Charlotte Hawkes – The Army Doc's Secret Wife (страница 2)

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.’