‘You are a good sister,’ he told her in her own language as she wept against him. ‘Your brother will be all right. I am going to pass him over to safe ground and I want you to go with him.’
The little girl nodded against his shoulder but even after she eased away he felt the imprint of her frail body.
Would the day ever come when he could put the past behind him, and hug his own children?
It would have to come. The country would need an heir…
‘It’ll be a while before I can move the rest,’ a soft voice called, recalling him yet again to his duty. And loath though he was to leave the top of the escape hatch, he waved to the man who’d held the position earlier and they crossed paths as he made his way down to the wadi to see the injured child. Dr Conroy—he’d think of her that way—was right. There were already too many injured people to be tended by one doctor. He’d had no business to be wasting time in the rescue effort.
The villagers were lining the injured up on a grassy bank near where the wadi had been deepened and widened to form an oasis. On this section of the northern side there’d been no buildings to collapse so the area was safe from anything but a rock fall and he had to pray that wouldn’t happen until the road was clear and all the injured evacuated.
Men had walked back to the helicopter drop and carried the cradle with supplies, and some of the women were carrying bottles of water to the men still lifting debris. Azzam concentrated on the victims, seeing first the little boy with the broken arm, checking the rough way Alexandra had positioned the splints and wrapped them, realising she’d been trying to immobilise the arms so the movement up the escape route wouldn’t cause further damage.
What to do? The child was conscious now, asking for his mother, his sister by his side. He was breathing easily and didn’t seem to be in much pain. He could be dealt with later—decisions made then about setting the arm.
He wanted to tell the little girl to find their mother, but what if their mother was trapped? Did he want to send the child on a search that could cause her heartbreak?
He patted her head instead, telling her to watch her brother—an unnecessary statement as she seemed to have attached herself to his good hand and had no intention of moving.
Azzam walked towards the other injured villagers, thinking only of lifesaving measures, knowing he needed to prioritise who would be lifted out first and who could be cared for here.
‘Sir, sir!’
A call from the man at the school. Azzam hurried back and was handed a small form wrapped in his once-white gown. The child’s pulse was faint, so Azzam carried him swiftly to the wadi and put him gently on the ground, carefully unwrapping the little form, finding not only a brace around the child’s neck but three lengths of stick ingeniously bound into a firm stretcher, the little body tied to it with lengths of turban.
Azzam grabbed a torch from the pack and opened one of the child’s eyes to shine the light into it. No response. Neither was there any response when he pinched a finger or a toe.
A woman dropped to her knees beside the child, demanding that he sit up, refusing to accept the child might be badly injured, berating Azzam for not helping her son to sit.
‘Spinal injury or brain, internal injury, it’s hard to tell,’ a soft voice said, and he realised the rescuer had been rescued. She was filthy, her clothes torn and her hands streaked with blood, yet his heart gave a leap that he knew was relief that she was safe, for all it was an unusual response. ‘I think he is the most severely injured, although there’s a little girl who’s comatose as well. I brought her out. Her father is with her.’
She hesitated, then added, ‘The school teacher and another child are both dead. It would be good to get them out so they can be laid to rest by their families, but I thought I might be needed here.’
He could hear the anxiety in her voice and understood she’d fought a battle with herself before leaving those two souls behind.
‘You did the right thing,’ he assured her. ‘And you saved the other children as well, remember that, although—’ his voice deepened to a growl ‘—your behaviour was incredibly foolhardy.’
Not that she took the slightest notice of him, turning to wash her hands with water from a bottle then kneeling beside a woman who’d been pulled from the rubble.
Alex checked and re-checked the injured, one by one, doing what she could for each of them in these appalling circumstances, aware, all the time, of the presence of Azzam, not because the local people were treating him with such deference but because some kind of awareness—definitely unwanted and totally bizarre—was tweaking at her body.
Had it started in the rose garden, this attraction? Had she been drawn to him when he’d revealed just a little of his grief for the brother he’d so obviously loved?
Surely it couldn’t be the bare chest. His lower half was decently garbed in what looked like a once-white sarong-type thing, though in the ingenious way of these people it was now fashioned into, yes, Sinbad-type trousers.
But it was the bare chest, olive skin, streaked with ash and dust, over heavy slabs of muscle, the chest of an athlete, not a doctor or a prince, that was causing her uneasiness. Not that she knew what princes’ chests should look like but not many doctors she knew had time to work out sufficiently to keep such well-defined muscles.
What was she doing?
How could her mind be wandering like this— she who prided herself on her focus and professional competence?
She moved to the next patient, focussing all her attention on the injured.
Until she heard the cry.
‘That’s a baby.’
She looked over towards where the school had been, sure of what she’d heard.
‘It was a bird,’ Azzam told her, but already the little girl who had sat beneath the table beside her injured brother was stumbling across the wrecked buildings towards the hole.
‘There couldn’t have been a baby in the school,’ Azzam said, patient common sense accentuating the denial. But already Alex was following the child.
‘Ask her,’ she called back to Azzam. ‘Ask her why she knows the cry.’
Alex caught the child and passed her back to Azzam, who, although she struggled and objected loudly, held her gently and easily in his arms, calming her with his voice.
‘She says her mother always came to meet them after school. She brought the baby. She says her father is away—he is gone, she says, although I don’t know what she means by that.’
‘They could have been outside the school—the mother and the baby. I’m going back down,’ Alex told him, then saw the fury in his face as he thrust the child into someone else’s arms and stepped towards her.
‘I will not leave an infant down there!’ Alex told him, hoping the defiance in her voice was visible in her face for there was no time to be arguing with this man.
‘You know you won’t fit and neither will any of the men I’ve seen here,’ she added, before he had time to open his mouth for his objection. ‘If you want to be useful, you can hold the rope.’
Alex eased herself feet first into the tunnel, dreading a return to the hole beneath, but hearing the baby’s cries more clearly now. She’d pocketed the torch and when she dropped onto the table, she shone it around, shuddering as the light passed over the body of the school teacher and the child, wishing, as she had earlier, that she didn’t have to leave them down here in the darkness.
The indignant shrieks of the infant, no doubt hungry and wondering why its demands were not being met, seemed to come from the opposite corner. Alex played the light around the area, seeing a twisted frame of what might once have been a door, still with sufficient strength to shore up the debris above it, making a kind of cave.
Approaching cautiously, Alex shone the torch into the depths, but although she knew she was closer to the baby because the cries were louder, she could see nothing.
‘Come up, we’ll widen the hole,’ Azzam commanded from above.
‘And bring the
whole lot down?’ Alex retorted, pulling carefully on a piece of broken masonry, praying the doorframe would still hold. The masonry came away, another rock, a piece of wall—slowly she widened the gap behind the doorframe until eventually she felt the softness of a person. Not the baby, the hand she grasped was too big for a baby’s, and the wrist she held had no pulse.
Tears of grief and fear spilled down Alex’s cheeks and deep inside her anger stirred as well. She didn’t know this woman, but two children up above, and the baby if she got it out, would now be motherless. How did fate choose whom to harm? Was it just on a whim that the earth threw open a great chasm and caused this devastation?
Aware she was raging against the fates to stop herself thinking about the possibility of not being able to rescue the infant, she set to work again, pulling out small stones, always checking, no matter how tiny her target, that moving it wouldn’t cause a collapse.
The infant’s cries ceased, and Alex moved more swiftly now, still careful but aware that time might make the difference between life and death, and suddenly, what she wanted most of all, was for this child to live.
She felt a small hand—even better, felt the tiny fingers move and grip her thumb. More tears flowed, but now Alex cursed them. This was no time for emotion. She had to concentrate—she had to somehow ease the baby out from beneath its mother.
Edging closer, she slid her hand along the ground, easing it beneath where she now knew the infant lay. It whimpered at the movement—was it injured? Had she hurt it?
But she had to get it out!
Her hand had met resistance. The baby was somehow tied to the mother. Alex closed her eyes and tried to picture the different types of slings a mother might be wearing to hold her baby close to her body.
All she could think of were the kind of things sold in baby shops at home, and this would surely be a less complicated arrangement. But whatever it was, she needed some way to cut the baby free.
Backing out of the space, she hurried to the table beneath the hole and called up to Azzam.
‘I need some scissors or a sharp knife. The baby is in some kind of sling, tied to the mother, who is dead.’
Azzam heard the waver in her voice as she said the last word and wondered at Alex’s strength of character that she’d even gone back down the hole in the first place, let alone be determined enough to remain and cut the baby free. He found a sheathed knife and knelt beside the hole, frustrated by again playing a secondary role in this rescue but wanting to help however he could.
‘Mostly, our women tie their babies in a criss-cross fashion, their scarves dangling from their necks then crossing in front and tied at the back. Can you picture that?’
‘Clearly,’ came the reply, ‘and thanks for that. I can cut at the back of the neck and not risk stabbing the baby.’
Azzam shook his head. He’d teasingly called her wonder-woman earlier, but that’s what she was proving to be. And he’d had doubts about her? He felt ashamed, not only about those doubts but about the poison he’d allowed to spread through his heart and soul, infecting his whole body not only with pain but with suspicion.
‘I have the baby, I’ve wrapped it well—can you pull really gently?’
The woman he no longer doubted sounded exhausted and he worried that she’d be able to get out.
He had to get her out!
‘Azzam?’
Once again, her voice reminded him of the immediate task.
‘I’ll be gentle,’ he assured her. ‘Tug when you’re ready.’
He felt the tug and hauled slowly and steadily, the weight so slight he had to force himself not to hurry lest he injure the baby in his haste. Then suddenly it was there and he pulled the wrapping from the little face and saw wide brown eyes staring up at him and the tiny mouth open in a wail of protest.
‘It’s all right, little one,’ he murmured, then realised he was speaking English and translated, although he was reasonably sure it was his tone of voice, not the words, that had hushed the baby.
But with the baby held against his chest he again felt that rush of longing he’d experienced earlier. Children were the future—Alex had been right. The baby had to be rescued.
But for now, perhaps he should be concentrating on the baby’s saviour.
‘Alex? Can you climb up?’
‘I guess I’ll have to,’ she said, injecting a laugh into her voice, although he suspected she was using it to cover if not fear then definitely apprehension.
‘I’m going to squirm down as far as I can so reach up and grasp my hands and I’ll haul you out,’ he said.
Quite how he’d manage it he wasn’t sure, but he feared she might not make it on her own. He’d sent everyone off the rubble to make the situation safer so now he set the baby down and wriggled as far as he could into the hole, forcing his shoulders between the boulders and building fragments, praying everything would hold. Two small hands grasped his, and a jolt of lightning seemed to pass right through him. He could not fail her now.
Fear for her lent him strength as he drew his knees up under his body to get some leverage. With one almighty heave he pulled her out, collapsing back onto the ground, the woman held securely in his arms, the warmth of her transferring itself to his body, his mind in turmoil as he tried to make sense of myriad reactions—relief, some anger still that she had risked so much, and—surely not—but, yes, definitely sexual attraction.
His arms tightened, and for an instant he imagined she’d snuggled into his embrace, but before he could process the thought she moved, almost abruptly, picking up the baby, and though Azzam kept a hand on her shoulder, he knew he shouldn’t be holding her. Already people might be wondering why he’d held her at all, but she’d been so close to collapse, he’d had to.
‘I had to get her out!’ she whispered as she held the baby against her body. ‘The mother is dead but for those two to lose a sibling as well, I couldn’t bear that.’
If she was aware of Azzam’s hand on her shoulder she gave no sign of it, simply rocking the baby against her chest.
‘Family!’ she whispered. ‘Family ties are strongest, for good or ill. I couldn’t let the baby die.’
And he wanted to hold her again. The words, he was sure, were spilling from her subconscious, but she was uttering the thoughts he’d had himself—thoughts that were ingrained in him through breeding and upbringing.
But now, looking down at her filthy, straggling hair—had she used her scarf as wrapping for the baby?—and watching as she dripped water on her little finger and held it to the infant’s mouth, he wondered if it had been pain he’d heard when she’d talked of family, and what had happened to her in the past that she’d risked her life a second time to reunite the children with their sibling.
CHAPTER FIVE
REACTION to what she’d been through. That was all it was that compelled Alex to sit very still on the rubble and drip water into the baby’s mouth. She was aware of Azzam squatting beside her, making her feel extremely uncomfortable about giving way to emotion against his bare chest a little earlier.
She tried to tell herself it was his fault, because the gentleness with which he’d held her after he’d hauled her out of that dark hole had broken through her reluctance to show any weakness.
Any weakness!
But the stoicism of the trapped children, the way the little girl had stayed beside her brother—these things had already cracked the protective shell she’d built around her heart and soul to prevent further damage. The man’s arms had just widened the cracks and let feelings in…
‘You must move from here. You are able to stand, to walk?’
Azzam would have liked to lift her in his arms and carry her and the baby to safety but she’d shied away from him earlier, thrusting her body apart from his as if being held in his arms was an affront of some kind.
Not that he’d wanted to keep holding her—well, not that he should have wanted to keep holding her…
She stood up and he re
ached out to grasp her elbow as she stumbled. She didn’t pull away, allowing him to guide her to a safe area of the wadi, where the little girl remained, a silent sentinel beside her brother.
Azzam watched as the woman knelt beside the girl, holding the baby for her to see. He saw the questions in the child’s eyes—the big question—and knelt on the other side of her.
‘We will keep looking for your mother,’ he said gently as the child took the baby, tucking the infant against her chest as if she was accustomed to looking after it.
Did the baby recognise its sister that a little hand reached out and grasped the girl’s finger?
Azzam found he had to swallow hard and turned to find Alex had also looked away, her fingertips brushing at tears that were leaking from her silvery eyes.
She recovered first, standing up and looking around her.
‘Where can I start?’
‘Prioritise,’ he replied. ‘These high mountains mean updraughts that would make night-flying in a helicopter very dangerous. So, we won’t be airlifting patients out tonight, and need to consider shelter.’
She looked bemused.
‘Shelter? Is it likely to rain? Do you have heavy dew? Will it be cold?’
‘No to the rain, but yes to the dew. The village headman is organising the survivors. Those able enough will continue to move rubble from the areas where it’s most likely people are still trapped, particularly around the market. The children? With the teacher gone, I have arranged for some of the mothers to take them to a safe area until nightfall. There’s a date palm grove a little way along the wadi. They will be sheltered there, away from the rubble should aftershocks occur.’
He paused, unreasonably pleased when she nodded agreement to his suggestions.
‘You and I—if you feel strong enough to continue to be involved—will stay with the injured. We have some emergency packs of fluid and I’ve already started IV drips in five people, but I haven’t examined any of the children closely. If you could examine them again, and work out what we need to keep them comfortable, I would be grateful. The headman has a generator and he is setting up lights for us to work by.’
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