Apart from the fact I’d abandoned her the previous evening for a long talk with Logan, I’d also been chosen above her by some very hot guy; something which I’m fairly certain had almost never happened to her before.
Instead of acting sore and jealous, she knocked on my door early the next morning to find out how the evening had gone. She wasn’t there to try and get inside information on Logan so she could make a fight for the guy, and nor did she try to start a catfight over what had happened. She was all excited for me, and I found myself wondering how much sooner I might have shaken off a deadbeat like Tom Delaney if I’d had Stacy in my corner.
“I’m proud of you, girl. You were sublime, and I loved the nervous act you put on to lure him in. I fired my heaviest artillery, and I didn’t get close to a breakthrough.”
“Umm, that wasn’t an act, I was that nervous,” I replied with a shy smile.
“Oh, come on, are you serious? A gorgeous gal like you? Those sharp green eyes of yours could cut through concrete.”
“There was a time, not so long ago, when you wouldn’t have recognized me, Stacy … a time when I changed my entire appearance for an absolute asshole so he could feel less threatened.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, I totally see it now … you have the demeanor of a girl who dated a doctor.”
I nearly fell off the edge of my bed. I’d never told Stacy, or anyone else at Arugam Bay, about my past with Tom. “How the hell did you know that?”
Stacy threw her head back and laughed. “Advanced Dating 101, darling. Remember, you are speaking to someone who has earned her master’s degree in the fine art of dating, and I can easily identify the signs of a person who has been involved with a doctor.”
I shook my head and laughed with my new best friend. Stacy was one of a kind, and I totally believed she had dated every single kind of guy out there and knew how to handle them. I still found it hard to believe Logan chose me over her.
“I know this sounds silly … but what do you think I should do next? I mean, is there any advice you can give me?”
I almost regretted asking such a silly question, but Stacy didn’t flinch. “Just do what comes naturally and don’t worry about it. When the right guy lands, you don’t have to concentrate on anything to make it work.”
That hit me right between the eyes. I instantly realized this had been the greatest problem in my failed engagement, and partly my own fault, always so busy concentrating on acting appropriately around Tom that there was nothing natural about our relationship.
I embraced Stacy and lingered for a huge hug.
“Don’t mention it. And remember, if Logan has any hot surfer buddies, I have first dibs on all of them.”
“Of course you have … Dating 101.” I laughed, and Stacy nodded emphatically to indicate she was pleased with her protégée’s progress.
In the days that followed, I kept running into Logan, and we chatted a couple of times briefly, but we never got another opportunity to enjoy a long conversation, as the hospital got incredibly busy during that time. There weren’t any new casualties or anything, but a nasty outbreak of cholera was expanding from the north, and people were getting sick from it. The Sri Lankan authorities still hadn’t cleared the filthy water from the inland lagoons and reservoirs, and seven months is plenty of time for such bugs to fester and multiply and—ultimately—attack the few restored water systems. When bottled water became inaccessible, people still boiled all cooking and drinking water, but it wasn’t the same for showers or baths, and sometimes ingesting a little is unavoidable. So Logan grew busy treating the sick while I spent my time inoculating, courtesy of an emergency shipment from the UN, the French government, and a joint Red Cross and Red Crescent charity initiative.
In other words, we did our jobs.
That seemed to be how it went out here. Weeks of constant, but essential treatments, of fighting infections and inoculating those who trusted us not to be the CIA injecting civilians with nano-tech (or whatever the conspiracy theory was that month), followed by several days of calm in which volunteers from across the globe unwound. It sounds like we partied an awful lot, but we didn’t; any time off needed to be savored.
And during the outbreak, there was nothing but work. A half-day off here and there—which is exactly what I signed up for.
Real work. Real people. Real life.
Even so, during that period, Bella and Eduardo became almost inseparable, and everyone enjoyed seeing them around as their story was such an uplifting one in the midst of all the other challenges. Brenda tried her utmost to make amends with Ricardo, Eduardo’s business partner, whom she did not find particular attractive at first. What changed, I wondered, to make her desire a second pass at him? Perhaps she didn’t anticipate her wingman to fall so quickly for Eduardo and wanted some of that for herself.
I almost felt sorry for Brenda as I watched her making all the mistakes I’d made with Tom. She kept trying to please Ricardo, and he returned the favor by criticizing her intermittently, plainly ticked off at her initial dismissal of him. One day, he told Brenda he liked girls with short hair, and to my utter shock and disgust, Brenda turned up for her shift the next day with her hair cut into a bob. She’d gone and butchered her lovely red locks to try and please Ricardo, and when he saw her, he said nothing about her new look.
But I wasn’t angry over what had happened to Brenda; I wanted to slap my old self, to yell at her and make her leave Tom sooner. I’d been a fool. Everyone had known the truth long before I saw it.
One day we were all having lunch at the beach bar, and Brenda was also there with Ricardo. Logan, Stacy, Bella and Eduardo made up the rest of the group.
“Don’t you think you would look nice with a tattoo like that one?” Ricardo said to Brenda and pointed at a local woman with a tattoo of a dragon on her arm.
Perhaps it wasn’t Ricardo—perhaps I was talking to myself, that old me, the fool. Whatever the reason, whoever I heard when he said that, I totally lost it.
“Don’t you think you would look nice with a slightly less turd-like face?” I asked Ricardo with an icy smile.
Everyone suddenly became very quiet. But I wasn’t finished.
“Guys like you are a waste of time. You think you’re so great, telling a woman how to be a ten when you’re no more than a four yourself.”
Ricardo looked as if someone had dumped his ass in ice water. He quietly got up from the table, and without saying a word, left for the bathroom. Everyone became deeply interested in their drinks, Brenda unable to meet anyone’s gaze until Ricardo returned a short while later. His general demeanor had vastly improved. He didn’t say much, apart from complimenting Brenda a couple of times on how beautiful she looked, and pretty soon my outburst seemed forgotten. Each time Ricardo spoke—in his new respectful voice, of course—Logan seemed close to bursting out laughing, and he winked at me more than once during lunch.
7
Later that evening, sitting in my room on a tough armchair, Stacy loudly announced, “I’m so proud of what you did today that I will now present you with an honorary degree from the University of TNC.”
We were both enjoying gin and tonics purchased from a street vendor who’d snagged a shipment from China, and we were a teeny bit drunk. We didn’t have to work the next day, so no need to head to bed early.
“What on earth, pray tell, is the University of TNC?” I asked with a slight slur.
“That, my dear Jenny, stands for the University of Take No Crap.”
We both laughed way too loud and for too long, especially bearing in mind the mediocrity of the joke, and someone eventually knocked on the wall from next door to shut us up.
“Shhhh,” Stacy said, and held her finger to her lips.
She looked so funny that I whooped with laughter and another knock hit the wall.
“We’d better be quieter before we get fired from Doctors Without Daughters,” Stacy said, and I pressed my hand over my mouth to muffle my uncontr
ollable giggles.
Later still, Stacy and I fell asleep side-by-side on my bed, and we woke up the next morning with our skulls having shrunk and pressed into our brains, tongues dry as the beach at low tide. A knock on my door instead of the wall, and when I opened up, Logan stood there with two surfboards—one under each arm.
“It’s time for your first lesson,” he announced brightly, and half an hour later, I strolled down to the beach with him.
Stacy had done the prudent thing and stayed behind in my room to recover, so it was only Logan and me. He said we wouldn’t need wetsuits as the water was really warm, so I dressed only in my bikini, a t-shirt, and beach sandals.
I put on the bravest face I could, but the sun was a sadistic torturer, even with my shades and a baseball cap on, and my gut squirmed as if trying to evacuate my body. But I couldn’t let this opportunity slip. I was determined to learn to surf, and by God, I would not quit.
When we got to the beach, I think Logan must have realized I was totally out of it, for he didn’t get on my case to go into the water immediately.
“Why don’t you stay here and watch first?” he said and left the one surfboard and three bottles of water behind as he walked off toward the ocean.
The water was clear and almost impossibly blue. My Ray Bans and hat did a good job of blocking the light. Otherwise I might not have survived the early morning sun.
Logan expertly hit the water and lay down flat on his surfboard before paddling deeper into the ocean. He and his board were one entity as he plunged through the first break, spearing out the other side like a creature born to it. I’d never seen anything more natural or beautiful in my life. When he was nothing but a stick figure against the surface glare, he paused, letting the ocean rise and fall, until finally, he paddled toward me. He caught a wave, stood up on his board, and surfed it all the way to the shore.
I got up and applauded wildly. I still had a headache, but the pint of water I’d drank while waiting for him meant I began to feel a lot better. Almost ready to try hitting the water.
“Want to give it a shot?” he asked after running up to me with his surfboard under his arm.
As a newly decorated graduate of the University of TNC, I most certainly was ready for the challenge and picked up my board, and followed Logan to the water’s edge.
He placed both boards on the sand and demonstrated the motion of paddling on his front, and required I show him I’d been listening. Luckily, I had. Once he was happy with my technique, he showed me two ways to stand upright: kneel first, then rise into position, or pop up suddenly onto two feet. He showed me how to center my balance, laying firm hands on me to correct my posture. Each and every time, my body reacted to his touch with a softening between my legs, to the point I pretended to slip and land in the shallows to hide what I was positive would be a visible wetness to my bikini bottoms. For seconds at a time, he held my hips, my shoulders, my ankles—yes, I know, even touching my ankles made me want to squeeze my thighs together in case he noticed. Sad, huh?
Eventually, it was time to try it for real.
“Now, just do what I do and don’t try anything else yet,” Logan said, leading me into the shallows at a point away from the main surfing channels, presumably so we didn’t collide with any of those more proficient than me.
I lay on my surfboard like I practiced and found myself surprised at how unsteady it felt under me. It wobbled like it actively wanted to tip me off, and I wondered how the hell I was ever going stand upright on the damned thing. After several minutes of Logan making tiny corrections, I started getting the hang of it and paddled some distance into the warm ocean water. Logan accompanied me, making sure always to stay close. These waves allowed me to slice over the top rather than dive through, and that brought us to a calm spot where we both aimed toward shore.
We’d paddled out farther than I thought. The beach looks miles away, the dozens of people tiny figures milling around, completely unaware of the hungover nurse doing the daftest thing she’d ever tried.
“Okay,” Logan said, “now the easy part. When you feel a strong wave behind you, paddle as fast as you can, then stand up. See what happens.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“What if I fall off?”
“Get back on and try again. When you’ve fallen off a dozen or so times, you might start to get it.”
Just like that.
So I waited. All I could hear were waves breaking hundreds of yards away and a light breeze across the surface. No need to talk. Simply being there, bobbing on the water, it relaxed me more than any massage. But when a relatively large swell approached me, I started paddling wildly, excited to catch my first wave. I almost fell off the surfboard in the process, not even trying to stand. I managed to stay on top, though, and when the wave rose, and my board dipped, the anticipation alone gave me the most excitement in far too many years. I still lay on the surfboard, and I didn’t really “ride” the wave for more than a four or five feet, but the sensation of the ocean carrying me forward was so intense I couldn’t wait to try again.
Returning to Logan, he presented a wide smile, as if he’d been laughing, but I didn’t worry about it. He suggested I try standing this time, and I would have punched him lightly in the shoulder if it wouldn’t have meant capsizing. But I did as instructed, gaining speed, attempting the kneeling technique first and tipping with a slap into the sea.
The next time I paddled to Logan, he wasn’t laughing. He gave me more tips, and I got ready to try again.
We repeated the whole process a dozen more times, and I achieved five whole seconds of standing upright. But when the sun headed higher and hotter, and the tide turned to alter the makeup of the waves, we headed for the beach.
I was totally exhausted but happy, a sensation long absent from my life. We reached the place where we’d left our stuff and put the surfboards down on the warm sand.
“That was amazing.” I looked right into Logan’s face.
His eyes were clear, bluer than the sky, and when he moved his lips closer to mine, I didn’t flinch. The kiss was long and warm, and the touch of his tongue against my own sent those same shivers of excitement down my spine the first time I met him, only amplified a hundred times. I didn’t want it to stop, but I knew it had to. I just hoped I didn’t screw up whatever happened next.
8
What happened immediately after the kiss wasn’t nearly as exciting as it should have been, but that’s because Logan remained a gentleman, treating me as he clearly thought I wanted to be. I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted to be treated myself—firmly ravished or romantically wooed—so I couldn’t blame him for taking the cautious approach.
“How about breakfast at the beach bar?” he asked when he finally moved his lips away.
I loved the way he’d kissed me, but I didn’t feel like having any heavy conversations about relationships. The best thing about us so far was how we simply hung out together without any need to push the envelope.
We had late breakfast/early lunch of bread, rice and fruit, and I kept repeating over and over how amazing it felt when the wave carried me for a short distance, despite face-planting at least four times. My hangover faded to little more than a bad memory.
“Just wait until you stand up and ride that wave to shore. You will feel like a colossus striding the oceans, and there’s no better feeling in the world.” Logan took a large gulp of his orange juice.
The little muscles on his forearm twitched as he lifted the glass to his lips and, like some tween meeting her favorite boy band singer, I thought he was the most perfect man I’d ever met. Why he’d chosen me above Stacy—or any other gorgeous girl, for that matter—was still a mystery to me, but his attentions were allowing my spirit to rise above the doldrums where it had been for longer than I realized.
After breakfast, Logan suggested explore Arugam Bay more widely, and I realized I’d been living in a relative cocoon, having b
een too afraid to venture to the surrounding parts since my arrival, thanks largely to my mother’s warnings. She’d read far too much about pretty much everywhere outside the United States. Logan hired a beat-up Land Rover, and around lunchtime, we arrived at the foot of a steep hill and decided to leave the vehicle behind and walk to the top.
“It’s rumored one of the locals saw the tsunami approaching from the peak,” Logan said as we started our steep trek.
“What did he do?”
“Apparently, he ran all down to the village below and warned the people inside to get to the top of the hill with him. They tried to phone the local coast guard to warn the populace, but there was simply no time before the tsunami hit.”
Below us, the sad remains of what must have been the man’s village lay in a muddy crater. I imagined the ocean sweeping out for miles to leave a bare seabed, a clear run for the rampaging wall of death that followed. Little remained but pieces of wood splayed away from the coast, around the ruined foundations of houses in the place where the village must have once stood.
“The survivors live inland now,” Logan said. “Most of them.”
“What about the rest?”
“Rebuilding their boats in our town, fishing, making new lives for themselves. Like most people on the coast.”
We kept hiking up the trail, and when we finally stood at the top of the hill, I looked out over the magnificent blue ocean. It seemed so huge, so all-encompassing from up there, it was almost impossible to believe something so beautiful could have been the instrument of so much destruction.
I sensed Logan was experiencing the same awe as he took in the breathtaking beauty of the scene before of us. Before I knew it, we were kissing, and our hands were all over each other. Something about being in that place where we could look out over the coastline where life and death had collided so violently made it the perfect spot to release every ounce of pent-up emotion … perhaps it would be some gesture or promise of continued life.
My Doctor Without Borders Page 3