“Ask them,” Rhys said. “I read about the last performing arts institution in Aleppo being bombed a few weeks ago. Maybe they came from there.”
“I doubt it. I can’t imagine that anyone would be left in Aleppo by now.”
But when Jevon left Rhys to sleep and struck up a conversation with the older children in the group, it turned out that Rhys’s musing had been right on the money. “It’s fucking criminal,” Jevon fumed to the leader of the Médecins sans Frontières group they were sharing living quarters with. “Why are they still bombing civilian areas?”
Anton shrugged. “You’re asking me to make sense of what’s happening in Syria? We could talk about it for the rest of our lives and never understand.”
Jevon growled and flopped down on the camp bed he’d claimed as his own. “Have you heard from your people at Idomeni? Ours got kicked out a week ago.”
It was Anton’s turn to growl. “We’ve got a team on the ground, but they’re being kept back at the roadblocks while they clear the camp. God knows when they’ll be able to link up with the DPs again.”
DPs: displaced people. It sounded so clinical, and Jevon was glad he hadn’t been around to see the Idomeni camp dismantled. To wave helplessly at children as they were herded onto rickety buses bound for who knew where. At least in Lesbos they sometimes got to the children before the authorities, smuggling toys and sweets into their sodden pockets.
Anton was called away. Jevon claimed ownership of his still warm cup of muddy coffee and lay back on his bed, itching to call Rhys again but forcing himself to wait until later. Rhys seemed to be working around the clock right now, and he needed rest. A lot of rest if the shadows smudged beneath his eyes were anything to go by.
Not that Jevon could talk. Local tensions surrounding the camp were spilling out every night now—protests, flares, soldiers, and police with dogs. Last night, it had got to the point where Jevon and his team had brought the youngest children into the staff tent, sitting up until dawn with half a dozen toddlers each to care for. Only the prospect of calling Rhys at sunrise had kept Jevon sane.
Sleep was his only true respite, but his dozing was interrupted a little while later by Anton coming back from the medical tents.
“Don’t suppose you know how to stick an IV, do you?”
“Me?” Jevon cracked an eye open. “Nah. Sorry, mate. I’ve only done that basic Red Cross course.”
Anton sighed. “Shame. I reckon you’d be a better nurse than you are a clown.”
It was Anton’s way to fill any time he spent with Jevon and his troop drolly informing them how distinctly unfunny they were. The banter passed the time when the generator failed and the water system clogged, but it was different now. The humour was laced with a graveness that drove Jevon to sit up. “What’s going on?”
“The reinforcements I was expecting to arrive this week aren’t going to get here.”
“They’re delayed?”
“Nope. They’re just not coming. Something’s kicked off somewhere else so they’ve been sent there instead. There’s no money to bring anyone else over, so we just have to make do.”
“There’s no volunteers?”
“None that we haven’t taken full advantage of already. I might be able to rustle up a couple of docs in the next few months, but it’s nurses I need and medical assistants, particularly ones with paediatric experience.”
Jevon recalled the moment he’d spun around in the Bedford hospital to see Haya climbing up Rhys’s legs. “What about paramedics?”
Anton nodded. “I’d marry one about now if it got them on a plane. Why? You know of anyone? Or a secret stash of paediatric antibiotics I could raid?”
“Maybe.” But Jevon left it at that as madness began to take hold in his brain. Anton wandered off again, and Jevon retrieved his phone from under his pillow. The Wi-Fi wasn’t working well enough for FaceTime, so he sent Rhys a message.
J:Random long shot... MSF is in desperate need of medics and paediatric drugs. Any chance you fancy a change of scenery?
* * *
R:When do you need an answer? Got to find some info first.
Jevon read the message for the thousandth time over the two weeks since Rhys had sent it, his heart skipping a brand new beat every time he considered the implications—the possibility that Rhys could join him at the camp in Lesbos. The application process for MSF took too long, but another NGO working with them on site had a faster system and had bitten Jevon’s hand off when he’d passed them Rhys’s details.
It seemed too good to be true. And there it was. Good. The word was so ironic it burned. The prospect of Rhys coming over filled Jevon with emotions he couldn’t describe, but there was conflict too. Life on the camp was horrendous and growing worse every day. Did Jevon truly want Rhys to see the things he’d seen? Babies dying in tents? Dead children washing up on beaches?
It’s Rhys’s decision.But it didn’t seem to matter how many times Jevon told himself that or even reminded himself that Rhys had seen plenty of horrors of his own, the war in his heart remained. A war that had sparked the moment they’d first kissed all those weeks ago. Months ago. A lifetime ago.
Jevon reflexively touched his lips, tracing them with the pad of his thumb. They tingled like they always did when he gave into memories that made his dick hard. Thankfully, he was alone in the living quarters, but he rolled over all the same, squashing the bulge in his trousers. He missed Rhys’s touch like a drowning man missed air, but it ran deeper than sex, even with the sensation of Rhys finally pushing inside him still raw in his mind.Fuck. Jevon closed his eyes as desire pulsed through him. His yearning for Rhys was far more than physical, but the craving for that mind-blowing sensation haunted Jevon every free moment he wasn’t distracted by something else.
Like talking to Rhys on the phone, on FaceTime, or texting him.