by Lexy Timms
Damn it all! This caring side of him was messing with her head.
“Tina.” Mel half-turned, found the nurse bent over her computer at the desk, looking for all the world like she was working hard. The rat. “Let’s find Dr. Layton some scrubs, shall we? And some basic toiletries? I don’t think he had a lot of time to properly pack for this trip.”
“Si, Dr. Bell.” Tina said, trying to pretend that the monitor still had a certain fascination for her. “I’ll make sure he gets them.”
Mel rolled her eyes and stepped closer, so that he wouldn’t overhear. Not that he was likely, with the way he was laughing and carrying on in the next room. “Listen, both of you. He’s had a rough time here already and he’s only just arrived. Please don’t do that thing where you pretend you don’t speak English, okay? Give him a break.”
“Oh no, Doctor, we won’t do that,” Tina protested.
“No, of course not!” Elena chimed in from the desk, her eyes wide in such a look of innocence she could have starred in a Disney movie. Then they paused, looked at one another, and giggled.
Mel held up a restraining hand and shook her head. “I don’t want to know.” She shifted so she could look into the room across from the desk. Maria was a delightful girl and very sweet, but it wasn’t easy to laugh when your face was badly burned.
She was laughing now, not just smiling or giving those around her those polite grins like she did when Mel was caring for her. Full-bellied laughs. It really said something for his bedside manner.
“Dr. Bell?” Tina said quietly.
“Hmmm?” Mel was only half-listening. Brant was looking under the bandages, and Maria’s laughter had quieted. The girl always cringed when the bandages came off, partly from the pain, though they did manage that as best they could, but also from a fear of people’s reaction to her scarring.
Yet, this time, Maria seemed far less self-conscious than normal. Almost as if she was able to set it aside for Brant.
“Is he a good kisser?” Tina asked in a rush, and Elena gasped beside her.
Mel’s full attention refocused on them. The look she shot Tina could have liquefied steel. “Don’t you have a bedpan to clean?” she said quietly.
Elena vanished in a rush, only the spinning chair marking her passage.
Tina ducked her head and smiled. “I’m sure I can find something… Doctor,” she said in a very mild voice. Mel wasn’t convinced. Tina liked to push, though she backed down easily. Still, there was something in her genetic makeup that just lived to push boundaries. She would make for an interesting physician.
Not that it made her any easier to deal with in the here and now.
Mel shot her another look, then turned and stormed out through the main doors. Carmen sat at her desk, an Easter Island carving in scrubs. The wall under her gaze hadn’t moved; apparently, Carmen was taking no chances. Mel opened her mouth to say something and closed it again.
When they needed to be, they were an effective and efficient team. They’d saved many lives since Mel had created the little place four years ago. It was the down time that made them all a little nuts.
It was the one part of this clinic, her clinic, that had been something of a complete shock back when she’d started. For that matter, it still surprised her. She’d expected a stream of patients, a conveyer belt of illness and pain that she and her colleagues could heal or attend or treat. The people from the local villages, however, were a strong and hearty people. They weren’t used to medical assistance so close, so for many generations they’d adapted to home remedies, using roots for ailments. Even now, it was still very normal to turn to the jungle for a solution, or maybe to a grandmother whose grandmother had taught her herbs from some even further distant matriarch.
Mel had tried to spread the word, mostly to polite nods and assurances that if they really needed the clinic, they would come, but no one ever seemed to need it badly enough.
So Tina and Elena played games with the new doctors. Carmen waged a staring contest with a wall, and Joseph…Joseph liked to think of himself as a lothario, but he was too sweet to pull it off. It made him as charming as a little boy who was discovering the difference between boys and girls. But it could rasp on your nerves, too. Especially if there was nothing else to do.
So she should have expected the inquisition in there. Everyone had to know by now what happened. And, of course, the question hovered in the minds of every eligible female within fifty miles.
Was the new doctor a good kisser?
Damn it, yes, he was. Not that it was anyone’s business. Or that she had any intention of revisiting that particular activity.
She hated that she felt this way. He’d obviously taken advantage of her fall. But he’d been so flustered after, like he’d discovered he’d made a huge mistake. He’d apologized, too, in his way. At least he hadn’t pressed her or forced himself. Whatever he was, womanizing didn’t seem to be on his list of flaws.
It should be enough, that regret, but Mel pressed her fingers to her lips and sighed. A part of her wanted that again, wanted to relive that moment and try to change the ending. It was a small part of her, but it couldn’t be denied.
“He’s probably never been turned down before,” she mumbled to herself.
She hadn’t realized that she’d spoken out loud until Carmen replied.
“He’s gorgeous, smart, and rich. What do you think?” She lifted an eyebrow.
Mel crossed her arms and debated scolding the intake nurse for sticking her nose in, but even a sideways glance from a woman who practices outstaring a wall can be withering. “Three weeks,” she said finally. “Three weeks and then things can get back to normal around here. Dr. Martin will return and…”
“Yes,” Carmen said, and shifted her gaze to the wall. “The exact opposite of Dr. Layton. In all aspects.”
“Carmen, Dr. Martin is a good doctor.”
Carmen’s silence was eloquent.
There was nothing more to say. So, Mel retreated. It wasn’t like there wasn’t plenty to do. Mel thought of paperwork not complete, supplies not inventoried, and other things to get done. But she knew her trip to the office for what it was—running to a safe place where she could hide and lick her wounds, away from everyone.
It was only for three weeks.
Three very long weeks.
Chapter 7
Maria was delightful kid, despite what had happened to her. Brant couldn’t believe her resilience and her spirit. The burn scars on her face were fresh and raw, but also healing well. Often the problem with severe burns was secondary infections. Brant had found himself assuming her home life to be infested with dirt, and fleas, all manner of dreaded disease-carriers, but he quickly caught himself. It was a form of bigotry, let alone snobbery to assume that someone in a village in the jungles of Central America lived in squalor.
He learned that the girl came from a nice house, maybe small for the size of family she had. Rather, the house had been relatively nice. According to Joseph, it was a complete loss now. Maria’s mother had the other two children to take care of and was living in her sister’s house.
Joseph had glossed over the girl’s history. Her father had returned home drunk, and accidently started the fire that destroyed their home and marred the poor girl. It was an accident, a matter of smoking on the couch, passed out, but the flames ran through the house in moments.
They’d all made it out safely, all but the father, still passed out on the couch in the middle of the flames. Maria had run back inside to save him. She hadn’t been able to rouse him when smoke finally overcame her and she fell. What sucked was that it had all been in vain.
Maria’s father was no longer a part of the family.
Brant took a deep breath of the moisture-rich air and still couldn’t clear his head. There were skin grafts, techniques that would help, ways to ease the marks on the girl’s face. There were drugs and therapies to numb the pain, but her natural beauty would never be restored. However,
after an hour with her it was hard not to see a wonderful internal beauty that no that flame or skin graft would ever touch.
Even now, as he left her, his mind kept turning over the possibilities. It wasn’t normal to not be able to leave his work at the hospital door. But this one he carried with him out into the clearing, long after he’d closed the file and finished his tour of the clinic.
“You’re getting sappy,” he chided himself and peered through the gathering dusk for the shack given to his use. The idea of being outdoors in the darkness was disquieting. He was beginning to understand why lions and tigers or bears were the least of his worries in the ever-shifting jungle. The real enemy was the damn mosquitos. They were the size of VWs and they were freakin’ everywhere. Joseph had warned him it would be the worst when the sun set. As the sun blasted the sky with reds and oranges and violets the damn insects began their assault, with a few advance scouts marking sources of blood for the approaching horde.
Brant smacked one on his arm and wiped the blood smear off on his pants. The Armani pants were already beyond the efforts of a drycleaner. They would have to be burned first, then cleaned. He clutched the scrubs closer to him, thankful for Tina’s—or was it Elena’s—efforts to find him clean clothing.
He wasn’t entirely sure which nurse was which, and it didn’t help that neither of them spoke any English, but Joseph was right: Brant should’ve learned Spanish. Signing on with a clinic in Belize might not have been in his plans, but there already was huge, and growing, number of people in L.A. who spoke only Spanish. It probably would’ve helped on a number of occasions already. He shook his head. It didn’t matter right now; he couldn’t change anything.
Brant scurried to the little cabin, now barely discernable in the gathering darkness. He pulled the door open after a few tries; it had swelled shut and was stubborn. Finally, it broke free and he jumped inside, slamming the door shut again. He reached in to find the light switch on the wall.
It wasn’t there.
In the fading sunlight, he saw a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room with a pull chain. It was three steps into the room in the darkness. He stood framed by the doorway. Three steps. Yep. Three. That’s all.
“Oh, for…” He cursed his own fears and walked to the pull chain. The light flashed on, temporarily blinding him. He surveyed his new home away from home. A small desk, light but strong, highly polished, and a desk chair as good as any office cubicle in the States. The bed was rather a different matter. It wasn’t actually a bed.
Brant stared at the hammock slung between two walls. It sported a thick blanket, assumedly to be used like a mattress, a thin sheet for the top and…mosquito netting. It looked like something out of a cliché jungle explorer movie from the ‘30s. Actual mosquito netting.
Glancing around, he discovered the practicality of the net. The naked bulb swinging pendulum- like was a searchlight to every sort of flying and crawling bug the jungle could dream up. Many of them looked familiar, huge parodies of known insects from back home. Others looked like some mad designer wanted to see how creepy a bug could get.
They swarmed the screen on the window, flapping and tapping on the mesh. Brant told himself they couldn’t get inside. Then he told himself again. Then he looked at the mosquito netting and doubted what he was telling himself, but kept repeating it like a mantra anyway.
The rest of the room was empty, quiet, and clean. There really wasn’t more than a small dresser in the corner. It was a very small cabin at the edge of the grounds. He parted the netting and sat gingerly on the hammock; it gave a little, swayed slightly, but held. It was surprisingly comfortable.
He sat there a moment, swinging. It had been one hell of a day. He hadn’t signed up for this—well, technically his stupid-ass drunk self had. Now this was his home, and there was no way out of it. He tried ignoring the bugs on the window and focused on the positive. He could do this. Maria needed help. He had the hands for it. The bed wasn’t that bad. Might actually be comfortable to sleep. Almost like on a boat. He yawned. Damn, he was dog tired. A shower and good night’s sleep was what he needed now.
He took his bundle of scrubs and the towels he was still holding and went to the door in the back of the room, presuming it was the bathroom, and pulled the cord for the bulb.
Dr. Brant Layton screamed for the second time that day. The fact that he was able to bring the scrubs and towel with him was due more to the coincidence of them being in his hand. If he’d had any dignity left, it remained in the hut along with giant snake coiled around the toilet.
He had no memory of running to the clinic, only catching his breath as he flew through the door. Carmen had apparently gone home for the day. The two nurses behind the desk were also gone. An older man sat with his feet up on the counter, another was busy cleaning the floor.
“I’m Dr. Layton,” Brant said breathlessly. The man behind the counter said something in rapid-fire Spanish to the janitor, and held his hands out in the familiar big-breast motion. Brant counted to ten. In Latin.
He stood a moment and nodded, and took Room 1 for his own.
* * *
“Grab the bag on the counter!” Mel’s voice cut through the early morning stillness like a claxon. The familiar sounds of slamming feet and objects getting torn from their cubbyholes had Brant on his feet before he knew he was awake. Ten years of residency had a way of drilling in the need to be in the game in a moment’s notice.
He pulled on the scrubs and his patent leather dress shoes and ran out into chaos. “What happened?” he demanded of Joseph, who was shoving supplies into a mesh bag.
“Where’d you come from?” Mel snapped as she strode past, organizing the flurry.
“L.A.,” Brant fired back, and turned back to Joseph.
“There’s a bus that brings patients here to be examined or helped,” Joseph said, and ran to the closet where sterile sutures were kept. “It ran off the road on the way here. Very close, maybe half a mile through the jungle.”
Brant looked around, ready to help, but found that Mel’s team, as eccentric as they were, was efficient and fast. The sun was up, the day shift had arrived, but the night men were there, too. He checked his watch: 6:30 local time. Both shifts were in high motion, including the front gal, Carmen. At her desk duty, she was as active as a Mt. Rushmore president, but here and now she was a dervish. She had half the ER packed before Brant had turned around, and was already heading out the door.
“Isn’t it dangerous to cross through the jungle?” He huffed along beside Joseph as they plunged through the trees rather than taking the track that he’d assumed was the road.
“It’s much shorter. More dangerous to leave them there,” Joseph replied. The tall gangly man loped off. Though he didn’t ever actually run, his long legs gave him a definite advantage and he soon outdistanced the rest of the rescuers.
Brant had a momentary flash of panic at the thought of crossing the jungle without Joseph’s experience beside him, but he resolutely squashed that fear. He wasn’t a child. He was a doctor, and there were people who needed his help.
His shoes were high quality, expensive, and utterly useless in a jungle. He had to slow down considerably to avoid landing face first in the undergrowth, and was the last person of the group to arrive at the scene.
A small bus, about the size one would have suspected from a kindergarten or a daycare, lay on its side. The door was blocked, but the emergency back door was propped open and a few people were shuffling around the still-spinning wheels of the bus.
The nurses were doing triage, pointing Mel to the most severely injured and trying to convince the wandering dazed to sit still. Elena, or Tina, was calling for a doctor. A woman was lying in the ditch, unmoving.
Dr. Bell stood at the edge of the jungle, looking at the victim in the ditch, one hand over her mouth and her eyes wide in fear. She looked overwhelmed.
“Doctor!” Carmen called as Brant reached her side.
�
�I need a backboard,” Brant said, kneeling to examine the woman, his heart sinking as he examined the patient quickly. He noted vitals automatically, not liking his assessment. “And a lot of help. We need to get her back to the clinic without bouncing her around. Someone run back and get the Jeep.”
Carmen blasted a short command in Spanish to the night nurse, who spun and ran back into the jungle canopy.
“Doctor!” Tina’s voice sounded almost panicked. Brant had figured who was who, or at least he hoped he had it right.
Brant looked over to see her holding a red-soaked rag to someone’s skull. Where the hell is Mel? She was standing in the same spot, unmoving, her hand still covering her mouth. He told Elena to stay with the patient, not to let her move, and ran to Mel.
“Doctor!” His voice was sharp. “You’re needed!” Mel didn’t respond. He blocked her view, but whatever she was looking at seemed to be very far away.
What the…?
Shock. The good doctor was in shock.
We don’t have time for this…
Brant slapped her. Hard. He didn’t like doing it. She liked it even less. She looked at him, confused, hurt, angry.
“DOCTOR, YOU ARE NEEDED!” He snapped each syllable at her like a whip, pushed past her, and returned to Tina.
Mel seemed to snap back to the present. Immediately a change came over her, and the competent doctor he had suspected was there returned. “How many are still inside?” Mel called out as she ran.
“Four more,” Elena called back, “One of them has a head wound!”
Brant looked at Carmen.
She nodded. “I can stay here with this one, Doctor.”
“Do not let her move!”
“Got it.” She settled next to the woman and trained that withering stare on her.
Brant ran to the open door, and found Elena and Joseph crawling over four bodies draped across what was supposed to be the wall of the vehicle.