Do Opposites Attract? (Kathryn Freeman’s Irresistible Romcom Collection #5)

Chapter Five

Mitch had watched Brianna stalk out of his meeting with an air of resignation. Why were people outside the profession unable to grasp that it was impossible to save everybody? And she’d twisted his words. He hadn’t said the boy wasn’t worth it. Just that the exercise of calling for an air ambulance wasn’t worth it. Sadly they’d found the kid too late and Mitch knew no amount of effort was going to save him now. All moving him would do was make the poor soul less comfortable and hasten his departure.

‘I don’t think our visitor has been around death before,’ Tessa observed, speaking into the silence that had greeted Brianna’s departure. ‘Perhaps, in a few more days, she’ll come to understand that not everyone makes it.’

‘Perhaps.’ But Mitch had his doubts. He had a sense that if Brianna set her mind to it, she would never give up, never let go, whether that was on a project or a person. She was a determined woman, a quality he would usually respect. At the moment though, she seemed to have set her stubborn mind on going up against him. Perhaps because he didn’t tug his forelock every time he spoke to her.

They finished the meeting without any further histrionics. Gathering together his notes, Mitch wandered back out to the ward, his mind on Brianna. He had to admit her reaction had been a bit of a shock. He hadn’t expected to find her so concerned with the welfare of a child she didn’t know.

When he entered the ward and caught sight of her sitting at the boy’s bedside, he immediately thought his mind was playing tricks on him. He’d been thinking about her so much, now he was starting to see her. Then he heard her murmuring to the boy and watched as she settled one of her ridiculous teddy bears next to his face. The very real sight touched something deep inside him, a place that hadn’t been warmed in a very long time. Out of her comfort zone and exhausted from the travel, she hadn’t taken off to her tent as he’d thought she would, as she actually had a right to do. Instead she’d decided to offer comfort to a boy she’d never met. He liked to think he was a pretty good judge of character, but as he watched Brianna stroking the young boy’s hair, Mitch wondered if perhaps he’d misjudged her. Beneath the posh, glossy exterior there was clearly a compassionate heart. It was almost as surprising a find as the sharp brain he’d witnessed earlier.

Slowly he walked up to her. ‘Brianna.’

She looked up with a start, her dislike of him very much in evidence when her beautiful face turned from soft to haughty in the blink of an eye. ‘I know you believe he’s not worth any of your precious time,’ she told him in a voice so cold icicles seemed to hang off each word. ‘But you can’t stop me from being here.’

Frustrated, Mitch jammed a hand roughly through his hair. Then, acting on impulse, he reached out, grabbed her arm and dragged her off the chair and outside the tent. Although she protested, his grip was so tight she was unable to do anything but follow him.

‘Damn you, Brianna,’ he uttered under his breath. ‘You’re putting words into my mouth.’ He paused, fighting to control his temper. ‘I didn’t say he wasn’t worthy of our compassion, just that there was nothing else we could do to save him.’

Brianna looked down at the hand that gripped her arm. Mitch wondered what she saw. The strength? Or the fact that it was rough and calloused.

‘Let go, you’re hurting me.’

If she’d slapped him, he couldn’t have let go any quicker. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to.’ Angry red bruises marked the delicate creamy skin where his hand had been and he winced at his roughness. ‘I just wanted to make sure you followed me out,’ he tried to explain. ‘Although the boy isn’t conscious, nobody knows whether he can hear or not. I didn’t want to subject him to this conversation.’

Brianna nodded briefly, then turned away from him and disappeared back inside the tent. Mitch was left standing outside like a fool, annoyed and frustrated. It seemed nothing he did was going to please the lady. It shouldn’t matter to him, but it did. And damned if that realisation didn’t escalate his annoyance and frustration.

* * *

Brianna spent another hour with the boy and then gave in to the tiredness she’d felt since she’d arrived. Travelling, coupled with the trauma of the day, had left her so exhausted that even the little camp bed seemed like the height of luxury. As soon as her head touched the pillow, she fell asleep.

When she woke, the clock by her bed said it was only four in the morning, but her mind told her it was time to get up. That was the trouble with jet lag. Frustrated, Brianna climbed out of bed and got dressed. With nothing to do in her little tent to while away the hours — no TV to watch, no music to listen to — she decided to check up on the little boy. See if he was still hanging in there.

Easing quietly through the entrance to the medical ward, she was heading towards the boy’s bed when she came to an abrupt halt. Good God, was that Mitch at the boy’s bedside? From across the dimly lit tent she could just about make out his broad-shouldered figure, smoothing what she guessed was a damp cloth gently across the boy’s parched lips. Not wanting to disturb them, she backed out and bumped straight into Tessa.

‘Sorry,’ she said hastily. ‘I was awake, so I thought I’d see how the boy was doing. But I see he already has company.’

Tessa nodded. ‘I’m afraid he’s nearing the end now, that’s why Mitch is with him. Nobody under his care ever dies alone, not if he can help it. It’s something he’s done ever since I’ve known him.’ They both gazed at the poignant sight of doctor and patient, man and boy. ‘Often in our work the patients don’t have their friends and families with them. They get split up in the chaos. It’s hard enough to keep tabs on who is alive and who’s dead, never mind where they might be. So in cases where there’s no family around, Mitch makes sure whoever is on duty calls him if the patient is slipping away. No matter what time it is he comes to hold their hand.’

Tessa moved past her and into the ward but Brianna hung back, her mind choked with emotion. Though it might go against the grain, she realised she owed the man a pretty big apology. She’d taken his abrasive, tough attitude as a sign of somebody who didn’t care, when in fact that couldn’t be the case. Why would anybody do this job, living and working in the crudest of conditions, witnessing human suffering on an agonisingly large scale, if they didn’t care? No doubt they had to grow a tough hide, but she’d been wrong to assume that meant they were unaffected by it.

Quietly Brianna entered the ward again and walked over to the bed where the boy was taking his final breaths. As she stood alongside them, Mitch glanced up. From the look of his haggard face, he hadn’t had any sleep.

‘I’ll take over now, if you like,’ Brianna said softly.

He shook his head but nodded in the direction of another chair. ‘Come and join us.’

Twenty-four hours ago, Brianna would have been annoyed that Mitch hadn’t got up to fetch the chair for her. Already she felt like a different person. This Brianna could accept that manners weren’t actually that important. They could be learned, but they didn’t define you. Other attributes, such as strength and compassion, did. Mitch had them both, in spades. So she silently forgave his lack of manners and went to get the chair. Together they sat with the boy while his life slipped away.

Finally Mitch stood up and gently drew the sheet over the boy’s head. ‘He’s gone now,’ he whispered. ‘Come on. I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.’

Surprised by his invitation and desperately in need of one herself, Brianna followed Mitch to his tent. It was similar to hers, though larger as it had room for a table, currently playing host to several piles of haphazardly thrown together files. Mitch delved into the canvas bag beside his bed and brought out the bottle of whisky she’d given him. Following a quick swig, he wiped the top and handed it to her. ‘Just what was needed, after all,’ he remarked dryly.

Not wanting to turn down his gesture of friendship, Brianna took hold of the bottle, brought it to her lips and took a sip. Used to drinking whisky out of a crystal tumbler, she found it hard to judge how much of a mouthful she was taking and ended up spluttering. Calmly Mitch took the bottle back from her. Though his face was expressionless, she felt sure his brown eyes were laughing at her.

He gestured for her to sit on the chair while he went to lie on the bed, rubbing at his face and eyes as if to wake himself up.

‘Rough night?’ Brianna asked.

‘You could say that.’

Seeing his shattered face she felt a sharp pang of guilt. ‘Mitch, I’m sorry for what I said in the meeting. I’m sure you did all you could to save him.’

Mitch glanced at her, his dark eyes holding hers. ‘Yes, we did. But maybe you were right. Situations like this occur far too frequently and we start to treat them as normal, using phrases we shouldn’t. I never meant the child’s life wasn’t worth it.’

‘I know,’ Brianna admitted quietly. And she did. He might not be crying, shouting, or wearing his emotions on his sleeve, but the man in front of her was suffering because he’d lost a patient. ‘It must be hard, watching a patient die like that. It’s the first time I’ve done it and I don’t think I could bear to do it again.’

‘Watching them die isn’t the hardest part. It’s feeling so damned useless that tears at you.’ He shrugged awkwardly then, as if embarrassed to have let slip that little morsel about himself.

‘How long have you being doing this job?’ she asked, partly because she was interested and partly to get them talking about something less harrowing.

‘With Medic SOS? Three years.’

She thought of what she had already seen in the short time she’d been here. ‘How do you stand it?’

‘What, the primitive sleeping conditions? The cold river water shower?’

She glared at him, not sure whether he was joking with her, or mocking her. His face was so flipping hard to read. ‘I meant how can you stand seeing suffering on such a scale?’

Mitch drew himself further onto the bed and lay back against the pillow, putting his arms behind his head. ‘I guess, like most things in life, you get used to it after a while. It doesn’t make it easy to live with, but you aren’t shocked any more. Before working with Medic SOS I was in the army, so I’d already seen some pretty grim stuff.’ Abruptly he stopped, turning the tables on her. ‘What about you, Brianna? Why is someone like you spending a week here?’

At his use of the words like you , she bristled. ‘Look, I know you’ve got me pegged as a spoilt rich bitch and maybe you’re right,’ she conceded crossly. ‘But I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to spend my life falling out of clubs drunk on champagne.’

‘Doesn’t sound too bad to me,’ he drawled. Then he smiled. Just as the laugh had earlier, the smile transformed his features, warming his dark brown eyes, smoothing the harsh planes of his face. If she was poetic she’d have said it was like a glimpse of sun on a cloudy day. It made her very much aware of him as a man, and not just an irritating person she was forced to temporarily put up with.

Of its own volition, her body responded to him, her blood feeling warmer, her stomach all fluttery. Please no. She didn’t want to be attracted to this man. Hastily she turned away, pretending an interest in the floor. Anything to stop looking at him. ‘Well, I want to do something more with my life,’ she finally stated.

When there was no reply, she stole a look at the bed. He was fast asleep. She watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest with a strange sort of relief. At least she could now escape his scrutiny. Hopefully, by the time she saw him again, she would have this crazy desire back under control. They’d just watched a patient die together. Clearly her emotions were all over the place.

She rose from the chair, but couldn’t resist a final look at his sleeping form. Now, instead of an uncouth man, she could only see one who was strong, tough and downright sexy. With a despairing shake of her head, she fled his tent and returned to the safety of her own. It was still only half five in the morning so she chose to lie back on her bed and try and get some more sleep. She must be over-tired if she was starting to find the rough, gruff DrMcBride attractive.