| Secrets to Solace | A Medical Romance

| Sudden Deaths |

Author's Note: 

An MRE is 'Meal Ready To Eat; usually used by soldiers/refugee camps etc due to easyof storage and preservation. 

Trigger warning; Sexual Assault: This chapter contains some sensitive content. Please take care whilst reading. Another warning will be given shortly before the scene.

The next few days saw broken conversations, static, half-heard messages and a mounting yearning that came with having little to no contact with the one person whose voice you desperately wanted to hear.

Murtasim reached the war-torn Venezuelan borders amidst a storm and barely had a chance to breathe before he was knee deep in the harsh ground realities of a storm and unrest ravaged refugee camp. Meerab, whilst living the comfortable life she had now become accustomed to, was more restless than she'd ever been during the past seven years.

Her time was spent buried in work, from patient to patient as she sought to keep her mind away from the fact that it had been a whole day since the man she loved had left for a warzone and no confirmation of him having reached had come yet. As she walked down the corridor towards his clinic just before the end of her shift, her heart was heavy and her body tired. She needed to get home to Meesam, and she needed to calm herself before she did so. Her stethoscope hanging around her neck, her block heeled boots setting a rhythmic cadence along the eerily quiet corridor and her mind and heart fixated on the dark wood door at the end of the corridor with a bronze plaque stating 'Dr Murtasim Khan, Neurosurgery'.

The key slid into the lock and the handle gave way with ease, and just as she'd stepped inside, the bright flashing of her silent phone lit up the darkened room. Holding on to the door for support, Meerab looked down and her hand tightened on the handle as she registered the unknown number.

"Murtasim?" she breathed out, her voice rushed.

Only static greeted her as she pressed her back against the now closed door and looked blindly into the dark room, her entire focus on the sounds coming from the phone at her ear. A few more moments of static went by and Meerab was frozen to the spot, waiting. It had been an out of country number. It had to be him. It needed to be him.

"Mee-" the broken, hardly clear word was cut short by more static but Meerab's breath rushed out at the sound of it.

"Murtasim? Can you hear me?" she called into the phone, knowing her voice was now bordering on beseeching but uncaring because she had spent the last twenty four hours in private worry whilst keeping a happy face on for their daughter and her colleagues and patients.

More static had her holding her breath before a huge, shaky rumble sounded in her ear. Her grip on the tightened as her mind registered the sound as crashing thunder. Car or truck horns began sounding and broken shouts were heard, and all the while, Meerab had begun silently praying under her breath without even knowing it.

"Meera?"

His voice sounding in her ear was like the gentle blowing of the damp leaves after a rainy storm. Her breath rushed out as she savoured the rich baritone, so beautiful even on a static ridden, broken line.

"Yes. I can hear you." She called softly. "Are you okay? Are you there?"

His voice returned after a few moments of static.

"I'm at the camp. Got here this morning. We had to-" static broke line before it cleared. "Five hours from the airport. You and Meesam okay?" he was speaking much louder than normal and even then, the loud sounds from around him filtered through and caused for quite a chaotic conversation.