by Peggy Webb
“Your survival depends on total professionalism.”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t know where you learned your skills, Doctor. But where I come from, professionalism allows for a little compassion.”
Head high, back stiff, she marched out. Joseph had to remain behind a few moments to compose himself before he joined her.
He had been unnecessarily harsh with her. He could tell himself it was for her own good, that he’d only been trying to protect her, but he knew better. Joseph was many things, some of them not so attractive, but he was not a liar, not even to himself.
Here was the simple truth: Callie Red Cloud had already gotten under his skin. The thing he had to do was ensure that she didn’t get into his heart.
There was a tapping on the door, and Sister Beatrice stuck her head in.
“Dr. Swift, can you come?”
“What is it, Sister?”
“Five new cases just brought in.”
Five new cases. He’d hoped the virus might be running its course. If this trend continued, the hospital would soon run out of beds.
Joseph hurried out to face the enemy.
Chapter Four
It was nearly midnight when the exhausted team of virologists crawled into their beds. Callie wanted nothing more than to fall into the oblivion of sleep, however brief, but Peg was wound up and wanted to talk.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.
“Of course not.” Callie remembered her first day in the field. She’d needed a sounding board, and Jennifer had obliged. She quickly propped an extra pillow under her head and prayed she could keep her eyes open. “Talk, Peg. I’m listening.”
“I didn’t know it would be like this.” The dim glow of the lantern emphasized the dark circles under Peg’s eyes. “I don’t know what I expected but not this…this dreadful, horrible…” Choking on sobs, she doubled over and buried her face in her hands.
Callie left her bed and put her arms around her friend.
“Cry it out, Peg.”
“I’m sorry…I feel so helpless.”
“We all do.” Callie glanced toward the trailer next door. A faint light still glowed inside, but there was no sign of an occupant. “Even Joseph.”
Peg jerked upright, and angrily swiped her face with the back of her hand. “You’ve got to be kidding. That man has ice water in his veins. I take back every good thing I ever said about him.”
“I know he was hard on you, Peg…”
“Hard on me? My lord, Godzilla is kind compared to him. If I ever get out of this godforsaken place I’m going to request that I never be sent out with him again.”
The problem was far more serious than it seemed. In dealing with a hot agent, teamwork was crucial. Every decision they made had life-or-death consequences. Even the smallest conflict loomed large when the stakes were so high.
“Maybe you should think about calling Ron and asking him to send a replacement, Peg.”
“You’re telling me to quit? To ditch everything I’ve worked for?”
“You wouldn’t be quitting. You would be making a decision based on what’s best for the team.”
“Thanks a lot. That sure buoys my self-esteem.”
Callie raked her hands through her hair. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. You’re great in the lab, Peg. Brilliant. But some people just aren’t cut out for field-work.”
“It was my first day, for Pete’s sake. Nobody’s perfect. Not even you.”
Callie didn’t respond to the jab, and Peg was immediately contrite.
“I didn’t mean that, Callie. It’s just nerves.”
“Forget it. You’re tired and scared. We both are.”
“Yeah, I’m scared.”
So scared that Peg had frozen up more than once today. Thank goodness Joseph hadn’t noticed. If he had, Callie was certain she wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Peg Cummings would already be on a plane headed back to Atlanta.
“Then ask for that replacement, Peg. The work we do at the center is just as important as the work we do here in the field. And you have Mike to think about.”
“Look, I can make it. I know I can. Just bear with me, okay?”
“I’ll do everything I can to help you. But if tomorrow is no better, promise me you’ll think about going home.”
“I will. Thanks, pal.” Peg flashed her dimples. “You look beat. Get some sleep. And don’t you dare dream about you know who.”
“Not a chance.”
Callie didn’t dream at all. She waited until Peg was sleeping then stole outside and headed toward the pinpoint of light next door.
Joseph saw her coming, but he didn’t didn’t reach for shirt and pants, didn’t miss a beat. Instead he sat in his boxer shorts strumming his guitar and waiting.
He didn’t have long to wait. Callie pulled open the door, then leaned against the jamb, hip slung out.
“Hank Williams?” she said.
“‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.’” Joseph kept strumming.
“I didn’t know country-and-western was popular in Italy.” He quirked an eyebrow, and she added, “That’s where you live, isn’t it?”
“Research, or personal interest?”
“I try to know everything about the people I work with, except the brand of toothpaste, of course. I don’t think that matters.”
“Colgate.” He strummed a few bars. “What does matter to you, Callie?”
“Music, laughter, hugs. There was a lot of that where I grew up.”
Joseph added that bit of information to his storehouse about Callie. Affection. Music and laughter. She’d come from a happy home.
“May I come in?” she said.
“I’m surprised you asked.” He nodded. “Sit down.”
She sat on the bunk opposite his, slender hands folded in her lap, a glimpse of leg visible where her robe fell open. Joseph was acutely aware of her.
“I assume this is not a social visit,” he said.
“No.”
She arched her back and raked her fingers through long, dark hair, a glorious panther limbering her muscles, getting ready for the kill.
“I’ve come to talk to you about Peg.”
“I saw what happened today,” Joseph said. Callie widened her eyes. “You need not pretend ignorance. She froze up. More than once, and you stepped into the breach.”
“That’s what teamwork is all about.”
“No. That’s cover-up work, and I won’t allow it. Not on this team. Not in this place. I don’t have to tell you that every minute is crucial. Every move we make must count.”
“You’re going to send her home?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not fair.”
He could see by the set of her jaw that she was going to fight to the bitter end for her friend. Loyalty. He liked that. He liked the way she looked curled on the bed in his room, as if she belonged there, as if she were waiting for a treasured nighttime ritual that would start with a soft kiss and end with the two of them tangled together under the white sheets. He liked the way the lamplight shone in her hair, like stars he could catch by the simple act of running his fingers through her velvet black mane.
There was serenity in the way she held herself, and a dignity that he’d seen in ancient Italian women as they sat in their doorways holding their sewing and watching the world with dark knowing eyes. He guessed the dignity was part of her Apache heritage, but the serenity was all her own.
He liked Callie Red Cloud very much…too much. Her sweet smell seduced him, her beautiful body beckoned to him. He had to put an end to this late-night visit before it was too late, before he was lost.
He flung his guitar aside and stood up so he would tower over her. Tonight he needed every advantage.
“Peg Cummings is not right for the team.”
Callie stood toe-to-toe with him, the set of her jaw daring him to try to back her down.
“You’re the one who’s not right for th
e team, Doctor. You with your arrogant ways and your stone heart. My God, you’re a regular Jekyll and Hyde. Saint Peter himself couldn’t work with you.”
Cheeks flushed, eyes flashing, she paused to compose herself. Joseph was fascinated. Anger enhanced her beauty, heightened her appeal. She reminded him of another dark beauty who had turned his blood to fire.
“You’re skating on thin ice, Callie. Watch your step.”
“Or what, Doctor?” She moved in on him, so close now he could feel the soft chenille of her robe brushing against his chest, and underneath… Ah, what lay underneath her robe defied description. “You’ll send me back, too?”
She moved closer, pressing home more than her point. There was ice in her voice and fire in her eyes, a heady combination.
Something savage rose in him, something dark and long buried that was more than need, more than desire. It was passion, primal and earthy, a passion that called storms down from the heavens and flames up from the earth, a passion that shook mountains and moved rivers from their appointed course, a passion so raw and real he knew it was rooted deep in his Sioux heritage.
Retreat, his mind told him. Charge, his heart demanded.
For the first time in what seemed forever, Joseph followed his heart.
His kiss shook Callie to the bones. Even as her mind urged her to flee from his embrace, her heart bade her stay. Even as she struggled to hang on to an icy reserve, her body went up in flames.
His was no ordinary kiss, no grazing of lips that left no trace. His was a soul-searing merger that left her dazed and branded.
How could this be? How was it she had come to his trailer to discuss something so important that lives hung in the balance, and ended up in his arms, with no thought in her head except to savor this intense pleasure, to give in to the primal urges that raged through her?
She swayed into him, melding their bodies with a shamelessness that would have been shocking had it not seemed so right.
He was wrong for her. She knew this to be true. But Callie was also Apache, and her native upbringing had taught her how to live in the moment, how to be.
She would accept his kiss without regret, savor the moment without thought for tomorrow, for somewhere deep inside Callie knew that the man who kissed her was not Joseph Swift, the practical doctor, but Swift Hawk, the passionate Sioux. Perhaps it was the night, hot and sultry, or perhaps it was the moon, a golden bowl riding the clouds in a darkened sky. But whatever the source, Callie knew that it was dangerous to question magic.
“Never question gifts from the Great Spirit,” her Apache grandmother used to tell her.
“What would happen?” Even as a child Callie had wanted to know the why of everything.
“The universe gives and it takes away.”
“How?”
“Go play with your dolls, Callie. I have no time for little girls who are like naughty squirrels, always chasing their tails and never storing their nuts.”
Callie lost her breath, and still Joseph held her captive in his arms—a willing captive. A love poem her father had written to her mother came to mind, a poem on yellowing paper stored away in a scrapbook.
Strong winds blow round us.
Storms rage as we embrace,
but nothing can separate us,
for the roots of your heart
entangle with mine.
The sweet juice of your sugar tree
runs through my veins,
And we are one.
Something deep inside Callie cried out, her heart and soul searching for the beauty and the music of love. For one moment in Joseph’s arms, she caught a glimpse of how it could be, of how it would feel, and then her mind took over and the practical Callie shut herself off to all possibilities.
Whether Joseph sensed the change in her or whether she made a sound, she would never know what ended the kiss. All she knew is that suddenly she was standing apart from him, arms wrapped around herself as if she could hold his warmth next to her skin forever.
“You must think me brazen,” she said.
“No.”
That was all he would give her, one word, but it was enough. Callie’s dignity settled over her like a mantle, and she studied her adversary, head up, chin out.
“I didn’t come here tonight for this,” she said.
Was that a fleeting smile she saw or something else, a small movement at the corners of his mouth that might be pain?
“I came to plead, not so much for Peg Cummings, but for all of us—you, me, Peg. Something is amiss, but I still think we can work as a team. The answer is not to send her away, but to come to terms with each other, to declare a truce of sorts.”
“You speak eloquently.”
“Thank you. My grandmother told me to always speak straight so my words would go as sunlight into the heart.”
Joseph retreated deep into himself, thinking. Callie allowed him his silence, for thought comes before speech and in silence dwells truth. Another bit of wisdom she’d learned at the knee of her Apache grandmother.
“I will make my peace with Peg,” Joseph finally said.
“Thank you.”
“And with you…”
He was as still as a rock, a tree, offering neither gesture nor facial expression to betray his deepest feelings. If he had any.
“…but first I must know why you hold me in such contempt.”
“I don’t…” His eyes pierced through her lie, and Callie told him the truth. “I am proud of being half Apache, but you deny your Native American heritage.”
“I have my reasons.”
He shut himself up then, deep as a river, and Callie nodded, showing her acceptance.
She left his trailer quickly. Strains of guitar music followed her into the darkness and all the way to the door of her temporary home—“Unforgettable,” each note vibrating with emotion as if it were plucked straight from the musician’s soul.
Chapter Five
You deny your Native American heritage….
Joseph continued strumming while Callie’s words rang through his mind. He had not thought about his father in many years, and now bewitched by this lovely Apache sorceress he could no longer shut out his history.
It wasn’t a pretty one. The only heroic thing his father ever did was die. He’d been shot down in the jungles of Vietnam and was buried with honors at Arlington.
Joseph had stayed behind with his grandmother while his mother flew into D.C. for the funeral. He’d never seen the grave and didn’t plan to. Let sleeping dogs lie, that was his philosophy.
It hadn’t always been that way. Once he’d thought Rocky Swift Hawk was the greatest man alive. His mother told him it was so. She had the war medals to prove it, and before that the certificates of honor from high school, college, then later medical school.
That’s where they’d met, Sarah Brave Crow and Rocky Swift Hawk, both studious, both good-looking and both Sioux.
Joseph had grown up wanting to be exactly like his father.
“He was the most brilliant man in medical school,” Sarah had told him. “A natural healer. Everybody knew he would be great. What they didn’t know is that part of his greatness was because of this.”
She’d gone to the cedar chest, brought out a small deer-skin bag, then placed it carefully into Joseph’s hands.
“This is your father’s sacred bundle.” She untied the bag and took out a single feather, brown with reddish tips. “The swift hawk came to him in spirit dreams. It was his talisman, Joseph, the source of his strength.”
There were other objects inside the bag—a small smooth rock, a seashell, an elk’s tooth, a single blue crystal—all from spirit dreams, all symbolic.
In the Sioux tradition, Sarah held a ceremony to officially transfer the bag and all its power to Joseph.
He’d been twelve at the time. When he was thirteen he started hating his father.
Joseph laid his guitar on the bed, then pulled opened one of the cabinets in the trail
er and took out his father’s sacred bundle. He held it in his hand for a long time, thoughtful.
He’d learned the ugly truth at school.
“Joseph Swift Hawk thinks he’s such hot stuff, getting all A’s. He’s nothing but a bastard.”
“How do you know?”
“My daddy said so, said his old man got drunk at a party in med school and raped his mother, then wouldn’t marry her.”
“That’s a lie!” Joseph charged towards the two boys he’d overheard on the playground, both fists flashing. He’d been suspended from school for fighting, but not before he inflicted severe damage to Ray Black Dog and Jim Little Pipe. Both had black eyes, and Ray had a chipped front tooth.
At home, Joseph confronted his mother.
“I want to know the truth,” he said.
And so she’d told him how Rocky had always been the most handsome, the most brilliant man she’d ever met…and the most flawed. He had a penchant for strong drink and hot words. At a Christmas party he’d been drunk and fighting. Sarah rescued him, took him out into the night to get some fresh air. He took the friendship she offered, and more.
“I could have stopped him, but even drunk he was the most wonderful man I’d ever known, the most wonderful man I could imagine knowing. And so I didn’t protest.
“Later, when I discovered I was pregnant, he offered to marry me, but I knew Rocky. With a wife and child to support, he would never have stayed in school and the world would have been deprived of a great doctor. And so I chose to raise you alone.”
Joseph’s fist closed around the skin bag, then he flung it into the cabinet and slammed the door. No decent man would allow the woman who carried his child to go into the world alone. No self-respecting man would deny his son.
From that day, Joseph turned his back on everything Sioux, including his name. He went into medicine, not because of his father, but because of his mother. She’d sacrificed a degree for him and so he earned one for her, and for himself. As Dr. Swift he moved far beyond his Sioux heritage, so far that when he met Maria it was easy to embrace not only her family but her country as well.