Four Weddings: A Woman To Belong To / A Wedding in Warragurra / The Surgeon's Chosen Wife / The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal

‘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?

If she feared him, why had she insisted on coming here with him? A guarded reserve and general aloofness toward him seemed to clash at times with real care and concern. But with the women and children she lost that tenseness. He couldn’t work her out.

She put her bowl down. ‘So we’re winning, right? Today we’ve only had five new cases?’

‘We have. This time. But until we can find out a way to truly make a change in a tradition, this sort of outbreak will continue.’

‘What do you mean?’ Her eyes sparked with genuine interest. He could almost see her brain ticking over.

‘Human excreta fertiliser.’

‘Really?’

He smiled at her dumbfounded look. ‘The government is making headway by using the local area health workers, but it’s a long, slow haul, especially in remote communities like this. This practice dates back centuries and the beliefs about it bringing good crops are well entrenched.’

‘And they only get one crop a year …’ Her voice trailed away.

She understood. A warm glow burned inside him. ‘That’s right. Plus we’re close to the border with China here and sometimes cholera comes in that way. But no outbreaks have been reported up there so I think this outbreak must have been started with unwashed vegetables and then it was propelled and promoted by a lack of handwashing and food-preparation skills.’

Bec pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket and smoothed it on her knee. ‘This is a copy of the mud map of the village. Most of the cases came from this area.’ She pointed with her finger.

His gaze fixed on her fine, tapered fingers as he moved toward her to study the diagram.

A line of tension ran through her but she didn’t move away. ‘Why did this section of the village get sick and the other areas didn’t?’

‘We could surmise that they used the fertiliser.’

‘True, but this is also the area where there is the most malnutrition.’ She turned toward him, almost vibrating with excitement. ‘Families all live together or very close to each other so we could conclude that what some extended families do in their daily life can seem to guard them against illness, whereas the practices of other families lead to illness and malnutrition for their children.’

Her energy encased him. ‘So what are you saying?’

Enthusiasm glowed on her face. ‘What if we get the women in the village to identify which women and children are not malnourished? If they can make the connection that some families are eating well and are not often sick then surely they will want to find out how.’