The Greek Doctor's Rescue
Auteur
Meredith Webber
Lezers
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Hoofdstukken
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CHAPTER ONE
ERIREKA appeared as a tiny speck of darkest emerald green set in a jewel-bright sea. Coral reefs beneath the ocean’s surface painted swirls of jade and cobalt in the blue-green water, while the shallows, washing over brilliant white coral sand, were pale, translucent aqua.
The speck grew larger as the plane descended, appearing as a steep and rugged peak, the lower slopes clad with jungle, giving the impression a thick green blanket had been wrapped around the barren rock.
To warm it?
Nikos Conias, muscles and sinews tense with the frustration from the delays he’d experienced, and the seemingly interminable journey to the island, shook his head at the fanciful notion. The equatorial air of Erireka would do all the warming necessary. This was a place that knew no winter, and, until comparatively recent times, had known no other hardships. Off the tourist route, the Erirekans had been able to ignore the outside world for far longer than the rest of their neighbours in the South Pacific.
Was that what he was doing here? Ignoring the outside world? The real world? Ellie Reardon had once accused him of using his work in war zones and famine-stricken areas as an escape, though she’d denied the same applied to herself…
The thought of seeing Ellie again lightened his dark mood—though only momentarily as he remembered he always looked forward to meeting up with her, then within minutes of the reunion they’d be arguing and he’d recall just what a stubborn, self-willed, obdurate and infuriating woman she was.
Ellie…
A huff of self-mocking laughter escaped his lips, as he remembered, also, how close he’d come to making a fool of himself over her.
But that was in the past, and this time she was right. His trip to Erireka was definitely an escape—two months of freedom from decisions and family responsibilities.
The memories of the past month—the month since his father’s death—pressed heavily on his shoulders, but he refused to think about the situation he’d left behind, turning his mind deliberately to what he knew of the island nation.
Although missionaries had found their way to the shores, building a church and starting a school, for the most part the island and its people had remained untouched. With nothing of value for early traders and with an encircling reef that had kept whaling and black-birding ships at bay, Erireka had lived on as an anachronism in the modern world until well into the twentieth century, when some desperate gambler had landed on its shores and by sheer chance had discovered deposits of platinum so rich the largest conglomerates in the world had fought for the rights to mine it.
The winning company had blasted an opening in the protective reef, dredged out a harbour, built a wharf and started mining.
They’d sent ore to Canada on bulk carriers that sailed under the Blue Funnel flag—the Blue Funnel flag designed by his father and his father’s best friend, Nikos Pippos, back when the pair had first gone into commercial shipping. The part of Nik’s brain that refused to forget business reminded him of this minor complication, and a little of his pent-up anger over the delays, and frustration over the travel arrangements, released itself in a long sigh.
Get a grip! he told himself. You’ve got two months before you have to think about the shipping company, so put it right out of your head. Concentrate on Erireka. Think about what you know or have learnt about the place—things that might help the mission.
It took a huge mental effort, but he refocused determinedly. With the mine had come modernisation. Pre-fabricated housing had replaced the traditional village bures and the Erirekans had learnt new words—electricity, democracy, supermarket, television.
Nik held his breath as the plane skirted precariously close to the base of the mountain and zeroed in on the narrow airstrip. Electricity, supermarkets and television had all been embraced by the island people, but the democracy idea hadn’t been adopted as enthusiastically. The mining company had pulled out when the fighting had escalated from occasional raids by so-called guerrillas to full-scale war between two different factions, both claiming sovereignty over the land that held the ore. Local leaders had tried to run the mine themselves, but without contacts in the outside world their venture had failed, causing more anger among the islanders.
The plane dropped suddenly, bounced twice as its wheels connected with the ground, then taxied along the runway, the encroaching jungle so close Nik wondered how long it would be before nature reclaimed the airfield. As they rolled to a halt, armed figures in military fatigues swarmed out of the small terminal building.
‘I hope these are the good guys,’ Nik said, and the pilot, who had completed his shut-down and walked back into the cabin, grinned at him.
‘Doesn’t make much difference!’ he said. ‘Depends who’s on top. This month’s good guys, might be the bad guys next month. It’s one of those stupid situations where everyone loses.’
He paused then added, ‘Especially the kids. If it weren’t for the kids, I wouldn’t come near the place, but since the island went modern, and the men took to fighting instead of fishing and tending their plots and livestock, the kids’d starve to death without the food I bring in.’
He unlatched the cabin door and pushed it outwards, releasing the steps at the same time.
‘Sounds like we might be really needed here.’ Jack Lee, an elderly handyman who’d attached himself to Nik five years earlier, had straightened out of his seat and moved towards the door, making the comment to Nik as he passed.
Nik stood up and stretched, wondering if he’d ever get the kinks out of his back after a four-hour flight in what must be one of the most ancient aircraft still flying. Who’d ever heard of canvas seats in a plane?
‘Much as I wouldn’t wish ill on anyone, man, woman or child,’ he grumbled, ‘I’d hate to think we weren’t needed and I’d endured that flight for nothing! Orville and Wilbur would have flown in greater comfort.’
‘Orville and Wilbur didn’t have to ditch the regular seating to pack in extra supplies,’ the pilot, returning to the cabin with a couple of soldiers, reminded him. ‘These guys will help you unload and see you safely to the camp.’
He flashed a wolfish smile as he sidled closer to Nik.
‘At least, that’s where they say they’ll take you,’ he murmured.
The taller of the two soldiers approached. A well-built man, with healthily shining skin and crinkly black hair turning into dreadlocks, he introduced himself as Arwon.
‘Your other workers are already settled at the camp,’ he said, soothing the vague unease the pilot’s words had caused. ‘They are using the cabins brought in by the mining company. The mining company stole our ore but they left some useful things. Even food.’
He laughed as if delighted by the hasty departure of the mining personnel when civil unrest had erupted across the island, before turning to Jack and asking which cases should be unloaded first.
‘Those over there. And treat them all as breakable,’ Jack suggested. ‘There are sensitive medical instruments in them.’
Nik found his own gear—duffelbag, backpack, a case of operating equipment and his personal medical bag. He carried them down the steps, the humid tropical air bringing sweat out across his skin as he looked around, and finally felt the familiar sizzle of excitement about what might lie ahead—a feeling that had been lacking during his delayed preparations.
A soldier used his rifle to beckon him towards a battered old truck that appeared to be the only vehicle at the airfield. Nik crossed towards him. Should he dump his bags into the back of it? Leave them there while he went back to the plane to help with the unloading?
The soldiers, close to, looked more like kids playing dressing up, their ‘uniforms’ bits and pieces of anything vaguely military, though the flowered sarong-type garment one of the youths was wearing in place of trousers didn’t quite fit with the very authentic-looking rifle he was carrying.
Deciding he had to trust someone, Nik slung his gear onto the tray of the vehicle and headed back towards the plane, passing the pilot, Jack and the first two soldiers all labouring under cases of supplies and equipment.
Forty minutes later the plane was unloaded. The pilot shook hands, wished them luck, repeated instructions given earlier for contacting him by radio, then, promising to return in a fortnight, he strode back towards his aircraft.
‘That fellow’s in too much of a hurry to get out of here for me to feel entirely comfortable,’ Jack muttered, as the young soldier boys all piled into the cabin of the truck, leaving Nik and Jack with no alternative but to hoist themselves into the back with the gear.
‘I’ll find us something soft to sit on,’ Nik said. ‘From the look of this vehicle, the roads aren’t up to much.’
He dragged his duffelbag up against the cabin so he could rest his back, shuffling around to make room for Jack.
‘I wonder if the others had to travel this way, and, if so, what they made of it,’ Jack said, as the engine roared and the vehicle took off with a series of bounds before settling into what seemed, given the state of the roads, to be a maniacal pace.
‘Most of them have worked in post-war zones in other developing countries and know not to expect too much,’ Nik reminded him, but Jack’s remark made him wonder.
When he’d originally put together a medical team to visit Erireka, he’d intended being on the island before any of the volunteers arrived, but his father’s death had caused an unavoidable delay so the other doctor, four nurses, a cook and two support workers who made up the team had been on the island for a fortnight.
It wasn’t that he was worried about them. He’d worked with Frank Butler, the doctor, in Afghanistan, and was confident the older man would have taken the reins. Or he’d have made out he was the boss, while Ellie organised everyone to within an inch of their lives.
Nik had first met Ellie when she’d been working for Care Australia in Afghanistan and he’d been with UNESCO. Tall and slim, with an upright carriage, she’d been dressed in a traditional Muslim burka—a long shapeless faded blue garment that fell from her shoulders to her toes, though, instead of the usual Afghan head covering with its latticed window, she’d worn a headscarf wound around her head.
He’d taken her for an Afghan woman, so had been surprised to hear her clear, crisp voice berating a hapless fellow worker in unaccented English. Maybe a little accented! He’d soon picked up on some Australianisms in her speech, in particular her casual and frequent use of the Aussie adjective ‘bloody’, which she favoured indiscriminately so things could be either ‘bloody wonderful’ or ‘bloody horrific’.
He’d been attracted to her, but something in the way she’d treated him—friendly and courteous, when she hadn’t been arguing, but somehow aloof—had held him back from declaring this interest. Later, when he’d heard her story, he’d understood she’d built a protective blockade around her emotional self, repelling any advances.
So they’d become friends instead of lovers and though he still felt twinges of disappointment when he thought of her, he looked forward to catching up with her again. And to seeing the reaction of the locals when her customary quiet dignity switched to white-hot anger at perceived injustices. Yes, Ellie would have things organised!
The support workers and two of the nurses had also been part of another team he’d put together, when his idea for KidCare had first become a reality. As the only medical team on the ground in Erireka, they would, of course, be treating adults as well, but as a paediatrician his primary focus would always be the mental and physical welfare of children. Although he had volunteered the team to help out at the refugee camp, the prime aim of this mission was to set up a clinic in the town, mainly to care for mothers and children—and to train local people to carry on with the work once the team departed.
Safe childbirth procedures, good nutrition for pregnant women and children, immunisation, preventing contamination of water supplies—these things and more could be left in the hands of trained local staff who didn’t need to be doctors or nurses to follow through with a programme, which would continue to be funded by KidCare.
Probably continue to be funded by KidCare…
‘I wonder how the kids have been coping.’ Jack must have been reading his mind!
‘The same way they always cope,’ Nik replied. ‘Taking one day at a time. Blotting out the ugly stuff as much as they can. Remember Johnnie?’
Jack nodded, and Nik wondered if either of them would ever forget the two-year-old they’d found clinging to his dead mother’s body in a burnt-out vehicle wreck outside Kabul—one small survivor among fourteen people who’d been travelling in the old army Jeep when it had run off the narrow road and plunged down a stony hillside into a ravine. From the state of the bodies, Johnnie had been keeping vigil beside his mother for at least three days—his own survival a miracle that had raised the spirits of all the volunteers working in the area.
But that was another country—a barren, dusty place with air that seemed to drag the life force out of you. Erireka burgeoned with growth, the jungle crowding the road along which they travelled, the air they breathed hot and damp.
Perfect breeding ground for infection…
The truck jolted along a narrow, shadowy road, which, like the airfield, appeared to be losing its battle with the encroaching wilderness, then suddenly they were in sunlight, driving along the top of the great open scar the mining company had left in the ground.
The road dipped around the side of the open-cut mine, then turned in through what must once have been a high, wire-mesh security fence. Now the wire-mesh sagged and posts had been flattened, so it was nothing more than another ugliness in a place of great natural beauty.
They passed a row of shipping containers, with children playing around them. Accommodation? Nik shuddered at the thought—in this heat and humidity it would be like living in an oven.
The truck pulled up, the young soldiers spilled out of the cabin, yelling orders or admonitions at each other and the children who’d run behind the truck. Standing up cautiously, because the kinks had settled back into his spine, Nik stretched, then dropped down to the ground.
They’d stopped outside a building that must originally have been the mine manager’s residence. It was a substantial size and had a small office attached to one side. The fact that the soldiers were unloading the truck and stacking boxes on the veranda of the house provided another clue, but no one issued forth to greet the new arrivals.
Nik found Arwon, who seemed to be in charge.
‘Is this where the other volunteers are? Frank Butler? The nurses?’
‘Frank Butler go,’ Arwon told him. ‘Plane came in and took him off.’
‘“Plane came and took him off”?’ Nik repeated. It didn’t make any sense at all. ‘But we came in on the plane—on the first trip it’s made since it brought the others in two weeks ago.’
‘Small plane,’ Arwon said. ‘Frank Butler very sick.’
‘From holes made by bullets?’ Jack murmured, but Arwon either didn’t hear or chose to ignore him.
‘The nurse woman makes orders,’ Arwon continued. ‘She’s set up hospital over there.’
He pointed towards a long, low building which had, Nik guessed, been single men’s quarters for the expatriate miners who’d been flown in and out on nine-day rosters.
Puzzled by the ‘set up hospital’ scenario—KidCare’s primary aim was to provide services to children and Nik had intended working from the abandoned hospital in the village—Nik left Jack to supervise the unloading and headed towards the building. All the doors and windows were open—no doubt the island had experienced power problems since the departure of the mining company, and air-conditioning was a thing of the past.
He took the two steps up into the building in one stride, landing in a corridor that ran along the right-hand side. Peering into the first room on the left, he saw a woman nursing a baby; the next room had two men, one young and clad mostly in bandages, the other so ancient and still Nik wondered if he might be dead. In the third room he found someone he knew.
‘Paul! What’s going on here? What happened to Frank? And why this hospital set-up?’
The solidly built nurse patted the patient he’d been tending reassuringly on the hand, then left the room, taking Nik’s arm and leading him out as well.
‘Ah, Nik. Welcome to Erireka! Let’s talk in the shade outside. The fans we’ve managed to scavenge stir the air but I don’t think it makes much difference to the actual temperature. At least outside you sometimes get a breeze, or, with luck, it might rain on you.’
They’d reached the far end of the building by now, and Paul steered Nik out the door to where some plastic chairs and tables had been set up in the deep shadow of a spreading poinciana tree.
Nik sat, though every fibre in his being wanted to be inside, seeing patients, doing what he knew best—practising medicine. He’d had enough administrative hassles in the last few weeks to last him a lifetime, and had thought coming to Erireka would at least get him away from that aspect of his life.
‘Frank Butler had a heart attack. Fortunately, a doctor he knew had taken delivery of a new light aircraft in the US and was flying it out to Australia. He’d arranged to call in and see Frank in Erireka and by sheer good fortune arrived the same day. We stabilised Frank, and his mate, Noel, flew him to Port Moresby. Haven’t heard how he’s doing, but the radio only works when it wants to, so that’s not surprising.’
‘When was this?’
Paul scratched his head.
‘A week—ten days? Not long after we arrived. It’s all a bit of a blur. For a start, the small hospital in town was burnt to the ground when fighting broke out again a few days before we arrived. According to the locals, the rebels did it, but who knows? The local nurse who’d carried on running it after the mining company left was then drafted into the so-called official army, which is why I wonder if perhaps they were responsible for the fire.’
‘So there are no medical facilities in the town?’ Nik was wondering just how outdated his information was.
‘There’s very little town,’ Paul told him. ‘It can’t have been big to begin with—hospital, school, church, government buildings and a meeting hall, all built by the mining company, plus a medley of shops. All the buildings the company put up were set ablaze on the same night, presumably to cleanse the island of the scourge of the invaders.’
‘So who’s in charge?’
‘Who knows?’ Paul shrugged. ‘We deal with a chap called Arwon—you would have met him at the airfield. He belongs to the group who control this area, but how far his power extends, I’ve no idea.’
Nik nodded. Although, from his information, the fighting in Erireka had ceased well before the team’s arrival, and an interim government had been set up, he’d been in similar situations often enough to know you accepted the protection of whoever was offering it.
‘So, you’ve set up a hospital here,’ he said to Paul. ‘Was it necessary?’
‘I wish it hadn’t been,’ Paul responded. ‘But there’s been an outbreak of chickenpox, not only in the camp but in other villages, and people have been coming to us—treating us as they would have the local hospital.’
‘So we can have patients from both sides of the fighting in the same room?’ Nik smiled as he spoke, but it was a grim effort. It wasn’t such an unusual situation. Even in refugee camps, he’d seen three- and four-year-old boys carrying on the war of their fathers.
‘I suppose we do, but I’ve no idea what the fighting’s about, let alone which side is which. We had a baby brought in yesterday—raging fever, so dehydrated she looked skeletal—and when Ellie asked the mother why she hadn’t come earlier, she said because her husband wouldn’t let her. We were on the side of their enemies.’
Nik sighed. He’d seen it too often to be surprised, but couldn’t fail to be affected.
‘The baby?’ he asked.
‘The baby died this morning. Ellie worked on her all night, feeding her sips of water—’
‘Feeding her sips of water? Why not IV fluids? All the necessary equipment was included in the original supplies.’
‘She was flat, Nik, barely six months old, and covered with chickenpox vesicles, most of them infected. We couldn’t find a usable vein and we didn’t have an intraosseous needle to put in an IO line. She could swallow, and Ellie fed her fluid, squirting it into her mouth.’
‘Where’s Ellie now?’
Paul shrugged.
‘Burying the baby, I’d say.’
‘Burying the baby? Ellie’s burying the baby? And you let her? You and the rest of the crew?’
Nik shot out of the chair, then realised he had no idea where to look for her, and slumped back into it, only half hearing—but fully understanding—Paul’s explanation.
‘What could we do? You know Ellie once she takes on something. She took on that baby and lost the battle to save its life. Do you think any of us could have stopped her doing what she’s doing now?’
‘Bloody stubborn woman!’ Nik swore, unconsciously choosing her favourite emphasis. ‘No, of course you couldn’t. But of all people, she’s the last one who should be burying babies.’
Even as he said it, he recognised the mistake, betraying a confidence he knew Ellie had entrusted only to him, but fortunately Paul’s attention was diverted by a small boy kicking a football at his head, and the moment passed.
But Nik’s heart was heavy as he imagined how Ellie must be feeling, and he stood up again, determined to find her and at least offer his physical presence as support.
‘Here she is now,’ Paul said, and Nik realised he’d been looking in the wrong direction. Turning, he saw a tall, slim, upright woman striding towards him, but this figure, clad in khaki shorts and a faded singlet top, didn’t look at all like the Ellie he’d known before. It took him a moment to realise why. The long plait of dark hair that had always swung down the middle of her back was gone—in fact, all her hair was gone, except for a dark sheen of very new growth that clung like a tight cap to a very shapely head.
Fascinated by this change in her, he stood and watched her walk towards him, seeing her face with its thin nose and wide full mouth come into focus, then her steady grey eyes, somehow appearing larger with the lack of hair, met his and he felt a shifting in his chest, as if his heart had somehow expanded and was now squeezing against his lungs, making breathing difficult.
‘You look like hell!’ she greeted him, holding out her hand to shake his, then tilting her head to one side while she examined him more closely. ‘Means you’ll fit right in. Has Paul explained?’
Nik grasped her hand and held it for way too long, but something he didn’t understand was happening inside him. It couldn’t be attraction—he’d set that aside years ago. On top of which, she was almost totally bald, she’d just told him he look like hell, and the one rule he’d tried to be strict about with KidCare missions was the ‘no fraternisation among the team’ one.
She’d retrieved her hand, though not immediately, and was standing about two feet in front of him, hands on hips, huge grey eyes only slightly reddened by recent tears. The short-cropped hair revealed two neatly positioned ears, with, unbelievably, slightly pointed tips, so she looked for all the world like a wide-eyed elf. A very tall, wide-eyed elf.
Ellie? Elfin?
No, it wasn’t the elfin look that startled him, but something else—something within…
Shock jolted through his body—the shock of recognition, not of the person, but of the ‘something else’ he couldn’t understand, let alone explain.
‘It’s so good to have you here—such a relief,’ she was saying. Could she not feel what was happening between them? ‘We may complain about your bossiness, but if ever a place needed a good strong boss…’
Her voice tailed off, as if she’d guessed he wasn’t really listening. Or maybe the waves of emotion his body had to be generating had finally penetrated her.
She frowned, shook her head, then said softly, just for him, smiling grey eyes emphasising the message, ‘It’s good to have you here.’
Then, before he could react—or even dismiss all the bits of mushy delight dissolving his brain cells—she turned to Paul.
‘Did you finish the baths? The old man said you were in Room Five when Nik arrived. Were you working up or down?’
Maybe he’d imagined the smile in her eyes.
‘Working up, but now you’re here I’ll go and finish them. Frank appointed you his deputy, so it’s up to you to show the boss around.’ Paul grinned at her as he stood up, then he walked back into the ‘hospital’ building.
Nik was alone with her.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked gently, and Nik knew she was asking about his reaction to his father’s death. She’d known about it—been in touch—sent flowers even—to him, not the funeral or the family. Only Ellie would have considered such a tribute could be equally as meaningful to a man as it would have been to a woman.
She’d sent them as a friend to a friend, he reminded himself.
Vlaka! He had to get past this weirdness—get his mind on the job. Or at least pretend…
He smiled at her.
‘You just told me how I look, so what do you think?’
‘I think you’ve been through hell. I know how much your father meant to you.’
She stepped towards him and put her arms around him, hugging him tightly.
As a friend, his mind said, but he held her close for a minute anyway.
‘You didn’t need to come,’ she reminded him, breaking away with a light kiss on his cheek. ‘We could have managed without a doctor for a time and you’d have found a replacement eventually. It’s not as if—’
‘I needed to come,’ Nik interrupted, before she could tell him no one was indispensable. Words he’d used to her often enough when she’d pushed herself to the limits of her endurance and he’d had to order her to rest.
She looked at him for a moment, the clear grey of her eyes darkening as if with memories, then she nodded.
‘Of course you did. And now you’re here, we’d better get on with it. How much has Paul told you?’
‘He explained about the hospital being burnt down and the locals coming here for treatment. Also the chickenpox outbreak. I’d got the message to bring chickenpox vaccine and did, although it seemed a strange request.’
Ellie chuckled.
‘I thought it would, but we need it to protect the children not yet affected, and, if there’s enough to go around, the adult population as well.’
She hesitated, turning to look out over the ugly quarry the mining company had left behind.
‘Did he mention the increase in the number of refugees in the camp?’
‘An increase in the number of refugees? We’re on an island with a population of, what, twenty thousand, tops? And we’ve more refugees?’
As she turned back towards him, he saw the clean lines of her profile, and the way the new growth of hair feathered around her face. Renewed desire coiled within him, fired by memories of the feel of her body against his, and he felt a mad urge to taste the generous fullness of her lips…
Lips that were explaining, answering his questions…
‘There’s more fighting, Nik, and you know as well as I do that where there’s fighting there will always be people left homeless and children orphaned. I don’t have exact numbers, because more people trickle in each day. We’re preparing meals for eighty, and can stretch it to one hundred if necessary. Of these more than half are children, and of the children about three-quarters are orphans, or temporary orphans—their parent or parents fighting on one side or the other, or their families deciding to send them here for safety.’
Nik felt a deep sadness well inside him, dampening desire. He understood only too well what she was telling him. He knew villages in Africa where the children made the long walk to the nearest town every evening so they could sleep without fear of being abducted by guerrillas and forced to fight their friends or family.
Yet something didn’t fit…
‘But these people have lived in peace for ever,’ he protested. ‘I understood the departure of the mining company left some people destitute, hence the camp, but the fighting—why is it continuing?’
‘We don’t know,’ Ellie said bluntly, but her voice was distracted, and she was looking not at him but at some point beyond his right shoulder. Surprised by her inattention, he half turned to see if there was something going on.
She was watching two figures in military garb—possibly two of the party from the truck—herding a group of children away from one of the shipping containers.
As the kids didn’t seem to be in any danger, Nik turned back to his colleague. Her eyes were mesmerising, set, as they were, behind thick sooty lashes and framed by neatly arched eyebrows. He remembered those same eyes, all he had seen of her scarf-wrapped face, studying him intently—sizing him up—the first time they’d met. He’d been mesmerised then, too, for all the good it had done him.
But this time something was different about Ellie—something more than her lack of hair. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew it was connected to the jolt he’d felt earlier. To the coil of desire…
Refusing to give his reactions any further consideration, he forced his mind back to the conversation and found the bit that had jarred as she’d said it.
‘Eighty meals—we can manage that?’
She nodded, still not looking at him.
‘The mining company must have departed in a hurry because they left well-stocked pantries. I imagine their freezers were also stacked with goodies, but the power supply isn’t what you’d call reliable, so all that remained in them was a stinking mess. But we do have a good supply of tinned fruit and vegetables, enough to feed this lot for months, plus flour, sugar—all the staples. As for the kitchens, well, Ben’s in his element.’
‘So, you’ve about eighty refugees living here in the camp?’ Nik was trying to get things straight in his head, but he was also hoping, eventually, to divert Ellie’s full attention back to himself.
‘No, no.’ She answered easily, but her eyes were still on the action beyond him. He could have been a lamppost for all the notice she was taking of him. Though that was nothing new! ‘Probably more like a hundred and fifty. But many of them are self-sufficient. They’re living here because their homes are no longer safe. The fighters in the hills come down and take the youths away to join them—even the so-called good guys conscript by force. Boys as young as ten have been taken, so families shift in here.’
‘And you don’t feed them? Surely if the mining company left all that food and we brought in more—I know we did—we can spare something for all of them?’
Ellie shook her head, momentarily diverted from the soldiers’ behaviour to look directly at Nik as she explained.
‘It’s their choice, not ours. Most of these families live on the far side of the mine site, on land that is still in its natural state. They’ve built their own shelters, brought their livestock with them, have planted crops and go back to their villages during the day to tend whatever they have growing back there.’
One part of his brain took it all in, while the other studied the woman in front of him, wondering if jet-lag could have the effect of stimulating his libido, which would explain why his feelings of attraction to a tall, elfin creature with beautiful, beautiful eyes had suddenly come flooding back.
He’d got over that, and had become a good friend—and had been accepted as her friend, mainly, he guessed, because he didn’t come on to her.
She was talking about the children now—something to do with schooling—but he’d stopped listening to concentrate on his own problem.
He closed his eyes, thinking that not seeing this particular woman might straighten things out in his head, and when he opened them again, he didn’t see her.
She was gone.
