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Until Rae.
He clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. Why couldn’t he get her out of his damned head?
‘Well, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.’ The camp leader laughed. ‘They’re starting to build a couple of new buildings. It’s more a matter of putting prefab wooden panels together. Fancy giving us a hand?’
‘Not a problem.’ He even dredged up a smile. Hard manual graft would be more than welcome. ‘Just point me in the right direction.’
‘Right around that wall over there.’
He was heading off before she’d even finished talking. Anything to distract him; to help smother the fire he feared was smouldering in him, ready to consume him from the inside out. The embers that he was very much afraid Rae had begun to fan.
Myles looked at the kit, like a flat pack on an enormous scale. The panels were pre-insulated, lightweight and easily assembled, designed to be thrown up quickly to enable rapid erection of refugee camps in times of emergency, especially for geographical disasters like earthquakes or volcanos when rapid reaction times were essential.
He was a few hours into the build when they heard the explosion. For a moment he was sure the very blood had frozen in his veins. He couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe.
And then that split-second reaction was over, and Myles was heading for the door, racing out of the compound and towards the noise, his senses taking in everything. Ready to stop, to regroup, if there was any unexpected danger.
And then he rounded the corner.
It was the smell that hit Myles first. The unmistakeable stench of burning flesh. It lodged itself in his nasal passages, reminding him, taunting him. He swayed, momentarily overcome by the flashbacks he’d been trying so hard to thrust aside, dangerously close to reliving that night. His body flushed hot, then cold, the seat making him feel clammy and helpless.
There was screaming and shouting all around him, but experience allowed him to phase it out. He couldn’t let cries of pain pierce his emotional armour. Not right now. Not when he was so close to the edge as it was.
Something battered his chest and it took him a moment to realise it was his heart, hammering so fiercely he was convinced it was going to ram its way out. His lungs strained with the effort of trying to draw a breath, desperate to suck in deep lungsful yet struggling to allow in even a trickle. He reached his hand out but the canvas tent offered scant support.
He’d dealt with this before. Too many times, adults and soldiers with devastating, often fatal, burns. But this was a non-combat area, and these were civilians. The tiny kernel of logic that was fighting to make itself heard warned him that it was likely to have been a domestic cooking explosion. It wasn’t unusual for a substandard pressure cooker to explode, or for a gas canister, used to make the family meal, to get too close to an open flame.
They might not be used to it in this camp, but he’d seen it too many times over the years.
He glanced around; the chaotic scene in front of him seemed to confirm his suspicions.
And then he saw the child. A young girl with burns on her face and arms and whose leg had clearly been crushed by something landing on her in the explosion. He couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead, but if he just focussed on her, if he shut everything else out—the all too familiar cries of pain and pleas for help—maybe he could just deal with her.
Maybe he could save her.
Racing across the room, he dropped to the ground and began to crawl carefully through the debris, his hand reaching out to try to take a pulse.
It was faint but weak, yet even that felt like a powerful victory.
‘What’s her status?’
A voice dragged him back to reality and he managed to crane his head over his neck enough to see another volunteer, a doctor, had arrived and was trying to get to him. Movement around them suggested other volunteers were trying to reach the other victims. Good, this once he could let others triage, he could just deal with this one child.
This one echo of his past.
‘She’s alive. Just,’ he managed. ‘Time is going to be critical. We’ll need to get her out to intubate and secure central venous access.’
He had dealt with enough to know that burns victims were usually those who required the most surgical interventions, with multiple trips to Theatre. Not to mention even when burns victims were kids, their surgical procedures were often in line with battlefield trauma surgery usually reserved for adults and soldiers.
‘You’re a doctor?’
‘Army trauma surgeon,’ Myles replied automatically, before qualifying it. ‘Well, I was up until I left six months ago. That was my last tour of duty.’
This was what he’d been trained for. This was what he knew best. Yet his six months away from the operating table could only have left him rusty. Then again, how many doctors out here with this group would have his particular field of expertise? How many of them would have operated, night and day sometimes, on such cases in such basic environments like this?
The main question was whether the length and intensity of all his operational tours of duty meant that, even rusty, he would still be the best chance this little girl had.
His head was still swirling as the two of them worked quickly and efficiently, clearing enough rubble to get to the girl, who mercifully began to regain consciousness on her own as they worked. Then whilst Myles performed a routine check and pulled her out, the other doctor prepared to intubate, and to take over pain management.
