Maxence was still smiling at her. “We should have gone to Disneyland in Paris.”
She cracked up. “I can’t even imagine telling my family, ‘I went to Disneyland, in Paris.’ They probably wouldn’t believe me. Some of them would be mad at me for putting on airs.”
“Maybe next time we’re in Paris,” he said, rolling up and contracting all those amazing abs of his while he grabbed a tee-shirt from the end of the bedroll and sniffed it.
“Yeah,” Dree scoffed while she stuffed her legs into her ski bib. “Maybe next time we’re in Paris.”
He twisted in his sleeping bag and looked at her, meeting her eyes with absolute seriousness. “We could go to Disneyland in Paris sometime.”
She dragged her ski jacket over her arms and shook her head. “Max, I’m the last person who should be talking because I don’t know what I’m doing with my life next week. I think half the reason I’m so adamant that this mission needs to continue is because I need the time to think about what to do.”
He was smiling at her. “You could stay in a hotel in Kathmandu for a week, or Sister Mariam would take you in as a roommate in a heartbeat. That’s not the reason.”
“Yeah, okay. Anyway, after this week, I don’t know if I should beg Sister Annunciata to find me another trip into the far outback or go back to Phoenix to face the music of my dead, idiot, ex-boyfriend’s drug dealers, or maybe go hide on my parents’ sheep farm in New Mexico. But you, my friend, you need to make some decisions about your life.”
“I can’t,” Maxence said, wrestling his tee-shirt over his head. He rested his arms on his bent knees that were still in the sleeping bag and stared at the back of the tent.
“Oh my God, you can’t,” she mocked him. “Can’t died when he was a pup,”
“I beg your pardon?”
Fine, the Jesuit with a doctorate didn’t know old country proverbs. She explained, “A momma dog had two pups: Can and Can’t. Whenever Can encountered a problem, he hopped up and said, ‘I Can!’ and he tried it. He didn’t always succeed, but he tried and he learned. Whenever Can’t was faced with a problem, he laid down and whined, ‘I Can’t.’ So he never learned how to run, escape, hunt, or eat. Thus, Can’t died when he was a pup.”
“Ah,” Maxence said, laughing. “I am schooled.”
“Yeah, you are. The problem is that you ‘slip’ a lot. Like, every chance you get. I mean, I totally shouldn’t be so easily led down the garden path or the happy trail—”
Maxence lifted his shirt and frowned at his lower belly, where a fine trail of hair was forming between his abs. “I should have made time for waxing in Paris, too.”
“—because I’m going to get my heart broken at some point, but you’re an ordained deacon. You really should not. I mean, deacons aren’t supposed to have relations unless they’re already married, and if they aren’t, they aren’t allowed to get married.”
He shrugged. “My Holy Orders to be a deacon were a little different than the usual rite.”
She rolled her eyes. “There are no ‘different’ Holy Orders. It’s a sacrament. Sacraments are, like, set in stone by God or something. If the priest screws up and says the wrong words during your baptism, it doesn’t count and you have to get it done again. You can’t get kind-of married or just a little baptized, or sort-of some Last Rites. Either they were done right, or they weren’t.”
Maxence cocked his head to the side and shrugged. “I’m not a priest yet, they assure me. Pope Vincent de Paul assured me that if I want or need to marry, he’ll do it himself.”
“You can’t do tha—Wait, you’ve met the Pope?”
He nodded, still staring at the back of the tent. “We met ten years ago when he was a cardinal, and we’ve kept in touch. He’s a nice guy.”
“Wow.”
Maxence shrugged.
“Okay, did he—was he—okay, that’s beside the point. The point is that you keep saying you’re an ordained deacon, which is a degree of Holy Orders. Father Booker and your school friends seem to believe it. You’re not even supposed to be bopping your tallywhacker. I mean, we all aren’t, but you, especially.”
Maxence snorted. “All my friends who are priests express less remorse about their ‘solitary sins against chastity’ than their solitary sins against pasta. You can be absolved after sawing one off.” He slapped his flat, muscular stomach. “Carbs are forever.”
She pulled on her gloves and motioned between the two of them with one puffy finger. “This isn’t solitary.”
“I know,” he sighed. He struggled out of the double-wide sleeping bag and grabbed his pants.
“What are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never had this problem before. I’ve always had this life,” he gestured toward the side of the tent where he’d inserted a silver crucifix suspended on a chain of black rosary beads between the tent wall’s fabric and the tension-sprung rib holding it up, “and then I’ve had, that life.” He gestured between the two of them like she had. “They’ve never crossed before. For months or years at a time, I do this.” His open hands encompassed the mission and the crucifix. “And then, if there is a week or a weekend that is unaccounted for between assignments, sometimes, I slip.”
“So, I’m just a ‘slip,’” Dree said, knowing it was true in her heart. “And that’s okay, but you need not to slip anymore. You shouldn’t play with my heart like that, and you shouldn’t do it to other people, either.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You were never a slip.”
“Then, what am I, Deacon Father Maxence?” she asked, staring straight at him.
He regarded her for a long time, examining her eyes, her mouth, and the curls of her hair, until he said, “I don’t know.”
“Great, you don’t know whether I’m ‘just a slip’ or not.” She half-stood as much as she could in the pup tent. “In any case, it’s only for a few more days. Then you’ll go wherever the Church sends you, and I’ll decide what to do after my little sojourn here. I’m hungry. I’m going to see if those boys have rustled up breakfast yet.”
She stomped out of the tent as much as she could, but she ended up stomp-crawling the last few steps to get through the flap.
She let him get a good view of her ass when she was shimmying out of the tent, though. She should’ve told him to kiss it.
Dree wiggled out of the tent and found the other guys standing around the brightly blazing campfire, but no breakfast cooking.
Dang.
Father Booker had set up an altar on the back of his motorcycle seat as he’d done every Sunday since they’d started the mission. “Is it Sunday again already?” she asked.
“Happy Christmas!” Isaak told her, and he handed her a piece of cloth sewn into a small pouch.
Lumps filled the bag. She asked, “What’s this? Some mini-bottles of your family’s vodka?”
He laughed, his blue eyes sparkling in the morning cold. “A Christmas present. It isn’t much because I didn’t know we were going to spend Christmas out here—”
“You got me a Christmas present?” She was stupidly thrilled. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t get you anything.”
He shrugged. “You can buy me a coffee in Paris someday.”
“I can’t imagine I’m going to be able to go to Paris anytime soon,” she said.
His smile widened. “Then I’ll fly you there.”
Okay, that was odd. “Can I open it?”
He sat beside her. “Please do.”
Inside the bag were a bunch of yellow crystalline rocks with white crystals on them.
She smiled brightly at him. “Rocks?”
He laughed. “Ginger candy. I bought them from one of the ladies a few towns ago.”
“Oh!” She popped one in her mouth and sucked on it. After weeks of eating no cookies or candy and only the barest minimum sugar in her coffee to conserve their supplies, the ginger candy was a burst of super-sweet spiciness on her tongue. “Oh, wow. It’
s so good!”
He laughed.
Uh oh, she was being a candy hog, so she held out the bag to the men standing around her. “Everybody should try one.”
Father Booker waved her off. “We all got a few, too. You got the big bag, though.”
“Okay, then.” She popped another one in her mouth. Spicy and sweet, and OMG, she loved it.
Maxence crawled out of her pup tent behind her, ruffling his hair like he’d just woken up. “Happy Christmas?”
“Happy Christmas, sleepyhead,” Isaak said and tossed a tiny bag to him.
He looked inside. “I heard it was ginger candy?”
“It is.”
“Thanks, Isaak. That’s cool of you.” Max ate one, and a surprised look rose on his face. “These are good. Hey, here’s something for you. Happy Christmas.” He pulled little things wrapped in foil out of his pocket and tossed one to each person, including Dree.
When she caught it, the dark brown-covered nuts seemed to be candied almonds. “Thank you!”
And, oh yeah, they were good, too. Crunchy and brown-sugary in her mouth. Europe made better candy than the US.
He said, “Aha, and the other thing approaches.”
A woman wearing a bright red-and-brown coat and pants was approaching their camp. She’d brought her daughter to the clinic the previous day with a broken arm, which Dree had set and cast. Dree waved, and the woman smiled.
She was holding a small bundle, which she gave to Maxence, who accepted it with much bowing and smiles, and she went back on her way.
“Good God, Maxence,” Alfonso said. “What’s that?”
“Pan de Natale,” Max said, handing it to Father Booker. “It needs to be blessed at the Mass before we can eat it. It’s a tradition from home, a sweet bread made with almonds and hazelnuts in it. There’s supposed to be an olive branch on top, but I lost it when the motorcycle crashed. At least I found the nuts. It’s still warm.”
“Hey, we can wrap it in the pashmina to keep it warm.” Dree crawled back into her tent and retrieved the baby-blue pashmina.
As she was bundling the warm bread in paper and then in the cloud-like shawl, Alfonso tilted his head and looked at the cross made from almonds on the top of it. “Is that from—”
“Monagasquay,” Maxence told him. “Yes, it’s an old Monegasque tradition.”
Alfonso looked up at him, paused, and then asked, “What?”
“An old Monegasque tradition.”
“Right, but what did you say—”
“Nothing,” Maxence said. “I said nothing.”
After the Mass, they ate the bread, and it tasted like a particularly good donut.
When they were striking the camp, Maxence drew Dree away for a few minutes and held out his fist. “I have one more thing for you.”
Dree held her hands under his, and when he opened his fingers, a small silver cross on a thin chain fell into her palm.
She asked, “Isn’t this the one you wear under your shirt?”
Maxence touched the larger, blackened-silver cross he wore around his neck. “I have this one. Angels should have a cross to wear.”
Dree asked him, “This isn’t a family heirloom or anything, is it?”
He shook his head. “I bought it in Rome because I liked it, but now I want you to have it.”
He helped Dree with the clasp, his fingers brushing the skin on the back of her neck. She didn’t have a mirror to look at it, but the cross seemed delicate over her black wool turtleneck. “Thank you. It’s beautiful. Is it silver?” She would have to make sure she kept it polished so that tarnish didn’t eat it away.
“Platinum.”
She started to take it off. “That’s too expensive.”
He laughed and waved at her. “I wish I’d had time to buy something for you in Paris, but I didn’t think we’d ever meet again. I’m glad we did. I want you to have this.”
“Okay,” she said dubiously. “I do like it.”
He grinned. “Good. Now let’s get this tent down so that we can ride our motorcycles through that icy, icy air to the next village.”
The next village wasn’t all that far away, and even though they’d had Mass, breakfast, and struck the camp, they managed to get there before noon. Everyone went their separate ways for the usual arrangements, though Alfonso and Isaak were bickering because Isaak thought the NICU micro-clinic project was over, and Alfonso didn’t.
Nepal is a primarily Hindu country, so Christmas was not celebrated. Dree supposed she could have insisted on taking the day off, but tending to people’s needs seemed more in keeping with the spirit of the holiday.
After they arrived, they performed their usual routine of commandeering one of the better houses in the middle of the village and stringing up bed sheets on a cord to make a curtain for some semblance of privacy. That day’s sheets were a gorgeous sunny yellow with an orange paisley pattern.
Dree had been seeing patients for about two hours, a usual mix of babies and kids who needed vaccines, people with pneumonia or intestinal ailments who needed antibiotics, and assorted other communicable and non-communicable diseases.
Maxence and Father Booker triaged the patients while Batsa translated.
Isaak had followed them into the clinic today instead of going with Alfonso, and he was doing whatever the others told him to. Alfonso had gone on to evaluate NICU sites even though Isaak had told him again that it was a waste of time. Father Booker tagged along with Alfonso because going off on one’s own seemed like a bad idea, and Father Booker was the only one with whom Alfonso was not having an active argument.
Dree was bandaging a little girl’s arm and telling Batsa to translate to the mother that she needed to apply the anti-fungal ointment twice per day and keep it covered, and the ringworm would go away. She stripped off her gloves and chucked them in their med waste bag.
Shouting rang outside the door.
Batsa said, “I heard the words for ‘woman’ and ‘bleeding.’” He ran to the door, calling for Maxence and Isaak.
Two women were standing at the door, yelling and pointing.
Batsa talked to them for a minute, his voice rising as he understood more. He turned and said, “Dree, they said there’s a woman giving birth, but it’s not her time yet. They said they didn’t expect the baby until spring.”
Dree grabbed her backpack and swept all the supplies she could grab back into it. She yelled to Batsa, “Take Isaak. Go on ahead and find out what’s going on so you can tell me when I get there.”
Maxence was beside her. “What can I do?”
“Carry this.” She shoved her backpack in his arms. “Do we have more antiseptic anywhere? We’re running out of everything.”
“I think Isaak has seventy-percent alcohol in that flask of his.”
“Good. I didn’t think of vodka as being seventy percent alcohol, but you’re absolutely right. That should sterilize instruments for when we need them. Come on, let’s go find those guys.”
As they ran out of the makeshift clinic, Isaak was roaring up on his motorcycle and sprayed gravel as he stopped. He flipped up the visor of his helmet, and his blue eyes were wild. “I came back to get you. The house isn’t far. She’s in labor, and I think it’s any minute!”
They mounted Dree’s motorcycle and followed Isaak. The house was just a little way down the dirt street, but riding the bikes was faster than running.
Isaak halted his bike in front of a small, neatly kept cottage. Dree shoved her heel against the motorcycle’s kickstand and waited for just a second for Maxence to get off the bike first because he was behind her. As she started to swing her leg over, Max already had his gloved hand out to steady her, and she grabbed hold of his hand with hers.
An older woman was gesturing at the door, motioning for them to hurry, and they all ran inside.
Batsa was sitting beside the bed. “Thank God you’re here. I think this is happening now.”
Dree dropped her backpack on the floor an
d snagged two sterile gloves out of the packet in the front pocket. “How do you know it’s time? Did you examine her?”
“I have five children. I don’t need to look. The mother is nearing the end of stage two, transitional labor. She is beginning to push instinctively. The child’s head should crown any moment now.”
Behind her, Maxence said, “I can find clean towels.”
Dree said, “Good. Yes.” She took a peek between the woman’s legs, but she didn’t see the crown of the baby’s head.
Batsa asked her, “Have you delivered a baby before?”
“Twice. How about you?”
“I delivered the last two of mine. I did the last one just eight months ago.”
“You left your wife home alone with an eight-month-old baby and four other little kids for a month?”
“Nepali families are very close.” He gestured to the women standing beside the new mother’s bed. “With each of our children, my wife’s parents came and did all the cooking and cleaning for the first six months, and my parents came and did it for the second six months. It has been eight months since the birth, so I think my wife is all right to go to the grocery store and drive them to church once a week now.”
With a deal like that, no wonder they kept having kids. “Do you want to catch this one?” she asked.
The mother yelled something at Batsa and waved at him, and then the two other women beside the bed began haranguing him in Nepali.
Batsa said, “They are concerned for her modesty. If I stay up here near her head, they might let me stay in the room. You’ll have to catch the baby.”
The woman strained and screamed, her teeth bared and her face turning dark red.
The two other women started speaking again, and Batsa retreated up by the woman’s head, grabbing hold of her hand.
The younger of the two women clambered over the bed and grabbed the new mother’s other hand, encouraging her.
When Dree caught a glimpse of the other woman’s eyes, the woman was plainly terrified.
Batsa told Dree, “Her mother-in-law, who is the older woman on that side of the bed, said she fell while trying to reach something in an upper cabinet this morning, and that brought on the labor.”
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