скачать книгу бесплатно
He nodded. “Not like you think, though.”
“But you fell in love with her. You had a holiday fling and fell in love.”
“No fling, no falling in love. She was just a nice way to pass some pleasant hours. Someone to take the stigma off eating alone. No big deal, really.”
“Then why the wistful sigh?”
“Not wistful. Agitated. I have patients to see and you’re standing in my way.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Ben. Whatever it was between you, whoever she was, I’m sorry it didn’t work out, because I was truly hoping you’d meet a beautiful Tuscan woman who’d steal your heart at first sight, then you’d have some kind of wild adventure with her. Maybe even get married and send me an email telling me you were staying there to have a full life and lots of babies.”
She backed away from Ben and brushed tears from her eyes. “Anything that makes you happy… that’s all I want. All I’ve ever wanted for you.”
“I know and I appreciate it. But I’m reconciled to what I have, what I am, Amanda,” he said gently. “It’s taken me a lot of years to come to terms with it, but it’s a decent choice, all things considered. So now it’s your turn to comes to terms with it. Okay?” Being alone had been his choice since he’d been fifteen. More strongly confirmed at age twenty-two with a fiancée, Nancy Collier, who’d gasped, but not in ecstasy, the first time they’d made love. Or attempted to.
The look on her face then the apologies and the discomfort… no man wanted to face that. But what he’d faced that day, even more than Nancy’s repulsion over his physical scars, had been the fact that this was the way it was always going to be. One look at the monster, and people turned away. And that was what unleashed the real monster.
Now it was easier to not let them look.
“No, it’s not okay. Your choice is too hard, Ben. You’re too hard on yourself, and it worries me, because if someone wonderful did come along…”
Someone wonderful, like Shanna… “It is what it is. My life is good, I’m not alone.” Subconsciously, he brushed his fingers across the scars on his neck. “And you’re too sentimental right now. Pregnancy hormones running amuck with your emotions, or something like that. How’s my nephew, by the way?” he asked, fervently hoping to get off the circumstances of his life, for which there was no solution. “I’ve missed him. Wondered how he was settling into family life.” He was referring to Ezequiel, the twelve-year-old Amanda and Jack had recently adopted. Also the sure proof there were happy endings out there. Just not for him.
“He and Jack are out on a medical run, but they should be back in a couple of days. Jack decided it’s good to take Ezequiel with him whenever he can when he goes out on short trips. It gives them some quality father-son time, and also gives Ezequiel a sense of purpose, pretending to be a doctor’s assistant.” She smiled with pride. “My new son is like a sponge. He absorbs everything, and he’s so anxious to learn and experience new things. I think he might be a doctor someday.”
“Children have so many expectations at that age,” Ben commented as he stepped around Amanda and pulled open the door to the women’s ward. He’d had those same expectations once. Not about being a doctor so much as the other things life might hold in store for him. In his youthful naivety he had just been waiting for the world to open up for him so he could take whatever he wanted.
Then one day it had ended. Everything. No more expectations, no more youthful hopes and dreams because those didn’t happen where he’d spent the next year of his life—in a burns ward, fighting for his life, going through skin graft after skin graft, battling any number of opportunistic infections trying to kill him by various degrees.
Those had been the days when his expectations had turned away from the world and centered only on surviving through the next few minutes, the next hour, the next day.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” she said as they walked shoulder to shoulder to their first patient. “Your affair in Tuscany. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“There was nothing to work out,” he said, stopping short of the bed where his first patient was dozing, then turned to face his sister. “See, that’s the thing. She wasn’t into me. If she had been, I wouldn’t have spent those few days with her. That’s the way it is, Amanda, and it’s not going to change.” He gave her a squeeze on the arm. “I love you for trying, but you’ve more important things to worry about now. And in the meantime I’ve got a middle-aged woman, bad diet, uncontrolled diabetes to look after.”
“Do you remember that treehouse Dad built us?” Amanda asked.
“The one where I wouldn’t let girls inside?” he replied, wondering where this was going.
“But I always managed to get in, Ben.”
“And left dolls there.”
“I knew you didn’t want a sister, knew you felt threatened when Mom and Dad adopted me. I was only five, but I could see it in you. See the resentment and the fear that maybe they were replacing you with me. It shows, Ben. It always shows on you.”
“But we eventually had fun there when I finally managed to get rid of the dolls.”
“And the pink curtains Mother made for the treehouse.”
Good memories, those days when his family had been happy. They were good to hold on to, especially when the darker days had prevailed. “So, are you thinking we should build a treehouse for Ezequiel? Is that where this conversation is leading?”
“You know it’s not,” she whispered, fighting back tears. “In the days before you accepted me as your sister, you hid in that treehouse. Refused to come out. I watched from my bedroom window. Could see you in there angry, hurt… crying. Ben, you have to come out of the treehouse. You can’t spend your whole life hiding.”
“I run a hospital. I work twenty hours a day, seven days a week. That’s not hiding.”
“There are different ways to hide, Ben.” She swiped at her tears. “Anyway, you’ve got patients to see, I’ve got patients to see…”
“I’m fine, Amanda,” he said as she walked away. She didn’t answer, though. Just kept on walking. And he… well, he just tried to blot it out of his mind. What else was there?
“So, I didn’t expect to see you back here so soon,” he said, turning his attention to his patient as he pulled up a chair next to the bed, and sat down. “It’s only been three weeks, Maria, which means we need to talk again about the things that can happen to you if you don’t take better care of yourself.” Said to a lady who was eyeing a plate of pastries next to her bed, left there by a too-sympathetic husband.
Sighing, Ben began the spiel he’d used on her ten times before. Apparently to no avail again. But he understood. It was never easy giving up what you loved, or what you wanted, no matter what the reason. Sometimes, though, life was just plain cruel and forced it on you. “First, you could have heart complications…” Something he assiduously avoided in his personal life.
CHAPTER TWO
“THAT way,” the disagreeable driver grunted. The filter of his cigarette was stuck between his lips, just hanging there, no more cigarette left to smoke. “I don’t go there.”
“I’m not surprised,” she quipped, tossing her oversized duffel on the ground outside the taxi, not expecting the driver to help her. Which he didn’t. But he was quick to extend his meaty hand out the window for a tip. The only tip she wanted to give him was to quit smoking and adopt a better disposition, but handing him a few pesos was easier. So she handed him a fist full of notes, then watched as he counted his money, grunted, then drove off without a care or concern over how she was going to accomplish the next leg of her journey.
For all she knew, she was nowhere near the village, called Aldea de Cascada—village by the waterfall—which she’d been told was also called Aldea de Hospital, thanks to Ben’s hospital.
Major disillusion certainly caused major life changes. And the gnats swarming her, either to glom onto the carbon dioxide was she exhaling or the sweat she was sweating like she’d never sweated before, were sure testament to that.
“Okay,” she said, picking up the duffel and slinging it over her shoulder, which threw her off balance and sent her tumbling backward a couple of steps. “Just do it. You want your life back, this is how you’ll get it.”
Shanna gained her balance at the same time she gained her bearings, and headed off down the narrow grassy path she hoped would lead either to her destination or to someplace where someone else could point her in the right direction. At this juncture, there weren’t many options. The sun was already getting groggy in the sky, so if she didn’t land somewhere soon, the chances looked good for her spending the night out here. Not an appealing thought, sleeping alone in the jungle where who knew what kinds of predators were lurking.
Thing was, the darned bag weighed her down, which slowed her down. But leaving it, maybe coming back tomorrow to get it, wasn’t an option. If something happened to it, if it disappeared overnight… She hadn’t brought much on this journey, but she wasn’t about to do without the few creature comforts she’d included. So she redoubled her efforts, focused only on the trail ahead of her, and bore down for the march. Thinking on every step of it how she was going to explain herself to Ben without looking like an idiot, a total lunatic or both.
A few casual days in a tiny Italian village weren’t enough to compel anyone to do what she was doing. Especially given the way those days had gone. He’d been there but, in so many ways, he hadn’t been. And that was what she needed to learn from him. How to switch off her feelings and simply get on with it. That’s the way he lived his life, being an outstanding doctor, no emotional involvement attached to it. Precisely what she needed to learn. And now she’d traveled halfway around the world to get it, or come to terms with what she would do with the rest of her life if she couldn’t. Because heart-on-the-sleeve medicine didn’t work in the Brooks medical world.
“Ayúdeme por favor. Mi madre fue mordida por una serpiente. Está muy enferma. No puede mover. Pienso que se morirá. Ayúdeme por favor!”
A young girl, probably no more than ten, appeared on the road and grabbed hold of Shanna’s duffel. Not to steal it. Shanna understood that. The child was terrified because, from what Shanna could gather, her mother had been bitten by a snake. Una serpiente. Wasn’t moving. Possibly dying, or already dead.
“Is she breathing?” Shanna asked instinctively, before she’d had a chance to think that the girl probably spoke no English. “Respirar. ¿Respira su madre?” she repeated, grateful for some family urging in the direction of languages.
“Yo no sé. Está en el suelo, como duerme. Pero yo no sé si puede respirar.”
Unconscious, on the ground. Status of her breathing unknown. “¿Sabe donde el hospital es?” She was asking the girl if she knew where the hospital was.
The girl nodded then pointed straight ahead on the trail.
“¿Es muy distante?”Very far?
The girl shook her head. “No.”
“Bueno. Por favor, corre al hospital, los dice lo que usted me dijo, y los dice que hay ya un médico con su madre, pero necesitan alguien que puede ayudar a conseguirla al hospital.” She was telling the girl to run ahead to the hospital for help, but the look on the girl’s face indicated she either didn’t understand or might be afraid to do so. “¿Lo que es su nombre?” she asked the girl as they made their way through the grasses.
“Valeria,” she said.
“Eso es un hermoso nombre.”Beautiful name.
“Agradecimiento.”
Valeria smiled politely with her thank-you, even though she was so scared. Shanna was impressed by the girl’s manners, especially given the circumstances. Grace under pressure. Something she needed to master. “¿Y qué es el nombre de su madre?”
“Su nombre está Ines.”
The mother’s name was Ines. Just as that little bit of knowledge sank in, they rounded a clump of tall pampas grass, where Ines was sprawled on the ground. Breathing, thank God! But barely.
Shanna dropped her bag to the ground, knelt to open it, then had second thoughts about snakes. Pit vipers were prevalent here. At least, that was what she’d read on the plane. That, and so many other disjointed facts about Argentina. So she stayed half upright, half bending, and grabbed the few medical supplies she’d been allowed to carry in. No medicines, just equipment. Which wouldn’t save the woman’s life. “Soy médico, Valeria. Pero debo ayudar. Por eso yo deseo que vaya al hospital.” I’m a doctor, but I need help.
Back home, help had been at hand with just the push of a button. Out here, she didn’t know. And as she wrapped her stethoscope around her neck and clicked on her penlight, she wasn’t even sure the kind of help she might have had back home would do much good, given what she was already seeing in Ines.
Truth was, if the bite had come from a pit viper, the only possible treatment was antivenin. “Debo ayudar.” Yes, she needed help, especially when her first take of the woman’s pulse revealed tachycardia. Pulse much too fast and starting to skip some beats. In addition, there was swelling on her left ankle where the bite area was, not only very puffy but red and hot to the touch.
Shanna imagined other symptoms had occurred while the child had waited there with her mother, probably hoping someone would come along to help them—difficulty with speaking, muscle weakness, dizziness before passing out, excessive sweating, blurred vision, maybe even some paralysis.
While she’d never had to treat a venomous snake bite as a family practitioner, she’d certainly studied them in medical school. Which was nothing like encountering one in front of her. Because what she remembered from her studies was that without fast treatment death followed coma. And the blue tinge developing around Ines’s lips was a precursor to death.
“¿Puede correr al hospital, Valeria?” Even though she asked Valeria again to run to the hospital, Shanna wasn’t sure it would make much difference. Time was elapsing and she had no idea how long ago Ines had been bitten. But the woman was still breathing, which meant there was still hope. Only at Ben Robinson’s hospital, though, and only if Ben stocked the right kinds of antivenin.
The child tugged on Shanna’s shirt. “Sí, puedo. Pero tengo a amigos cerca que puede ayudar a llevar a mi madre allí. Creo que sería más rápido.”
She had friends who could carry Ines there faster. Shanna kept her fingers crossed as she shooed Valeria off to fetch these friends. “Tan rápidamente como usted puede,” she urged the child, even though she didn’t know if Valeria’s fast would be fast enough.
In the meantime, Shanna kept vigil over Ines, washing the snake wound the best she could with bottled water. There’d been a time when making a tourniquet had been the field standard in care, but studies had proved that when a tourniquet was applied, the poison was likely to concentrate where the tourniquet was cutting off circulation, increasing the chances of amputation or even a faster death.
Then there was the idea that cutting the wound and sucking out the poison could improve things. Unfortunately, too many people had died from sucking the poison into their own lip or mouth cut.
So now she had to sit and wait, feeling as medically ineffective as she had that day when she’d promised her patient, Elsa Willoughby, a kidney transplant. Not a simple thing to promise, granted. But Elsa had been in a bad condition, which should have put her at the top of the list for an available kidney. What she hadn’t expected, though, had been the hospital’s refusal to allow the procedure once a kidney became available. A refusal that had come from her grandfather, and been upheld by her father and several other doctors bearing the Brooks name. It was like they’d turned into a wall of opposition because she’d had a patient who needed an operation they didn’t want to grant.
Your patient is too old, her grandfather had stated. That, and another dozen reasons that had got Elsa rejected from Brooks Medical Center, a conglomerate of three hospitals, nine clinics and fourteen other miscellaneous medical services.
Eventually, the county hospital had taken Elsa, but too late. Her condition had deteriorated to the point that she had no longer been a good enough candidate for a transplant anywhere. She’d gone back on dialysis to await her fate, which had come just four months later.
Shanna still had nightmares about the day she’d had to tell her patient she could do nothing for her, that the medical system she’d loved and trusted had failed her. She’d had a small breakdown, meltdown, whatever the term du jour turned out to be. Had spent the night alone, crying, angry, doubting everything about what she was doing.
Next morning she’d gone to her grandfather one more time, trying to persuade him to change his mind. But his was a mind that wouldn’t be changed. “Given your emotional involvement, you may be better suited in an administrative role than the actual practice of medicine,” her grandfather had said. An administrative role because she cared? It’s why she’d left medicine and had gone looking for a better way. Or a different way. Or any way at all that would define her place in medicine. And if it wasn’t out there, then what?
Ben Robinson. He proved it was out there. Everything she’d seen of him proved it. And to gain some of what he had, she’d do whatever she had to.
Except here she was again. Not being able to treat a patient. So she spent the next several minutes doing what she’d done with Elsa after she’d broken the news. She sat and held her patient’s hand, felt her own pulse jump every time Ines twitched, felt her own breath catch each time Ines’s breath went raspy. Heart-on-her-sleeve medicine. Even deep in the jungle she could feel the disapproval of the entire Brooks family.
Luckily for Ines, that wait wasn’t long for only minutes after Shanna had settled in she heard quite a clamor coming from the trail. Not just one or two people. Probably not even three or four of them. In fact, by the time she was on her feet, twenty or so people were standing in front of her, hefting a bed. Not a stretcher or some makeshift rig to transport Ines but a single-size bed, mattress, blankets, pillows and all. She’d never seen anything like it. So much response, so much concern…”Put her…” she started to instruct, but the will of the people took over, and before Shanna could blink, Ines was lifted into the bed, and the bed was being whisked down the trail. All she could do was follow.
Which she did, for about half a mile. Then, at the entry to a small wooden building, everybody stepped back for her to go first, after which several of the men followed her in, leaving the bedframe outside and carrying Ines gently on the mattress.
Shanna spotted Ben immediately, and even in the urgency of the moment her heart clutched. Was it excitement to see him, to start her medical makeover? Or was it merely excitement for medical help for her patient? She didn’t know which, didn’t care. Ben was bent over an empty exam table in what she presumed to be the emergency area. He was adjusting a light, not even aware yet that she was in the room. “Is that table taken?” she asked, smiling when he looked up at her.
“I’m supposing this is not a coincidence, you being here?” Ben asked. He gestured for Shanna to sit down across the table from him. They were in the doctors’ lounge, a tiny place with a table, two chairs, an old sofa, a refrigerator and barely enough room to turn around. Sparse of comfort and cramped, but well used by Ben’s largely volunteer staff. “Which means you’re stalking me, correct?”
She grasped the cup of yerba maté he’d made, a tealike drink popular in Argentina, like it was her lifeline. Ben had mentioned it was his favorite, but she hadn’t quite acquired the taste for it yet, like she hadn’t yet acquired the taste for the changes she needed to make in herself.
“Believe me, I had thirty hours to think about it on the flight. You know, questions you’d ask. Answers I’d give. What would sound plausible, what wouldn’t.”
“Plausible would be good,” he conceded, still absolutely bewildered by her being there. Wondering, also, if he was hallucinating or under some kind of other spell that plucked his thoughts from his mind and turned them into reality. Because he’d thought about her in every unoccupied moment since he’d left Tuscany. She’d even managed to creep into a few of his occupied moments. And now here she was, like he’d ordered her up and, poof, she appeared. “But under the circumstances, difficult. You followed me halfway around the world, and I’m trying to imagine how plausible any explanation for that could be.”
“Other than stalking you,” she said quite brightly. Taking a sip of the maté, she let the bitter taste mellow out on her tongue for a moment, then nodded as she swallowed. “Which I’m not. At least, not in the traditional sense.”
“Okay, then tell me what’s the untraditional sense.” It was flattering that she’d followed him here. At least, he thought it was. Or hoped it was. Because there was the distinct possibility that Shanna Brooks was some kind of lunatic, and he’d completely missed that in her back in Tuscany. Blinded by the aura, oblivious to the reality? No, that didn’t make any sense because he’d looked into her eyes more than once, and there was nothing to suggest anything wrong with her. In fact, one of the things he’d been drawn to had been her spark, her vitality, which shone in her eyes.
“It’s hard to explain. I… I need something different.”
“You needed something different so you stalked me and ended up in my jungle hospital. Which, by the way, isn’t on the map, or any global tracking system I know about. So you had to put some effort into finding me.” These kinds of things never happened to him, and he wondered if he should pinch himself to make sure he was awake.
Shanna shrugged. “You’re right. You’re way off the map. But you’d mentioned you were in Argentina, and I’m resourceful. So, here you are.” She took another sip of maté, watched him carefully over the top of her mug.
“Yes, here I am.” So was she being deliberately vague, or was she as unsure of herself as he was sensing, putting forward the brave front with nothing behind it to back it up? Because Shanna Brooks seemed almost as surprised to be here as he was to see her here. “Several years, now, which gets me back to my original question…”
“Why am I stalking you?” She drew in a deep breath. “The answer is… I want to be like you. So who better to show me how to do that than you?”
Now he was back to the theory that she might be a lunatic. “What you’re telling me is that you want to be like a recluse doctor who’s running an isolated, struggling volunteer hospital in the middle of a jungle?”
She smiled. “Not sure it does. So you’re thinking I’m crazy, aren’t you?”
“Probably not crazy enough to medicate you. But odd enough that I might have to keep an eye on you, take away sharp objects, limit your prescribing to sugar pills.”
Shanna laughed. “Don’t blame you. In the same position, I might also be calling for a security guard.”
“If we had one,” he said. “Which we don’t. So what didn’t you tell me back in Tuscany that I obviously should know since you’ve set your sights on… me?”
“That’s a fair question, I suppose.”
“Which you’re going to answer, I suppose?”
She sat her mug down on the table and simply studied him for a moment. Looked deep into his eyes, never breaking contact for what seemed like an eternity. Then she drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly and smiled. “You deserve an answer, but it’s not necessarily the real answer because…”
“Because it’s hard to explain,” he filled in.
“Harder than you can know.”
“Then, start at the beginning.”
“The thing is, every story has so many beginnings. With this one, let’s begin where medicine and I came to a parting of the ways. For the sake of keeping this brief, let’s just call it a discrepancy of idealisms, and move on from there. After I hung up my medical diploma, I went on a road trip. You know, in search of myself, in search of truth, maybe in the higher sense in search of the meaning of life.
“Who knows what I was in search of but, whatever it was, I met you and I liked the way you talked about your medical world. Thought maybe I might like the way you actually deal with it, as well. And I’ll admit I probably got caught up pretty easily as I didn’t have my own medical world any longer.”
