The Army Doc's Christmas Angel. Annie O'Neil
again.
Fair dos to the woman, she hadn’t blinked once when he’d all but marched her to an empty room a few doors down from Adao’s and wheeled on her.
He counted to ten in time with her heartbeat before he’d steadied his own enough to speak.
“So.” He crossed his arms and tipped his head toward Adao’s room. “What was that all about?”
She gave her head a quick shake as if she didn’t understand.
He waited. His failsafe technique.
Far more effective than saying the myriad of things he could have:
“There’s only one person in charge in that room and it’s me.”
Not his style.
“Since when is a physio a psychiatrist?”
Ditto. He wasn’t into tearing people down, but he did like explanations for outbursts.
The seconds ticked past.
Naomi threw a quick look over her shoulder, stuffed her hands in the pockets of her Hope Hospital hoodie then said, “Okay. Fine. I just feel for the little man, you know?”
He loved the way she said “feel”—even if it was a verb he didn’t include in his own vocabulary. She said it as if the word had heft. Gravitas, even. As if it meant something.
What a thing to have all that emotion churning round in your chest. Way too much extra baggage to haul around the hospital if he wanted to do his job properly. If he professed to know one solitary thing about himself it was this: Finn Morgan did not do baggage.
Ha!
He coughed into his hand to hide a self-deprecating smirk.
If his ex-wife could read his thoughts, she would’ve pounced on them like a mouse on cheese.
One of the last things she’d said to him before he’d left his past where it belonged was that he was “Made of baggage.” And one day? “One day,” she’d said to him, “all of that baggage will tumble open and wreak havoc with the man you keep telling yourself you are.”
How about that for a “let’s keep it friendly” farewell.
On a good day he recalled her “prophesy” as tough love.
On bad days? On bad days he tried not to think of her at all.
He shifted his weight off his knee and brought his thoughts back to Adao and Naomi. “How do you ‘feel’ for him? Are you from Kambela?”
“No, I’m...” She started to say something then pressed her lips together and started again. “I know what it’s like to arrive somewhere new and feel...overwhelmed. Not know who to trust.”
“Oh, I see. So you’re the only one he can trust here, is that what you’re saying?”
Why was he being so confrontational? She was clearly doing what any employee of Hope Children’s Hospital should be doing: Holding the patient’s needs first and foremost in their mind. At all times.
Take it down a notch, man. She’s trying to do right by the kid.
He shrugged the tension out of his shoulders and adopted what he hoped was a less confrontational pose. “I see what you’re saying. The kid’s been through a lot. But the one person he’s got to trust is me.” He let it sink in a minute. He was the one who would be holding the scalpel tomorrow. He was the one who would be changing Adao’s life forever.
“You’re the one who will help him live. I’m the one who’s going to help him rebuild his life,” Naomi shot back.
Wow. The pronouncement was so loaded with barbs he could take personally he almost fell back a step. Good thing he didn’t take workplace slanging matches personally.
The surgery and recovery Adao required was a step-by-step process. And they weren’t anywhere near rehab. No point in popping on rose-colored glasses at this stage. Whether she liked it or not, Adao had a long road of recovery ahead of him, and the first step was the operating table. Finn’s operating table.
“You got the order right,” Finn said. “Life first.”
And that was the simple truth of the matter.
Naomi didn’t respond verbally. But the pursed lips followed by a swift inhalation told him all he needed to know. She knew the facts as well as she did. She just didn’t like them.
“C’mon.” He steered her, one hand pressed to the small of her back, toward Adao’s room. “All the basics should be taken care of right now. How ’bout you sit in while I talk Adao through his first twenty-four hours here at Hope?”
If she was surprised, Naomi masked it well. If she noticed he dropped his hand from her back about as quickly as he’d put it there, she made no sign of it either. As if the moment had never happened.
The tingling in his fingers spoke a different story. When he’d touched her? That flame in his core had tripled in size.
* * *
Leaning against the doorframe, having refused Finn’s invitation to join him, Naomi had to silently admit the truth.
She was impressed.
As cranky and gruff as Finn was with her...with Adao?...he was gentle, calm and capable of explaining some incredibly complicated facts in a way that didn’t patronize or confuse. When Adao spoke or asked questions, she recognized the same lilting accent she’d acquired when learning English from American missionaries or aid workers. Hers, of course, was softened by years in the UK and was now predominantly British English. His was still raw—lurching between the musical cadence of his mother tongue and wrestling with all the new English words.
“We can go over all of this again,” Finn was saying, “whenever you want. But the main thing is we’re here to help. Okay, little man? Anything you need?”
Adao shook his head now, his small head and shoulders propped up on the big white pillows. He was a collection of bandages with little bits of his brown skin peeking out at intervals. And his eyes...those big brown eyes rimmed with tears...spoke volumes.
Fear. Bewilderment. Loneliness.
He nodded at Finn but said nothing.
She got that.
The silence.
Admitting there was something or someone you missed so much you thought your heart might stop beating was as good as admitting a part of you wished it would. And despite the anxiety creasing his sweet little brow, she also saw fight in him. He wouldn’t be here otherwise.
She ached to go to him. Be by his side. Tell him all the things she wished she had been told when she’d arrived in the UK. That these were good people. And while they weren’t family...
Her eyes unexpectedly misted over as Finn and Adao did a big fist, little fist bump.
You couldn’t ever replace family. Could you?
Finn crossed to her.
“I think it’s time we let him get some rest.” Finn tipped his head toward the staffroom. “His minder from the charity is just getting some coffee. She’ll stay with him tonight. The chair in the corner converts to a bed, so...we’d best leave him to settle in quietly.” He gave her a weighted look. “As you suggested.”
Nothing like having your own words come back to bite you in the bum.
He was right, of course. And Adao was in the best possible place. But leaving the little boy was tugging at a double-wide door to her heart she’d long jammed shut. It felt wrong.
“Now,” Finn mouthed, when the woman from the charity appeared from round the corner and Naomi’s gaze inevitably skidded back in Finn’s