Jewel cast a wide glance out into the seemingly bankless river as their riverboat followed the smaller boats’ lead midstream and sighed. “Glad you’re so happy, Maddy.”
“Who wouldn’t be? I’m on the Amazon River. Tell me all you know about it, Joo. I bet you know everything!”
Jewel sighed again. “No one knows everything about anything, Maddy, least of all Amazonia. The forest keeps most of its secrets. It isn’t hard as it covers half of Brazil and extends into six other countries. But, yes, your beloved Amazon River is longer than the Nile.”
Madeline gaped. “How did you know I was going to ask that?”
Jewel crooked her a complacent smile. “So-called modern people are pathetically predictable.”
She submitted to Madeline’s equally predictable shove as she tried to keep her eyes off Roque’s boat now that he’d come on the observation deck.
He stood there like a conqueror of old, power and distinction stamped in his every line. And control. Talk about control. Then he waved.
Madeline waved back enthusiastically. It figured. Jewel bet females of all species in a hundred miles’ radius were waving right back at him. She wouldn’t be one of them, just this once.
At her ignoring him, he cocked his head, tension gathering in his stance. Then he pressed his fingers to his lips for a drawn-out moment. Her heart pounded at the pantomime. She knew his fingers were a substitute for her lips, for every other part of her he’d told her he was dying to taste, to pleasure. Her nerves fired when he released the kiss, let it blow her way. She almost growled at her pathetic reaction.
Next second he swung around and rushed out of sight, seemingly in answer to some summons.
“Sos” Madeline resumed with ultra-brightness. “The brochure said among the estimated 15,000 species here, thousands aren’t classified. How did they count them if they’re not classified?”
Jewel sighed. “Counted is one thing, classified is another. If you must know the difference I’ll hand you over to our naturalist. He’s dying for an excuse to drown in your sapphire eyes.”
“What?” Madeline yelped in elated surprise. “Marcos? That dimpled hunk dripping in Indiana Jones appeal? No way!”
“Yes way. That’s what you miss when you focus all your attention in the wrong direction, Maddy.”
“Meaning in yours and Roque’s? Can you blame me? I’m still stunned you’re married, and to a world-leading genius who’s a world-class hunk. Your family sure never went public with that piece of explosive news.”
“They didn’t because at the time Roque was a doctor who survived on grants and had a one-room condo in Rio and no car. It was the far lesser evil to advertise that I’d gone mad and went to live in the jungle than make my marriage to him public.”
“I bet your folks would love to call him son-in-law now.”
Jewel sighed in bitterness. “Yeah, I bet.”
“But cut your folks some slack, who wouldn’t? That man of yours is something else.”
Jewel almost stamped her foot. He wasn’t her man. She had no idea what he was, or what he wanted to be.
Madeline went on, “But you guys seem to have such a complicated history, I doubt either of you understands it.”
Jewel exhaled another dejected sigh. “It was too naïve to think you’d resist the urge to gossip, wasn’t it, Maddy?”
“It’s not gossip as it’s staying between us!” Madeline scrunched up her eyes against the sun, indignant. “You’re my friend and I’m concerned. And I’m confused. But I bet not half as much as both of you are.”
“I don’t know why you include Roque in your summation. He certainly isn’t confused about anything.”
“You’re just spinning so hard you can’t see him spinning. Seriously, Joo, yours is a match made in a higher echelon of heaven. Two magnificent creatures who burn the air in a mile radius around them and who also share the same vocation.”
“I didn’t share Roque’s vocation when he married me. The truth is, I have no clue why he did marry me.”
“Because he loved—loves—you, why else?”
Jewel chewed her lip, feeling her confusion only mounting. This couldn’t have been why he’d married her. But she no longer had theories why he had.
Madeline went on, “And he’s here seeking you again, and you’ve both changed, for the best, so what’s stopping you from coming back together?”
Jewel sighed. “Would you believe—him?”
Madeline’s mouth clunked open. “Huh?”
“Threw a sabot in the cogs of your logic machine, huh?”
“Hey, give me a break. I thought you were the one resisting the reunion, but if he’s the one who’s—aargh! I give up!”
Jewel’s gaze swept the endless expanse of glasslike waters, let its serenity permeate her, let Madeline’s last three words seep their resignation through her.
Then she finally said, “Yeah. Me, too.”
“Are you coming, too, or shall I go alone?”
Roque watched Jewel’s flushed lips caressing the words, heard her rich tones undulating to their rhythm. But he couldn’t understand a thing.
“Earth to Roque! You can come down from orbit now.”
Her smile was a shard of light and delight piercing his heart. He rose under her influence, his hand sweeping a hungry path from a strong calf, exposed by knee-long shorts, up to her waist. “Can’t I remain lost in orbit, mapping your topography?”
Half a giggling pirouette took her out of reach. “You don’t seem so lost now. And now you’ve landed safely, are you coming? I can go alone if you’d rather stay here.”
“You’ve such a short memory. I said you go nowhere without me.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “You said that ages ago.”
“Thirteen days and…” he consulted his watch “… fourteen hours and twenty-three, four minutes ago.”
She gave him a mysterious look, her eyes going a murky shade of honey. Then her lips parted, the smile vacant this time. “Come on, then. I’d rather avoid another macho attack.”
With this she spun around, called to the team she’d chosen for their landing and first visit to one of their targeted tribes.
He followed, his steps slower, his heart racing.
Just what had he thought? That her surrender had been a carte blanche and he was free to pick it up whenever he pleased?
Well, surprise. Seemed she’d withdrawn it. Maybe had torn it up and burned it, too. And he had only himself to blame.
Her withdrawal had started the day they’d embarked on their journey, in subtle ways. Giving him no chance to find her alone, emptying her words and glances of familiarity until she interacted with him with the same neutral ease and distance she did with the rest of the men on the expedition. He hadn’t noticed right away, lost in discovering the new her, all that appealed to his every fastidious taste and satisfied his every uncompromising demand, and struggling to remember why he’d started this, and what was so bad about her craving him, too.
The sobering answer always reared its head. She’d craved him once before, and he’d splurged himself on her and she’d ended up reviling him, sated and sickened.
But he’d almost reached a point where even this argument couldn’t dam the hunger, where everything inside him clamored to have her now, come what may. But he couldn’t, had to wait. And, then, she seemed no longer interested anyway…
“May we ask a question and not be thrown overboard?”
Roque blinked. Berto. And Loretta. And they were standing right in front of him. Where had they come from?
“You’ll be thrown overboard if you don’t make it quick!” he barked, his annoyance taking a short cut to maximum.
The duo exchanged a wary glance, seemed to agree that Berto should deliver the question. “Joo’s team know who’s doing what. We ‘re sort of lost until our boss decides our fate.”
“Call her Joo one more time, Berto, and you’d better learn to swim in a hurry.”
/> Inferno. His condition was more critical than he’d realized. Not only did he sound like a jealous adolescent, he was acting like one. And slipping in his leader role, too.
Had she left his team floundering on purpose to point this out? Or was she keeping out of his territory to avoid another “macho attack” as she’d put it? Or what had come after its?
This was getting ridiculous, these attacks of absent-mindedness. He gritted his teeth. “You two, come with me.”
In ten minutes they were all aboard two rowing boats. He took over rowing his boat, the grueling exercise and the 110°F temperature easing his agitation.
He didn’t see the wild beauty they were nearing. He was in a limbo of blurred images and sensations, with only Jewel in focus. Her closeness and connection had been his first taste of true living. And now she was drifting away again, and he couldn’t…
“But if it’s better for indigenous people to be left uncontacted by Western civilization, why are we going there?” Madeline’s question intruded into his oppression. Thankfully.
Jewel answered, sitting further away from him than Madeline, yet her voice felt closer, almost inside his head. “We’ll try to undo the damage done by past contacts, Maddy. Even those with the best intentions resulted in disaster when the tribes were exposed to Western infectious diseases, the ones you and I take in our stride but to which they have no immunity.”
Madeline persisted. “Then why go after those who haven’t been contacted at all? Won’t we bring them our antibiotic-resistant strains and vaccination-fortified viruses?”
Jewel sighed. “Contacting unknown tribes will remain controversial. But beside the dangers of imported infections, they have other endemic health problems that can’t be handled by traditional remedies. And those specific people we’re visiting have been discovered. It’s better that we make first contact than anyone else.”
Perpetually simmering fury and futility made Roque interrupt. “You didn’t mention what really drives these people to extinction, Jewel. Once the modern world intrudes, those people fragment and disperse. Then they’re no more. Or, worse, they become like Qircamo’s tribe, both cut off from tradition and incapable of joining the modern world.”
“Protecting indigenous people from the outside world has become an important goal of the Brazilian government and its Federal Department, Roque,” Berto put in.
Roque gave the oar an extra-hard yank, jerking the whole boat. “So Vale do Javari has been declared an indigenous reservation, but did that stop the cattle, logging and mining interests from continuing their pressures? What really galls me is that the uncontacted tribes are remnants of former indigenous nations who fled deeper into the jungle after violent encounters with the outside world. Yet no matter how far they run or how deep they hide, it keeps encroaching, leaving them no escape.”
Silence met his frustrated rage. It lasted until they went ashore and started to trek into the forest. He fell in step with Jewel, and Madeline strode ahead, leaving them alone.
Jewel’s eyes briefly swept to him before snapping back to negotiate the thickening undergrowth covering the forest bed. He wanted to stop her, take her in his arms, rest her head over his heart, let the contact soothe him, defuse him. He hadn’t had anything of her in days and he was suffering.
She suddenly talked. “The indigenous people situation is frustrating as hell. And I know that whatever we do may seem useless, ultimately. Yet we have to try and help them in any way we can, and hope. But no matter how committed I am to this, I guess you’re bound to feel more so, may even feel in a way responsible as it’s your people who’re driving those people to extinction.”
Her words fell on him like a wrecking ball. It took him a full minute before he was able to articulate an answer.
Then he rasped it. “You think I’m of Portugese origins? Another assumption, eh? But what’s another one in the sea of careless conjectures that form my character in your mind?”
He hadn’t meant it to come out so cold and mocking. So hurt. But it had and he couldn’t recall it, was in no mental shape to apply any brakes. Her golden eyes poured startled confusion over him and his control fractured.
So she’d lost interest already, eh? Even before she had him this time? Bom, let him give her one more good reason—the best reason possible—to thank God for her lucky escape, to congratulate herself for gauging his worth correctly and discarding him like the trash that she thought he was.
“Are you going by my physical appearance in your assumption?” he rasped an abrasive sneer. “Or is it my family names? I’m sure there are existing families with those names, but in my case they’re just a random combination my illegitimate orphan mother picked from the obituaries right before she had me so she’d give me a surname. As for my origins on my father’s side, who knows? He could have been any one out of a hundred or more of her clients.”
CHAPTER TEN
ROQUE moved the Doppler ultrasound probe over the man’s distended abdomen. The images were transmitted to the monitor lying between him and Jewel on the woven-vine-covered floor. She couldn’t see them with the screen facing away from her.
“What do you see?” she asked him as soon as he’d concluded his exam of the abdomen and moved on to the pelvis.
“Hmm, just a minute. I’m capturing more images.”
When the minute became five and he still didn’t answer as he clicked away on his laptop, her banked heat rose.
He’d been doing this, ignoring her, since he’d hurled the truth about his parentage at her.
For the hour it had taken to reach the Manis village, she’d shriveled with mortification, trying to imagine how it had been for him, his childhood, his struggles without the support of a family and the difficulties of his mother’s situation—and failing. Could they have had more different formative years?
Then she’d tried to imagine how many hardships he’d had to endure, what level of dedication had seen him rise so far with everything possible against him—and still couldn’t. It was beyond phenomenal.
She’d tried to approach him, convey all that stormed in her heart, but he hadn’t let her. Then they’d reached the village, met the villagers and organized their schedule of exams and educational sessions with the tribal elders, and he’d kept treating her like he did the air around him. It had been then that her mortification had morphed into resentment.
She’d been keeping him at arm’s length out of pure survival. But she hadn’t been ignoring him. Why was he?
Did he regret telling her something so profoundly personal? Did he think she was judging him? Did he think her such a shallow, snobbish, empty shell? Still?
His unapproachable profile made her think of worst-case scenarios, made her wish she hadn’t sent her team off to other cases so she was alone with him. As if he needed her support—in any way!
In another minute she gave up hope that he’d acknowledge or include her, and decided to find answers for herself.
But as he hadn’t even taken the time to make introductions, it was up to her to perform them herself and, using the few indigenous words she knew, she did.
Their patient was Moie and his wife was Tuia. Tuia was as alert as her husband was lethargic, her sun-baked body naked to the waist, like the rest of the tribe, and there was a child no younger than five sleeping on her back. Patting the spot she had vacated beside her husband, she made it look as if she was carrying nothing at all as she jumped to her feet, giving Jewel the optimum place to conduct her exam. Moie squeezed his yellowed black eyes, giving her his consent to examine him.
An overall look, followed by palpating Moie’s abdomen and pelvis and examining his edematous legs, told her a lot. But as he wasn’t up to making the effort, she turned to Tuia and questioned her about his complaints in an elaborate set of pantomimes. The bright woman caught on with amazing accuracy, her answers bolstering Jewel’s suspicions.
But when Jewel tried to ask a more complex question, she found out the limit of non
-verbal communication. But even without that answer, she had her diagnosis.
She was delineating treatment in her mind when Roque finally announced his verdict. “Ascites and hepatosplenomegaly.”
Oh, yeah? She could have told him that without all the gadgets. It had taken her a few palpating dips and percussion taps on Moie’s abdomen to detect free fluid floating in his abdominal cavity and the hugely enlarged spleen and liver.
“And your diagnosis?” She raised her eyebrows at him.
He cocked one formidable eyebrow back at her, his eyes devoid of expression for the first time since she’d seen him again. For the first time ever. “Are you testing me now?”
Her heart constricted. Keep it light. She did. “Yep, since you’re on my turf. This case is pure internal medicine.”
“You mean you have a diagnosis?” At her nod, his eyebrows drew together into a forbidding glower. “Don’t you mean a differential diagnosis?”
She shook her head, ignored the itch behind her sternum that his uncharacteristic harshness inflicted. “That’s the problem with you surgeons. You can’t consider coming up with a diagnosis without using all your gadgets on the patient. We internists rely on good old case histories and examination.”
“And that’s why you’re often wrong, as evidenced by the ever-increasing numbers of your chronic patients! And God only knows how many people you actually kill, slowly or quickly, never even realizing it. Then you pat yourselves on the back and go have lunch! Symptoms can overlap from one relatively benign condition to another catastrophic one, and your so-called history taking and exams are never enough to make the distinction. I question your unsubstantiated instincts and self-satisfied diagnostic skills and the way you approach a patient with your human limitations and prejudices. These often blind you to the obvious until it’s too late. ‘Gadgets,’ on the other hand, don’t have opinions or preconceptions—and they certainly don’t have egos!”
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