Christmas with Her Bodyguard

She wanted to say no, but part of her knew it could be the only chance this woman had.

‘What about the boy? You can’t take him with you—it’s too dangerous.’

‘Far too dangerous,’ Myles agreed.

‘And I’m not supposed to take him in the truck, but I can’t leave him here.’

‘I don’t think you’ll have a choice.’ Myles jerked his head to where the kid was fixed on the river bank. ‘I don’t think he’ll leave this spot as long as his mother is on the other side. He knows what I’m trying to do.’

‘Will he be safe?’

‘Safe is relative in these parts,’ Myles offered grimly before putting his hands on the tailgate to jump back in. ‘Okay, I’m tied up. Take us back upstream.’

* * *

Rae saw the boy before she saw Myles.

She’d been pacing the compound for several hours when she saw the kid heading down the road, his face as pinched and frightened as before. But whilst his body had been stooped with desperation before, it was now straighter, taller, more hopeful.

He was keeping a steady pace, but this time there was no shouting, no drawing attention of any kind. Still, his eyes were trained across the river, and Rae could only follow his gaze, something which might possibly have been her stomach lodged in the vicinity of her throat.

Myles.

His gait was unmistakeable, although he had shirked the volunteer garb that he’d been wearing in favour of something closer to the clothing worn by the people swarming across the bridge. And in his arms, the unmistakeable figure of a pregnant woman, a bundle in her arms that, Rae realised with a jolt, looked suspiciously like a newborn baby.

There was clearly an issue.

It felt like an age as he reached the bridge, joining the throng who were already jostling to cross the narrow planks. She could see him moving, trying to fight his way through. All she could do was wait, and pace, knowing that every minute was crucial to the baby and the mother, but unable to do a single thing about it.

And then he was close enough for her to call a couple of local volunteers to bring out a gurney, which arrived at the same time that Myles did. There was no missing the blood covering the woman’s clothing, and Myles’.

‘You delivered the baby but the mother’s haemorrhaging?’

‘Yes. There was no choice, that baby was coming out. The heartbeat was weak but it was there, I had to clear its lungs and nose of fluid. It will need to come back with us to the neonatal team. However, it’s the mother I’m most concerned about. She hasn’t delivered the placenta and now she’s haemorrhaging.’

‘Okay, let’s get her inside and check her levels. I’m guessing her haemoglobin is going to be down so we’ll need to find her some blood—her son would be a good start—and start transfusing her. Then we can get inside and try to get that placenta out.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘YOU’RE VERY QUIET.’

They were almost an hour into the drive back to Camp Sceralenar, the ambulances with the more urgent patients in the convoy, but the two of them alone again in the four-by-four.

She hitched her shoulders, her gaze fixed out of the window.

‘You can talk to me, you know.’

‘I know.’ She smiled sadly but didn’t pull her eyes away from the barren landscape. ‘I just don’t know what to say.’

‘There was nothing you could have done, Rae. The baby was born too early and they just don’t have the equipment out here to help these babies survive. But you saved the mother. Because of you, the kid who flagged us down isn’t an orphan right now.’

‘I know that.’ She turned her head slowly to look at him.

‘It just doesn’t help,’ he supplied.

‘No, it doesn’t. I just... I’m not sure how I feel.’ She drew in a long breath. ‘When I first arrived here I was shocked at how brusque people were. How cold. How little they grieved, or showed their grief. They were so desensitised to all the death and I couldn’t understand it. Now I think I do.’

Was the tight coil inside his chest normal? Like an over-wound clock.