* * *
He’d noticed it. Even though she didn’t realize.
But, then, he noticed everything about her.
That fleeting moment, that wave of fear that had seemed to pass over her eyes.
What did it mean? Or had he just imagined it?
He couldn’t trust anything he felt around Violet Connelly. His instincts seemed to be completely wrong around her. She messed with his mind. Ten minutes in Violet’s company and all rational thought went out the window.
He’d thought she’d be happy that he’d assigned her a specific task she could get her teeth into. Something she could lead and tackle on her own. Giving her the midwifery role had seemed to make sense.
He’d been watching her. She was wonderful around babies and children. She seemed to come into her own. She excelled at dealing with them. This job should have been perfect for her.
So why the fear in her eyes?
But something else was bothering him. Something else was eating at his stomach.
Was that really the reason he’d given her this task?
Or had he just wanted to avoid it himself?
Evan had no reason to avoid children or babies. But he did have a reason to avoid pregnant women.
Helen. Sawyer’s wife.
She’d died of an ectopic pregnancy. No one had known she was pregnant. Not Sawyer, and apparently not Helen.
And seeing pregnant women immediately brought Helen to mind.
It hadn’t been as though she’d looked pregnant—not as if a glance at a pregnant woman reminded him directly of Helen.
No, it just reminded him of what should have been Helen.
And that’s what made him sick to his stomach.
He’d spent the past few years thinking that Sawyer must have known his wife was pregnant. They both must have known and kept it secret, otherwise Helen would never have been allowed to go on the mission in the first place.
But that was an excuse. And it was a poor excuse.
It was so easy to push the blame onto Sawyer and not to take any responsibility himself. But he had been the team leader. He had been the one responsible for the health and wellbeing of everyone in his team. And Helen had told him she wasn’t feeling one hundred percent.
It had been a fleeting comment. An unremarkable conversation. And if Evan hadn’t been so caught up in the details of the mission he might have stopped for a minute to consider what she’d said.
He could have asked her a few questions about what was wrong, and to specify exactly how she was feeling. And he knew, deep down, that at some point there was a tiny chance he might have asked her if there was a possibility she was pregnant.
And even though Helen hadn’t known herself, it might have given her pause to stop and think and consider the possibility. It might have made her stop for a second and do a pregnancy test.
Bottom line. It might have saved her life.
The ectopic pregnancy had been a horrible inevitability for Helen. But where it occurred wasn’t.
If she’d been in Atlanta when she’d had the symptoms, she would have gone to the nearest hospital and undergone surgery. And lived.
But none of that had happened. And the sight of Helen lying in her husband’s arms, with the life slowing but surely seeping out of her, had haunted Evan for the past six years.
He had been the team leader. Helen had been his responsibility.
He’d never shared this with anyone. And he never would. Least of all with a member of Sawyer’s family.
He watched as the team assembled around him, Violet among them, talking quietly with some of the voluntary workers.
Another team he was responsible for. Another team whose lives were in his hands.
He could do this. He could. He just had to focus and keep his mind on the job.
He had to keep his eyes and ears open to the health and wellbeing of his team. Which meant he had to get to the bottom of what was wrong with Violet. She was his responsibility—whether she liked it or not. And he couldn’t ignore the fact that something could be going on with her. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he missed something in a team member again.
He watched for a few seconds. Violet was fidgeting with her flower-covered notebook, picking away at the edges as she spoke to someone. Every few moments she would bite her lip. She put her notebook down and her fingers went automatically first to her ear then to a strand of hair that she wound round and round one of her fingers.
The person she was talking to seemed oblivious to Violet’s nerves. They were talking quickly, gesturing with their hands, only taking notice of her occasional nods.
Was that how he’d been with Helen? So wrapped up in other things that he hadn’t looked at what had been right in front of him, or listened to her words?
It made him feel sick to his stomach.
Violet looked over and for a second those pale green eyes met his. Every muscle in his body tightened but she instantly averted her gaze, reluctant to let him read anything at all.
It only made him more determined.
He couldn’t decide if he’d given her the midwifery role because he wanted to avoid it himself or whether he’d given it to her to show how much he valued her as a part of the team. But that was irrelevant.
What was important was what happened next. What he did next.
And that was the one thing that he could control.
CHAPTER SEVEN
EVAN WAS IN a good place. They’d immunized over one hundred people today, the majority
of them children.
It was a good outcome for the team, giving them the boost that they’d needed. The past few days had been tough on them. Several visits to villages had been unproductive, with hours spent going from house to house, even though most people were still refusing to be vaccinated. It was heartbreaking. All around them there were signs of the destructiveness of polio and its lasting effects. Some elderly villagers, struggling for every breath, their chest muscles virtually paralyzed by polio. The first sign of an infection would wipe them out.
Children of various ages with one weak, wasted limb affecting their mobility—and parents still wouldn’t immunize their other children.
It didn’t help that the one thing he’d dreaded had finally happened. One of the few families that had been vaccinated had actually given vaccine-associated paralytic polio to one of their distant adult cousins. It was a rare complication, usually caused by an adult changing the nappy of a recently vaccinated child and picking up the disease due to poor hand washing. But it was a blow the team didn’t need.
Evan felt as if he were banging his head on a brick wall. Things had to be better than this.
And now they were here. This village had welcomed them with open arms. People had queued for hours to be vaccinated, bringing family members of all ages. And the community workers had come back with a list of houses to visit where people were unable to come to the clinic but still wanted to be vaccinated.
It didn’t matter that it was more time-consuming and difficult. Evan didn’t care. He would happily walk around every home in the village individually if that’s what it took to get everyone vaccinated.
Time was marching on. It had been a long day—they’d been here nearly ten hours and they still had an hour’s drive back home.
He approached one of the final houses, a lightweight structure made of a mixture of wood, bricks and mud. Jaja, his community worker, gave him a smile as they approached the house. “This lady has four children she wants vaccinated. She would have come to the clinic but one of her sons, Dumkata, has been very sick these past few days.”