Debris in the riverbed caught at my foot. I tripped, and no amount of flailing kept me from falling to my butt in the shallows.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
With laser focus, sure now of my status as prey, the croc arrowed my way.
I held desperately to the empty rifle, my only weapon, as I frantically levered myself up, eyes riveted on the attacking croc while in my peripheral vision the first croc appeared, ready to feast in the spoils.
Oh, damn.
Then strong hands were pulling me up and back, dragging me for a few steps until I gained my own feet under me. Holding to each other, Peter and I ran.
The crocodiles swarmed up onto the bank behind us, but we slid into the Land Rover seats just ahead of them. Peter pointed the SUV at them and rolled down the bank, where he stopped and gunned the engine, making it roar. Saying in effect, You might be dinosaurs, but here there be dragons.
With a thrash of their tails, the crocs turned and swam off.
“Watch them,” Peter said, jumping out of the Land Rover and heading for the zebra filly standing nearly petrified with her tail against a tree. She flinched when he grabbed the trailing end of the rope around her neck, but followed obediently to the back of the SUV.
I jumped out and pulled up a light dose of tranquilizer. “They’re in the middle of the river, not going across, but they haven’t started back yet,” I told Peter as I punched the drug into the filly’s neck. Before she could fall, we manhandled her into the cargo bay, folding her neck and legs until she was compact enough inside we could close the hatch.
Peter went to the front of the vehicle to take over watching the crocs while I examined the zebra.
“They’re heading this way!”
“Give me a minute,” I called back, using the time to pull up a heavy dose of cortisone that I injected into the filly’s fetlock. Slamming the back door, I ran for the passenger door and jumped inside. “Go, go, go!”
Peter peeled away from the bank, the crocs and the remnants of our picnic, speeding for the river bridge almost four miles away.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Torn ligaments, I think. I gave her something to help with the pain and swelling.”
“How are you?”
“Embarrassed. Scared. Relieved. You?”
He grinned. “What you said. What happened to ‘Don’t be a hero’?”
“I wasn’t! I was being stupid.” I gave him a side-long look. “Besides, I meant you.”
“That old double-standard, hmm?”
I laughed.
We drove another mile.
“Hey,” I said. “When we get to the perimeter road up here, take a left instead of going over the bridge.”
“A left? Back to the compound?”
“Yeah. It’ll be a couple of weeks at best before that filly will be healed enough to be able to run with the herd. The leopards might get hungry again before then.”
“Pushover.”
I liked the way he said it with kind of a soft edge and a gleam in his eye.
“Let’s call her Crocket.”
Damn. Why did he have to go and name her?
25
Nicky
Melea was thrilled when we installed the little zebra into the barn. “Strict stall rest,” I told her. “And she goes back to her herd as soon as she’s able. She is not another Zuri, understand?”
“Her name’s Crocket,” Peter added, and Melea clapped her hands in delight, all my admonishing no doubt driven right out of her head.
“Conspirators!” I glared. “Back to the herd,” I repeated as I stalked off to catch a shower.
“I could join you,” Peter suggested, catching up with me.
“You could have—until you whispered sweet Crockets into Melea’s impressionable ear.”
Peter blew out his breath in exasperation. “I was teasing—you as much as her.”
“She’s got an acute case of mommy syndrome right now, and you are doing nothing but enabling her.”
“So now feeling the biological clock kick in is a psychological disorder?”
Oh God.
The sudden pang hit me in the gut, catching me unawares, although I should have seen it coming. I couldn’t blame Peter for the acute reminder, of course, but dammit I wanted to offload the guilt for it on someone other than me.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Peter’s hand, gentle on my upper back, was my anchor out of self-pity. Although I hadn’t realized my legs had quit working there for a moment.
Shaking my head, I muttered, “Nothing,” as I plunged on toward the house, reminding myself who Peter wasn’t. Not that I wasn’t still annoyed with him, but being annoyed wasn’t a good enough excuse to miss showering with the gorgeous man who’d so recently risked his life for his zebra filly—and me.
When I look back, he was standing there, puzzled and…hurt. That wasn’t fair to him either. “Well, are you coming? Eau de Mbingi River isn’t half as pleasant a scent as you might think.”
I still got the side-eye as he joined me, but the hurt look was quickly replaced with one far more risqué.
* * *
That night, under just a sliver of moon and a ribbon of stars, we waited in vain for Jasiri to make an appearance outside the thicket. We called her and cajoled her and made fierce love to lure her our way, but a single peep of oversized ears and trunk was all we got. Exhausted by the day’s events, capped off with a round of especially vigorous and life-affirming sex, we fell asleep just after midnight and slept through till dawn.
I woke to a feeling of unease, a prickle of expectation like that in the stillness before the storm or the quiet calm of the receding ocean before the tsunami rolls in. Yet I was folded safe in Peter’s arms, one of his hands cupped lightly around my breast, half a hard-on, even in sleep, against my hip.
Any other morning, I would be considering ways of making Peter’s half a hard-on a full one before he woke fully up. This morning, however, I reluctantly moved his arms aside and quietly rose in the breaking dawn. A lion whuffed somewhere far outside the sanctuary, and a trio of wild dogs that had found their way in yapped at the rising sun. But somewhere in the register below all that was a low, sad cry.
I looked out across the boma.
By the thicket, in the open, Jasiri stood, her head swaying back and forth, her trunk, a limp and dejected thing, dragging the ground.
Squinting at the gray shape in the gray dawn I saw beside her—
I grabbed my binoculars from the Land Rover. There wasn’t, however, enough light yet to see by. Not clearly anyway. But what I could see… My stomach cramped. I felt cold and sick.
I didn’t hear Peter get up. Didn’t know he was standing by me until I felt his fingers in the small of my back. “What is it?” he whispered.
I shook my head, and he gently pried the binoculars from my hands and peered through them himself. “There’s—is that? What is it?” He lowered the glasses, his face ashen. “That’s not…her baby…is it?”
Taking the binoculars from him I looked again, the scene ahead better resolving in the brightening day. The breath I inhaled shuddered in my chest, shuddered in my voice. “Yes. It’s her calf.” For two-and-a-half weeks now the anticipation of this moment had been a dear dream of mine. The delight. The elation. Not just for me but for Jasiri who so desperately needed a bright little life in her bleak and grief-filled world. The bright little life she so deserved. The bright little life that the universe in its infinite fair and caring way would be sure she was awarded as compensation for all the crap it had put her through already.
A little baby with big eyes, bigger ears and a curious trunk. A little clown of a calf holding tight to mama’s tail or spraying her with a nose full of water.
Not…that.
I forced myself to keep looking. To report to Peter what I knew. Because that was my job. My responsibility. To be sure everyone was fully apprised of my failure.
“It’s been dead days,” I said. “Sin
ce Jasiri’s capture, maybe, or if it wasn’t already dead then, maybe the other night when she tried to escape.” Oh God. “When I couldn’t hear its heartbeat.” Its. I wouldn’t give it a gender or a name or personality. It hurt too much as it was.
Jasiri circled the thing that was not her baby, trying desperately to understand. Her tail and the backs of her legs were splashed with blood. Not fresh, red, healthy blood, but dark, brown, stagnant blood. Sick blood.
I groaned.
“Of course.” It felt like I’d been gut-punched. I bent over, the binoculars dangling, wondering if I would throw up.
Peter’s kind hands straightened me up. He looked worried. As well he should be for hanging around an idiot like me. I pounded on his broad, naked chest. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
Catching my fists, he shook me lightly, forcing me to look into his eyes. “What? Tell me.”
“The weight she’s been losing. No appetite. Carrying a dead calf instead of aborting it immediately… She probably has a massive infection. And I missed it. All of it. Like any incompetent vet would.”
His eyes shifted away from mine. Tacit agreement that he thought the same. What else could it be? Watching Jasiri, he asked, “What now?”
“I failed her. Did you hear me?”
“And I asked what do we do about it now. Did you hear me?”
“What—?” What indeed. What would this non-birth trigger in her? Deeper depression or an even greater rage? What if she connected me to the death of her calf? What if she never forgave me…or any human?
What it, after all we’d been through, we still had to put her down, whether for her own sanity or for our safety?
“No. Damn it, no. I can’t put her down.”
“Put her down? I was thinking more along the lines of penicillin.”
Can’t put her down didn’t mean I wouldn’t. “And if we save her, what then? What kind of life will she have? Will she even try to live? Would it be right to force her to? To get up every day and be reminded you have no one and nothing left in this world? What would you want? What would you do?”
“Want? To die. Do? Disappear. Start over.”
I heard the deep sadness in his voice. The way it caught as though I was addressing something profoundly personal with him. But I was focused on Jasiri now.
“And if there was no one to do that with? If your last hope was gone?”
“Who makes that call?”
“I do. Because someone always has to. Because I’m strong enough. Because in the end it takes strength to be compassionate.”
“And you always have to be strong.”
“Yes!” I cried.
Peter drew away. I felt him go. Not just in the stiffening of his body and the half-step he retreated, but in the air between, in the warmth that cooled, in his look. Was it blame or pity he felt for me, or simply revulsion? Or was I transferring my own feelings onto him? Maybe it was simply distaste. Or maybe he couldn’t deal with strength in a relationship when it wasn’t his own. He was a natural protector. Maybe he needed people weaker than him around.
I couldn’t worry about Peter and any hangups of his right now, though. I needed to make a decision about Jasiri. To answer for myself the question Peter had asked: What now?
There was nothing I could do for her mental state. No mood elevator that would touch grief as profound as hers. But her physical state…
Peter’s line of reasoning hadn’t been wrong. Jasiri needed antibiotics now even if more extreme measures would have to be taken later. I wouldn’t risk darting her again unless absolutely necessary, so the challenge now was to get those antibiotics into a grieving ellie who I couldn’t approach and who was barely eating, and in a large enough dose to do any good.
I headed up to the clinic. I half-expected Peter to follow.
He stayed with Jasiri instead.
She needed him.
I, apparently, didn’t.
Then why did the empty air at my side feel so very cold?
* * *
I called Rasheda on the way up. It was too early and I was in no mood to play the polite African today. Skipping the interminable pleasantries, I went straight to the point, Western-style. “Jasiri lost the calf. It was still-born, probably dead for days.
“Oh Nicky, pole-sana—I am so sorry. Too much tranquilizer, perhaps she fell on it, or maybe just nature—these things happen. How is Jasiri?”
Even through my own grief, I had to smile. Rasheda was “good people,” someone who truly cared about the ellies she placed. Even the problem ones. “She’s mourning now, but she’s been not eating for days. I hate to think of the infection she’s likely built up. I need something potent that I can drench her with that won’t require bottles of the stuff per dose. I have Pen G for cows. It’s an injectable but I’d go oral with it if there wasn’t another choice. Can I use that?”
“It’s safe enough, and probably as effective as any. I’d start her at 80 mils for five days and see how she’s doing after that. But Nicky…”
“Yes?” I knew I wasn’t going to like any question that began with but.
“Are you just prolonging what you need to do?”
“Rasheda, honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing right now. There’s more to it than just Jasiri, and I need time to think before I make a decision I might regret.”
“Make it easy on yourself, Nicky. Do what’s best for Jasiri—no one else.”
She was right, of course. The problem was, I was second-guessing what was best, and second-guessing my motives.
What strength I’d started this ordeal with, I felt slipping away.
* * *
“Here.”
I pressed a grapefruit into Peter’s slack hand. It didn’t look like he’d moved from the fence since I’d left him.
He stared at the fruit. “I’m not hungry.”
“Good thing. It’s not for you, it’s for Jasiri.”
The wariness that dropped over his features like a shroud panged my heart. I deserved his suspicion, of course.
“It’s laced with penicillin. I also injected a dose of sugar water to make it extra-sweet and hopefully mask the taste of the drug. It seemed pretty bitter to me when I gave it a taste. I tossed a couple of them around in the garden; as long as the fruit isn’t over-ripe, they don’t appear to go splat. I’m assuming that you can throw farther than me—and we have five of these to get close enough to her that she can find them.”
He looked from the fruit to me and back again. “Yeah?”
“She may be as uninterested in eating as you are, but yeah. Seems only fair to give her a chance.
He smiled, even if it was a slow and secret expression filled with complexities I couldn’t begin to guess at.
Then one by one, five chances, five rays of hope sailed straight and true over the fence.
26
Peter
The old adage isn’t true, of course. Time alone can’t heal a broken heart. In fact, time alone just gives us the chance to turn more and more inward to examine our grief and to continue picking at it, keeping the wound open and raw. Another catalyst is needed apart from time. A new love. The distraction of physical or mental labor. New purpose.
And some of us simply run to escape. To a new neighborhood, a new city, a new state. Some of us even to a new continent.
Jasiri couldn’t run, of course. Not beyond the boma. Certainly not beyond Kulinda. Never far enough. So she needed a distraction big enough to fill the massive hole left in her life. And from where I stood only another ellie would be big enough to do it. Not in actual size of body but size and quality of impact on her life.
For my own situation, it seemed to be taking all of Africa to do it.
Nicky had given Jasiri a reprieve—for how long I didn’t know. Despite all her tough talk and posturing, Nicky was led by her heart—and by hope.
She disappeared for a while to tend to the beasts in her charge who needed her while I stayed to watch Jasiri. One by one,
Melea, Steve and Abasi came to pay their respects to Jasiri’s newest grief. She accepted the little crowd that gathered at the fence, not letting up on the soft cries and swaying as she stood in the open beside her dead baby and allowed us to share her mourning. By the time the others drifted off to the breakfasts and their duties for the day, Jasiri still had shown no interest in her drug-laced fruit.
It was possible, of course, that Nicky was right. That Jasiri might still die from grief or starvation or infection, each of which would be slow and painful. Not that Nicky would let it progress to the point where Jasiri was wasting. Even I would insist she intervene before then.
“You’re going to have to meet us halfway on this, Jasiri girl.” I knew those big ears had to hear me. It came down to whether they wanted to or not.
Curiosity at last got the better of her.
She took a step toward me. Then another. And another. Not steps really so much as world-weary shuffling, head and trunk hung low. When she came to the first grapefruit, she felt all around it with the finger-like tip of her trunk. Were we fooling her? Could she smell the drug in it? Would she pass over it?
Intent as I was on Jasiri, I only heard Nicky returning when she was nearly upon the camp. She came up beside me and slipped her hand into mine as we waited for what Jasiri would do.
Jasiri in turn watched us. Even across a couple of hundred intervening feet I could tell her hooded eyes weren’t on the fruit she was rolling around with her trunk, but on us. Waiting for some cue, perhaps? Permission? Benediction? How could I know her thoughts so completely and intimately one moment and be at such a loss the next?
Nicky squeezed my hand. Come to think of it, I could have been asking myself the same thing about Nicky.
On impulse, I kissed Nicky’s forehead.
On impulse, Jasiri popped the fruit into her mouth and swallowed it.
* * *
I left Jasiri’s side that day only to wander up to the barn and check on Crocket and see what new additions there might be in the clinic. Tribesmen had taken to bringing Nicky any odd animal they ran across in distress outside the sanctuary. Today it was a honey badger with possible distemper .
Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology Page 34