her team with deliberate brightness as they deposited their theatre gloves and gowns in the bins. ‘Three back-to-back surgeries, and all of them went better than anyone could have anticipated. Nice work, guys.’
It felt good to have such a high mood after the last couple of days. Elle reached for the hand scrub, content to listen to the chattering of her colleagues. The storm had caused a fair amount of damage in communities far and wide and injury levels had spiked, but it finally felt like they were starting to break the back of the influx of new arrivals without compromising care for existing patients.
Stepping through the doors to the main corridor to check on the wards, Elle knew instantly that something was wrong. The low, tense buzz was unsettling and it didn’t take her long to find Jools, already huddled in conversation with a small group.
‘What’s going on?’
There was no need for preamble, they knew each other too well. Jools’s head snapped up in dismay.
‘There’s been a landslide in the Zenghar Valley. That earthquake we had the other day was closer to them than to us and they think it likely caused the slide. Razorwire are sending out Medical Emergency Response Teams, but there are sixty-three confirmed dead so far.’
Fitz.
A chilling fear stole through Elle, its icy fingers closing painfully tightly in her chest. That was where one of his other units was bridge-building.
‘Colonel Fitzwilliam was heading out there to oversee things.’
Jools nodded grimly.
‘The engineers were caught in it, too. We know they suffered a couple of fatalities, but that’s all we know.’
Tempted by Dr. Off-Limits Page 15
