Captain O'Reilly's Woman - Ashes of Love 1 (20 page)

Chapter Nine

Headquarters was able to piece together just who in Ramos’ unit was part of the program and who wasn’t. Bodies came and went constantly, except for three of them—his sergeant and two corporals. Members of the town council of Montpelier, along with key players in other communities Ramos had approved for the reclamation program, were quick to point fingers as soon as they found out Ramos was being shipped to the formerly great state of Montana where he would serve out his sentence as part of a dirty-earth clean-up crew.

Life expectancy there was two months. Three at most.

They thought they’d heard the last of him until, about two months after they arrived, a girl—no more than thirteen—waited in Montpelier’s brand new, permanent medical clinic for Samantha to come on duty.

Samantha was the only female medic on base. Many of the OB/GYN cases were willing to wait for her. By now, Samantha was four months pregnant and her carefully ironed fatigues had given way to shapeless scrub tops and re-made cargo pants with elastic waistbands.

The first thing Samantha noticed when she entered the exam room was the girl was alone. People didn’t come to clinics alone, especially during the first few months of reclamation. The brought somebody along for support, for company, and often just because they wanted to share the novelty of the experience with someone.

“Hi...Kathleen,” Samantha greeted the girl warmly after glanced down at her chart. “How can we help you today?”

The girl looked at Samantha’s belly then at her own. “I...I think I need help.”

“Hmm...with what?” Samantha sat down on a stool across from the girl and shut her mouth.

“My Dad...he’s on the town council. That’s how we met the first guys that were here. That recon unit?”

Samantha’s back stiffened but she kept quiet and listened. The girl had waited all her life for medical care. The least she deserved now was a chance to tell her why she was here.

“He...um...Ed? My Dad told me I had to. You know.”

“No, I don’t know, Kathleen,” Samantha prompted gently and set her clipboard aside.

Kathleen started chewing on one of her uneven fingernails. “My Dad told me I had to let him have, you know, sex with me. Otherwise we wouldn’t get this clinic. Only now I...I don’t feel so good sometimes and my woman’s plumbing is messed up.”

“And what did your mother say about this arrangement?” Samantha asked non-judgmentally.

“Oh she’s dead. She died when my little brother was born.” The girl shrugged lightly. “That’s why Dad was so keen on us having a clinic. Said if Mama had somebody—somebody like you with her she wouldna died.”

Samantha gave the girl a full check-up. Her overall health wasn’t good and she had rickets. She needed an appointment with their dentist and was suffering from other lingering effects of a lifetime of inadequate nutrition. Even though Samantha didn’t want them to, the girl’s pregnancy and syphilis tests came back positive.

Two days later, Kathleen was back. This time with her father. It was Kathleen’s choice, Samantha had explained, whether or not to tell him. Samantha had told her that the pregnancy could be terminated if she chose. At her age, giving birth was risky. She would have sent Kathleen home with literature to digest, but the girl couldn’t read. To his credit, even though he’d pimped his own daughter out, Kathleen’s father chose his daughter’s health over his self-deluded pride at having played a part in saving their community. Samantha scheduled a D&C for the next day.

Doctor Stern called her aside when he read the OR board the next day.

“You sure you want to perform this procedure, Corporal?” he asked, his bushy, gray brows drawing together. “With you being pregnant, you might feel...conflicted performing procedures like this. We’re forced to push so much learning on our medics that we forget that, sometimes, there’s a need to pull back too.”

“I don’t want to perform it. But I’m going to, sir,” Samantha answered shakily. “She’s a brave kid but she flinches whenever one of the male nurses touches her.” She straightened her back.

Doctor Stern sighed but agreed.

That afternoon, when David returned to their quarters, he found Samantha curled up on their bed. Her eyes were bleary but she wasn’t crying. He sat down beside her and stroked the slight mound of her belly. “You all right, Sam?” he whispered, pulling off his cap. He was the only one that she let see the strain her pregnancy put on her. Her frequent lateness in the morning was an inside joke in the medical division. They teased her about being a newlywed. But he knew how hard it was for her to move in the morning without throwing up. How tired she was. How she hated being so emotional. How much strain her work and study hours gave her.

How much she hated the fact that her ankles swelled up by the end of the day.

If he had his way, he’d yank her from active duty. She wouldn’t let him. She also wouldn’t let him use his authority to coddle her when no other female soldier had that privilege.

Samantha rolled toward him and lay her hands on his arms. She caressed his muscles through his shirt. She liked that. So did he.

She smiled up at him. “Yes,” she answered firmly. Quietly. “
I
am all right.”

And she was. Although David was completely bowled over when her first ultrasound showed that she was carrying not one but two babies. By the first week in March, their work in Montpelier was complete. The schools had been rebuilt and thirteen-year old Kathleen, along with all the other children in town, was learning to read. The clinic was staffed with locally trained medics as well as four nurses and two doctors that the Army recruited from outside. To Samantha’s undying gratitude, a dairy cooperative was up and running under local leadership. There were other start-up businesses, including a metal-fabrication shop and a dressmaker whose business quickly grew to feature women’s clothing made with locally woven lace and a popular line of lingerie that was available throughout reclaimed New North America by mail order.

A month before the division was due to ship out, Doctor Major Fred Stern asked to meet with David and Samantha.

“I’m removing you from active duty next month, Corporal,” he said, addressing Samantha directly. David sighed with barely contained relief but Samantha started to fume. Doctor Stern held up his hand when she turned red and opened her mouth to yell at him. “And don’t argue with me,” he added tiredly. “I had two emergency surgeries last night and I’m in no mood.” He rubbed his temple then looked at her pointedly. “We’re taking this bucket of bolts back on the road in four weeks,” he said, glancing around David’s office. The formerly austere and impersonal space now held pictures of Samantha and Captain O’Reilly, of Samantha and her family, Samantha alone. “By then you’ll be in your thirty-fourth week. I refuse to allow you and those twins to be bounced over lord knows how many kilometers of bad road. And no way will I let them be born in an un-reclaimed area that we’ve just barely started to clean up. You’re no good to me that close to delivery and you’ll draw too many medical resources,” he added bluntly when Samantha opened her mouth again.

She wasn’t buying into his gruffness but held her tongue when David slid his hand over hers.

“Go home, Samantha,” Doctor Stern added, his voice gentling. “Use the four and a half months you’ll have before you start medical school to take care of yourself, study and enjoy those babies of yours. And use that RI clout of yours to get him a leave of absence.” Doctor Stern turned to David. “You’re going to be leaving anyway. We all know you’re heading to Kentucky mid-July. You won’t get a chance to see this next reclamation through to the end. Let your replacement come in early and see it through start to finish.” He smiled grimly. “Consider it an order from your chief medical officer.”

*
   
*
   
*

Four weeks later, at the beginning of March, Cheryl Rogerson, her husband and a select handful of David’s oldest friends sat in heated cars, looking out the windows. They heard the big Army helicopter long before they saw it.

“Hmm,” Stephen, the local butcher, said. “Guess he’s an even bigger big-shot than we thought.”

But the truth of it was that the special transport was for Samantha, not David and, after the helicopter crew unloaded their two passengers, their luggage then took off again, David and Samantha’s friends rushed toward them. They welcomed them back, commented on how Samantha was glowing and led them to the waiting cars.

“The ice is still in so you can’t stay out on the island yet,” Pete, David’s fishing buddy explained. “But we’ve set you up in the old Maxwell place.” David and Samantha had a good idea how much trouble the town would go to when they learned their local hero and his bride were coming home for her abbreviated maternity leave so they weren’t surprised.

It had snowed a few days earlier and the sun was out. Samantha always remembered her first glimpse of her new home set in a frame of glittering, fresh snow. The old Maxwell place was a sprawling, two-storey colonial, freshly scraped of old paint and awaiting warmer weather before a fresh coat was applied. The paved driveway and walkways were cleared, a fresh pine swag hung on the front door. The house was no more than two kilometers outside of town and set back from the road on a big, wooded lot. Inside, Samantha smelled a wood-burning fire, coffee and sweet rolls. Jacob Rawlins and his wife stepped out to greet them and, the old burns on her arms hidden by the sleeves of a warm, hand-knit sweater, she embraced Samantha fondly then led her around the house.

It was sparsely furnished, but on purpose. The people in town wanted David and his wife to have the opportunity to decorate it themselves. The wood floors had recently been stripped and resurfaced. All the upstairs carpet had been replaced. The walls and ceilings were freshly painted a uniform cream color. And, Jacob Rawlins informed them proudly, there were new shingles on the roof and new insulation in the attic.

He was especially proud to show them the handcrafted bed in the massive master suite. “The best carpenters in town all had a hand in building this.
Myself
included,” he added with a grin.

*
   
*
   
*

David and Samantha settled easily into town life. She spent most of her days studying with her feet up. David caught up with his friends and was fast-tracked onto the town council without an opportunity to protest his appointment. When he asked Samantha what she’d like first for their new home, her answer was simply, “a dog.”

David’s dark brows drew together. “A dog,” he repeated skeptically. “You want a puppy
and
two babies...at the same time.”

“Not a puppy. A dog,” Samantha repeated succinctly and scratched her distended abdomen.

“A dog...
okay
then,” David agreed with a shrug.

The next day, he drove her to the farm that served as the town’s animal shelter. Feral dogs, whenever they wandered too close to town, were shot. But a few that wandered in had obviously been pets, often dropped off by desperate owners living in un-reclaimed areas. It didn’t take Samantha long to settle on what had to be just about the largest dog David had ever seen. He was black and looked like the result of an illicit love affair between a black retriever and a black bear, with a massive head and a long, lanky frame. So skinny he looked like death warmed over and had a blotchy coat that had likely never seen a brush, let alone a bath.

But Samantha was completely smitten by him and, after just a minute standing beside the dog, David knew why. He was just the nicest, most easy-going animal David had ever met. It followed Samantha without protest and she settled him into the back seat of their newly acquired, refurbished four-by-four. The dog poked his head between the front seats and leaned against her shoulder as they drove.

*
   
*
   
*

She went into labor a week early and, despite the prep classes they’d attended, David had a hard time controlling the unexpected and unwelcome wooziness he felt in the delivery room. With Doctor Nichol’s encouragement ringing in one ear and Samantha’s determined grunts in the other, he managed to hold it together. One of the nurses gently sat him down on a stool near Samantha’s head after his twin daughters, Lynn and Mary Rose were born. They had dark-brown hair and arrestingly pale, blue eyes the color of the sky. The first girl was named after his mother, the second after his sisters. “Very efficiently done, Corporal,” he teased Samantha afterward. “Two down and only two to go.”

She shot him a look that could freeze water in summer. “Yeah well next time
you
go through ten hours of labor,” she grumbled then shifted in the oversized, padded rocker in the girls’ nursery. “Jeez these stitches are bugging me.” She stopped grumbling when he lifted Lynn from her hand-turned cradle. The baby stopped crying as soon as Samantha began nursing her and he sat down on the window seat across from them, watching with a contentment that was as startling as it was profound.

Out in the hallway, the dog lifted his head briefly, slapped the floor a few times with his heavy, feathered tail then dropped his head back down onto the carpet and went back to sleep.

Samantha’s mother arrived soon after and stayed for a week. With the constant flow of visitors, she spent more time cleaning the house than cuddling her granddaughters. But she didn’t complain.

By the beginning of June, David, Samantha and the girls moved into the cottage. The town had re-graded their road and added fresh gravel—quite an extravagance considering theirs was the only home on it.
 

One of the first things Samantha did was buy potted geraniums at the Saturday-morning market and get out the old hanging baskets for the garages. She touched up the paint on the sign at the top of the drive.

They had a good six weeks. Samantha started running again and, the dog at her heels and a double-pram ahead of her, soon got back up to five kilometers a day. The babies looked adorable, tied up in their little lifejackets whenever their parents took the boat into town. Or when David took them with him to go fishing off the dock.