His low voice was like a physical blow but she stood her ground, though she would never know how.
‘Talk about an anticlimax.’ It was amazing how still her hands were as they made a great show of sorting her clothes out, deliberately, unashamedly, with no indication of just how much she was shaking inside.
‘Well, as...enlightening as that was, Myles...’ think airy, think breezy, don’t think needy ‘...I really don’t feel we need to revisit it, do you? And, for both our sakes, let’s never speak of it again.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘WHAT HAVE WE GOT?’
Rae barely had time to glance at the interpreter, Clara, as her colleagues brought in a heavily pregnant young woman, clearly in pain and looking generally unwell. She gazed at the doctors with a mix of fear and hope.
Just like the hundreds of pregnant women and babies Rae had already seen in the five days since she’d arrived at the camp, none of whom had ever been under the care of a doctor in their life before.
It was a never-ending flood of desperate women, all with pregnancy or labour complications. But then, that was the issue out here. Lack of nearby medical services, lack of money for medicine, or being a displaced person meant that non-complicated pregnancies were dealt with at home. They either never came into the clinic in the first instance, or they only came in when they realised there was a problem—often, sadly, when it was too late.
And so the place was heaving with pregnant women who needed medical attention. Rae was already beginning to realise that an average twenty-four-hour period here meant sixty or seventy women giving birth and many of them—so many of them—needing emergency C-sections at the very least.
She felt as if she was stretched so thin she was terrified of missing something.
There was one silver lining, though. And that meant the shifts were so long, so exhausting, that it was all Rae could ever do to stumble back to her room in the compound and flop onto her cot bed and into sleep—a deep sleep, not plagued by memories of that night with Myles. Certainly not reliving the excruciating awkwardness of the flight over here, when they had scarcely been able to look at each other, let alone exchange a civil word.
Even now she could feel her cheeks heating at the memory of that night together. Or, not together, depending on how she looked at it. The way he’d touched her, made her come alive in a way no one ever had before... Her heart skittered slightly in her chest. And then the way it had all unravelled in those final, humiliating moments...
‘This is Fatima.’ The interpreter mercifully drew Rae back to the present. ‘She’s twenty-six. She has severe pain on her right side and has suffered some blood loss. She’s about eight months pregnant and she has been walking with her husband for several days, almost non-stop, to get here.’
‘Is this her first baby?’
Rae carefully examined the young woman as Clara translated the question and Fatima replied earnestly between her gasps of pain.
‘Yes,’ Clara passed the information on, ‘although she’s had a couple of early-term miscarriages in the past.’
‘I take it Fatima hasn’t seen a doctor throughout this pregnancy?’
She knew the answer, but she still had to ask the question, just as Clara had to check.
‘No one,’ Clara confirmed after a moment.
‘There’s a strong foetal heartbeat.’ Rae nodded, using the handheld Doppler device. ‘That’s a good sign. Still, I’d like to take her through for a proper ultrasound.’
No need to mention her concern over the solid mass under Fatima’s ribs. Not until the ultrasound confirmed her suspicions that it was the baby’s head, and that the baby was lying transverse, instead of head down.
As she waited for the only machine they had to become free, Rae watched the couple as the man held his wife’s hand. Caring, loving, tender. It was touching, not least because it was so different from many of the cases over the last few days.
Back home, she was so accustomed to talking to the mother-to-be, ensuring the woman gave consent for herself. Yet out here she was already beginning to learn that the women rarely made their own choices. So many times already she’d found herself conflicted when she’d spoken to the woman only for the woman to look straight to her husband or even her husband’s mother, to be told what she could or could not do.
If Rafe were here, she could have talked to him. She hadn’t realised quite how much she’d come to rely on bouncing ideas back and forth with her half-brother over the last few years. She could talk to any of the other volunteers, of course. She knew that. But instead her thoughts came squarely back round to Myles.
As they so often had since that night.
Since before that night, a voice echoed in her head. Since the moment you walked into Rafe’s offices and saw Myles standing there.
It was impossible to escape him. Not physically, since he’d clearly been keeping his distance this last week, but mentally. Neither of them had mentioned the kiss, the...sex, but memories of it pervaded her thoughts constantly, even when she didn’t want them to.
Especially, it seemed, because she didn’t want them to. And even those mere echoes were enough to make her body shiver and pulse, and feel more alive than she had done in such a painfully long time.
Or ever.
Which was as terrifying as it was thrilling since it called into question everything she’d thought was true the night she’d let Justin convince her that she was ready to lose her virginity to him.