Paula Riggs - Born A Hero

A young female aide wheeling an elderly woman toward the elevator smiled shyly as Kate approached. “Are you on your way home at last, Doctor?” she asked with a charming diffidence Kate had never noticed in the States.

“Soon,” she replied, returning the smile. Provided she could find the energy to summon Arturo from wherever it was he went while she worked, then make it to the car.

When she’d been a resident, she’d become accustomed to thirty-hour shifts. The last four years of semiregular hours had spoiled her, she decided, as she pushed open the door to the lounge.

Expecting to find the stress-relieving, often ribald bantering and chatter that seemed to be a universal characteristic of medical types everywhere, she was surprised to find the lounge all but empty.

Its only occupant was a trim, freckled-faced woman in pale blue scrubs, who glanced up from fixing herself a cup of tea when Kate entered. Petra McGee had sparkling sky-blue eyes, short crinkly curls the color of sun-splashed copper and, despite her tiny five-feet-nothing frame, energy enough for two people.

According to the bios they’d exchanged during a shared—and hasty—lunch earlier, the elfin registered nurse had joined Medics Without Limits three years ago after a painful divorce. She’d been working with Elliot for half that time. Kate had been tortured by curiosity about the depth of their relationship, then furious that she’d spent even a moment wondering about that part of his life.

As far as anyone knew, she and Elliot had met for the first time on the night she arrived. Whenever they chanced to meet—at a hasty orientation meeting held by Dr. Andretti early this morning, in the intensive care unit later and in the corridor outside the OR suites—he’d simply nodded without speaking. Since that was exactly what she had demanded of him, she failed to understand why it irritated her no end when he ignored her.

“Mind some company?” Kate asked when Petra hailed her with a grin.

“Lordy, no,” the nurse replied in the rapid-fire, clipped accent of a Brooklyn, New York, native. “Actually, I was terrified I was going to be stuck with my own company.”

“I didn’t realize your team was working tonight,” Kate commented as she filled a paper cup with black coffee.

“Our shift officially ended an hour ago, but triage got a heads up from the field that there’s a strong possibility of another victim or two. The four of us voted to stay so the local people could get home to see their families.”

“Any idea how many are still trapped?” Kate asked, resting the cup on the sofa’s arm.

Petra offered her a somber glance. “No one seems to know. The last report I saw on the tube said there might have been upwards of thirty people already at work on the floors above the restaurant. The way those floors pancaked down…” Her voice trailed off. Both knew how grim the odds were against surviving crushing injuries.

Terrorism was an obscenity, Kate thought with a rush of pure cold anger. Those who practiced it were no better than the most heinous murderer, no matter how tightly they wrapped themselves in the mantle of patriotism.

“Any leads on who planted the device?” she asked. King Marcus had addressed his subjects—and the international community—at noon today, but she’d been in surgery and hadn’t been able to listen in.

“Not that I’ve heard, but I haven’t had much time to check the news, either.”

“Arturo, my chauffeur, told me this morning the king had ordered increased security at the airport and the cruise line terminal.”

“I heard the same thing. It helps some, but every time I walk into the hotel, I can’t help thinking how easy it would be to put a bomb in a suitcase and just leave it by one of the pillars.”

A cold shiver ran down Kate’s spine. Don’t think about that, she told herself sternly as she shifted her gaze to the TV screen. Though the sound was muted, the images spoke for themselves. Not since Oklahoma City had so many media types gathered in one small space. Like a swarm of hungry termites, Kate thought, taking tiny sips of the still-steaming coffee.

Immediately after the explosion, city police had cordoned off a two-block radius, allowing only emergency personnel, government officials and a pool of media types beyond ropes of yellow tape very much like the kind used in the States.

The high-profile buzzards had arrived, she thought with a grimace as she watched a glossy blond female reporter in trendy safari togs speaking earnestly into the camera. In the distance the mound of rubble that used to be a modern, four-story office building provided an obscene contrast to the journalist’s bright-eyed freshness.

Cold-hearted bloodsuckers, Kate thought, averting her gaze.

After kicking off her surgical clogs, she carefully set her cup on the table in front of her, then bent forward to massage one cramped instep with fingers so tired they were nearly numb.

“I read someplace that the world always looks bleaker when you have sore feet,” she muttered as she dug her fingers into the painful knots.

“You should get some of these Wellies,” Petra suggested, dropping her gaze to the calf-length, green rubber boots she and the rest of the Medics Without Limits favored. “They have nice thick soles and good arch support.”

“Aha, and here I thought you Without Limits types were going for the rugged, outdoorsy look.”

Petra laughed, but there was a hint of somberness in her eyes. “Actually, Elliot started wearing them in Kosovo because he got sick and tired of cleaning the blood off his leather boots after a surgical marathon.”

Kate grimaced. “When were you in Kosovo?”

“During the worst of it, in fact. The working conditions were abysmal, to say the least. One wing of the hospital where we set up shop took a direct hit the day before we arrived. They’d rigged up a gas-powered generator that kept running out of fuel, usually at the worst possible times. Late one night Elliot had to shanghai a couple of ambulatory patients to hold flashlights so we could finish.”

Petra turned to fill a cup with hot water from one of the urns. “On our last day there, our X-ray tech was killed only a few feet away from me.” Her face tightened as she dunked the teabag in the cup. “His name was Eugene, but we called him Bubba because he had this grits-and-molasses Alabama accent. His wife had just had twins, and he’d been scheduled to leave for home the next day.”

Kate’s stomach clenched. She’d seen the horrific images of war and carnage on TV and felt sympathy for the victims. What she hadn’t done—what she knew she could never do—was face that kind of horror herself.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured truthfully. “Was he a close friend?”

Petra nodded sadly. “We’d been together for nearly three years. The kind of work we do tends to bond a team together very much like a family.” Her lips curved. “Sometimes I think I’m closer to Hans and Elliot than I am to my own brothers.”

Kate was lifting the cup to her mouth when the door opened and Elliot walked in, wearing rumpled scrubs and a grumpy expression. His hair was a tousled thatch of silver and wheat, and his jaw was shadowed with a day’s growth of beard. He looked tough and bitter and unapproachable.

Kate had almost gotten used to the way her heart leaped whenever she happened to run into him. The rush of heat to her cheeks was annoying.

The tired smile he offered Petra disappeared the instant he caught sight of Kate. Instead of greeting him, she mimicked the curt nods he’d given her earlier. His jaw clenched briefly.

After they exchanged greetings, Elliot turned his back and concentrated on the soft-drinks machine. Though she wanted to look away, Kate found herself riveted by the ripple of muscles beneath the cotton scrubs.