A Woman To Belong To

‘Tom!’ She stood outside the hut and called, not wanting to barge into the clinic and undo the trust he’d built up.

He appeared almost immediately, smiling when he saw her. ‘Finished already?’

She shook her head, ignoring the feeling in her gut his smile created. ‘No, I think I’m just starting. I need your help.’

He raised his brows. ‘Really? How so?’

She took no notice of the gentle jibe—she knew her independence and distance could sometimes grate in a team situation. ‘I have a woman and child with severe dehydration.’

‘That’s pretty common, Bec. You’ll need to mix up the oral rehydration solution.’ A perplexed look crossed his face. ‘I’m pretty sure I unpacked those boxes and stacked them in the women’s hut when we arrived. Do you want me to look?’

Again, his thoughtfulness surprised her. She wasn’t used to men acting like this. Not toward her, anyway. ‘Thanks, but I know where the sachets are. My real concern is that this woman is complaining of diarrhoea, vomiting and leg cramps.’

His head snapped up, his dark eyes meeting hers. ‘Does anyone else have the symptoms?’

She nodded slowly, knowing exactly where his mind was going. To the same conclusion she’d drawn. ‘I’ve got Hin and Sung questioning the villagers. It sounds like cholera, doesn’t it?’

‘Damn it!’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘Cholera’s so contagious. It races through a community like wildfire. We need to set up a separate clinic, isolate all the affected people, start treatment and find the source.’

‘As I have the first few patients in my hut, I guess we make that the isolation ward.’ All thoughts of barrier nursing came pouring back into her head. ‘Do we have chlorine to kill the bacterium?’

Worry lines scored his forehead. ‘We do, but we also need it to wash their clothes. A laundry will have to be set up…I need to speak with the village elders.’

‘Sung and I will get started on the makeshift quarantine area. I need to get the electrolyte solution into that child. I’ll see you the moment you’re back from meeting with the elders.’ Please, don’t be too long.

‘Good plan. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Did he read minds? ‘Great.’ She turned to go.

‘Bec.’ One syllable and yet it held both caution and concern.

She spun back to see his face filled with a mixture of authoritative control and unease.

‘Only drink the bottled water from our supply and only eat the food that Sung has prepared. I don’t need you getting sick.’

A rush of emotion swirled inside her, battering the protective guard she’d erected long ago, frightening her.

Keep a safe distance.

She took in a deep breath and reinforced her guard. His caring tone, the worried look on his face didn’t indicate concern for her. It was concern for the village. He needed all the help he could get to deal with this epidemic.

She tossed her head and flashed him her best ‘don’t boss me’ look, similar to the one she’d used in Hanoi. The one that hid her true feelings. ‘The same goes for you, too, Tom. I don’t want to waste rehydration solution on someone who should have known better.’

She ran back to the clinic, thankful that the huge job in front of her wouldn’t allow any time to think about a broad-shouldered, dark-haired doctor with deep worry lines between his chocolate-brown eyes. Lines she longed to smooth out.

‘Tom, I’m sorry, but I think we need another IV.’

He glanced up from examining a woman whose eerie calm worried him intensely. She clung to life by a thread. In three days they hadn’t lost a patient and he didn’t want this woman to be their first.

Bec stood next to him, petite and exhausted from days of almost non-stop work. She should have been prostrate with fatigue but her strength and implacable determination kept her going.

She’d organised a remarkable clinic in a short space of time and with limited resources. Everyone who entered the isolation ward washed their hands and feet at the chlorine station beside the door.

Patients lay on bamboo mats with one member of their family to care for them. Bec had organised the healthy men into a team to dig a new latrine and the area around the clinic had been quarantined with a fence. Fires burned continuously outside, boiling water to make it potable. Further away, women boiled the clothes of the sick.

‘We’ve got plenty of oral solution but intravenous packs are getting low.’ She worried at her bottom lip with her top teeth.

His blood surged.

Fury at himself immediately followed. What the hell was wrong with him? Vomiting patients surrounded him, he was cloaked in heat, operating in the most basic of medical facilities, and now his body was reacting like a hormone-fuelled teenager’s.

Bec was a nurse, a much-needed colleague, nothing more.

Make that your mantra. ‘If we have a patient who needs an IV, we insert it. And we hope the new supplies arrive before we run out.’ He rose slowly, weariness vibrating through him.

‘Can you insert the IV now, please? Then you need to take a break.’ Clear, violet-blue eyes bored through him.

Indignation bristled. ‘You should talk. You’ve been going for longer than me. I get to sit down when I do my daily briefings with the elders. So I’ll insert the IV, you do another oral rehydration round and then we’ll both take a break.’

She held his gaze, her mouth firm. Suddenly, the corners twitched upwards and she smiled. ‘Fair enough. But only because the local health worker from the next village has arrived to help.’

Her smile took away the tension that seemed to dog her.

He couldn’t help grinning back. ‘Deal.’

Hin explained to the mother of the child about inserting the IV and Bec held both the mother’s and the child’s hands. Tom continued to be amazed at how she seemed to channel supportive care and understanding to these women and children.

Somehow he managed to slide the cannula into the almost collapsed veins of the dehydrated child. As he reached to release the tourniquet, Bec moved forward to tape the needle securely to the skin.

Their hands collided, his palm gently skating over her fingers.

She flinched, her hand suddenly rigid, hovering over the child’s arm. Tension vibrated up her arm and through her body. A moment stretched out, her hand suspended, fingers taut.

He glanced at her as he released the tourniquet. Her colour, usually tanned and healthy, had faded to ivory. Her skin stretched tightly across her high cheekbones.

She moved jerkily, her fingers flexing before she quickly taped the drip in place. ‘I can’t believe how effective the oral rehydration solution is. I would have thought antibiotics would have been required.’ The words had rushed out, tumbling over each other.

Her reaction to an accidental touch mystified him completely. But an inexplicable need to protect her surged inside him. He matched her conversation, hoping to put her at ease. ‘It’s amazing what some salt water, sugar, potassium, magnesium and other electrolytes can do.’

He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Although it’s the glucose that does the trick. It means the sodium moves into the gut, taking the electrolytes and fluid with it, and that’s the key to rehydration. Simple yet so effective and life saving.’

‘Talking simple but effective, I can smell the rice soup Sung’s made for us.’ Bec stood up, her usual ‘in-control’ demeanour back in place. ‘Let’s go.’ She waited for him to start walking, as if she didn’t trust he would follow her.

‘We need a complete break so how about we eat outside?’ He led the way, hearing her gentle, uneven footsteps behind him, her slight limp more audible than noticeable.

They sat under the shade of a tree, clutching their bowls of rice soup as reverently as if they were highly coveted and rare French truffles.

Bec had chosen a position that left a good metre between them. He noticed she did that a lot. In the truck coming up she’d sat so close to the door that if she’d been any closer she would have been outside the vehicle. And the flinching thing when they’d inserted the drip. What had that been about?