Encounter with a Commanding Officer

‘Yeah, sometimes,’ she agreed jerkily. ‘The rush of saving a life is the greatest feeling and I love my job, I wouldn’t change it for the world. But sometimes...’

‘Yeah, so I thought you’d like to know that Hollings’ operation went well yesterday. He’ll be stable enough to be leaving on a plane back t

o the UK hospital within the next twelve hours. He’s still alive, thanks to you.’

‘And you. If you hadn’t got us into that shelter...’

‘We made a good team.’

He didn’t realise how intimate that would sound until the words were out. Yet with anyone else it wouldn’t have held any deeper significance. By the loaded silence, Fliss thought the same.

‘Thanks,’ she managed at last. ‘I mean, for coming to tell me.’

‘No problem.’

Another silence pressed in on them. He ought to leave. He straightened his legs, ready to get up.

‘Wait.’

He paused. Stopped.

‘How did you know about Andy Hollings?’

Ash didn’t know how best to answer her.

‘It’s not as though you’re around the hospital much.’

‘I just happened to be there,’ he offered.

Her shrewd look seemed to pierce through him, boring into his armour, creating cracks where none should be.

‘Do you mean you went in there specifically to check on the lad’s progress? You couldn’t just leave it, could you? You hoped he had pulled through the operation.’

‘It isn’t a big deal.’

She clicked her tongue. ‘They really were right about you.’

‘Don’t read so much into it,’ he warned uneasily. ‘Who was right?’

‘No one, forget it.’

Ash clenched his jaw. The problem was that her looks, her words, her touch, all chipped away at the guise he had painstakingly built up over the years. She was getting behind it and reaching for the man in there and he was finding it harder and harder to resist.

But he had to resist. He was having enough trouble resisting the physical attraction as it was, without her throwing in the dangerous complication of emotions.

He should leave. He’d said what he’d come up to say. Ash tried to make a move but a heaviness had set in, bone-deep, and he stayed exactly where he was.

‘I’ve never seen the sunset from this height before,’ he commented, his tone deliberately casual. ‘It’s impressive.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve taken several photos over the last few months. And this is one of several safe rooftops around camp—at least for now. Back when I was still in training, I used to have to go to a FIBUA training area back home, near where I lived. We had exercises where the soldiers would be practising their Fighting in Built-Up Areas skills, and doing casualty evacuation scenarios, and I would play out treating the casualty. I...didn’t have the best childhood so I’ve always found it hard to talk to people. But there was a rooftop similar to this—different view, of course—which was deserted after hours so it always seemed such a peaceful place to go in order to think, to process.’

He couldn’t help it. Instantly, Ash wondered what had happened in her childhood. He could bet it hadn’t been anything like his. A kid like her, with a general for an uncle and Army blood running through her veins, always destined to be a commissioned officer, wouldn’t know what a bad childhood was. Not the way he did. Not the way a huge number of the infantry soldiers, still kids themselves, did. He waited for the habitual bristle of resentment which always seemed to get to him when people who’d had it relatively easy thought they’d had it bad.

But for once it didn’t come. Instead, he found himself trying to empathise with her. Trying to see that it was all relative and, from her point of view, it might have felt like a difficult time growing up.

‘You come up here to process events like today,’ he repeated carefully. ‘I understand that.’

She hunched her shoulders, neither confirmation nor rebuttal.