Still, they’d searched without turning up any leads. They’d been turned away again and again at barriers and checkpoints as martial law quickly slid into place. They were just two of thousands desperate for information.
They’d given Amelia and Joshua’s names and descriptions to rescue workers, who made notes with fatalistic compassion. Lisabeth’s silent tears had tracked paths through the grime that coated everything. They hadn’t even been allowed near the hotel, the epicenter. Instead they’d been shuttled to another site… this crumbling church-turned-hospital. Now nearly three days since the earthquake, he’d lost count of how many lives he’d saved—and lost.
He stepped back from his patient.
This man, at least, was alive. For the moment. He’d patched up a forty-seven-year-old father caught looting an overturned market vendor’s booth for untainted food. The guy had sprinted away with a burlap sack full of bananas and pineapples, slipped on loose gravel, and fallen into a pile of rotting fish—impaling his chest on a metal rod.
Aiden flexed his fingers. He’d caught shit for saving a thief when earthquake victims waited. This place was a lawless hell full of scared, desperate people, and no doubt it would only get worse. Even if his Hippocratic oath hadn’t already demanded he stitch up the man, Aiden still wouldn’t have been able to turn away from a father putting his family first, defending his children, something far too rare in his experience.
Backing away from the stretcher, he left the church’s social hall, which had been turned into an operating room. As he charged down the corridor, he kept his eyes off the frescoes and crosses. A helluva time to realize he hadn’t been in a church since his wedding, and then only because his wife had insisted on a service in her childhood chapel back here in the Bahamas.
Pushing through double doors, Aiden retreated to the chapel’s kitchen. Clean scrubs and gloves were stacked on a shelf beside the sink. Some military group called RED HORSE had dug latrines and drilled a fresh well for showers. Except on a day like this, he didn’t think there was a shower long enough to wash away the destruction.
He peeled off the bloodied gloves and pitched them in the trash, slap, slap.
“Aiden?” Lisabeth’s calm, soft voice cut through his thoughts. “Are you okay?”
“Of course, just recharging the brain.” He pulled off his glasses, wiped a spot of blood off the left lens with an alcohol wipe, and put them on again.
She studied him over her surgical mask, her brown eyes turning golden yellow with concern, too perceptive after sixteen years of marriage. He looked away quickly.
Her cool hand fell onto the back of his neck. “I know you better than that. You may look emotionless to the rest of the world, but I see deeper. I know how much you hold in.”
She pulled her mask down, revealing her regal face, which had stared back at him across the pillow every morning since he was twenty-two. “All of this is more than any one person can bear. We need to turn to each other. I need to talk to you.”
He held out his arms without hesitation. “I’m here for you.”
“I know that. But will you let me be here for you, love?” she said with a rare hint of British accent she’d picked up from her father. Her dad had moved to the Bahamas to teach history, met her mother, and stayed. Lisabeth had been their only child, their world, treasured.
The way life should be for a kid.
He turned back toward the sink. “If you want to help me, then ease up right now. I’m maxed out.”
She slid her lithe body between him in the basin. “You can’t always protect your sister. This is not your fault.”
“Do not go there,” he snapped. “Not. Now.”
He already knew how fallible he was.
“Okay.” She eased off in surrender, sweeping off her surgical cap and shaking free her short black curls. “Let’s just sit together for a minute quietly and catch our breath.”
Aiden reached for the antibacterial scrub. “No time for that now. People will die while we breathe in a paper bag. We’ll talk later.”
He was lying about that, but willing to do anything to get her to stop this line of questioning. Bullshit weakness. He shouldn’t have caved to Lisabeth about adopting a baby from her home country. If he’d held strong, they would be home in the States now. They would be safe.
And the child? Joshua? Aiden pivoted away from his wife before she could read the pain in his eyes. She needed so much more than he could give her. He still wasn’t sure why she stayed with him, but God help him, he couldn’t walk away.
He felt her standing behind him for at least five heartbeats before the soft sound of her footsteps faded. Sighing, he let his guard down and swayed, dead tired on his feet.
Through the cracked stained-glass window, he saw a military Humvee pulling up with armed guards in front and back. Most likely the restocking of medical supplies. The last convoy had been ambushed.
Typical shit that happened in situations like this. Looters. Medications would sell for big bucks in the outer regions, where help hadn’t yet reached. Hell, anything could happen at times like these… Everything from drug trafficking to human trafficking.
He had a 9 mm tucked under his scrubs and he knew how to use it. Yeah, he’d made use of one of those black-market scavengers right after the earthquake hit. It had cost him his Patek Philippe wristwatch to get a weapon. He hadn’t hesitated in making the exchange. No one would touch his wife.
And his sister? His… child?
Bile churned in his gut until his vision dimmed. He pushed down the abyss of memories always there waiting, threatening to swallow him. Turning back toward the sink, he became the surgeon again. No longer Aiden, husband, father, brother… son of a perverted criminal. For now, he would save lives.