from me. Now I realize it was probably doing me a huge favor. Not sure how I would have coped with it all when I first got back. Not sure how I’m going to cope with it now.”
Those beautiful, pale blue eyes filled with tears.
Shit.
“Jenna, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you to tell me all of this.”
He felt helpless to stop her pain. It wasn’t something he was used to feeling.
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I need to learn how to live with this, right? To cope with the memories without falling apart when someone mentions what happened.”
“You need to cut yourself some slack. I don’t know anyone who’d be coping as well as you are right now.”
And why was she having to deal with it alone? Where was her family? Why weren’t they accompanying her to therapy? Supporting her?
He leaned forward, clenching his hands against the need to take her into his arms. To pull her over and tuck her in against his chest and keep her safe.
“All the memories came rushing back. So fast and so real it made me ill.” She placed her hand over her stomach, her gaze fixated on the wall in front of her. But he knew she wasn’t really seeing the wall. “The gunshots came first. Then the screams. Oh, God.” She shuddered, and he wasn’t strong enough to resist. Standing, he pulled her up then settled down in the chair and drew her into his lap. He’d started this. He had to listen to whatever she wanted to tell him. No matter how much it would hurt.
He ran his hand up and down her back, feeling the tremble run through her. “You must have been terrified.”
“They didn’t want me to go, you know.”
“Who? Where?” The rebels? The other doctors?
“My parents. They didn’t want me to go to Sudan. My mother did her usual performance. First, she tried bribery then anger then came the guilt. It’s rare for us to get to guilt because I normally give in before then and give her what she wants.”
“But not this time.”
“No, not this time. This time I stuck to my guns. I knew she wasn’t going to like it but I wanted to do something, you know? I wanted to help. I was so naïve I actually thought I was going to make a difference. I didn’t want to take some job at a private practice like my mother wanted. For some reason, she thinks the only reason I went to medical school was to find myself a rich, handsome doctor to marry. Preferably a plastic surgeon so he could help her in her fight against ageing. She’s winning, by the way. She looks younger than me.”
He’d seen her mother recently, and she did look youthful. But it was all fake. Everything about Lorraine Jasons was artificial, from her nails to her skin to her attitude. She’d never liked him but she always greeted him with an air kiss to the cheek and talked to him like he was her long-lost son.
How someone as genuine and sweet as Jenna had come from that woman, he had no idea.
“I don’t need someone to look after me. I can take care of myself.”
He disagreed but he knew better than to argue that point right now. Sometimes it paid just to stay quiet when a woman was talking. He’d learned that the hard way.
“But what really surprised me was that Daddy agreed with her.” She glanced up at him. “He didn’t want me to go either.”
Curt got it. Had he known of her plans to join Doctors Without Borders and head into one of the most dangerous countries on the planet he’d have put his foot down and told her she wasn’t going.
Okay, so she was a grown woman, but she’d been sheltered all her life. She’d grown up thinking there was good in everyone. She didn’t have that hard, cynical edge to her. Not like he did. Sudan was not a place she belonged.
Again, he remained quiet. He wasn’t stupid enough to incite her anger over something that had already happened. There was no question of her ever returning. It would be over his dead body.
“So, I had my mother trying to guilt me into staying, and my father practically ordering me not to go. Do you know how it felt to leave when I didn’t have their support? I was so upset. But I thought I could finally make a difference, you know? What a naïve idiot I was.”
He frowned, not liking her self-deprecating tone. “You are not a naïve idiot.”
“Really? How did I think that anything I did would count? I was there a month, Curt. A whole freaking month before I saw everyone in that village murdered. Women, children, my colleagues. I can hear Alana begging for her life as she knelt next to me in the dirt. She was sobbing, telling them how she had a family back home, a daughter and son. A husband. And they just shot her. One minute she was there. The next she was dead. And her babies don’t get to see their mother anymore.”
Curt held her tightly as she started to sob, her body trembling against his. “Why did they do that? Why kill everyone? Why not kill me?”
“They wanted you for a reason.”
“For the money? Then why didn’t they tell Daddy how to pay the ransom?”