Free Heartbeat (Medical Romance) by Anna Ramsay Page B

'em early every morning, driving the village's communal herd of cattle past the Medical Centre and down to the grazing grounds on the far side of the Mbusa Wa Bwini. Hey, don't give all your lunch away!' he protested as a little girl sneaked herself on to Jenni's lap for a cuddle, a piece of banana clutched in her small plump fist. 'These people don't eat in the daytime.'
    'Oh, the children must do, surely. Look at this poppet, she’s hungry?' The child was attempting to share her food with Jenni, smearing banana mush all over her freckled face. Jenni just laughed but Matt said, 'Ugh, don't know how you could. C'mon,' he urged with a glance at his watch, 'we better get along back.'
    That break by the river was a rare treat. As a general rule each waking hour was crammed to the minute with activity. Grab a meal, get to the ward, rush to a clinic, speed by Red Cross truck to visit the village settlements. Don't waste a second. So little time, so much to do. And the doctor's all-seeing eye scrutinising her every move, ready waiting for the first sign of weakness, of not being up to the job. Like hell she'd give him the opportunity to fire her!
    'Let's clear the floor and have ourselves a disco!' suggested Matt after supper on Saturday night. Too late—Jenni's head was already nodding over the mango pudding.
    She was finding out the hard way that for a nurse newly arrived from England it required a superhuman effort to work efficiently in the tropical heat. And she seemed permanently thirsty. The flies particularly got her down. They were everywhere—a plague.
    But Nurse Westcott was not going to show publicly the extent of her fatigue. Not a murmur of complaint should escape her determinedly smiling lips.
    Kindly Sister Beatrice, perceiving the hollow-eyed glitter of exhaustion, insisted Jenni take the occasional hour’s breathing space. 'Can’t have Paul accusing me of working you into the ground. Now be off with you. Out of my sight. Who told you you were indispensable around here?’
    Jenni grinned, unabashed. 'Oh, thank you, Bea! OK if I nip over to the school and hand over the letters I was telling you about? The ones from the kids in Dad’s Sunday School, asking for pen-friends? And I have photos too. I must show you them.' There had been no further mention of her supposed weeks of 'trial'. It appeared to be strictly between the doctor, the priest, and the by-nature-rebellious Nurse Westcott.
    Not much romance about the whole adventure now. Paul was no longer the lover-boy of a young girl's dreams. In fact he was causing the mature Jenni the occasional nightmare from which she awoke with a start, struggling to remember where she was, and why. Generally it took the form of a harassed and heavily pregnant Jenni, her swollen form draped in a batik-printed kanga, surrounded by freckled blond toddlers, all boys and all kicking footballs round the one room of a wattle-and-daub hut while she struggled to support a wriggling baby on one hip and stir the cooking pot with the other - at the same time trying to discipline children who scarcely knew their father from Adam and who seemed intent on turning their wretched mother's fiery hair snow-white.
    Dear old Paul. Any woman sharing his life would have to accept that she took second place, and Jenni knew she was too volatile to put up with that. Perhaps, she found herself pondering, she'd never marry. After all, if in twenty-four years she had never found Paul's equal, then in all probability she never would.
    It was at this point, as she lay flat on her back, meditating in the darkness and shrouded by mosquito netting, that the image of a tall sweaty unshaven man, leaning bold-eyed and insolent against her door jamb, superimposed itself so remarkably on her inner vision that Jenni sat up, open-mouthed and wide awake, clutching the thin sheet to her throat and almost convinced Ross McDonnell himself was right this moment, there, just outside her room—
    What an extraordinary