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The sound of a door banging open in the main room outside, interrupting with an urgency that was impossible to ignore, had them both leaping to their feet.
A pregnant young woman, crying out and bloodied, was being carried in by an older man, flanked by at least four others, a long shard of metal debris impaled through the side of her abdomen.
Chapter Twelve
‘GET THE INTERPRETER,’ Elle instructed quickly as she hurried forward, trying to encourage them to bring the girl through to a gurney.
‘No need.’
Grimly Fitz matched her, communicating efficiently with the group as Elle struggled to make out snippets and words in the cacophony of voices. Back and forth the conversation went as Fitz quickly established order, instructing them to bring the woman through to where Elle could examine her and eliciting information.
His face tightened.
‘What’s wrong?’ Elle pressed urgently.
‘She’s seven months pregnant, and they were travelling on the main road out there when the storm hit. They pulled over to wait it out but another car coming in the opposite direction drove off the road and into them, rolling their car down an embankment into the wadi at the side.’
Elle drew her lips into a thin line, remembering the route from the way in. It was a fair way down, the car could have rolled a couple of times and she doubted the woman had been wearing a seatbelt.
‘She’s in pain and afraid for the baby.’
His voice broke on the
last part and Elle stared at him in shock. His expression was too haunted, too bleak to be solely a reaction to this woman’s condition. But there was no time for her to dwell on it. Her priority was the woman and her baby.
‘Can you send one of the men to the main building, ask for Jools, and tell her to bring my medical bag?’
‘I’ll go. I can’t send anyone out there,’ Fitz managed, his voice filled with pain like nothing she’d ever heard from him before.
Something in her heart broke for him, even if she didn’t know why.
‘No. I need you here to translate.’ Elle stopped him firmly.
He moved to the door, not appearing to hear her.
‘Colonel.’ She raised her voice firmly. ‘Colonel Fitzwilliam. Fitz.’
He finally turned at her last bellow.
‘You cannot go, do you understand?’ Elle said quietly but firmly. ‘You need to listen to me, this is a medical situation.’
For a moment she wasn’t sure her words were registering, and then he snapped out of it—whatever it was—as quickly as it had started.
‘Major,’ he acknowledged, turning to the men and issuing the instruction.
There was little need for discussion as two of them promptly volunteered and headed out together. Elle was relieved; there was a degree of safety in numbers. Quickly Elle moved on, turning back to the woman and tapping her own chest as she gave her name, smiling when the woman responded in kind.
‘Roshan, good, that’s good.’ So at least the woman was cognisant enough to process Elle’s words.
Her language skills might not be anywhere as fluent as Fitz’s, but the army had given her plenty of phrases to assist in everyday and medical situations.
‘Colonel,’ Elle stated, more to establish order than anything else, ‘can you ask the men for their accounts of what happened while I ask Roshan here? Get as much information as possible.’
There was no time now to think about Fitz, but something had spooked him and she didn’t think it was just about the crash. She could feel emotion flowing off Fitz, hot then cold, colourless then vivid, still then raging. It seeped into her chest, pulling it tight, and it seeped into her head, making it feel ready to explode. A mass of contradictions, out of control. A mess. And nothing like the man Elle knew. She struggled to make sense of it and then, all of a sudden, it hit her.
Pain.
This was what Fitz had been stuffing down all this time. The barrier that had always stood between them. The wall she’d wanted him to tear down for as long as she could remember. The trench that had stopped him from trusting her, and which had made her feel as though she ought to think it was too soon after Stevie. But finally she couldn’t ignore the truth any longer. She was falling for Fitz. She’d probably started falling for him from the minute they’d met.
