by Dianne Drake
“I did try to find something here before I came to you, but nothing seemed to fit into my schedule. The hospitals all wanted more than a couple days a week from me, and several of them insisted I’d have to take calls. Which I can’t do, since I have to deal with people at all hours of the day and night. Except weekends.”
It seemed to Damien that Juliette’s life worked out to be very tough, as she didn’t have any personal time scheduled into it for herself.
“Anyway—I got Señor Mendez settled into the hospital, so I’m ready to head back to Bombacopsis anytime you’re ready to leave.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Understandably frightened. But bearing up.”
“Well, I’ve been talking to a couple of specialists here, and if he does come back with a multiple sclerosis diagnosis, I think there are some things we can do to treat him. It’s a difficult outlook, but not an impossible one. By the way, I need to stop at one of the hospitals on our way out. Just for a few minutes. Do you mind?” She grabbed a knee-length white lab coat off the peg by the door, then slung her overnight bag over her shoulder. “I have a new recruit there, an ophthalmologist, and I want to stop by to see how she’s doing.”
“I can do that for you,” Cynthia said, stepping into the office. Her eyes immediately went to Damien, and she opened them wide in frank appreciation. “And I’ll bet you’re Damien, aren’t you?”
“Last time I checked,” he said, extending his hand to her. “And you are?”
“Cynthia Jurgensen.”
“Doctor extraordinaire,” Juliette supplied.
“Well, Cynthia, it’s nice to meet you. Do you and Juliette go way back?”
“We only just met when we came here. I preceded her by a while, then trained her.”
“When you weren’t busy swooning on the phone to Carlos,” Juliette teased. Then explained to Damien, “Carlos Herrera—her fiancé.”
“The cardiologist?” Damien asked.
Cynthia beamed with pride. “You know him?”
“Vaguely. I made a referral to him a few months back. Good man!”
“He’s the reason Cynthia’s going to stay permanently in Costa Rica.” She shrugged. “What we do for love, eh?”
“And you wouldn’t stay if you fell in love with someone here?” Damien asked Juliette.
“Would you?” she asked in return.
That was a good question. One he couldn’t answer, as he didn’t anticipate love anymore. If it happened, it happened. If it didn’t, he wasn’t going to worry about it. Past experience had taught him it took up too much time, and time was a commodity he simply didn’t have enough of these days.
“Look, I think we need to get going. It’s a long trip back to Bombacopsis, and if we need to stop at the hospital first...”
“I said I could do that,” Cynthia interjected.
Juliette shook her head. “I really have to do this myself, since she’s there on my recommendation.”
“You just can’t stay away from it, can you?” he asked, smiling.
“What?”
“The patient experience—which, I might add, implies that you’re in the wrong position since for you it always goes back to the patient.”
“Just like my father,” she said, half under her breath. This was something she didn’t want in her life—another man trying to dominate her. Her father had always dominated, and it seemed as if Damien was trying to. But she’d finally resisted her father and, compared to him, Damien was a piece of cake. So let him bring it on. She was finally ready for it!
“Did you ever consider that your father might be right?”
“I like my job finding new medical talent, Damien. And I like the hours I put in at your hospital. The rest of it’s none of your business.” With all the newfound confidence she could muster, Juliette opened the office door and stepped into the hall. “So, are you coming, or would you rather stand there and think of even more ways to insult me?”
Damien chuckled as he followed Juliette into the hall. “So, have I gone and set you off even before we start out?”
“I can resist you, Damien Caldwell. Try anything you want, but I can resist you!”
* * *
Juliette threw her lab coat into the seat next to her, tilted her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Finally done for the week,” she said as Damien engaged the truck he’d borrowed and began the journey back to Bombacopsis. “And I think the people I’ve brought here are, overall, working out pretty well.”
“You’ve got good instincts.”
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s about the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” She was starting out her weekend tired. It had been a long, grueling week—so many interviews to conduct, so many contacts to make, so much paperwork to do. Physically, her work hadn’t been demanding. Not like what she was used to in her clinic back in Indianapolis. But she was exhausted, nonetheless. Probably just emotional fatigue, high heat, high humidity, she told herself as the noise of the cranky truck motor sputtered her to sleep.
“Juliette?”
She felt the gentle nudging on her arm, but resisted opening her eyes.
“I need to make a stop in Cima de la Montaña to see if I have any mail. Is that OK?”
Damien’s voice was so soothing she simply wanted to melt into it. “That’s fine,” she mumbled.
“Then I want to make a house call. I have a patient who has just moved there from Bombacopsis, and he wants me to check his daughter. It sounds like infected tonsils. It’s going to be a little delay, so I wanted to make sure you’re up to it.”
“I’m fine, Damien,” she said, twisting in her seat to face the direction from which his voice was coming, yet still refusing to open her eyes.
“You’ve been sleeping,” he said.
“Not sleeping. Just—resting my eyes.” Too bad she couldn’t rest her head on his shoulder.
“Well, your eyes have been resting a good two hours now, and you were resting so hard I began to wonder if you were sleeping, or dead.”
“Two hours?” Her eyes shot open at this. “Are you serious?”
“Two hours, soft snoring, occasional mumbling.”
She never took naps. Never! No matter how tired she got. For her to nap the way she had wasn’t a good thing, and to do it in front of Damien? “I don’t snore!” she said, sitting up straight in the seat.
“OK, so maybe it wasn’t snoring so much as it was moaning.”
“And I don’t moan in my sleep. Neither do I mumble!”
“Well, somebody in this truck was fully invested in sleep sounds and, since I’ve been driving, I hope to God that wasn’t me. So, are you feeling better now?”
“I was feeling fine to begin with. Just a little tired. Crazy week...”
“We all have them,” he said sympathetically.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked. “It’s not like you, which has got me worried.”
“Actually, you’re the one who has me worried.”
“Why? Because I took a nap?”
“Napping is fine. Fitful napping is a symptom.”
“It is if you’re sick. But I’m not sick.”
Damien stopped the truck in front of a tiny wood-sided house and opened the driver’s-side door. “Look, we’ve still got another hour before we’re back in Bombacopsis. You look like you’ve been hit by a freight train, so why don’t you get yourself another hour’s worth of sleep?”
“A freight train? You sure have mastered the art of flattery.”
“OK, maybe not a freight train. But at least a donkey cart.” He grinned in at her. “Is that better?”
Juliette leaned her head back against the headrest once again, and shut her eyes. “Go do what you have
to do, Damien. And if it takes you very long, you should have enough time to come up with your next round of insults. Or do you already have them stored up for me?”
He chuckled. “You do bring out the best in me.”
“Thank heavens it’s the best, because I’d really hate to see the worst.” She settled back into the seat with a little wriggle, then deliberately turned her face away from him. “Now, go away. Leave me alone.”
“Sounds like a direct dismissal to me.”
With that, Damien grabbed his medical bag from behind the seat, then shut the truck door. And suddenly the truck cab was quiet. Too quiet.
“Shoot,” she said, opening her eyes, and twisting around to watch him walk up the dirt path to the house, where a very anxious woman stood on the porch, wringing her hands. “Double shoot.”
Reaching behind her seat, she grabbed hold of her own medical bag, jumped out of the truck and followed Damien into the house. “I may look like a donkey cart hit me, but I’m all you’ve got. So, what do you want me to do?”
“I knew you couldn’t resist,” he said, grinning.
Of course she couldn’t. Not Damien. Not patient care. And this was getting very frustrating.
* * *
“Her parents are going to bring Pabla in,” Damien said, tossing a handful of mail onto the seat next to him. Letters from home, advertisements that had an uncanny way of finding him even in the jungle, a medical journal, a pharmaceutical catalog. All waiting for him in his local pickup box. “In fact, they’ll probably beat us there.”
“Isn’t there a place here, in Cima de la Montaña, where she could have her tonsils removed?”
“There’s a GP here, and he’s actually pretty good. Young guy, with a lot of ideals. But he doesn’t do surgery. So he sends his minor procedures over to me, and anything major into San José.”
“Like you’re set up to do even the minor procedures.”
“We do the best we can. Dr. Villalobos, here in Cima de la Montaña. George and me—and even you—back in Bombacopsis. Also Frank Evigan, a chiropractor-turned-medic who practices out of a one-room hut about an hour and a half east of us. That’s the real Costa Rica, Juliette, and it’s nothing like the one you live in, where you have first-rate hospitals, normal medical amenities and highly trained doctors coming in from all over the world to be part of it.”
“But you stick with it, in spite of the hardships.”
“Somebody has to.” And, for now, he was that appointed somebody. In truth, he was glad he was. After a year, he was rather fond of his little hospital in Bombacopsis, hardships and all.
“Do you ever want to go back to a surgical practice, Damien? In society—a big city?”
“At least twice a day. I loved what I did. Loved that my scalpel could cure people. But, unfortunately, I also had a brief love affair with a lifestyle I didn’t have the means to support, even at the salary of a surgeon.” Which turned out to be the reason Nancy had left him. Bye-bye, lifestyle... Bye-bye, Nancy. “But, ultimately, it got me in trouble.”
“How?”
“I became greedy. Wanted more than I was entitled to.”
“And you recognize that in yourself.”
“What I recognized was that my boat got repossessed, and my car towed off because I couldn’t afford it. What I also recognized was that the condo I’d bought was far too expensive for me, and the woman to whom I was engaged was far too rich to come down to my means.”
“And so it ended?”
“Because she was rich, I wasn’t, and I was trying to play a part that wasn’t suited for me. Bottom line—I loved it for a while, until I discovered I really didn’t love it at all. That it was just me trying to face up to the fact that my life was pretty shallow—except for my work.”
“So, to compensate, you were trying to come up to her standards? Is that why you hate rich girls, because you couldn’t?”
“Don’t hate them. Just avoid them.” But, to be fair, he was in a place in his life where he was avoiding all women. The one he’d had hadn’t wanted him for who he was, and that had hurt. What had hurt just as much was how he’d been taken in by it, how he’d been so blind to it. Now, he just didn’t trust himself enough to get involved with someone else.
“Or give them a hard time.”
“By that, I assume you mean the hard time I give you.” It was his natural instinct taking over. He knew that, and he was fighting hard to control it as Juliette didn’t deserve his leftover resentment.
“You do give me a hard time, Damien.”
“But you bear up.”
“I shouldn’t have to, though. And that’s the point. I’m a good doctor. I’m working here free of charge. People who know me will say I’m a good person. I’m a dutiful daughter. But you don’t see any of this because one look at me, and one failed bed-making attempt, and all you see is the rich girlfriend you used to have, which equates to you as bad. And that’s where it all ends for you.”
“It’s not you, Juliette.”
“No, it’s your former fiancée, and I get that. But what you need to get is that whatever went wrong between you and her has nothing to do with me.”
She was right, of course. But that didn’t change the fact that he still had his fears. Was it a fear born out of envy, though? Had he tried to emulate Nancy’s wealth because he envied it? Because, if that was the case, it didn’t sit well with him. Didn’t say much about his character, either.
“I don’t underestimate you as a person, or as a doctor,” he said, giving in to the idea that he was completely wrong in all this. “And if you’re intent on continuing on at the hospital—”
“Intent on continuing on?” Juliette exploded. “If I’m intent on continuing on? Who do you think I am, Damien? Someone who just flits in and out at will?”
“Well, it is an awfully big leap for you.”
“Like it was for you? Don’t you think I can measure up to you?”
“Of course you measure up to me. It’s just that I thought that with the hard time I’ve given you—”
“And are still giving me,” she interrupted.
“OK, and am still giving you. And, coming from the background you do—”
“You mean pampered and spoiled?” she interrupted again.
Open mouth, insert foot once again. He was nothing but a big blunder where Juliette was concerned, and it was beginning to worry him that he might actually drive her away. “No, that’s not it. What I’m trying to say is that, in my experience, people have good intentions at the start, but they become disillusioned pretty easily. Do you know how many people have showed up at the hospital, responding to my ads, the way you did, this past year?”
She shook her head.
“Seven, Juliette. Seven. And only one stayed. And he stayed because, at the time, he had nowhere else to go. So why should I expect that you’re going to stay, because you do have someplace else to go.”
“Because I gave you my word, Damien.” Her voice softened. “Because I’m not like the rest of them.” She reached over and gave his arm a squeeze. “And one day you’re going to trust that.”
“What I trust, Juliette, is that I’m living in a godforsaken jungle village because it’s the only place I can live right now. It’s the only place where I can just be myself. And there’s nothing else to offer here.”
“You offered me a job, and that’s all I wanted. It’s enough, Damien.” She smiled at him. “Don’t make it any more complicated than that, OK?”
He didn’t deserve her niceness, but he was grateful for it. More than that, he was grateful to have her there beside him. In a life that had let him down as often as he’d let himself down, he had no reason to believe that Juliette would.
* * *
“Stop!” Juliette twisted around in her seat
and stared out the window. “Over there, on the side of the road. Did you see him?”
“See who?” Damien asked, as he slammed his foot onto the brake.
“I don’t know. Maybe a child. Maybe a small adult. I couldn’t tell. But he was huddling in the bushes.”
“Where?”
“About fifteen or sixteen meters back.”
Damien engaged the truck into reverse and started to back up. “Tell me when to stop.”
“Right across from that tree.” She pointed to a fabulously large shaving brush tree. “And I didn’t get a really clear look, but I did see something—someone. I’m sure of it.”
Damien stopped the truck in the middle of the road, and they both hopped out. “Over there,” she whispered, pointing to a particular clump of bushes that was moving, despite the fact that there was no wind.
“Are you sure it wasn’t an animal? Because we do have big cats, and crocodiles. And killer ants.”
“It wasn’t a killer ant,” she huffed out.
“Fine, I’ll go take a look. You stay here in case, well...” He shrugged.
“It was a person, Damien. I’m sure of it.”
“A person who’s not coming out to greet us.”
“Maybe he’s injured.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like outsiders.” Damien approached the bush, looked down for a moment, then turned back and signaled Juliette over. “Or maybe he’s scared to death.”
Juliette looked down, and blinked twice. There, concealed in the bushes, was a little boy. Dark skin. Scraggly black hair. Huge brown eyes rolled up at them. Quivering lip. Probably aged six or seven. “He’s...”
“Lost,” Damien said gently. “Probably confused.” He took a step toward the child, and the child hunched down into himself even more. “Cómo te llamas?” he asked. What’s your name?
The boy didn’t respond, so Damien tried again.
“Hablas español?”
The child didn’t respond to that either, so Damien took another try.