by Beverly Bird
“Wow, now there’s an offer.”
Shadow looked surprised, then she chuckled.
Catherine shook her head. “It’s not just that,” she said.
Shadow hesitated and said a silent prayer that her Holy People would forgive her this one small transgression—and that her brother would as well.
“You’ll take a piece of Jericho if you go. I’d say he’s finally warmed up to you in a big way.”
Catherine blanched. “And I’ll leave a piece of myself behind.”
“So then why do it?” Shadow demanded, almost angry.
Catherine felt her temper tug too. “Because I have to. Because the Service and fate gave me this externship and an opportunity to start over. But I did something with that opportunity. I took it and I wrestled with it, and somehow, by some miracle, I was able to achieve something no one else had been able to do. I found the root of that damned disease, and now maybe a reputable hospital, maybe even a top-notch hospital, will consider me. I can’t turn my back on that for a man again. I’d never be able to respect myself if I did it twice. And I’m just...not ready to love someone... until I can love and respect myself first.”
And that was it, all of it. She shot up from the chair again and went to stare out the window at the mountain, hugging herself, knowing it was true and that no matter how much she might want to change it, she couldn’t.
“I’m not learning anything here,” she said faintly. “I want to learn, Shadow. I don’t just want to be a doctor. I want to be a good one.”
Shadow was quiet for a long time. “The hell of it is,” she said finally, “you already are.” She went to the door, then she hesitated again. “It seems to me that being a doctor shouldn’t just mean book learning. Sure, that’s important, but how can you teach someone to care? How can you teach someone to bend their minds a little and accept things such as fear and superstition and treat them as well? If it were possible, anybody with a high IQ could do the job. But they can’t. Kolkline couldn’t do it, and the guy over at Crownpoint can’t, and none of the others before them could either. You did. Ellen said that you didn’t bat an eye when she stuffed bottlebrush in Lance’s bite wound. You told him to come back in a day or so and you would repack it.”
Catherine flushed. She had.
“He wasn’t too keen on the antibiotic shot,” she murmured. “But he thought the bottlebrush might work.”
“It will,” Shadow said. “It’s been working for centuries.”
“The antibiotic will work, too. I needed to get him to accept that, so I relented on the other. I compromised.” Compromise. Why wouldn’t that damned word stop haunting her? Jericho had pretty much said that a compromise wasn’t good enough. She needed to want to stay here with all her heart and soul.
“Well,” Shadow said quietly, “I rest my case.”
Catherine listened to her leave, to the sound of her boots on the steps, without being able—or willing—to look at her. She started to turn away as the woman crossed the parking area to her truck, but then another vehicle pulled in.
A shiny rental car. Catherine thought of the one Richard Moss had driven and she shuddered. This one was equipped with a horse trailer, emblazoned with the logo of a rental company. She sighed. She knew without being told that the CDC had spent all this time trying to find the trailer, instead of just asking Ellen or Jericho if anyone on the Res might have one available for loan.
She shook her head, knowing she would have done the same thing six weeks earlier, and went to meet Weatherly as he came inside.
“The ewe is in the back room,” she told him, handing over what was left of the droppings and six vials of blood, all marked as to how far she had broken them down. “The disease took her faster than usual because I injected her right in a vein,” she went on. “I don’t know how we’re going to get her to that trailer. She can’t walk. So what I was thinking was why don’t you just leave her here? That’s her blood in vials four, five and six. I’ll call a vet up from Albuquerque or Gallup, and maybe together we can save her.” She truly hated to see the animal die when her only crime had been that she happened to be tied up outside at a very inopportune time.
Weatherly gaped at her. “Save her?”
“The ewe.”
“Oh, well, we might need other things besides her blood.”
Catherine shook her head. “I’m pretty sure you won’t. Here. This is everything I figured out last night.” She gave him a file she had left on the desk, listing all her research meticulously so they wouldn’t have to waste time repeating any of it. But of course they would.
“Anyway,” she went on, “if you do need anything else from her, just call me and I’ll get it down to you somehow. She’s not going anywhere for a while.”
Weatherly took the file bemusedly and nodded. “That should be fine. Uh, how much longer are you supposed to be here?”
“Four days. But I’ll leave you a number where you can reach me if you have any further questions.”
“Actually, I have a number you’re supposed to call.” He groped around in his suit pocket until he came up with a business card. He gave it to her and she looked down at it bemusedly. It was from the CDC.
“Craig Wilson is our chief administrator,” Weatherly explained. “That’s his number there in Atlanta. He would like very much for you to give him a call. To be quite honest, Ms. McDaniel—”
“Callahan,” she corrected absently. “Catherine Callahan.” She looked up in time to see that his expression had turned slightly dazed. “Never mind.”
“Yes, well, in any event, you’ve left a good many of us red faced on this whole thing. Wilson would like to offer you a position. In his words, he would like someone qualified working the field on things like this.”
“A position?” Her heart slammed.
“I understand you’re due for a residency after you pass your exams. Wilson says that study time can be arranged into your schedule for the first six weeks or so, and he can have your Tufts credentials transferred to Atlanta. You can take the tests there. He’d like to meet with you next week, if that’s possible.”
“Where?” Now she was feeling dazed.
“Well, in Atlanta, of course.”
“I can’t afford the airfare.” At least, not after buying the sheep and paying Eddie, she couldn’t.
Weatherly smiled blandly. He reminded her for all the world of one of those FBI agents. “The CDC will take care of it. Just call Mr. Wilson.”
“Of course,” she whispered, and then he and his associates were gone.
Catherine carried the business card back to the desk. Well, she thought woodenly, you can’t get more top-notch than the CDC.
So why wasn’t she smiling?
She reached for the phone again, but she didn’t call the number on the card. It was time to talk to Paddy, crow or no crow. The CDC could wait.
Calling Paddy was long overdue, after all.
Chapter 20
The plane taxied and its nose lifted. Catherine felt a familiar sinking sensation as she watched Atlanta fall away beneath her. She pressed closer to the window to watch the city’s immense sprawl grow tiny and craved each breathless moment of ascent. It carried her closer and closer to...well, her spirit.
She thought of Paddy’s clever manipulations and smiled softly. She wondered if he had been in cahoots with Uncle Ernie.
He had fully agreed with her that she had to go to Atlanta. She couldn’t rush blindly into a choice this time. With Victor, she had caved in to an assault on her senses and judgment, and she had spent four years regretting it. Jericho deserved much more. This time she had had to be sure of her own heart. Because this time was forever.
Wasn’t it?
He had never actually said as much. The realization that he hadn’t left her panicked for a moment, but then her pulse settled. Because she knew, deep inside, that her choice would have been the same with or without him. That was what she’d had to find out, and she had done it
.
With some none-too-subtle prods from Paddy.
The CDC had provided her with airfare, but Paddy had seen to it that she was greeted at the airport by a limo. He was dangerous with those savings of his, she thought, grinning. The limo had whisked her off to the finest hotel in Atlanta, where a bottle of very good champagne had been waiting in her room. An hour later room service had arrived with a virtual seafood feast—all her favorites. On the rare occasions when Paddy had been able to treat his girls to an evening out, Catherine had always ordered shrimps and oysters.
Now he was able to afford it on a limited basis, and he had provided her with all the wonderful things money could buy...all the things Victor had given her, only this time she knew that with a CDC salary she would soon be able to afford it on her own. It had been a very far cry from the dilapidated trailer on the Navajo reservation. The table in her room hadn’t even wobbled.
And it had been a very empty and lonely experience.
She had met with Craig Wilson the next morning, and he had given her a proud tour of the facilities the CDC had to offer. The labs he had shown her were state-of-the-art, the equipment the best money could buy. Doctors and technicians had swarmed like bees around a hive, busy and productive—virtually bumping into each other.
Watching that, she had known her answer.
In the end, it hadn’t had much to do with the beauty Jericho had offered her. It had had even less to do with Shadow’s lecture or Paddy’s machinations. It had been all that personnel, so many doctors. Every grad interested in epidemiology would kill to get there, would die for the offer Wilson was giving her. And nobody at all wanted to stuff bottlebrush into an alcoholic’s skunk-bite wound.
In the end, it hadn’t been a choice between Jericho and her career at all, and that was as it should have been. It had been a question of the goals that had taken her to med school in the first place. She had wanted to heal people, to wipe out every disease known to modern man. Lofty ambitions, certainly, but modern man was being well taken care of in Atlanta. Sooner or later she knew one of those doctors would have raised a brow at slightly mutated virion in a blood sample.
But who was going to battle Mrs. Nakai’s cankerous toe?
She needed to be needed. And the Navajo needed a decent physician far more than the CDC did.
Catherine leaned her head back against the seat, closing her eyes, her throat tightening as she considered how painful each of Dinetah’s rugged sunsets would be if Jericho did not choose to share them with her after all. How would she practice in a land that shuddered with memories of him if all they really had between them was a flash of glory, like one of those sunsets that all too quickly faded away to darkness? She could transfer, she supposed. There was the Crownpoint clinic. She had never been there, and the place wouldn’t ache with memories of him. Nerve-racking as it might prove to be, she knew she could only wait and see.
Finally, she dozed, as much at peace as she could hope to be. When turbulence jarred her awake somewhere over the Midwest, she looked sharply at the man sitting next to her.
It was the same man who had gotten on with her in Atlanta. He didn’t speak to her. Catherine slept again.
* * *
Paddy’s bounty had stretched back to Albuquerque. There was a rental car waiting for her, not behind a chain-link fence but right in the front of a line of shiny nondescript vehicles. Catherine wanted to be irritated with him for so smugly anticipating her decision, but Paddy was ... Paddy. She took the keys and headed for the Res. Not for anything would she have taken her foot off the gas in any of the washes. She would get Paddy to bring her Camaro west for her, but in the meantime she did not intend to be so stranded again. Even with her resident’s salary, she doubted if she would be able to afford Eddie Begay’s wages very often.
The parking area of the clinic was deserted except for Ellen’s rusty Toyota. It was nearly closing time. Catherine left her car and went inside, the clump of her boots sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet.
She stood just inside the door, looking around, letting the familiarity of the place warm something inside her. Then Ellen came out from one of the exam rooms.
“Well, look what the wind blew back.” If her voice wasn’t exactly warm, then neither was it cutting.
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“You didn’t. My money was on you turning up again.”
“Sort of like a bad penny,” Catherine responded dryly.
Ellen shrugged. “Even bad pennies spend.”
The nurse went to the desk. A very small, very crooked artificial Christmas tree sat on its corner. A star perched on top, but other than that it was badly in need of adornment.
“I...uh...didn’t think the Navajo celebrated Christmas,” Catherine said finally. It was something she had fretted about on the trip here, wondering if she could perhaps take a few days off and go back to Boston, assuming Paddy’s savings held out. Or maybe he would bring all the girls out soon.
“Everybody needs a Santa Claus,” Ellen responded tightly.
The man of miracles. Catherine fought the urge to look over her shoulder at the mountain. She supposed it had had a few up its sleeve after all. Who knew how everything might have turned out if she hadn’t given Louie those pills, if Mrs. Nakai had never mentioned those mice?
She wondered if the mountain was fresh out by now. Then her heart kicked and she thought maybe—maybe—it wasn’t.
Ellen pulled an envelope out of the center drawer. “Jericho left this for you when we heard you were coming back.”
Catherine opened it with trembling hands. His handwriting was starkly slanted, bold, filling up the notebook page without apology...even if he had written only eleven words.
I love you. I guess I never told you that either.
Tears sprang to her eyes hot and fast. She fumbled with the paper but couldn’t get it back in the envelope.
“Didn’t even have time to gather dust,” Ellen muttered, slamming the drawer, standing again. “I’m supposed to send you to his house. Your trailer’s temporarily indisposed.”
Catherine gave a small, cracking laugh and surreptitiously wiped her eyes. “Don’t tell me. The table collapsed through the floor.”
“We had a freeze a couple of nights ago and the water pipes from the tank burst. Jack called somebody to fix them when you let him know you were going to stay here, but it’ll take a few days. Navajo time, you know.”
Which meant that the days would pass in a haze of sunshine and passion, and six weeks would be gone before she blinked. Catherine laughed again shakily. “I know.”
“Anyway, if you go north on 666, you’ll see a barrel cactus sitting all alone next to a wash about six miles from here. On the other side of the wash there’s a trail heading west. It goes right up the mountain. You’ll see Lance’s windmill first. If he’s there, stop and send him home. If he’s not, keep going until the trail splits. Take the right fork.”
Catherine nodded and took a single step backward, then she hesitated. “I’m sorry you got hurt,” she said quietly.
Ellen met her eyes. Pain flared there briefly and Catherine felt as though she was trespassing. She had to look away.
But to her surprise, Ellen answered. “Look, there’s a lot you don’t know about me, and for the most part I’d like to leave it that way. But you should understand that I poured my heart into Jericho because I knew he was safe. I could never have him because he’s clan. There was a certain protection in that that I needed.”
She said it all as she tidied up the desk with a few heartfelt slaps and bangs, then she changed the subject bluntly and efficiently. “If he’s not home, there’s a key under a loose stone in the carport. Let yourself in and wait.”
* * *
He was home.
Catherine turned onto the right fork and the house appeared in front of her. Her hands went suddenly damp as they clutched the wheel of her rental car and nerves fluttered in the pit of her stomach. She stopped b
ehind the Rover in the carport and walked around to the front, but for a long time she only looked at the place.
She found without much surprise that it suited him perfectly, even if she also knew that it had to be the place he had built for Anelle.
It was simple and rugged and of Anglo design, but it jutted dangerously out from the cliff face. More than that, it seemed to grow from the mountain, an inherent part of it. She could hear the essential generator humming someplace, but it was hidden so as not to blemish the land. The water tank was barely visible in the dying light of the day, tucked behind a stunted snarl of golden aspens. She had learned that that meant there was also some groundwater nearby.
There would be, she thought. He would have chosen a site where the rugged land offered everything it could, and then he had complemented it rather than assaulted it. The face of the house was of red rock and raw weathered wood.
Her breath caught at the click of the door opening and she looked that way again to see him silhouetted there. Behind him, lights blazed in the twilight, beckoning, looking like home.
Driving up here, she wondered what she would say when she saw him again. On the flight back she had imagined a thousand scenarios, all of them involving him thump-thumping up the clinic steps again, taking her in his arms. Now she knew that it hadn’t happened like that because it couldn’t. She had come back, if not for him, then to him. And so she said the only thing she could.
“I love you, too.”
His smile was very slow and it made her heart leap. “No doubt. You’re here. So come on in where it’s warm.”
Catherine slipped past him, feeling the heat of him again, reaching out, touching her. But suddenly her eyes were all for the front room and the window there. It drew her and she crossed to it and gasped.
It was huge and bayed, and Jericho’s Navajo homeland spread out below it, the distant lights of Shiprock twinkling, the shadows of the desert gathering and shifting. “So this is where you come to sleep.”
He was watching her hard. “I put the window in so she could see the beauty. It only ended up terrifying her.”