been children. She just thirteen years old. Him three years older. And it might have been an adolescent crush, something silly, but she remembered the pain and the humiliation all too well, even now. It was like being that teenage girl all over again.
‘Quinn?’
The doctor frowned at her briefly, clearly wondering how she knew his name, but then his attention was returned to Abeje, who lay still on the bed. ‘Tell me her symptoms. When it began.’
Tasha blinked hard, still not quite believing that he was here. Of all the places in the world he might have gone he was here. On this ship.
As if from a world away, unable to tear her gaze from his face, she began to relay Abeje’s symptoms, stunned into numbness and a creeping sense of hurt. The box she’d put him in, and all her feelings about him—the box that she’d locked and hidden away for all these years—was finally beginning to crack open, creating a canyon of a scar upon her heart.
* * *
There was something about the tall blonde who had just appeared in his clinic. Something weirdly familiar. But he didn’t have time to place her. He’d thought he knew most of the English people here in Ntembe, but obviously not.
Perhaps she was new? She had corkscrew honeyed curls, deep blue eyes and a mask of sun-kissed freckles across her nose. Cute.
But he didn’t have time to think about her, much as he would like to. She wasn’t the important one. The most important female at this point in time was the semi-conscious one lying on the bed—not the one who somehow knew his name.
Quinn examined the young girl, his stethoscope already in his ears, the metal diaphragm at its end already upon her clammy chest. She was about six years old, a little underweight, but not so much that it concerned him. She had a temperature of nearly one hundred and three degrees, sweats and chills. Drowsy. Flu-like symptoms.
His first concern was malaria. ‘Has she been vomiting?’
The blonde shook her head, curls shimmering. She looked terrified. Almost as if she were afraid to look at the little girl on the bed. As if she was shutting herself down.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Any family history I should know about?’
She shook her head, looking at him in apology, cheeks colouring.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Has she been given anything?’
There was a pained expression in those blue eyes of hers.
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m just her teacher.’
He listened to her heart. It sounded good, if a little rapid. Her chest was clear at the moment. Checking her eyes and the palms of her hands, he saw she seemed pale, and the possibility of anaemia assured him that malaria was probably the case here.
‘Let’s get her on an intravenous drip and get some blood drawn so we can do a rapid diagnostic test. She’s probably going to need anti-malarials.’
‘You think this is malaria?’ the woman asked, heartbreak in her voice.
‘It looks like it. The bloods will let us know for sure. You’re her teacher?’
She looked frightened. On edge. Her arms were wrapped around herself protectively, making her look smaller.
‘Yes.’
‘Are any of your other students sick?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t think... I’m sorry. I don’t know.’
It seemed there was a lot she didn’t know. But he didn’t want to get frustrated with her. This wasn’t the first time a patient had turned up at the ship with no one knowing anything about them. Sometimes they’d get dumped there. Abandoned.
‘Can I sit with her?’
‘You’ve taken anti-malaria tablets before coming over here?’
She nodded.
‘Good. Then you can stay.’
There was something about those eyes of hers. Something familiar. Oceanic blue and just as deep. Thick, dark lashes enveloping them. Where had he seen them before?
He held out his hand, determined to find out. ‘Dr Quinn Shapiro.’
Hesitantly she took his hand, as if she’d been asked to touch a live, hissing and spitting cobra. ‘Tasha Kincaid.’
Tasha Kincaid. The name didn’t ring a bell. Perhaps he was mistaken about her being familiar somehow? Some people just had that type of face...
Though she seems to know me...
‘Nice to meet you.’
She looked at him strangely. Questioningly. Surprised. Relieved?
‘Likewise.’
* * *
Nice to meet him? Quinn Shapiro? Here on the Serendipity? Of all the hospital ships in all the world, he had to be on this one? Off the coast of Africa? What were the chances?
She didn’t want to think about what he’d done. What he’d said. About how he’d made her feel. So small. So unimportant. So ugly. Those feelings she’d stamped down on long ago, determined not to let them affect her self-confidence.
It had been a struggle for a while, especially because she’d been at such a vulnerable, impressionable age, but she’d done it. The only way she’d been able to carry on had been to pretend it had never happened.
Tasha sat by Abeje’s bed, holding her student’s hand. Abeje was sleeping now, her face restful in repose, her chapped lips slightly parted. Her skin was hot to the touch—boiling. Her small body was fighting a battle that had no definite outcome. The rapid test, which had given a result within minutes of their arrival, had shown that it was malaria.
‘Don’t you die on me,’ she whispered to her small charge, hoping that her just saying those words would make some higher power hear them and infuse the little girl with a fighting spirit. ‘Do you hear me? You’ve got to pull through this. You’ve got to fight it. You can’t give in.’
‘How’s she doing?’
Quinn’s voice behind her had Tasha leaping to her feet, her heart thundering like galloping horses, her cheeks flushing red. She turned around, stared at him, resisting the urge to start yelling at him. To humiliate him. To embarrass him the way he had once done her.
Trying her best to hold the bitterness back, she said, ‘She’s sleeping.’
‘That’s good. Her body needs rest.’
Yes, it did. So did she. But her own tiredness, her own endless, exhausting fear, was something she had to dismiss right now. Her body was once again thrumming to the presence of Quinn Shapiro, apparently having forgotten that years ago she’d made a decision never to be attracted to
