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‘How will I know how much to use?’ Bridget could still remember such a feeling of helplessness as she’d asked the question.
And she could still picture her mentor’s half smile, half grimace.
‘Look at the vitals.’ The woman had shrugged. ‘Too little and the seizures will continue. Too much and you’ll cause respiratory depression. We do the best we can out here.’
She’d returned to her accommodation feeling more frightened than ever. Yet, only a few days in, and Bridget had already begun to find her sea legs.
Now, several missions and years later it felt horribly normal.
She saw measles, malaria and meningitis on a daily basis, and she had already delivered more babies in four days than she would probably have delivered in four months back home. But she hadn’t grown used to the deaths yet. She hoped she never would.
The main problem with where they were was that it was so far into the bush that there was no town, no market, certainly no hospital. Which meant that people simply weren’t used to having medical help around—not unless they walked for two days or more to the nearest big town with its understaffed, under-equipped hospital—and so they didn’t come into the charity’s small clinic until it was too late for Bridget or her colleagues to be able to really help.
As she rounded the corner to the small tukul she shared with another nurse, Bridget stopped short when she saw her roommate painting her toenails a glorious shiny red.
‘Bad day?’
‘Thankfully not.’ Sara smiled, barely looking up from her task. ‘I just fancied feeling a little more...feminine. At least, as much as one can, dressed in combat trousers, a tee and dusty sandals all day long.’
She shifted around on the corner of her hammock to allow Bridget to enter the one-roomed mud hut, containing the two beds—each complete with mosquito net—and something that passed for a chest of drawer per person.
Ultimately, the plan was to use local expertise to build more tukuls so that each member of staff would have a small haven that they could call their own. But at the moment a broken roof in what would ultimately become the main accommodation area in one of the abandoned village’s old buildings meant the rooms there were unusable, and many of them were having to share.
‘Want to borrow it?’ Sara waved her bottle of shiny red nail polish in the air. ‘We can call it our version of party gear.’
Bridget frowned.
‘There’s a celebration?’
‘Close enough.’ Sara laughed. ‘The army unit came in this afternoon, and we’re throwing them a bit of a welcome party as we’re going to be working together so closely for the next few months. See if we can’t break the ice a little to make the getting to know each other process that little bit smoother.’
Bridget pitched forward, grateful that her hammock was there to catch her fall, not that Sara seemed to notice.
So that was why the clinic had been shut down early and there was only a skeleton crew on. Usually, the charity tried to have roommates on alternating shifts, so that one would be working when the other had down time, thereby allowing each of them to get some valuable alone time in the tukul. But tonight the charity was hosting a sort of party for the army camp, an effort to get to know each other given how they were both working in the area. So she and Sara both had down time for the evening, unless an emergency came in.
* * *
It had been almost a week since she’d left Hayd’s bed. But it had taken her a lot longer to get him out of her head.
Her mind had been full of memories of him the entire flight to the charity’s headquarters, all through the briefings and seminars, and the whole duration of the flight out here. Even during the short plane ride from the capital city to the tiny airstrip closest to the charity’s new camp in Jukrem—which she would normally have spent drinking in the stunning views of lush vegetation after the rains—had been filled with X-rated images of Hayden Brigham.
So much so that it had been a relief to be ushered into the clinic almost the moment her four-by-four had pulled into the camp, so that the outgoing nurse could begin her handover. The bedlam of the over-subscribed outreach clinic proved to be just the distraction that Bridget had needed. And today she’d almost—almost—forgotten that she was meant to be forgetting about him.
But now he was here. His regiment of Royal Engineers had finally arrived, and she was going to have to deal with him on a daily basis. And suddenly she wasn’t so sure she could face him without remembering everything he’d done to her with his mouth, his fingers and more.
She shivered deliciously then instantly tried to quash it.
What had happened that night was over. Done. It wouldn’t be happening again, and the sooner she remembered that, the better for everyone. She wasn’t out here to further anything with Hayd, or anyone else for that matter, she was out here because she had a job to do. A job she’d performed perfectly on many previous occasions.
‘Did you want to borrow it?’ Sara’s voice crashed in on Bridget, and she looked up to see her roommate screwing the top closed and holding it out into the gap between the beds.
Bridget hesitated. She’d been through enough camps to have seen doctors do similar things over the years. Sometimes nail polish, sometimes mascara. One had even had pretty rhinestone Alice bands. And she’d been tempted.
It was hard to feel feminine out here sometimes with all the muck, and dust, and disease.
But in the end she’d never wanted to enough, so surely there was no need to let herself get distracted now? Just because Hayden Brigham was finally at camp?
He meant nothing to her, she reminded herself. They’d drawn a clear line between the UK and out here, and out here he meant nothing to her. She wasn’t buying it.
