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“Those weren’t miracles, just damned good surgery. If they were miracles I could have cured the old man’s cancer and given My Lei back what a misplaced gene took away from her.”
Suddenly they heard the unmistakable sound of squealing tires followed instantly by a crash. “Oh, God, an accident!” Leah started running.
Adam was faster. He passed her within the first ten feet. The school came into view. Leah stopped at the gate for a moment to catch her breath, but Adam just kept running toward the sound of children’s screams. “What happened?” she asked a Vietnamese nun on her knees in the roadway, her simple white habit torn and bloodstained, her arms around two crying, mudsplattered little girls.
“Our bus. It crashed,” she said in French-accented English. She started to cry, just like the little girls clinging to her sleeves. “There.” She pointed toward the road just out of sight beyond the high brick wall surrounding the school. “It is in the ditch. We came for help. Sister Grace is hurt. Hurry, please. The other children are still inside.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” the nun replied. “I only hurt my shoulder.”
Leah dropped to her knees, ran her hands over the little girls’ arms and legs. “Can they tell you where they hurt?”
“They are okay. Just cuts and bruises. Go to the others. I’ll take care of them.” She began to talk soothingly to the little girls in Vietnamese.
“Send someone to the hospital. Tell them what’s happened!” Leah yelled over her shoulder and started running again. “Tell everybody to come.”
The orphanage bus, an old Volkswagen van, had gone nose first into a marshy ditch in front of the school. It had already sunk halfway into the mud by the time Leah arrived. Sister Grace and three more children were huddled by the side of the road. The nun was dazed and bleeding from a cut on her forehead. One little boy was crying lustily and holding his wrist. His hand was twisted at an awkward angle, the wrist obviously broken. The other two appeared uninjured, although they were wet and muddy and very frightened.
“How many are still inside?” Leah asked Sister Grace just as Adam braced his foot against the frame and literally tore the side door of the van from its hinges.
“I... there was nothing I could do. The tire blew out. I’m sorry. So sorry.” She looked up at Leah with unfocused eyes.
“It’s all right,” Leah said. “It wasn’t your fault. How many children were with you?” The nun was in shock. She would have to be checked for a concussion, but at the moment getting the rest of the children out of the wrecked van was the most important thing to be done. “Sister Grace?”
“I...”
“Adam, how many children do you see?”
“Two. Both girls. Are there any more, Sister?” Adam called.
Sister Grace responded to the command in his voice. “There were eight, no, seven children, and Sister Marie.”
There were two little girls on the road with the sister and three more children here. That left two unaccounted for. Leah relayed the information to Adam as he hoisted himself through the door of the van. She watched the vehicle settle deeper into the mud. One of the children inside screamed weakly. Leah realized Adam would need help getting them out of the van, so she left Sister Grace and stepped off the shoulder of the road, immediately sinking into muck over her ankles. “I’m here, Adam. What can I do to help?”
“I’ll hand them out to you. This thing is filling up with muck.”
“I’m ready,” Leah said.
“Come on, put your arms around my neck, honey,” she heard Adam croon. “Thatta girl. Here we go.” Adam shifted his weight and leaned out the door to hand a child to Leah. “Abrasions, contusions and possible broken ankle,” he said. The van settled deeper into the mud. “This stuff’s goddamned quicksand.”
Leah held the little girl close, murmuring soothing nothings. The child’s clothes were covered with mud. So were her face and arms. Marsh water dripped from her long black hair. She was conscious and whimpering with pain. “What about the other one?”
Adam’s face closed down, and it was as though Leah were confronting a machine. “It’s bad. She’s unconscious and trapped under the seat. I’ll stay with her until the others get here. We’ll need a backboard and we’ll need an OR. She has a compound fracture of the left tibia and, God help us, I think she may have a broken neck.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“LEAH, WAKE UP.”
“I’m not asleep,” Leah murmured. “I was just resting my eyes.” She straightened from her slumped position in the unforgivingly hard chair, every muscle screaming in protest, to find Kaylene standing over her.
“I know, dear. I’m here to relieve you. I’ll sit with the little sweetie while you go clean up and get some rest.”
“What time is it?” The only light in the room came from the hallway and the pale green glow of the portable monitor by the bed. Automatically Leah checked the display. All the readouts looked good. Their patient was sleeping comfortably.
“Almost three.”
The last time she’d noticed, it had been just a little past two. “I did fall asleep,” she said ruefully. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. It’s been a very long day.”
In unison they moved toward the child’s bedside. The little girl slept quietly, her shattered left leg held immobile by a metal traction bar. Leah leaned over the bed rail and smoothed her straight, night-dark hair back from her forehead. She looked very small and helpless with her neck also immobilized, by a wide cervical collar. “Do you know her name?” There hadn’t been time before to ask.
“Ahn Lyn. Isn’t it pretty?”
“Very pretty. I wonder what it means.” Leah touched the little girl’s cheek in a gentle caress. “She moved her arms and wiggled her toes.” Leah’s voice was not quite steady. “Almost as soon as she woke from the anesthetic. There was no damage to her spinal cord.”
“I know. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“How are the others?” Sister Grace, the little girl with the broken ankle and the boy with the broken wrist were also in the hospital.
“We’re still monitoring the sister, but her vitals are good. She had one heck of a knock on the head. The children are sound asleep. So, you go get some rest. I’ll stay with her.”
“You’re as tired as I am,” Leah protested.
“No, I’m not. I slept while you and Dr. Sauder were standing vigil. Now go.”
Adam. Where was he? Two hours ago when the little girl woke up, moved her arms and wiggled her toes, he’d simply walked out of the room and not returned.
“I’ll be back at 0600.”
“No, you won’t. We’re not operating today, remember? It’s Thanksgiving. Father Gerard and the regular staff will look after the children. Now go. Sleep till noon. All afternoon if you want. I’ll save a drumstick for you.”
Leah crossed the darkened compound with the aid of a pocket-size flashlight. In her room she lit a candle, grabbed a towel and a clean set of scrubs and headed for the showers. The water was cool, so she didn’t linger beneath the spray. She dressed hurriedly and wrapped a towel around her head, then headed back to her room. She was so tired she could barely stand, and no wonder; she’d been awake for more than twenty hours. But even though she was exhausted she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Not until she found Adam and assured herself he was all right.
He had barely let Ahn Lyn out of his sight from the moment she was lifted from the overturned van until the moment she’d opened her eyes in the tiny, ill-lit hospital room. Tests had determined that the injury to her neck was less severe than Adam had first feared. Surgery on her spinal column wouldn’t be required, but he had remained in the OR to assist the orthopedic surgeon in the repair of her shattered left leg. He’d stayed by her bedside with Leah until she’d awakened, and then he’d disappeared.
She opened the door to the screened porch fronting the women’s lodgings and stepped inside. The dim circle of light from her flashlight picked out the toe of a man’s running shoe. She sucked in her breath.
“Don’t scream, Leah. It’s me.” The voice was low and rough and male, the words quietly spoken.
She let her breath out in a rush. “Adam?”
He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the beam of her flashlight. Leah switched it off. The moon was riding low among the clouds, but the candlelight spilling from the window outlined Adam sitting with his back against the wall, his legs drawn up to his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She dropped to her knees beside him. “Where have you been?”
“Walking. I saw the light in your window, but you weren’t here.”
“I was in the shower.”
“I can smell your soap.” He touched her cheek. “Lemon. You always smell of lemons.”
“Adam, are you all right?”
He dropped his hand to his knee, but not before she felt the faint tremor in his fingers. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think so. If you were fine you’d be in your bed asleep, not sitting here in the dark.”
“I hate to sleep.” His words were clear but unutterably weary. He was still wearing the scrubs he’d worn in the OR. He smelled of hospital soap and warm skin.
“Why, Adam?” she asked softly. She covered his hand with hers. He had strong hands, with long blunt fingers, a surgeon’s hands. She hadn’t imagined the trembling when he’d touched her. He was shaking all over.
“It all comes back when I sleep,” he said simply. “They’re always in my dreams. Twenty-five years of nightmares. Back home I can deal with it. Here, they’re too close. I hate this place.”
So coming back to Vietnam hadn’t been the healing time for him that it was for some vets. She had suspected as much, and now she was sure. “Did you hope coming back here would make the nightmares go away?”
“I came for B.J. I knew it wouldn’t help. Nothing has helped.”
“A therapist?”
“I’ve talked to the best of them. No one had a clue.”
“Did you tell them the truth? Did you tell them you’re suffering from post-traumatic stress dis—”
His words were like rapier thrusts. “What makes you think it’s post-traumatic stress disorder I’m describing? I wasn’t in combat, Leah. Not like the guys who went before me. I was only here at the end. One hundred and seventeen days to be exact. I never set foot outside Saigon. It wasn’t war then—it was only cleaning up the mess.” He didn’t shake off her touch, but his hand had balled into a fist beneath hers. “Maybe I’m just losing my mind.”
“Are you on medication?”
He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Pills give me the shakes. I don’t take them. No one wants a surgeon with the shakes mucking around in his brain.”
“You’re shaking now,” she said.
“I know. For hours. It won’t go away this time.” He lifted his left hand, the one she wasn’t holding and held it in front of him. “Children should never die.”
The statement confused her, but she answered the desperation in his tone as much as his words. “All the children are going to be fine—all of them.”
He came to his feet in one smooth movement, pulling her with him. “She didn’t go sour after I left?”
“Ahn Lyn is awake and stable.”
“Ahn Lyn. Is that her name?”
“Yes.”
“When I saw her trapped in that damned van...” He lifted his hands and bracketed her face. “I can live with all the rest—the dreams of the shelling and the sniper attacks and the riots—but I can’t live with the memories of the little ones dying. I can’t.”
The hopelessness in his voice chilled her heart. “Adam, please tell me—”
“No! I don’t want to remember. I want to forget. Help me forget, Leah. Please, help me.” He pulled her into his arms, lowered his mouth to hers, and she tasted his desperation and his desire. “With you in my arms I can forget, at least for a little while.”
She knew some of the grief that gnawed at him. She’d had friends who’d died young. She’d seen children die. She could no more deny him now than she could fly. He pulled the towel from her hair and threaded his fingers through the strands, holding her face still for his kiss. Her mouth opened to the urgency of his. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. She longed to take away some of his pain and sorrow and lose some of her own, which she kept locked away in a very small corner of her heart.
But somehow, in a heartbeat, the kiss changed and became completely sexual, purely a man and a woman and the fire that can consume them. She didn’t let herself think, only feel, and her response urged him to do the same. They were as alone as they could be in the crowded compound. Kaylene would be with the little girl for hours. The others were asleep or keeping watch over patients in the hospital. Adam slid his arm behind her knees and lifted her as though she weighed nothing. She let her head rest on his shoulder and felt the wild beating of his heart against her fingers. She was naked beneath the thin, much-washed cotton of her scrubs; Adam probably was, too. She could feel the heat of his skin, the roughness of hair, the rock solidness of bone and muscle against the side of her breast.
He set her down on her bed and stripped off his shirt. She fumbled with hers and he helped her draw it over her head. Adam’s hand went to the drawstring of his pants. The candle had blown out with their movements; now there was no light except the moon’s glow through the window. She shimmied out of her pants, wanting nothing between them. He stood for a moment looking down at her, all moon shadows, darkness and secrets that could cause her pain, as well. When he lay down beside her and took her in his arms, Leah forgot everything but her desire for him.
His hands cupped her breasts. His lips covered hers and she felt his tongue inside her mouth. She returned the intimate caress with a hunger that matched his. Then Adam kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, the curve of her ear. He splayed his fingers through her hair and held her head still for another mind-emptying kiss. Then he moved his mouth to kiss her throat, her collarbone, the upper swell of her breast. His beard was rough and exciting against the softness of her skin. He took one hardened nipple into his mouth and Leah sucked in a breath, swallowing a moan. She reached up and held his head close to her, feeling pleasure arc along a glittering pathway from her breast to her womb.
She reached down and wrapped her fingers around him. He gasped, then entered her slowly, but when he realized how ready she was for him, he began to move more strongly within her. She met him thrust for thrust, each giving and taking what they needed from the other. His mouth sought hers once more, muffling her moans of pleasure. Finally he climaxed deep inside her, and his release pushed her into her own.
She had never responded to lovemaking this way before, going beyond thought, beyond reason in a realm of pure sensation. It frightened her a little, how well she read his desires, and he hers. But she didn’t want to analyze what had just passed between them. She only wanted to feel. She became aware of the weight of Adam’s body on hers, the fullness of him still buried within her. Then he shifted his weight and lay beside her. Leah listened to the deep evenness of his breathing. He was asleep, and in moments so was she.
ADAM AWOKE from a dreamless sleep with Leah in his arms. No, not dreamless he realized groggily, but sleep not filled with nightmares and the cries of dying children. Instead, his dreams had been filled with images and sensations of the woman beside him. He turned her head gently and kissed her awake. A small, cold corner of his mind told him not to do this, to let her sleep. Making love to her again, unprotected and uncommitted, was as wrong and irresponsible as something a boy Brian’s age might do, but he couldn’t stop himself. The taste and touch and scent of her had become as necessary to him as his next breath.
“Leah.” He whispered her name in the darkness.
“I...I must have fallen asleep,” she said, but her arms came around his neck and she kissed him back.
“So did I.” He wanted to tell her what a gift it was, but was unable to find the words when she was so close, her breasts pressed to his chest, her legs tangled with his.
“I’ve never done that before. I...I never lose myself that way.”
“I never do, either. Thank you, Leah...” He stopped himself from saying my love. He didn’t mean it, and she would know he didn’t. But somehow it sounded right and so he whispered it to himself.
“Are you okay? Really okay?” she asked, and he could feel her searching gaze on his face as her fingers moved to touch his mouth. He turned his head and kissed the inside of her palm.
“I’m fine.” He wasn’t, not really. Already the darkness was pushing at the edges of his thoughts, but when he covered her mouth with his, the darkness receded, and light, along with bits and pieces of longing and dreams that couldn’t be, filled his thoughts. She was drawn to strays, the hurt and injured. If he told her everything he’d kept inside him for so long, she would stay and try to heal him. As much as he craved her solace, he wouldn’t take advantage of her that way.
The kiss was long and hungering, and when it was over he was hard again and she lay panting beside him. “What time is it? I don’t want Kaylene to find us,” she said.
“It’s very, very late, or very early. But still hours before dawn.”
“I don’t want the dawn to come,” she said softly. He knew she didn’t like being in the dark. He knew she was offering him a part of herself with those words, and it humbled him.
“Neither do I.” He pressed himself against her and she opened her legs. This time their lovemaking was not so gentle, and was over more quickly. They didn’t sleep afterward, but lay twined together. Her hands, moving in small circles over his back and shoulders, were almost enough to keep the demons at bay, but not quite, and he took her once more to hold back the darkness. She seemed to sense his desperation. She met him halfway, and they joined and melded and once more found oblivion.
A baby crying somewhere in the compound awakened him, and this time even the warmth of Leah’s arms around him couldn’t hold back the memories....
The Orphan Plane. It was April 4, 1975, a week after his nineteenth birthday; 243 children and sixtytwo adults took off in the C-5A Galaxy cargo plane heading for new homes and families in the United States. He had helped carry the little ones on the plane, strapped them in the seats, two by two by two. An hour later he was helping carry their bodies out of the wreckage of the huge aircraft. It had crashed into a half-flooded rice paddy trying to return to Than Son Nhut with a malfunctioning hydraulic system.
All around him were dead and dying children, and there was nothing he could do about it. One little girl he remembered more than the others. He had found her alive in the wreckage and held her head above the water so she wouldn’t drown. But she couldn’t be saved and had died in his arms. He had watched her die, and then he’d gotten up and gone about doing what he could for the others. In one way or another he had been repeating those motions every day of his life since..
There had been good times, too. After Brian was born he held his son in his arms and thought he might be able to put the past behind him. But when Brian was ten he’d crashed his bicycle head-on into a mailbox. Adam had been out in the yard watching and rushed to his side and cradled his bloodied face in his arms all the way to the hospital. From that day on the nightmares had come back and never gone away.
He looked down at his hand. He was shaking like a leaf. What was worse, he was shaking inside. He couldn’t operate in this condition. Hell, he didn’t even know if he could set foot inside the hospital again. He had to get out of this place or lose what little was left of his reason and his soul. Adam slid Leah’s arms from around his neck. Forced himself not to kiss her again. Pulled on his clothes and walked out into the night.
IT WAS DAYLIGHT when Leah awoke again. There were tears on her cheek, as though she’d been crying in her sleep, but she couldn’t remember any bad dreams. And then she realized she was alone. She dressed in haste and smoothed the rumpled sheets on her bed, drawing the blanket up just as Kaylene entered the room.
