The Army Doc's Secret Wife
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Charlotte Hawkes
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Chapter One
ICY NUMBNESS HAD been sneaking around Alethea ‘Thea’ Abrams’ body from the moment she’d received the phone call. The drive to the hospital was a blur but somehow she must have done it. And now the chill finally took a grip of her shaking limbs, forcing her to stop and lean on the door frame as if to draw strength, as she stared down the military wing’s ward and into the side room where Ben Abrams, her husband, lay—still asleep—in a bed.
‘I understand you’ve been fully briefed?’ The nurse consulted her notes. ‘And that you’re also a civilian doctor, working for the Air Ambulance Emergency Response Unit? That’ll certainly help a lot. And Dr Fields has prepared you for the chance that Major Abrams... Ben...might not recognise you?’
Thea managed a stiff nod, surreptitiously sliding cold fingers around the doorjamb. Yes, they had warned her it was a possibility. Words of caution she often had to say to other people, and yet it had still been a shock to hear them said to her. It all felt surreal—like some kind of nightmare. The broken body in that bed was so far removed from the robust, spirited, dynamic Ben she knew.
If she had ever really known him.
‘I understand how difficult this is but you need to be ready. Your reaction could influence how Ben approaches his recovery.’ The nurse was kind but firm.
‘I understand.’ Miraculously, Thea made it sound as if she did, despite the fact that the professional, medical side of her brain appeared to have completely deserted her.
‘Are you ready to go over there?’
Thea watched as Dr Fields moved around Ben’s bed. There was another man there, an older man who looked vaguely familiar, but Thea couldn’t place him. He wasn’t interfering, and she couldn’t tell whether he was overseeing or not. An Army specialist perhaps? Not anyone she knew.
Not trusting herself to speak, Thea forced out a couple more jerky nods. The nurse seemed unconvinced.
‘Listen, it’s a lot to take in all at once. Do you need a few more moments? We can go to the visitors’ room—it’s just down the corridor.’
Thea shook her head, unable to drag her gaze from Ben, who looked so utterly alien to her, and yet so painfully familiar at the same time.
‘Just run me through it again.’ Her voice was so hoarse she couldn’t even recognise it herself. ‘Ben was caught in a roadside bomb?’
‘Yes—well, two, actually. His vehicle was the fourth in a convoy, and the IED was detonated as the second four-by-four passed. Ben was quite severely injured in the initial blast, severing his arm at the level of the proximal humerus, and he has since undergone successful micro-vascular replantation. However, even with that level of injury we understand he ran to the front vehicles to pull out the rest of his patrol.’
The utter admiration in the military nurse’s voice was evident, but Thea just stared at the uncharacteristically still figure in the bed, a maelstrom swirling in her head.
Dammit, Ben—you nearly died. Why do you always have to play the hero?
How was she meant to correlate this with the life-loving Ben who had always lived for his beloved sports?
‘He pulled five soldiers to safety—he saved their lives—before the second IED went off, and then he was crushed under a vehicle and knocked unconscious.’
‘Which is when he sustained the spinal damage,’ Thea stated flatly, her medical brain finally—mercifully—kicking in. She needed to detach herself from her unsteady emotions. It was the only way she was going to get through this. If only it was that easy, she thought bleakly.
‘It looks bad, but from what we’ve seen, Ben is strong. If anyone can pull through this, he can. With your help.’ The nurse smiled encouragingly. ‘Your husband’s a hero.’
Your husband’s a hero.
Nausea churned in Thea’s stomach. Her mouth was parched—too parched to respond. It took her several attempts to swallow, then to flick out a nervous tongue to try and moisten dry lips.
Her husband...
For the first time since she’d heard about the accident and rushed to the hospital Thea felt her pain and fear give way to something even more visceral.
Anger.
The man lying in that bed—her husband—was almost as much of a stranger to her as he was to the nurse standing next to her now. That was if Thea set aside the fact that the last time she’d seen Ben they’d had wild, crazy sex, only for him to walk out on her the next morning. Leaving her abandoned and alone. That was a far cry from the Ben everyone else saw—the self-sacrificing soldier who always seemed to save the day in her brother’s war stories. Where had Ben the hero been when she’d needed saving?
Instead, she’d had to save herself.
So why, even now, did he still have the power to affect her the way he did?
‘I understand your husband has been hailed as a hero before?’ The nurse broke into Thea’s preoccupation with another encouraging smile. ‘Wasn’t he awarded the Distinguished Service Order?’
‘He was part of a patrol that was ambushed.’ Thea forced herself to acknowledge the question, her tongue feeling too thick for her mouth. ‘Ben took out at least twenty of the enemy before back-up arrived.’
‘I can believe it.’ The nurse smiled, shaking her head incredulously. ‘And his patrol mates?’
‘That’s all I know.’ Thea heaved her shoulders and fought back tears. She didn’t want to talk any more—didn’t want to tell the nurse that Ben’s patrol mate—her own brother Daniel—had died. Having already lost her parents when she was nine years old, Daniel had been all she’d had, and back then the pain of losing him had been raw. She hadn’t asked Ben exactly what had happened, and he had never spoken about it.
‘Can you just give me a few moments, please?’ Thea asked the nurse, grateful when she nodded her understanding and moved away to give Thea some space.
This was harder than she could have imagined. This one event had opened a floodgate of emotions and memories she’d kept locked away for almost two decades.
After their parents’ death it had been just her and Daniel, but whilst she’d stayed with foster families—twice being offered and turning down a permanent home—her brother, seven years older than her, had remained in the children’s home. No one had wanted a teenage boy. Hardly surprising that Daniel had joined the Army the day he’d turned eighteen.
The day Thea had turned eighteen she’d thanked her kindly foster family, packed her bag, and left to be reunited with her brother. Looking back, she realised that moving from the free accommodation within the Army barracks to renting a tiny flat in town for them both must have taken every penny Daniel had—and yet he’d never once made her feel anything other than welcome.
Three years later he’d been killed in that ambush and she’d gone to pieces, fallen in with the wrong crowd. It seemed doubly ironic that Ben—the one person who had tracked her down night after night and dragged her out of illegal warehouse raves, the one person who had stayed with her until the very worst of the grief had started to clear and she’d been able to see that being hell-bent on self-destruction wasn’t the way to go—should have walked out on her too, leaving her more alone than ever.
Of all the losses in her life, none had left her feeling as abandoned, as bereft, as when Ben had walked out on her. Except perhaps the loss of their baby. Ben’s baby. Thea pushed away a surge of nausea but couldn’t tear her mind away from the devastating memory.
When Ben, barely twenty-five years old, had offered her marriage Thea, just twenty-one herself, and looking for someone to cling to after Daniel’s death, had jumped at it. With hindsight, Ben’s subsequent walking out on her had been inevitable.
Daniel had once claimed that Ben had always appeared older than his years. Something to do with a regimented upbringing and a strict Army Colonel father, which had left Ben with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for everything and everyone around him.
And Ben had honoured the responsibility side of their marriage. His Captain’s income had given her security, money to fund her continued education and a home of her own—not that he’d ever returned to it after their wedding night. If he hadn’t done all that, where would she have ended up? Certainly not as one of the youngest doctors with the Air Ambulance, that was for sure.
She would have to keep reminding herself that that was why she was here. Not because she still cared about Ben, but because she owed him a great debt. However much he had hurt her.
Nothing could ever completely erase the pain of losing the people who had loved her the most, but the one consolation she’d always held on to was the fact that both her parents and her brother had been ripped from her against their will—they hadn’t abandoned her.
But Ben was different. He had chosen to leave her. Worse still, he had walked out on her the morning after their wedding. The morning after their wedding night—when she had thought they had made the ultimate connection.
She’d been wrong.
‘Dr Abrams?’ Thea hadn’t noticed the nurse return, and she swung around to meet her gentle gaze.
‘I’ll be over at the nurses’ station—just let me know when you’d like to go in to see your husband.’
‘Great,’ Thea croaked.
What the hell was she supposed to say to him?
Her mind whirled. This was a walk of shame and an oh-so-awkward morning-after conversation all rolled into one. And to make matters worse it was five years too late.
She squeezed her eyes shut, as if blocking the memories which suddenly threatened to engulf her. She had to stop being silly. No doubt the last time they’d been together—the awkward sex—was the least of Ben’s problems right now. Besides, nothing good could come of wallowing. She knew that from bitter experience. It might have taken her almost all of these five years to come to terms with what had happened, but she had finally managed to.
At least she’d thought she had. The moment she’d received that call—shocked that she was still noted as Ben’s next of kin—and seen him lying immobile in that bed, her emotions had been whipped into a confused mess.
Ben was hurt. She couldn’t ever forgive him for abandoning her emotionally when she’d needed him, but she had to concede that he hadn’t abandoned his responsibility to her. Now he needed her help, and she couldn’t ignore the sense of commitment that struck in her—half buried as it might be. She owed him loyalty for that, at least.
She stuffed the anger back down, feeling calmer as the genuine concern she felt for him slowly started to regain control over her errant emotions. Perhaps seeing Ben through this, helping him to recover, would be the closure she finally needed? She had no choice. It was proving impossible to put Major Ben Abrams into her past any other way.
Thea felt a tiny sliver of resolve harden in her chest—her strong, professional inner core finally peeking its head out again—and she clutched at it before it darted back into the shadows. Tilting up her head, she urged her leaden legs to move in the direction of the nurses’ station just as the nurse glanced up.
‘Dr Abrams? Are you ready to go in now?’
Thea jutted out her chin and fell back on all her training. It offered her a much needed confidence boost.
‘So...’ Thea injected as much authority into her tone as possible. ‘What’s the prognosis?’
It barely took a moment for the nurse to register the difference in her. She shot Thea a look more akin to one colleague looking at another, rather than at a patient’s next of kin.
‘Fortunately the ambush occurred not far from the camp, and they were able to get a team out quickly to secure the area and recover the casualties. Ben was med-evacced to the nearest main hospital, which was when his arm was reattached. The seven-hour operation went smoothly, but there will be follow-ups, of course.’
‘And what about regaining normal function?’ Thea asked. That sliver of resolve was starting to grow, lending Thea a new sense of determination.
‘Under ideal circumstances, with consistent physio and positive rehabilitation, Major Abrams can expect to regain up to eighty-five per cent of normal function.’
Eighty-five per cent of normal function? Ben was a surgeon.
Thea suppressed a shudder. How would he cope with never being able to operate again? What was more, these weren’t ideal circumstances.
She could see the concern in the nurse’s eyes.
‘I’m guessing that with Ben’s additional spinal injury that replantation prognosis is optimistic? What level of spinal injury is it?’
‘Honestly...? We simply don’t know at this stage.’ The nurse shook her head. ‘We know the bomb blast was significant, and that Major Abrams went into spinal shock. So there is spinal cord damage. But the swelling means we have no idea just how extensive the damage is.’
Thea nodded grimly, struggling to keep those icy fingers from curling their way around her heart again.
‘I appreciate you’re Air Ambulance,’ the nurse was saying, ‘but how much do you know about spinal injuries post-emergency rescue?’
‘These days it’s mainly assessing, securing and stabilising the patient to ensure no further damage during transport,’ Thea acknowledged. ‘As you say, I don’t usually get involved with the post-emergency rescue care. But before I joined the Air Ambulance I did do some work on the Keimen case.’
It was one of the things which had helped to propel her up the career ladder at such a young age. That and her driving need to block out the pain caused by Ben’s ultimate rejection.
‘The boy whose spinal cord was completely severed and who took his first steps some two years later?’
Thea dipped her head. The work had been cutting edge, and she wasn’t surprised that it had caught the nurse’s attention.
‘I understand they transplanted cells from the part of the brain involved in sending smell signals from the nose to the brain to stimulate the repair of his spinal cord?’
‘That’s right.’ Thea managed a smile despite herself. It had been inspiring to work on that case.
‘I see.’ The nurse nodded. ‘Then you’ll completely understand the difficulty at the moment with Major Abrams. As I said, there’s still too much swelling to get a clear MRI, and unfortunately we do know that the impact of the second IED and the Land Rover crushing him was significant.’
‘So it’s a waiting game,’ Thea stated as calmly as she could.
As unlikely as it sounded, she could only hope that the swelling was protecting his back and that any injury was as low down as possible. Usually, the lower it was, the better. The sacral nerves, perhaps, at worst the lumbar. But the higher the damage—the thoracic nerves or, God forbid, somewhere within the cervical vertebrae—the more chance Ben might be paralysed for life.
Thea squeezed her eyes shut at the thought. Ben was such a physical guy—not just as a soldier but in his personal life, too. She couldn’t imagine how he would react to such news, but she would need to start considering options just in case. He loved sports. All sports. Mountain biking, climbing, kayaking—even base jumping. And their fake honeymoon had been a skiing trip—not that they’d gone after he’d walked out.
Before that failed night Ben had promised to take her, after she’d told him that the highlight of her years in and out of care homes had been a charity group who’d taken a bunch of them to some rundown hostel every year.
Thea shook her head before the memory could get a grip. It was those caring, thoughtful moments from Ben which had meant that the same morning he’d walked out—the morning after they’d made love for the first time—Thea had been screwing up all her courage to suggest that one day they might possibly have more than just a fake marriage. Even if it took time.
Odd, the randomness of the memories which now popped into her head...
‘Yes, it’s a waiting game,’ the nurse confirmed sympathetically.
Thea blinked slowly. Ben didn’t know any of this yet. She stood for a moment, looking down the ward in silence. Life was precious,—so very precious. Why was it that people lost sight of that so easily—including her? Especially her.
Abruptly she stepped forward, as if to steel her body as well as her mind, and headed to the side room. As she got closer she could see the traction which stopped Ben from moving his neck and back, his legs, until they were able to assess the damage. He looked so uncharacteristically fragile that she felt her emotions start to bubble once again.
Ben—who had rejected her not once, but twice, leaving her broken. And yet it seemed entirely fitting that, as she stood by his bedside, across from the nurse as she checked his vitals, Ben chose that moment to wake up.
‘Thea? What are you doing here?’
He recognised her!
She blinked back tears as the nurse swung around to pour a beaker of fresh water and offer a straw for Ben to take a sip. He was clearly still groggy from the sedatives, and his brain was no doubt a mush of memories that he wouldn’t be able to process or even arrange in chronological order. But the fact that he knew who she was an encouraging start. And, despite the painful rasp, the unexpected warmth in his voice at seeing her had caught her off guard. But it had also made her feel more helpless than she’d ever felt before. It was as if the last five years had momentarily been erased.
She wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry...’ His voice cracked as he struggled to speak. ‘About Daniel...about the wedding...’
‘Shh...don’t talk. Just rest.’ She blinked furiously to stop the unwelcome tears from falling. Tears of fear, but also of relief.
So much for the concern that he might not remember anything. She should have known better—this was Ben Abrams they were dealing with. She should have known he would fight through.
‘I’m sorry about everything...’
His slurred words were barely clear, but she could decipher them.
‘I’ll protect you, Thea. I’ll never leave you again.’
It was absurd that her heart should lurch so unexpectedly. Thea chastised herself. It was the medication talking—she knew that—and even groggy he wasn’t saying the three words she had once longed to hear. Though no longer. There weren’t any words she wanted to hear from him any more.
Caught up in her thoughts, Thea realised too late that Ben was fighting to move his arm and take her hand. His injured arm. As if in slow motion she watched him struggle to raise his head, only for the restraints to stop him. His eyes slid to the damaged limb as it lay obstinately on the bed, refusing to obey the commands his brain was sending out.
This was happening all wrong. She needed to speak to him, explain things to him—not have him find out for himself...especially not like this. In horror, she saw Ben stare at the arm, then down to the other restraints around his pelvis and spine. Finally came the realisation of memory, and it chased long, furious shadows across his bruised face. His eyes met hers one final time.
‘Get her out of here. Now,’ he snarled, his eyes unexpectedly full of accusation and despair and loathing before he abruptly passed out again.
Did he still blame her for that night? That night when she’d barely been able to think straight with grief. That night she’d craved just a few moments of dark oblivion, to forget everything. An oblivion that only crazy, stupid sex with Ben might have momentarily brought.
Emotions rushed to crowd in on her, dense and suffocating. Her initial relief had been swallowed up in pain, anger, frustration, sympathy and misplaced love. They coursed around her body, leaving her weak and nauseous.
Pain gripped her heart. This wasn’t about her—she knew that—and yet she couldn’t help reliving her utter devastation of almost five years earlier. It wasn’t right that this should be the first time she’d seen him since he’d walked out. It wasn’t right that he should be lying there so battered and broken. And it wasn’t right that—even like this—he still had the power to hurt her.
A strangled sob escaped her throat before she could stop it. Her emotions were pushed to the limit. And suddenly all she could think about was the baby she had conceived as a result of that one incredible night. Their baby—although he’d never known. Almost five years on, she could still feel the pain which had torn at her heart the day she’d lost it.
Another sob threatened to break free and she choked it back just as Dr Fields came back into the room.
‘It’s just the sedative talking.’ He looked up at her sharply before softening his voice. ‘Think of Ben like any other patient, if it helps. Don’t let it get to you, Doctor.’
She bowed her head, unable to speak and yet unable to leave the room.
The surgeon continued. ‘His vitals are stable. Rest is the best thing to help his body to heal at this time, and I’ve no doubt that, despite his initial reaction, seeing you will help to calm any fears he has and help him to be patient until we know more.’
Thea wasn’t so sure. But when Ben woke up she’d finally have to tell him. Everything. Yes, she definitely needed closure.
