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He’d ruined her. And the worst of it was that if she could go back in time and choose to have one night with Lukas or a lifetime with anyone else, then she wouldn’t hesitate to choose him. Every time.
‘Of course we can,’ she replied, wondering if her voice sounded as hollow to Lukas’s ears as it did to hers. She hoped not.
‘Besides, you’ll be in that hospital eighteen hours a day, from what you’ve told me, grabbing a few hours’ sleep when you can, sometimes working through the night. And I’ve already been given a list of tasks, so I have plenty to do. We won’t even be in here at the same time for much of it.’
‘And when we are, we’ll be so tired that we’ll be asleep before our heads even hit the pillow,’ she added, wishing that she could believe that for even a minute.
She couldn’t actually imagine anyone being able to sleep if they were sharing a bed with Lukas. She doubted anyone ever had.
Her body signalled its approval instantly.
‘Are you okay?’ He eyed her closely. ‘You appear to be a little flushed.’
‘It’s a little hot in here, don’t you think?’ Beginning to babble, she headed for the door. ‘Sometimes you marinate in your own sweat in these places. I’ve known people to pull their beds outside and sleep in the cool air.’
‘That’s an option,’ he replied evenly. ‘But for now, acting like we can actually stand to be around each other would be a start.’
She nodded stiffly, her mind searching for a topic but coming up short. He made it sound so easy. Then again, it probably was easy for him.
In the end, it was Lukas who spoke first. ‘How is the baby, anyway?’
‘Shangok?’
Did his voice sound hoarser than usual? No, it was no doubt just her imagination. At least this was a topic she could discuss with some ease.
‘Shangok. Yes.’
She lifted her shoulders sadly. ‘We won’t know for a while. That is to say, we’re more likely to know if he’s getting worse than if he is responding. We put him on a drip, and we’ll use as much of our limited resources as we can.’
‘Is he still in pain?’
‘Incredible pain.’ She nodded. ‘We inserted an IV line and administered medications to control the muscle spasms, otherwise he’d be unable to move his rigid body yet feel every single one of them.’
‘It sounds horrendous.’
‘You have no idea.’ She sucked in a breath. ‘The slightest thing can set a spasm off, from a soft noise to the lightest touch, even a whisper of wind gliding over their skin.’
‘I take it that’s why you mentioned putting him in an environment with little stimuli?’
‘Yes.’ No point in thinking about their home—his home—now. ‘The hut we have is darkened, with a more consistent temperature than elsewhere.’
‘And it will be enough?’
He actually sounded as though he cared. But then, why wouldn’t he? He wasn’t some heartless monster. Except, perhaps, where her own traitorous heart was concerned. And that was hardly his fault, since he’d warned her from the start that she should know what she was signing up to.
She dragged her mind back to the little baby in the tukul. Would the measures be enough?
‘I don’t know,’ she told him sadly. ‘He really needs human tetanus immune globulin, but our stores are virtually depleted. There should have been a supply run a few weeks ago, but the rains meant that the runways were impassable. Last time I was here, we had three babies die within a thirty-hour period.’
‘That many? I thought illnesses like tetanus were virtually eradicated.’
Oti tried to concentrate on the topic at hand and not the way that his sense of compassion somehow made him that much more than the man she was already beginning to fall for.
‘That doesn’t come close to the true extent of the problem, Lukas. It’s estimated that out here, in the bush, around ninety per cent of births happen in the home, and a high percentage of those births will result in maternal and neonatal tetanus being contracted when the umbilical cord is cut. Most of the time, they never make it to us—maybe as little as five per cent of the time—and because of the way it moves through the body, the mother and/or the baby will be dead within days.’
‘That’s...staggering.’ His brow pulled up tight, and there was an expression in his gaze which she didn’t entirely recognise. ‘Surely that can’t be across the entire country?’
‘It isn’t.’ She forced a half-smile. ‘In the cities, where there are hospitals, the incidence is much lower. The charities and the government have been working together for a long time, establishing vaccine roll-outs and educating people.’
