ICY NUMBNESS HAD been sneaking around Alethea ‘Thea’ Abrams’ body from the moment she’d received the phone call. The drive to the hospital was a blur but somehow she must have done it. And now the chill finally took a grip of her shaking limbs, forcing her to stop and lean on the door frame as if to draw strength, as she stared down the military wing’s ward and into the side room where Ben Abrams, her husband, lay—still asleep—in a bed.
‘I understand you’ve been fully briefed?’ The nurse consulted her notes. ‘And that you’re also a civilian doctor, working for the Air Ambulance Emergency Response Unit? That’ll certainly help a lot. And Dr Fields has prepared you for the chance that Major Abrams... Ben...might not recognise you?’
Thea managed a stiff nod, surreptitiously sliding cold fingers around the doorjamb. Yes, they had warned her it was a possibility. Words of caution she often had to say to other people, and yet it had still been a shock to hear them said to her. It all felt surreal—like some kind of nightmare. The broken body in that bed was so far removed from the robust, spirited, dynamic Ben she knew.
If she had ever really known him.
‘I understand how difficult this is but you need to be ready. Your reaction could influence how Ben approaches his recovery.’ The nurse was kind but firm.
‘I understand.’ Miraculously, Thea made it sound as if she did, despite the fact that the professional, medical side of her brain appeared to have completely deserted her.
‘Are you ready to go over there?’
Thea watched as Dr Fields moved around Ben’s bed. There was another man there, an older man who looked vaguely familiar, but Thea couldn’t place him. He wasn’t interfering, and she couldn’t tell whether he was overseeing or not. An Army specialist perhaps? Not anyone she knew.
Not trusting herself to speak, Thea forced out a couple more jerky nods. The nurse seemed unconvinced.
‘Listen, it’s a lot to take in all at once. Do you need a few more moments? We can go to the visitors’ room—it’s just down the corridor.’
Thea shook her head, unable to drag her gaze from Ben, who looked so utterly alien to her, and yet so painfully familiar at the same time.
‘Just run me through it again.’ Her voice was so hoarse she couldn’t even recognise it herself. ‘Ben was caught in a roadside bomb?’
‘Yes—well, two, actually. His vehicle was the fourth in a convoy, and the IED was detonated as the second four-by-four passed. Ben was quite severely injured in the initial blast, severing his arm at the level of the proximal humerus, and he has since undergone successful micro-vascular replantation. However, even with that level of injury we understand he ran to the front vehicles to pull out the rest of his patrol.’
The utter admiration in the military nurse’s voice was evident, but Thea just stared at the uncharacteristically still figure in the bed, a maelstrom swirling in her head.
Dammit, Ben—you nearly died. Why do you always have to play the hero?
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