“You should’ve asked him to stay for dinner,” Lissa added, slinging an arm around Julia’s shoulder.
At six feet, Lissa towered over Julia’s five-foot-five frame. Some of the men on staff teased the Aussie about her monstrous height, but truth was, everyone was a little bit in awe of Lissa. Now Lissa would definitely be Sebastian Stone’s type. A tall, gorgeous redhead with a great rack and endless legs?
Call her selfish, but Julia was kind of glad Sebastian had already left before Lissa came outside. No doubt the man would have been drooling all over his hiking boots.
“He had a flight to catch,” she replied as the two women headed inside.
“Pity. You could’ve benefited from a good shag.”
Julia burst out laughing. “Why are you so concerned with my sex life? Seriously, you talk about it a scary amount.”
“I just don’t like seeing my mates work themselves to the bone, love. I wish you’d let yourself have some fun.”
“I’ll have fun in three months.”
She neglected to mention how incredibly not fun the thought of heading home was, but because Doctors International demanded mandatory breaks between placements, she had no choice but to return to Boston when her time was up.
The nine-months-on, three-months-off cycle was liable to kill her. She’d joined D.I. the second she’d finished her residency, and she’d been with the organization for three years now. She was already dreading returning to Boston and twiddling her thumbs for twelve weeks while she waited for her next cycle to begin. She usually spent the time off taking shifts at a colleague’s private practice and counting the days until she could go overseas again.
“Anyway,” she added as they headed for the small nurses’ station past the waiting room, “you can have fun for the both of us.” She grinned. “That is, if you’re still planning on seducing Kev?”
“Definitely,” Lissa declared, her vivid green eyes shining with mischief. “The second you and Marcus graciously bestow me with a night off, I will be sneaking into Dr. Carlisle’s tent and finally putting us both out of our misery.”
“You have been dancing around each other for six months now. It’s about time.”
“Exactly.” Lissa pulled out the elastic restraining her hair and retied the curly red strands in a fresh ponytail. “I’ll see you later, love. Sally needs help with those vaccinations.”
Julia watched the nurse bounce off in her usual lively fashion. Earlier, when she’d told Sebastian that her colleagues were her family, she hadn’t been kidding. Lissa truly had become like a sister to her. Kevin was her teasing older brother. Marcus was the father figure she’d lacked her entire life. Helga, the midwife on staff, was the sweet grandmother who handed out endless words of wisdom.
With both her father and sister gone, Julia was all alone in the world. Sure, she still had her mother, but the two of them had never been close, and once Darlene moved to the West Coast a few years back, they’d completely lost touch. Not that Julia was beat-up over it—Darlene Davenport was a cold, self-absorbed woman without a single maternal bone in her body, and Julia was better off without her.
“Jules, I need you in here.”
Shifting her gaze, she caught sight of Nadir Patel poking his head out of an exam room. Along with Julia, Kevin and Marcus, Nadir was the fourth physician on staff. In his native India, he had run a thriving pediatrics practice, so he was responsible for dealing with the younger patients in Valero.
“Everything okay?” she called.
“I’m attempting to take a blood sample and our patient is a tad cranky. Perhaps you could lend a hand?”
A loud, petulant wail came from the exam room, telling Julia that Nadir’s patient was more than a tad cranky.
“Sure thing,” she called back.
Ten minutes later, she’d successfully assisted Nadir in drawing blood from the bawling two-year-old. Afterward, she went to check on her own patients, pleased to see that many of the ones who’d come in complaining of malaria-like symptoms were no longer showing signs of the parasite. She still couldn’t release them until the blood test results were in, but she was fairly confident they weren’t looking at a serious outbreak.
For the next three hours, she bustled around the clinic, doing everything from stitching up patients to changing bedpans. Her white coat might label her a doctor, but the clinic was so understaffed that the responsibility lines blurred significantly, and Julia often found herself being not just a doctor, but also a nurse, a surgeon, a janitor, a cook, a babysitter or any other job that cropped up.
It was no surprise that by the time nine o’clock rolled by she was ready to collapse. Because she was on the evening shift, she hadn’t eaten dinner with her colleagues. She’d scarfed down a can of cold beans during a break between patients, and her stomach rumbled with hunger by the time she shrugged out of her coat and left the clinic through the back doors.
The D.I. staff lived in heavy canvas tents behind the building. There were four large tents, two for the men, two for the women, which housed six cots each, and along with those, there were a few smaller tents for people with special circumstances; one for Simone, and the others were reserved for the married staff.
She strode to the tent she shared with Lissa and two other nurses—Kendra, a lovely African-American woman from Detroit, and Marie-Thérèse, a young French blonde right out of nursing school.
Kendra was passed out on one of the cots, so Julia tried to be quiet as she sank onto the edge of her cot. She dimmed the battery-operated lamp so as not to disturb the sleeping nurse, then opened one of the two drawers and pulled out her toiletry kit.
As tired as she was, she wanted a cool shower before bed to wash off the heat and grime of the day. There was a bathroom and shower area behind the tents, which they shared with the men. Not that it mattered much in such primitive conditions, but a schedule had been arranged to preserve the modesty of those who actually still cared about things like that. Julia was always far too exhausted to worry about who might see her naked.
She stood up with her toiletries in hand, then froze when the radio on the night stand began to crackle. Shooting a quick look at Kendra, she grabbed the radio and hurried out of the tent, ducking through the flap.
Outside, the small recreation area was deserted, and she headed for the long picnic-style tables where the staff usually congregated for meals.
“J-J-Julia … c-can … h-hear me?”
She could barely make out the tinny voice emerging from the speakers, but it sounded like Kevin’s. Her brows furrowed as it suddenly occurred to her that he still hadn’t come back.
As more static hissed out of the radio, she clicked the button and said, “Kevin, is that you?”
“J-Julia …”
She heard him more clearly this time. Relief swept through her. All right, at least he was still in one piece. He’d probably decided to spend the night in one of the villages rather than trek it back to the clinic in the dark.
“Kev, do you read me? Where are you?”
“I … village … Esperanza …”
Julia frowned. “Esperanza? Why did you go so far north?”
More static, followed by what sounded like a round of heavy coughing. “Things … h-here … bad.”
For the first time since she’d heard her colleague’s voice, a real pang of concern tugged at her gut. “Kev? What’s going on there?”
“I … t-treatment … don’t know … never seen it before.”
Unease circled her spine like a school of sharks. Her palms started