From the Beginning

  That Amanda hadn’t shed so much as one tear at the funeral.

  Where was that woman now? she wondered hysterically. She wanted her back. Living like this, her emotions an open, aching wound, was too hard.

  Jack continued to rub her back soothingly as she sought to pull herself together. It took a few minutes, but when she’d finally managed it, he drew back and asked quietly, “Do you feel any better?”

  Was he kidding? Her head throbbed, her eyes burned and her mouth felt as if something had crawled inside it and died. How could she possibly be feeling better when she’d never felt worse? But she nodded as she reached across his desk for a tissue. There was only so much humiliation a woman could stand in one day.

  He watched silently as she wiped her face and blew her nose, struggling for the composure that was still a little out of reach. Finally he said, “You know I’m right. If one of your patients came in like this, you’d tell her the same things I’m telling you.”

  “I can’t, Jack.”

  “You mean, you won’t. But this time, you don’t have a choice. I run this place and I say you go.”

  She studied him with narrowed eyes for a minute, then shrugged even as unease crawled up her spine. “There are other clinics.”

  “And you won’t get a job at any of them. Not with this organization or any other.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “You’d be surprised what I can do.” He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “You’re on the edge, Amanda. No reputable clinic will take on a doctor who is so obviously going to blow. And I won’t give you a recommendation—not right now.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I care about you.” He ignored her snort of derision. “Because you’ve been here too long.”

  She folded her arms over her chest and glared at him accusingly. “You’ve been here as long as I have.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But I know when to draw the line—for myself and others. You don’t. You never have. It’s what makes you such an incredible doctor, but it’s also what brought you to this point. You’re used up, Mandy.”

  The hell of it was that he was right. She knew it, had recognized the signs for a while now but had ignored them. Because to admit to them meant she’d have to go home. She’d have to face what she’d been running from since Gabrielle’s pediatrician had delivered her death sentence.

  She didn’t know if she was strong enough to do it.

  “Do I have a choice, Dr. Alexander?” Her voice was stilted, her hands ice-cold.

  “Mandy.” He sighed. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  She eyed him steadily. “Oh, I think it does.”

  He stared at her for long moments, before shaking his head sadly. “Then no, you don’t have a choice. The supply truck comes in four days. You can ride back to town with Josh and catch a flight from there.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “FOUR DAYS?” HER WORLD imploded, even as she told herself that there had to be a mistake. No way could Jack find someone to replace her on such short notice. “You expect me to be ready to leave Africa in four days?”

  “Yes.” His tone was implacable.

  “That’s not enough time.”

  “To pack one suitcase of clothes?”

  “To deal with my patients. To find another—”

  “The patients aren’t your problem anymore—and neither is my staffing shortage. In fact, I’m taking you off rotation, effective immediately.”

  “Jack! You can’t.”

  He crossed the room, scribbled something on the schedule that was always hanging by the door. “It’s already done.”

  “Who will take care of my patients? You can’t do everything—”

  “That’s no longer your problem.”

  It was as if he’d slapped her, her entire body recoiling with pain and betrayal. “We’ve been friends too long for you to treat me like this. How can you do it?”

  “Because we are friends.” He crossed the room and took her hand in his own, ignoring her sudden stiffness. “Because I want to work with you for another fifteen years, at least.” He reached up and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her left ear. “This isn’t forever, kid. Only until you get yourself rested and back in fighting form. I can’t hold the fort indefinitely, you know.”

  But that was exactly what she was afraid of—that he would have to hold the fort alone, forever. It was why she’d worked her way past exhaustion, beyond burnout. Because she feared if she ever left this place, she would never come back. Not just here, to Somalia, but Haiti or Cambodia. Bosnia or Sierra Leone. Chechnya, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine. So many places. So much pain.

  “Well, that’s it, then.” Anger and fear came through in her voice, despite her struggle to regain her professionalism. Amanda didn’t mind if Jack saw her anger, but she would be humiliated if he knew how afraid she was to return to the easy, civilized life most people took for granted.

  “For now. Go back to your room and lie down. Get some rest and I’ll check on you later.” He paused, shot her a guilty look. “Three days ago, I emailed—”

  She didn’t wait for him to finish. Didn’t want to hear him admit that he’d ratted her out to the administrators of the program. Instead, she turned and left, walking briskly through the clinic, despite the calls of nurses and patients. They weren’t her responsibility anymore.

  The thought cut like a knife.

  So, what happened now? she wondered, dazed. What on earth was she supposed to do?

  It was crazy, really, how completely unprepared she was for life away from here. How could an intelligent woman of thirty-five be so frightened of living a normal life? And how was she supposed to get past the gut-clenching, palm-dampening fear?

  She headed outside, toward the tents pitched to the left of the clinic. She’d lived in them for almost a year, never leaving this stretch of desert since she’d arrived, fresh from Mozambique, ten months before.

  She’d run here, one more stop in the headlong flight that kept her from thinking about—

  Amanda shut the thought down before it could form. She wasn’t ready to go there yet. She wasn’t strong enough to examine her feelings about Gabby. She’d buried them for one year, six months and twenty-three days. She could bury them for a few more days or weeks or months—whatever it took for her to feel strong enough to deal with them.

  But even as she mentally repeated the too-familiar sentiment, she knew it was a lie. She would never be strong enough to accept Gabby’s death. She’d failed her daughter, and that was not something she could get over.

  Shaking again, Amanda paused for a moment and looked around the camp and surrounding desert that were as familiar to her as her own face. It was hot, the sun high in the sky as it roasted this part of East Africa. Drought and famine, AIDS and Ebola, tuberculosis and cholera, more diseases than she could count had taken their toll, year after year, until some weeks bodies actually piled up in the villages, waiting to be buried or burned.

  But despite everything that had happened here in the past three decades, Africa was beautiful. The landscape was empty, barren, but there was an elegance in its stark simplicity. Endless miles of dirt and sand and desert brush as far as the eye could see, the sun reflecting brightly off the hard, arid ground. It appealed to something primitive inside of her, this country with its harsh truths and frightening realities.

  There was beauty in its complete and utter devastation.

  At a loss for what else to do—knowing only that she couldn’t go back to her tent and stare at the four canvas walls without losing what was left of her control—she began to walk. Without her patients, without her job, it wasn’t as if there was anything else to do out here but wander for a while, saying goodbye to this continent that had such a huge impact on her life. If things went as she was afraid they would, then it didn’t matter what Jack said. She was done here.

  She walked for a long time—through the villag
e and beyond, oblivious to the heat that was so much a part of Somalia. It was harvest time for the meager crops that this poverty- and drought-stricken nation could produce, and the men were few. Between the wars, the famine and the harvest, the village was almost a ghost town during the day. Many of the children were in the fields with their mothers; the others were in the hospital or at the government-run school that was built on the east side of the village. It was here that they learned math and history and how to read and speak English—at least until they had to give up their education to help feed the family.

  She shook her head. Somalia had so many languages. Somali and Arabic were the two main ones, but each village in the line sweeping through the nation’s interior had a variation of its own. Her village, Massalu, spoke Chimbalazi, but most of the children who lived here were almost illiterate in the language of their parents. The language of their blood.

  Her fatigue—a soul-deep weariness—caught up with her, and Amanda slumped onto a large rock. Her thinking rock. She’d used it so much in the past ten months that she could swear she’d worn a flat spot on it. Or maybe she wasn’t the only one who came to this desolate stretch of land to brood. God knew, there was more than enough to think about…

  The sound of a faraway engine caught her attention and she looked up in time to see a Learjet coming into view. She watched it for a few minutes, until it passed over her, but she grew alarmed when the plane slowed as it approached the village.

  Who could it be? Only the top government “officials”—Samatru and his crew—had access to planes like that. But even they usually arrived by car. Fuel and airplanes were hard to come by and saved for very special occasions.

  The plane coasted in for a landing on the dusty road that ran about a thousand yards in front of the hospital, and though it was officially no longer her business, she couldn’t help worrying. Nor could she stop herself from running toward it as she tried to figure out what new threat the clinic was in for.

  Despite the famine ravaging the country, it had been almost impossible for their organization, For the Children, to gain access to Somalia—the government frowned on outside interference. Even reporters and tourists had very restricted access to the small besieged nation—which made running a clinic here that much more difficult.

  Add in the fact that the government had decided the doctors were ripe for exploitation, and it was a miracle that the hospital managed to hold on to any supplies to treat their patients.

  As she ran, Amanda wondered what official had gotten a sudden “concern” about their presence here? And how much money it would take for his “attack of conscience” to be mollified.

  How many people had to die so that he could wear his expensive suits and fly in his little plane? How many children had to starve?

  Concern whipped through her, making her run faster despite the heat and the exhaustion. Making her incautious, when her life and the lives of the other doctors and patients at the clinic often depended on keeping a delicate balance with the current administration.

  But what did she have to live for?

  Gabby was gone.

  Simon, the only man she had ever loved, had disappeared from her life, for good this time.

  She had shut out everyone who cared about her until she was alone, isolated.

  And now that Jack had stripped her of the only reason she had to get up in the morning, maybe she was better off dead.

  Despair swamped her—black and overwhelming—but her long strides didn’t falter. Jack was a good doctor and a hell of an administrator, but even after ten years in these war-ravaged conditions, he had no tolerance for the way the country—and its corrupt officials—worked. If he lost his temper, he could bring everything they’d accomplished down around their heads.

  Not that she blamed him. Every dollar he paid the rulers was one less to buy medicine and food for the people who desperately needed it. All the money he’d paid through the years meant days and weeks off the lives of Mabulu and all the other boys and girls like him.

  But as Amanda approached and got a glimpse through the small crowd that had gathered when the plane landed, she realized that this was no government official. Dressed in jeans and a clean, white Aerosmith T-shirt, the newcomer stuck out like a sore thumb among the impoverished villagers who had come to observe the landing.

  The sun glinted off too-long wheat-blond hair, but it wasn’t until she caught sight of the worn leather backpack over the visitor’s shoulder that the truth occurred to her.

  She stopped breathing, shock holding her lungs and rib cage immobile.

  Still, she told herself that she was wrong. It couldn’t be him.

  He was in Haiti, putting together a documentary about earthquake victims.

  In Colombia, investigating the cartels and their negative influence on the indigenous population.

  In Cambodia, uncovering shady CIA deals. Anywhere and everywhere but here, where she’d been safe from thinking about him, insulated against her past by the immediacy of the present.

  But the build was right—tall and rangy with a lean, long-legged frame that was deceptively strong. The shaggy blond hair worn too long—more from carelessness than fashion. Even the T-shirt advertised his favorite band.

  Her breath caught in her throat, but her brain refused to accept what her eyes were seeing. That Simon was here—here—when years ago he’d decided that he’d had enough of Africa’s endless suffering.

  But if it was him, what was he doing here? There had been no coup, no newly reported human-rights violations, no recent massacres. Only the ongoing famine that was neither glamorous nor seedy enough to attract the Western press here.

  To attract Simon here.

  For a moment, Jack’s guilty expression flashed into her mind, his warning that he had contacted someone. She’d ignored him at the time, but now, as her stomach constricted, she wished she’d let him have his say. At least then she would have been prepared.

  Even as the idea formed in her mind, she told herself that she was being paranoid. There was no way Simon would fly this far to see her after the way they’d parted. She’d completely ignored his existence—and his pleas—in the days after they’d buried their daughter.

  The argument was a good one and she’d almost convinced herself that she was mistaken, that her mind was playing tricks on her. She’d even managed to suppress the instinctive, involuntary response that took over her body as it had every single time she’d seen him in the past ten years.

  Then the man turned and everything within her stilled. It was him. She was sure of it, especially when his bright green eyes met hers as he scanned the crowd, looking for something. Looking for someone. At first, he looked right past her, but then he froze. His gaze returned to her. Clung.

  Amanda wanted to look away, but she was caught. Ensnared. A rabbit in a trap. And she’d do anything to escape. Because he was the one person she didn’t want to see her like this, the one person in the whole damn world guaranteed to make the soul-crushing pain she felt even worse.

  SHE LOOKED LIKE HELL. Jack hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d emailed three days before. Even from this distance, Simon could see that she was much too thin. Tall and naturally slender, Amanda always lost weight when she was on location, refusing to take time to eat when so many people needed her help. Refusing to take any more of the essential supplies than she absolutely needed to stay alive.

  “I can eat when I’m home,” she used to tell him. “I’ll curl up on the couch with a loaded pizza and a gallon of ice cream and eat it all.”

  “But you never go home,” he would answer. “It’s been two years.”

  She’d smile at him, her smoky eyes twinkling silver in the moonlight. “Soon,” she’d promise. “I just need to do a few more things here.”

  It hadn’t taken him long to realize that soon almost never came. There was always one more country, one more disaster, one more person who needed her. In that, she was very much like him—except, Am
anda had spent the past decade of her life getting her hands dirty, while he’d done exactly the opposite.

  But he couldn’t do that anymore, couldn’t hide behind his camera lens and maintain his objectivity. Not with her. Not when she so obviously needed him. For a man who’d built a career around making sure no one got too close—even his lovers or, God forgive him, his daughter—it was a frightening state of affairs.

  But what else could he have done? He hadn’t been able to walk away, not after reading those few heart-stopping lines.

  Close to a breakdown, Jack had written. Strung out. Making herself sick.

  He had been in an open-air market in the middle of the Andes when he’d gotten the message. Jack wasn’t prone to exaggeration, so Simon had literally forgotten everything but Amanda, had dropped his story and his deadline without a qualm, to get here before it was too late.

  In the end, it had taken him three hellish days of travel by everything from donkey cart to airplane to reach this small, secluded village. But looking at Amanda now, almost as frail and sick as the patients who waited in a long line outside the clinic’s canvas doors, he couldn’t help thinking that he was already way too late.

  Weaving his way through the curious onlookers, he walked toward her—his gaze still glued to hers. But the closer he got, the more concerned he became. Her beautiful eyes—usually so filled with life—were bruised and sunken. Her cheekbones were razor sharp, her skin pale and waxy despite the strong African sun. And whatever small amount of color she’d had in her face had drained the moment she realized he was here for her.

  She looked like hell. Anger began to churn inside him. How had she gotten herself into such a state? And why had Jack waited so long to tell him about it?

  He stopped a couple of feet in front of her, reached a hand out to stroke her cheek and maybe push one of her short corkscrew curls out of her face. But she flinched away before he could touch her, freezing him in midmotion.