The Army Doctor's Wedding (3 page)

"Do you know if the baby has
any living relatives?"

"They wouldn't want
him."

"I guess not. But we have to
make a note if he has."

Alice shook her head sadly.
"From what I saw, most everyone in the village is dead."

Cameron sucked in a breath and
released it slowly. He might be in the army, but he would never get used to the
persecution of civilians. It seemed to be part and parcel of just about every
military conflict.

"Here's my suggestion on how
we move forward. The baby obviously needs surgery to repair his lip, and he's
not going to get it here. There is a plastic surgeon at the military hospital
in Oxfordshire where my brother works, and he could do the operation. All we
have to do is get the baby over there."

Alice visibly perked up,
determination filling her blue eyes. "I'll take him. No problem."

"Unfortunately we can't just
put him on an aircraft and ship him off to the UK. He needs a visa and we need
to get whatever permission is necessary to take him out of this country. It
would look bad if the local authorities think we are taking children without
authority."

Alice sagged again, her good hand
moving to rub her shoulder above her cast.

"Aching?"

"A little."

Cameron had an overwhelming urge
to fold her in his arms and hug her. She was incredibly brave and had
experienced things no young woman should have to cope with. But she was a
patient. Much as he wanted to offer comfort, he had to maintain a professional
distance. He patted her arm then pushed back his chair and moved away from the
bed.

"Get some sleep. I'll make a
few calls and try to arrange a visa for Sami."

It was lucky his father was a
bigwig in the Ministry of Defense and quite happy to throw his weight around
when necessary.

Chapter Three

A few days later, Alice woke with a start to a booming
explosion outside. The window above her head rattled, the ground shaking. Dust
and flakes of cement fell from the ceiling. In the corridor, voices shouted
while booted feet thudded.

Pulse racing, Alice struggled to
sit up in the dark room lit only by the faint light leaking through the crack
in the door. Sami started to cry, his plaintive wail rising as another boom and
crash rattled the building.

"It's all right, Sami. All
right, baby boy. I'm here." Alice slid out of bed and felt for her boots
on the cold, rough floor.

Leaning over the bassinet, she
stroked the baby's hair, speaking softly to him so he knew he wasn't alone. She
wanted to cuddle him, but it was difficult to pick him up with the wretched
cast covering her left arm from shoulder to wrist.

So far Lieutenant Grace had
changed and fed Sami. She'd promised to help Alice work out how she could hold
the baby in her lap to give him his bottle.

Another bang sounded. Flashes lit
up the sky outside the small window, momentarily giving Alice a clear view of
the room before leaving her blind.

Sami continued to cry, his
desperate wail growing louder as the barrage of gunfire outside grew more
insistent. She had to find someone to pick the baby up and soothe him. The poor
little guy sounded frantic with fear.

The door burst open and light
flooded the room. Cameron raced in, pulling on a utility vest. "Good,
you're up. You need to get dressed quickly. We'll have a driver take you across
Rejerrah to the hotel where the foreign journalists and charity workers have
been evacuated." He stooped to tie his trailing boot laces. "You'll
be safer there and we'll need this room for casualties."

"What's going on?"

"The rebels are shelling the
airfield."

Another boom outside, closer this
time, caused the whole building to shudder. The lights flickered off. After a
few moments of darkness they came back on again, but not as brightly.

"The backup generator has
kicked in."

"Can someone come with me to
carry Sami?"

Cameron ran a hand back through
his tousled hair and frowned. "We can't spare any medics. We're going to
need them all. You'd best leave him here. Lieutenant Grace will have to find
time to look after him."

"No. He comes with me or I
stay here." After everything Alice had gone through to keep the baby safe,
she was not leaving him now, especially when the hospital would be so busy it
was unlikely Lieutenant Grace would have time for him.

Cameron met her gaze, firm and
intense, as if judging her resolve. After a few seconds he nodded. "Okay,
then. I shouldn't do this but never mind. You'll have to bunk in my room for a
while." He gave a weary laugh. "I certainly won't need it for a few
days."

He grabbed her clothes off the
chair and heaped them on the baby's feet. "Come on. Let's move you
now."

Clutching the end of the
bassinet, he pushed it out the door. Alice jammed her feet deeper in her boots
and shuffled after him, a sheet wrapped around her thin hospital gown. She had
to jog to keep up with him as he slalomed down the corridor, avoiding people
and equipment. He turned at the end into a quieter area. The rooms here only
had curtains over the doorways and this part of the building was in worse
repair, bricks falling out of the walls in places.

Cameron pushed aside a curtain
and led her into a small room with a low camp bed on one side, a chair on the
other, and no windows. Bags and clothes hung from nails in the wall. She
recognized the jacket with the red cross logo on the sleeve. It was the same
one he'd worn when he rescued her.

"Can you manage to feed and
change Sami?"

Alice glanced at the distressed
baby still bawling his eyes out. "Yes," she said firmly. She would
have to manage. The sterilizing unit and baby formula were in a small kitchen
down the corridor, and she'd watched Lieutenant Grace prepare a bottle the
previous day.

"Good. I'll see you
later." Cameron grabbed his jacket and put it on, then picked up his
helmet. He headed for the door but paused and looked over his shoulder.
"It will be pandemonium for a while. You'll be fine. Just stay out of the
way."

"I will."

He stepped out and went to draw
across the door curtain.

"Cameron, be careful."

Their gazes locked. For a crazy
moment she thought he would come back into the room and hug her. The moment
passed and he simply nodded. Then he was gone.

Alice squatted beside the
bassinet and rested a hand on Sami's tiny body, gently stroking, listening to
the distant shouts and clatter of soldiers as some headed out to pick up the
casualties while the others prepared. Gradually the noise died down and so did
Sami's wails.

In the light from one small table
lamp, she peeled back a tape on Sami's diaper to check if it was dirty. Then
she hurried along the now quiet corridors to the room where Lieutenant Grace
kept the sterilizer, bottles, and formula. Alice made up a couple of bottles
before dashing back to Cameron's room.

Sami was still awake, but now the
barrage had died down, the baby had quieted as well. Was it simply the noise
he'd reacted to, or had he sensed the tension in the people around him?

She stood the bottle on the floor
beside the bed and gently wriggled her good arm beneath the baby. Bending close
with her palm supporting his head, she scooped him up against her chest, his
bottom resting on her cast. Pain shot up her broken arm, and she hurried to sit
on the low bed.

Her years working in a women's
refuge in London had given her plenty of experience handling babies. She knew
it was possible for women to breast-feed while lying down. She hoped it also
worked with bottle-feeding.

She lay the baby in the middle of
the bed and put the nipple in his mouth. The tiny boy must have a strong
survival instinct because right from the word go he had taken his bottle with
no trouble. He sucked down his milk as if he knew he was lucky to have it.

When he'd finished, Alice
awkwardly held him against her shoulder to burp him and settled him back in his
bassinet. The shelling had stopped and an eerie silence hung over the place.

Thoughts of Cameron kept creeping
into her mind. She imagined him at the airfield, shells exploding around him
while he tended the wounded. Her stomach gave a sick lurch at the thought he
might be hurt. Cameron Knight was not like any man she had met before. For the
first time in her life, she imagined the possibility of falling in love.
Something she had believed would never happen.

She glanced around the neat room
at his bag and his bed. She pressed her palm to the pillow. This was where he
slept, where he laid his head. Alice kicked off her boots and lifted the
bedcover, then slipped underneath and settled her head on the pillow, staring
up at the pockmarked cement ceiling above, imagining Cameron lying here looking
at the same view.

Crazy as it seemed, in only three
days she had started to care for him.

***

"Major Knight."

Cameron turned as a voice behind
him called his name. One of the medical technicians stood in the corridor,
holding aside the plastic strips that made up the door to the OR.
"Lieutenant Colonel Jasper told me to pass on a message, sir."

Cameron blinked, his eyes gritty
with tiredness after hours of setting broken bones, stitching wounds, and
stabilizing more serious injuries so the soldiers could be safely transported
back to the military hospital in the UK.

"What is it, Sergeant?"
Cameron said behind his mask.

"The lieutenant colonel says
you should take a break, sir."

Cameron turned back to the
unconscious man on the table and tied off the last of six stitches to a
laceration on the man's arm.

"Can I tell him you'll take
a break, sir?"

"Yes," Cameron said
without turning around. "In a few minutes. I'll just finish up here."

He examined a couple of other
lacerations and put two stitches in one of them. While men were under
anesthetic for more serious procedures, he took the opportunity to stitch the
minor wounds. It was less stressful for them.

This poor guy had a badly
traumatized leg from a blast injury. Cameron had done all he could to clean it
up following the protocol his brother Radley had drawn up for removing damaged
tissue and stabilizing seriously injured limbs. Whether the lower leg could be
saved or not was now up to Radley back in the UK. He specialized in limb
salvage.

"All right, you can take him
to recovery." He was wheeled away and Cameron pulled off his bloodied
plastic apron and gloves and tossed them in the trash.

He acknowledged the medical
technician. "Okay, tell Jasper I'm taking a break."

The man hurried off, relief clear
on his face.

Cameron followed him along the
corridor, stumbling on some debris that had fallen from the wall during the
bombardment. This building had once been used as offices by a freight company,
but long since abandoned. That was until the NATO forces moved in and adapted
it as a field hospital. It was in an ideal location close to the air field and
on the right side of Rejerrah. Part of it ran back into the rocky hillside,
affording extra protection.

That was where the medical staff
had their quarters—where Alice and little Sami were safely tucked away from the
frantic race to treat the injured servicemen.

Cameron pushed through the door
into what they laughingly called the mess, a small room with a couple of tables
surrounded by chairs, and a table bearing a coffee machine and ration packs.

He poured himself a tepid coffee,
added dried milk and sugar, and slumped down on a chair with a ration pack in
his hand. He took out a cereal bar and chewed with effort. Weariness sapped his
appetite, even though he hadn't eaten for hours.

Major Braithwaite came in, her
face pale and pinched with fatigue. She silently acknowledged him, grabbed an
energy drink, and hurried away again.

At times like this they were all
worn down with the mental and physical stress of fighting for the lives of
their fellow soldiers. Nobody had energy for social chat. Times like this left
Cameron drained. It normally took him a week to recover his usual optimistic
outlook on life.

His mind slipped to Alice as it
had done often in the last thirty-six hours, as if she were the default setting
for his thoughts when he had a moment to relax.

He pictured her as he'd left her
standing in his room, wearing her boots, a pale blue hospital gown, and a white
sheet wrapped around her skinny body. Her blonde hair straggled around her
bumped and bruised face, her nose swollen. Yet there was something about her
that tugged at him.

How was she managing with Sami?
He'd asked Lieutenant Grace to check on her when she had a moment. Cameron
would like to go back and see Alice himself, but he didn't have time. He didn't
want the distraction; he needed to concentrate on his work.

Yet his mind focused on Alice,
and he couldn't drag it away. Even now, she was probably lying in his bed. He
closed his eyes and pictured her there, her blonde hair spread across his
pillow. Unwanted emotions flooded up from somewhere deep inside him and
wouldn't go away.

He rubbed a hand over his face and
blew out a breath. He couldn't have feelings for her. It was unprofessional and
inappropriate. She was his injured patient. She simply was not suitable. If he
let himself develop feelings for a woman who traipsed all over the world,
putting herself in danger, he would be out of his mind with worry most of the
time.

And wasn't he a hypocrite?

A groan rumbled in his chest, and
he pinched the bridge of his nose.

His father was in the process of
getting the baby a visa. Once the work at the hospital died down, Cameron would
help Alice negotiate with the authorities so she could take Sami out of the
country to the UK. Then he could forget about them and focus on his job.

***

Alice jolted awake and lay in the semi-darkness. Every time
she turned over she woke up, either because the cast got in the way or because
her arm hurt. The noise of the portable air-conditioning unit droned in the
corridor, but the room was still airless and hot.

She kicked aside the thin cover
and wiped sweat off her face. She wore panties, along with a T-shirt Lieutenant
Grace had given her. Even though the lieutenant was busy, she had made time to
check up on Alice every day to make sure she was coping with Sami. Alice liked
her a lot.

She rolled over, trying to find a
comfortable position for her arm. Her heart gave a little bump at the sight of
Cameron lying on a sleeping bag on the floor. Her gaze traveled down his long,
lean body stretched out only a few feet away from her, naked except for his
underwear. The lamp in the corner of the room cast his form in light and
shadow, emphasizing his toned muscles.

Relaxed in sleep, his face
appeared almost boyish, the lines of worry gone. But there was nothing boyish
about his biceps and the ridges of muscle in his belly. He was in good shape, but
then he was a soldier. In the army, even doctors must have to train to keep
fit.

Over the last three days she'd
exchanged only a few words with him when they'd passed in the corridor. He had
asked how she was doing, but he'd been very busy and preoccupied. She didn't
think he'd slept in that time. He hadn't been back to his room anyway.

She bit her lip, uncomfortable
with this situation. The poor man must be exhausted. He should have the camp
bed. The temporary folding bed was just a sheet of canvas on a metal frame. Not
especially comfortable, but better than the floor.