‘THIS IS ARI,’ the nurse, a corporal who’d been there a month or so longer than Elle, informed her as soon as she came on shift for the morning. ‘He’s eight and he has a broken leg with an open wound. This is his first visit to us but the team at the main hospital have been trying to treat him for over a month.’
Elle smiled at the boy, receiving a sweet smile in return as he clung onto his mother’s hand. Her own fears were masked by a tight smile, too. The nearest hospital was across the border, several hours and a treacherous drive away. It was no wonder that even though this hospital had been intended to be just a training ground for local doctors, with only a few cases while the army got the rebuild under way, the locals were ignoring that and bringing their sick and injured here anyway.
Another reason why getting this hospital back up and running quickly was so essential.
‘They’ve been trying to heal the infected wound before they can attempt to set the bone,’ the nurse added.
Elle nodded. Infection really was the enemy out here. Even if they set the bone, it wouldn’t heal unless the infection was gone.
‘He needs a smaller surgical plates-and-pins kit that I don’t have among my army kit,’ Elle assessed quickly. ‘Neither do Razorwire. But our logistics teams are bringing supplies all the time now we’re out here, so I’ll put in a requisition for more instruments appropriate for dealing with children. In the meantime, we do need to get the infection under control.’
‘He can’t tolerate washing the wound without anaesthesia,’ the nurse warned. ‘And we don’t have any here.’
‘No, well, without the custom-sized plates and pins to hold the bones together they’ll be moving and the pain will be incredible for him. We’ll leave the leg in plaster for now and wash the wound as much as Ari can withstand, and always under anaesthetic. As soon as the smaller surgical plates arrive we’ll be able to hold the bones together and we’ll have more options.’
‘Understood,’ the nurse confirmed.
‘Who’s in the next bay?’
‘Young boy named Zav. He’s only five. He suffers from a severe form of thalassaemia so he needs blood transfusions every five weeks. His family are from a village a little east of here, wealthy by local standards, but they say they can’t keep making the journey across the border and want to bring him to this hospital for his transfusions.’
‘Right.’ Elle nodded grimly. Thalassaemia wasn’t uncommon out here, not just as an inherited blood disorder, but also because there was no national plan to tackle the disease. It meant that few health facilities could offer treatment for the more severe cases, and parents weren’t educated on its causes, which were mutations in the DNA of cells. They only understood the symptoms of chronic fatigue, anaemia and, ultimately, if she recalled rightly, a life expectancy of around fifteen years in this region. Twenty years across the country.
‘I take it infection, bone deformities and slowed growth rates, especially in children, are common.’
‘Right,’ the nurse agreed. ‘We see a lot of abnormal bone structure in the face and skull, broken bones, iron overloads and heart problems such as arrhythmias and congestive heart failure.’
Elle nodded. There was little she could say. Treatments were basically frequent blood transfusions or stem-cell transplants, usually from a non-affected sibling. Otherwise, affected or carrier parents would be looking at IVF with embryos pre-tested for genetic defects. Hardly a possibility in a country like this one.
‘And in the far bed?’ Elle forced herself to move on.
‘A two-month-old. Bronchiolitis.’
Again, not uncommon in this region, affecting hundreds of babies every season. Still, she would be glad when the rebuild was under way and she could start kitting out dedicated wards with incubators, paediatric kits and equipment for women in labour. Training the local health professionals to be part-doctors, part-nurses, part-surgeons, however, promised to be no mean feat.
As she flew around the wards—or what passed for wards in the damaged hospital—Elle considered the best place to start in terms of the rebuild. She knew that Major Carl Howes, the officer in command of the troop working at the hospital itself, was focussed on getting the main infrastructure up first. Without water and power, everything else would be doubly hard, but the discovery of an unexpected aquifer running below the area had thrown their programme into turmoil, and Carl had told her he’d called in his commanding officer to go through the finer details.
She could only hope Carl’s colonel was as much of an expert as Carl claimed the man was.
She glanced quickly at her watch. There was a joint regiment briefing in a couple of hours and her own commanding officer had flown in as well. She really didn’t want to keep him waiting so her ward rounds were going to be postponed. Grabbing a hat for the shade, Elle ducked outside, seeing the older man straight away and beaming at her mentor.
‘Colonel Duggan, thanks for flying in. I take it you’ve heard about the aquifer?’
* * *
Fitz surveyed the vast expanse of nothing beneath the helicopter as it flew the hour or so trip across the barren land, his eyes constantly scanning, more out of habit than anything since they were in a non-combat environment out here.
Part of him was actually relishing the challenge of the unexpected aquifer. Anything to occupy his mind, to distract it from the emerald-eyed, flame-haired beauty who had haunted his dreams—waking and sleeping—for almost a week now. He couldn’t shake her from his memory, but every time he tried to work out what made her so special, so unique from any other woman he’d dated, he just seemed to tie himself up in knots.
It was uncharacteristic and he loathed it. Yet he wouldn’t have changed it even if he could have.
He’d watched a group of squaddies playing with a deck of cards the previous night and had realised that right now his life, his career had been like a perfectly ordered deck of cards until Elle had given them a playful shuffle. It had taken him all of the last week to re-order them and fit them neatly back into their box.
Still, he had no intention of letting them get messed up again. Not while he was out here on tour, in any case.
Maybe afterwards, once he returned home, if visions of that flame-haired, emerald-eyed temptress still haunted his dreams, he might consider stepping out of his comfort zone and contacting the hotel to see if he couldn’t inveigle something—anything—out of them regarding Elle’s name.
Anything to sate the gnawing ache she’d left inside him.
Finally the heli landed, and Fitz stepped out to greet Major Howes, one of the five majors under his direct command.
‘Colonel.’
‘Major.’
‘How was your ride, sir?’
‘Fine, thanks. Good to see you again, Major. We missed each other at Razorwire.’
‘Yes, sir, I didn’t think I’d have to wait long for you to come out and see the hospital site first-hand. I’m glad, too, as I could use someone with your particular specialism right now. I was going to radio HQ to send me someone yesterday but then I heard you were on your way. I’ll show you around when you’re ready.’
‘I’m happy for you to show me around now,’ Fitz said as they moved out of the way while soldiers began unloading the several tonnes of materials and equipment from the heli.
Dutifully, Carl instructed a young lance corporal to take Fitz’s pack to his office.
‘How was the drive out here?’ Fitz asked as the two officers slipped easily into conversation.
The convoy had left Razorwire earlier in the week before Fitz had even arrived. He would have preferred to have travelled with them, it was always good to get an idea of the ground, but he had been needed elsewhere.
‘Six hours. Not bad.’ Carl shrugged. ‘The route was long but that’s because we still have to go the long way round that valley, and you know what passes for roads around here.’
‘You’re lucky if they’re paved,’ Fitz acknowledged. ‘So what’s the issue you wanted me here to look at? You mentioned an aquifer.’
‘Your speciality. It runs directly beneath where we’re planning on putting the plant room for the generators. I had a couple of solutions, which I was going through with the medical liaison officer, but I’d like it if you could run over them, too.’
‘Okay, when did you schedule the briefing for me today?’
‘Zero-nine-hundred hours. Ninety minutes away.’
‘Understood. Then don’t let me hold you up, let’s go.’ He followed as Carl led the way around the hospital, mentally orientating himself as they progressed. ‘What’s the medical colonel running this hospital like? Colonel Duggan, isn’t it? I heard he had a good reputation as a surgeon, don’t tell me he’s making things difficult on our construction side?’
‘No, the Colonel is okay,’ Carl answered as they made their way through and around the part-damaged, part-derelict hospital. ‘He has got a good reputation apparently, and he mainly deals with teaching the local doctors. But one of the majors under his command, a Major Caplin, has experience both as a combat doctor and of building cottage hospitals back in the UK, so her CO has been happy to pass a lot of the liaison work on to her.’
‘Makes sense if she has that kind of experience and he doesn’t.’ Fitz nodded, thinking how he’d always found that one of the greatest strengths of the British army. ‘But not if she’s insisting the plant room go above the aquifer without considering the other options.’
As structured and hierarchical as it might appear to an outsider, in reality it was far more nuanced and elastic. A brigadier should be willing to take advice from a lieutenant, or even a sergeant, if that individual had specific expertise that everyone else lacked. For all intents and purposes, he could be answerable to this Major Caplin if her commanding officer Colonel Duggan had passed over administrative and operational command of the hospital rebuild to her. Usually, it worked well and was balanced. But if she was awkward and demanding the hospital be constructed in a way that wasn’t feasible then he was prepared to pull rank if required.
‘No, she isn’t insisting that. She’s tough and she knows what she wants, but she also has a good head on her shoulders and she isn’t difficult to work with. She’s clearly a skilled doctor, too.’
Fitz eyed his old friend shrewdly.
‘She’s also attractive, isn’t she?’ he noted wryly. ‘I’d forgotten you were one for the females.’
‘Only single commissioned females. Usually back home but certainly never in a combat zone,’ Carl pointed out with a sheepish grin. ‘I’m always discreet and I don’t contravene the rules. I never dip into the non-commissioned officers pool. I value my career, thanks. Besides, there’s no need for us all to be complete monks like you.’
He’d either forgotten about Janine, or deliberately wasn’t mentioning her. Janine’s father—back then a colonel, now a general—had no doubt made sure of that.
Lost in his own thoughts, Fitz was completely unprepared when he rounded the corner.
Just Elle?
Shock stole over him, taking his breath and leaving him feeling physically winded. She might as well have snatched that perfectly ordered deck of cards he’d imagined earlier out of his hands and hurled them high into the cloudless sky. Now some were fluttering in the breeze while others plummeted, ominously, to land face down in the dust.
Even putting one foot in front of the other suddenly seemed like a mammoth feat.
She couldn’t be out here. The woman, the one-night stand he was already struggling to put behind him. Surely it was impossible now?
And yet he had to put that night behind him. Especially now.
Oblivious, Carl stepped forward and made the formal introductions.
‘Colonel Fitzwilliam, this is the medical CO, Colonel Duggan. And one of the majors under his command, Major Caplin.’
‘Fitz,’ he clarified, holding his hand out to his counterpart, focussing on the older man. But the only person he could see, could focus on, was Elle.
‘Phil,’ Colonel Duggan responded immediately.
A solid handshake and warm greeting confirmed Carl’s assessment of the guy as a secure CO. It was all Fitz could do to keep his eyes from sliding to the side.
But even in his peripheral vision he could see how remarkably stiff Elle was, blood draining from her face to leave two pinched high spots. He got the sense that if she’d been allowed to salute in the field, she would have. Evidently she was as thrown as he was, yet Fitz was helpless against the inexplicable sense of anger welling inside him.
He prided himself on his focus, his drive, his steadiness. And Elle threatened all that. She made him feel unbalanced. He allowed her to unsettle him and he didn’t know who he was more furious with.
He was only grateful that army protocol gave him some semblance of structure that he might otherwise have felt was lacking.
‘Major.’
‘Colonel.’ She thrust out her hand to take his with no acknowledgement in her expression.
Yet there was no doubting the spark that arced between them as their hands made contact, the hitch in her breath as it grew shallow, the way his chest pounded. Things that only the two of them would notice, but which proved the attraction from that night hadn’t dimmed in any way.
If anything, it seemed to have increased.
He had to act. Before she did something stupid like pretend they’d never met. They might not be about to flaunt the exact circumstances of their encounter—that wasn’t anyone else’s business but their own—but neither did it mean it was anything they should need to hide.
Ignoring the voice in his head challenging why he really didn’t like the idea of going along with it—the inexplicable sense of possession—Fitz smothered his irrational fury and dipped his head.
‘We’ve already met. Once. Isn’t that right, Major?’
She managed a murmur of agreement but he had already turned back to his counterpart. As though that would somehow ground him, as though the more professional he could keep it, the less he could pretend he was affected by her. Until he’d managed to control his frustration.
‘Major Howes informs me there’s already been a development. An aquifer that wasn’t previously identified?’
‘That’s right,’ Colonel Duggan agreed. ‘Directly beneath the intended location for the medical gas supply system.’
‘But it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.’ Fitz frowned. ‘We can bridge over it or close it in.’
The medical colonel held a hand up with a smile.
‘Let me stop you there, Fitz. Major Caplin here has experience in hospital construction so it’s better if she runs you through her concerns. My expertise is as a vascular surgeon and I’m mainly based at the field hospital back in Razorwire, so Major Caplin essentially has administrative and operational command of this hospital. Of course, she keeps me updated in her daily sit-rep so I’m always happy to discuss it with you, but it might be easier to speak to the major in the first instance.’
Just what he didn’t need.
‘Not a problem, Phil.’
‘Then, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a teaching operation scheduled in about half an hour. I’ll send someone to let you know when I’m out and we can go through anything.’
‘Appreciate it,’ Fitz confirmed, as the man checked with Elle if she needed anything else.
He couldn’t blame the man, it was exactly what he would have done. In fact, hadn’t he left his second-in-command liaising with brigade back at Razorwire in his absence? Furthermore, Carl was right, Colonel Duggan looked like he would be good to work with. The man was secure enough to acknowledge when it was advantageous to hand off to his more experienced major, but still remain directly responsible.
If only that major wasn’t Major Caplin, wasn’t Elle. Not that he didn’t respect her or admire her—far from it. But he couldn’t imagine working with someone whose laugh still jingled in his head and whose body he could taste on his tongue if he closed his eyes.
‘Nice to meet you, Colonel,’ Colonel Duggan signed off cheerily, and Fitz forced himself back to reality with a pleasant smile.
‘Likewise.’
With the medical CO gone, that left him and Carl. And Elle. With Carl gazing at her with respect and a hint of lust, which only an old friend like Fitz himself would have recognised.
Something shot through him. Something which—if he hadn’t known better—he might have mistaken for a touch of jealousy and...possession?
But he did know better.
He knew because he’d sworn, after Janine, that he’d never allow himself to blur the lines between personal and professional again. And now that Elle was out here, with him, in this environment, he had to stop remembering that night.
He liked things to be distinct, clear, compartmentalised. It avoided messiness.
He didn’t date army colleagues. Oh, there was no rule against him and Elle getting together that night, but it was a line he didn’t like to cross in his own mind. Just as he didn’t do long-term relationships.
He wasn’t built for them. He was too selfish. Too thoughtless. Too damaged.
The kind of man who’d been too busy celebrating his eighteenth with his mates to take the time out to listen to his voicemail. For the sake of thirty seconds, he’d have heard his mother’s desperate, frightened message. Their deaths were on his hands.
The one time he’d thought he could be a better person, he’d thought he could be there for Janine the way he never had been for his family, he’d failed again. The loss of their unborn baby, another death on his conscience.
He couldn’t run from it. It was in his DNA.
A good soldier. A good leader.
A destructive family man.
One-night stands and temporary relationships with women who never knew the military side of him meant he never had to deal with complications when they ended. He’d been meticulous about keeping the two sides of his life distinct from each other.
And now here he was. Acutely aware of the woman standing stiffly beside him. A woman who had made him feel the most relaxed and comfortable that he’d been in a long, long time. That night with her he’d actually felt a carefree happiness.
But wanting something more with Elle now, as a fellow officer, would allow his personal life to bleed into his professional one, a no-go in his mind. Or at least it should have been a no-go. Yet even now, as his initial shock dulled, he couldn’t shake the possibility. As if Elle had the ability to break down whatever barriers he tried to erect between them.
He’d never felt so off-kilter. Elle had sneaked under his skin when he hadn’t noticed and all he could think of was how she’d looked in his arms, how she’d tasted when he’d kissed her, and how she’d sounded when he’d made her come apart time and again.
He was hardly surprised when Elle jumped straight in with a determinedly professional expression. And then her eyes locked with his and there was no doubting that she was as unsettled as he was. Both of them striving to remain soldier-like, both of them unable to help homing in on each other as though it was just the two of them in the whole world.
‘I understand from Major Howes that the soil on either side of the aquifer is hard and competent, so it might be possible to bridge it. However, he did mention he wanted to get advice from an aquifer specialist. I didn’t know that was you, sir.’
Fitz doubted Carl would hear anything but polite respect in her tone. But, then, Carl hadn’t got to know the major quite as intimately as he himself had.
‘Major Howes is right. It is possible to bridge some aquifers, but I’d need to study this one before I could confirm it in this case. I don’t know what the pressure is in the aquifer, and even if the soil either side is hard and competent, if it’s made up of over-consolidated silt it could wash away if we have to drive any piles into the ground.’
‘He mentioned basal uplift?’
Why wasn’t he surprised that Elle had absorbed every bit of information Carl must have given her? And, just like when they’d pulled together so harmoniously back at the bar with the young lad and his sister, Fitz found himself slipping easily back into working with her. Setting aside their unsettled history for the moment.
‘That can happen if we excavate the water and soil from on top of the aquifer—which is currently keeping it contained—and the pressure within the aquifer itself bursts, swamping this entire site. That could also happen even if we don’t have a blow-out but simply pierce the aquifer.’
‘That sounds like a risk we don’t want.’ She frowned.
‘Only if we don’t allow for it. We can drill a series of relief wells, even back-up relief wells, and instal pumps to get some draw-down and relieve the pressure. We can also spread the footings of the buildings to avoid piles piercing the aquifer.’
‘And what if we moved the plant room altogether, how feasible is that?’
‘It depends how extensive the aquifer is. Major Howes and I have already agreed this is a priority discussion.’
‘If at all possible, I’d like to consider moving to the other side of the site, to avoid any risk of contaminating the aquifer altogether,’ Elle stated firmly. ‘In this area the population mainly use groundwater, either from foothill infiltration or from riverbed exfiltration, with little chance of rainwater recharge. And with the population in this region growing exponentially, there is increasing over-exploitation of the scarce water resources.’
He could see exactly where she was heading.
‘So you want to tap into this aquifer for the local communities. Perhaps a series of clean water wells?’
‘I’m not a ground surveyor like you are, and I certainly don’t know anything about aquifers to speak of, but I would think this offers a significant clean water supply to the community, especially when cholera and other water-borne diseases are so prevalent out here. Do you agree, Colonel?’
‘I do,’ he mused, looking over her shoulder at the basic geological plans Carl had already put together. ‘But if you’re moving across the site, it will mean redesigning your hospital layout. The main hospital itself, as damaged as it has been over the last decade, is still the best medical resource the local population have.’
The familiar citrusy scent powered into him before he realised it, tightening his chest and stealing his breath away.
‘So we need to minimise the impact on them and make as few alterations as possible. Yes, Colonel,’ Elle bit out, stiffening abruptly.
Their sudden proximity clearly affected her just as much as it did him. Fitz jerked around to Carl, as much to remind himself of his Major’s presence as anything else.
‘Any ideas, Major Howes?’
‘Working on it, sir.’ Carl stepped forward, apparently unaware of the tension Fitz felt was practically sparking between himself and Elle. ‘The plant room houses the heat, ventilation and air-conditioning units.’
Fitz made a quick assessment.
‘Which means also moving the generators in the next-door unit since they’ll be relying on the HVAC plant room to keep them cool, especially in these temperatures.’
‘What about moving the medical gas supply system here?’ Elle tapped another location on the map, and he stepped close again, so close her fingers accidentally brushed his and his gut kicked in response even as she snatched her hand away.
‘The HVAC could go here—’ the faint, almost imperceptible quiver in her voice betrayed her ‘—and the generators could go there.’
‘What’s on that side of the wall?’
‘The ICU.’
‘Then no. And, anyway, I’d like the generator-housing unit to have bigger blast walls if we’re having to move them closer to the hospital.’ Fitz scanned the ground. ‘Can we take a walk around? I’ve studied the plans back at Razorwire, and I had a good aerial view coming in, but I want to see it for myself.’
‘Colonel.’ Elle and Carl acquiesced simultaneously.
He was used to it, a first-name basis in private but generally formal in public, yet this time it particularly reminded him of how well he and Elle had worked together before. How effortlessly they’d slipped into working together now. How easy she made it.
At every turn she challenged his fears of complications and messiness. She made him wonder whether he could have more after all. More time with her. More of her.
The possibility intrigued him.
And the distraction annoyed him.
Forcing himself to focus on the plans in front of him as well as the geography of the site, Fitz tried to forget that Elle was suddenly here, and concentrated on mapping it all in his head. It was a sixty-bed hospital, with electricity intermittent. So the back-up generators were vital, as was good access from the road to fuel them. He moved around the site thoughtfully, finally coming back to a possibility in his mind.
‘So the proposed ORs were to have been on the other side of this wall?’
‘Yes.’ Elle nodded. ‘On each side of the corridor.’
Fitz consulted the design then glanced over the other end of the site, warming to his work as he always did, and forgetting for a moment that he and Elle had any issues between them.
‘So, hypothetically, if we extended that part of the facility to house them on the other side, we’d have to move the recovery areas too?’
‘Yes. And building room is tighter on this side so, as you said, we’d have to either create more space between the hospital and the proposed location for the generators, or build thicker blast walls.’
‘It could work,’ Fitz mused. ‘I need to look into it in more detail and understand how your internal layout for the hospital works.’
He’d built plenty of bridges, railheads, electricity plants and more in his time, not to mention demolished or blown up a fair few buildings. But this was the first hospital he’d built.
‘I admire your frankness, Colonel.’ Elle beamed unexpectedly when he told her as much, and a thousand explosions went off in Fitz’s chest, like an unused pyrotechnics display at the end of an army year.
It was impossible not be drawn into those vivid emerald pools.
And that smile.
It was ridiculous that he’d been missing that smile so profoundly. He didn’t miss smiles. He didn’t miss people.
She made him feel things he’d never felt before and he couldn’t afford that. The last time he’d tried to pretend that he was normal, that he wasn’t missing fundamental pieces of a human being, he’d ended up causing immeasurable pain. He could still recall the distraught expression on Janine’s face, the pain, the hurt, the recrimination in her eyes when she’d screamed at him that she’d have been better off never meeting him in the first place.
He was broken, and his attempts to fix himself had only ever caused more pain to those around him.
He was only here for a few days. How hard could it be to keep himself at arm’s length from Elle? To refuse to allow himself to give into temptation and seek her out as though that night had been more than it had been?
‘Colonel.’ Carl’s voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘The briefing you scheduled is due to start in forty minutes.’
Had they been that long walking around the place?
‘Right.’ He jerked his head, forcing himself to focus. ‘Thank you, Major.’
‘If you don’t need me here, I’ll go and start setting up, sir.’
‘That’ll be fine,’ Fitz confirmed smoothly, watching Elle twist her hands in discomfort.
This was the moment to put into practice what he’d been thinking. To keep himself at arm’s length. To walk away. To let Elle walk away.
He didn’t move.
Neither did Elle.
They both knew what was coming. It was inevitable. And unavoidable. They’d fallen into working together with incredible ease but they couldn’t ignore their shared night. And, worryingly, he found he didn’t want to. So much for it being a one-night stand; he needed to hear her talk about it, to know that she found it as unforgettable as he did. Which only made him all the more irritable.
Fitz waited until Carl had rounded the corner before he began speaking.
‘You told me you weren’t military.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ She shook her head miserably. ‘I told you I was a doctor, I omitted to say I was an army trauma doctor.’
‘Yet you knew I was a colonel in the army.’
What was wrong with him that he was blaming her?
It was as though the more frustrated he felt at his own inability to walk away from her, the angrier he felt, and he turned it onto her in some misplaced effort to keep his distance. To stop himself from hauling her into his arms and kissing her senseless. Which, at this instant, was the only thing he ached to do.
Ached.
He’d never wanted anyone like this. Never. It made no damned sense.
‘Yes, but I didn’t think it would matter.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Listen, I understand this isn’t the most ideal development to our...one-night stand.’
His whole body balked at the sound of the words on her lips. It was exactly what that night had been and yet, ludicrously, it seemed a wholly inadequate description.
The ache became a crushing need, the likes of which he’d never experienced.
‘Not the most ideal development hardly even begins to describe what this is, wouldn’t you agree?’
In his effort to stay distant his voice sounded harsher, uglier than he’d like, and she jerked her head up in shock. But he was fighting to make sense of the maelstrom in his head. In his chest. He suspected that if he didn’t push her away he might end up kissing her. And he could hardly do that.
‘Not ideal, no,’ she agreed slowly, tightly. ‘But you’re acting like it’s a scourge on you or something. It isn’t. We haven’t contravened a single rule. We’re both commissioned officers and you aren’t my boss. There’s no rule against us having slept together.’
‘Not here,’ he silenced her, glancing hastily around, his tone even more brusque than the jerk of his head.
There was no one about but, still, it didn’t hurt to be careful. He strode angrily back to the set of buildings, barely pausing to throw a final command over his shoulder.
‘My office.’