Her voice tailed off. She was right. He had known Helen. He’d known her well and respected her. She would never have deliberately lied. Even to be with her beloved Sawyer. Deep down he’d always known that.
But that threw all his beliefs out of the window.
No, that threw all his excuses out of the window.
Finally, he had to stop blaming Sawyer. He had to stop pushing the blame onto someone other than himself.
He slid down the wall and put his head in his hands.
“Evan?”
He could hear that Violet was confused. He could hear by the tone of her voice. The way it had quieted. The way her anger had quickly dissipated.
He felt her hand on his wrist. She was kneeling down next to him. “Evan, what is it? What’s wrong?”
Violet started babbling. Filling the air around about them. “No one knew, Evan. No one knew that Helen was pregnant. It was horrible. And I’m sure it must have destroyed you all. Knowing that if you’d been back home, chances are that Helen would have been fine. But it was one of those things you couldn’t have known. It was one of things that no one could have predicted.”
Her words cut him to the bone. She had no idea what she was saying to him. Her warm fingers were wrapped around his wrist. Her other hand was on the top of his knee. He had to tell her.
He couldn’t keep quiet anymore. The guilt was going to eat him alive.
But telling her would destroy any chance of them having a relationship. Any chance at all. How could she have a relationship with the man responsible for her sister-in-law’s death? The man who could have made a difference?
Things could be so different for Violet’s family. Sawyer would still have Helen. Violet wouldn’t have experienced an estranged relationship with her brother for the past six years. She wouldn’t have had sleepless nights and days fraught with worry.
All because of him. All because he should have paid attention. All because he should have uttered a few words, asked a simple question.
It could have made the whole world of difference.
If only he’d done it.
He raised his eyes to meet hers. This was the most painful thing he would ever have to do. “I knew.”
“What?”
This thing with her brother was never going to go away and she was getting tired of it. She was getting tired of pretending not to be relieved she finally knew where her brother was and what he was doing.
Her heart was singing for her brother right now. He’d finally met someone to put a little light into his life and she was very happy for him. What’s more, he’d met someone she liked and respected. She couldn’t have wished for anything more.
Except for Evan.
She’d finally moved on. She’d finally taken the step of having a relationship again. And for the most part, it was good. No, it was great.
Her stomach flipped every time she saw him, every time he looked at her. His smile made her think impure thoughts. His touch drove her wild.
And for the first time in a long time she felt good. Good about herself. Good about the world around her.
Hopeful.
Hopeful that there was still a life out there worth living.
It didn’t matter that this thing with Evan might not last. It didn’t matter that chances were they were using each other as a distraction while they were in Africa.
So, why this? Why now?
She just didn’t get it. She didn’t get the animosity he felt toward her brother. She didn’t get any of this.
Her skin prickled. The hairs on her arms stood upright. There was something about what he’d just said. The way he’d just said it.
“What do you mean, Evan? What do you mean, you knew? Knew what?”
She could feel herself instantly building a wall around herself. Her self-protection mechanism was kicking in. Telling her to run. Telling her this couldn’t be good.
His eyes were hidden under his heavy eyelids. Struggling to look at her.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t swallow.
“About Helen.” His voice was so low, so husky. He struggled to get those two words out.
A horrible sensation went down her spine. She instantly pulled her hands back, drawing away from him. “You knew what about Helen?” The thoughts were starting to form in her brain. She was trying to rationalize what she’d heard. “You knew she was pregnant?” No. He couldn’t have. It wasn’t possible.
He shook his head.
“Evan. Look at me.” She couldn’t stand the way he couldn’t look her in the eye. This wasn’t the man she knew. Evan Hunter didn’t shy away from anything. So why couldn’t he lift his head from his hands to look at her?
The frustration was overwhelming her. She reached over and yanked at one of his hands. “Look at me!”
He raised his eyes. They were laden with regret and guilt. What had he done? Had there been some cover-up at the DPA? Was that why no one was talking?
She couldn’t bear the thought of that.
“Helen. She told me she wasn’t feeling one hundred percent.”
“What?”
He stopped to swallow. “While we were getting ready for the mission. I was packing up equipment and checking the inventory. She told she wasn’t feeling great.”
“And what?”
He shook his head. “That’s just it—and nothing. I wasn’t paying attention. I had too much on my mind. I didn’t think anything else about it.”
“Let me get this straight. A team member tells you they aren’t feeling great before you leave and you didn’t ask them anything else.”
The words were obviously sticking in his throat. He nodded. He ran his hand through his hair. One of Evan’s signs of frustration.
“What else did she say?”
“Nothing. She said nothing.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “But I should have asked her. I know I should have asked her. If I’d stopped for a second, if I’d thought about it. Helen never complained. It was unusual. I should have asked her to think about it. Why she was feeling unwell. What exactly was wrong.” He was wringing his hands together now.
Violet was running through things in her head. “What difference do you think that would have made? Helen didn’t know she was pregnant. She’d already reported as fit for duty. She hadn’t even told Sawyer she didn’t feel well.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” His voice carried across the compound. “She didn’t tell anyone! Anyone apart from me! And I did nothing!”
Violet flinched back as he shouted. This was turning into a living, breathing nightmare. He stood up and started pacing around, his feet kicking up the dust around them. She shook her head. Her brain was spinning. She couldn’t understand all this.
“What difference do you think you could have made, Evan?”
He stopped pacing. “What?” His head was shaking, ever so slightly.
“She mentioned, in passing, that she didn’t feel great. How could you, by asking her questions, have made a difference? I don’t get it.”
His face was becoming redder and redder by the second. In her heart she would have loved it if anything in the world could have made a difference to her sister-in-law’s outcome but the reality seemed very different.
He held up his hands in frustration. “I should have stopped. I should have paid attention. I should have asked her if there was any possibility she was pregnant!”
“Why would you ask her that? Why would you even think that?”
“Because if maybe I’d considered it a possibility, she might have considered it a possibility!”
The words hung in the air between them. There was so much on the line here. He was exposing everything about himself to her. He was exposing his failings. His failings as a team leader and
as a person. What man ever wanted to do that?
She tried to push her family loyalties aside but could feel herself torn. Was there even a shred of possibility that could be true? Would Helen really have stopped to think she might be pregnant if Evan had asked her a few more questions?
She needed to step back. She needed to step out of this situation. She needed time to think.
She lifted her head. It was hard to look at him right now. There was too much conflict here. The rational part of her brain came into play. “Did you ever stop to think that if you’d asked Helen if she could be pregnant, she might have thought you were being sexist? She wouldn’t have thanked you for asking that question, Evan. If you knew Helen as well as I did, you would know she might even have been angry with you.”
His voice was quiet. “She might also still be alive.” He let out the biggest sigh. “An angry Helen I could have lived with. It’s the dead Helen I can’t take.”
Everything was silent round about them. There was no one else around, it was just her and him.
In the heart of Africa even the insects seemed to have become quiet.
Tears prickled in Violet’s eyes. The horrible realization that Evan might be right. If he’d asked Helen if she could be pregnant, would she have checked the calendar? Would she have stopped for a minute to consider it?
Might it have saved her life?
There were so many ifs and buts. There was nothing definite here. Just a world full of possibilities.
Possibilities that neither of them would ever know about, because the time had passed.
It was over. There was no time machine. There was no way to turn back the clock. How many other people felt like that? How many mothers whose child’s hands had slipped from theirs moments before a car had appeared? How many doctors who had sent a patient home, only for them to come back later and die?
And for her, how many women who couldn’t remember the last time they felt their baby move?
A never-ending list. A whole world of don’t-knows. A whole lifetime of what-ifs.
Evan turned to face her, his hands hanging by his sides. Even with his large, broad frame he looked broken. “How can I live with this, Violet? How can I live with knowing if I’d done a better job Helen might still be here?”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t find the words she should be saying to comfort him, to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault. That it hadn’t been his responsibility.
It would be so easy to apportion him the blame. But, then, that’s what he’d done to her brother. He spent the past six years blaming her brother for this. Thinking that he’d known about his wife’s condition and had let her go on the mission with them.
He’d turned his anger on her brother rather than on himself.
How wrong. How unfair. As if Sawyer didn’t have enough to live with.
Now he was blaming himself. Finally.
And in her heart of hearts she wanted to blame him too.
But she understood better than anyone what it was like to feel saddled with blame. Every moment in the last three years she’d wondered if she’d done something wrong. Something that had affected her pregnancy and stolen the life of her baby.
She’d interrogated her life to the point of not being able to move forward. Every thing that had crossed her lips during her pregnancy, every tiny twinge, every action she’d taken, every time she hadn’t slept well or felt grumpy.
Anything that she could have changed that would have let her baby live.
Let her baby be born the living, breathing daughter she’d dreamed of.
But she’d had to let it all go.
Because no matter what she analyzed it didn’t change the outcome.
It didn’t change the results of the autopsy by the medical examiner. It didn’t give her a reason for her daughter’s death.
Because there had been no reason. Or none that could be found.
And no matter how hard it was, putting it behind her was the only way to start to move on.
Sometimes there just was no one to blame.
Her throat was dry. The dust in the air around her was stifling, or maybe that was just how she was feeling, as if the whole world was closing in on her again.
She tried to find some words. It didn’t matter how much of a struggle it was to say them.
“You have to realize that Helen was a professional. You have to realize she was responsible for her own well-being. You have to let it go.” Her voice was breaking now.
“But how? How can I let it go?” He reached toward her hand. She didn’t want him to touch her. She wanted him to leave her alone. “Can you forgive me?”
His eyes were pleading with her. She could see how much this had destroyed him. She could see how much this had been eating away at him.
But she was so mixed up right now. Feelings of guilt and responsibility were rushing to the surface and she didn’t feel equipped to deal with them.
There was no one out here to talk to. No one who understood.
She couldn’t deal with his feelings as well as her own.
She felt as if she’d just jumped back a dozen steps.
She needed time. She needed space.
She raised her eyes to meet his. “It’s not my forgiveness you need, Evan. It’s your own.”
And she turned and walked away before he could see her tears start to fall.
CHAPTER TEN
VIOLET LOOKED AROUND the village they’d just been arrived at. It was the third one they’d visited that day. She was trying to ensure all the local midwives were enrolled in the midwife service scheme and the oral polio vaccine pre-placed in delivery rooms to ensure administration immediately following birth.
She’d barely been in Evan’s company since that fateful night two weeks ago. She just couldn’t find the time and space to deal with him.
Because he’d brought so much to the surface again she was finding this task harder than she’d first thought. She was feeling raw and exposed.
And dodging Evan Hunter had become her number one priority.
She looked around. This was one of the bigger villages, with over two thousand residents and a mixture of midwives and traditional birth attendants. The birth rate was high, as very little form of contraception was used in the village and some of the expectant mothers from neighboring villages even came here to give birth.
Violet could hear some noise coming from the delivery room that was used in the village. She walked over hesitantly, unwilling to disturb the midwife if she was dealing with an expectant mother. Many of the births were attended by female family friends as well as the midwife or birth attendant, so Violet’s presence might be considered intrusive.
As she approached the doorway the first thing she noticed was that, apart from Urbi, the midwife, only one other person was with the expectant mother. She was obviously in hard labor and her moans could be heard from the road, but what Violet hadn’t heard was the fact she was also weeping quietly.
A horrible sense of dread came over her straight away.
Urbi looked up. She was using a traditional midwife’s Pinard to listen to the baby’s heart and waved her hand at Violet to come inside.
“Ah, Dr. Violet. Can you listen for me?”
Violet tried her best to remain calm. “Is there a problem? Where are the rest of the family?”
Urbi shook her head. “I sent them away. Hasana has been in labor for more than twelve hours. I haven’t been able to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the last hour.”
No. Violet felt a shiver go down her spine. She wanted to turn and run away. She wasn’t specially trained in obstetrics. Her fundamental knowledge was basic at best. How much use could she really be?
But the look on poor Hasana’s face was desperate. And V
iolet’s heart went out to her. She would be hoping, praying that Urbi had made a mistake. With every breath she would be willing that Violet would be the person to find her child’s heartbeat.
The coiled-up feeling in Violet’s stomach made her feel sick. She had to do her duty as a doctor. This birthing room wasn’t equipped with the latest technology. There was no sonogram. No fetal Doppler, no fetal monitor. The only piece of equipment was the Pinard horn, the most fundamental listening device to detect a baby’s heart.
Violet took a deep breath. There was no running away from this. She couldn’t find any suitable excuse not to do the task she’d been asked to. As a doctor, she had a duty of care. “Is there any possibility that the baby has turned into an awkward position?”
Urbi had her hands on the mother’s stomach. Her eyes were sad. She was one of the most experienced midwives that Violet had met since she’d arrived in Natumba state.
Violet was grasping at straws here and she knew it.
But she knew this situation better than anyone. She’d had the experience of being that mother. It took all her strength and self-resolve not to run and hide away in a corner. She really didn’t know if she could go through this again.
Urbi spoke a few words in Hausa to the expectant mother. She looked back at Violet. “She felt her baby move last night when her labor started. The movement continued for the first few hours. There’s been nothing since.”
Violet pulled her ordinary stethoscope from her bag. She already knew this would be a futile exercise. “Let me try both of these,” she said, taking the Pinard from Urbi’s hands.
Hasana was tightly grasping the midwife’s hand as Violet placed her hands on her stomach. The tightness of the grasp turned her knuckles pale.
Violet felt Hasana’s tight abdomen first to determine the position of the baby. She’d used to do this to herself on a regular basis. It felt good to know which way her baby was lying at different points in the day.
THE MAVERICK DOCTOR AND MISS PRIM/ABOUT THAT NIGHT... Page 27