by Dianne Drake
“He’s in the rubble?” Solange cried.
Paul nodded, then directed Étoué and several men from his village to begin carefully on a pile of rubble that would have been the kitchen. “I’ve had Ayida and Keskeya both taken back to the hospital only minutes ago. They were shaken up pretty badly, with some scrapes and bruises, but nothing serious.”
She still didn’t understand. “I don’t…”
“I was on my way back here, Solange. Yesterday, after that whole nasty scene between us…I didn’t want to leave it at that. I’d made it as far as Étoué’s village when the storm hit, and he said it was worse farther up the mountain, that this kind of storm always was.”
“And you didn’t wake me up when you got here?”
“Wake you up? Hell, I thought you might be buried in all this mess with Frère Léon. Ayida and Keskeya were both hysterical, and I couldn’t understand them…” He shrugged, then ran to her and pulled her into his arms. “Damn it, Solange. I was scared to death.”
“We’ve got to find him, Paul,” she choked. It was such a huge pile of debris, and Frère Léon could be anywhere. She only hoped that, wherever that was, he was still alive.
“I’ve only been here a few minutes, and we’ve barely begun looking. So let’s start at the front. Étoué and his men are at the rear.”
Solange nodded numbly. Without a word she grabbed up the first of hundreds of wooden shingles and tossed it aside. Then another and another, as Paul went to the side of the structure to do the same “Frère Léon,” she called. “It’s Solange. Hold on. Paul’s here, and we’ll get you out of there in just a minute. Can you hear me? We’re going to get you out of there. Just listen to my voice…”
Her voice. Ten minutes later she was nearly hoarse from yelling. Through the entire ordeal, she talked to Frère Léon, reminding him of things they’d done together, teasing him about his love of good food, especially the sweets. As she ripped at the boards until her fingers were bleeding, pulling them away from the piles of debris and starting new piles with them, to listen to her would have given the impression that Frère Léon was right there at her side, participating in the conversation with her.
“And that day at the monastery when I made those horrible yeast rolls and all the brothers ate them simply to be polite. You were the only one who told me they weren’t fit to throw to the chickens, and you were the only one who didn’t make a pretense of even taking a second bite merely to spare my feelings. But I’ve been practicing when you go away. Did you know that? I can make a yeast roll now that doesn’t taste like goat chow.” She swiped at a tear, pulled up a large piece of wood and tossed it away. “And you’re going to be the first one to try one, just as soon as we…” Solange’s voice broke, and she shut her eyes, swallowed hard, and took in a deep breath. “Just as soon as we get you out of there.”
Paul’s heart ached for her. Trying to be so brave when she was so scared. “I’m all the way down to the floor over here,” he called, wishing desperately he could stop for a moment just to hold her. But he couldn’t, of course. “I’m going to move a little further forward.”
“No,” Solange called. “That would be the women’s showers, and he wouldn’t have gone in there, no matter what.”
They were a good fifteen minutes into the search now, and Paul was beginning to have grave doubts. If Frère Léon had been seriously injured, he could have bled to death by now. Or been smothered. There were too many scenarios he could think of that ended in tragedy. “Look, I’m going to the back for a minute to see how the others are coming. Will you be OK here alone?”
Instead of answering him, she nodded, then returned to plucking boards and shingles and pieces of broken furniture from the stacks of debris. “You saved my life,” she whispered. “When I came to you, I really didn’t care if I lived or died. It was all so bad for me then, Frère Léon, and I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
Paul hesitated at the side of the demolished structure as he heard her words. It was an intrusion, listening to something so private. But he couldn’t pull himself away because there was so much about Solange he didn’t know, so much that Frère Léon did.
“And after I was feeling better, and you began to tell me about the needs of these wonderful people living here on the mountain…I’d been here to the mountain so often with my mother, and I didn’t know, yet you knew that’s what I needed, didn’t you? You knew that’s what I needed to make me whole again. I’m not there yet, and I’m trying very hard. You’ve got to be there when I come through this. And I will. I promise, I will. And you’ll be there with me.”
Paul stepped away, cursing himself for listening. As much as he wanted to know everything, it couldn’t be this way.
Even though it felt like an eternity, by the time Paul had returned to the front of the structure, they’d been at the search seventeen minutes. Seventeen futile minutes, and Solange was now at the end of her first pile, looking at the bare wooden floor of what had once been the vestibule. Solange stood up straight for a moment, stretched, and looked around, then stepped across to another pile of debris and started all over again. Fighting with every ounce of strength in her, she ripped at the boards, talking non-stop to Frère Léon until—“Mon Dieu!” she gasped. “Paul! Over here. I need help!”
Solange threw herself to her knees and started pulling frantically at the pieces of wood, one by one, afraid that if she moved too quickly it could cause an avalanche of debris to come crushing down on the monk. So she went cautiously, praying to herself and talking out loud to Frère Léon. “Wiggle your fingers,” she said, to which there was no response. “Just one little wiggle. That’s all I want.”
Paul ran to her side, dropped to his knees and started the same arduous task. Within seconds an arm was revealed. Pasty skin, unmoving. Limp. Instinctively, Solange reached to feel for the pulse in his wrist…It was there, but very faint.
In mere seconds the other men had converged on the spot in which Frère Léon was trapped, and it took only a few seconds more before the debris was totally off him.
Immediately Solange assessed his pupillary reaction to ascertain brain damage, and thankfully it was normal. Paul was busy looking for obvious broken bones and other injuries. “His belly is fine,” he said. “I don’t think there’s an internal bleed because his abdomen isn’t rigid. But his left ankle is shattered. I think he’s going to need surgery to fix it up, but other than the conk on his head and the ankle, I think our friend here is in decent shape, considering that the entire building collapsed on him.”
“You’re going to be fine,” Solange finally whispered, her fingers entwined in Frère Léon’s. She reached up to swipe at her tears, then smiled over at Paul. “Did you hear me, Frère Léon? You’re going to be just fine.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“HE’S holding on pretty well, all things considered, and not too grumpy because I won’t give him anything stronger than an aspirin.”
“You explained that his bump on the head…”
Paul nodded. “Bump on the head and going in and out of consciousness like he’s still doing, I told him that refusing him pain pills is standard medical protocol, and I really hate to do that because I know his ankle is killing him.” Paul dropped down onto one of the two straight-backed metal chairs against the wall, leaned his head back, and shut his eyes. Then he let out a deep, weary breath. “And he said to tell you the yeast rolls didn’t taste like goat chow.”
“He said that?”
Paul nodded. “Cardboard. I think his exact words were ‘burnt cardboard soaked in tar drippings’.”
“And here I offered to bake him more. See what kind of gratitude I get for that.” Solange laughed as she strolled over to the door separating the two rooms and looked in at Frère Léon. He was sleeping again, as he had been off and on for the past hour. “We need to get him out of here,” she said. “Normally, he’d be the one I’d rely on to find a way.”
“You need to come here, sit down, and
leave that to Étoué. He’ll find a way to get help up here.” He patted the chair next to him.
Under different circumstances she might have moved her chair to the other side of the room, but that seemed silly now. Everything seemed silly, considering what they’d just gone through.
“I heard some of what you were saying to him,” Paul confessed. “And I’m sorry for listening, but…” He shrugged. “I did.”
“Which part?” She’d said so many things in those interminable minutes she wasn’t sure she remembered all she’d told Frère Léon.
“About how he saved your life during a bad time, and that you’re not over it yet. Was it about Mauricio?”
“Not really. He was simply the catalyst, I think. I had other issues—family, career, personal, and Mauricio simply exacerbated the situation.”
“And sent you off to have a breakdown?”
“Sounds so bad, doesn’t it? A breakdown…Solange Léandre had a breakdown. It was more of an emotional retreat, I think, and Mauricio didn’t send me off to have it. I did. I needed space, and Frère Léon had it to offer me. And it was nice to have support at a very difficult time in my life.”
“Your father didn’t support you?”
“My father’s support consisted of telling me Mauricio wasn’t the man he would have chosen for me and I was better off without him. Which I was, although I certainly wasn’t in an emotional place to tell him he’d been correct.” She shook her head. “He has an impossible standard for the men in my life…and my sister’s.”
“Because when he sees the men in your life, or your sister’s, he’s thinking in terms of a grandson.”
“I know that!” she snapped. “That’s all I’ve heard since I was old enough to…” To what? Have children? That window of opportunity had opened when she’d been twelve and had stopped when she’d been thirty-one. Nineteen years seemed like an eternity in so many ways, yet like such a short time in so many others. “Something my mother did not give him. A male heir. My duty to uphold the family name. That’s not where I want to be but, of course, that’s exactly what he wants from me. Maybe the only thing he wants.”
“Where do you want to be, and don’t tell me right here because this is only a place. Where do you want to be in your life? I’ve been trying to figure that out all this time, and every time I get near, you seem to skirt around it. We were friends. We were more than friends. Then we were nothing. And I have to know why. It’s driving me crazy because I don’t believe you’re the kind of woman who would be so cavalier about a relationship. Which is what you were with us. You wanted what we had, then you walked away from it when you realized that I wanted it, too. And I really had to do some soul-searching to get to that point.”
“And you think I didn’t?” she snapped, springing up from her chair.
He caught her by the arm, then stood up. “I have a right to know.”
“No, you don’t. In my life, you have no rights. And don’t think that because you came up here to make up, that’s going to change things between us. You want from me what my father expects from me. He rejected you when he thought there was something between us because you weren’t settled enough, but that’s what you would do to me, Paul. Settle me. You said it in so many words, and I don’t want to be settled.”
“I never said anything about trying to settle you, Solange. I would never ask you to give up doing what you want to do.”
“No, you wouldn’t. But you talked about changing your lifestyle in a couple of years when the hospital is better funded, and in that scenario you had me having babies…” She yanked her arm free of him. “So how can you tell me that you don’t want to settle me, Paul? Babies do that. Husbands do that! And I can’t,” she cried. “I just can’t!”
“But you were willing to do that with Mauricio?”
“I was younger then. My life was completely different. I was completely different!” She fled to the infirmary door, opened it and ran outside, only to be slammed by the ruins yet again. Ruins. The symbol of her life. “I should have never let us get to the point we did, Paul,” she said, as he followed her out. “You and me—we both knew there couldn’t be any more than a casual acquaintance, and I’m so sorry it went past that for you. I never meant for it to happen that way. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Do you still love him, Solange?” Paul asked. “Is that what this is about? Do you still love Mauricio?”
She laughed sadly. “The truth is, I never loved him. Never even came close.” Loving Paul had taught her that.
Solange drew in a breath of pure Kijé air. Funny, how something as destructive as the storm had a healing power to it. The chapel was gone, but the dead wood had been blown from the trees, making way for new growth, and the impurities blown from the air had made way for a renewal of purity. This was nature renewing itself to start afresh.
If only it was that easy.
“You should be going after her now,” Frère Léon said, as Paul stepped into the tiny infirmary.
Paul dropped down onto the bed across from the monk, and lay flat on his back to look up at the rough-hewn boards of the ceiling. “Right now, I think that’s the last thing she wants,” he said.
“Or the only thing she wants.” Frère Léon rubbed his hand over the bandage under which the IV line was anchored. “Did I thank you for saving my life, Paul?”
“I heard Solange thank you for saving hers.”
“And she’ll tell you about it when she’s able.”
“Or not.” He huffed out an exasperated breath. “Her father doesn’t want me with her because I’m not settled enough to settle her, and he thinks I’ll…” Paul raised his head and glanced over at the monk. “If I confess something to you, you can’t tell anyone, can you? I’m not sure how that works with a monk.”
Frère Léon chuckled. “I would never violate a sacred trust. But I think I already know what you were going to tell me. Monsieur Léandre is afraid that you will cheat on his daughter, the way he cheated on his wife.”
“Did he confess that to you?” Paul asked incredulously.
“Just an educated guess. He is a man who has endured a heavy heart for as many years as I’ve known him, and I have seen that in him constantly. Because he has a successful life, successful businesses, successful daughters, the only reason for that heavy heart could be something where he was not a success, and since his wife was truly all that really mattered to him, my guess is that he failed her.”
“As he thinks I will fail Solange because my lifestyle would not be so dissimilar from his, always separated, if Solange and I were ever to…And he threatened to pull out the funding for the hospital if anything happens between us.”
“And you expected that he wouldn’t threaten you? He’s a man who’s used to getting his own way, and the only thing he knows to do is use his power. But he has a sensible head. He won’t hurt the hospital, especially if you re-name it after his beloved Gabriella. And since you have no ego in this matter…”
Paul grinned. “You are a tricky devil, aren’t you?”
“Experienced. There’s more of me than meets the eye than my brown robes.” He smiled. “Whatever Monsieur Léandre has done is his grief to bear, Paul. You, however, are not Monsieur Léandre, and you have no leanings in that direction.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter to Solange what kind of leanings I have, because she doesn’t want me, and she couldn’t be any clearer about that. So maybe I should just take the rather obvious hint and move on, because this is just becoming so damned frustrating. I fell in love with her the first time I laid eyes on her. Did you know that?”
“I knew that you would. How could you not?”
“How could I not, indeed! And I’ve told her that I wouldn’t expect her to change her life, to settle down the way Bertrand expects her to. Settle down, have a grandson for him. I even said that if we ever were to have children, I’d be glad to stay home while she goes off to the mountain…”
“Children?”
Frère Lèon choked, and immediately Paul was at his bedside, listening first to Frère Léon’s heart then to his lungs. “You need to rest,” he said, pulling the stethoscope out of his ears and setting it on top of the bedside stand. “No more matchmaking for you for some time to come, and that’s an order.” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Dammit, Léon, you scared the hell out of me out there in the chapel when Solange and I thought you were—”
“Will I be able to get back out there to the mountain?” he asked, his voice noticeably weaker.
Paul sat down on the side of the bed and took hold of Frère Léon’s hand. “Maybe not in the way you did before. But you’ll make it, and I want you to trust me on this. You’re going to be fine.”
“Then you have to trust me on this, Paul. Solange is worth the effort.” He gave Paul a faint smile and a wink, then shut his eyes to nap.
“A helicopter?” Paul asked, standing on the porch.
Solange looked up at it, as shocked as Paul was. Sure enough, there was a helicopter, getting ready to set down on the grass, its blades blowing up dust, the roar of its rotors nearly deafening.
“It looks to me like there are still miracles,” she replied, watching the pilot maneuver the mechanical bird to the ground. “So, now that we have a ride out of here, where do we take Frère Léon?” she asked. “Back to your hospital?”
Paul shook his head. “To the orthopaedic care center in Port Georges. He needs the best, and I don’t have the proper facilities for long-term rehabilitation, which is what he’s going to need.”
She laughed. “Isn’t that how all this started? I came to you because I didn’t have the facilities?” She waved at her father as he stepped out of the helicopter and crossed the compound. She wasn’t surprised it was him. If there ever was anybody who could conjure up a miracle like this, it was Bertrand Léandre.
“I got here as quickly as I could,” Bertrand yelled over the noise of the helicopter. “One of the villagers went to Dr Sebastian who, in turn, called me for help to evacuate Frère Léon. How is he, by the way?”