The Doctor and the Debutante by Anne Fraser

Author:Anne Fraser [Fraser, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460376478
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

THE next morning, after a sleepless night, Alice was up before the sun had risen but already the camp was stirring and the smells of cooking drifted across the camp. All staff meals were taken together in a communal tent. Breakfast was thin porridge or toast with coffee or tea.

If she hoped to see Dante before she started work she was disappointed. By the time she arrived at breakfast it was to see his disappearing back as he headed towards the children’s tent. Linda asked her to go back to work in the reception area where all new arrivals were processed.

They came. Tired, sad and often ill. The children were the worst. The ones who had lost their parents. The ones with swollen bellies from lack of proper nutrition. As she’d done the day before, after she’d logged them in and given them their pack she took them to the clinic so they could be vaccinated and then passed them over to one of the other aid workers who found them a spot to set up some sort of shelter. Then she’d return and start the whole process all over again.

Midmorning, when she was dropping a patient off at the outpatient area, Linda called her over. ‘Could you go to the children’s tent and ask Dante to come when he’s free? Tell him it’s not an emergency but I have a patient I’m concerned about that I’d like him to see.’

Alice had been putting off going back to the children’s tent. Out of it all, it was the children she found most difficult to cope with.

Inside the tent, it was almost eerily quiet. Babies lay looking up at the ceiling or stood up by the side of the cots staring in mystified silence at what was going on around them. About two-thirds of the children had a mother by the cot side, some of whom were breastfeeding while others were holding their children and singing or talking quietly to them.

But that left about six or seven children without anyone to look after them.

Dante was bending over a cot examining Samah, the child from the day before. When he noticed her, he straightened and spoke briefly to the child’s mother before coming across to Alice.

‘Hello. Have you come to help?’

Alice’s heart was pounding but this time it wasn’t because of Dante.

‘I…’ She faltered. How could she explain her reluctance to stay in the children’s tent? She found the reality of the sick children almost too much to bear. She cleared her throat. ‘Linda asked me to come and get you. She has a child in the clinic that needs a surgical opinion. Could you come? She says it can wait until you’re finished here.’

‘Bene. I just have to finish my rounds here first. I still have a couple of children to see.’

Alice stood at a safe distance, trying to ignore the outstretched arms of the toddlers without mothers. She watched as Dante examined the children. He was efficient but gentle, even managing to make some of the anxious mothers smile.

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