Meg sighed as she went over to the Land Rover, wishing that she hadn’t been so quick to refuse his help. She and Jack were never going to resolve this if one of them didn’t give a little, although it would have been nice if it didn’t have to be her. After all, she’d tried to apologise to him last night and look where it had got her.
Her mind did that double-quick whirl back to the previous night’s events and she sighed again. It would serve no purpose harping on about how it had felt to kiss him when it was obvious how much he regretted it. He was still in love with his ex-wife and that was all that mattered at the end of the day. He wasn’t interested in other women, herself included…especially not her!
The Primus stove proved to be as recalcitrant as Jack had hinted, defying all her attempts to get it working. Meg was flushed with exertion and bad temper when she glanced up to find him leaning against a tree and watching her. Pushing back her sweat-soaked hair, she glowered at him.
‘If you dare say I told you so I warn you I’ll…I’ll…well, I’ll do something drastic!’
His black brows rose. ‘Would I dream of saying such a thing?’
‘Yes! And it would give you a lot of pleasure, too!’ Meg flung the box of matches onto the ground and got up. ‘Oh, to hell with it. I’m not hungry now anyway!’
She wasn’t sure why she felt so angry all of a sudden. Maybe it was the pressures of the day, coming on top of everything else, but she knew that she was on the verge of exploding if she didn’t get away. She strode down the path that led away from the village, uncaring what Jack thought about her outburst. He couldn’t think any worse of her anyway, she thought with a surge of grim humour. So why worry about it?
The path wound its way through a few scrubby trees before turning sharply right to skirt the base of a cliff. Meg kept on walking, wanting to work off her anger. Because it wasn’t in her nature to let things upset her, it made her feel even worse. There seemed to be little danger of her getting lost so long as she stayed on the path, so she wasn’t worried about that. As for any other dangers—like wild animals, for instance—she was confident that she could handle the situation if it arose. It was only Jack Trent she couldn’t handle, Jack who possessed this ability to arouse in her the strangest feelings!
Meg walked for a good fifteen minutes before deciding that she should turn back. The sun was barely skimming the treetops now and she knew how quickly night would fall. She paused to look around, drinking in the beauty of the countryside as it lay bathed in the glow from the setting sun.
The parched landscape was golden brown and shimmering with heat, the mountains bruised purple patches against a cloudless sky. Oncamba was so beautiful but so harsh to the people who lived there. Yet, no matter what happened, Meg knew that she would always be glad that she’d come here. It had given her a new perspective on life, made her more aware of how lucky she was. If only Jack loved her then life would have been complete.
The thought slid into her mind and Meg’s breath caught as she turned blindly back towards the village. There was no future in thinking like that—just a whole lot of heartache—but it was hard to rid herself of the thought. When she heard a small wailing cry she wondered for a moment if she had herself uttered it. However, when she heard it a second time, she realised that it hadn’t come from her lips at all.
She stopped and looked around, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. It was very quiet in the pre-dusk hour, with just the whispering of the breeze in the dry grass to disturb the silence. Even so, Meg knew that she might not have heard the noise if she hadn’t been listening for it because it was so faint.
She stepped cautiously off the path and headed towards where she thought the sound had come from. The ground was treacherous beneath the cliff and she was very aware of how easy it would be to break an ankle if she didn’t watch each step. She picked her way between the boulders, pausing every few seconds to listen, but she couldn’t hear anything now. She was just wondering if she’d been mistaken when she spotted a bit of bright blue cloth sticking out from behind a rock.
She hurried towards it then recoiled as a dreadful smell met her. Digging in her pocket, she found a handkerchief and held it to her face as she crossed the last few yards. She was dreading what she would find, and it was as bad as she’d feared, she realised when she saw the body of an old woman lying on the ground.
There was obviously nothing she could do for the woman, but it was the glimpse of another scrap of fabric, bright red this time, that made her move closer. Her eyes widened in horror when she saw a child huddled in the rocks. It was a little girl from what she could tell, weak and dreadfully emaciated, a huge gash on her right leg surrounded by a cloud of flies.
Meg hurriedly picked her way over to the child, steeling herself as she felt for a pulse. Her heart lifted because there it was, very faint and thready but a sign all the same that she was alive!
‘Meg! Where are you? Answer me!’
Jack’s voice couldn’t have been more welcome, though it was hard to ignore the anger it held. Meg cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted back.
‘Over here! Hurry, Jack!’
He made it in double-quick time so that he was panting when he ground to a halt. He took in the situation at a glance then started firing questions at her. ‘Is she alive? Has she said anything?’
‘Yes, she’s alive but only just. Her pulse is so faint that it took me all my time to find it. I heard her cry out, which is how I came to find her,’ she explained hurriedly.
‘Right. Let’s get her back to the village, pronto.’
Jack didn’t waste any more time. Bypassing the body of the old woman, he bent and scooped the child into his arms. She whimpered pitifully, her head lolling against his shoulder like a rag doll’s. It was obvious to Meg that she wouldn’t survive much longer and her heart was in her mouth as they hurried back to the village. It seemed the longest fifteen minutes of her life!
‘I want saline and antibiotics, stat!’ Jack bit out as he carried the child into the village. Most of the villagers were sitting outside their huts, eating their evening meals, and their arrival created a lot of interest. Meg saw Jack frown as a crowd started hurrying towards them.
‘I also need some place quiet to examine her.’
Meg looked round, her gaze centring on the headman who’d come out of his hut to see what was happening. She ran over to him, using a combination of mime and words to explain what she needed. Few of the villagers spoke much English and she was afraid that he wouldn’t understand her. It was a relief when he nodded and pointed to one of the huts.
She ran back to Jack. ‘Over there. We can use that hut.’
‘Thanks.’ His eyes were warm when he smiled at her. ‘Well done, Meg. I should have known you’d come up trumps.’
He carried the child to the hut, bending almost double to duck beneath the low lintel. Meg felt an inane little smile start to tilt her lips but she didn’t try to stop it. A few words of praise maybe, but they meant a lot to her!
She quickly ransacked the supplies they’d brought with them, blessing Jack for his foresight when she found everything she needed. He was bending over the little girl when she went into the hut, but he looked up as soon as he heard her.
‘Get that drip set up right away. Put two lines in because we need to rehydrate her as fast as possible. We’ll run the antibiotics in at the same time so they can start working, but it’s going to be touch and go.’
He stepped back to give her room to work and Meg gasped in horror when she suddenly got a good look at the child’s injured leg. Her stomach lurched ominously as she saw the seething mass of maggots in the open wound.
‘It’s not as bad as you might think.’ Jack squeezed her shoulder, steadying her when she needed it most. ‘Those maggots will probably have saved her life by eating the rotted flesh. Once we clean up that cut you’ll see what I mean.’
His pragmatism was what she needed, although she knew that the hand o
n her shoulder had helped as well. Meg swallowed hard and somehow managed not to make a fool of herself.
Jack gave her shoulder a last encouraging squeeze then carried on with his examination, working quickly and deftly as he tested the child’s limbs for fractures. Meg followed his lead and set up the drips, one in the child’s arm and the other in her uninjured leg. She was very conscious of how flaccid the child’s skin felt when she cleaned it with alcohol prior to inserting the cannulae and how difficult it was to find a suitable vein. However, she managed at last and breathed a sigh of relief when the fluids started to flow into the inert little body. Step one successfully accomplished. Now for step two…the one she was dreading!
‘Lucky I brought some ether with me. I was in two minds whether to or not, but it’s useful on occasion.’ Jack tipped a little ether onto a pad of sterile gauze and held it close to the wound on the child’s leg. To Meg’s amazement the maggots immediately rolled themselves up into little balls. Jack quickly began scooping them out of the way, shaking his head when Meg stepped forward to help him.
‘No, leave this to me. I’m an old hand at dealing with these little squirmy things.’ He grinned as he deposited the last maggot into a plastic container. ‘I used to spend most weekends fishing when I was a boy. My mum always knew where to find me, down by the local pond.’
Meg laughed at the wry note in his voice but she was touched by his consideration. Despite the lightness of his tone, she knew that Jack had wanted to spare her from having to deal with the maggots when he knew how distasteful she would find it. It was an effort to keep her own tone as light as his had been as her stupid heart surged.
‘I can’t imagine you as a grubby-kneed little boy,’ she teased, opening a fresh sachet of saline to wash out the wound.
‘No? Well, I certainly wasn’t a little Lord Fauntleroy, that’s for sure. Thanks.’ Jack swilled a little saline into the cut then grinned at her. ‘I was the bane of my poor mother’s life, forever getting into scrapes at school and coming home with the knees ripped out of my uniform trousers or ink blotches on my shirt. I have three older sisters and I don’t think she knew what had hit her when I arrived!’
‘If you were anything like my brother then I sympathise with her. David was a holy terror when he was younger. Mum used to keep a diary of all the times she and Dad were called in to see his teachers for some misdemeanour or other he’d committed.’
Meg chuckled as she reached for a kidney dish as Jack swilled the wound once more, holding it steady to catch the bloodied saline solution. ‘Come birthdays and Christmas, she’d tot up how many offences David had committed and threaten him that he wouldn’t get any presents unless he bucked up his ideas!’
Jack laughed at that. ‘Thank heavens my mum never thought of that. I would never have had any presents if she’d used a point-scoring system!’
His smile lit up his whole face and for a moment Meg basked in its glow before he looked away. His tone was far more sombre when he next spoke, but that didn’t mean she missed the undercurrent it held and her heart began to play pat-a-cake.
Jack had looked at her just now as he might have looked at a woman he found deeply attractive. She knew that and so did he! It was an effort to focus on what he was saying as her mind ran riot with the idea.
‘You can see what I meant about those maggots, can’t you? I know how disgusting they look but they can actually be a blessing in a situation like this.’
Meg blinked as she stared at the wound on the child’s leg. ‘There’s no sign of infection!’
She gently traced the healthy, pink tissue with a gloved finger. ‘I’ve rarely seen a wound that clean, even one which has been treated under the strictest sterile conditions.’
‘I know. Amazing, isn’t it? Yet not quite such a surprise when you remember that before the discovery of antibiotics maggots were often used to clean wounds. Their use goes back thousands of years and is well documented from the time of the Ancient Egyptians right through to just after the First World War, in fact.’
Jack gave the wound one last rinse then picked up a large pad of sterile gauze. ‘Soldiers who had lain on the battlefields were often found to have maggots in their wounds. However, they rarely died from secondary infections. The maggots ate away all the decaying flesh and kept the wound clean.’
‘I didn’t know that. I suppose I just reacted the way most people would when I saw them, but now I can see that the poor child was lucky in a way,’ Meg observed gravely.
‘She was. However, she isn’t in the clear yet.’ Jack’s tone was equally grave as he finished dressing the little girl’s leg. ‘I’ll leave it open for now as too much tissue has been lost to even think of suturing it. In other circumstances I’d be putting her down for a skin graft but we’ll have to wait and see before we go making any plans.’
‘She’s very dehydrated. And shocked, too, I imagine.’ Meg’s tone was sad as she laid a gentle hand on the child’s head. ‘I wonder how long she’d lain there?’
‘A few days, I’d say. And in this heat…well!’ Jack shook his head sadly. ‘Poor kid. From the look of her she wasn’t in the best of health in the first place because she’s certainly very emaciated. I don’t hold too many hopes that she’ll pull through.’
‘But we’ll give it our best shot!’ Meg declared forcefully.
‘We will. But you know that she’s going to need round-the-clock nursing care if there’s any hope of her recovering, don’t you, Meg? And that isn’t going to be easy.’
‘It isn’t a problem.’ Meg shrugged dismissively. ‘Once we get her back to the Angel I can sleep in the ward with her. And through the day one of us will be on hand to keep an eye on her.’
‘That would be placing a lot of extra responsibility on you, Meg. You’d be on call virtually twenty-four hours a day.’
‘I don’t mind!’ she declared passionately. ‘If that’s what it takes to pull her through this then I’m happy to do it.’
‘Well, if you’re sure it’s what you want to do, I’ll get things organised.’ Jack’s tone was pensive, as was the look he gave her, but Meg wasn’t sure what he was thinking.
She managed a smile, struggling to keep all trace of anything untoward from her face. To let Jack know how desperately she wanted him to be thinking good things about her could be setting herself up for a great deal of disappointment.
‘I am sure. And I know that Lesley and Kate will back me up.’
‘Right, then I’d better go and see if anyone knows who she is. Obviously, we’ll need to get her parents’ permission to treat her but, hopefully, that won’t be a problem.’ Jack treated her to a quick but surprisingly warm smile before he left the hut.
Meg turned back to their small patient and set about washing the child’s pitifully thin body. It was a task that demanded little concentration because she’d performed it hundreds of times before. However, she kept her mind firmly on what she was doing. She’d allowed herself far too much leeway already that day to risk letting her thoughts go wandering where they chose again.
The night was very dark now that the moon was hidden behind a cloud for once. Meg sat on a box of medical supplies while she listened to the chirping of the crickets. Behind her in the hut the little girl slept peacefully. They still had no idea who she was because she wasn’t from the village. However, there had been a slight but encouraging improvement in her condition as the drips had started to put back the lost fluids into her body.
Meg was hopeful that she would pull through but it was still very much at the fingers-crossed stage. It could go either way but if a few heartfelt prayers and a large dollop of willpower had anything to do with it, the child would recover.
Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the rough wattle wall of the hut. The heat was beginning to catch up with her now and she felt physically drained. She was almost asleep when something alerted her to the fact that she was being watched.
Her heavy lids drifted open and she stared
at Jack for a moment before she managed to summon a rueful smile. ‘I wasn’t really asleep. I was just resting my eyes.’
‘Mmm, you tell a good tale, Staff Nurse Andrews.’ He grinned back at her as he dragged over another packing case and sat down. Leaning against the wall, he stretched out his long legs with a sigh. ‘I’m bushed and I don’t mind admitting it.’
‘So am I, to be honest. I just didn’t want to be the first to admit it in case you saw it as a sign of weakness.’ Meg grinned sleepily at him and saw him frown.
‘There’s no shame in admitting that you’re tired, Meg. Working in this heat is bad enough, but when you combine it with the sort of gruelling schedule we have…Well!’
He half turned to look at her. ‘You aren’t forgetting to take care of yourself, I hope? It’s easy to get so caught up in the job that you forget about your own health. You need to make sure that you drink plenty and keep up your sodium levels and take your antimalarial tablets. And you must be on the lookout for any cuts or grazes…’
She held up her hand. ‘Whoa! Steady on, Dr Trent. You’ll make me so neurotic about the dangers that I won’t be able to function!’ She laughed when he grimaced ruefully. ‘But to set your mind at rest, yes, I’ve done all of those things. I don’t intend to let myself get ill and add to your woes if I can help it.’
‘Good. But not because I’m worried about ending up with another patient. I…I wouldn’t like to think of you being ill, Meg.’
His voice grated just a little but it was enough to set her pulse off and running. Meg stared down at her hands, studying her nails as though they were the most fascinating sight she’d seen in her life. This could go any of several ways and she wasn’t sure which direction to choose until Jack suddenly took charge of the situation.
Her eyes were as big as saucers as he took hold of her hand and gave her a gentle tug that tipped her towards him. They grew even wider when she saw his mouth tilt into the sexiest, most provocative smile she’d ever seen! Maybe that was what made her come out with the most inane statement of her life, one which made her squirm with mortification the moment she’d uttered it.
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