Christmas with Her Bodyguard

by Charlotte Hawkes

She wanted him inside her. So much that it was almost painful. She wanted him to take her, to show her all the things she’d read about, heard about, but which Justin had ruined for her. The reason why she couldn’t bring herself to utter the words aloud, however much they hovered on her lips, or hummed through her body.

  ‘Is that it?’ she heard herself demand, her cool, brittle voice nothing she’d ever sounded like before. ‘The best you’ve got?’

  ‘Say again?’

  Something dark and lethal moved between them but she only jerked her head up higher and ignored it. There was no other way. She couldn’t have sex with Myles. If that was how much he made her come apart just from touching her, if that was how easy it had been to break her defences and remember just how much she’d loved him in her girlish, naïve way, then she could only imagine how intense it would be to have full-on sex with him.

  She couldn’t risk it. She couldn’t be hurt again by him.

  Not like last time.

  ‘I must say, I’ve had better.’ Every word scratched inside her. ‘I was expecting more from you.’

  ‘What the hell kind of game are you playing, Raevenne?’

  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.

  The night she’d told herself that if she was in love with Justin the way she thought she was, then she shouldn’t keep holding herself back from sleeping with him. The night she’d told herself that if she didn’t want to then perhaps she really was as frigid as her sisters and Justin mocked her for being.

  She’d spent the years afterwards believing that was the only explanation. And then Myles had come along and she’d physically ached for him in a way she’d never known was possible. That night she hadn’t had to talk herself into anything with Myles. She’d wanted him with such a wanton intensity that surely no one could ever have felt before.

  She should have been ashamed—living up to every last false image that had been told about her over the last decade. But Myles had made her feel so...alive, so free, so powerful. It had been like nothing else she had ever imagined. Nothing like Justin. How could she regret that?

  So she’d spent the past few days here desperately ignoring him. She’d got away with it so far, but she couldn’t avoid him for ever. Not if she didn’t want the other volunteers to notice and start wondering. She and Myles had arrived together; it would be obvious if she avoided him for the entire month.

  As she’d heard at least three times already thi
s shift, even in a place as hellish as this it couldn’t be all work, all the time. There had to be at least a few moments of snatched private time, or else one would go truly insane.

  Which meant once her shift ended, she was going to have to go and find him and come up with a solution.

  She told herself that it was purely apprehension that made her chest spin like the triple-axle she’d learned to execute as a youth champion ice-skater.

  ‘Machine’s free.’

  Rae stared blankly for a moment, the words taking their time to sink in, to push away the unwanted thoughts of Myles. And then she was moving, grateful to be able to focus on her patient.

  The ultrasound confirmed her suspicion, and since the baby was clearly intent on coming out that night, one way or another, there was nothing else for it but to carry out an emergency C-section.

  As Clara translated all the information and gained consent from the mother, Rae looked around for one of the senior surgeons to brief.

  ‘I can join you, if you like,’ offered Janine, a sixth-time volunteer and one of Rae’s mentors. ‘I’ve just cleared a clinic of the usual diarrhoea and urinary tract infections. I have a free half-hour.’

  ‘That would be brilliant.’ Rae nodded gratefully. ‘I knew the lack of healthcare out here meant complicated pregnancies were more common than I was used to, but I don’t think I was prepared for sixty to seventy women giving birth in a twenty-four-hour period. And many of them to twins or triplets because of the unregulated fertility pills out here.’

  ‘No one is ready that first time.’ Janine laughed. ‘But you’ll get used to it and be a dab hand before you know it. And wait for a busy night when north of ninety women give birth and there are a couple of quadruplets thrown in for an added kick.’

  ‘Oh, well, thanks for that.’

  ‘Any time. Seriously though, Raevenne, you’ve already settled in well these last few days. You’ll be fine. Come on, you take the lead on this one, I’ll just assist.’

  And then it was time.

  Sucking in a steadying breath, Rae lifted the scalpel and began.

  ‘I’m going for a transverse abdominal incision, given the position of the baby.’ She cut carefully until she could see the uterus.

  But it wasn’t what she’d expected and it didn’t make any sense. She stopped, frowning. A glance at her equally baffled mentor didn’t help. They began a quick set of checks.

  ‘It is the uterus,’ she breathed a few moments later. Half a statement, half a question.

  ‘It is,’ Janine concurred.

  ‘But it looks like a normal, non-pregnant uterus? Yet I felt the baby. I saw it on the ultrasound?’

  ‘Try extending the incision upwards. Until it’s T-shaped.’

  Dutifully, Rae cut until she was where the gallbladder might usually be. Only it wasn’t a gallbladder.

  ‘It’s an abdominal pregnancy,’ they both gasped at once.

  Rae shook her head in awe. How was it possible that this baby had developed entirely outside the uterus? Entirely inside the abdominal cavity?

  Ectopic pregnancies might occur one or two per cent of the time, but in pretty much all those cases the pregnancy was usually in the fallopian tubes, and would be terminated because of the high risk to the mother. But to see a baby—an almost full-term baby—still alive, outside both the uterus and the fallopian tubes? Rae had been prepared for the high number of complications out here, but she could never have imagined she would ever see something like this.

  ‘I’ve only ever read about this in my medical journals back home,’ she marvelled. ‘And even then there was only a sketch to accompany the condition. It’s just extraordinary.’

  ‘Once in a lifetime,’ agreed Janine. ‘And if we’re somehow able to get this baby safely out whilst keeping Mum well, I think it will stay with me as the most incredible birth of my career.’

  ‘Do you think we can?’ Rae bit her lip. ‘Save the mother and the baby?’

  ‘We can certainly try. The baby is crying, so I’d say that was a good sign. We’re going to have to get it out as quickly as we can. You see that mass there? That’s the placenta. We need to remove it carefully so as not to cause bleeding.’

  They worked swiftly, carefully, with one eye on the baby and another on the mother. Both of whom seemed to be doing remarkably well.

  Rae wasn’t even sure she was breathing during the entire painstaking procedure. But suddenly they were closing up and it was all over and she and Janine stared at each other in disbelief. Tired but elated.

  ‘We’ll still have to keep a close eye on them. The mother is at risk of both bleeding and infection, and I don’t know how the baby is going to develop, but you should be very proud of yourself, Rae. That’s an incredible job tonight.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled, not sure whether it was the baby they’d just delivered or her mentor’s praise that was filling her with such an incredible sense of euphoria.

  ‘Right, now didn’t your shift end an hour and a half ago? So go and get something to eat, get some rest, and we’ll do it all again tomorrow. Well, maybe not this, exactly.’

  ‘No.’ Rae laughed, feeling exhausted but insanely proud. ‘Not exactly.’

  She wasn’t sure whether she crawled, walked or floated to the doors of the clinic but she might have known her escape wouldn’t have been that easy as a frantic-looking colleague from the general hospital on the other side of the courtyard came racing in.

  ‘We’ve got an old guy hauled out of the river. Don’t know how long he was down but he was in a bad way. We’ve run out of stuff. Have you got any blankets and fresh trousers over here?’

  She should keep walking. Her shift was over but her next one would start in a matter of twelve hours.

  Rae glanced over her shoulder. Everyone was hectic, as always, and time clearly wouldn’t be on the old man’s side if he had hypothermia.

  ‘I’m just coming off shift. If you fill out one of your department’s authorisation slips I’ll run it to the warehouse for you.’

  The issue sheets were a precious commodity around here. There was no way the women’s clinic could afford to use one of their own for goods from the main hospital, and the warehouse staff couldn’t release anything—clothing, food, toiletries—without a paper trail.

  ‘Oh, would you, doll?’ the older woman breathed gratefully. ‘I’ll fill out a slip now. We’re swamped over there.’

  Rae followed her back across the courtyard, the paperwork in her hands within a minute, a quick, tight hug almost squeezing the life out of her.

  A quick run to the stores and back, and then that would be it. Bed. Sleep. And a good breakfast. Then another non-stop twelve-hour shift would start. To so many people, this would be their idea of hell.

  Yet somehow, Rae had never felt so settled. So right. As if this was somehow her calling, she just hadn’t realised it before.

  Her first week would soon be up. Already. Another three and she’d be home. In time for New Year, Rafe had said.

  Why did she already get the feeling that one month out here simply wouldn’t be enough?

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know you’d be here.’

  * * *

  Myles stilled in his task as her voice carried in the quiet, cool air, its faint quiver hitching curiously in his chest.

  He battled to keep images of that last evening at her house out of his head. He couldn’t afford to go there. Each time he did, something else kicked lower, harder, and eminently more forcefully.

  He’d spent five days—seven, if he included the flights over here—pretending he hadn’t given in to the temptation of kissing her, tasting her, touching her.

  But it was impossible. Rae was always there, tempting him in gloriously vivid Technicolor, whether in his nightly dreams or his waking hours.

  He supposed he should be gratef
ul. If he wasn’t dreaming of Rae then it was other memories that pervaded his head. Nightmares that infiltrated his sleep like an unwanted invader. Images he could never, ever bury, and which would haunt him for ever.

  The longer he’d been out here, the worse they’d become. But he couldn’t speak to anyone. He would not talk about it. He was just waiting to get home.

  This month out here couldn’t end soon enough.

  ‘What are you doing in here, Rae?’ He deliberately made his voice unwelcoming, forbidding even, brutally calling to mind every scurrilous thing he’d ever heard or read about her. He couldn’t fall for her act again. He wouldn’t. ‘The warehouse is off-limits.’

  ‘I need a couple of blankets, and a pair of trousers for a patient.’

  ‘Authorisation slip?’ He held out his hand, taking care not to let their fingers come into contact as she handed it over.

  Rae looked exhausted...but elated. He peered at her whilst appearing to be focussed on the paper in his hand.

  He’d spent the last week overseeing her from afar, making sure she was safe just as he’d assured Rafe he would do, but he’d kept away. Waiting for her to finally admit that this latest stunt was a step too far; that she was out of her league with the game she was playing with the media; that she’d overestimated her hand in trying to improve her image by coming out to a place like this to volunteer.

  Because a place like this ate into your soul. The poverty, the sickness, the pain. He recognised it only too well from his years of operational tours. Indeed, this was tame compared to some of the horrific places he’d visited; missions he’d been a part of.

  But it was still eating him alive.

  For someone as pampered as Raevenne Rawlstone, it should certainly have been enough to send her screaming back to New York, and the best, cushiest, private practice posting that Rafe’s contacts could buy her.

  Instead, she was fitting into life out here in a way he’d never anticipated. She hadn’t folded, crumbled, or run to contact her brother to get her a way out of here because she couldn’t cope, but rather she’d taken a deep breath, rolled her sleeves up, and thrown herself into chaotic camp life.