She nodded, her face now serious, all traces of teasing gone. ‘Right, I give them a swing in the weigh sling and I measure them on this.’ She rolled out a bamboo mat and placed the measuring stick next to it.
‘Any children needing supplemental feeding I’ll keep here with their mothers. Between Hin, Sung and me, we’ll have it sorted.’ She washed her hands with quick-dry antibacterial solution. ‘You’d better skedaddle and see the men.’
She’d just dismissed him. He tried to suppress the rising indignation sweeping through him. He should be pleased she was competent and he could get on with what he needed to do. Hell, he wasn’t there to hold her hand.
He shook off the mantle of reluctance to leave her and headed over to greet the men.
* * *
Three hours later, drenched in sweat, and fighting visions of sliding into a clear, cool stream and lying under a waterfall, Bec examined her fiftieth child. She knew the stats about child malnutrition in Vietnam, and this village unfortunately skewed the average upwards.
And yet some children thrived. Were the families better off? Or did they just do things differently? She scribbled a note to herself. This was the sort of stuff she had to find out. She planned to question Sung closely when they went on their village vegetable garden tour. She had to maximise every moment of working there.
Her snap decision to come to the village was turning out to be the right thing after all. She hugged the knowledge to herself. It wasn’t like she and Tom were spending any real time together anyway.
Tom had happily left her alone to run this clinic while he did his work. A plan rolled out in her head. They’d spend their days here involved in their own projects. She could work and learn, and still stick to her rule of keeping a safe distance. It was a win-win situation.
She glanced up to the next person in line. A woman stepped forward, her face impassive, carrying a toddler who lay limp and listless in her arms.
Dehydration. Bec’s radar kicked in the moment she saw the sunken eyes in the child’s small face. ‘Hin, I need you. Can you, please, ask this mother how long her child has been sick and what the symptoms are?’
The interpreter, an easygoing young man in his twenties, spoke rapidly to the mother who responded and looked beseechingly at Bec as she sank to the ground, laying the child on the mat.
Bec knew why. This little girl was desperately ill. And she’d stake a bet the mother was pretty sick, too.
‘She says the child has water coming from her bottom and she has been vomiting,’ Hin succinctly translated.
‘Has anyone else in the family been sick?’
More rapid-fire dialect spun around Bec. She desperately wished she could understand the words. But she could understand the emotions behind the words.
‘This woman has been sick today. She has been vomiting and has had pains in her legs.’
‘Tell her we can help.’ Diarrhoea and vomiting were pretty common out here but Bec was worried by the complaint about pains in the legs.
Hin relayed Bec’s words and then listened. ‘She says many are sick. Some are here in the line, others are too sick to walk.’
Bec closed her eyes for a moment and breathed out a long, slow breath. She touched the woman’s shoulder reassuringly while her mind raced. ‘Right. Hin, you go with Sung and talk to everyone who’s waiting. Find out who has these symptoms and put those people together in another line.
‘Ask if they have relatives who are sick as well. Draw a mud map of the village and mark on it every household that is sick. I’ll be back in a minute.’ She grabbed her hat and ran out of the hut toward the men’s clinic. So much for working on her own.
‘Tom!’ She stood outside the hut and called, not wanting to barge into the clinic and undo the trust he’d built up.
He appeared almost immediately, smiling when he saw her. ‘Finished already?’
She shook her head, ignoring the feeling in her gut his smile created. ‘No, I think I’m just starting. I need your help.’
He raised his brows. ‘Really? How so?’
She took no notice of the gentle jibe—she knew her independence and distance could sometimes grate in a team situation. ‘I have a woman and child with severe dehydration.’
‘That’s pretty common, Bec. You’ll need to mix up the oral rehydration solution.’ A perplexed look crossed his face. ‘I’m pretty sure I unpacked those boxes and stacked them in the women’s hut when we arrived. Do you want me to look?’
Again, his thoughtfulness surprised her. She wasn’t used to men acting like this. Not toward her, anyway. ‘Thanks, but I know where the sachets are. My real concern is that this woman is complaining of diarrhoea, vomiting and leg cramps.’
His head snapped up, his dark eyes meeting hers. ‘Does anyone else have the symptoms?’
She nodded slowly, knowing exactly where his mind was going. To the same conclusion she’d drawn. ‘I’ve got Hin and Sung questioning the villagers. It sounds like cholera, doesn’t it?’
‘Damn it!’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘Cholera’s so contagious. It races through a community like wildfire. We need to set up a separate clinic, isolate all the affected people, start treatment and find the source.’
‘As I have the first few patients in my hut, I guess we make that the isolation ward.’ All thoughts of barrier nursing came pouring back into her head. ‘Do we have chlorine to kill the bacterium?’
Worry lines scored his forehead. ‘We do, but we also need it to wash their clothes. A laundry will have to be set up … I need to speak with the village elders.’
‘Sung and I will get started on the makeshift quarantine area. I need to get the electrolyte solution into that child. I’ll see you the moment you’re back from meeting with the elders.’ Please, don’t be too long.
‘Good plan. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
Did he read minds? ‘Great.’ She turned to go.
‘Bec.’ One syllable and yet it held both caution and concern.
She spun back to see his face filled with a mixture of authoritative control and unease.
‘Only drink the bottled water from our supply and only eat the food that Sung has prepared. I don’t need you getting sick.’
A rush of emotion swirled inside her, battering the protective guard she’d erected long ago, frightening her.
Keep a safe distance.
She took in a deep breath and reinforced her guard. His caring tone, the worried look on his face didn’t indicate concern for her. It was concern for the village. He needed all the help he could get to deal with this epidemic.
She tossed her head and flashed him her best ‘don’t boss me’ look, similar to the one she’d used in Hanoi. The one that hid her true feelings. ‘The same goes for you, too, Tom. I don’t want to waste rehydration solution on someone who should have known better.’
She ran back to the clinic, thankful that the huge job in front of her wouldn’t allow any time to think about a broad-shouldered, dark-haired doctor with deep worry lines between his chocolate-brown eyes. Lines she longed to smooth out.
* * *
‘Tom, I’m sorry, but I think we need another IV.’
He glanced up from examining a woman whose eerie calm worried him intensely. She clung to life by a thread. In three days they hadn’t lost a patient and he didn’t want this woman to be their first.
Bec stood next to him, petite and