The Doctor's Marriage For A Month. Annie O'Neil

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      “I need to examine him,” she said, irritation threading actively through her voice as she met another one of the pandillero’s dark eyes.

      No response.

      “If I don’t get to him he’s going to die.”

      The men stared at her.

      She persisted. “He could drown. Look at him!”

      The poor lad was sprawled on the shoreline, legs apart, hands clutched to his chest, and the tide was coming in without an ounce of pity for a young man whose life could be taken away. Much like the baddie now staring at her as if he were carved out of marble.

      This was absolute madness!

      She glanced toward the security men wearing El Valderon Turtle Sanctuary T-shirts. Their guns had been taken from them and they were being tied to palm trees by yet more members of Noche Blanca. Terrific. When had that happened?

      “Any one of you willing to let me know why I can’t help this guy?”

      She stared at Scarface for answers. He pushed her further into the center of the newly floodlit part of the cove with the butt of his rifle.

      “Hey!”

      She rubbed the small of her back. No one—and that included gun-wielding criminals trying to steal turtle eggs from idyllic beaches in the middle of the Caribbean—was going to push her around. Had she mentioned being dumped this week? The cancelled wedding?

      She wheeled on him. “I am a doctor,” she ground out. “Dottore?” She pointed at herself, wondering why she was now speaking in Italian.

      Maybe because you’re a boring GP whose only access to the world is via your television.

      She pushed Kyle’s cutting tone out of her head. It was a heck of a lot better than getting access to the world via an array of flight attendants’ lady gardens!

      She gave the pushy gunman her best no-nonsense face. The one she always had to use with Mrs. MacGregor when she refused to take her insulin. Scottish stubbornness was a force to be reckoned with. If she could get Mrs. MacGregor to listen she could do the same with these men.

      “I can stop your friend from bleeding to death...” she pressed her hands to her stomach and then braved making her dying face again before looking him in the eye “...but you have to let me go to him.”

      She pointed at the young man again, speaking as calmly as she could. Difficult with her heart trying to launch itself into her throat every few seconds.

      “I need to help him.”

      She kept pointing at herself and then the young man, feeling about as awkward as she did every Christmas when her aunties forced her to play charades.

      Talking slowly didn’t appear to be remotely helpful. The man stared at her entirely unmoved.

      He would have been terrific at playing a tree in the school play. She tried to picture the scene in an attempt to make him seem less scary. Miraculously, it worked.

      So she did the only thing she could think of that would end this ridiculous stand-off while that poor man bled into the approaching surf. She ignored the man in front of her and began deliberately walking toward her patient.

      No one moved a muscle.

      No guns were raised.

      No safety catches were unclipped.

      Not that she really knew what that would sound like, but she was over-familiar with the crime show oeuvre and knew having the safety on or off was very important.

      Was that what she’d done her life these past few years? Approach it with the safety on?

      Well... Look at her now. Here she was in the middle of a crime scene, marching toward a patient as if the Hippocratic oath made her bullet proof.

      At least if she died it would be in a blaze of glory. How very “MacLeay” of her. That would make the papers back home!

      She looked down at her wrinkled eyelet blouse and crumpled A-line skirt. Her hand crept up to her hair. Her auburn curls had exploded into the equivalent of a comedy wig the second she’d stepped off the plane and she hadn’t had the heart to try and wrestle them into submission. Yet. She’d given herself a week to cry and feel sorry for herself and she was only halfway through it.

      Another reason to be annoyed with these banditos. How dare they interrupt her self-indulgent sob-fest when she so rarely took time for herself?

      She gave her shoulders a little wriggle and kept her head held high. Looks weren’t everything. Besides, she hadn’t been shot yet, so perhaps dying in a scrappy skirt and T-shirt ensemble wouldn’t be an issue.

      She kept her eyes glued on the young man. A late teen at best. On the cusp of the rest of his life. He deserved a fighting chance to make some new decisions. Take a fresh path. And she was going to be the one to give him the chance. Then the pandilleros would free her, liberate her father, and everyone could get on with their lives.

      Scarface shouted at her and then at another one of his hombres as the roar of a motorboat cracked through the thick night air. She heard the word médico somewhere in there, so thought the best thing to do was to keep on walking.

      Finally! They were getting the hint. She was trying to help. And maybe the boat was the island version of an ambulance.

      The waves were just beginning to shift the sand around the boy. She pulled off her light cardigan and moved his hands away from the wound without too much effort. His strength was clearly fading. She sucked in a sharp breath. The bullet had entered the lower region of his right shoulder. His breathing was jagged. She pressed her fingers to the pulse line on his throat. Accelerated.

      Diagnoses flew threw her mind. Pneumothorax? Chest wall tenderness? Only an X-ray would give a proper read on the situation, but if that bullet had nicked the boy’s lung on entry there was every chance he was suffering a hemo-pneumothorax. A potentially lethal combination of air and blood filling the chest cavity.

       “Me llama, Isla.”

      He stared at her with glazed eyes and said nothing.

      She silently berated herself. It didn’t matter if he knew her name or not. What mattered was whether or not she could stop the bleeding and keep him breathing. The frightened look in his eyes sharpened her resolve to help him. Her heart twisted inside her chest as it hit home just how fortunate she had been as a child.

      Okay, her parents had been away on research trips for the bulk of her childhood, but she’d had her grandmother. She’d known her parents would try their best to get home for holidays. They’d make a huge event out of her birthdays. She’d been clothed, fed, and she’d always known she was loved.

      It was why she’d vowed to become such a solid rock for her father when her mother had died. She knew half of his world had been torn away from him that day and, like her grandmother before her, she was going to be there for him. Reliable. Dependable.

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