“Yes, Major?” Ty tried not to look as disappointed as he felt. The shaded quiet of his tent was only a minute walk from where he stood.
“Walk and talk?” It wasn’t a real question but a command disguised as one.
Ty moved in step with Major O’Donnell and the later seemed happy to take his time. Ty walked on in silence as the vision of Dr. Léonie Fournier popped brazenly back into his mind.
“I was told that you and your boys had something of a… celebration a few days ago.”
Immediately Ty understood what the conversation was about.
“It was First Lieutenant Jaheem’s birthday sir. I believe it did get a little out of hand—I apologize for that sir.”
Major O’Donnell’s eyes flicked to Ty and back to the ground the in front of him. Jaheem worked closely with Ty. He ranked just beneath him and took pains to make Ty’s life significantly easier then might otherwise have been.
“I thought Jaheem just had a birthday in April?”
“No sir, I believe you’re thinking of Johnson. It was Johnson’s birthday in April.” Ty’s cheeks flushed a quick red. Major O’Donnell was pointing out that they’d already had this same conversation in April. “Won’t happen again sir.”
“That’s what you said last time Captain Forrester.” Major O’Donnell stopped suddenly and looked at Ty who held his gaze.
“I know, I don’t have a good excuse—only that my men work hard and I felt like they could use a little boost in morale. It gets hard out here, sir.”
“Captain, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this but I am also in Afghanistan. I know how hard it gets.” Major O’Donnell’s voice took on an acid tone and Ty knew he’d phrased things the wrong way.
“Yes of course, sir. I wasn’t trying to patronize you, sir.” Ty fell into his more formal soldier tone and posture, which seemed to appease O’Donnell to some degree.
“Captain, you are an excellent soldier and an incredible marksmen. I know you have strengths that are appreciated here and I won’t write this up because I like you, but please in the future try to make a habit of listening when we have a conversation.”
“Yes, sir.”
When the Major walked on without Ty in tow, Ty breathed a heavy sigh of relief. He turned and walked back from where he’d come but stopped halfway back. The need he’d felt to be alone had left and a desire to distract himself took over.
He thought back to the rowdy group of men he’d encouraged into even rowdier behavior only a few days ago. Ty had a bad habit of letting loose with flourish. They’d all started at the base bar then he’d acquired an extra three bottles of cheap vodka which had been quickly depleted. For a few hours things had felt like home. Going out with a bunch of guys and getting drunk.
They had watched the newest Rocky movie, Creed, which Ty had already seen three times in the TV room. They’d made a lot of noise but nothing out of control until Rahim and Ben had gotten in a fight. Ty wasn’t sure what it was about but things didn’t always make sense when you were drunk and there were always a lot of pent up emotions out here. With regular scares there was bound to be. It was a lot of waiting around then bang, a flurry of action that would give any man nightmares for the night six years. So, Rahim had punched Ben in the nose.
Ty had personally delivered Ben to the medic and told the doctor that he had slammed his head into an opening car door. The doctor had painfully moved Ben’s nose back into alignment and Ty was pretty certain that the doctor hadn’t ratted him or his guys out to the Major. When Ty had made it back to the TV room he’d found a huge crack in the screen and a group of men unwilling to say how it had happened.
That was probably what had done it. The Major had probably put the TV crack together with Ben’s broken nose and someone who had seen them at the base bar. In April there had been an incident with a borrowed jeep. The jeep had turned out to be the personal conveyance of a lieutenant colonel. An unfortunate choice to be sure.
As he walked further toward the presence of various groups of soldiers Major O’Donnell’s chastisement played on Ty’s brain until he turned off of his course and rerouted toward his third platoon. He would check on his guys and make sure they were adequately prepared as they headed out.
When his foot hit down off the path and into the dirt, Ty’s mind wandered back to two large blue eyes.
Chapter Three
Unlike Ty, Léonie had not been thinking of him, his eyes, or his temperament. She had not been looking for him down on the street during the daily patrols he made with his men. She had barely thought of once since she’d come into contact with him outside of the walls of the MSF building. Léonie rarely had a moment to herself. She worked when and wherever she was needed within the small complex of medical buildings. The unrest of the region made all of the Afghan MSF hospitals overcrowded at all times. There was violence in the streets, a drought on the land, limited access to other healthcare, and no money to pay for it even if they could get there.
As hard as it was, Léonie loved her work. She loved being pushed to her limits. Seeing nonstop patients all day, almost all of which were extreme cases. Many people only came to MSF when they had no other choice, unless they happened to live in the vicinity.
Léonie walked down the corridor past a nurse giving immunizations to a line of locals. She walked on past the emergency surgery where a man was being brought in on a gurney, grasping his gut in pain. A male nurse was talking loudly in fluent Pashto to a family who might or might not be related to the man who had just entered the surgery.
She headed out of the building and waved at two doctors who were catching a quick cigarette. One waved back, the other nodded, and Léonie continued, passing the next building before heading into a rugged looking building that was significantly older then the others. This building had once been a home. MSF had added the other buildings on when they’d purchased the land.
“How are we doing?” Léonie took a clipboard from an intake nurse. Léonie split her time between obstetrics and pediatrics. She specialized in children’s medicine having studied at Faculté de Médecine Necker-Enfants Malades the first pediatric hospital in the world. It was a teaching hospital, part of the Université René Descartes. But this location was often short on obstetrics so Léonie found herself delivering a lot more babies then she’d thought she would be when she’d signed up to work for MSF.
“We have two women upstairs now, Dr. Schermer is with one of them and it seems that the other close delivery will be another hour. It looks like we may have three more tonight.” Léonie looked over the charts looking for the name of the woman who was in a few days previously. There was no sign of her name or mention of twins on any of the papers. Léonie exhaled, she’d been thinking about the woman a lot since she’d been taken away by her father. The woman was a widow with a complicated birth. If she and both babies made it through the pregnancy she would have to raise twins with only the help of a father whose own health would be failing him soon.
The truth, more then anything, was that the pregnant woman had reminded Léonie of her own mother. Darker skin, a cloth covering her head, but there was something about the way the woman had moved. She had long fingers that moved with a natural grace. Thick eyelashes and a high forehead set off an oval face. The woman had been soft spoken in the presence of her much louder father but when Léonie had been alone with her the woman had seemed to open up. She couldn’t speak any English or French and Léonie could only speak a few phrases of Pashto but the woman spoke anyway, gesturing and miming the way Léonie often found herself doing.
“No one with twins?” Léonie asked the nurse who immediately understood who she was looking for.
“No, she hasn’t been back. Maybe she’ll come back when she begins to go into labor?”
“I don’t think they lived close by, it would probably be hard for them to come back in the middle of labor, especially when there’s been more Taliban movement around here.” Léonie handed the clipboard back to th
e nurse. “I’m going to go up to pediatrics since you guys are ok right now, give a call if there’s an emergency.”
“Will do,” The nurse nodded and went to talk to a woman with a small baby bump in the waiting room.
Léonie walked up the stairs to the pediatrics department. The walls were covered with taped drawings from the department’s many different children. The drawings ranged from scribbles to carefully crafted shapes, displaying the vast age ranges and abilities of the many children who found their way up to these rooms. The floor was poured concrete and underneath the nearly floor to ceiling drawings there were cracks where anyone passing through could see the tan dirt color of the wall beneath.
“Is Dr. Daniels in the operating room?” Léonie looked at the clock then to the young American man lining up folders on the table in front of him.
“He is but not for any of our pediatric patients. He was called to emergency just a few minutes ago, there was a bus accident and they are bringing the worst cases into the surgery. I was just about to call you. He wanted you to take a look at everyone, prioritize them, so he can get to the most critical children first.”
“Sure,” Léonie held out her hand for the folders and the youngish American man piled them up for her.
“These are for the first room.” He put his hand on top of the first pile then created a second and third. There were three rooms with beds lined up for the children who had to stay inpatient and weren’t contagious. Léonie pulled a large handful of candy from a jar on the desk before she picked up the first pile. She walked back to the room, which housed only boys. She heard one of the young patients crying.
“Hello Sinead,” Léonie smiled at the nurse who was just heading out of the room.
“I was just going to check on the others, would you like me to stay?” Sinead was a sixty-year-old nurse volunteer from Scotland. She was one of Léonie’s favorite people. She never complained, work just as hard as Léonie did and had a real way with the children. She’d had Pashto children’s books delivered to the hospital then had one of the parent’s read the stories out loud to the children while Sinead wrote the words down phonetically.
Now, every night Sinead would read the children the stories in their own language.
“One for you,” Léonie handed Sinead a hard candy. “If you have time I’ll take some help when you’re done with the other two rooms, but take your time.”
“Aren’t you sweet,” Sinead took the candy. She had a definite soft spot for sweets something that Léonie also liked about her. “Back in a few minutes then.”
Sinead walked out as Léonie looked around at the beds. One parent was permitted to stay with a child under the age of seven. The older children were required to stay alone unless they lived very far away, the hospital simply didn’t have the room.
Léonie walked over to the crying child first. The little boy’s mother was trying to get him to stop crying but the little boy was obviously in pain. He was pulling at his hospital mask and his mother was busily trying to keep it over his nose and mouth.
“Ehsan,” Léonie sat on the bed opposite from his mother. “Salaam, you look uncomfortable today.”
Ehsan’s round eyes grew large. Léonie didn’t blame him for not trusting a woman he couldn’t understand. He’d come in with an advanced infection and he’d been poked with needles, forced to take medicine, and wear a surgical mask ever since. Léonie looked at his vital sheet that Sinead had just updated.
“Do you want a piece of candy?” Léonie took two pieces out of her pocket and held out her hand for the little boy to pick what he wanted. The tears stopped immediately and Léonie couldn’t help but smile. “You’re almost ready to go home. Kor, ” Léonie repeated the word home in Pashto then looked at his folder and circled a few important stats.
The little boy picked one of the candies and unwrapped it with blundering stubby fingers. Léonie smiled at his mother whose eyes were the only thing that showed through her burka. The mother’s eyes smiled back at her.
“Are you going to be ok? ” Léonie asked as she put her hand to the child’s hairline, brushing his unruly hair back.
The boy looked at his mother.
“Dinner will coming soon,” Léonie stood and mimed a person eating until the boy smiled. She moved to the bed on the other side of a thick curtain.
An older boy was staring listlessly at the ceiling. He lived close enough for his parents to come and go so he spent much of his time alone. His appendix had been removed and he too would be allowed to leave and go home soon.
“How are you feeling, Wahid? Ta sanga yee?”
The boy made a half shrug that Léonie understood very well.
She looked through his folder and made large understandable facial expressions as she read. She looked up from the folder and gave the boy a thumbs up. The boy gave a weak uninterested smile. Léonie took out two candies for the boy and placed them close to his hand.
The boy perked up and almost smiled.
“Goodbye, da khoday pa amaan.” Léonie walked out of the curtained area as the boy ignored her. She smiled and shook her head.
She walked into the next curtained area. A boy sat with his father. He was a new addition to the room and Léonie hadn’t met him yet. She picked up his folder and flipped it open.
“Zama num Léonie de,” She introduced herself with a hand above her heart. “Staa num tsa dhe?” She asked the boy his name.
“Gul Mir,” The boy’s father spoke for his son.
Léonie nodded, “Gal Neer?” She asked though she’d heard the father perfectly well.
“Gul Mir,” The boy corrected and Léonie nodded at her mistake.
She looked over his intake form then took out her thermometer and began redoing his vitals for herself. She wrote little notes next to the form and looked over the boxes and their translations that the father had checked off for his son. She looked into the boy’s eyes, felt his joints and his abdomen, which got a small yelp out of the boy.
Léonie held up her finger and left the curtained area. She walked out and back to the American who had brought the boy in.
“Will you help me move bed four? I think he might be hepatitis A,” Until the boy was properly treated he would be highly contagious. He shouldn’t have been put in with the other boys to begin with.
“Oh,” The American looked surprised and Léonie tried to remember his name. Jeremy? James? He wasn’t wearing his badge. The two walked back to the room and Léonie handed the father a notecard that had been translated to Pashto to explain that his child was being moved because he might be contagious but that he would be treated and ok.
The father read through the card as Léonie put the child’s hospital mask in place and the American began to move the boy to a wheelchair he’d brought from the hall. The doors to these rooms weren’t well suited for moving beds through them so the boy’s bed would have to be sanitized as quickly as possible.
Léonie walked ahead of the small convoy. She had just walked through the main door to the room when there was a thudding boom and the ground moved beneath her. The walls and floor began to ripple and move around her. Léonie slipped and heard the American let out a guttural sound as the wheelchair in his hands shot forward. Léonie flung her torso toward the wheelchair as her legs slipped in the opposite direction.
Her fingers struck on the metal frame and her body stopped its movement forward as one of the feet crashed into her stomach. Léonie clasped onto it as the building stopped moving.
“Was that—” Léonie looked up at the American who was already moving into action. She moved to her knees and looked around the building. There was a sound as if her head were pressed to the bottom of the ocean and she watched one of the walls nearby fall into rubble. Chunks of the wall fell out over the floor and one crashed into Léonie’s shin. A line of red bloomed on her pants where the rock had hit.
Just as Léonie was standing back up, there was another explosion.
Chapter Four
Ty was two blocks from the hospital on joint patrol when the first explosion went off. Every single soldier stopped and turned toward the sound and the flashing sight of flames and smoke. Ty sent off one of his piercing whistles. He looked to his men and sent a finger around and pointed toward the explosion. Ty took off at a run up the street with his men and the Afghan troops just behind him.
“Where did that come from?” Ty yelled to the soldier running next to him.
“I don’t know, maybe a car bomb.”
Ty picked up his pace, “I think it’s the hospital.”
There was second explosion just as Ty turned the corner. It was coming from the far side of the hospital. Ty stopped and turned to his men who were rounding the corner on him.
“You,” Ty pointed to a group of four men, “I want you to find out where the explosion came from. See if the area is still a threat and secure it.” Ty signaled them and the group went running in the direction of the explosion. “You,” He pointed to six other men, “In groups of two, around the block, I want word on anyone you see. Everyone else we’re going in, we need to see if anyone’s hurt. If the building is compromised then we take everyone out.”
The group continued forward as Sabeir Nawabi moved forward with his own men.
Ty ran to catch up with Sabeir. A side of the hospital wall was blown apart. People were screaming from inside the complex, others were running out. As he moved past the blasted wall Ty saw that it wasn’t the wall that had been blasted but one of the buildings. The crowds of running screaming people told Ty how much worse it was then he’d hoped. A woman’s head was dripping blood. Ty moved forward and saw an arm lying on the ground. He turned to the men behind him.
“Get everyone out of here. All the patients and doctors. Let the ones who can walk, walk themselves, carry all the others and find a doctor to help organize the aid these people will need. Brandt, Tomlinson, you’ll both come with me.”
Romancing the SEAL: The Complete Box Set (SEAL Military Romance Series Book 4) Page 2