“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.
Elliot had always been superbly fit. A natural athlete, he’d played football in high school and rugby at Stanford. His body had always been strong, his legs long and powerful, his chest heavily muscled. But now her practiced eye noted substantially more hard-packed muscle and steely sinew on that frame of long bones and the wide, deep chest.
According to Sarah he’d worked for three months on a shrimp boat in Alaska during the year he’d spent traveling after Candy’s funeral. It had been hard, dangerous work under miserably cold conditions. Just what he’d needed to take his mind off his loss. Kate hadn’t seen much of him after he’d returned to finish medical school.
In fact, she’d seen him only once before in the last ten years—and that was because she’d dropped in one Sunday morning on her way to the hospital to leave a birthday present for Helena, only to find him sitting at the breakfast table. He hadn’t seemed any happier to see her than she’d been to see him—which was not at all.
Not then. Not now.
She gave some thought to excusing herself, before she remembered that she was in control of the choices she made in this lifetime, not Elliot Hunter—or anyone else. So…she would finish her coffee, then check on her patients. Just as she’d planned, she reminded herself as she took a sip of the black-as-pitch coffee.
“Heard any more from triage?” Petra asked as Elliot took a bottle of juice from the machine.
“Last I heard we’re still on alert.” He twisted the top off the bottle and tossed it away before taking a drink. “Almost forgot—Hans was looking for you.”
Petra brightened. “He was? Why?”