Jewel stopped a couple of steps away, extended the mug to him with a smile that set his heart quivering and gave a general affable wave. Then she did something totally unexpected. She told him, and everyone else, exactly what she was thinking.
“Hi, everyone. I can see your surprise. Seems you didn’t know Roque was married. You and me both! Till yesterday I had no idea Roque was still my husband. Now he says I’m also his co-leader, when yesterday he told me he has the leader spot all to his undisputed self and I’m to be his ‘sidekick'. I did warn him about the dangers of me taking the term literally. Then just before you arrived he finished telling me it’s either see this expedition through or find myself another country to work in, then proceeded to try to shame me into staying.”
He guffawed at her brazen summary, at his team’s stunned reaction to it. He took an eager step towards her. She didn’t back away. “And did it work?”
She shrugged, looked at the others long-sufferingly. “Only because you might make a mess of things without me. I can’t risk you messing up the expedition I’ve prepared for a year.”
He laughed his immense relief and hugged her to his side.
The only woman on his team joined in the laughter, the first one to recover. “That’s married talk all right. Delighted to meet you, Dr. Da Costa. Loretta Diaz, Roque’s technical engineer.”
Jewel shook her hand, grimacing, “Uh, let’s keep Dr. Da Costa to Roque, OK? I’m either Jewel or JJ. Take your pick.”
Another team member came forward to shake her hand. “Adalberto Alvarez, Roque’s radiographer. Call me Berto or AA.”
“AA makes you sound like a battery.” Loretta snickered.
By the time introductions were over the sun was up and the pier was busy. Jewel led Roque’s team around the boats and he followed a few steps away, succumbing to Berto’s probing, his focus on Jewel. With every lively gesture, with every lilt of her animated tones, a skewer turned in his chest.
She’d never joked with him in the past. Outside the realm of physical intimacy where everything had been pure and sure, she’d felt so precarious he’d been so afraid to say anything that might have widened the gap he’d been struggling to obliterate. It had made him tense, unnatural, waiting for her to give him a sign she’d like a more spontaneous interaction between them. She hadn’t, so there hadn’t been any. Then she’d made sure there’d never be.
Now she was showing him how much fun she could be. Had this side of her never existed before? Or hadn’t her uses for him extended to having fun this way…?
Stop it. It didn’t matter any more. She had changed.
And though he did believe her, he couldn’t be more thankful for the paranoid suspicions that had made him overcome his reluctance to see her again, made him come here braving resurrecting all the pain of the past, where he’d found this new Jewel. And they’d now share an incredible experience together, on every level. He’d make sure of that. What was more, she seemed to have accepted his presence, had shed her past pensiveness and the angst of the last day, and he couldn’t wait to experience the full measure of her humor and spontaneity.
He got plenty of that as their teams were introduced. But it wasn’t directed solely at him, and by the time his team had installed his equipment in the two smaller boats comprising the convoy, he needed emergency one-on-one time with her.
She was having a laughing conversation with two of his men. On his approach they wandered off, giving him thumbs-ups and winks.
She turned to him, her open face radiant with an impish grin. “Is that what I should expect from now on? People dropping me in mid-sentence at your approach?”
He smiled, savoring the novel experience of being exposed to her acerbic wit. “Damned straight, as your people would say. They know better than to keep you occupied when I want you.”
He waited for the indignation to come. It didn’t. She only inclined her head at him. His heart teetered to the same angle in his chest. “It’s not conductive to business to have everyone deserting me and leaving their posts whenever you get the urge.”
He had to touch her, connect with her. He did, his hand reaching to her velvet cheek. “You’re probably right. As that urge is perpetual.”
Her eyes dimmed. He almost snatched his hand away, made an encompassing gesture with it. He had to restore her smile! “What’s your opinion of my team? My facilities? Now you can really call the expedition multi-disciplinary, eh?”
His tension eased a bit when her eyes warmed. “Your people are great. I’ve never met anyone in this line of business who wasn’t. As for your facilities, you’re suffering from a condition called ‘I know my stuff inside and out I think everyone must too'.”
His laugh boomed at her teasing, his heart too, with relief. Now he’d experienced ease with her, he never wanted to go back to friction. “I didn’t know it was a condition.”
“It is, and very hard to treat, too. Not terminal but terminally aggravating to the people interacting with the sufferer.”
“Is treatment forcing the sufferer to explain his ‘stuff'?”
She gave a sage nod. “The only known treatment.”
Smiling broadly, he bowed and swept an arm out in invitation. “Lead the way to the treatment room.”
She chuckled and preceded him. He followed a step behind her, to watch her move.
He couldn’t wait to have her alone, made an imperative gesture that made his guards jump to the pier at once. He went ahead of her now, tugging her by the hand inside, hurrying her up. Sudden cries ripped through the air, through both of them.
They swung around, found Madeline running with a boy of no more than two in her arms, with Inácio and four locals, two women and two older children, running in her wake.
His aroused agitation turned off abruptly, his surgeon side coming to the fore as he rushed to meet the emergency, feeling Jewel keeping up with him step for step.
He took the little boy from Madeline as she panted, “We only understood that he fell! He has a huge scalp hematoma.”
Roque felt the bulge in the toddler’s head that had formed her impromptu diagnosis. He didn’t think it was that simple.
“Get Loretta and Berto,” he barked, and turned to rush inside the boat. Someone clung to him, stopped his dash. He turned his eyes way down, met the streaming eyes of a woman who was shaking and babbling, her fingers digging into his arm. Sympathy shot through him with her tremors, hot and deep. She had to be the boy’s mother.
She was. He struggled to understand her torrent as his clinical senses went into hyperdrive, taking in everything about the little boy, documenting, cross-referencing, concluding.
Then he felt Jewel’s soft hands on his arm. “Give me the boy, Roque. You get some history and I’ll do emergency measures.”
He relinquished the boy to her and she received him with great gentleness, her face full of compassion. Roque walked behind her in a trance, a part of him listening to the mother’s agitated account, all others buried under an avalanche of pain.
The child he and Jewel had lost would have been seven now. And there could have been others. Even one this boy’s age. He’d wanted to fill his world with replicas of her to love and cherish.
His first and only brush with happiness had been when she’d become pregnant with his baby; his first tumble into despair had been when she’d lost it. But he’d held himself together, soothed her, told her there’d be other babies. And she’d only said, “Never.”
He’d tried to remain calm, sworn he understood her trauma, would only ask they try again when she was ready, but he had to have children. One at least.
It had been then that she’d told him that her pregnancy had been a mistake when maintenance drugs had deactivated the Pill. Then she’d told him why she’d married him.
He now watched her placing the boy on the examination table as if he was precious to her. Why hadn’t his child been?
The mother’s agitation encroached on his, dragged his focus bac
k to her. He soothed her as he asked her baby’s name, asked her more questions. He joined Jewel only when she’d finished assessing the child, when he had himself under control.
“His name is Ake,” he said as he performed a full neurological exam of the boy, avoiding looking at his face or making eye contact with her. He felt her give a sad nod, knew where her eyes touched him, where his face burned.
“It’s a growing skull fracture, isn’t it?” she whispered.
His eyes made an unwilling swing to hers. She’d diagnosed it, and that easily? As a rare complication of skull fractures, it should have been one of the last things she’d thought of. The progressive enlargement of the fracture line led to protrusion of the skull contents with the fast growth rate of the brain at that age. But as it was also known as a leptomeningeal cyst because it was usually associated with a cystic mass filled with cerebrospinal fluid—what Madeline had mistaken for a hematoma—it was very hard to diagnose. But Jewel hadn’t been fooled.
He didn’t want to feel impressed. Not right now.
He gave her his reluctant corroboration. “Yes. Little Ake here fell on his head three months ago. He screamed and fussed then it passed. A month ago this bulge began to form over his left parietal region, but as he made no complaints, they didn’t worry. But the rate of enlargement increased and he began to be lethargic and disoriented, and today he just didn’t wake up.”
“As horrible as this is,” she murmured, her voice a difficult rasp, “Ake is still lucky—that you’re here, and that his general condition and neurological status are stable enough so you can operate…” Urgency permeated her gaze. He almost looked away from the lacerating emotion. “You will, won’t you?”
The idea of operating on a child constricted his heart. He steered clear of pediatric cases if he could. He couldn’t now. His nod was slow, unwilling. “As soon as I obtain scans.”
She snapped a fraught look at the tiny inert Ake then turned hopeful eyes to Roque. “Can I assist?”
His heart convulsed this time. Before he could answer, rushing footsteps had both of them turning to the incomers. Loretta, Berto and Madeline. The first two rushed to the PET-CT scanner. Madeline joined him and Jewel.
“Inácio and the others are keeping the peace outside with the guards,” Madeline gasped. “A very distraught father and what looks like the whole tribe seem to be all accounted for now.”
Roque only nodded to her, thankful for her interruption, and turned to prepare Ake for the scan. Jewel followed his instructions, extracted the radioactive tracer glucose from his supplies, injected the boy as Madeline winced and moaned over the far worse diagnosis they’d reached.
Loretta and Berto operated the scanner, sent its sliding table gliding out, then Berto called out, “All set, Roque.”
Roque scooped up the child, gently put him in place. “Give me a skull series. Let’s look at the neck, too.”
“Is this a CT scanner? I’ve never seen one that small!” Madeline exclaimed.
It was Jewel who answered her. “That’s a PET-CT scanner, Maddy. I’m not surprised you’ve never seen one—they’re so expensive most hospitals don’t have it.”
Madeline frowned. “Um, PET is positron emission tomography?”
Jewel didn’t answer right away, her eyes clinging to Ake as his flimsy body slid inside the machine. Roque didn’t feel like talking at all. He wasn’t in an educational mood.
At length Jewel looked up at her nurse. “Yes. But this combined scanner gives comprehensive and in-depth scans of injuries and their pathological effects. The CT component shows anatomical defects and the PET one shows deranged tissue metabolism. In the PET scan inflamed tissues show up as brightly colored areas.”
Jewel’s eyes turned to Roque, asking if he had anything to add. A respectful bow of his head conceded she was doing a good job. His “impressed” factor was rising by the minute. She seemed to be well versed in the latest technology. Seemed his contribution was the only area where she was ignorant.
Madeline’s question interrupted his oppressive thoughts. “Joo said you made some huge innovations. Is this one of them?”
Suddenly an alien feeling took him over. The need to brag. Deus, he was having the primitive urge to chest-thump for his woman. There went all his illusions of being an advanced being.
Thankfully it was Loretta who answered for him, saving him from sounding like a self-satisfied fool. “He may not have invented it but he made it smaller, faster and more effective. This darling he modified goes through scans at hyper-speed—64 slices per second was a dream until he made it a reality.”
Silence followed Loretta’s answer as they prepared the surgical station and themselves. All through it he kept snatching looks at Jewel. It stunned him to find his heart ramming his ribcage, still waiting for her reaction to Loretta’s information. But it wasn’t Jewel who eventually reacted. It was Madeline who deluged him in admiration and interest.
In minutes Loretta displayed the scans on the computer screen. As he and Jewel converged to view them, Roque shook off his dejection, focused on his chore.
“This looks bad,” Jewel choked.
It did. It was.
He took a deep inhalation. “OK, to business. First, to maintain intracranial pressure during the procedure.”
“Mannitol now and keeping up oxygen pressure during the surgery?” Jewel sought his approval.
Her knowledge shouldn’t surprise him any more. She seemed to be a comprehensive field doctor. He nodded and began anesthesia.
After Jewel had finished her task she took his assistant’s position and he made the first incision into the scalp, a horseshoe-shaped cut over the bony protrusion.
Step by step, he and Jewel worked quickly to repair the tears in the damaged tissue and cauterized bleeding arteries. Roque handed bony fragments to Madeline to soak in an antibiotic solution before he wired larger pieces together.
With Madeline informing them that the child’s condition was deteriorating, he and Jewel rushed through the reconstruction of the skull, then scalp closure.
After they finished post-operative details, Jewel’s old pensive air hung around her like a cloak, making him almost throw the others out so he could grab her, question her. Why was it back? Was she, too, thinking of their lost child…?
But he still needed his other colleagues around as he detailed Ake’s continuing care. Then he had to organize a helicopter to transfer Ake to his hospital as soon as he cleared Recovery for the intensive care he’d need and to prepare his parents’ accommodations for the months of rehabilitation ahead.
He gritted his teeth, took care of business, resigned that it would be a while until he was alone again with Jewel.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JEWEL made sure she wasn’t alone with Roque again.
After the surgery had ended, he’d almost snared her into another tête-à-tête at one point, but she’d been saved when his team had roped him in to handle the last-minute details of Ake’s transfer. She’d walked away, shaking with the reprieve, praying for something that would assure her of more time away from him.
Then she’d gotten it. A chance to get away for hours.
Qircamo had regained consciousness and had asked for the people who’d healed him. His people had come hastening to fetch them. And she’d grabbed Inácio, two guards and Montoya, their expert on the indigenous people, and gone with the tribesmen.
Not only was she certain she could do the follow-up on Qircamo on her own, she needed the long, bumpy drive to assimilate her turmoil. To thwart her, her four companions were in a talkative mood. She could ask them to shut up or she could participate. She participated.
And here they were, at their destination, and her chaotic thoughts were engulfed in the press of people, the demands of work and the wonder of meeting her first real-life shaman.
Qircamo, now that he was conscious, had a permeating presence that made her very self-conscious of everything she did under his scrutiny. Her hands
shook as she removed his bandages and packs, her mind streaking ahead with worst-case scenarios. Then she saw his leg and all her tension evaporated. She raised relieved eyes from her examination to meet a gaze that was fathomless with ancient knowledge and infinite patience and benevolence.
“Qircamo—if I may call you that—you must really have powerful magic,” she whispered to the old man in Portuguese. His weathered face crinkled with understanding, on every level. She smiled back at him, thankful for his improvement and that she’d had any role in it. “Your general condition is excellent. As for your leg, you’ll be walking the forest for years to come.”
“It’s you and your man who had the magic,” he said in heavily accented Portuguese, his bony hand patting her hand. She fisted it around a stab of pain the moment he’d said “your man.” “I thank both of you for my life—and my leg. I’ll pray to the gods to bless you.”
She swallowed, shook her head. “It’s my—my partner they should bless. He was the one who saved your leg.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Then his incredible face creased in what had to be ultimate serenity. “I believe you are all the blessing he wants from the gods.”
“Ohs” His words struck her hard for being so wrong, with the brutal, idiotic wish that they weren’t.
She thanked God for the distraction of having a lot to do before this was over. She busied herself with getting rid of his bloodied packs, applying fresh ones, upping his antibiotics, all the time feeling his penetrating gaze probing her.
Then, with Montoya translating the more involved words, she advised Qircamo and his people about his continued care and said she’d be back in forty-eight hours to close his wounds.
As Inácio gathered their things, she succumbed to an impulse, and bent and kissed Qircamo’s leathery cheek.
“Obrigado,” she whispered.
As she rushed out of his tent, she didn’t know what she’d thanked him for. For bringing her and Roque together for real for the first time? For planting that damaging hope that he did have clairvoyance and could see what lay in Roque’s heart? Or was she just delirious with lack of sleep?
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