Winter Soldier
Winter Soldier
Marisa Carroll
IN UNIFORMSometimes love isn't enough….When Lieutenant Leah Gentry–nurse and soldier–goes overseas as part of a team providing medical care for those in need, she knows she's in for long days and hard work. What she doesn't expect is to fall for Dr. Adam Sauder–or to become pregnant with his child.Adam thinks Leah might be able to save him from his haunting past. But he has nothing to give her–not even his love. Still, when the mission is over and he discovers that Leah's in danger of losing their baby, he leaves his job to come to Kentucky.Adam would like to be a husband to Leah and a father to the baby, but he can't forget his past. He knows he should go but he desperately wants to stay….
“Chief of Neurosurgery is a long way from a small practice in Slate Hollow, Kentucky, Adam. Almost a different world.” (#u28d5dc2c-0445-5946-9ef3-c4ff7d031097)ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#uc601cda6-b3f3-51b5-8b3f-193ade73d4eb)Title Page (#ubcc35ebd-cfb9-5532-800a-5bbeb76fa357)Epigraph (#uf4171a08-b762-5248-b668-ac8991a7f6ae)CHAPTER ONE (#u3d9d8520-50fa-574f-9bdd-40e83853220f)CHAPTER TWO (#u55624737-d5eb-5ce2-88bf-f6c284fd399b)CHAPTER THREE (#uad6a3787-239e-56f3-8406-a0a98565ef9c)CHAPTER FOUR (#u99efb194-7bf2-56c5-852e-66c4e551e796)CHAPTER FIVE (#u50d882ca-938f-540e-8c87-7702977d1bad)CHAPTER SIX (#u9ba27227-81cb-5b5b-b3f6-a0565a940549)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Chief of Neurosurgery is a long way from a small practice in Slate Hollow, Kentucky, Adam. Almost a different world.”
Leah wondered why she’d said that. It sounded almost as if she was asking him—what? To leave Chicago and come to Kentucky with her? Wasn’t that what she really wanted? For him to make a commitment to her—and the baby he didn’t even know she was carrying?
“Leah, my son is coming to live with me. We’ve been apart for a long time. I have to concentrate all my energy on Brian.”
His energy. Not his love. His words took her breath and sent a stab of pain through her heart. Adam would never open himself to love and to being loved. Once more she realized how close she’d come to caring too much for this man. The decision she’d agonized over since learning she was pregnant was made in an instant. “I understand. I really have to be going.”
“Leah, if there’s ever anything I can—”
Leah took a step backward, avoiding his touch. She wasn’t made of stone, even if he appeared to be. “There’s nothing you can do for me.”
Or our baby.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Wagner and Marian Scharf—the award-winning writing team of Marisa Carroll—are sisters living in a small northwest Ohio town, where they are surrounded by five generations of family and friends. Winter Soldier is their twentyninth book.
Winter Soldier
Marisa Carroll
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
These are the times that try men’s souls.
The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot
will in this crisis,
Shrink from the service of his country,
But he that stands it now,
Deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
—Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
CHAPTER ONE
THAN SON NHUT.
Even above the roar of the jet engine he caught the echo of the pilot’s words, felt them snag the edge of his consciousness. Than Son Nhut. For almost twenty-five years, more than half his lifetime, Adam Sauder, had returned to that place only in his nightmares. Today, he was actually going back.
Before he heard her voice he smelled her perfume, a light, lemony fragrance had tantalized his senses. “Dr. Sauder?” He pretended to be asleep. Maybe she’d go back to her own seat, leave him alone. God, it had been such a long flight. Thirty-six hours from Chicago to—
She spoke again, a bit more forcefully this time. “Dr. Sauder? Are you awake?”
Damn, she’s persistent.
He rolled his head toward the well-modulated but demanding voice, but didn’t open his eyes. “I’m awake,” he said in the don’t-tread-on-me tone that had struck fear into the hearts of interns and residents at St. Barnabas Medical Center for the past five years.
“I thought so.” She sounded neither cowed nor embarrassed. “We’ll be landing in Saigon in a few minutes. I thought I should introduce myself.”
She could have done that anytime since they’d left Chicago. Why did she have to pick now, when he had almost willed himself to that gray nothingness between waking and sleeping that was the only place he seemed to find peace? Saigon. Than Son Nhut. The names wouldn’t die, just like his memories of the days he’d spent there. “I thought they called it Ho Chi Minh City now.”
She chuckled, a sound as light and pleasant as her perfume. “No one calls it that. Even our luggage tags say Saigon.”
The laughter was irresistible. He lifted his heavy eyelids and looked at his tormentor. Clear hazel eyes, neither green nor gold, stared steadily back. He blinked and her face came into focus. She smiled, and like magic her deceptively ordinary features turned from plain to pretty. “I’m your gas-passer,” she said.
Gas-passer? She must have been raised on M*A*S*H reruns. “You’re my anesthesiologist?” She didn’t look a lot older than his nineteen-year-old son, Brian. She sure as hell wasn’t old enough to be a doctor.
“Nurse anesthetist,” she clarified.
They didn’t give out advanced nursing degrees to teenagers, either. Mentally he added ten years to her age, pegging her somewhere close to thirty.
“I’m Leah Gentry.” She held out her hand. He took it automatically. Her handshake was as firm and no-nonsense as her voice and, surprisingly enough, as potent as her smile. He pulled his hand from hers and her smile disappeared. “I’m in practice with Caleb Owens,” she said more formally.
He knew who Caleb Owens was, although he’d never met the man. He was a friend of a friend—or an ex-friend. Adam directed a sour glance at the back of B. J. Walton’s head, as his old Marine buddy lolled, snoring away two rows in front of him.
B.J. had made it big in computers in the eighties. He had more money than he could count—not that he didn’t put a lot of it to good use. He’d sponsored half-a-dozen private medical-aid missions to Central America, Africa and even Russia over the past ten years, and he’d badgered and bullied and made a damned pest of himself until Adam had promised to be part of the next one.
B.J. had made a big deal of Adam’s moment of weakness. He’d called a press conference and talked up the humanitarian mission of top-notch nurses and doctors taking time from their busy lives and careers to help the less fortunate. Then he’d promised a bundle toward the new spinal-injury rehab center if St. Barnabas agreed to let Adam come along. St. B’s knew a good deal when they saw one. They agreed to supply all the specialized equipment Adam needed and offered to send technicians to keep it running at peak efficiency. It was a hell of a public-relations coup, the hospital administrator had told him. And it wouldn’t do Adam any harm in his quest to be the next chief of neurosurgery, either. And then BJ. had dropped his bombshell.
This time they were going to Vietnam.
“Caleb was so disappointed he couldn’t make the trip. He was looking forward to assisting you.”
Adam continued to scowl at the back of B.J.’s head a moment longer, then shifted his gaze. “I’ll manage without him. But what about you?”
She looked puzzled. “I’ll be fine.”
“I mean, are you up to operating with me? Owens is a general surgeon. You’re probably used to gallbladder and uterine excisions, not keeping someone under and stable while I tinker around in his brain for eight or ten hours.”
“Caleb does a little of everything. Slate Hollow’s a small place. You have to be flexible.” A hint of defensiveness had crept into her voice. Adam suppressed a momentary twinge of conscience. She was a colleague, a professional. They’d be working together for the next three weeks. He was barking at her as if she was a not-too-bright first-year intern.
“Ever scrubbed for brain surgery before?”
“You mean other than bashing a patient on the head with a hammer, while Caleb drilled through his skull with the Black and Decker Two Speed to let out the evil spirits?”
“I didn’t mean—”
She cut him off. “Yes, you did.” She was right. He couldn’t deny it without lying through his teeth, so he kept quiet. Neurosurgeons were considered the glamour boys of medicine and had a reputation for being arrogant and imperious. He’d just reinforced the stereotype, big time. “The answer is yes, Doctor. I have worked with your kind before.”
Your kind. The emphasis on the words was so slight most people wouldn’t have noticed, but he did. He almost smiled. She was a fighter. Good. They would need that kind of grit and stamina where they were going. “I apologize,” he said. “B.J. told me he always gets the best people for these jaunts. He was right. What I should have asked you was if you’d had experience operating under...less-than-ideal conditions.”
He’d almost said battlefield conditions. What had made those words pop into his head? Was it because, below a sleeveless white tank top that molded itself nicely to her breasts, she wore desert-patterned utilities, fatigues to everyone but an ex-Marine, and combat boots—a look that was decidedly military. Or because the past was growing stronger with every mile they flew, bringing long-guarded memories dangerously close to the surface?
She glanced down at the U.S. Marine Corps emblem tattoo on his left forearm, partially visible below the rolled-back cuff of his shirt, a souvenir of his first liberty after boot camp at Parris Island all those years ago. “I’ve been around the block a few times, Marine. I won’t bug out on you.” She gave him a mocking little salute and headed down the aisle toward the front of the plane.
He closed his eyes but could still see the proud tilt of her head, the sway of her hips in the baggy utilities that tried hard but couldn’t completely hide the fact she was all woman. Three weeks in close proximity to Leah Gentry was going to be very interesting. And maybe, just maybe, it would be interesting enough to keep him from losing what was left of his mind.
“MAY I JOIN YOU?” Leah asked Kaylene Smiley, the mission’s head nurse, as she came abreast of the older woman’s seat. She and Kaylene had met for the first time in the lounge at O’Hare the evening before. Dr. Roger Crenshaw, the anesthesiologist Leah would be working with in Dalat, and Kaylene were playing gin rummy on a folded-down tray.
“Of course. Roger just won my last nickel. You’ve saved me from losing another hand and being in his debt,” Kaylene said.
“It’s a good time for a break,” Roger agreed. “I’m going to use the lavatory before the plane lands. If you ladies will excuse me.” The elderly physician stood up, pocketed his small pile of winnings and with a courtly gesture offered Leah his seat.
“What do you suppose it will be like there? Saigon, I mean. The only pictures I’ve ever seen are from the war. And in the movies.” Kaylene was looking out the window as she spoke.
“They make most of the movies in Bangkok, you know. There are parts of it that look like Saigon did during the war.” Shielded by the high back of the airplane seat, Leah tried to shake the feeling that Adam Sauder’s eyes were boring burr holes into the back of her head in preparation for taking it off her shoulders.
“Really? I didn’t know.”
“I have three brothers, all making a career of the military, and my dad just retired after thirty years in the army. So I know about war movies.” Leah also leaned forward and looked out the window at the green tangle of jungle and rice paddies visible below.
“You’re wearing dog tags,” Kaylene observed. “Were you in the service, too?”
“Yes, I’m an army reservist now.”
“My brother was here in 1967. He was stationed near Dalat, where we’ll be staying. I never thought I’d come here.” Kaylene returned to looking out the plane window. “According to the travel books, Dalat’s supposed to be a beautiful place. The brass from both sides vacationed there during the war, but my brother can’t imagine why I wanted to come on this mission. He said he’d never come back—never in a million years.”
THE PLANE ROLLED to a standstill, the stairs were drawn up and the door opened. Brilliant sunlight poured into the cabin as Adam walked out to meet his past. Much had changed. Oh, yes, there was still the same heat, the same stifling humidity, the smell of hot oil, metal and concrete baking in the sun, and the guard posts between the runways he’d manned as a nineteen-year-old Marine corporal still stood. But the sandbags were gone. And the skeletons of crashed and burned aircraft that had made takeoffs and landings so dangerous toward the end of the war had been hauled away. Most of the other buildings he might have recognized were gone, destroyed in the final hours before the airport had been abandoned to the conquering Vietcong.
But it was the sounds that were the most different. In fact, it was the lack of noise that marked the biggest change. There wasn’t another aircraft in sight. Their chartered Air Vietnam jet was the only plane landing or taking off. It was quiet, eerily so. Absent from the scene was the drone of helicopter blades, the whine of fighter jets taking off and landing, the roar of cargo planes evacuating load after load of civilians....
Adam shut down his recollections with an efficiency that was the result of long years of practice, retreating behind the buffer zone of reserve most doctors learned to erect around themselves early on in their careers, or else they risked losing their sanity. From that perspective he could view Than Son Nhut from a place outside himself where he observed, but didn’t participate in, what was going on. He spent a lot of time in that limbolike state these days, and every time he went there he found it harder and harder to come back.
“Damn, Adam. Did you ever think we’d be back?”
It was B.J. at his elbow, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a wondering look on his face. B.J. was a millionaire fifty times over, but you’d never know it from the way he looked or dressed, or from the luggage he carried.
“No,” Adam said truthfully. “I never expected to come back.”
“It’s friggin’ spooky. I half expect a MIG to come screaming out of the sky the way it did that day and strafe the runway, or a sniper to start taking potshots at us when we unload the plane.” His expression darkened as he looked around him, but a moment later his usual good-natured smile returned. He mopped at his red face with a blue bandanna he pulled out of the back pocket of his jeans. Then he tied the four corns of the bandanna into knots and put the makeshift hat on his balding head. “I’m going to have to get myself a cover. I forgot how friggin’ hot the sun is here.” He looked sourly at Adam’s full head of hair. “Some guys have all the luck.”
Adam and B.J. had gone through boot camp and infantry training together, and ended up with the same duty assignment, attached to the embassy in Saigon. A cushy assignment anyplace else on earth. In Saigon in 1975 it was the stuff of nightmares. They’d arrived in country just before Christmas in 1974 and left in April of ’75. B.J. on an Evac flight after a sniper’s bullet hit the tire of a jeep he was driving, causing it to flip over on him, and Adam aboard one of the last helicopters off the airfield. But at least they’d gotten out alive; many hadn’t.
“Yeah, all the luck in the world,” Adam said.
“Mr. Walton?” It was Leah Gentry again. She was wearing a boonie cap in the same shades of brown as her utilities and mirrored sunglasses. She had a decidedly unmilitary, traffic-stopping, lime-green backpack with a picture of Minnie Mouse emblazoned on it slung over one shoulder, and in her other hand she carried a large, locked, fire-engine-red toolbox. “Sir, I was wondering if I could speak to you for a moment.”
“Hey, don’t go calling me sir.” B.J. grinned.
“Yes, sir, B.J.” Her lips tightened momentarily, then curved into a heart-stopping smile.
“Never made it past PFC, myself. Adam here was a corporal, though. No wait. You ended up with sergeant’s stripes before you got out, didn’t you, Marine?”
Adam ignored his friend’s question. “I think she’s deferring to your age, not your rank.”
B.J. laughed loudly enough to turn heads in their direction. “That’s a low blow, buddy.” He turned to Leah. “And even more of a reason for you to cease and desist, Captain, ma’am.”
“Captain?” Adam repeated.
“Officer on deck, old pal,” B.J. said, slapping Adam on the back as he made his little joke. “Ms. Gentry here’s an officer in the United States Army.”
“You’re active duty?” He hadn’t expected that. He’d noticed the utilities, but had her pegged for a military wanna-be or maybe a weekend warrior, not regular army.
“Reserves since ’94.”
“Desert Storm?”
B.J. answered first. “And Somalia and Bosnia. I told you I only get the best. Leah knows the ropes. And she’s not going to go into a screaming panic if the lights go out or some ex-Charlie bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur starts hasslin’ us about our paperwork. We’re damned lucky to have her, so don’t go giving her a hard time.”
“It’s too late,” Leah said mildly. “Mr. Walton, could you spare me one of the interpreters to run interference with the customs officer?” She lifted the big metal case a few inches. “I’ve got everything I need to work in here. I don’t want any of it confiscated by some round-butt desk jockey with an overactive sense of duty or a quick eye for a bribe. If I don’t work, Dr. Sauder doesn’t, either. Or anyone else, for that matter,” she concluded with a grin.
“I’ll walk you through myself,” B.J. said, suddenly all business. “It’s liable to take some time to get us all through the red tape, so we might as well start with you. The commies may have lost the cold war, but they won the paperwork one. Then I’m coming back to ask for volunteers to stay with the plane. I don’t intend to see any of our stuff get ‘liberated’ . by any of those desk jockeys you mentioned and end up on the black market. Can I count on you, Captain?”
“Certainly. Just tell me when.”
“I’d like to get everyone squared away at the hotel ASAP. Would you be willing to take the first shift with the plane? I’ll leave Adam here with you. Got a problem with that, Marine?” B.J. asked in a softly challenging tone. He had made his peace with the past. He knew Adam had not.
“No,” Adam said. “No problem.”
“Great. It’s settled, then. I’ll make sure the government liaison guy they promised to have waiting for us gets us some guards. Once they’re stationed around the plane all you have to do is stick around a while to make sure they stay honest. Piece of cake.”
Adam wasn’t so sure of that, but maybe with Leah Gentry to keep him company, he could fill the silence of the present with the sound of her voice and keep the horror of the past at bay.
CHAPTER TWO
ADAM WALKED OUT onto the balcony of his hotel room to greet the sunrise in a country he’d hoped never to see again.
“Good morning, Doctor. You’re up early.”
He swung around. Leah Gentry was standing on another postage-stamp-size balcony next to his. She looked fresh and rested, even though they hadn’t gotten to their hotel rooms until after midnight the night before. “Good morning. Is that coffee you’re drinking?” He’d given up alcohol years ago, cut down on his red meat and smoked only the occasional cigar, but he’d refused to give up coffee.
“Yep. I made it myself.” She laughed, the wonderful, lilting laugh he’d found himself beginning to crave as though it were...coffee. “I’m not fit for human company if I don’t get my fix in the morning, so Mom sent along one of those little coffeemakers and every conceivable electrical adapter. Luckily one of them worked. The wiring in this hotel is... eccentric,” she finished diplomatically. “Would you like a cup? The door’s unlocked. Help yourself.”
“Thanks, I’ll be right over,” he heard himself say, and wasn’t as surprised as he would have been only twenty-four hours earlier.
The time they’d spent together at Than Son Nhut hadn’t been as bad as he’d expected. True to his word, B.J. had gotten Leah and her tackle box full of anesthetic drugs and instruments through customs in under an hour, some kind of record in Vietnam. And true to his word, the Vietnamese official had shown up with his armed guards—sober young men dressed in dull green fatigues and pith helmets that sported a red star. With AK-47s slung over their shoulders, they took their places on each side of the hangar door.
Left alone in the vast echoing space, he and Leah had made small talk, played gin rummy on Leah’s tackle box and listened to the drumming of rain on the metal roof. It was November, the tail end of the rainy season, so the downpour lasted for less than an hour, instead of half the day.
The sun was setting when the rain stopped. The air had cooled ever so slightly. Leah produced apples and oranges, peanut butter and cheese crackers and bottled water from her backpack. They shared their makeshift meal with the guards, who spoke English far better than Adam spoke Vietnamese. As darkness fell, a little battery-powered lantern materialized from yet another pocket of Leah’s backpack. It fought the darkness to a standstill in a small circle around them.
As the hours slowly passed, he’d kept her talking about her work, about growing up an army brat and about her family. He’d learned her parents were retired, her father after thirty years in the military, her mother after a career as a teacher. One brother was a U.S. Navy SEAL, one a navy chaplain, the third an army Green Beret.
And in return he had given up a few details of his own life during the dark minutes before midnight—broken home, one brother, who lived in California, he saw only now and then. Both parents dead. They’d lived hard and died young, he’d told her. She hadn’t asked for more details and he hadn’t offered them. He told her about the judge who’d given him the choice of joining the U.S. Marine Corps, or going to jail for a joyride that had resulted in a totaled car. He’d taken advantage of college courses the Corps offered, found he was a good student and went on to medical school. And then the unrelenting grind of a neurosurgical internship and residency, followed by one marriage, one son, one divorce and all the nightmares he could handle. This last he hadn’t spoken aloud.
Than Son Nhut he’d faced and survived. This morning it was Saigon. The city had fallen to the victorious enemy only one day after his helicopter had lifted off the airfield. He wondered if Leah’s company might be as potent a talisman against the past today as it had been yesterday.
He walked the few feet down the hallway to her room and pushed open the louvered door. Her accommodations were identical to his—high ceiling, white walls, sheer curtains at the French doors. The place had once been a villa that belonged to a South Vietnamese general, B.J. had told him. Now it was a hotel, a joint venture between the Vietnamese and an Australian firm. They were trying hard, but they hadn’t gotten it quite right yet. The rooms were clean, the toilets worked, and there was hot water, but no soap and only one towel in the communal bathroom. The electricity was eccentric, as Leah had said. To turn on the ceiling fan, he’d had to hook two bare wires together, and there was no such thing as room service.
Leah must have heard him enter the room. “There’s whitener in those little packets,” she called from the balcony.
“No, thanks. Black is fine.” He couldn’t help himself to her coffee and then just leave, walk back into his room and stare at the walls, so he made himself move through the doors onto the balcony to stand beside her.
Saigon was up with the sun. The dusty, tree-lined street below was crowded with bicycles, motor scooters and cyclos, the bicycle-rickshaws that served as taxicabs and couriers everywhere in Vietnam. There were also a few cars and buses, but completely absent were marked lanes and traffic signals, at least none that anyone was obeying. Traffic moved in both directions on both sides of the street. It was every man for himself.
Leash was leaning over the railing watching what went on below. She was wearing a flowered cotton skirt that ended just above her ankles and a shortsleeved pink blouse that complemented her creamy skin. Her mink-brown hair was pulled back into a French braid so complicated he wondered how she could accomplish it on her own. There was nothing even vaguely military about her appearance. Today she was all woman.
“How does anyone manage to cross the street safely?” she asked.
“Like that,” Adam pointed with his coffee mug. A man with two young children in tow waded, undaunted, into the traffic. Miraculously, bicycles, cyclos, motor scooters, even a bus, swerved to miss him and the children.
Leah let out her breath in a whoosh. “They made it,” she said, turning to Adam with amazement on her face. “You just start walking. Show no fear. It’s like my dad said it would be.”
“Your dad was here?”
“In ‘65 and ’68,” she said.
“He was in the country during the Tet offensive?”
She nodded. “That’s where he got his Purple Heart. He wants to come back, but Mom says no more. She’s never going anywhere that requires a passport again. We moved eleven times in fifteen years. I’m sorry. I told you all this last night, didn’t I.”
“I enjoyed it,” he said. She blinked. He’d spoken too tersely. He was out of the habit of making small talk with a woman.
“I’m going to do some sight-seeing right after breakfast. Dad wants pictures of the embassy and Chinatown, and I want to tour the presidential palace. They’ve kept it exactly as it was the day the North Vietnamese marched into the city. Want to come along?”
“No.” Again, too terse. “I mean, I...I hadn’t thought about it.”
She rested her hip against the stone railing and looked at him over the rim of her coffee mug. “Of course, you were here before. You said so last night.” She turned her head, her gaze moving in the direction of the abandoned American Embassy. “It’s so different—not what I expected at all. My impressions were shaped by those videos of the last days—pictures of tanks and soldiers with guns, mobs of terrified people fighting to get out. But this... It’s as if the war never happened.”
“For most of these people it didn’t,” he said. “Vietnam is a young country. Half the people here were born after the war. They don’t want to look back. They want to move forward.” Good advice. Too damned bad he couldn’t follow it himself.
B.J. appeared on Adam’s balcony. “Hey, buddy, there you are. You left your door unlocked, did you know that?” He waved a greeting. “Good morning, Leah.”
“Good morning, B.J.”
“Leah has coffee.” Adam moved to the edge of the balcony and surveyed his friend across the few feet separating them. B.J. was wearing jeans and a Hawaiian-print shirt in shades of pink and orange. His red baseball cap was emblazoned with the Marine Corps emblem in gold.
“So does the hotel restaurant, old buddy. Café filtre and baguettes. Delicious.”
Leah laughed and held out her mug. “You mean I dragged a coffeemaker all the way from Kentucky for nothing?”
“Nope. I’m only saying they’ve got great coffee in the hotel. Hospital coffee is the same the world over—not fit to drink. I doubt it’s any different at Dalat. You’ll get plenty of use out of it there.”
“Any word on when we’ll be moving out?”
B.J. poked at a piece of crumbling balcony railing with the toe of his shoe. “That’s what I came to tell you. The trucks pulled up at the airport about an hour ago. If there’s any sight-seeing you want to do, I suggest you do it this morning. We’ll be leaving here before noon. Don’t want to get stranded overnight somewhere along the highway. Luckily the day starts early here. Most of the shops are open by seven, the museums, too. Some of the others have already left the hotel. If you apply yourself, you should be able to see a little of the city and at least hit the antique shops on Dong Khoi Street.”
“An excellent plan, B.J. If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll be on my way.”
“Why don’t you go with her, Adam? Take her to the embassy and the presidential palace,” his friend suggested.
“No.” His voice was harsh. Striving to soften it, he added, “I figured I’d go back to the airport with you. Make sure everything’s okay.”
“Not necessary. I’ve paid all the fees and a few plain, old-fashioned bribes. Nothing’s going to go missing. Head out with Leah and get a souvenir to take home to Brian. Have your picture taken in front of the embassy. Better yet, have a beer on me if you can find the Tiger’s Den.”
“It’s too early for a beer, and I doubt the Tiger’s Den survived the reunification.” The panic-filled streets of the defeated city he’d known were long gone, but he wasn’t interested in trying to find the bar he and B.J. and their buddies had hung out in.
“I don’t need a chaperon,” Leah said. “I’ll find my own way.”
“I know you will. It’s Adam I’m worried about. Lousy sense of direction. Gets lost all the time. Why I remember one night in Norfolk—”
“Stow it, B.J. You lead,” he said to Leah. “I’ll follow.”
She stayed where she was. “But I thought—”
“I changed my mind. I’d like to go if you’re willing to put up with my company.”
She studied his face for a moment and he endured the scrutiny. He had the feeling she could see all the way to the center of his soul, but that was ridiculous. If she could really see what was inside him, she’d turn and run like the sane and sensible woman she was. Instead, she said, “Okay, let’s go.”
LEAH WALKED DOWN the vaulted hallway with Adam Sauder on one side and B. J. Walton on the other. She was glad none of her brothers were around to see what she was up to. They’d teased her about picking up strays all her life. Usually it was the four-legged kind, puppies with sore paws or homeless kittens, but she tended to do the same thing with people. Most of the others probably couldn’t see the pain behind Adam Sauder’s dark gaze, but she did, and it should have warned her to stay away. Instead, she found herself riding down to the lobby in the elaborately grilled elevator, saying goodbye to B.J., hailing a double cyclo and moving out into the bewildering stream of traffic with him still at her side.
Their cyclo driver was a young man of French and Vietnamese descent who spoke excellent English. He maneuvered them skillfully through the heavy traffic, taking them directly to the abandoned American Embassy, a concrete-and-glass fortress every bit as ugly as it had looked in the news footage on TV. The building had a sad, defeated air about it, Leah thought. Someone had hung laundry in one of the old guard towers. She sat quietly for a moment, Adam equally silent beside her. Then they climbed out of the cyclo and stood by the gates where she had seen videos of refugees trying to climb over, of grim-faced young Marines on the wall pulling others into the compound, of overloaded helicopters taking off from the roof.
She’d brought her camera, and without her asking him Adam took her picture in front of the gates, and then their driver took a picture of both of them together. Her father’s ghosts were close. She could feel their eyes on the back of her neck. “Were you here?” she asked Adam.
He shook his head. “I never got this far.” His expression appeared set, his jaw clenched. Leah didn’t ask any more questions about the past.
They didn’t stop to tour the presidential palace. She didn’t know what she was going to tell her dad when she got back, but she’d think of something. Most likely the truth. I went there with a Marine who was in Saigon at the end. He didn’t want to go inside, so we didn’t. Her dad would understand.
Instead they took B.J.’s advice and went shopping. Their driver took them to a small, bustling marketplace. It was alive, wall-to-wall, with sights and sounds and smells that were raucous and tantalizing, unfamiliar and fascinating. Leah stood for a long minute just looking around. Street vendors peddled their wares on every corner. Food stands crowded storefronts, shoppers jostled one another as they ogled the merchandise. Vietnam was still a Communist country, and poor, but you would never know it by the stacks and boxes and cartons of VCRs, televisions, CD players and microwave ovens piled inside the tiny stores, spilling outside onto the sidewalk, lashed to cyclos and bicycles, and stacked in pushcarts.
She bought a pale blue silk ao dai, the traditional slim dress and loose pants worn by Vietnamese women, for her mother. Exactly like the one her father had brought home thirty years ago, but three sizes larger. Then she bought a mint-green one for herself. She chose greeting cards with beautiful, silk-screen paintings of craggy green mountains and mist-covered valleys that she could frame for Caleb Owens and his wife, Margaret. Also one for Juliet Trent, the pregnant teenager she had befriended. That left only her brothers, and for them she bought carvings of elephants and of smiling old men smoking their pipes and wearing the traditional conical hats called lo nan.
Adam stayed by her side saying little, waiting patiently. He didn’t buy anything, not even for his son, Brian. She knew his name, knew he was nineteen and a sophomore at Harvard. Adam had told her that much the night before. But she knew nothing beyond those few facts, certainly not why his father wasn’t buying him a gift from this exotic and fascinating place.
Like the stray animals Leah had rescued in the past, once or twice she’d become involved with stray men—men with haunted eyes and sad smiles like Adam Sauder. Trying to heal wounded souls was much harder than healing wounded bodies, she’d learned to her sorrow. His hurts and heartaches were none of her business. This time she wasn’t going to get involved. She was going to protect herself for a change. She saw him pick up a watch, turn it over, then put it down again.
“Do you suppose it’s really a Rolex? For only a hundred dollars?” There was a sign in English above the table of watches. There were a lot of signs in English, nothing in Russian. The few Russians who came now didn’t have money to spend. The Americans and Australians did.
“I doubt it, but it’s a very good knockoff.”
“It would be a nice gift for your son.”
He picked the watch up again, unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out a money clip. The shopkeeper appeared in front of them as if by magic. “You like?”
“I’ll take it.” Adam peeled off five twenties and handed the man the money. He didn’t bargain for a better price.
“Engrave for free,” the smiling shopkeeper said. “Remember Saigon always.”
“I don’t need a watch for that.” But Adam handed it to him, anyway.
“What do you say on it?”
“For Brian—” Adam began.
Suddenly there was a small stampede of sandaled feet, and from out of nowhere came a whole gaggle of children of all ages, all sizes, from toddlers to young adolescents, who swirled around them. Street children. There were many of them in Saigon, some orphaned, some not. Left behind in the headlong rush to prosperity, they roamed the streets living hand-to-mouth.
“Nguoi My! Nguoi My!” It meant American. Leah had learned it from her phrase book. “Friends, give us money—dollars.”
She wished there was more she could do to help, but she’d learned the hard way you couldn’t save the world all by yourself. At least, she could do her small part and make today a little better for them. She slipped her hand into her skirt pocket to fish out a couple of dollar bills she had stashed there.
The children became even noisier when they saw the money. They began to jump up and down, laughing and giggling, demanding more. The shopkeeper waved them away. They ignored him, crowding around Adam and Leah and plucking at their clothes. A couple tugged the straps of her backpack. Leah laughed and tugged back. The shopkeeper picked up a broom resting by the door and made sweeping motions toward the children, still scolding in Vietnamese. The boys shouted. The little girls squealed, and one of the smallest started crying.
Leah glanced over at Adam. His face was as white as his shirt. A look of pure horror.
The shopkeeper shooed the children out into the street. Leah held her breath and watched them until they were safely on the other side of the narrow, crowded roadway. She turned back as the ebb and flow of Saigon street life surrounded her again. She was alone. She looked around. Adam was already a hundred feet away and walking fast. Surely he hadn’t turned tail and run because a group of kids had hustled them for a couple of dollars. Then she remembered the look on his face and thought maybe he had. She watched him go, a head taller than everyone else around him.
“Adam, wait! Your watch.” She might as well have saved her breath. The level of street noise made it impossible for him to hear her. She didn’t think he would have stopped if he had. He’d left her alone in the middle of a strange city without a word of explanation. She had every right to be angry with him, but she wasn’t. Being stranded didn’t worry her—she could take care of herself. What bothered her was the memory of that look on his face. She wanted to know what had put it there. She wanted to help take it away—and that bothered her most of all.
CHAPTER THREE
A DELIVERY-TRUCK DRIVER made a U-turn in the middle of the street two blocks from the market, tying up traffic in every direction, when Leah was heading back to the hotel. It took her driver almost an hour to maneuver his cyclo through the snarl. When she finally arrived, the bus to take them to Dalat was waiting, engine idling. She paid the driver and hurried to her room. While packing, she listened for sounds of movement from Adam’s suite, but heard nothing. She couldn’t stop wondering where he was and what he was doing. She couldn’t forget the horror she’d glimpsed on his face—an old horror, familiar and long remembered. It sent a shiver of dread up and down her spine. When she left her room, she knocked on his door. There was no answer. She hadn’t really expected there would be.
Adam wasn’t in the lobby. He wasn’t on the sidewalk outside the hotel. He wasn’t on the bus. She shoved her duffel bag into the overhead bin and looked around. The passengers were all women, except for Roger Crenshaw.
“Glad you’re here, Leah. Only two more to come,” he said, putting a tick beside her name on the clipboard he was holding.
“Join me. We’re almost ready to leave.” Kaylene smiled and beckoned from across the aisle.
“Where are the others?” Leah asked, sliding onto the cracked leather seat beside the woman she already considered a friend.
“B.J. and most of the men left for the airport—” Kaylene glanced at her watch “—half an hour ago.”
“Dr. Sauder, too?”
“Yes, I believe I saw him with the group.”
Leah was relieved to learn that Adam had made it safely back to the hotel. Something of what she was feeling must have shown on her face, for Kaylene looked as if she wanted to say more. But just then the bus doors screeched shut on unoiled hinges behind the final two members of the group. Moments later they pulled out onto the street, parting the waves of opposing traffic like a whale in a school of shrimp.
The ride to Dalat was one of the most nerveracking experiences of Leah’s life. The highway out of Saigon was crowded with all manner of vehicles, from eighteen-wheelers to high-wheeled carts pulled by water buffalo. There were seventies-era American cars, Japanese motor scooters, Chinese trucks and buses, cyclists and pedestrians, and no one paid any more attention to the traffic laws here than they had in Saigon. There seemed to be only one rule of the road: have a horn and use it. It was a long, harrowing drive, and even the beauty of the mist-washed hillsides was not enough to take Leah’s mind off their driver’s suicidal tendency to pass other vehicles on the winding stretches of narrow roadway with sheer, unguarded drops only inches from the bus’s wheels.
The sun had set and the short twilight had almost faded when they arrived at the hospital compound in the jungle, several miles outside the hill-country city of Dalat. Father Gerard, the French Canadian priest in charge of the hospital, and two of the nuns, whom he introduced as Sister Grace and Sister Janet, came out of the square, two-story, brick building to welcome them.
Leah took a moment to look around and get her bearings before following the white-cassocked Father Gerard and the others on a tour of the compound. To the west of the hospital was a church made out of the same dusty-red brick, its copper-roofed steeple green with age. Grouped between the two buildings were half-a-dozen thatched-roof huts. Smoke from cooking fires curled through holes in the roofs while small children played outside in the dirt, among chickens and potbellied pigs. Here, Father Gerard explained, as he led them to their rooms in two larger communal huts, the families and friends of hospital patients stayed while their loved ones underwent treatment.
They drew names out of a hat for room assignments, and Leah and Kaylene found themselves paired up, an arrangement that suited them both. Their room was at the end of the long building closest to the hospital. Barely big enough to turn around in, it held two hard, narrow beds draped with mosquito netting, a small table and one chair, a metal washbowl and pitcher. A single bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The hospital had electricity provided from Dalat, but in the compound there was only an aging generator that produced electricity for two hours at dusk and one hour in the morning. Showers and toilets were in the hospital building. The kitchen and refectory were there, too.
The evening meal had been held for them. They took their places at the long benched tables and the Vietnamese nuns brought them soup thick with noodles and bits of pork and chicken. It was spicier than anything Leah had ever eaten, but delicious. The rest of the meal consisted of steamed rice, stale French bread, dried fruit—and tea—no coffee. Adam wouldn’t like that, Leah thought. When they’d finished eating, they toured the wards and the operating suites. It was dark by the time they returned to their rooms to unpack. The generator shut down at eight as advertised. They undressed by candlelight and were in bed by nine.
Leah was so tired she ached in every muscle, but still she couldn’t sleep. Where were the supply trucks? They should have arrived by now. The highway they’d traveled was treacherous enough in daylight. At night, with only the moon to guide them, it would be even more dangerous. She stared into the darkness and listened to the unfamiliar but comforting sound of Kaylene’s gentle snoring. She found herself straining to hear the sound of trucks laboring up the steep grade to the hospital compound. What if something had happened to them? To B.J. and the others? To Adam?
She forced herself to relax. There was nothing she could do to get the trucks and their occupants here any faster, and tomorrow was going to be a long, busy day. The two operating suites would have to be evaluated and arranged to the surgeons’ satisfaction. The electrician would have to get the generator that would power all their high-tech equipment and computers up and running. All the surgical instruments had to be checked and checked again. There would be patients to evaluate, operating schedules to draw up. But still she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she watched the luminous hands of her travel clock creep forward in slow circles until at last her vigil was rewarded with the unmistakable sound of heavy trucks pulling into the compound.
They were here. They were safe. He was safe. Leah closed her eyes, but it wasn’t until she heard the low rumble of Adam’s voice as he exchanged greetings with Father Gerard that she relaxed enough to fall asleep.
THUNDER RUMBLED in the distance, barely audible above the steady roar of the generator on the other side of the wall. Adam looked out the operating room’s one small window, saw the dark clouds rolling down from the mountains and knew they were in for a downpour. He would be surprised if they didn’t get a thunderstorm at this time of the afternoon every day for the next three weeks. He saw Leah Gentry glance over her shoulder to the same spot and then continue her conversation with Roger Crenshaw.
He’d been avoiding her all day. He owed her an apology and an explanation. The apology he could handle; the explanation he wasn’t so sure about. Adam watched as Leah and Roger inspected a pressure gauge they’d just unpacked. Roger would oversee the larger operating room next door where the orthopedic and general surgeons would set up shop. He and Leah would work together here. The generator’s staccato beat stuttered and faltered. The lights flickered and dimmed, then steadied again. Leah dropped a screwdriver on the cement floor and mumbled an apology in his direction.
He acknowledged it with a nod and went on checking his own instruments, thousands of dollars’ worth of specialized scalpels and retractors, drills and clamps. He hadn’t bothered to keep them with him on the plane, as Leah had with her red toolbox. If they’d been lost, he wouldn’t have to operate. He could have turned tail and run back to Chicago. He closed the case and set it on the table by the antique autoclave in the corner. From now on they were Kaylene Smiley’s responsibility.
Roger Crenshaw left the room, and Adam found himself standing at the head of the operating table watching Leah work. “Everything check out okay?” he asked.
She was apparently so involved in what she was doing it took a moment for his words to sink in. Then she looked at him and blinked. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes, as though she hadn’t slept well. She probably hadn’t, if her bed was as hard and uncomfortable as his.
She smiled tentatively, obviously not quite certain how to handle him after yesterday’s disappearing act. Her hair was in the same French braid as before, but today little curling wisps had escaped to brush against her cheek and the nape of her neck. “The humidity is giving me fits. Everything’s sticking or jumping around.” She tapped one of the gauges with the tip of her fingernail.
“B.J. said they’ll have the air conditioner installed soon.” Even though it was cooler in the hills this time of year than in Saigon, the humidity would play havoc with the delicate instruments on which both he and Leah relied. The air conditioner was a necessity, not a luxury.
“I’ll run one more check when it’s up and going. Then I’m ready whenever you are.”
“We start patient evaluations first thing in the morning. Would you like to sit in on mine?” Back at St. B’s he let his residents do most of the face-to-face work. These days he kept his distance from his patients, especially the youngest ones.
“Thank you, I would. Caleb and I work together that way. I like to have a feel for the patient. There’s more to anesthesia than just checking height and weight, and looking up dosages on a chart.” She tilted her head slightly and smiled at him.
Adam had been waiting for that smile, and the realization made him angry at himself. He took it out on Leah. “This isn’t going to be fun and games. It’s triage. The oldest, the youngest, the sickest—those are the ones who can’t beat the odds, the ones we’ll have to pass over.”
Her smile disappeared. “I know that.”
“B.J.’s done a hell of a job getting me what I need to operate here, but it’s still a Third World setup. No heroics. No miracles. Some are going to make it and some aren’t. Can you handle that, too?” He looked down at his hands, balled into fists on the metal table. He sounded like the soulless medical machine he was becoming.
“I can live with the tough calls,” she said quietly. “Can you?”
He ignored her question. Losing your soul didn’t mean you had to behave like a jackass. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. We’ll do our best for all our patients. We’ll do fine together.”
“I always give my patients one hundred percent. I’m sure you do, too.”
She didn’t sound completely mollified, but he forged ahead. “And while I’m at it, I also want to apologize for leaving you stranded yesterday.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can. That has nothing to do with it. My behavior was uncalled-for.”
“I have your watch,” she said unexpectedly.
The statement and the change of subject caught him off guard. “My watch?”
“The one you bought for your son.”
He’d forgotten all about it. He’d forgotten everything but the past the moment he heard the smallest of the street urchins begin to cry. Leah reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out the wristwatch. She handed it to him. It was warm from the heat of her body. “Thanks,” he said.
“I had the shopkeeper engrave it.”
Adam turned the watch over. To Brian. With Love, Dad. Saigon, 1999.
With love. How long had it been since he’d told his son he loved him?
She waited as the silence grew between them. A frown creased her forehead. “It’s my turn to apologize, it seems. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have presumed. I’ll pay to have the inscription removed.”
He stuck the watch into his pocket and twisted his mouth into a smile. “No, it’s fine. Thank you for taking the trouble. Thanks for everything.” He turned to walk away. Leah reached out and laid her hand on his arm. A current of energy had passed between them when his hand had brushed hers moments before. He’d ignored it. This time he couldn’t.
“What happened there at the marketplace? Why did you take off like that?”
“It was nothing. Not enough sleep and too much sun.”
“It was more than that.”
The storm had rolled down off the mountain. Now the thunder crashed directly overhead. She didn’t even flinch. He knew he was going to have to tell her something, perhaps even the truth, or at least a portion of it.
“Was it being in that marketplace? Or was it being in Saigon?”
Damn, she’s persistent. “It was—” The lights went out. There was no blinding flash of lightning or crash of thunder, but the room was suddenly dark except for the small rectangle of light coming from the window. The rain still pounded on the roof, but the rhythmic stutter of the generator had ceased. It was a distraction, the answer to an unvoiced prayer. “The generator’s out,” he said unnecessarily.
“Do you think it was hit by lightning?” There was a quiver in her voice.
“No. It’s right outside the window. I think we would have known if lightning had struck it.”
“Of course. How stupid of me. It probably just ran out of gas.” He heard Leah suck in a sharp breath, saw her turn toward the light.
He smiled. He couldn’t help himself. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of storms.”
She slid off her stool, looking at him over her shoulder. She moved toward the window, a darker silhouette against the pale rectangle of murky light. “Of course not.” She laughed a little self-consciously. “But I’m not very comfortable in the dark. Isn’t it silly? I’m thirty-one years old and I sleep with a night-light.”
“Don’t tell me you lay awake all night staring into the darkness to keep the monsters at bay.” Why had he said that? Because it was what he did every night?
“I’m not sleeping alone,” she said.
“Does it help not sleeping alone?” He had a sudden vision of her in bed with a man. He didn’t like it. Some of what he was thinking must have seeped into his voice.
She spun around, bringing them within a step of each other. He reached out and steadied her with his hands on her shoulders. He couldn’t see her blush, but he was certain she did. “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, having a roommate. Besides, I have a clock with an enormous fluorescent dial. It’s practically as good as a night-light.” She turned the tables on him. “What comes for you in the dark?”
“No, Leah.” Then he stopped her from saying more with his mouth. He’d meant only to silence her, but her lips were so soft and warm....
She pulled away. “You don’t have to kiss me to shut me up. I won’t insist that you explain to me what happened yesterday,” she whispered, her breath warm against his lips.
“I’m not kissing you to shut you up. Not anymore.” She opened her mouth and let him inside to explore. She tasted of mint and cola. Her tongue touched his and something inside him flared with a white-hot flame, searing his heart. He pulled her close. Her breasts pressed against his chest, her softness against his sudden erection. He kissed her harder. He could go on kissing her forever, more than kissing her, making love to her over and over again. Adam found the fantasy taking hold of his heart and his brain. He wanted all of her, the way he hadn’t wanted a woman for a long, long time. “You don’t have to be alone in the dark, Leah. Stay with me tonight,” he said before the barriers of self-control could slam down on his need for her.
She shook her head, but didn’t step out of his arms. “That’s not a good idea.”
He could hear voices beyond the wall, a mixture of French, Vietnamese and English. People were working on the generator. Before he knew it the lights would come back on. The intimacy of near darkness would be erased. “What’s wrong with both of us taking comfort from each other?” He could feel her pulling back and he tightened his arms around her. “Don’t go,” he whispered against her hair. It was half plea, half command. He found her mouth again.
She relaxed against him for a handful of heartbeats, kissed him back and then pushed away, her hands on his chest. Her breasts rose and fell with her quickened breathing. There was a look of wonder on her face, and he knew their kisses had affected her as strongly as they had him. It was a warning signal he should have heeded, but he did not. “Stay with me, Leah.”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t sleep with colleagues. I don’t do one-night stands.” She took another step away. He let his palms slide along her arms, then manacled her wrists with his hands, keeping her close.
“This wouldn’t be a one-night stand.”
“I’m not good at short, intense affairs, either.”
“Leah. I...” He couldn’t say “I need you” because she would demand to know why, and maybe he would tell her, and then the thin plate of armor separating him from his private version of hell would buckle and melt away, and he would be lost. “We would be good together,” he finished lamely.
“Another reason it’s not a good idea.”
He felt a chuckle working its way up into his throat and didn’t hold it back. “Thank you, I think.”
She smiled, too, but it was a little off center. “There is something between us, physically. I’m not denying it. But there are other reasons it’s not a good idea. You’re heartsore, Adam, and I’m not the woman to take away your pain. I know, I’ve tried before....” She lifted her hand to his cheek just as the generator kicked in beyond the wall, and the lights flickered back to life. “The truth of the matter is that I don’t think we should be alone with each other outside this room anymore.”
CHAPTER FOUR
LEAH RESTED HER HEAD against the back of the old, canvas chaise longue and closed her eyes. They had been in Vietnam ten days. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. There would be turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce, of a sort, freeze-dried and foil-wrapped. This was the first Thanksgiving she’d spent away from home since Desert Storm, but she was almost too tired even to be homesick.
Kaylene Smiley joined her in the screened hospital veranda, two cans of soda in her hands. “You look like you could use a drink,” she said, handing Leah one. Kaylene had come straight from the surgical suites. She was wearing green cotton scrubs and a paper surgical hat that framed her round, good-natured face like an old-fashioned mobcap.
The soda wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm, either. Leah accepted it with a grateful smile, popped the top and took a long swallow. “Thanks, I needed that.”
Kaylene sank into the chair next to Leah’s. “I’m getting too old for this. I should be thinking about retiring and playing with my grandchildren, not hiking off to the back of beyond to play Florence Nightingale.”
“I thought you told me you came on the mission to get away from your adorable crumb crunchers.” Kaylene had five grandchildren, all under the age of seven and all living within a few miles of her home. Leah had gathered from the pictures Kaylene showed her that the little ones spent as much time as possible at Grandma’s house.
“I did. But now I miss them. I even miss my husband.” She grinned and settled into the chaise with a sigh of relief. “Sixty-eight surgeries in eight days. It might not sound like an awful lot back home, but under these conditions we must be setting some kind of record. How’s your pituitary tumor doing?”
Early that morning Adam had operated on one of the Vietnamese nurses whose infertility was likely caused by a tumor of the pituitary gland. The tumor was benign and the surgery had gone well. Their patient was already awake and alert “Adam thinks she shouldn’t have any trouble conceiving now.”
“Another little miracle. Justifies my aching back and feet.”
Leah murmured agreement. The sun had dropped from sight behind the mountains that surrounded the valley where the hospital and several small villages were located. The air had already begun to cool. At dusk the church bell would ring to call Father Gerard and the sisters and their flock to prayers. Evening here was the most pleasant time of day. It reminded her a little of Slate Hollow with the smell of wood smoke in the air, the laughter of children at play and dogs barking in the distance.
“I really should bestir myself to take a shower before the hot water’s gone,” Kaylene said a few minutes later.
Leah lifted her hand and brushed back a strand of hair that had worked its way out of her braid. “That does sound like a good idea.”
“The only problem is I’ll have to get out of this chair to do it.”
“You know you hate cold showers.” The hotwater heater that supplied the showers was ancient and unreliable.
Kaylene took another swallow of her soda and swung her feet off the chaise with a groan. “You talked me into it. I also have to do some laundry. I’m not celebrating Thanksgiving with dirty undies. Hello, Doctor.”
“Good evening, ladies.”
Leah turned her head, but she didn’t have to see him to know it was Adam. She nodded hello, not trusting her voice.
“Is there something you need in the operating room, Doctor?” Kaylene was from the old school of nursing. She didn’t call any of the doctors by their first names.
“Everything’s perfect in the OR and you know it,” he said with one of his rare smiles.
“Just making sure, because once I get out of these scrubs, you’re not getting me back into them for forty-eight hours.” There were no surgeries scheduled the next day in honor of Thanksgiving.
Kaylene went back into the hospital, leaving Leah and Adam alone on the veranda. Leah stared down at her soft-drink can. Adam stared out into the compound. The church bell began to chime.
“It’s time for mass,” Leah said unnecessarily.
“Don’t let me keep you.”
“I wasn’t planning to attend.”
“Then would you care to come with me to the orphanage?”
The nursing sisters ran a small orphanage together with a school in another building about half a mile away. Leah, Kaylene and one of the doctors made the trip down the road at least once a day to visit the children and check on their patients.
“Has something gone wrong with My Lei’s shunt?” The six-month-old girl had been born with a condition that caused fluid to build up on her brain. Five days ago Adam had implanted a shunt, a tube to redirect the excess cerebrospinal fluid. She had been doing well ever since, but any kind of surgery was risky for an infant, especially brain surgery.
“She’s fine,” Adam said quickly. “But I promised Sister Grace I’d check on her today. If you’re too tired or you still don’t want to be alone with me, just say so.”
She’d hesitated too long in answering his invitation. He was impatient with personal interaction, she was learning, as though he spent little time in idle conversation. It was only a few minutes’ walk. Surely she could keep her feelings under control and her hands to herself for that length of time. “I’m always tired,” she said. “But I’m not worried about being alone with you.” It was the first mention he’d made of that afternoon in the OR. The first for her, too. She stood up and walked to the screen door.
Adam stepped in front of her and held it open. Leah searched for a topic of conversation. “Have you seen B.J. today?” she asked as they passed the church and headed for the roadway.
“Not today, but it’s obvious by the sound of your voice he’s hatching some new scheme, and he’s got you as excited about it as he is. Am I right?”
“You seem to know him very well.”
“We’ve been friends a long time. What is it? A new program to revolutionize the Internet? Although I didn’t have you pegged as a computer geek.”
“I’m not.” She laughed. “I use one, but I don’t understand it.”
“Don’t tell me he’s planning to try and fly a hotair balloon around the world. No, that was last year.” He smiled. “I give up. What is it today?”
“He told me he has a new project he’s working on—containerized hospitals. They’ll fit on the back of a semi-rig or you can sling them under a helicopter and drop them just about anywhere in the world. Pod-Meds, he wants to call them. Completely selfcontained and fully equipped operating rooms with labs, X ray, physical therapy and even water and electricity.”
“What about a stable blood supply and competent follow-up care?”
“I didn’t say there weren’t problems. Big ones. But that’s where people come in,” she said. “To donate blood, solve the problems and teach others how to care for themselves.”
He looked at her and smiled, but it didn’t lighten the shadow behind his eyes. “Never underestimate the power of a dreamer. You and B.J. are two of a kind.”
“I think it’s a great idea.”
“I do, too. I hope he brings it off.” This time his response seemed more genuine, heartfelt, and his smile took her breath away.
They walked in silence, listening to the sound of children’s laughter carried to them on the smoky air. “I always marvel at how wonderfully happy these children are—except for love, they have so little,” Leah said as they moved into the shade of the tall stands of bamboo that grew beside the road where the humid air felt ever so slightly cooler.
“Family is important to the Vietnamese. They’ll do just about anything for their children. Even children like My Lei who haven’t got much of a future.”
“I wish there was something I could do,” Leah said, thinking aloud.
“You’ve done plenty already.” Adam’s tone sounded harsh, resigned.
Leah kept her eyes on the track. “But it isn’t enough.”
“With a case like My Lei it’s never enough.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and lowered his head.
“Are you sorry you operated on her?” Leah asked. If he said yes in that same stony voice, she would turn around and go back. She thought of the happy, smiling baby. Her life was precious even as imperfect as it was.
“No,” he said at last. “I’m only sorry I couldn’t make her well and whole. There’s still so much we don’t know about the human brain. So much that can go wrong.”
“And some things that can be put right.”
They’d come to a place where a small runnel crossed the road. It wasn’t deep, but too wide to step easily across. Adam held out his hand to help her. Leah hesitated. She didn’t want to touch him. She remembered all too well the feel of his hands on her arms, the heat of his body, the taste of him in her mouth. A craving for his touch was part of what kept her awake at night.
A bird called somewhere off in the distance, another answered, calls as strange and exotic as the setting. She and Adam would be together only a little over a week longer, then he would go back to his world and she to hers. She would remember that and keep this attraction between them in perspective. She put her hand in his and jumped across.
“If Vo’s family can’t be located, perhaps I could sponsor them,” she said, hoping he’d attribute her breathlessness to the steepness of the rise they were now climbing. Vo was My Lei’s father, a young widower.
“You can’t take on a responsibility like that. The child has no mother. Vo doesn’t speak English. He has no marketable skills.”
Leah thought of the dying old woman she’d befriended back in Slate Hollow, along with the woman’s pregnant great-granddaughter, Juliet Trent, She had already made herself responsible for the two of them. Adam was right. She couldn’t do the same for My Lei and Vo. “I was only thinking—”
“With your heart, instead of your head.”
She turned on him, stopping him dead in his tracks. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“Yes, when it blinds you to the realities of the situation.”
She started walking again. “I’d rather be blind to reality, if it keeps me from seeing things as callously as you do.”
He reached out and grabbed her wrist, spinning her around to face him. “I’m not blind, Leah. I’ve only learned the hard way how it tears you up inside when there’s no more you can do than what’s been done. I stopped believing in miracles a long time ago.”
“You did work a miracle for My Lei. For the others, too. The old man whose pain you took away, so he can enjoy his last months with his family, and the nurse who will have babies to love and cherish now.”
“Those weren’t miracles, just damned good surgery. If they were miracles I could have cured the old man’s cancer and given My Lei back what a misplaced gene took away from her.”
Suddenly they heard the unmistakable sound of squealing tires followed instantly by a crash. “Oh, God, an accident!” Leah started running.
Adam was faster. He passed her within the first ten feet. The school came into view. Leah stopped at the gate for a moment to catch her breath, but Adam just kept running toward the sound of children’s screams. “What happened?” she asked a Vietnamese nun on her knees in the roadway, her simple white habit torn and bloodstained, her arms around two crying, mudsplattered little girls.
“Our bus. It crashed,” she said in French-accented English. She started to cry, just like the little girls clinging to her sleeves. “There.” She pointed toward the road just out of sight beyond the high brick wall surrounding the school. “It is in the ditch. We came for help. Sister Grace is hurt. Hurry, please. The other children are still inside.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” the nun replied. “I only hurt my shoulder.”
Leah dropped to her knees, ran her hands over the little girls’ arms and legs. “Can they tell you where they hurt?”
“They are okay. Just cuts and bruises. Go to the others. I’ll take care of them.” She began to talk soothingly to the little girls in Vietnamese.
“Send someone to the hospital. Tell them what’s happened!” Leah yelled over her shoulder and started running again. “Tell everybody to come.”
The orphanage bus, an old Volkswagen van, had gone nose first into a marshy ditch in front of the school. It had already sunk halfway into the mud by the time Leah arrived. Sister Grace and three more children were huddled by the side of the road. The nun was dazed and bleeding from a cut on her forehead. One little boy was crying lustily and holding his wrist. His hand was twisted at an awkward angle, the wrist obviously broken. The other two appeared uninjured, although they were wet and muddy and very frightened.
“How many are still inside?” Leah asked Sister Grace just as Adam braced his foot against the frame and literally tore the side door of the van from its hinges.
“I... there was nothing I could do. The tire blew out. I’m sorry. So sorry.” She looked up at Leah with unfocused eyes.
“It’s all right,” Leah said. “It wasn’t your fault. How many children were with you?” The nun was in shock. She would have to be checked for a concussion, but at the moment getting the rest of the children out of the wrecked van was the most important thing to be done. “Sister Grace?”
“I...”
“Adam, how many children do you see?”
“Two. Both girls. Are there any more, Sister?” Adam called.
Sister Grace responded to the command in his voice. “There were eight, no, seven children, and Sister Marie.”
There were two little girls on the road with the sister and three more children here. That left two unaccounted for. Leah relayed the information to Adam as he hoisted himself through the door of the van. She watched the vehicle settle deeper into the mud. One of the children inside screamed weakly. Leah realized Adam would need help getting them out of the van, so she left Sister Grace and stepped off the shoulder of the road, immediately sinking into muck over her ankles. “I’m here, Adam. What can I do to help?”
“I’ll hand them out to you. This thing is filling up with muck.”
“I’m ready,” Leah said.
“Come on, put your arms around my neck, honey,” she heard Adam croon. “Thatta girl. Here we go.” Adam shifted his weight and leaned out the door to hand a child to Leah. “Abrasions, contusions and possible broken ankle,” he said. The van settled deeper into the mud. “This stuff’s goddamned quicksand.”
Leah held the little girl close, murmuring soothing nothings. The child’s clothes were covered with mud. So were her face and arms. Marsh water dripped from her long black hair. She was conscious and whimpering with pain. “What about the other one?”
Adam’s face closed down, and it was as though Leah were confronting a machine. “It’s bad. She’s unconscious and trapped under the seat. I’ll stay with her until the others get here. We’ll need a backboard and we’ll need an OR. She has a compound fracture of the left tibia and, God help us, I think she may have a broken neck.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“LEAH, WAKE UP.”
“I’m not asleep,” Leah murmured. “I was just resting my eyes.” She straightened from her slumped position in the unforgivingly hard chair, every muscle screaming in protest, to find Kaylene standing over her.
“I know, dear. I’m here to relieve you. I’ll sit with the little sweetie while you go clean up and get some rest.”
“What time is it?” The only light in the room came from the hallway and the pale green glow of the portable monitor by the bed. Automatically Leah checked the display. All the readouts looked good. Their patient was sleeping comfortably.
“Almost three.”
The last time she’d noticed, it had been just a little past two. “I did fall asleep,” she said ruefully. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. It’s been a very long day.”
In unison they moved toward the child’s bedside. The little girl slept quietly, her shattered left leg held immobile by a metal traction bar. Leah leaned over the bed rail and smoothed her straight, night-dark hair back from her forehead. She looked very small and helpless with her neck also immobilized, by a wide cervical collar. “Do you know her name?” There hadn’t been time before to ask.
“Ahn Lyn. Isn’t it pretty?”
“Very pretty. I wonder what it means.” Leah touched the little girl’s cheek in a gentle caress. “She moved her arms and wiggled her toes.” Leah’s voice was not quite steady. “Almost as soon as she woke from the anesthetic. There was no damage to her spinal cord.”
“I know. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“How are the others?” Sister Grace, the little girl with the broken ankle and the boy with the broken wrist were also in the hospital.
“We’re still monitoring the sister, but her vitals are good. She had one heck of a knock on the head. The children are sound asleep. So, you go get some rest. I’ll stay with her.”
“You’re as tired as I am,” Leah protested.
“No, I’m not. I slept while you and Dr. Sauder were standing vigil. Now go.”
Adam. Where was he? Two hours ago when the little girl woke up, moved her arms and wiggled her toes, he’d simply walked out of the room and not returned.
“I’ll be back at 0600.”
“No, you won’t. We’re not operating today, remember? It’s Thanksgiving. Father Gerard and the regular staff will look after the children. Now go. Sleep till noon. All afternoon if you want. I’ll save a drumstick for you.”
Leah crossed the darkened compound with the aid of a pocket-size flashlight. In her room she lit a candle, grabbed a towel and a clean set of scrubs and headed for the showers. The water was cool, so she didn’t linger beneath the spray. She dressed hurriedly and wrapped a towel around her head, then headed back to her room. She was so tired she could barely stand, and no wonder; she’d been awake for more than twenty hours. But even though she was exhausted she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Not until she found Adam and assured herself he was all right.
He had barely let Ahn Lyn out of his sight from the moment she was lifted from the overturned van until the moment she’d opened her eyes in the tiny, ill-lit hospital room. Tests had determined that the injury to her neck was less severe than Adam had first feared. Surgery on her spinal column wouldn’t be required, but he had remained in the OR to assist the orthopedic surgeon in the repair of her shattered left leg. He’d stayed by her bedside with Leah until she’d awakened, and then he’d disappeared.
She opened the door to the screened porch fronting the women’s lodgings and stepped inside. The dim circle of light from her flashlight picked out the toe of a man’s running shoe. She sucked in her breath.
“Don’t scream, Leah. It’s me.” The voice was low and rough and male, the words quietly spoken.
She let her breath out in a rush. “Adam?”
He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the beam of her flashlight. Leah switched it off. The moon was riding low among the clouds, but the candlelight spilling from the window outlined Adam sitting with his back against the wall, his legs drawn up to his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She dropped to her knees beside him. “Where have you been?”
“Walking. I saw the light in your window, but you weren’t here.”
“I was in the shower.”
“I can smell your soap.” He touched her cheek. “Lemon. You always smell of lemons.”
“Adam, are you all right?”
He dropped his hand to his knee, but not before she felt the faint tremor in his fingers. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think so. If you were fine you’d be in your bed asleep, not sitting here in the dark.”
“I hate to sleep.” His words were clear but unutterably weary. He was still wearing the scrubs he’d worn in the OR. He smelled of hospital soap and warm skin.
“Why, Adam?” she asked softly. She covered his hand with hers. He had strong hands, with long blunt fingers, a surgeon’s hands. She hadn’t imagined the trembling when he’d touched her. He was shaking all over.
“It all comes back when I sleep,” he said simply. “They’re always in my dreams. Twenty-five years of nightmares. Back home I can deal with it. Here, they’re too close. I hate this place.”
So coming back to Vietnam hadn’t been the healing time for him that it was for some vets. She had suspected as much, and now she was sure. “Did you hope coming back here would make the nightmares go away?”
“I came for B.J. I knew it wouldn’t help. Nothing has helped.”
“A therapist?”
“I’ve talked to the best of them. No one had a clue.”
“Did you tell them the truth? Did you tell them you’re suffering from post-traumatic stress dis—”
His words were like rapier thrusts. “What makes you think it’s post-traumatic stress disorder I’m describing? I wasn’t in combat, Leah. Not like the guys who went before me. I was only here at the end. One hundred and seventeen days to be exact. I never set foot outside Saigon. It wasn’t war then—it was only cleaning up the mess.” He didn’t shake off her touch, but his hand had balled into a fist beneath hers. “Maybe I’m just losing my mind.”
“Are you on medication?”
He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Pills give me the shakes. I don’t take them. No one wants a surgeon with the shakes mucking around in his brain.”
“You’re shaking now,” she said.
“I know. For hours. It won’t go away this time.” He lifted his left hand, the one she wasn’t holding and held it in front of him. “Children should never die.”
The statement confused her, but she answered the desperation in his tone as much as his words. “All the children are going to be fine—all of them.”
He came to his feet in one smooth movement, pulling her with him. “She didn’t go sour after I left?”
“Ahn Lyn is awake and stable.”
“Ahn Lyn. Is that her name?”
“Yes.”
“When I saw her trapped in that damned van...” He lifted his hands and bracketed her face. “I can live with all the rest—the dreams of the shelling and the sniper attacks and the riots—but I can’t live with the memories of the little ones dying. I can’t.”
The hopelessness in his voice chilled her heart. “Adam, please tell me—”
“No! I don’t want to remember. I want to forget. Help me forget, Leah. Please, help me.” He pulled her into his arms, lowered his mouth to hers, and she tasted his desperation and his desire. “With you in my arms I can forget, at least for a little while.”
She knew some of the grief that gnawed at him. She’d had friends who’d died young. She’d seen children die. She could no more deny him now than she could fly. He pulled the towel from her hair and threaded his fingers through the strands, holding her face still for his kiss. Her mouth opened to the urgency of his. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. She longed to take away some of his pain and sorrow and lose some of her own, which she kept locked away in a very small corner of her heart.
But somehow, in a heartbeat, the kiss changed and became completely sexual, purely a man and a woman and the fire that can consume them. She didn’t let herself think, only feel, and her response urged him to do the same. They were as alone as they could be in the crowded compound. Kaylene would be with the little girl for hours. The others were asleep or keeping watch over patients in the hospital. Adam slid his arm behind her knees and lifted her as though she weighed nothing. She let her head rest on his shoulder and felt the wild beating of his heart against her fingers. She was naked beneath the thin, much-washed cotton of her scrubs; Adam probably was, too. She could feel the heat of his skin, the roughness of hair, the rock solidness of bone and muscle against the side of her breast.
He set her down on her bed and stripped off his shirt. She fumbled with hers and he helped her draw it over her head. Adam’s hand went to the drawstring of his pants. The candle had blown out with their movements; now there was no light except the moon’s glow through the window. She shimmied out of her pants, wanting nothing between them. He stood for a moment looking down at her, all moon shadows, darkness and secrets that could cause her pain, as well. When he lay down beside her and took her in his arms, Leah forgot everything but her desire for him.
His hands cupped her breasts. His lips covered hers and she felt his tongue inside her mouth. She returned the intimate caress with a hunger that matched his. Then Adam kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, the curve of her ear. He splayed his fingers through her hair and held her head still for another mind-emptying kiss. Then he moved his mouth to kiss her throat, her collarbone, the upper swell of her breast. His beard was rough and exciting against the softness of her skin. He took one hardened nipple into his mouth and Leah sucked in a breath, swallowing a moan. She reached up and held his head close to her, feeling pleasure arc along a glittering pathway from her breast to her womb.
She reached down and wrapped her fingers around him. He gasped, then entered her slowly, but when he realized how ready she was for him, he began to move more strongly within her. She met him thrust for thrust, each giving and taking what they needed from the other. His mouth sought hers once more, muffling her moans of pleasure. Finally he climaxed deep inside her, and his release pushed her into her own.
She had never responded to lovemaking this way before, going beyond thought, beyond reason in a realm of pure sensation. It frightened her a little, how well she read his desires, and he hers. But she didn’t want to analyze what had just passed between them. She only wanted to feel. She became aware of the weight of Adam’s body on hers, the fullness of him still buried within her. Then he shifted his weight and lay beside her. Leah listened to the deep evenness of his breathing. He was asleep, and in moments so was she.
ADAM AWOKE from a dreamless sleep with Leah in his arms. No, not dreamless he realized groggily, but sleep not filled with nightmares and the cries of dying children. Instead, his dreams had been filled with images and sensations of the woman beside him. He turned her head gently and kissed her awake. A small, cold corner of his mind told him not to do this, to let her sleep. Making love to her again, unprotected and uncommitted, was as wrong and irresponsible as something a boy Brian’s age might do, but he couldn’t stop himself. The taste and touch and scent of her had become as necessary to him as his next breath.
“Leah.” He whispered her name in the darkness.
“I...I must have fallen asleep,” she said, but her arms came around his neck and she kissed him back.
“So did I.” He wanted to tell her what a gift it was, but was unable to find the words when she was so close, her breasts pressed to his chest, her legs tangled with his.
“I’ve never done that before. I...I never lose myself that way.”
“I never do, either. Thank you, Leah...” He stopped himself from saying my love. He didn’t mean it, and she would know he didn’t. But somehow it sounded right and so he whispered it to himself.
“Are you okay? Really okay?” she asked, and he could feel her searching gaze on his face as her fingers moved to touch his mouth. He turned his head and kissed the inside of her palm.
“I’m fine.” He wasn’t, not really. Already the darkness was pushing at the edges of his thoughts, but when he covered her mouth with his, the darkness receded, and light, along with bits and pieces of longing and dreams that couldn’t be, filled his thoughts. She was drawn to strays, the hurt and injured. If he told her everything he’d kept inside him for so long, she would stay and try to heal him. As much as he craved her solace, he wouldn’t take advantage of her that way.
The kiss was long and hungering, and when it was over he was hard again and she lay panting beside him. “What time is it? I don’t want Kaylene to find us,” she said.
“It’s very, very late, or very early. But still hours before dawn.”
“I don’t want the dawn to come,” she said softly. He knew she didn’t like being in the dark. He knew she was offering him a part of herself with those words, and it humbled him.
“Neither do I.” He pressed himself against her and she opened her legs. This time their lovemaking was not so gentle, and was over more quickly. They didn’t sleep afterward, but lay twined together. Her hands, moving in small circles over his back and shoulders, were almost enough to keep the demons at bay, but not quite, and he took her once more to hold back the darkness. She seemed to sense his desperation. She met him halfway, and they joined and melded and once more found oblivion.
A baby crying somewhere in the compound awakened him, and this time even the warmth of Leah’s arms around him couldn’t hold back the memories....
The Orphan Plane. It was April 4, 1975, a week after his nineteenth birthday; 243 children and sixtytwo adults took off in the C-5A Galaxy cargo plane heading for new homes and families in the United States. He had helped carry the little ones on the plane, strapped them in the seats, two by two by two. An hour later he was helping carry their bodies out of the wreckage of the huge aircraft. It had crashed into a half-flooded rice paddy trying to return to Than Son Nhut with a malfunctioning hydraulic system.
All around him were dead and dying children, and there was nothing he could do about it. One little girl he remembered more than the others. He had found her alive in the wreckage and held her head above the water so she wouldn’t drown. But she couldn’t be saved and had died in his arms. He had watched her die, and then he’d gotten up and gone about doing what he could for the others. In one way or another he had been repeating those motions every day of his life since..
There had been good times, too. After Brian was born he held his son in his arms and thought he might be able to put the past behind him. But when Brian was ten he’d crashed his bicycle head-on into a mailbox. Adam had been out in the yard watching and rushed to his side and cradled his bloodied face in his arms all the way to the hospital. From that day on the nightmares had come back and never gone away.
He looked down at his hand. He was shaking like a leaf. What was worse, he was shaking inside. He couldn’t operate in this condition. Hell, he didn’t even know if he could set foot inside the hospital again. He had to get out of this place or lose what little was left of his reason and his soul. Adam slid Leah’s arms from around his neck. Forced himself not to kiss her again. Pulled on his clothes and walked out into the night.
IT WAS DAYLIGHT when Leah awoke again. There were tears on her cheek, as though she’d been crying in her sleep, but she couldn’t remember any bad dreams. And then she realized she was alone. She dressed in haste and smoothed the rumpled sheets on her bed, drawing the blanket up just as Kaylene entered the room.
She looked a little surprised to see Leah up and around. “I thought I told you to sleep till noon.”
“I guess my internal clock had other ideas,” Leah fibbed. “I was just going to take a shower.” Adam’s scent, the scent of their lovemaking, clung to every inch of her.
Kaylene grimaced. “My internal clock can stuff itself. I’ve had my ice-cold shower, and I’m still going to sleep till noon.”
“I’ll make sure no one disturbs you.” Leah wanted to ask Kaylene if she’d seen Adam. Perhaps he’d gone to the hospital to check on Ahn Lyn, but she didn’t think so. He’d probably left her bed just to spare her the embarrassment of Kaylene finding them together.
“Who’s sitting with Ahn Lyn?” She held her breath, waiting for Kaylene’s answer.
“B.J. He relieved me about half an hour ago. She’s had her pain meds and she’s sleeping soundly. Still moving all her extremities. So far, so good. Sister Grace’s vitals are stable, and the other kids are fine.”
B.J. was with Ahn Lyn, not Adam. She stretched her mouth into a smile. “Thanks for the report. Pleasant dreams.”
“Mmm.” Kaylene was already in bed.
Twenty minutes later, showered and with her hair back in its habitual French braid, Leah faced B. J. Walton across Ahn Lyn’s bed.
“You’re looking for Adam, aren’t you?” he asked her bluntly.
“Yes. I...I’m worried about him.”
“He’s gone, Leah,” B.J. said, his sympathetic gaze taking in the dark circles beneath her eyes. “I found a note when I woke up this morning. It was too late to stop him.”
“He’s left the compound?”
“He’s leaving Vietnam.” His hand fisted on the bed rail. “Damn. I should have never talked him into coming back.” Ahn Lyn stirred in her drugged sleep and BJ. lowered his voice. “He wasn’t ready.”
Leaving the mission? Leaving the country? She hadn’t expected that. Her aching heart jerked painfully in her chest Gone. Out of my life.
“What happened to him here, B.J.?” She had to know.
“He won’t tell me. I have my suspicions, but he refuses to talk about it. Maybe it wasn’t a bungeestakes-and-jungle-patrols kind of war here at the end. But it wasn’t pretty. Snipers, shellings, the refugees scrambling to get out. I’m sure it was hell being the last ones out of the only damned war we ever lost. I thought maybe you...”
“No,” she said. “He told me nothing. Not even that he was leaving.” But what had she expected? Adam was a stranger to her. He had taken what she’d freely offered and promised nothing in return. Once more she’d let her heart overrule her reason. She’d given a piece of herself unwisely. Now he was gone, and she was left alone to consider the consequences of her actions and, God help her, to want him back again.
CHAPTER SIX
“DOES YOUR MOTHER know you’re here in Chicago?”
Brian Sauder shifted his attention from the view outside the office window to his father’s face. “Not exactly,” he answered carefully. “She knows I’m spending the weekend out of town.” He’d driven seventeen hours straight to get to Chicago from Cambridge. His brain was nearly fried, but what he had to say to his dad was too important to wait until he got some sleep. That was why he’d come straight to St. Barnabas, instead of waiting for his dad at his condo.
“Out of town, but not out of state.” Adam stood up and walked around his desk. Brian stood up too. Jeez. I’m an inch taller than he is. When had that happened?
Adam waved him back to his seat. “Are you in trouble, son? Is that why you came to me?”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
His dad picked up a big piece of quartz he used for a paperweight and held it in his hands. “You’re not having problems with your grades, are you?”
“Solid B’s.”
“Good.” One corner of Adam’s mouth curled up in an expression Brian couldn’t quite classify as a smile. “I doubt even Elliot’s connections would get you back into Harvard if you flunked out.” Elliot Carlton was his stepfather, an investment banker in Boston where he lived with Brian’s mom and his little half sister, Megan.
“Yeah, I know. He keeps reminding me what a generous donation he made to get me considered in the first place. That you and Mom made a big mistake sending me to public school all those years.” His dad had gone to a public high school in Pennsylvania, and then on to the University of Michigan after he got out of the Marines. Brian thought it would have been good enough for him, too.
“A fact your mother pointed out to me many times as you were growing up.” This time Adam did smile. His mom smiled like that, too, when she talked about his dad. They were still friends, sort of, and Brian was glad.
“She’d have a fit if she knew I was here.”
His dad was still holding the big piece of quartz—tightly. His knuckles were white. When he saw Brian look at his hands, Adam put the rock down, then walked behind the desk and gazed at the snow falling in huge, wet flakes outside the window. “Why didn’t you tell her you were coming to see me?” he asked.
“Christmas break doesn’t start till the end of the week. I...left early.”
“She won’t like that.” Adam turned and spread his hands flat on the teak surface of the desk.
“That’s why I didn’t tell her.”
Adam frowned at his reply, accentuating the harsh new lines around his mouth. Jeez, Dad’s looking old. He hadn’t looked like that when he saw him last at the end of the summer. Was he sick? Did he have cancer or something? Or had he caught some weird disease in Vietnam? Is that why he’d come home almost two weeks before he was supposed to? Brian hadn’t lived with his dad since he was eleven, but he loved him. He didn’t want anything to be wrong with him.
“Why did you come here, Brian?”
Worries about his dad’s health were forgotten for the moment. It was now or never. Adam had just asked the million-dollar question and he had to answer it. “I don’t want to be an investment banker. I don’t want to go to work for Elliot at Carlton, Lieberman and Carmichael. I don’t want to go back to Harvard.”
“Have you told your mother this?”
Brian snorted. “Are you kidding? She’d have a stroke. She’d have me committed.”
“A lot of other mothers would feel the same way.”
Brian stood up again and started pacing the width of the office. “I’ve given it a year and a half, almost. It’s not for me.”
“Math has always been your strongest subject.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to be a banker or, God help me, an economist.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I don’t know exactly what I want to do with my life, Dad, but I know it isn’t following in Elliot’s footsteps. I’m dropping out of Harvard at the end of the semester. I need some time to think things through. I’d like to come here and live with you. God knows Mom and Elliot would make my life miserable if I stayed in Boston.”
“Brian, I don’t know what to say.”
Adam’s hesitation hit Brian like a fist to the gut. He hadn’t let himself believe his dad would turn him down. “It’s okay, Dad,” he made himself say. “I’ll find somewhere else to live if you don’t want me at your place.”
Adam was silent for a long moment. “Why don’t you try sticking it out until spring?”
“I’ve made up my mind, Dad.”
“I think you’re making a mistake.”
“Maybe I am, but I’ll never know if I don’t give it a try. That’s all I’m asking. The chance to make my own mistakes. I can live with the consequences.” His dad had been a Marine in Vietnam when he was nineteen. All Brian wanted to do was figure out his own path in life. Surely he had a right to do that.
“Okay. Call your mother and break the news to her. I’ll back you up.”
Brian pushed away from the credenza, his heart beating madly in his chest. He wanted to give his dad a hug, but the desk was still between them, so he held out his hand, instead. “Thanks, Dad.”
Adam didn’t take his hand right away. Brian held his breath. Then his dad leaned forward and clasped Brian’s hand in both of his. “I’m not giving you a free ride. You’ll have to get a job, and you’ll have to promise me you’ll consider going back to school next year.”
“I’ll start looking for a job first thing tomorrow.” He couldn’t stop the grin spreading over his face. “Thanks, Dad. I knew I could count on you to see my side of this.”
“I’m not looking forward to talking to your mother.”
“Neither am I, but I might as well get it over with. Can I use your phone?”
“Dr. Sauder?” His dad’s secretary opened the door between their offices and stuck her head inside.
“Yes, Camilla?”
“There’s a young woman here to see you.”
“I don’t have any patient appointments scheduled for this afternoon.”
That was odd, Brian thought. His dad always had patients scheduled on Wednesdays. He operated on Tuesday and Thursday, and saw patients on Monday and Wednesday. At least he always had.
“She’s not a patient,” Camilla said. “She says she’s a friend. Her name is Leah Gentry.”
“Leah?” The way his dad said the name caught Brian’s attention.
“Leah Gentry,” Camilla repeated. “Should I tell her you’re busy?”
“No.” Adam ran a hand through his hair. His expression didn’t give much away, but Brian could have sworn he saw his hand shaking. “Send her in.”
“You have a meeting with Dr. Fenimore at twothirty, don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
Camilla opened the door wider. His dad was staring at it like he expected a ghost to walk through it. Instead, a very ordinary young woman with dark brown hair in a French braid entered the room. She was wearing a military-issue parka, and she had a lime-green backpack slung over one shoulder. The backpack had a picture of Minnie Mouse on it, just like the one his little sister had. Her nose was red from the cold, and there were pale blue shadows under her eyes, as though she’d been awake for a lot of hours in a row.
“Hello, Adam,” she said stopping just inside the door.
“Hello.” His dad came out from behind his desk and took a couple of steps toward her.
“It’s good to see you again.” She held out her hand.
“It’s good to see you, too. Welcome home, Leah.” His dad came just close enough to take her hand. He held it for a long moment, and they stared at each other like they’d thought until that very moment they’d never see each other again.
Brian cleared his throat. The woman turned her head in his direction. Her eyes widened momentarily. She had very pretty eyes, all kind of green and gold mixed together.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Adam dropped her hand and retreated behind his desk. “This is my son, Brian.”
She smiled, and he smiled back. He couldn’t help himself. “Hi,” he said.
She held out her hand again. “Hello, Brian. Your father told me a lot about you.”
“Leah was my anesthetist in Dalat,” Adam explained.
“Nice to meet you,” Brian said.
“I...I just got back to the States. B.J. and I were the last to leave. I have a four-hour layover.” She turned back to Brian. “So I thought I’d look up your father and make sure he’s okay. He left the mission so hurriedly I...I didn’t get to say goodbye.” A tinge of color stained her cheeks.
“I’m fine,” Adam said, and his voice was suddenly cold and hard.
“I can see. I’m sorry I barged in on you this way. I...I should have called, I guess.”
She looked uncomfortable. So did his dad. There was something going on here, undercurrents he couldn’t understand. This might be a good time for him to make an exit. “I have a phone call to make. It was nice meeting you,” he said again, smiling at her once more, hoping she’d smile back. She did.
“It was nice meeting you, too, Brian, but please, don’t hurry off on my account. I truly did only stop in to see if your father was all right, and to thank him.”
“For what?” Brian asked. He wasn’t flirting with her, not really—she was too old for him. But it was hard not to want to coax her to smile again.
“For seeing that Vo and My Lei found sponsors here in the States.”
“Vo and My Lei?”
“Yes, a Vietnamese man and his daughter. Your father operated on the little girl—”
“I’ll tell you about them later, Brian,” Adam broke in. “Don’t you want to make your call?”
“Yeah, sure I do.” He tried one more smile, but this time she didn’t smile back, only nodded a little distractedly. “I’ll use Camilla’s phone to call Mom.” Brian left the room wondering just what had gone on between his dad and this woman in Vietnam. Maybe if he worked it just right, he’d find out, but he doubted it. His dad never talked about his love life—if he had one, and besides, right now Brian had more important things on his mind—like changing the entire course of his life.
THE DOOR CLOSED behind Adam’s son, and Leah wished she’d left the office with him. Why had she .given in to the impulse to come here and see for herself that Adam was all right? He obviously was. And he obviously wasn’t happy to see her. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “Your son is a very good-looking young man. Very nice, too.”
“Yes, he is.”
“I’m sorry I interrupted your visit.”
“It’s okay,” Adam said. “Can I get you something. A cup of coffee?”
“Yes, thanks.” She wanted to refuse, but he might think it odd—their love of coffee was one thing they had in common. But she wouldn’t have more than a swallow, not now. Because now she was pregnant
She’d bought a pregnancy-test kit as soon as they landed in Frankfurt and confirmed what she’d suspected almost from the moment she’d awakened alone in her bed that morning. She should never have made love to him without protection when she knew she might be ovulating, but she hadn’t been thinking with her head that night, only with her heart.
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Marisa Carroll
IN UNIFORMSometimes love isn't enough….When Lieutenant Leah Gentry–nurse and soldier–goes overseas as part of a team providing medical care for those in need, she knows she's in for long days and hard work. What she doesn't expect is to fall for Dr. Adam Sauder–or to become pregnant with his child.Adam thinks Leah might be able to save him from his haunting past. But he has nothing to give her–not even his love. Still, when the mission is over and he discovers that Leah's in danger of losing their baby, he leaves his job to come to Kentucky.Adam would like to be a husband to Leah and a father to the baby, but he can't forget his past. He knows he should go but he desperately wants to stay….
“Chief of Neurosurgery is a long way from a small practice in Slate Hollow, Kentucky, Adam. Almost a different world.” (#u28d5dc2c-0445-5946-9ef3-c4ff7d031097)ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#uc601cda6-b3f3-51b5-8b3f-193ade73d4eb)Title Page (#ubcc35ebd-cfb9-5532-800a-5bbeb76fa357)Epigraph (#uf4171a08-b762-5248-b668-ac8991a7f6ae)CHAPTER ONE (#u3d9d8520-50fa-574f-9bdd-40e83853220f)CHAPTER TWO (#u55624737-d5eb-5ce2-88bf-f6c284fd399b)CHAPTER THREE (#uad6a3787-239e-56f3-8406-a0a98565ef9c)CHAPTER FOUR (#u99efb194-7bf2-56c5-852e-66c4e551e796)CHAPTER FIVE (#u50d882ca-938f-540e-8c87-7702977d1bad)CHAPTER SIX (#u9ba27227-81cb-5b5b-b3f6-a0565a940549)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Chief of Neurosurgery is a long way from a small practice in Slate Hollow, Kentucky, Adam. Almost a different world.”
Leah wondered why she’d said that. It sounded almost as if she was asking him—what? To leave Chicago and come to Kentucky with her? Wasn’t that what she really wanted? For him to make a commitment to her—and the baby he didn’t even know she was carrying?
“Leah, my son is coming to live with me. We’ve been apart for a long time. I have to concentrate all my energy on Brian.”
His energy. Not his love. His words took her breath and sent a stab of pain through her heart. Adam would never open himself to love and to being loved. Once more she realized how close she’d come to caring too much for this man. The decision she’d agonized over since learning she was pregnant was made in an instant. “I understand. I really have to be going.”
“Leah, if there’s ever anything I can—”
Leah took a step backward, avoiding his touch. She wasn’t made of stone, even if he appeared to be. “There’s nothing you can do for me.”
Or our baby.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Wagner and Marian Scharf—the award-winning writing team of Marisa Carroll—are sisters living in a small northwest Ohio town, where they are surrounded by five generations of family and friends. Winter Soldier is their twentyninth book.
Winter Soldier
Marisa Carroll
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
These are the times that try men’s souls.
The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot
will in this crisis,
Shrink from the service of his country,
But he that stands it now,
Deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
—Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
CHAPTER ONE
THAN SON NHUT.
Even above the roar of the jet engine he caught the echo of the pilot’s words, felt them snag the edge of his consciousness. Than Son Nhut. For almost twenty-five years, more than half his lifetime, Adam Sauder, had returned to that place only in his nightmares. Today, he was actually going back.
Before he heard her voice he smelled her perfume, a light, lemony fragrance had tantalized his senses. “Dr. Sauder?” He pretended to be asleep. Maybe she’d go back to her own seat, leave him alone. God, it had been such a long flight. Thirty-six hours from Chicago to—
She spoke again, a bit more forcefully this time. “Dr. Sauder? Are you awake?”
Damn, she’s persistent.
He rolled his head toward the well-modulated but demanding voice, but didn’t open his eyes. “I’m awake,” he said in the don’t-tread-on-me tone that had struck fear into the hearts of interns and residents at St. Barnabas Medical Center for the past five years.
“I thought so.” She sounded neither cowed nor embarrassed. “We’ll be landing in Saigon in a few minutes. I thought I should introduce myself.”
She could have done that anytime since they’d left Chicago. Why did she have to pick now, when he had almost willed himself to that gray nothingness between waking and sleeping that was the only place he seemed to find peace? Saigon. Than Son Nhut. The names wouldn’t die, just like his memories of the days he’d spent there. “I thought they called it Ho Chi Minh City now.”
She chuckled, a sound as light and pleasant as her perfume. “No one calls it that. Even our luggage tags say Saigon.”
The laughter was irresistible. He lifted his heavy eyelids and looked at his tormentor. Clear hazel eyes, neither green nor gold, stared steadily back. He blinked and her face came into focus. She smiled, and like magic her deceptively ordinary features turned from plain to pretty. “I’m your gas-passer,” she said.
Gas-passer? She must have been raised on M*A*S*H reruns. “You’re my anesthesiologist?” She didn’t look a lot older than his nineteen-year-old son, Brian. She sure as hell wasn’t old enough to be a doctor.
“Nurse anesthetist,” she clarified.
They didn’t give out advanced nursing degrees to teenagers, either. Mentally he added ten years to her age, pegging her somewhere close to thirty.
“I’m Leah Gentry.” She held out her hand. He took it automatically. Her handshake was as firm and no-nonsense as her voice and, surprisingly enough, as potent as her smile. He pulled his hand from hers and her smile disappeared. “I’m in practice with Caleb Owens,” she said more formally.
He knew who Caleb Owens was, although he’d never met the man. He was a friend of a friend—or an ex-friend. Adam directed a sour glance at the back of B. J. Walton’s head, as his old Marine buddy lolled, snoring away two rows in front of him.
B.J. had made it big in computers in the eighties. He had more money than he could count—not that he didn’t put a lot of it to good use. He’d sponsored half-a-dozen private medical-aid missions to Central America, Africa and even Russia over the past ten years, and he’d badgered and bullied and made a damned pest of himself until Adam had promised to be part of the next one.
B.J. had made a big deal of Adam’s moment of weakness. He’d called a press conference and talked up the humanitarian mission of top-notch nurses and doctors taking time from their busy lives and careers to help the less fortunate. Then he’d promised a bundle toward the new spinal-injury rehab center if St. Barnabas agreed to let Adam come along. St. B’s knew a good deal when they saw one. They agreed to supply all the specialized equipment Adam needed and offered to send technicians to keep it running at peak efficiency. It was a hell of a public-relations coup, the hospital administrator had told him. And it wouldn’t do Adam any harm in his quest to be the next chief of neurosurgery, either. And then BJ. had dropped his bombshell.
This time they were going to Vietnam.
“Caleb was so disappointed he couldn’t make the trip. He was looking forward to assisting you.”
Adam continued to scowl at the back of B.J.’s head a moment longer, then shifted his gaze. “I’ll manage without him. But what about you?”
She looked puzzled. “I’ll be fine.”
“I mean, are you up to operating with me? Owens is a general surgeon. You’re probably used to gallbladder and uterine excisions, not keeping someone under and stable while I tinker around in his brain for eight or ten hours.”
“Caleb does a little of everything. Slate Hollow’s a small place. You have to be flexible.” A hint of defensiveness had crept into her voice. Adam suppressed a momentary twinge of conscience. She was a colleague, a professional. They’d be working together for the next three weeks. He was barking at her as if she was a not-too-bright first-year intern.
“Ever scrubbed for brain surgery before?”
“You mean other than bashing a patient on the head with a hammer, while Caleb drilled through his skull with the Black and Decker Two Speed to let out the evil spirits?”
“I didn’t mean—”
She cut him off. “Yes, you did.” She was right. He couldn’t deny it without lying through his teeth, so he kept quiet. Neurosurgeons were considered the glamour boys of medicine and had a reputation for being arrogant and imperious. He’d just reinforced the stereotype, big time. “The answer is yes, Doctor. I have worked with your kind before.”
Your kind. The emphasis on the words was so slight most people wouldn’t have noticed, but he did. He almost smiled. She was a fighter. Good. They would need that kind of grit and stamina where they were going. “I apologize,” he said. “B.J. told me he always gets the best people for these jaunts. He was right. What I should have asked you was if you’d had experience operating under...less-than-ideal conditions.”
He’d almost said battlefield conditions. What had made those words pop into his head? Was it because, below a sleeveless white tank top that molded itself nicely to her breasts, she wore desert-patterned utilities, fatigues to everyone but an ex-Marine, and combat boots—a look that was decidedly military. Or because the past was growing stronger with every mile they flew, bringing long-guarded memories dangerously close to the surface?
She glanced down at the U.S. Marine Corps emblem tattoo on his left forearm, partially visible below the rolled-back cuff of his shirt, a souvenir of his first liberty after boot camp at Parris Island all those years ago. “I’ve been around the block a few times, Marine. I won’t bug out on you.” She gave him a mocking little salute and headed down the aisle toward the front of the plane.
He closed his eyes but could still see the proud tilt of her head, the sway of her hips in the baggy utilities that tried hard but couldn’t completely hide the fact she was all woman. Three weeks in close proximity to Leah Gentry was going to be very interesting. And maybe, just maybe, it would be interesting enough to keep him from losing what was left of his mind.
“MAY I JOIN YOU?” Leah asked Kaylene Smiley, the mission’s head nurse, as she came abreast of the older woman’s seat. She and Kaylene had met for the first time in the lounge at O’Hare the evening before. Dr. Roger Crenshaw, the anesthesiologist Leah would be working with in Dalat, and Kaylene were playing gin rummy on a folded-down tray.
“Of course. Roger just won my last nickel. You’ve saved me from losing another hand and being in his debt,” Kaylene said.
“It’s a good time for a break,” Roger agreed. “I’m going to use the lavatory before the plane lands. If you ladies will excuse me.” The elderly physician stood up, pocketed his small pile of winnings and with a courtly gesture offered Leah his seat.
“What do you suppose it will be like there? Saigon, I mean. The only pictures I’ve ever seen are from the war. And in the movies.” Kaylene was looking out the window as she spoke.
“They make most of the movies in Bangkok, you know. There are parts of it that look like Saigon did during the war.” Shielded by the high back of the airplane seat, Leah tried to shake the feeling that Adam Sauder’s eyes were boring burr holes into the back of her head in preparation for taking it off her shoulders.
“Really? I didn’t know.”
“I have three brothers, all making a career of the military, and my dad just retired after thirty years in the army. So I know about war movies.” Leah also leaned forward and looked out the window at the green tangle of jungle and rice paddies visible below.
“You’re wearing dog tags,” Kaylene observed. “Were you in the service, too?”
“Yes, I’m an army reservist now.”
“My brother was here in 1967. He was stationed near Dalat, where we’ll be staying. I never thought I’d come here.” Kaylene returned to looking out the plane window. “According to the travel books, Dalat’s supposed to be a beautiful place. The brass from both sides vacationed there during the war, but my brother can’t imagine why I wanted to come on this mission. He said he’d never come back—never in a million years.”
THE PLANE ROLLED to a standstill, the stairs were drawn up and the door opened. Brilliant sunlight poured into the cabin as Adam walked out to meet his past. Much had changed. Oh, yes, there was still the same heat, the same stifling humidity, the smell of hot oil, metal and concrete baking in the sun, and the guard posts between the runways he’d manned as a nineteen-year-old Marine corporal still stood. But the sandbags were gone. And the skeletons of crashed and burned aircraft that had made takeoffs and landings so dangerous toward the end of the war had been hauled away. Most of the other buildings he might have recognized were gone, destroyed in the final hours before the airport had been abandoned to the conquering Vietcong.
But it was the sounds that were the most different. In fact, it was the lack of noise that marked the biggest change. There wasn’t another aircraft in sight. Their chartered Air Vietnam jet was the only plane landing or taking off. It was quiet, eerily so. Absent from the scene was the drone of helicopter blades, the whine of fighter jets taking off and landing, the roar of cargo planes evacuating load after load of civilians....
Adam shut down his recollections with an efficiency that was the result of long years of practice, retreating behind the buffer zone of reserve most doctors learned to erect around themselves early on in their careers, or else they risked losing their sanity. From that perspective he could view Than Son Nhut from a place outside himself where he observed, but didn’t participate in, what was going on. He spent a lot of time in that limbolike state these days, and every time he went there he found it harder and harder to come back.
“Damn, Adam. Did you ever think we’d be back?”
It was B.J. at his elbow, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a wondering look on his face. B.J. was a millionaire fifty times over, but you’d never know it from the way he looked or dressed, or from the luggage he carried.
“No,” Adam said truthfully. “I never expected to come back.”
“It’s friggin’ spooky. I half expect a MIG to come screaming out of the sky the way it did that day and strafe the runway, or a sniper to start taking potshots at us when we unload the plane.” His expression darkened as he looked around him, but a moment later his usual good-natured smile returned. He mopped at his red face with a blue bandanna he pulled out of the back pocket of his jeans. Then he tied the four corns of the bandanna into knots and put the makeshift hat on his balding head. “I’m going to have to get myself a cover. I forgot how friggin’ hot the sun is here.” He looked sourly at Adam’s full head of hair. “Some guys have all the luck.”
Adam and B.J. had gone through boot camp and infantry training together, and ended up with the same duty assignment, attached to the embassy in Saigon. A cushy assignment anyplace else on earth. In Saigon in 1975 it was the stuff of nightmares. They’d arrived in country just before Christmas in 1974 and left in April of ’75. B.J. on an Evac flight after a sniper’s bullet hit the tire of a jeep he was driving, causing it to flip over on him, and Adam aboard one of the last helicopters off the airfield. But at least they’d gotten out alive; many hadn’t.
“Yeah, all the luck in the world,” Adam said.
“Mr. Walton?” It was Leah Gentry again. She was wearing a boonie cap in the same shades of brown as her utilities and mirrored sunglasses. She had a decidedly unmilitary, traffic-stopping, lime-green backpack with a picture of Minnie Mouse emblazoned on it slung over one shoulder, and in her other hand she carried a large, locked, fire-engine-red toolbox. “Sir, I was wondering if I could speak to you for a moment.”
“Hey, don’t go calling me sir.” B.J. grinned.
“Yes, sir, B.J.” Her lips tightened momentarily, then curved into a heart-stopping smile.
“Never made it past PFC, myself. Adam here was a corporal, though. No wait. You ended up with sergeant’s stripes before you got out, didn’t you, Marine?”
Adam ignored his friend’s question. “I think she’s deferring to your age, not your rank.”
B.J. laughed loudly enough to turn heads in their direction. “That’s a low blow, buddy.” He turned to Leah. “And even more of a reason for you to cease and desist, Captain, ma’am.”
“Captain?” Adam repeated.
“Officer on deck, old pal,” B.J. said, slapping Adam on the back as he made his little joke. “Ms. Gentry here’s an officer in the United States Army.”
“You’re active duty?” He hadn’t expected that. He’d noticed the utilities, but had her pegged for a military wanna-be or maybe a weekend warrior, not regular army.
“Reserves since ’94.”
“Desert Storm?”
B.J. answered first. “And Somalia and Bosnia. I told you I only get the best. Leah knows the ropes. And she’s not going to go into a screaming panic if the lights go out or some ex-Charlie bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur starts hasslin’ us about our paperwork. We’re damned lucky to have her, so don’t go giving her a hard time.”
“It’s too late,” Leah said mildly. “Mr. Walton, could you spare me one of the interpreters to run interference with the customs officer?” She lifted the big metal case a few inches. “I’ve got everything I need to work in here. I don’t want any of it confiscated by some round-butt desk jockey with an overactive sense of duty or a quick eye for a bribe. If I don’t work, Dr. Sauder doesn’t, either. Or anyone else, for that matter,” she concluded with a grin.
“I’ll walk you through myself,” B.J. said, suddenly all business. “It’s liable to take some time to get us all through the red tape, so we might as well start with you. The commies may have lost the cold war, but they won the paperwork one. Then I’m coming back to ask for volunteers to stay with the plane. I don’t intend to see any of our stuff get ‘liberated’ . by any of those desk jockeys you mentioned and end up on the black market. Can I count on you, Captain?”
“Certainly. Just tell me when.”
“I’d like to get everyone squared away at the hotel ASAP. Would you be willing to take the first shift with the plane? I’ll leave Adam here with you. Got a problem with that, Marine?” B.J. asked in a softly challenging tone. He had made his peace with the past. He knew Adam had not.
“No,” Adam said. “No problem.”
“Great. It’s settled, then. I’ll make sure the government liaison guy they promised to have waiting for us gets us some guards. Once they’re stationed around the plane all you have to do is stick around a while to make sure they stay honest. Piece of cake.”
Adam wasn’t so sure of that, but maybe with Leah Gentry to keep him company, he could fill the silence of the present with the sound of her voice and keep the horror of the past at bay.
CHAPTER TWO
ADAM WALKED OUT onto the balcony of his hotel room to greet the sunrise in a country he’d hoped never to see again.
“Good morning, Doctor. You’re up early.”
He swung around. Leah Gentry was standing on another postage-stamp-size balcony next to his. She looked fresh and rested, even though they hadn’t gotten to their hotel rooms until after midnight the night before. “Good morning. Is that coffee you’re drinking?” He’d given up alcohol years ago, cut down on his red meat and smoked only the occasional cigar, but he’d refused to give up coffee.
“Yep. I made it myself.” She laughed, the wonderful, lilting laugh he’d found himself beginning to crave as though it were...coffee. “I’m not fit for human company if I don’t get my fix in the morning, so Mom sent along one of those little coffeemakers and every conceivable electrical adapter. Luckily one of them worked. The wiring in this hotel is... eccentric,” she finished diplomatically. “Would you like a cup? The door’s unlocked. Help yourself.”
“Thanks, I’ll be right over,” he heard himself say, and wasn’t as surprised as he would have been only twenty-four hours earlier.
The time they’d spent together at Than Son Nhut hadn’t been as bad as he’d expected. True to his word, B.J. had gotten Leah and her tackle box full of anesthetic drugs and instruments through customs in under an hour, some kind of record in Vietnam. And true to his word, the Vietnamese official had shown up with his armed guards—sober young men dressed in dull green fatigues and pith helmets that sported a red star. With AK-47s slung over their shoulders, they took their places on each side of the hangar door.
Left alone in the vast echoing space, he and Leah had made small talk, played gin rummy on Leah’s tackle box and listened to the drumming of rain on the metal roof. It was November, the tail end of the rainy season, so the downpour lasted for less than an hour, instead of half the day.
The sun was setting when the rain stopped. The air had cooled ever so slightly. Leah produced apples and oranges, peanut butter and cheese crackers and bottled water from her backpack. They shared their makeshift meal with the guards, who spoke English far better than Adam spoke Vietnamese. As darkness fell, a little battery-powered lantern materialized from yet another pocket of Leah’s backpack. It fought the darkness to a standstill in a small circle around them.
As the hours slowly passed, he’d kept her talking about her work, about growing up an army brat and about her family. He’d learned her parents were retired, her father after thirty years in the military, her mother after a career as a teacher. One brother was a U.S. Navy SEAL, one a navy chaplain, the third an army Green Beret.
And in return he had given up a few details of his own life during the dark minutes before midnight—broken home, one brother, who lived in California, he saw only now and then. Both parents dead. They’d lived hard and died young, he’d told her. She hadn’t asked for more details and he hadn’t offered them. He told her about the judge who’d given him the choice of joining the U.S. Marine Corps, or going to jail for a joyride that had resulted in a totaled car. He’d taken advantage of college courses the Corps offered, found he was a good student and went on to medical school. And then the unrelenting grind of a neurosurgical internship and residency, followed by one marriage, one son, one divorce and all the nightmares he could handle. This last he hadn’t spoken aloud.
Than Son Nhut he’d faced and survived. This morning it was Saigon. The city had fallen to the victorious enemy only one day after his helicopter had lifted off the airfield. He wondered if Leah’s company might be as potent a talisman against the past today as it had been yesterday.
He walked the few feet down the hallway to her room and pushed open the louvered door. Her accommodations were identical to his—high ceiling, white walls, sheer curtains at the French doors. The place had once been a villa that belonged to a South Vietnamese general, B.J. had told him. Now it was a hotel, a joint venture between the Vietnamese and an Australian firm. They were trying hard, but they hadn’t gotten it quite right yet. The rooms were clean, the toilets worked, and there was hot water, but no soap and only one towel in the communal bathroom. The electricity was eccentric, as Leah had said. To turn on the ceiling fan, he’d had to hook two bare wires together, and there was no such thing as room service.
Leah must have heard him enter the room. “There’s whitener in those little packets,” she called from the balcony.
“No, thanks. Black is fine.” He couldn’t help himself to her coffee and then just leave, walk back into his room and stare at the walls, so he made himself move through the doors onto the balcony to stand beside her.
Saigon was up with the sun. The dusty, tree-lined street below was crowded with bicycles, motor scooters and cyclos, the bicycle-rickshaws that served as taxicabs and couriers everywhere in Vietnam. There were also a few cars and buses, but completely absent were marked lanes and traffic signals, at least none that anyone was obeying. Traffic moved in both directions on both sides of the street. It was every man for himself.
Leash was leaning over the railing watching what went on below. She was wearing a flowered cotton skirt that ended just above her ankles and a shortsleeved pink blouse that complemented her creamy skin. Her mink-brown hair was pulled back into a French braid so complicated he wondered how she could accomplish it on her own. There was nothing even vaguely military about her appearance. Today she was all woman.
“How does anyone manage to cross the street safely?” she asked.
“Like that,” Adam pointed with his coffee mug. A man with two young children in tow waded, undaunted, into the traffic. Miraculously, bicycles, cyclos, motor scooters, even a bus, swerved to miss him and the children.
Leah let out her breath in a whoosh. “They made it,” she said, turning to Adam with amazement on her face. “You just start walking. Show no fear. It’s like my dad said it would be.”
“Your dad was here?”
“In ‘65 and ’68,” she said.
“He was in the country during the Tet offensive?”
She nodded. “That’s where he got his Purple Heart. He wants to come back, but Mom says no more. She’s never going anywhere that requires a passport again. We moved eleven times in fifteen years. I’m sorry. I told you all this last night, didn’t I.”
“I enjoyed it,” he said. She blinked. He’d spoken too tersely. He was out of the habit of making small talk with a woman.
“I’m going to do some sight-seeing right after breakfast. Dad wants pictures of the embassy and Chinatown, and I want to tour the presidential palace. They’ve kept it exactly as it was the day the North Vietnamese marched into the city. Want to come along?”
“No.” Again, too terse. “I mean, I...I hadn’t thought about it.”
She rested her hip against the stone railing and looked at him over the rim of her coffee mug. “Of course, you were here before. You said so last night.” She turned her head, her gaze moving in the direction of the abandoned American Embassy. “It’s so different—not what I expected at all. My impressions were shaped by those videos of the last days—pictures of tanks and soldiers with guns, mobs of terrified people fighting to get out. But this... It’s as if the war never happened.”
“For most of these people it didn’t,” he said. “Vietnam is a young country. Half the people here were born after the war. They don’t want to look back. They want to move forward.” Good advice. Too damned bad he couldn’t follow it himself.
B.J. appeared on Adam’s balcony. “Hey, buddy, there you are. You left your door unlocked, did you know that?” He waved a greeting. “Good morning, Leah.”
“Good morning, B.J.”
“Leah has coffee.” Adam moved to the edge of the balcony and surveyed his friend across the few feet separating them. B.J. was wearing jeans and a Hawaiian-print shirt in shades of pink and orange. His red baseball cap was emblazoned with the Marine Corps emblem in gold.
“So does the hotel restaurant, old buddy. Café filtre and baguettes. Delicious.”
Leah laughed and held out her mug. “You mean I dragged a coffeemaker all the way from Kentucky for nothing?”
“Nope. I’m only saying they’ve got great coffee in the hotel. Hospital coffee is the same the world over—not fit to drink. I doubt it’s any different at Dalat. You’ll get plenty of use out of it there.”
“Any word on when we’ll be moving out?”
B.J. poked at a piece of crumbling balcony railing with the toe of his shoe. “That’s what I came to tell you. The trucks pulled up at the airport about an hour ago. If there’s any sight-seeing you want to do, I suggest you do it this morning. We’ll be leaving here before noon. Don’t want to get stranded overnight somewhere along the highway. Luckily the day starts early here. Most of the shops are open by seven, the museums, too. Some of the others have already left the hotel. If you apply yourself, you should be able to see a little of the city and at least hit the antique shops on Dong Khoi Street.”
“An excellent plan, B.J. If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll be on my way.”
“Why don’t you go with her, Adam? Take her to the embassy and the presidential palace,” his friend suggested.
“No.” His voice was harsh. Striving to soften it, he added, “I figured I’d go back to the airport with you. Make sure everything’s okay.”
“Not necessary. I’ve paid all the fees and a few plain, old-fashioned bribes. Nothing’s going to go missing. Head out with Leah and get a souvenir to take home to Brian. Have your picture taken in front of the embassy. Better yet, have a beer on me if you can find the Tiger’s Den.”
“It’s too early for a beer, and I doubt the Tiger’s Den survived the reunification.” The panic-filled streets of the defeated city he’d known were long gone, but he wasn’t interested in trying to find the bar he and B.J. and their buddies had hung out in.
“I don’t need a chaperon,” Leah said. “I’ll find my own way.”
“I know you will. It’s Adam I’m worried about. Lousy sense of direction. Gets lost all the time. Why I remember one night in Norfolk—”
“Stow it, B.J. You lead,” he said to Leah. “I’ll follow.”
She stayed where she was. “But I thought—”
“I changed my mind. I’d like to go if you’re willing to put up with my company.”
She studied his face for a moment and he endured the scrutiny. He had the feeling she could see all the way to the center of his soul, but that was ridiculous. If she could really see what was inside him, she’d turn and run like the sane and sensible woman she was. Instead, she said, “Okay, let’s go.”
LEAH WALKED DOWN the vaulted hallway with Adam Sauder on one side and B. J. Walton on the other. She was glad none of her brothers were around to see what she was up to. They’d teased her about picking up strays all her life. Usually it was the four-legged kind, puppies with sore paws or homeless kittens, but she tended to do the same thing with people. Most of the others probably couldn’t see the pain behind Adam Sauder’s dark gaze, but she did, and it should have warned her to stay away. Instead, she found herself riding down to the lobby in the elaborately grilled elevator, saying goodbye to B.J., hailing a double cyclo and moving out into the bewildering stream of traffic with him still at her side.
Their cyclo driver was a young man of French and Vietnamese descent who spoke excellent English. He maneuvered them skillfully through the heavy traffic, taking them directly to the abandoned American Embassy, a concrete-and-glass fortress every bit as ugly as it had looked in the news footage on TV. The building had a sad, defeated air about it, Leah thought. Someone had hung laundry in one of the old guard towers. She sat quietly for a moment, Adam equally silent beside her. Then they climbed out of the cyclo and stood by the gates where she had seen videos of refugees trying to climb over, of grim-faced young Marines on the wall pulling others into the compound, of overloaded helicopters taking off from the roof.
She’d brought her camera, and without her asking him Adam took her picture in front of the gates, and then their driver took a picture of both of them together. Her father’s ghosts were close. She could feel their eyes on the back of her neck. “Were you here?” she asked Adam.
He shook his head. “I never got this far.” His expression appeared set, his jaw clenched. Leah didn’t ask any more questions about the past.
They didn’t stop to tour the presidential palace. She didn’t know what she was going to tell her dad when she got back, but she’d think of something. Most likely the truth. I went there with a Marine who was in Saigon at the end. He didn’t want to go inside, so we didn’t. Her dad would understand.
Instead they took B.J.’s advice and went shopping. Their driver took them to a small, bustling marketplace. It was alive, wall-to-wall, with sights and sounds and smells that were raucous and tantalizing, unfamiliar and fascinating. Leah stood for a long minute just looking around. Street vendors peddled their wares on every corner. Food stands crowded storefronts, shoppers jostled one another as they ogled the merchandise. Vietnam was still a Communist country, and poor, but you would never know it by the stacks and boxes and cartons of VCRs, televisions, CD players and microwave ovens piled inside the tiny stores, spilling outside onto the sidewalk, lashed to cyclos and bicycles, and stacked in pushcarts.
She bought a pale blue silk ao dai, the traditional slim dress and loose pants worn by Vietnamese women, for her mother. Exactly like the one her father had brought home thirty years ago, but three sizes larger. Then she bought a mint-green one for herself. She chose greeting cards with beautiful, silk-screen paintings of craggy green mountains and mist-covered valleys that she could frame for Caleb Owens and his wife, Margaret. Also one for Juliet Trent, the pregnant teenager she had befriended. That left only her brothers, and for them she bought carvings of elephants and of smiling old men smoking their pipes and wearing the traditional conical hats called lo nan.
Adam stayed by her side saying little, waiting patiently. He didn’t buy anything, not even for his son, Brian. She knew his name, knew he was nineteen and a sophomore at Harvard. Adam had told her that much the night before. But she knew nothing beyond those few facts, certainly not why his father wasn’t buying him a gift from this exotic and fascinating place.
Like the stray animals Leah had rescued in the past, once or twice she’d become involved with stray men—men with haunted eyes and sad smiles like Adam Sauder. Trying to heal wounded souls was much harder than healing wounded bodies, she’d learned to her sorrow. His hurts and heartaches were none of her business. This time she wasn’t going to get involved. She was going to protect herself for a change. She saw him pick up a watch, turn it over, then put it down again.
“Do you suppose it’s really a Rolex? For only a hundred dollars?” There was a sign in English above the table of watches. There were a lot of signs in English, nothing in Russian. The few Russians who came now didn’t have money to spend. The Americans and Australians did.
“I doubt it, but it’s a very good knockoff.”
“It would be a nice gift for your son.”
He picked the watch up again, unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out a money clip. The shopkeeper appeared in front of them as if by magic. “You like?”
“I’ll take it.” Adam peeled off five twenties and handed the man the money. He didn’t bargain for a better price.
“Engrave for free,” the smiling shopkeeper said. “Remember Saigon always.”
“I don’t need a watch for that.” But Adam handed it to him, anyway.
“What do you say on it?”
“For Brian—” Adam began.
Suddenly there was a small stampede of sandaled feet, and from out of nowhere came a whole gaggle of children of all ages, all sizes, from toddlers to young adolescents, who swirled around them. Street children. There were many of them in Saigon, some orphaned, some not. Left behind in the headlong rush to prosperity, they roamed the streets living hand-to-mouth.
“Nguoi My! Nguoi My!” It meant American. Leah had learned it from her phrase book. “Friends, give us money—dollars.”
She wished there was more she could do to help, but she’d learned the hard way you couldn’t save the world all by yourself. At least, she could do her small part and make today a little better for them. She slipped her hand into her skirt pocket to fish out a couple of dollar bills she had stashed there.
The children became even noisier when they saw the money. They began to jump up and down, laughing and giggling, demanding more. The shopkeeper waved them away. They ignored him, crowding around Adam and Leah and plucking at their clothes. A couple tugged the straps of her backpack. Leah laughed and tugged back. The shopkeeper picked up a broom resting by the door and made sweeping motions toward the children, still scolding in Vietnamese. The boys shouted. The little girls squealed, and one of the smallest started crying.
Leah glanced over at Adam. His face was as white as his shirt. A look of pure horror.
The shopkeeper shooed the children out into the street. Leah held her breath and watched them until they were safely on the other side of the narrow, crowded roadway. She turned back as the ebb and flow of Saigon street life surrounded her again. She was alone. She looked around. Adam was already a hundred feet away and walking fast. Surely he hadn’t turned tail and run because a group of kids had hustled them for a couple of dollars. Then she remembered the look on his face and thought maybe he had. She watched him go, a head taller than everyone else around him.
“Adam, wait! Your watch.” She might as well have saved her breath. The level of street noise made it impossible for him to hear her. She didn’t think he would have stopped if he had. He’d left her alone in the middle of a strange city without a word of explanation. She had every right to be angry with him, but she wasn’t. Being stranded didn’t worry her—she could take care of herself. What bothered her was the memory of that look on his face. She wanted to know what had put it there. She wanted to help take it away—and that bothered her most of all.
CHAPTER THREE
A DELIVERY-TRUCK DRIVER made a U-turn in the middle of the street two blocks from the market, tying up traffic in every direction, when Leah was heading back to the hotel. It took her driver almost an hour to maneuver his cyclo through the snarl. When she finally arrived, the bus to take them to Dalat was waiting, engine idling. She paid the driver and hurried to her room. While packing, she listened for sounds of movement from Adam’s suite, but heard nothing. She couldn’t stop wondering where he was and what he was doing. She couldn’t forget the horror she’d glimpsed on his face—an old horror, familiar and long remembered. It sent a shiver of dread up and down her spine. When she left her room, she knocked on his door. There was no answer. She hadn’t really expected there would be.
Adam wasn’t in the lobby. He wasn’t on the sidewalk outside the hotel. He wasn’t on the bus. She shoved her duffel bag into the overhead bin and looked around. The passengers were all women, except for Roger Crenshaw.
“Glad you’re here, Leah. Only two more to come,” he said, putting a tick beside her name on the clipboard he was holding.
“Join me. We’re almost ready to leave.” Kaylene smiled and beckoned from across the aisle.
“Where are the others?” Leah asked, sliding onto the cracked leather seat beside the woman she already considered a friend.
“B.J. and most of the men left for the airport—” Kaylene glanced at her watch “—half an hour ago.”
“Dr. Sauder, too?”
“Yes, I believe I saw him with the group.”
Leah was relieved to learn that Adam had made it safely back to the hotel. Something of what she was feeling must have shown on her face, for Kaylene looked as if she wanted to say more. But just then the bus doors screeched shut on unoiled hinges behind the final two members of the group. Moments later they pulled out onto the street, parting the waves of opposing traffic like a whale in a school of shrimp.
The ride to Dalat was one of the most nerveracking experiences of Leah’s life. The highway out of Saigon was crowded with all manner of vehicles, from eighteen-wheelers to high-wheeled carts pulled by water buffalo. There were seventies-era American cars, Japanese motor scooters, Chinese trucks and buses, cyclists and pedestrians, and no one paid any more attention to the traffic laws here than they had in Saigon. There seemed to be only one rule of the road: have a horn and use it. It was a long, harrowing drive, and even the beauty of the mist-washed hillsides was not enough to take Leah’s mind off their driver’s suicidal tendency to pass other vehicles on the winding stretches of narrow roadway with sheer, unguarded drops only inches from the bus’s wheels.
The sun had set and the short twilight had almost faded when they arrived at the hospital compound in the jungle, several miles outside the hill-country city of Dalat. Father Gerard, the French Canadian priest in charge of the hospital, and two of the nuns, whom he introduced as Sister Grace and Sister Janet, came out of the square, two-story, brick building to welcome them.
Leah took a moment to look around and get her bearings before following the white-cassocked Father Gerard and the others on a tour of the compound. To the west of the hospital was a church made out of the same dusty-red brick, its copper-roofed steeple green with age. Grouped between the two buildings were half-a-dozen thatched-roof huts. Smoke from cooking fires curled through holes in the roofs while small children played outside in the dirt, among chickens and potbellied pigs. Here, Father Gerard explained, as he led them to their rooms in two larger communal huts, the families and friends of hospital patients stayed while their loved ones underwent treatment.
They drew names out of a hat for room assignments, and Leah and Kaylene found themselves paired up, an arrangement that suited them both. Their room was at the end of the long building closest to the hospital. Barely big enough to turn around in, it held two hard, narrow beds draped with mosquito netting, a small table and one chair, a metal washbowl and pitcher. A single bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The hospital had electricity provided from Dalat, but in the compound there was only an aging generator that produced electricity for two hours at dusk and one hour in the morning. Showers and toilets were in the hospital building. The kitchen and refectory were there, too.
The evening meal had been held for them. They took their places at the long benched tables and the Vietnamese nuns brought them soup thick with noodles and bits of pork and chicken. It was spicier than anything Leah had ever eaten, but delicious. The rest of the meal consisted of steamed rice, stale French bread, dried fruit—and tea—no coffee. Adam wouldn’t like that, Leah thought. When they’d finished eating, they toured the wards and the operating suites. It was dark by the time they returned to their rooms to unpack. The generator shut down at eight as advertised. They undressed by candlelight and were in bed by nine.
Leah was so tired she ached in every muscle, but still she couldn’t sleep. Where were the supply trucks? They should have arrived by now. The highway they’d traveled was treacherous enough in daylight. At night, with only the moon to guide them, it would be even more dangerous. She stared into the darkness and listened to the unfamiliar but comforting sound of Kaylene’s gentle snoring. She found herself straining to hear the sound of trucks laboring up the steep grade to the hospital compound. What if something had happened to them? To B.J. and the others? To Adam?
She forced herself to relax. There was nothing she could do to get the trucks and their occupants here any faster, and tomorrow was going to be a long, busy day. The two operating suites would have to be evaluated and arranged to the surgeons’ satisfaction. The electrician would have to get the generator that would power all their high-tech equipment and computers up and running. All the surgical instruments had to be checked and checked again. There would be patients to evaluate, operating schedules to draw up. But still she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she watched the luminous hands of her travel clock creep forward in slow circles until at last her vigil was rewarded with the unmistakable sound of heavy trucks pulling into the compound.
They were here. They were safe. He was safe. Leah closed her eyes, but it wasn’t until she heard the low rumble of Adam’s voice as he exchanged greetings with Father Gerard that she relaxed enough to fall asleep.
THUNDER RUMBLED in the distance, barely audible above the steady roar of the generator on the other side of the wall. Adam looked out the operating room’s one small window, saw the dark clouds rolling down from the mountains and knew they were in for a downpour. He would be surprised if they didn’t get a thunderstorm at this time of the afternoon every day for the next three weeks. He saw Leah Gentry glance over her shoulder to the same spot and then continue her conversation with Roger Crenshaw.
He’d been avoiding her all day. He owed her an apology and an explanation. The apology he could handle; the explanation he wasn’t so sure about. Adam watched as Leah and Roger inspected a pressure gauge they’d just unpacked. Roger would oversee the larger operating room next door where the orthopedic and general surgeons would set up shop. He and Leah would work together here. The generator’s staccato beat stuttered and faltered. The lights flickered and dimmed, then steadied again. Leah dropped a screwdriver on the cement floor and mumbled an apology in his direction.
He acknowledged it with a nod and went on checking his own instruments, thousands of dollars’ worth of specialized scalpels and retractors, drills and clamps. He hadn’t bothered to keep them with him on the plane, as Leah had with her red toolbox. If they’d been lost, he wouldn’t have to operate. He could have turned tail and run back to Chicago. He closed the case and set it on the table by the antique autoclave in the corner. From now on they were Kaylene Smiley’s responsibility.
Roger Crenshaw left the room, and Adam found himself standing at the head of the operating table watching Leah work. “Everything check out okay?” he asked.
She was apparently so involved in what she was doing it took a moment for his words to sink in. Then she looked at him and blinked. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes, as though she hadn’t slept well. She probably hadn’t, if her bed was as hard and uncomfortable as his.
She smiled tentatively, obviously not quite certain how to handle him after yesterday’s disappearing act. Her hair was in the same French braid as before, but today little curling wisps had escaped to brush against her cheek and the nape of her neck. “The humidity is giving me fits. Everything’s sticking or jumping around.” She tapped one of the gauges with the tip of her fingernail.
“B.J. said they’ll have the air conditioner installed soon.” Even though it was cooler in the hills this time of year than in Saigon, the humidity would play havoc with the delicate instruments on which both he and Leah relied. The air conditioner was a necessity, not a luxury.
“I’ll run one more check when it’s up and going. Then I’m ready whenever you are.”
“We start patient evaluations first thing in the morning. Would you like to sit in on mine?” Back at St. B’s he let his residents do most of the face-to-face work. These days he kept his distance from his patients, especially the youngest ones.
“Thank you, I would. Caleb and I work together that way. I like to have a feel for the patient. There’s more to anesthesia than just checking height and weight, and looking up dosages on a chart.” She tilted her head slightly and smiled at him.
Adam had been waiting for that smile, and the realization made him angry at himself. He took it out on Leah. “This isn’t going to be fun and games. It’s triage. The oldest, the youngest, the sickest—those are the ones who can’t beat the odds, the ones we’ll have to pass over.”
Her smile disappeared. “I know that.”
“B.J.’s done a hell of a job getting me what I need to operate here, but it’s still a Third World setup. No heroics. No miracles. Some are going to make it and some aren’t. Can you handle that, too?” He looked down at his hands, balled into fists on the metal table. He sounded like the soulless medical machine he was becoming.
“I can live with the tough calls,” she said quietly. “Can you?”
He ignored her question. Losing your soul didn’t mean you had to behave like a jackass. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. We’ll do our best for all our patients. We’ll do fine together.”
“I always give my patients one hundred percent. I’m sure you do, too.”
She didn’t sound completely mollified, but he forged ahead. “And while I’m at it, I also want to apologize for leaving you stranded yesterday.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can. That has nothing to do with it. My behavior was uncalled-for.”
“I have your watch,” she said unexpectedly.
The statement and the change of subject caught him off guard. “My watch?”
“The one you bought for your son.”
He’d forgotten all about it. He’d forgotten everything but the past the moment he heard the smallest of the street urchins begin to cry. Leah reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out the wristwatch. She handed it to him. It was warm from the heat of her body. “Thanks,” he said.
“I had the shopkeeper engrave it.”
Adam turned the watch over. To Brian. With Love, Dad. Saigon, 1999.
With love. How long had it been since he’d told his son he loved him?
She waited as the silence grew between them. A frown creased her forehead. “It’s my turn to apologize, it seems. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have presumed. I’ll pay to have the inscription removed.”
He stuck the watch into his pocket and twisted his mouth into a smile. “No, it’s fine. Thank you for taking the trouble. Thanks for everything.” He turned to walk away. Leah reached out and laid her hand on his arm. A current of energy had passed between them when his hand had brushed hers moments before. He’d ignored it. This time he couldn’t.
“What happened there at the marketplace? Why did you take off like that?”
“It was nothing. Not enough sleep and too much sun.”
“It was more than that.”
The storm had rolled down off the mountain. Now the thunder crashed directly overhead. She didn’t even flinch. He knew he was going to have to tell her something, perhaps even the truth, or at least a portion of it.
“Was it being in that marketplace? Or was it being in Saigon?”
Damn, she’s persistent. “It was—” The lights went out. There was no blinding flash of lightning or crash of thunder, but the room was suddenly dark except for the small rectangle of light coming from the window. The rain still pounded on the roof, but the rhythmic stutter of the generator had ceased. It was a distraction, the answer to an unvoiced prayer. “The generator’s out,” he said unnecessarily.
“Do you think it was hit by lightning?” There was a quiver in her voice.
“No. It’s right outside the window. I think we would have known if lightning had struck it.”
“Of course. How stupid of me. It probably just ran out of gas.” He heard Leah suck in a sharp breath, saw her turn toward the light.
He smiled. He couldn’t help himself. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of storms.”
She slid off her stool, looking at him over her shoulder. She moved toward the window, a darker silhouette against the pale rectangle of murky light. “Of course not.” She laughed a little self-consciously. “But I’m not very comfortable in the dark. Isn’t it silly? I’m thirty-one years old and I sleep with a night-light.”
“Don’t tell me you lay awake all night staring into the darkness to keep the monsters at bay.” Why had he said that? Because it was what he did every night?
“I’m not sleeping alone,” she said.
“Does it help not sleeping alone?” He had a sudden vision of her in bed with a man. He didn’t like it. Some of what he was thinking must have seeped into his voice.
She spun around, bringing them within a step of each other. He reached out and steadied her with his hands on her shoulders. He couldn’t see her blush, but he was certain she did. “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, having a roommate. Besides, I have a clock with an enormous fluorescent dial. It’s practically as good as a night-light.” She turned the tables on him. “What comes for you in the dark?”
“No, Leah.” Then he stopped her from saying more with his mouth. He’d meant only to silence her, but her lips were so soft and warm....
She pulled away. “You don’t have to kiss me to shut me up. I won’t insist that you explain to me what happened yesterday,” she whispered, her breath warm against his lips.
“I’m not kissing you to shut you up. Not anymore.” She opened her mouth and let him inside to explore. She tasted of mint and cola. Her tongue touched his and something inside him flared with a white-hot flame, searing his heart. He pulled her close. Her breasts pressed against his chest, her softness against his sudden erection. He kissed her harder. He could go on kissing her forever, more than kissing her, making love to her over and over again. Adam found the fantasy taking hold of his heart and his brain. He wanted all of her, the way he hadn’t wanted a woman for a long, long time. “You don’t have to be alone in the dark, Leah. Stay with me tonight,” he said before the barriers of self-control could slam down on his need for her.
She shook her head, but didn’t step out of his arms. “That’s not a good idea.”
He could hear voices beyond the wall, a mixture of French, Vietnamese and English. People were working on the generator. Before he knew it the lights would come back on. The intimacy of near darkness would be erased. “What’s wrong with both of us taking comfort from each other?” He could feel her pulling back and he tightened his arms around her. “Don’t go,” he whispered against her hair. It was half plea, half command. He found her mouth again.
She relaxed against him for a handful of heartbeats, kissed him back and then pushed away, her hands on his chest. Her breasts rose and fell with her quickened breathing. There was a look of wonder on her face, and he knew their kisses had affected her as strongly as they had him. It was a warning signal he should have heeded, but he did not. “Stay with me, Leah.”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t sleep with colleagues. I don’t do one-night stands.” She took another step away. He let his palms slide along her arms, then manacled her wrists with his hands, keeping her close.
“This wouldn’t be a one-night stand.”
“I’m not good at short, intense affairs, either.”
“Leah. I...” He couldn’t say “I need you” because she would demand to know why, and maybe he would tell her, and then the thin plate of armor separating him from his private version of hell would buckle and melt away, and he would be lost. “We would be good together,” he finished lamely.
“Another reason it’s not a good idea.”
He felt a chuckle working its way up into his throat and didn’t hold it back. “Thank you, I think.”
She smiled, too, but it was a little off center. “There is something between us, physically. I’m not denying it. But there are other reasons it’s not a good idea. You’re heartsore, Adam, and I’m not the woman to take away your pain. I know, I’ve tried before....” She lifted her hand to his cheek just as the generator kicked in beyond the wall, and the lights flickered back to life. “The truth of the matter is that I don’t think we should be alone with each other outside this room anymore.”
CHAPTER FOUR
LEAH RESTED HER HEAD against the back of the old, canvas chaise longue and closed her eyes. They had been in Vietnam ten days. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. There would be turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce, of a sort, freeze-dried and foil-wrapped. This was the first Thanksgiving she’d spent away from home since Desert Storm, but she was almost too tired even to be homesick.
Kaylene Smiley joined her in the screened hospital veranda, two cans of soda in her hands. “You look like you could use a drink,” she said, handing Leah one. Kaylene had come straight from the surgical suites. She was wearing green cotton scrubs and a paper surgical hat that framed her round, good-natured face like an old-fashioned mobcap.
The soda wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm, either. Leah accepted it with a grateful smile, popped the top and took a long swallow. “Thanks, I needed that.”
Kaylene sank into the chair next to Leah’s. “I’m getting too old for this. I should be thinking about retiring and playing with my grandchildren, not hiking off to the back of beyond to play Florence Nightingale.”
“I thought you told me you came on the mission to get away from your adorable crumb crunchers.” Kaylene had five grandchildren, all under the age of seven and all living within a few miles of her home. Leah had gathered from the pictures Kaylene showed her that the little ones spent as much time as possible at Grandma’s house.
“I did. But now I miss them. I even miss my husband.” She grinned and settled into the chaise with a sigh of relief. “Sixty-eight surgeries in eight days. It might not sound like an awful lot back home, but under these conditions we must be setting some kind of record. How’s your pituitary tumor doing?”
Early that morning Adam had operated on one of the Vietnamese nurses whose infertility was likely caused by a tumor of the pituitary gland. The tumor was benign and the surgery had gone well. Their patient was already awake and alert “Adam thinks she shouldn’t have any trouble conceiving now.”
“Another little miracle. Justifies my aching back and feet.”
Leah murmured agreement. The sun had dropped from sight behind the mountains that surrounded the valley where the hospital and several small villages were located. The air had already begun to cool. At dusk the church bell would ring to call Father Gerard and the sisters and their flock to prayers. Evening here was the most pleasant time of day. It reminded her a little of Slate Hollow with the smell of wood smoke in the air, the laughter of children at play and dogs barking in the distance.
“I really should bestir myself to take a shower before the hot water’s gone,” Kaylene said a few minutes later.
Leah lifted her hand and brushed back a strand of hair that had worked its way out of her braid. “That does sound like a good idea.”
“The only problem is I’ll have to get out of this chair to do it.”
“You know you hate cold showers.” The hotwater heater that supplied the showers was ancient and unreliable.
Kaylene took another swallow of her soda and swung her feet off the chaise with a groan. “You talked me into it. I also have to do some laundry. I’m not celebrating Thanksgiving with dirty undies. Hello, Doctor.”
“Good evening, ladies.”
Leah turned her head, but she didn’t have to see him to know it was Adam. She nodded hello, not trusting her voice.
“Is there something you need in the operating room, Doctor?” Kaylene was from the old school of nursing. She didn’t call any of the doctors by their first names.
“Everything’s perfect in the OR and you know it,” he said with one of his rare smiles.
“Just making sure, because once I get out of these scrubs, you’re not getting me back into them for forty-eight hours.” There were no surgeries scheduled the next day in honor of Thanksgiving.
Kaylene went back into the hospital, leaving Leah and Adam alone on the veranda. Leah stared down at her soft-drink can. Adam stared out into the compound. The church bell began to chime.
“It’s time for mass,” Leah said unnecessarily.
“Don’t let me keep you.”
“I wasn’t planning to attend.”
“Then would you care to come with me to the orphanage?”
The nursing sisters ran a small orphanage together with a school in another building about half a mile away. Leah, Kaylene and one of the doctors made the trip down the road at least once a day to visit the children and check on their patients.
“Has something gone wrong with My Lei’s shunt?” The six-month-old girl had been born with a condition that caused fluid to build up on her brain. Five days ago Adam had implanted a shunt, a tube to redirect the excess cerebrospinal fluid. She had been doing well ever since, but any kind of surgery was risky for an infant, especially brain surgery.
“She’s fine,” Adam said quickly. “But I promised Sister Grace I’d check on her today. If you’re too tired or you still don’t want to be alone with me, just say so.”
She’d hesitated too long in answering his invitation. He was impatient with personal interaction, she was learning, as though he spent little time in idle conversation. It was only a few minutes’ walk. Surely she could keep her feelings under control and her hands to herself for that length of time. “I’m always tired,” she said. “But I’m not worried about being alone with you.” It was the first mention he’d made of that afternoon in the OR. The first for her, too. She stood up and walked to the screen door.
Adam stepped in front of her and held it open. Leah searched for a topic of conversation. “Have you seen B.J. today?” she asked as they passed the church and headed for the roadway.
“Not today, but it’s obvious by the sound of your voice he’s hatching some new scheme, and he’s got you as excited about it as he is. Am I right?”
“You seem to know him very well.”
“We’ve been friends a long time. What is it? A new program to revolutionize the Internet? Although I didn’t have you pegged as a computer geek.”
“I’m not.” She laughed. “I use one, but I don’t understand it.”
“Don’t tell me he’s planning to try and fly a hotair balloon around the world. No, that was last year.” He smiled. “I give up. What is it today?”
“He told me he has a new project he’s working on—containerized hospitals. They’ll fit on the back of a semi-rig or you can sling them under a helicopter and drop them just about anywhere in the world. Pod-Meds, he wants to call them. Completely selfcontained and fully equipped operating rooms with labs, X ray, physical therapy and even water and electricity.”
“What about a stable blood supply and competent follow-up care?”
“I didn’t say there weren’t problems. Big ones. But that’s where people come in,” she said. “To donate blood, solve the problems and teach others how to care for themselves.”
He looked at her and smiled, but it didn’t lighten the shadow behind his eyes. “Never underestimate the power of a dreamer. You and B.J. are two of a kind.”
“I think it’s a great idea.”
“I do, too. I hope he brings it off.” This time his response seemed more genuine, heartfelt, and his smile took her breath away.
They walked in silence, listening to the sound of children’s laughter carried to them on the smoky air. “I always marvel at how wonderfully happy these children are—except for love, they have so little,” Leah said as they moved into the shade of the tall stands of bamboo that grew beside the road where the humid air felt ever so slightly cooler.
“Family is important to the Vietnamese. They’ll do just about anything for their children. Even children like My Lei who haven’t got much of a future.”
“I wish there was something I could do,” Leah said, thinking aloud.
“You’ve done plenty already.” Adam’s tone sounded harsh, resigned.
Leah kept her eyes on the track. “But it isn’t enough.”
“With a case like My Lei it’s never enough.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and lowered his head.
“Are you sorry you operated on her?” Leah asked. If he said yes in that same stony voice, she would turn around and go back. She thought of the happy, smiling baby. Her life was precious even as imperfect as it was.
“No,” he said at last. “I’m only sorry I couldn’t make her well and whole. There’s still so much we don’t know about the human brain. So much that can go wrong.”
“And some things that can be put right.”
They’d come to a place where a small runnel crossed the road. It wasn’t deep, but too wide to step easily across. Adam held out his hand to help her. Leah hesitated. She didn’t want to touch him. She remembered all too well the feel of his hands on her arms, the heat of his body, the taste of him in her mouth. A craving for his touch was part of what kept her awake at night.
A bird called somewhere off in the distance, another answered, calls as strange and exotic as the setting. She and Adam would be together only a little over a week longer, then he would go back to his world and she to hers. She would remember that and keep this attraction between them in perspective. She put her hand in his and jumped across.
“If Vo’s family can’t be located, perhaps I could sponsor them,” she said, hoping he’d attribute her breathlessness to the steepness of the rise they were now climbing. Vo was My Lei’s father, a young widower.
“You can’t take on a responsibility like that. The child has no mother. Vo doesn’t speak English. He has no marketable skills.”
Leah thought of the dying old woman she’d befriended back in Slate Hollow, along with the woman’s pregnant great-granddaughter, Juliet Trent, She had already made herself responsible for the two of them. Adam was right. She couldn’t do the same for My Lei and Vo. “I was only thinking—”
“With your heart, instead of your head.”
She turned on him, stopping him dead in his tracks. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“Yes, when it blinds you to the realities of the situation.”
She started walking again. “I’d rather be blind to reality, if it keeps me from seeing things as callously as you do.”
He reached out and grabbed her wrist, spinning her around to face him. “I’m not blind, Leah. I’ve only learned the hard way how it tears you up inside when there’s no more you can do than what’s been done. I stopped believing in miracles a long time ago.”
“You did work a miracle for My Lei. For the others, too. The old man whose pain you took away, so he can enjoy his last months with his family, and the nurse who will have babies to love and cherish now.”
“Those weren’t miracles, just damned good surgery. If they were miracles I could have cured the old man’s cancer and given My Lei back what a misplaced gene took away from her.”
Suddenly they heard the unmistakable sound of squealing tires followed instantly by a crash. “Oh, God, an accident!” Leah started running.
Adam was faster. He passed her within the first ten feet. The school came into view. Leah stopped at the gate for a moment to catch her breath, but Adam just kept running toward the sound of children’s screams. “What happened?” she asked a Vietnamese nun on her knees in the roadway, her simple white habit torn and bloodstained, her arms around two crying, mudsplattered little girls.
“Our bus. It crashed,” she said in French-accented English. She started to cry, just like the little girls clinging to her sleeves. “There.” She pointed toward the road just out of sight beyond the high brick wall surrounding the school. “It is in the ditch. We came for help. Sister Grace is hurt. Hurry, please. The other children are still inside.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” the nun replied. “I only hurt my shoulder.”
Leah dropped to her knees, ran her hands over the little girls’ arms and legs. “Can they tell you where they hurt?”
“They are okay. Just cuts and bruises. Go to the others. I’ll take care of them.” She began to talk soothingly to the little girls in Vietnamese.
“Send someone to the hospital. Tell them what’s happened!” Leah yelled over her shoulder and started running again. “Tell everybody to come.”
The orphanage bus, an old Volkswagen van, had gone nose first into a marshy ditch in front of the school. It had already sunk halfway into the mud by the time Leah arrived. Sister Grace and three more children were huddled by the side of the road. The nun was dazed and bleeding from a cut on her forehead. One little boy was crying lustily and holding his wrist. His hand was twisted at an awkward angle, the wrist obviously broken. The other two appeared uninjured, although they were wet and muddy and very frightened.
“How many are still inside?” Leah asked Sister Grace just as Adam braced his foot against the frame and literally tore the side door of the van from its hinges.
“I... there was nothing I could do. The tire blew out. I’m sorry. So sorry.” She looked up at Leah with unfocused eyes.
“It’s all right,” Leah said. “It wasn’t your fault. How many children were with you?” The nun was in shock. She would have to be checked for a concussion, but at the moment getting the rest of the children out of the wrecked van was the most important thing to be done. “Sister Grace?”
“I...”
“Adam, how many children do you see?”
“Two. Both girls. Are there any more, Sister?” Adam called.
Sister Grace responded to the command in his voice. “There were eight, no, seven children, and Sister Marie.”
There were two little girls on the road with the sister and three more children here. That left two unaccounted for. Leah relayed the information to Adam as he hoisted himself through the door of the van. She watched the vehicle settle deeper into the mud. One of the children inside screamed weakly. Leah realized Adam would need help getting them out of the van, so she left Sister Grace and stepped off the shoulder of the road, immediately sinking into muck over her ankles. “I’m here, Adam. What can I do to help?”
“I’ll hand them out to you. This thing is filling up with muck.”
“I’m ready,” Leah said.
“Come on, put your arms around my neck, honey,” she heard Adam croon. “Thatta girl. Here we go.” Adam shifted his weight and leaned out the door to hand a child to Leah. “Abrasions, contusions and possible broken ankle,” he said. The van settled deeper into the mud. “This stuff’s goddamned quicksand.”
Leah held the little girl close, murmuring soothing nothings. The child’s clothes were covered with mud. So were her face and arms. Marsh water dripped from her long black hair. She was conscious and whimpering with pain. “What about the other one?”
Adam’s face closed down, and it was as though Leah were confronting a machine. “It’s bad. She’s unconscious and trapped under the seat. I’ll stay with her until the others get here. We’ll need a backboard and we’ll need an OR. She has a compound fracture of the left tibia and, God help us, I think she may have a broken neck.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“LEAH, WAKE UP.”
“I’m not asleep,” Leah murmured. “I was just resting my eyes.” She straightened from her slumped position in the unforgivingly hard chair, every muscle screaming in protest, to find Kaylene standing over her.
“I know, dear. I’m here to relieve you. I’ll sit with the little sweetie while you go clean up and get some rest.”
“What time is it?” The only light in the room came from the hallway and the pale green glow of the portable monitor by the bed. Automatically Leah checked the display. All the readouts looked good. Their patient was sleeping comfortably.
“Almost three.”
The last time she’d noticed, it had been just a little past two. “I did fall asleep,” she said ruefully. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. It’s been a very long day.”
In unison they moved toward the child’s bedside. The little girl slept quietly, her shattered left leg held immobile by a metal traction bar. Leah leaned over the bed rail and smoothed her straight, night-dark hair back from her forehead. She looked very small and helpless with her neck also immobilized, by a wide cervical collar. “Do you know her name?” There hadn’t been time before to ask.
“Ahn Lyn. Isn’t it pretty?”
“Very pretty. I wonder what it means.” Leah touched the little girl’s cheek in a gentle caress. “She moved her arms and wiggled her toes.” Leah’s voice was not quite steady. “Almost as soon as she woke from the anesthetic. There was no damage to her spinal cord.”
“I know. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“How are the others?” Sister Grace, the little girl with the broken ankle and the boy with the broken wrist were also in the hospital.
“We’re still monitoring the sister, but her vitals are good. She had one heck of a knock on the head. The children are sound asleep. So, you go get some rest. I’ll stay with her.”
“You’re as tired as I am,” Leah protested.
“No, I’m not. I slept while you and Dr. Sauder were standing vigil. Now go.”
Adam. Where was he? Two hours ago when the little girl woke up, moved her arms and wiggled her toes, he’d simply walked out of the room and not returned.
“I’ll be back at 0600.”
“No, you won’t. We’re not operating today, remember? It’s Thanksgiving. Father Gerard and the regular staff will look after the children. Now go. Sleep till noon. All afternoon if you want. I’ll save a drumstick for you.”
Leah crossed the darkened compound with the aid of a pocket-size flashlight. In her room she lit a candle, grabbed a towel and a clean set of scrubs and headed for the showers. The water was cool, so she didn’t linger beneath the spray. She dressed hurriedly and wrapped a towel around her head, then headed back to her room. She was so tired she could barely stand, and no wonder; she’d been awake for more than twenty hours. But even though she was exhausted she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Not until she found Adam and assured herself he was all right.
He had barely let Ahn Lyn out of his sight from the moment she was lifted from the overturned van until the moment she’d opened her eyes in the tiny, ill-lit hospital room. Tests had determined that the injury to her neck was less severe than Adam had first feared. Surgery on her spinal column wouldn’t be required, but he had remained in the OR to assist the orthopedic surgeon in the repair of her shattered left leg. He’d stayed by her bedside with Leah until she’d awakened, and then he’d disappeared.
She opened the door to the screened porch fronting the women’s lodgings and stepped inside. The dim circle of light from her flashlight picked out the toe of a man’s running shoe. She sucked in her breath.
“Don’t scream, Leah. It’s me.” The voice was low and rough and male, the words quietly spoken.
She let her breath out in a rush. “Adam?”
He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the beam of her flashlight. Leah switched it off. The moon was riding low among the clouds, but the candlelight spilling from the window outlined Adam sitting with his back against the wall, his legs drawn up to his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She dropped to her knees beside him. “Where have you been?”
“Walking. I saw the light in your window, but you weren’t here.”
“I was in the shower.”
“I can smell your soap.” He touched her cheek. “Lemon. You always smell of lemons.”
“Adam, are you all right?”
He dropped his hand to his knee, but not before she felt the faint tremor in his fingers. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think so. If you were fine you’d be in your bed asleep, not sitting here in the dark.”
“I hate to sleep.” His words were clear but unutterably weary. He was still wearing the scrubs he’d worn in the OR. He smelled of hospital soap and warm skin.
“Why, Adam?” she asked softly. She covered his hand with hers. He had strong hands, with long blunt fingers, a surgeon’s hands. She hadn’t imagined the trembling when he’d touched her. He was shaking all over.
“It all comes back when I sleep,” he said simply. “They’re always in my dreams. Twenty-five years of nightmares. Back home I can deal with it. Here, they’re too close. I hate this place.”
So coming back to Vietnam hadn’t been the healing time for him that it was for some vets. She had suspected as much, and now she was sure. “Did you hope coming back here would make the nightmares go away?”
“I came for B.J. I knew it wouldn’t help. Nothing has helped.”
“A therapist?”
“I’ve talked to the best of them. No one had a clue.”
“Did you tell them the truth? Did you tell them you’re suffering from post-traumatic stress dis—”
His words were like rapier thrusts. “What makes you think it’s post-traumatic stress disorder I’m describing? I wasn’t in combat, Leah. Not like the guys who went before me. I was only here at the end. One hundred and seventeen days to be exact. I never set foot outside Saigon. It wasn’t war then—it was only cleaning up the mess.” He didn’t shake off her touch, but his hand had balled into a fist beneath hers. “Maybe I’m just losing my mind.”
“Are you on medication?”
He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Pills give me the shakes. I don’t take them. No one wants a surgeon with the shakes mucking around in his brain.”
“You’re shaking now,” she said.
“I know. For hours. It won’t go away this time.” He lifted his left hand, the one she wasn’t holding and held it in front of him. “Children should never die.”
The statement confused her, but she answered the desperation in his tone as much as his words. “All the children are going to be fine—all of them.”
He came to his feet in one smooth movement, pulling her with him. “She didn’t go sour after I left?”
“Ahn Lyn is awake and stable.”
“Ahn Lyn. Is that her name?”
“Yes.”
“When I saw her trapped in that damned van...” He lifted his hands and bracketed her face. “I can live with all the rest—the dreams of the shelling and the sniper attacks and the riots—but I can’t live with the memories of the little ones dying. I can’t.”
The hopelessness in his voice chilled her heart. “Adam, please tell me—”
“No! I don’t want to remember. I want to forget. Help me forget, Leah. Please, help me.” He pulled her into his arms, lowered his mouth to hers, and she tasted his desperation and his desire. “With you in my arms I can forget, at least for a little while.”
She knew some of the grief that gnawed at him. She’d had friends who’d died young. She’d seen children die. She could no more deny him now than she could fly. He pulled the towel from her hair and threaded his fingers through the strands, holding her face still for his kiss. Her mouth opened to the urgency of his. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. She longed to take away some of his pain and sorrow and lose some of her own, which she kept locked away in a very small corner of her heart.
But somehow, in a heartbeat, the kiss changed and became completely sexual, purely a man and a woman and the fire that can consume them. She didn’t let herself think, only feel, and her response urged him to do the same. They were as alone as they could be in the crowded compound. Kaylene would be with the little girl for hours. The others were asleep or keeping watch over patients in the hospital. Adam slid his arm behind her knees and lifted her as though she weighed nothing. She let her head rest on his shoulder and felt the wild beating of his heart against her fingers. She was naked beneath the thin, much-washed cotton of her scrubs; Adam probably was, too. She could feel the heat of his skin, the roughness of hair, the rock solidness of bone and muscle against the side of her breast.
He set her down on her bed and stripped off his shirt. She fumbled with hers and he helped her draw it over her head. Adam’s hand went to the drawstring of his pants. The candle had blown out with their movements; now there was no light except the moon’s glow through the window. She shimmied out of her pants, wanting nothing between them. He stood for a moment looking down at her, all moon shadows, darkness and secrets that could cause her pain, as well. When he lay down beside her and took her in his arms, Leah forgot everything but her desire for him.
His hands cupped her breasts. His lips covered hers and she felt his tongue inside her mouth. She returned the intimate caress with a hunger that matched his. Then Adam kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, the curve of her ear. He splayed his fingers through her hair and held her head still for another mind-emptying kiss. Then he moved his mouth to kiss her throat, her collarbone, the upper swell of her breast. His beard was rough and exciting against the softness of her skin. He took one hardened nipple into his mouth and Leah sucked in a breath, swallowing a moan. She reached up and held his head close to her, feeling pleasure arc along a glittering pathway from her breast to her womb.
She reached down and wrapped her fingers around him. He gasped, then entered her slowly, but when he realized how ready she was for him, he began to move more strongly within her. She met him thrust for thrust, each giving and taking what they needed from the other. His mouth sought hers once more, muffling her moans of pleasure. Finally he climaxed deep inside her, and his release pushed her into her own.
She had never responded to lovemaking this way before, going beyond thought, beyond reason in a realm of pure sensation. It frightened her a little, how well she read his desires, and he hers. But she didn’t want to analyze what had just passed between them. She only wanted to feel. She became aware of the weight of Adam’s body on hers, the fullness of him still buried within her. Then he shifted his weight and lay beside her. Leah listened to the deep evenness of his breathing. He was asleep, and in moments so was she.
ADAM AWOKE from a dreamless sleep with Leah in his arms. No, not dreamless he realized groggily, but sleep not filled with nightmares and the cries of dying children. Instead, his dreams had been filled with images and sensations of the woman beside him. He turned her head gently and kissed her awake. A small, cold corner of his mind told him not to do this, to let her sleep. Making love to her again, unprotected and uncommitted, was as wrong and irresponsible as something a boy Brian’s age might do, but he couldn’t stop himself. The taste and touch and scent of her had become as necessary to him as his next breath.
“Leah.” He whispered her name in the darkness.
“I...I must have fallen asleep,” she said, but her arms came around his neck and she kissed him back.
“So did I.” He wanted to tell her what a gift it was, but was unable to find the words when she was so close, her breasts pressed to his chest, her legs tangled with his.
“I’ve never done that before. I...I never lose myself that way.”
“I never do, either. Thank you, Leah...” He stopped himself from saying my love. He didn’t mean it, and she would know he didn’t. But somehow it sounded right and so he whispered it to himself.
“Are you okay? Really okay?” she asked, and he could feel her searching gaze on his face as her fingers moved to touch his mouth. He turned his head and kissed the inside of her palm.
“I’m fine.” He wasn’t, not really. Already the darkness was pushing at the edges of his thoughts, but when he covered her mouth with his, the darkness receded, and light, along with bits and pieces of longing and dreams that couldn’t be, filled his thoughts. She was drawn to strays, the hurt and injured. If he told her everything he’d kept inside him for so long, she would stay and try to heal him. As much as he craved her solace, he wouldn’t take advantage of her that way.
The kiss was long and hungering, and when it was over he was hard again and she lay panting beside him. “What time is it? I don’t want Kaylene to find us,” she said.
“It’s very, very late, or very early. But still hours before dawn.”
“I don’t want the dawn to come,” she said softly. He knew she didn’t like being in the dark. He knew she was offering him a part of herself with those words, and it humbled him.
“Neither do I.” He pressed himself against her and she opened her legs. This time their lovemaking was not so gentle, and was over more quickly. They didn’t sleep afterward, but lay twined together. Her hands, moving in small circles over his back and shoulders, were almost enough to keep the demons at bay, but not quite, and he took her once more to hold back the darkness. She seemed to sense his desperation. She met him halfway, and they joined and melded and once more found oblivion.
A baby crying somewhere in the compound awakened him, and this time even the warmth of Leah’s arms around him couldn’t hold back the memories....
The Orphan Plane. It was April 4, 1975, a week after his nineteenth birthday; 243 children and sixtytwo adults took off in the C-5A Galaxy cargo plane heading for new homes and families in the United States. He had helped carry the little ones on the plane, strapped them in the seats, two by two by two. An hour later he was helping carry their bodies out of the wreckage of the huge aircraft. It had crashed into a half-flooded rice paddy trying to return to Than Son Nhut with a malfunctioning hydraulic system.
All around him were dead and dying children, and there was nothing he could do about it. One little girl he remembered more than the others. He had found her alive in the wreckage and held her head above the water so she wouldn’t drown. But she couldn’t be saved and had died in his arms. He had watched her die, and then he’d gotten up and gone about doing what he could for the others. In one way or another he had been repeating those motions every day of his life since..
There had been good times, too. After Brian was born he held his son in his arms and thought he might be able to put the past behind him. But when Brian was ten he’d crashed his bicycle head-on into a mailbox. Adam had been out in the yard watching and rushed to his side and cradled his bloodied face in his arms all the way to the hospital. From that day on the nightmares had come back and never gone away.
He looked down at his hand. He was shaking like a leaf. What was worse, he was shaking inside. He couldn’t operate in this condition. Hell, he didn’t even know if he could set foot inside the hospital again. He had to get out of this place or lose what little was left of his reason and his soul. Adam slid Leah’s arms from around his neck. Forced himself not to kiss her again. Pulled on his clothes and walked out into the night.
IT WAS DAYLIGHT when Leah awoke again. There were tears on her cheek, as though she’d been crying in her sleep, but she couldn’t remember any bad dreams. And then she realized she was alone. She dressed in haste and smoothed the rumpled sheets on her bed, drawing the blanket up just as Kaylene entered the room.
She looked a little surprised to see Leah up and around. “I thought I told you to sleep till noon.”
“I guess my internal clock had other ideas,” Leah fibbed. “I was just going to take a shower.” Adam’s scent, the scent of their lovemaking, clung to every inch of her.
Kaylene grimaced. “My internal clock can stuff itself. I’ve had my ice-cold shower, and I’m still going to sleep till noon.”
“I’ll make sure no one disturbs you.” Leah wanted to ask Kaylene if she’d seen Adam. Perhaps he’d gone to the hospital to check on Ahn Lyn, but she didn’t think so. He’d probably left her bed just to spare her the embarrassment of Kaylene finding them together.
“Who’s sitting with Ahn Lyn?” She held her breath, waiting for Kaylene’s answer.
“B.J. He relieved me about half an hour ago. She’s had her pain meds and she’s sleeping soundly. Still moving all her extremities. So far, so good. Sister Grace’s vitals are stable, and the other kids are fine.”
B.J. was with Ahn Lyn, not Adam. She stretched her mouth into a smile. “Thanks for the report. Pleasant dreams.”
“Mmm.” Kaylene was already in bed.
Twenty minutes later, showered and with her hair back in its habitual French braid, Leah faced B. J. Walton across Ahn Lyn’s bed.
“You’re looking for Adam, aren’t you?” he asked her bluntly.
“Yes. I...I’m worried about him.”
“He’s gone, Leah,” B.J. said, his sympathetic gaze taking in the dark circles beneath her eyes. “I found a note when I woke up this morning. It was too late to stop him.”
“He’s left the compound?”
“He’s leaving Vietnam.” His hand fisted on the bed rail. “Damn. I should have never talked him into coming back.” Ahn Lyn stirred in her drugged sleep and BJ. lowered his voice. “He wasn’t ready.”
Leaving the mission? Leaving the country? She hadn’t expected that. Her aching heart jerked painfully in her chest Gone. Out of my life.
“What happened to him here, B.J.?” She had to know.
“He won’t tell me. I have my suspicions, but he refuses to talk about it. Maybe it wasn’t a bungeestakes-and-jungle-patrols kind of war here at the end. But it wasn’t pretty. Snipers, shellings, the refugees scrambling to get out. I’m sure it was hell being the last ones out of the only damned war we ever lost. I thought maybe you...”
“No,” she said. “He told me nothing. Not even that he was leaving.” But what had she expected? Adam was a stranger to her. He had taken what she’d freely offered and promised nothing in return. Once more she’d let her heart overrule her reason. She’d given a piece of herself unwisely. Now he was gone, and she was left alone to consider the consequences of her actions and, God help her, to want him back again.
CHAPTER SIX
“DOES YOUR MOTHER know you’re here in Chicago?”
Brian Sauder shifted his attention from the view outside the office window to his father’s face. “Not exactly,” he answered carefully. “She knows I’m spending the weekend out of town.” He’d driven seventeen hours straight to get to Chicago from Cambridge. His brain was nearly fried, but what he had to say to his dad was too important to wait until he got some sleep. That was why he’d come straight to St. Barnabas, instead of waiting for his dad at his condo.
“Out of town, but not out of state.” Adam stood up and walked around his desk. Brian stood up too. Jeez. I’m an inch taller than he is. When had that happened?
Adam waved him back to his seat. “Are you in trouble, son? Is that why you came to me?”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
His dad picked up a big piece of quartz he used for a paperweight and held it in his hands. “You’re not having problems with your grades, are you?”
“Solid B’s.”
“Good.” One corner of Adam’s mouth curled up in an expression Brian couldn’t quite classify as a smile. “I doubt even Elliot’s connections would get you back into Harvard if you flunked out.” Elliot Carlton was his stepfather, an investment banker in Boston where he lived with Brian’s mom and his little half sister, Megan.
“Yeah, I know. He keeps reminding me what a generous donation he made to get me considered in the first place. That you and Mom made a big mistake sending me to public school all those years.” His dad had gone to a public high school in Pennsylvania, and then on to the University of Michigan after he got out of the Marines. Brian thought it would have been good enough for him, too.
“A fact your mother pointed out to me many times as you were growing up.” This time Adam did smile. His mom smiled like that, too, when she talked about his dad. They were still friends, sort of, and Brian was glad.
“She’d have a fit if she knew I was here.”
His dad was still holding the big piece of quartz—tightly. His knuckles were white. When he saw Brian look at his hands, Adam put the rock down, then walked behind the desk and gazed at the snow falling in huge, wet flakes outside the window. “Why didn’t you tell her you were coming to see me?” he asked.
“Christmas break doesn’t start till the end of the week. I...left early.”
“She won’t like that.” Adam turned and spread his hands flat on the teak surface of the desk.
“That’s why I didn’t tell her.”
Adam frowned at his reply, accentuating the harsh new lines around his mouth. Jeez, Dad’s looking old. He hadn’t looked like that when he saw him last at the end of the summer. Was he sick? Did he have cancer or something? Or had he caught some weird disease in Vietnam? Is that why he’d come home almost two weeks before he was supposed to? Brian hadn’t lived with his dad since he was eleven, but he loved him. He didn’t want anything to be wrong with him.
“Why did you come here, Brian?”
Worries about his dad’s health were forgotten for the moment. It was now or never. Adam had just asked the million-dollar question and he had to answer it. “I don’t want to be an investment banker. I don’t want to go to work for Elliot at Carlton, Lieberman and Carmichael. I don’t want to go back to Harvard.”
“Have you told your mother this?”
Brian snorted. “Are you kidding? She’d have a stroke. She’d have me committed.”
“A lot of other mothers would feel the same way.”
Brian stood up again and started pacing the width of the office. “I’ve given it a year and a half, almost. It’s not for me.”
“Math has always been your strongest subject.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to be a banker or, God help me, an economist.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I don’t know exactly what I want to do with my life, Dad, but I know it isn’t following in Elliot’s footsteps. I’m dropping out of Harvard at the end of the semester. I need some time to think things through. I’d like to come here and live with you. God knows Mom and Elliot would make my life miserable if I stayed in Boston.”
“Brian, I don’t know what to say.”
Adam’s hesitation hit Brian like a fist to the gut. He hadn’t let himself believe his dad would turn him down. “It’s okay, Dad,” he made himself say. “I’ll find somewhere else to live if you don’t want me at your place.”
Adam was silent for a long moment. “Why don’t you try sticking it out until spring?”
“I’ve made up my mind, Dad.”
“I think you’re making a mistake.”
“Maybe I am, but I’ll never know if I don’t give it a try. That’s all I’m asking. The chance to make my own mistakes. I can live with the consequences.” His dad had been a Marine in Vietnam when he was nineteen. All Brian wanted to do was figure out his own path in life. Surely he had a right to do that.
“Okay. Call your mother and break the news to her. I’ll back you up.”
Brian pushed away from the credenza, his heart beating madly in his chest. He wanted to give his dad a hug, but the desk was still between them, so he held out his hand, instead. “Thanks, Dad.”
Adam didn’t take his hand right away. Brian held his breath. Then his dad leaned forward and clasped Brian’s hand in both of his. “I’m not giving you a free ride. You’ll have to get a job, and you’ll have to promise me you’ll consider going back to school next year.”
“I’ll start looking for a job first thing tomorrow.” He couldn’t stop the grin spreading over his face. “Thanks, Dad. I knew I could count on you to see my side of this.”
“I’m not looking forward to talking to your mother.”
“Neither am I, but I might as well get it over with. Can I use your phone?”
“Dr. Sauder?” His dad’s secretary opened the door between their offices and stuck her head inside.
“Yes, Camilla?”
“There’s a young woman here to see you.”
“I don’t have any patient appointments scheduled for this afternoon.”
That was odd, Brian thought. His dad always had patients scheduled on Wednesdays. He operated on Tuesday and Thursday, and saw patients on Monday and Wednesday. At least he always had.
“She’s not a patient,” Camilla said. “She says she’s a friend. Her name is Leah Gentry.”
“Leah?” The way his dad said the name caught Brian’s attention.
“Leah Gentry,” Camilla repeated. “Should I tell her you’re busy?”
“No.” Adam ran a hand through his hair. His expression didn’t give much away, but Brian could have sworn he saw his hand shaking. “Send her in.”
“You have a meeting with Dr. Fenimore at twothirty, don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
Camilla opened the door wider. His dad was staring at it like he expected a ghost to walk through it. Instead, a very ordinary young woman with dark brown hair in a French braid entered the room. She was wearing a military-issue parka, and she had a lime-green backpack slung over one shoulder. The backpack had a picture of Minnie Mouse on it, just like the one his little sister had. Her nose was red from the cold, and there were pale blue shadows under her eyes, as though she’d been awake for a lot of hours in a row.
“Hello, Adam,” she said stopping just inside the door.
“Hello.” His dad came out from behind his desk and took a couple of steps toward her.
“It’s good to see you again.” She held out her hand.
“It’s good to see you, too. Welcome home, Leah.” His dad came just close enough to take her hand. He held it for a long moment, and they stared at each other like they’d thought until that very moment they’d never see each other again.
Brian cleared his throat. The woman turned her head in his direction. Her eyes widened momentarily. She had very pretty eyes, all kind of green and gold mixed together.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Adam dropped her hand and retreated behind his desk. “This is my son, Brian.”
She smiled, and he smiled back. He couldn’t help himself. “Hi,” he said.
She held out her hand again. “Hello, Brian. Your father told me a lot about you.”
“Leah was my anesthetist in Dalat,” Adam explained.
“Nice to meet you,” Brian said.
“I...I just got back to the States. B.J. and I were the last to leave. I have a four-hour layover.” She turned back to Brian. “So I thought I’d look up your father and make sure he’s okay. He left the mission so hurriedly I...I didn’t get to say goodbye.” A tinge of color stained her cheeks.
“I’m fine,” Adam said, and his voice was suddenly cold and hard.
“I can see. I’m sorry I barged in on you this way. I...I should have called, I guess.”
She looked uncomfortable. So did his dad. There was something going on here, undercurrents he couldn’t understand. This might be a good time for him to make an exit. “I have a phone call to make. It was nice meeting you,” he said again, smiling at her once more, hoping she’d smile back. She did.
“It was nice meeting you, too, Brian, but please, don’t hurry off on my account. I truly did only stop in to see if your father was all right, and to thank him.”
“For what?” Brian asked. He wasn’t flirting with her, not really—she was too old for him. But it was hard not to want to coax her to smile again.
“For seeing that Vo and My Lei found sponsors here in the States.”
“Vo and My Lei?”
“Yes, a Vietnamese man and his daughter. Your father operated on the little girl—”
“I’ll tell you about them later, Brian,” Adam broke in. “Don’t you want to make your call?”
“Yeah, sure I do.” He tried one more smile, but this time she didn’t smile back, only nodded a little distractedly. “I’ll use Camilla’s phone to call Mom.” Brian left the room wondering just what had gone on between his dad and this woman in Vietnam. Maybe if he worked it just right, he’d find out, but he doubted it. His dad never talked about his love life—if he had one, and besides, right now Brian had more important things on his mind—like changing the entire course of his life.
THE DOOR CLOSED behind Adam’s son, and Leah wished she’d left the office with him. Why had she .given in to the impulse to come here and see for herself that Adam was all right? He obviously was. And he obviously wasn’t happy to see her. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “Your son is a very good-looking young man. Very nice, too.”
“Yes, he is.”
“I’m sorry I interrupted your visit.”
“It’s okay,” Adam said. “Can I get you something. A cup of coffee?”
“Yes, thanks.” She wanted to refuse, but he might think it odd—their love of coffee was one thing they had in common. But she wouldn’t have more than a swallow, not now. Because now she was pregnant
She’d bought a pregnancy-test kit as soon as they landed in Frankfurt and confirmed what she’d suspected almost from the moment she’d awakened alone in her bed that morning. She should never have made love to him without protection when she knew she might be ovulating, but she hadn’t been thinking with her head that night, only with her heart.
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Marisa Carroll
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: IN UNIFORMSometimes love isn′t enough….When Lieutenant Leah Gentry–nurse and soldier–goes overseas as part of a team providing medical care for those in need, she knows she′s in for long days and hard work. What she doesn′t expect is to fall for Dr. Adam Sauder–or to become pregnant with his child.Adam thinks Leah might be able to save him from his haunting past. But he has nothing to give her–not even his love. Still, when the mission is over and he discovers that Leah′s in danger of losing their baby, he leaves his job to come to Kentucky.Adam would like to be a husband to Leah and a father to the baby, but he can′t forget his past. He knows he should go but he desperately wants to stay….