Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart / Small Town Marriage Miracle

by Meredith Webber / Jennifer Taylor

  ‘I do not know of ants that can do this and his mother says he has been bitten by ants before. But she says the boys have been playing near the jacaranda trees and sometimes bees crawl into the bells of the fallen flowers.

  He may have angered a bee by stepping on a flower and accidentally stepping on the bee as well.’

  ‘Ah!’

  It seemed a logical explanation, and as the little boy was obviously more comfortable now, the drug must have worked.

  ‘He will need to stay here for some hours,’ she told Juan. ‘Could you explain to the mother we need to watch him in case he gets sick again?’

  Caroline had to wonder what Juan had said, for the woman seized both of Caroline’s hands and pressed a kiss on each of them, her ‘Gracias’ and ‘Muchas gracias’ so fervent they would have broken through any language barrier.

  ‘Is there somewhere we can put the boy where he’d be more comfortable and his mother could perhaps sit by his side?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘I will fix,’ Juan told her. ‘Are you one of the new doctors who are coming here to work?’

  The question made Caroline realise that at no stage had Juan questioned her right to treat the child or her competency to act in the emergency. Obviously Jorge attracted enough foreign helpers for Juan to accept Caroline without question, which was a good thing as far as her campaign to stay was concerned. Knowing Jorge, she guessed that throughout his appointment part of his mind would be fixed on how quickly he could move Caroline out of his life. Now he’d had time to think, he’d have come up with some excuse or strategy, of that she had no doubt, but this was one battle she wasn’t going to lose.

  She left Juan to move the little boy, and took a look around. The room they’d been in was apparently the only treatment room, and in front of it was another room, little more than a lobby, where a few patients might be able to wait out of the sun. There were three chairs, a small table and tattered magazines, while all the walls were covered with posters, familiar in context although the messages appeared to be in a language other than Spanish. Probably the Toba language?

  The posters adjured people to wash their hands, immunise their children, use sunscreen—or maybe it was insect repellent mothers were wiping on their children’s arms. Another poster showed vegetables and fruit, piles of grains and milk, presumably suggesting good dietary habits—so nothing much changed in this wide world, Caroline decided as she peered into another small room that opened off the lobby.

  It must be Jorge’s office, for it had an old table and chair—obviously scrounged from somewhere—with papers piled across the surface of the table and more papers and files on top of the battered-looking filing cabinets that lined the walls. After visiting his house, Caroline wasn’t surprised to see his medical textbooks in tall towers on the floor. In fact, she smiled, for although so much up-to-date information was available to doctors through the internet, she, too, liked to open a textbook when she was checking something.

  Beyond the treatment room on one side and office on the other was a wide room that took up the whole of the back section of the building. There were three beds on one side and Juan was settling the little boy into one of these. An old man lay sleeping in the next one, while the third was empty. A stack of mattresses in the far corner on the other side of the room suggested that at times the ‘hospital’ could cater for more than three patients.

  Juan must have seen her studying the stack as he came to her side and explained, ‘In the worst of summer sometimes people come from far up north to visit their families who live here now. They come from their homes in the bosque impenetrable—the impenetrable forest—but their families have no room for them so Jorge says they can sleep here. Sometimes they are sick, even with TB, but they are afraid of treatment. Sometimes he can give them treatment, once he gains their. Is trust the English word?’

  Caroline nodded, but she was thinking about Juan’s explanation. She had read of the land covered with thorny trees and jungle where many Toba people still lived, a place where she could imagine armadillos still mooching along the ground and jaguars hiding on the branches of the trees, and where exotic birds still made their homes.

  They must be tough, the Toba people, to have survived in that environment, and knowing that she understood a little more of why Jorge would wish to help the little community of them who had settled in Rosario but were having trouble making the transition to city life.

  Having satisfied the city official that the handover of the clinic was proceeding according to plan, Jorge could hardly avoid driving back to the clinic. The handover might be going according to plan, but his life had been flung so far off track he wondered if he’d ever get it back to somewhere approaching normal.

  He drove reluctantly out of the city, through the leafy suburbs towards the close-packed settlement of the Toba.

  Where the woman he’d thrust out of his life four years ago awaited him?

  He ran his fingers over the scarring on his right cheek, remembering his shock and horror when the bandages had come off, telling himself it didn’t matter, knowing it did because the scars were only the visible signs of the damage to his body—damage that could well have been permanent.

  Emailing her.

  Now she was back, and he knew her well enough to understand that nothing short of an earthquake would move her, and as the region was relatively stable an earthquake was just as unlikely as the tsunami he’d wished for earlier. Not that he’d welcome either one—he’d not welcome anything that would put anyone in danger.

  Perhaps he could pay someone to put a python in her bedroom—maybe even a giant anaconda. He sighed as he dismissed this new idea—knowing Caroline, instead of being frightened away, she’d strangle the creature and cook it for dinner.

  Maybe—

  Dios mio! Why was he thinking this way? Had the woman’s appearance totally addled his brain? Was finding out he had a daughter turning him crazy?

  Caroline was here, and here she’d stay, at least until she’d got what she’d come for.

  Which was?

  Estupido! The exclamation wasn’t aimed at Caroline but at himself, for as he’d asked himself the question a jolt of desire had rattled his body. Of course she wasn’t here to see him—well, not as the lover he had been, although memories of the love they’d shared, the passion, the heat and the fire set his body alight.

  He could see her body now, shadowy as it had always been in the dim light of the small round hut, welcoming, enveloping, becoming one with his—sharing the journey to oblivion with him as they tried to blot out the horrors they had seen during the day.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FRUSTRATION reawoke his anger. Love-making would be the furthest thing from Caroline’s mind. She had come to shock him into doing what she wanted, come without warning. Come to ensure her daughter had a father.

  Could he do that?

  Be a father to the child?

  At least the questions diverted him from thoughts of Caroline’s motives and the impossibility of love.

  He had the greatest example of fatherhood in the world, his father having been behind him all his life, teaching him, encouraging him, backing him in all he wished to do, but most of all loving him with an uncritical and unstinting devotion. His father was the rock he’d clung to when he’d returned from hospital in France, broken both physically and emotionally.

  Everyone should have such a father!

  But could he emulate the man he loved—be as good a father to Ella as his father had been to him?

  Somewhere inside him a determination to do just that was beginning to grow, but weighed against it was the fact that involvement with Ella would mean involvement with Caroline, and if seeing her once had brought such chaos to his mind and body, how would he react to being with her on a regular basis?

  No, best he knocked the whole thing on the head right now. Caroline was beautiful. She’d find a man and marry, thus providing a father figure for Ella.

  Some o
ther man being a father to his daughter? Guiding her through life, winning her love?

  A pain he barely understood shuddered through him.

  There had to be an answer, and it was up to him to find it, and soon, before gossip, which, although they were separated by hundreds of miles, inevitably reached his father. Once his father laid eyes on Ella, she would be his princess, the answer to all his dreams, the one gift he’d wanted so badly from his son but had accepted he might never be given.

  His father.

  Maldici—n! His father wouldn’t have to wait for gossip to filter south. In just over a fortnight he, Jorge, was due to drive south to live with his father, to resume his medical career—some as yet unknown medical career in the city of his birth, to give back just a little of the love and devotion his father had spent on him.

  ‘You can’t stay here.’

  It probably wasn’t the best conversation-opener he’d ever managed, and he was becoming repetitive, but Caroline’s arrival had put his own imminent departure right out of his mind, but remembering—remembering other things as well—he knew he had to get rid of her.

  Now!

  Her reply was a slight raising of her eyebrows as she glanced up from the book she held on her knee.

  ‘My spoken Spanish is probably better than my reading of it, but I can follow enough of this account of the Toba people to know they were a very fierce tribe. They were never assimilated into the general population as other tribes were?’

  She was doing this deliberately, changing the conversation to something she must know held his interest, and for a moment he nearly fell for it, explaining to her what he knew of the early European settlement of the northern Grand Chaco area and the Toba people.

  Until he remembered why she was doing it. Diverting him.

  He changed the conversation back to where he’d begun it.

  ‘I won’t be here myself in a couple of weeks,’ he told her. ‘I began the clinic to do something for myself as well as for the local people, and now the government is taking it over. My job here is done and I’m moving on.’

  ‘Ah!’ she said, setting down the book and looking up at him, her eyes snagging something in his chest. ‘I wondered when Juan accepted me so readily. Then something he said made me think that perhaps you had some more permanent arrangement with other doctors, rather than relying on people giving up a short period of time.’

  She looked as if she had more to say, but she’d already puzzled him enough.

  ‘You were speaking to Juan? Did you go over to look at the clinic?’

  She smiled—he wished she wouldn’t do that—and stood up. He wished she wouldn’t do that as well, because it brought her closer and he could feel the connection that had always been between them zinging in the air already.

  ‘I should have told you when you came in,’ she said, heading for the door, ‘but you had a patient while you were away. Anaphylaxis. A little boy. I’ve kept him in. His mother’s with him.’

  Could that be true?

  Of course it could!

  Like strangling a snake, this woman could do anything and was usually around when any kind of anything needed doing. The grumpy thoughts dogged his footsteps as he trod behind her to the clinic. The little boy was fine, his mother far too effusive with her praise of Caroline—a trained monkey could have given an epinephrine injection.

  Jorge wasn’t sure why her competence was making him so angry. It couldn’t possibly be because his libido was at war with his brain. He headed for his office, knowing she was following because every nerve ending in his back was standing to attention—probably saluting, if nerve endings could salute.

  ‘Did you make a file? Write it up?’

  ‘Juan did that for me,’ the aggravating female replied. ‘I didn’t think my Spanish was up to it.’

  ‘Why learn it at all?’ he asked, and realised immediately he should have kept his mouth shut. All he was doing was giving her more reason to show her wonder-woman skills.

  ‘I learned it for Ella. I’ve been sharing what I know with her, but it’s not the same as having her grow up in a bilingual family, hearing both languages all her life. It’s so much easier for children to learn at a young age—I see three-year-olds in the practice at home chattering away in Arabic or Vietnamese, then talking to me in English. By the time they’re five most of them can act as translators for their parents if it’s needed.’

  He wanted so much to hate her, but how could he when every time she opened her mouth she revealed more that was good and worthy?

  And best he didn’t think about her mouth, the way his body was behaving. Best he not be beguiled by those lips and memories of what they had done to him in the past.

  He wasn’t angry now, Caroline realised, not angry angry, more grouchy—put out—as well he should be.

  He’d had a tendency to grouchy, usually when unable to achieve miracles for the people they treated—unable to stop the wars and famines that made so many people’s lives so insecure, their health so fragile.

  Back then she’d found ways to divert him when the impossibility of it all had got him down—but though her body might ache with memories of those diversions, this wasn’t the time to be considering them. Especially as her own anger at him for treating her as he had—for doubting her love—still burned beside the love inside her.

  Yelling at him, bringing all the hurt out into the open, would be a diversion, but what would it achieve—more distance between them when what she needed was some kind of neutral ground where they could work out a satisfactory arrangement for their daughter? Besides, apart from the grouchiness, he was handling this massive disruption in his life so smoothly she’d lose ground if she didn’t match his … aplomb? She didn’t think she’d ever done aplomb before but she hoped that was what she was managing.

  There remained the issue of a diversion. She’d try a practical one.

  ‘Should I find somewhere to buy some food? You weren’t expecting visitors, particularly not a child. Ella will eat practically anything but I can’t expect you to be feeding us.’

  She saw anger flare again.

  ‘Of course I will feed you,’ he snapped. ‘You are my guests, even if totally uninvited ones.’

  ‘And unwelcome ones?’

  She couldn’t stop herself asking, although she knew the answer was sure to hurt.

  ‘Definitely unwelcome. You’ve deliberately staged this—this reunion—’ he spat the word at her ‘—to cause me maximum emotional disruption and physical inconvenience. The only worse way you could have played it would have been to go to my father’s home. Perhaps you didn’t think about that? ‘

  Stricken by his words, Caroline could only stare at him, until her own anger came to her aid.

  ‘You think I did this out of spite? Planned this deliberately to upset you? And why? To get back at you for having dumped me? For having ignored my letters and left me with a child to bring up on my own? Believe me, Jorge, I was over that a long time ago.’

  ‘So why come now?’

  She opened her mouth to tell the truth—to say she’d read about the extent of his injuries, seen his photo, seen the scars, and knowing him had guessed he’d pushed her away deliberately, believing her pity would be more hurtful than the pain of losing love.

  But that would be tantamount to admitting she still loved him, and from his reaction to her arrival any love he’d ever felt for her was long gone.

  So she told a lie, well, a partial lie, following right on the heels of the one where she was over the hurt he’d caused a long time ago …

  ‘I could afford it now,’ she said. ‘Suddenly I had the money to take time off work and travel. Letters hadn’t worked so I decided maybe seeing Ella would persuade you to become involved in her life.’

  ‘You had no money before? You always worked? And how did you manage when Ella was a baby? Did you not breastfeed her? ‘

  Well, as a diversion for his grumpiness it had certainly worked, but grumpy
didn’t begin to describe how the switch in conversation and those rude questions had made her feel.

  ‘It was before my father found me and made up for twenty-eight years of neglect by leaving me his money,’ she snapped. ‘I had to work to keep us but, yes, I was breastfeeding. My mother, when she was in remission, cared for Ella. It’s not that hard these days to freeze pouches of milk so there was a supply for Ella during the day.’

  She gave him a glare she hoped was as cold as the pouches of frozen milk, mainly because his probing had reawoken the guilt she still felt at not being able to spend more time with both her baby and her ailing mother.

  He’d been leaning against his desk and now he stepped towards her and for a moment she thought he was going to touch her—maybe even kiss her—though that, of course, was nothing more than wishful thinking.

  As it turned out, he stopped just out of touching distance and said quietly, ‘I do regret not being there to help you. I regret not opening the letter that would have told me of the child.’

  And because her body had tensed for the kiss—as if!—she snapped again.

  ‘Her name is Ella! It shouldn’t be too hard for you to remember. And now it’s getting late—it’s been a big day. I need to sort out food, rescue Mima from her, and get her bathed and into bed.’

  Now he did touch her, catching her arm as she spun away from him, the abrupt halting of her movement spinning her back so she landed up against his body.

  His body—as hard as she remembered it—solid, chunky almost, the kind of body that would be a bulwark against anything the world could throw at her.

  But that had been then, when she’d believed their love so great their souls had joined.

  One slight move now and their lips would join. The air grew thick and still between them, desire throbbing in her body, a moment in time, stretching, stretching to forever—then he steadied her and stepped away, going behind his desk, sitting down, looking at the note Juan had made about the boy.

  Had she imagined the shift in the atmosphere when he’d touched her? Imagined it because she’d have liked to think their mutual attraction still existed?