Reawakened by the Surgeon's Touch Read Online Free PDF

out of the footwell as the soldiers approached them with their rifles raised.
    â€˜We’ve an injured man on board!’ she shouted out of the window. ‘We need to get him to hospital.’
    The soldiers obviously recognised her because they immediately raised the barrier and waved them through. Jude felt his spirits start to revive a little as he drove along the road. Not only had he managed to outrun the rebel faction, but he would get their patient to hospital as well. Not bad going for his first day in the country, all things considered.
    â€˜Take a right at the end of the road and drive straight across when you reach the crossroads. Sound your horn in case anything’s coming but don’t stop.’
    Jude frowned as he glanced over at her. He would have expected her to be pleased at having got back to the town but she looked almost as edgy now as she had done when they were being pursued.
    â€˜You can relax,’ he said, injecting an extra-large dollop of honey-coated reassurance into his voice. It was a trick he employed when dealing with particularly nervous patients and it always worked. He was confident that it would work just as well now too. ‘We’re perfectly safe now.’
    â€˜I hate to disillusion you, Dr Slater, but we won’t be safe until we’re at the hospital.’ She smiled thinly as she pointed to a gang of men standing on the corner of the road. ‘See those guys over there? They’re just waiting for someone like you to come along.’
    â€˜Someone like me?’ Jude repeated, unconsciously slowing down.
    â€˜Keep moving!’ She tapped him sharply on the knee so that his foot hit the accelerator and sent them shooting forward. ‘You never, ever slow down when you’re driving through the town. And it goes without saying that you never stop. Those guys will have this truck off you before you can blink.’
    â€˜Oh, come on! You really think I’m just going to hand it over to them?’ he scoffed.
    â€˜If they hold a gun to your head then yes I do. You’d be a fool not to.’ She looked him straight in the eyes and he could tell immediately that she wasn’t simply trying to alarm him. ‘Vehicles of any description are worth a fortune here. They’re far more valuable than a human life and I suggest you remember that.’
    She didn’t say anything else but she didn’t need to; she had said more than enough. Jude’s heart plummeted as he drove through the town. He had known it wouldn’t be a picnic working here, but he had never imagined it would be this bad. By the time he pulled up in front of the hospital, he was beginning to wonder if he should have got onto the plane twelve hours or so ago.
    â€˜Stay here while I find a porter,’ the woman instructed, jumping down from the cab.
    Jude took a deep breath as she disappeared inside, determined to get himself back on even keel. Maybe the situation was far worse than he had expected but he would cope. He had to. Quite apart from the fact that he had been warned at his interview that there was only one flight per month in and out of Mwuranda, he had a lot to prove, didn’t he?
    When he had left the NHS he had been completely burnt out. The pressure of working the kind of hours he had done, added to the daily struggle to find sufficient qualified staff to allow a scheduled surgery to go ahead, had ground him down. Every time he’d had to explain to a patient that an operation couldn’t take place, it had taken its toll on him. It had seemed nothing short of cruel to raise someone’s hopes only to dash them.
    He’d had such high expectations when he had gone into surgery, too, a genuine desire to help those who had needed it most, but he had become disillusioned. Nevertheless, he would have carried on if it weren’t for Maddie, but her death had been the final straw. He had left the NHS and gone into the private