by Lexy Timms
“I thought this was a Jeep!”
“I’m all for four-wheeling, Doc, but we’re on the side of a mountain. There’s little enough room as it is. It’ll take heavy equipment to carve another path through this.”
Brant grabbed the first aid kit and the doctor’s bag from the back.
“Where are you going?”
“It’s only a couple of miles from here,” Brant said, leaping to the ground and rummaging behind the passenger seat until he found a rather battered backpack. “I run that much every day. I can handle this.”
“Not through the jungle, you don’t. There are things out there that’ll kill you in an instant.”
“Like L.A. traffic.” Brant grinned, and shoved the supplies into the pack and slung it over his shoulder. “I’ll be fine; besides, I have the…” He patted his pockets, checked the backpack.
“Doc…” Tom said, holding out the walkie-talkie with a frown that spoke volumes about what he thought about Brant’s sanity.
“Yeah, that. I’ll be fine. Go back and let them know, okay?”
“Your wife will kill me.”
“We’re not married.”
“Tell her that.” Tom slammed the gear into first and drove over a rock Brant didn’t think would clear the bottom of the car. He was right.
Brant shook his head and turned to face the jungle. Alone at the edge of a carved-out rut of dirt and rock, Brant began climbing.
The sun beat down on his back, pulling the sweat from him and adding to the humidity of the jungle. By the time he crested the hill and felt it was safe to head back down to the road, he was drenched through and thankful Tom wasn’t there to say, ‘I told you so.’
He bent over, holding his knees and forcing the breath to come from his diaphragm. He tried to mop his brow with his shirt sleeve, but it was too wet to do more than add to the sweat.
“At least this time,” he told the jungle, “I got hiking boots before I got here.” His departure to chase after Mel had been delayed just long enough to arrange for her boxes to get shipped and to go shopping for appropriate clothing. Except for one rather crucial thing.
“I FORGOT TO GET A HAT!” he yelled at the trees.
Something called back.
The breath stopped in his throat, his heart froze. Frightened wildlife. That was what Mel said. Define wildlife. The call sounded again, louder. Okay, that’s a good definition. Thank you. His feet seemed to figure out that he needed to move before he did. He half ran, mostly slid down the far side of the hill, and all but tumbled onto the road. He landed on the dirt road after only a brief tumble and pulled himself up, gathering the backpack which had slid off his shoulder and landed in the dust at his feet.
Somehow, despite the huge hole carved out of the road behind him, he felt safer. A road was a man-made artifice, a creation of humans. He remembered reading something about wild animals instinctively staying away from man-made things. He hoped whatever it was that was making the noise had read the same thing.
He shouldered the backpack, felt like he was forgetting something, and stopped. A quick check of his pockets revealed exactly what he’d been most dreading. The walkie-talkie was gone. Just… gone. It had to have dropped on the hill somewhere, but the thought of climbing back up that incline in this heat gave him pause. He was still debating it when the call of whatever beast was stalking him came again, running through the trees and bouncing off the rocks.
Decision made, Brant shouldered the kit and walked along the center of the dirt road. On his right was crumbling edge to a 1000-foot fall and on his right… well, it was loud and sounded pissed.
He thought to sing something, just to keep up his spirits, but the only two songs that he could think of were ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ and Randy Newman’s ‘I Love L.A.’
‘I Love L.A.’ it is…
No more wild screams came from the jungle. Brant assumed that whatever it was had found the transmitter and was now calling in death threats instead of following one doctor to deliver them in person.
“At least it gets to stay in the shade,” he mumbled to himself, grimly setting one foot in front of another. How far was he from the blasted place?
After what seemed hours of traipsing through the jungle in unrelenting heat, Brant started compiling a list of Things to Buy When I Get a Hat. On the top of the list, under hat was canteen. His thoughts turned more and more to ice-cold crystal-clear water, fresh from a plastic bottle taken from a refrigerated section of a gas station.
Next on the list: ice cubes. Since they would melt in this heat the way he was doing, next on the list was freezer. Needing someplace to put said freezer, house and swimming pool followed soon after, which led to pleasant thoughts of sitting by the pool with Mel sipping iced tea. Naked.
He was so wrapped up in his list he almost missed the first time someone shot at him.
Chapter 15
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE WENT ON WITHOUT YOU?” Mel shrieked, throwing down her clipboard hard enough to send it clattering from reception desk to floor.
“Don’t yell at me; it was his idea!” Tom shot back.
“I think she’s got a good case to yell at you, Tom. You’re supposed to know this area, at least a little. He doesn’t.” Joseph gave him a look that was entirely unsympathetic. But then the fact that he’d been nowhere to be found immediately after the quake had put him on the wrong end of Mel’s bad temper already once today. He still denied any fault—the girl he’d been visiting had been badly frightened by the movement of the earth and he’d stayed to comfort her.
Mel had no doubt exactly what had transpired in that ‘comforting.’
Which was completely beside the point compared to this current crisis.
“Go. Get. Him.”
“How?” Tom threw up his hands, accompanying the gesture with a stream of Spanish that needed no translation followed by, “the road’s missing.”
“I thought that was a Jeep!” Mel demanded, pointing at the vehicle in question.
“I made sure he had the transmitter.” Tom paced around in a frustrated circle before plopping down in a chair in what passed for the reception area, sulking. “Call him and check on him then.”
Mel shot the man a look promising that this would not be the last of it, though, truth be told, she hadn’t even thought of the damned walkie-talkie until this moment. She stormed into the office and pulled the mate out of the drawer and keyed it. “Brant.” She waited. “Brant?” Nothing.
“Tell him to press the button down to talk.” Tom suggested from behind her.
Mel jumped a mile. Dammit, what did it take to get a moment’s privacy around here?
“The man’s a doctor,” Joseph chided, joining Tom at the door. “He knows how to work a walkie-talkie.”
“Really?” Tom asked. “They cover walkie-talkies in medical school, do they?”
“Well, you never know what someone might find shoved into available orifices…” Joseph said in a tone that spoke volumes about his own time spent in training back at the hospital in Belmopan.
“What the hell was I supposed to do? Beat him and carry him back?”
“Shut UP!” Mel yelled at them both. “This isn’t a boarding house, it’s a freakin’ pre-school!” She glared at them both till they stared at their feet like naughty boys. “Brant? Honey? If you can hear me, press the button to talk.” She chose to ignore the triumphant look Tom shot to Joseph. “BRANT?”
No answer. Nothing. Mel’s stomach knotted itself a little bit tighter. A nasty little voice asked her whether she was happy now that he was dead and gone and couldn’t bother her with outrageous gifts of foundations and millions of dollars.
She really hated that little voice. It sounded an awful lot like Carmen.
Besides, he’s not dead. He’s probably…busy.
She set the radio on the desk very carefully, thinking hard. She reminded herself to breathe. And then reminded herself to do so again until she thought she’d remembered how and s
he felt less like throwing up. “I’m going after him.”
“No, you’re not.” Carmen shoved her way bodily between the men and entered the office. Tom and Joseph bolted into a corner to get out of the way. “Tina called on the other radio. Since she couldn’t find Joseph here, she took Jose. There’s a collapse in one of the older buildings; they’re bringing people back with them. Broken bones, concussions.”
Mel closed her eyes a moment and regretted not sending that prayer after him as she’d intended. “Tom, go find him. Joseph, get the OR ready, just in case. I want prep trays for casts and stitches. And get the penicillin out. I shouldn’t have to remind you that cuts out here get infected. Let’s go!”
Tom didn’t object; he ran like he was released from a torturer’s prison. Carmen and Joseph bolted back into the clinic proper, and Mel stood for a long moment leaning against the door frame, silhouetted against the jungle on one side, the air-conditioned office on the other. She stood there, straddling the heat and the chill, and lowered her head and closed the door behind her.
She had patients coming. She could do this.
What if I never get a chance to apologize?
What if he never forgives me?
There was no room for thinking like that. It wasn’t productive. She had an emergency. She’d frozen once and she wasn’t going to freeze up again. She was better than that. Brant was…well, Brant was Brant. He’d be fine. He was always fine.
Except, he’d wandered off into the jungle, albeit following a rather decrepit road.
ARGH!
Just get to work!
Already she could hear the approaching vehicles. The injured had arrived and she had a job to do.
As it turned out, the three people they brought back were not badly hurt, though the concussion would take a few days of close observation to be sure. One leg had a protruding bone and, while shocking and vivid, it was a fairly simple repair, one she’d done many times before.
Mel dove into the work, finding that even having been away a few months, her hands remembered what to do. She found herself humming at one point during the operation, feeling a peace and contentment that bordered on the ghoulish.
This…this was what she’d been born to do.
She was at it for an hour, maybe more. By the time she left the operating room, everyone had been settled comfortably and Angelica had gone out to scrub out her car. The Toyota was a million years old, but was her pride and joy, even if it constantly got stuck in the mud.
Mel checked her patients and breathed a sigh of relief. At least here everything was under control.
It was the rest of the world she was worried about.
She settled finally on sitting outside. A liberal dose of bug spray kept the insects at least moderately off her. Her staff knew where to find her if there were any complications. She certainly wasn’t going to get any rest until Brant came home.
The sun was setting when Mel saw Tom come up the drive. He was alone in the Jeep.
He pulled up by her and got out. He’d aged in the hours since she’d seen him, his face lined and weary, grey beneath his tan. He solemnly handed her something. For just a moment, her eyes refused to focus on the black object in his hand. Then it came through in startling clarity. Mel sank down on the steps with a soft cry and stared, eyes furiously blinking back tears.
The walkie-talkie. It was covered in mud. The antenna had been badly bent.
“There were a number of tracks around it…” Tom said quietly. “Jaguar.”
“No,” Mel said quietly. “No. He’s…”
The jungle exploded near the driveway, trees shoving each other out of the way and tearing out of the earth. It took a minute to figure it out, the noise, the chaos…Mel scrambled to her feet, staring as in came a large bulldozer, lights blazing, the blade in front clearing everything in its path up to and including the Jeep, which was dinged fairly badly, before it ground to a halt in front of them. Tom shot off the porch, swearing in two languages.
“I have internal bleeding over here!” Brant yelled from a truck that had followed the bulldozer in. “Get this one inside NOW!”
Three orderlies had converged on the machinery before he even got the word ‘Now’ out. Mel screamed and dropped the walkie-talkie, running headlong into the fray.
Brant was home.
* * *
“Your man is going to be okay,” Brant said to the foreman. “He lost a lot of blood, but he’s going to make it.”
“Thank you.” The man sighed. It looked as though the beefy man would cry with relief. Brant sympathized. After the day he’d had, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been the one to burst into tears.
He watched the big guy hovering over his buddy. He looked like he intended to spend the night there. Brant made a mental note to have one of the nurses bring the man a cot later if he wanted to spend the night. From the way things looked at the hotel, not a lot of the rooms were habitable anyway. The entire place was a mass of broken concrete and hysteria. Thankfully, the place had been nearly empty at the time of the quake.
Turning, he stretched and massaged a particularly bad knot in his neck. Some sleep was sounding pretty good to him about now, too. Not that he’d get any anytime soon. The entire staff had somehow snuck up behind him, assembled in a wide-eyed throng that wasn’t going to let him get any rest until the story was told.
Not that he minded. The most beautiful woman in the world was standing there, front and center, her eyes glistening in the dim lights, with unshed tears. Damn, she was something.
“Okay, so you need to tell us what happened,” Joseph said, as around him the sea of faces nodded encouragement in unison.
Brant suppressed a laugh. Nope he wasn’t getting any rest anytime soon. Noticing that other patients around the ward appeared to be listening as well, Brant shrugged and began. “Well, I was walking along, minding my own business, when Samuel back there took a shot at me.”
“If I was shooting at you, you’d be dead, amigo.” Samuel laughed from beside the bed of his friend. If he laughed a little too hard maybe it would help him to deal with emotions of the past few hours. “I was shooting at the kitty who was following you, thought you were a tasty mouse.” He laughed again and landed a friendly blow on Brant’s shoulder that threw him off-balance.
“You missed,” Brant pointed out.
“Sure.” Samuel agreed. “But jaguars… they are protected. City doctors, now, they come and go all the time!” Samuel let loose with a booming laugh, then seemed to realize where he was and quieted with a guilty look on his face. “Can I stay?” He nodded to the patient who still slept despite all the noise.
“Quietly,” Brant cautioned.
“Si, gracias.” For a man of Samuel’s thickness, he moved without making a sound, picking up a chair from next to an empty bed and bringing it to sit next to his friend with exaggerated care.
“You were stalked by a jaguar?”
After all her warnings, her dire tales of dangerous wildlife, it was Mel who sounded the most upset. Her voice rose in uncertainty, her eyes wide and frightened. Maybe it was he who should have been surprised. I mean, seriously, I could see getting hit by a Jaguar on the road while jogging. But a real jaguar? Yet somehow in the grand scheme of things this whole thing had become almost…normal?
As if life with this woman would ever be anything normal.
“I suppose,” Brant said, pulling her into his arms. “I offered it my walkie-talkie, I commiserated with it about the heat… don’t know what I did to piss it off.” He looked at her and his face grew serious. “But I do understand what I did to you. What… what all of us did to you. Mel, I never meant to take anything away from you. I would give all I have, everything for you. That’s not an exaggeration, I mean that.” He touched her face gently, tipping her chin up so that he could look her in the eyes. “Being here is frightening. Being stalked, shot at… part of a wall fell on that poor guy and there wasn’t much I could do about it, beca
use I needed to go in and stop the bleeding. No road. No ambulance. No help. If Samuel hadn’t decided that a bulldozer the size of Rhode Island could damn well make a road on the fly, I might’ve lost that poor man entirely.”
“You don’t belong here,” Mel whispered, blinking back tears.
“Yes.” Brant smiled. “I do. See, the thing is, I was able to rely on something you weren’t. I’m a doctor, like you. I was scared, I was out of my element, but I was a doctor. And for the first time, it had real meaning. What I do can be important, ask Maria. But what I did today…” He looked away for a moment, considering his words. Saw the faces of an entire staff and a few bystanders who were studiously avoiding his gaze, pretending to not be there though he’d have bet it would have taken more than an earthquake to shake any of them loose from their posts right now.
Her family.
Maybe his family, too.
He drew Mel away from the rest. Found a quiet corner that gave them some privacy. Spoke the next words against her ear, for her alone. “Mel, I made a difference. That’s why I belong here. I matter. I matter as a doctor and as a husband. You don’t belong in L.A., because there neither of us matter. No, hear me out. The money isn’t mine, it’s my father’s, it’s my mother’s, not mine. I didn’t make that mansion, I didn’t make enough in my practice to start a foundation. None of that was ever truly mine, it’s just… mine to control.”
“But—” She half-turned to face him.
“Shhh, no buts. Hear me out.” He touched her cheek, bringing her back to him. “No one matters in L.A., Mel, not like this. Not like… here. I’m sorry I took it away; I didn’t understand that I had. But where you are, Mel, that’s where I need to be. Like air or water.” He looked down at her upturned face. “I’m not leaving, Mel.”
“What about the foundation?”
He shrugged. “Too much math. Lisa handles the business end of things. And for the face of the organization, I recommended Bertram Hastings. My old boss.”
Mel lay her head on his chest. Her voice came from a million miles away. “But I’ve been wrong, too. I’m selfish. Prideful. I worry more about what I personally build than what we’re doing here. Carmen can run this place better than I can. I know that. I just want to…well…get my hands dirty now and again. Feel useful. I can live with L.A. The noise, the traffic, the people. That’s part of your world, too. And, maybe it would be kind of fun, setting up places like this in other parts of the world.”