‘They’re ready to transfer the patient, timings are on us, of the essence. Send a runner to use the charity’s radio and find out what billets will be available at Rejupe, so let’s go for an O group in fifteen minutes to let the guys know what gear they need to bring.’
‘Understood. I’ll also let Lieutenant Johns know that he’s going to be your second-in-command while I’m gone. It’ll be good practice for him.’
‘Better let him know he’ll be your second-in-command.’ Hayden deliberately held his tone neutral. ‘You’ll take command here while I head to Rejupe. With it being the main hospital and camp, I might as well do the recce we were planning to do there next month anyway.’
‘Makes sense,’ Dean agreed, taking it at face value.
‘Great, right, I’ll go and grab my kit and be back for the O group.’
He heard Dean answering over his shoulder, but Hayden was already heading out of the ops tent, telling himself that it was business. The mission.
Nothing more.
* * *
‘How’s the baby doing?’
‘Hungry,’ Hayden growled, ignoring the amusement in Bridget’s eyes as she watched him trying to cuddle the newborn.
She’d basically shoved it...him...into his arms as soon as her patient’s stretcher had been carefully manoeuvred onto the vehicle amongst the equipment, ignoring his objections. Not that he’d many the moment she’d told him that the baby’s mother was all the kid had, his soldier father having been killed by a rebel group a few months earlier.
It was a point that had served to remind Hayden how the country’s civil war had raged for so long that even now the peace they had was painfully fragile.
‘I’m really not sure that I’m the best person to look after him.’
‘You’re fine,’ she’d answered in a tone that had invited no argument. ‘I need to have my hands free for the mother in case anything goes wrong. And babies around here don’t get put down, they’re held all the time, even if it’s in one of those intricately woven newborn baskets the women carry on their heads.’
‘I’m not carrying
him in a basket on my head,’ he’d said with a grimace.
Not that Bridget had seemed to care.
So now he was stuck holding a baby—literally—whilst watching her deal with any problems with her patient, as their vehicle made careful progress along what didn’t even pass for roads around this place. And he found himself drawn in by the way Bridget kept talking softly to the unconscious mother in what seemed to be quite a decent grasp of the young woman’s language.
Caring.
Then the baby began to grouse again, causing him to have to start the jiggling and soothing of his own all over again.
‘Sing him a song,’ Bridget suggested.
‘Say again?’
‘Babies love songs, right?’
‘How the hell should I know?’ he demanded, but it lacked any real heat. ‘And I don’t sing.’
‘Well, you’d better start now.’ She chuckled as the baby had made its objections even clearer. ‘Either that, or show him the birds outside by the river, or the purple lily beds, or the sorghum in the fields.’
‘Egrets.’
‘Sorry?’ She frowned at him.
‘The birds you mentioned are egrets. Yellow-billed egrets, to be more precise. They nest in the trees along the riverbank at night.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ She rocked back on her heels, surprised. ‘Although I do know that the river in this area offers good fishing opportunities, especially at this part of the season, right when the locals are caught between the rainy season and the next harvest.’
‘So I understood.’ He laughed, loving the tiny glower it earned him.