Chapter Five
Ian watched as the woman in the doorway swayed on her feet, then drifted to the floor, taking the curtain with her.
“What the hell?” Wes jerked around.
“Cameron?” Ian shook the thought away. For a moment, when he’d spotted the woman standing in the doorway in baggy, blood-soaked clothes and a surgical mask, he could’ve sworn he was looking at the woman he’d mourned for the past five years. But Cameron was dead. And this woman, whom he assumed was the doctor, was very much alive.
“Doc,” someone yelled, followed by footsteps running down the short hallway.
Wes knelt by the woman’s unconscious body, checking her pulse.
Luci appeared in the doorway with Edmund and the haggard woman from earlier. “Doc?” She knelt by the fallen woman. “What happened? What’s wrong with her?”
Wes turned back to Ian. His wide eyes filled with questions.
Ian shrugged. “She fainted. That’s all I saw. Is the blood hers?”
“Was she hurt today?” Wes asked the group. “Has she said anything?”
“She’s probably exhausted,” Edmund offered. “She hasn’t stopped moving since the crash.”
“And worrying,” the younger woman offered.
Luci raised her head, her gaze landing on the sedated girl on the table. “Did she see Ara?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I’d only just noticed her when she fell. Would seeing the girl upset her?”
Luci lifted a shoulder. “Maybe. She is her daughter.”
“What did you say?” Wes, who’d been bent over the doctor, blocking Ian’s view from the scene, sat back now.
“Ara’s Doc’s daughter. Maybe seeing her so pale, she thought she might be . . .”
“Holy shit,” Wes muttered.
The islanders looked at each other in confusion. Edmund inched closer, as if to step between Wes and the doctor.
Sighing, Wes ran a hand over his face. “Ian, you need to get over here. You’re going to want to see this.”
No. From the sound of Wes’s sigh, Ian did not want to see this. But he would anyway. He placed the last bandage over the stitches on Ara’s side and tucked the blanket around her tiny body. Taking a deep breath, he trudged to the group in the doorway.
Cameron.
* * *
Ian sat in the tattered chair, one foot propped on the small, battered table used as the doctor’s desk. No. Not the doctor. Cameron. He didn’t want to believe what he’d found. Almost couldn’t believe. But the truth lay on the worn couch across the small office from him. After Cameron collapsed, they’d brought her here. Luci had insisted, and Edmund and Aimee had agreed, Cameron needed a sedative. Wes had complied. Now Ian waited for her to wake up and tried to wrap his mind around his new reality.
For years now, he’d assumed Cameron was dead. Not that the thought had allowed him closure or the ability to move on. Still, he couldn’t fathom that while he’d been home mourning her, she’d been hiding on this island. Correction, she hadn’t been hiding. She lived here. Cameron, his Cameron, the woman he’d created and lost a child with, the woman he’d planned to spend his life with lived on this island with her child. A child she’d conceived with someone else.
Tears burned hot behind his eyes. He fought them back. Tears served no purpose. They certainly did nothing to alter his current circumstances. Or Cameron’s.
A small moan came from across the room. Ian dropped his feet to the floor, his body suddenly tense. Cameron’s eyes fluttered open, staring at the ceiling. For a moment, she seemed to try to make out where she was. Then she rolled to her side and swung her bare feet to the floor.
“Where’s my daughter?”
The question was a haunting echo of the way she’d woken up in Africa, asking for their baby. Ian swallowed the grief that always accompanied thoughts of their lost child.
“She’s in her room. The same one you took her to. The same one she was in when you fainted.”
She cleared her throat. “She’s okay?”
He nodded wordlessly. If she wanted his answers, she could damn well look at him. But when she turned her head in his direction, her blue gaze landing on him, his stomach clenched and all the breath fled in a whoosh that left him empty. Bereft.
“She’s okay?” she repeated, her voice rising with worry.
Swallowing, he looked down at his fisted hands. Of course Cameron wanted to know about her daughter before hashing out their past. He could stop being an asshole and give her reassurance. Maybe once he’d apprised her of the girl’s condition, she’d answer his questions.
“She’s good. She’s all sewn up and resting comfortably. She’s in no pain and should make a full recovery.” He’d start with that. If he started with all he’d found, Cam would probably be too upset to hear the good news.
Her body visibly relaxed as she let out a long sigh. “Thank God.”
“The shrapnel cracked two ribs and bruised two others,” he continued. “You were smart to tie it to her. Too much movement to either side and the ribs likely would have broken and possibly punctured a lung.”
Tears slid silently down her cheeks as she bit her lip. “It missed her organs? You got it out without any damage?”
He nodded. “The entry was fairly clean. The metal inserted between two ribs almost perfectly, cracking each of them. I won’t lie, Cam—it was close, but she was lucky.”
Now her entire body shook with the force of her sobs. He rose from the chair and hurried to her. Sinking to the couch beside her, he pulled her into his arms, half-expecting her to protest. Instead, she leaned limply against his chest. Her tears dampened his t-shirt.
“I couldn’t—” She cried harder. Her entire body trembled. “I couldn’t lose her. Oh God. I couldn’t do it again.”
He didn’t have to ask what she meant. Cameron had barely survived the loss of one daughter. A second loss would be unbearable for anyone. Tears stung his eyes as he remembered Wes and their team working over Cameron’s ravaged body in the African clinic. He could still perfectly see the moment Wes lifted their daughter from Cameron’s womb. Ian had held his breath, waiting for the sound of his daughter’s cry, but no sound, no breath, ever came. He’d known then if he lost Cameron too, he’d never survive. Little had he known, though she’d survived, he’d eventually lose her anyway.
* * *