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you stabilized your patient.”
    “Staying kept her stable.” He frowned, his jaw jutting. “Write me up if you need to, but I wouldn’t change a thing.”
    McCabe sighed like a weary parent. “Let Rocha check you over. Now. We need to make sure you’re not hiding any injuries.”
    He grinned, forcing a smile through caked-on grime so the major wouldn’t realize how blown to shit his insides were. He refused to be benched. “Would I do that?”
    “Yes you would. Go. It’s an order.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    A light breeze parted the stifling air, welcomed for the cooling. Dreaded as it stirred the flies and the stench. Snakes and rats already scavenged through the debris. The fetid wind rolled across the uneven landscape, gathered grit and stray papers before lifting the door flap of the nearest medical tent…
    His boots picked up speed toward the field hospital they’d put together shortly after landing. Triage was in place for major injuries to the left, minor to the right. Lines of wounded streamed out of both. His teammate Wade Rocha was already waiting, just as the major had insisted.
    Still, Hugh checked one last time… just as Amelia’s stretcher reached the tent flap. He could swear she stared back at him, held him with those intensely blue eyes. Eyes that reached down deep in his gut and twisted.
    He’d only felt this connection once before in his life. The day he’d looked at Marissa’s tear-filled eyes as she’d begged him to get her Siamese out of the tree. Next thing he’d known, he was hauling his ass up a twenty-foot oak.
    He didn’t want this.
    The past few hours had proven beyond a doubt that Amelia Bailey was dangerous as hell to his peace of mind. More than ever he couldn’t afford this during a mission that already put him raw and on edge.
    And still… He bolted across the jutting mass of broken concrete. His eyes locked on the stretcher being carried to a drab green tent, the canvas flapping in the muggy air, stirring fat flies around.
    He grabbed the arm of a foreign medic, a wiry guy with a top-of-the-line Motorola two-way radio and a clipboard. “Where will she go after you finish here?”
    “There are already over a dozen makeshift hospital sites being set up in schools and churches.” The foreign soldier covered the mouthpiece on the walkie-talkie and tucked the clipboard under his arm. “It’s going to be a matter of which one can take them.”
    “I know it’s chaotic right now, but if she’s not going to be flown out—”
    “Do you know this woman?”
    So easily he could end this now. He could do what he would—and should—in any rescue situation. Ensure the appropriate personnel made a record of the pertinent information, such as her connection to the child, then move on to the next case.
    He could not be personally responsible for every individual he saved. It wasn’t practical, feasible, or mentally advisable, if he wanted to keep from falling the rest of the way off the deep end.
    But then he’d stopped giving a shit about his sanity five years ago.
    Hugh looked back at Amelia, under the sheet with only her face and one arm sticking out. “Yeah, her and the kid… They’re mine.”

Chapter 4
    Dr. Aiden Bailey thrust his hands into the man’s chest cavity and squeezed life back into the dead heart.
    Squeeze. Squeeze. Pray.
    “Catch, damn it, catch,” the seasoned surgeon muttered with each massage of his fingers.
    The canvas wall creating the makeshift operating room flapped from movement on the other side, another surgical team to tackle the insurmountable flood of injured. Aiden focused, worked, even though he’d been in the Bahamas to adopt a son, not ply his trade.
    Squeeze. Squeeze. Pray.
    He’d volunteered his services in the improvised hospital after the earthquake hit. His Hippocratic oath, his call to heal, wouldn’t let him turn away from the masses of injured.
    Squeeze. Squeeze . Pr—
    Through the thin membrane of latex gloves, he felt the warm