Tempted by Dr. Off-Limits

‘Good.’ Elle nodded. ‘And if the ulcer had instead been along the lesser curvature of the stomach?’

‘It would be more problematic. More prone to re-bleeding because of the rich complex of blood vessels from the left gastric artery.’

‘Anything else?’

Amir paused, and she couldn’t be sure whether it was the language barrier or a gap in his knowledge. Many of the local doctors here were on an extremely steep learning curve but she was continually impressed by their eagerness to soak up everything she and her team were teaching them. And having a CO like Phil, who didn’t just have decades of experience as a brilliant surgeon but was also an inspiring teacher, certainly kept Elle at her best. It was a challenge she usually relished.

But not today.

For the past couple of days all she’d wanted to do was stay in her army cot, lick her wounds, and hope that everything looked a little less grim when Fitz finally left the hospital camp and headed back to Razorwire.

That, obviously, hadn’t been an option. But at least she’d managed to avoid him since that awful day in his office, to give herself the chance to start thinking straight again. At first she’d vacillated between rage and mortification. Rage that he’d lifted the lid on their attraction and mortification that he’d shut her down so completely.

She dragged her mind back to the present and to Amir.

‘Okay, wedge excision of gastric ulcers along the lesser curvature of the stomach is harder to do and is much more likely to result in a deformed J-shaped stomach and luminal obstruction or gastric volvulus, which is rotation of the stomach by more than one hundred and eighty degrees...’

‘Yes, yes.’ Amir nodded vigorously. ‘Inconstant blood loss, obstruction of materials moving through the stomach, and sometimes tissue death.’

‘Okay, good.’ Elle smiled. ‘We’ll go over it again, it’s something you’re likely to come across often here. Right, let’s see what we can do for our patient here.’

She worked carefully, talking Amir through each step, until finally she was satisfied, taking half a step back and straightening her spine.

‘Did you ask your Colonel Duggan if you can continue here, or return on...what you call it, a back-to-back tour when this tour of yours now is over?’

Lifting her head, Elle glanced into the hopeful expression on Amir’s face. Having started this tour of duty at Razorwire, once her three months here were up, two more rotations of army doctors would take over during the course of the next twelve months, and Elle had hoped to be able to return on the last one. The fact that Amir also hoped she would return spoke volumes about her teaching style and Elle couldn’t help smiling proudly.

‘Colonel Duggan, yes. I did chat with him while he was here, unofficially of course. He considered the possibility of me returning within the year was quite high, but there’s no guarantee, of course.’

‘That’s wonderful news. You are so dedicated to your career, you sacrifice greatly to be a soldier doctor, yes? But it is your life, you are single-minded, and you are not needing anything else. It inspires much.’

‘Thank you,’ Elle managed graciously, trying not to frown. ‘Right, you recall the suture technique I demonstrated yesterday? Good. Because I want you to close up now.’

Amir nodded, clearly pleased, and stepped forward, leaving Elle, her eyes still on the surgery, to wonder if she wasn’t a little too single-minded.

How else to forge a career like this? Fitz must have done the same. Was that what he’d meant about not being good for her? She could hardly square the Fitz she’d met that night with the Colonel who was out here. It wasn’t so much like two sides to the one man as it was two completely different men. The man from that night who had told her things about his past, about his family, had been very different from the man who had stood in front of her the other day and lied to her. She was sure of it.

Clearly Major Howes knew Fitz well from the past and still liked and respected him, and, from what little she could tell, so did the rest of the men in the troop from Fitz’s regiment. And surely they should know—he was their commanding officer after all. He might only just be at the start of his two-year posting as their colonel but morale among them had certainly appeared boosted in the few days he’d been on site.

She couldn’t shake the idea that none of them had ever seen the Fitz she’d met that night. Neither could she shake the idea that there had been more between them that night than either of them had realised. Enough for him to tell her things he’d never told anyone. And after the way Stevie had lied to her, she valued honesty more than ever.

Either way it was irrelevant. She shook the thought away irritably. She was never going to get the chance to find out. Fitz had made it more than clear that as much as he was still attracted to her, he wasn’t interested in opening himself up to anyone. As for her, she’d obviously let herself get too emotionally involved to be any good at no-strings sex. And the wounds from her years with Stevie were still too fresh, she wasn’t ready for another relationship. Not that it was even on the cards with Fitz.

So where did that leave her?

With your career, she reminded herself firmly. When all else failed, she’d always have her role as an army doctor to rely on. She drowned out the little voice that suggested that she might have liked to have known Fitz just a little better. As he’d

said, he wasn’t the man she’d imagined him to be.

She shrugged off her gloomy thoughts and leaned in to check Amir’s sutures.

She might have nothing back home, but she had her career and hadn’t that always been the most important thing to her? And right now she had command of a hospital that, partially destroyed or not, brought different cases every day.

While Royal Engineers and logistics units worked on building, rebuilding and refitting the old hospital so that some of the major international charities would send teams out over the coming years, her job was to keep the medical side running in the meantime. Local communities were desperate to be able to use the hospital again, instead of having to make the hazardous four-hour drive across the border to the next closest hospital. No one wanted to risk the drive if they could avoid it, with the unsafe roads and dangerous checkpoint crossing, not to mention the fact that, out here, it was down to the men to allow their wives or children to seek medical help, so the more accessible it was, the easier that would be.

But with so few surgeons and doctors there was no place for specialties and the experience was testing and refreshing her knowledge all the time. Elle found it both exciting and challenging, with patients ranging from babies to the elderly, and from victims who’d stepped on old, forgotten landmines to women having labour problems. In fact, the latter accounted for a huge percentage of her operations, given maternal mortality was so high out here, all of which was a far cry from the combat trauma she’d been doing in other postings over the last few years. She couldn’t afford to let Fitz ruin what was otherwise a unique career opportunity for her.

What had Fitz said? That he destroyed everything? That he’d destroy her?