“I don’t belong in your world,” she murmured. But her heart wondered if she could fit in. She didn’t really know him that well, and, given the circumstances with a man of his obvious means, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“You could if you wanted to,” he said, reiterating her own thoughts.
“Maybe,” she said, “but you have a life back there. I don’t. I haven’t got the means to make a living, and I’m not even sure I’m ready to go back to society.”
“To the society that hurt you?”
“To the society I chose not to live in,” she said quietly. “Judge me all you want, but that world I don’t particularly want to have anything to do with anymore.”
“I get it,” he said. “Honestly I do. But, Leia, you can’t just hide away here forever.”
“I have been doing it for a long time, so why can’t I?” she asked him curiously.
“Because you became a surgeon for a reason. To help people.”
“But not everybody wants to be helped,” she said, tilting her face to the sun and closing her eyes, searching for that sense of equilibrium she tried so hard to achieve and was so terrified to let go of now that she had found it.
“I care about you,” he said abruptly.
She opened her eyes, smiled at him. “I know,” she said, “and I care about you. But that doesn’t mean we move forward.”
“That’s as damn good a reason as any,” he said, growling at her.
She nodded. “You’ll have to go back to your world and see what matters.”
“Exactly. And you need to try my world to see if it’s something you can live with. You can’t make a decision from here, any more than I can make a decision if I don’t go back there.”
There was a certain craftiness to his voice, and she realized he’d been thinking about this as an argument for a long time. Smiling, she said, “We’ll see.”
And, with that, he had to be content because she wasn’t willing to give him anymore. At least not yet. When a commotion came outside as they were finishing breakfast, he looked at her, and she sighed.
“It sounds like your company has arrived.”
His face lit up, and he bolted to his feet and raced around the corner. She watched from a few steps back as a stranger, looking like he’d been given a new lease on life, came around the corner. With open arms, the two men fell into each other’s arms. She was amazed to see such joy and love on their faces.
Who was this man who brought Bullard such joy? She hadn’t known that he cared so much about someone, likely several someones, she realized, remembering his face when he talked about his team. But apparently he had a huge love of life and a love for others in that big frame of his.
As soon as Bullard pulled back, he turned and motioned at Leia. “This is Leia,” he said. “She rescued me and kept me alive all this time. She brought me back from the brink of death. Leia, this is Dave. We served in the same unit in the military, and we’ve been working together ever since.”
Dave immediately stepped closer and gave her the gentlest of hugs. “You have my undying thanks,” he said, “and, if we can do anything for you, please let us know. Bullard is a very special person, and our world was a much dimmer place when we began to lose hope of finding him after all this time.”
“I probably should have contacted the outside world earlier,” she admitted. “But it seemed much easier to stay safe in this cocoon, than to face whatever forces sent his plane into the ocean.” Dave nodded, his gaze searching and gentle, and she felt as if he saw so much more than she wanted him to. But she smiled at him bravely instead. “He has asked me to return with him, just so you know.”
“In that case, I would be extremely honored to have you come back with us,” he said, his gaze going from one to the other.
“I haven’t said I will,” she said. “This is my world here.”
“I understand that, but your old world could be yours again, if you wanted it to be.”
She stiffened and glared at Bullard. “Yours is the world of danger and ugliness.”
“But yours was just as ugly in another way,” he said, “and nobody was there to help you. I won’t let that happen again.”
Shaking her head, she said, “You don’t know anything about it.”
“No, I don’t,” he said, “but I trust Dave to find out.”
She nodded stiffly and said, “In that case, you guys can go talk but don’t involve me.” With that, she spun on her heel and walked away.
*
“She’s a very interesting woman,” Dave said in admiration. “But trust you to find somebody out in the middle of nowhere.”
“I didn’t know anything but her for the longest time,” Bullard said. “I had no memories, and she wouldn’t give me even a hint. She was very cautious about me trying to force them to return.”
“As you well know,” Dave said, “you’re much better off to just let them fall back into place on their own.”
“Yes, but it was frustrating,” he said.
Dave looked at him. “Do you think she was keeping you here deliberately?”
“No,” he said. “Things only just started to fall into place over the last couple weeks, after I turned a corner physically, able to move a bit on my own,” he said. “Leia did surgery on me right here.”
At that, Dave grinned. “I hope you didn’t lose anything of importance.”
Bullard howled with laughter. “Nope,” he said, “but I haven’t tested everything.”
“You haven’t given it a test drive, huh?”
“I’ve been trying to move gently,” he said, turning to look where she’d gone. “She’s a very special woman, and she’s been badly hurt.”
“Yeah, I can give you some details on part of her past. She’s Leia Montrose. Thirty-four years old. Her birthday is April 2nd. She was a surgeon, was up for a chief surgery position. Because of her age, there was significant opposition, but she was one of those super-talented surgeons.”
“What happened?” Bullard asked, anxious to find out.
“She was assisting the surgery of a high-profile patient. Long story short, the patient didn’t make it, and she was blamed. Her version was that the lead surgeon deliberately killed the patient on the table, while she tried hard to save him.”
“Ouch,” he said. “And nobody else saw what he did?”
“No, and he said she did it, while she said it was him. He was a senior surgeon, highly respected in his field, but vocal in his opposition to her advancement.”
“And all that was enough for her to just walk away?”
“It was highly publicized, and the public reviled her,” Dave said. “She was blamed for the death of a high-profile patient. The hospital canceled her surgical position, and somehow it was leaked to the media that there was talk of a murder charge. She was crucified,” he said simply. “The hospital turned on their own rising star to deflect attention away from them.”
“Good Lord. No wonder she doesn’t want to go back. She’d have to face it all over again.”