by Dianne Drake
Hard to imagine, considering his strong rally this morning. Still, Solaina shivered, thinking about it. David dead. No! That wasn’t an image she wanted emblazoned alongside Jacob Renner’s. All too much to see in her dreams, so she opened her eyes and focused on the white sands stretching out in front of her. Any more fixation on David right now would force her to weigh her decisions concerning him. He was stable. He wasn’t going to die in her bed. He wasn’t bleeding. He didn’t even seem to be in too much pain.
Good enough for now. And soon Howard would be here to take charge. All she had to do was wait, which seemed infinitely harder to her than those Christmas mornings when she had been a child and her parents had insisted on a proper family breakfast before she and Solange had been allowed to rip into all those gifts under the tree. She’d never thought there could have been a wait as long as that. Until now.
Impatiently, Solaina picked up the Lennox book and turned to the first page. She really had hated those family breakfasts on Christmas morning! And this!
CHAPTER FOUR
DAVID stirred around in bed, then finally found a relatively comfortable position flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling. This time when he woke up he knew exactly where he was and why he was there. Last time it had taken him a few minutes, and somewhere in his distant recollections he seemed to recall a petulant little schoolboy being quite cranky with his nurse. “Could have been a dream.” he muttered. The half-eaten muffin and the half-filled glass of water sitting on the table next to the bed told him otherwise.
He wanted to call out for her. Solaina. Beautiful name. Beautiful woman. He’d thought so the first time he’d ever seen her. When had it been? He couldn’t quite remember. Had it been last night when she’d rescued him on the road? Or a month ago in Chandella? Six months ago in Switzerland? Right now those memories were smudged. They were there, but buried deep and not making too much sense to him. But they would. Memories that came with Solaina were meant to be the memories that lasted a lifetime.
His memories of what had happened in Cambodia were smudged over, too. He recalled getting the call. It had been a routine ambulance run, as routine as any run to pick up a landmin. victim would be. He’d done that many times from his little hospital outside Kantha, gone to rescue someone who’d tripped over a mine planted three decades ago.
But right now he didn’t recall the particulars of this run—the one that had landed him in the bed of the woman whose bed he’d most wanted to land in. Considering his condition, though, something had gone horribly wrong, and he couldn’t remember what. Meaning he could still be in trouble, which wasn’t acceptable at all because he might be involving the beautiful Solaina in his mess as well.
“So you get the hell out of here before what you’ve done comes down on her,” he said aloud, thinking over, essentially, the only option he had. He wasn’t going to die. Not now. Even in his wooly headed condition he knew that much. So maybe he could go somewhere else, figuratively lick his wounds until he was well enough to get back to Kantha. And then what? Hope she didn’t get messed up in his fallout?
David pulled back the sheets and raised himself up to look at his body. Having his ribs kicked and broken was coming back to him. The black, steel-toed boot. The warnings to get out of Cambodia, get out of Dharavaj. He remembered all that now. The man who’d dragged him from the Hummer—at first David had thought it was a highway robber out to take his vehicle. But then he’d called him by name. “Are you Dr Gentry?” the man had screamed at him.
At gunpoint. He remembered that, too. The barrel of that gun pointed at him. But it had been such a preposterously small gun he’d never expected the man to use it. Just a tiny, pearl-handled spot of a thing in the palm of his hand. A honker of an AK-47 would have made more sense.
Or maybe he was fuzzy again. His head did hurt like hell. And his hands were still shaking like a Chihuahua having a nervous breakdown.
Well, one thing was for sure, fuzzy or not, someone had done a nasty job on him. Tried to kick him to death, judging from the look of things. At least, that’s what he would diagnose if this had happened to one of his patients.
He ran his hands down his ribs and sucked in a sharp breath as the pain kicked in. Sharp. Deep. It was cutting right straight through him, and he was glad of every agonizing sensation, because it sure beat the alternative. Which was, just hours ago, looking to be a rather eternal bout with the quietus. In spite of pain, though, Solaina had certainly done a good job of dressing his wounds. She had a nice touch…the lovely Solaina. A nice touch he desperately wanted to remember the next time he woke up. Of course, he’d thought he’d remembered her the last time he’d woken up, and perhaps the time before that. But he wasn’t sure…Wasn’t sure about anything except that someone like Solaina…and her touch…needed to be remembered.
Gingerly, David flexed his shoulder, probing gently over the bandage with his fingertips. He’d removed enough bullets in his time to know this one was only in the flesh. At least for starters, because by now he was sure the infection from something that had commenced as barely a scratch was raging deep. Raging, spreading…It should have killed him, and probably would have. Mercifully, Solaina again.
Sitting up a little more, David saw her standing in the doorway, watching him.
“Going somewhere?” she asked.
Backlit against the sun streaming in, she was in silhouette, leaving her exact detail to his imagination. Even in his bleariness, he’d memorized that detail, memorized it from that very first instant. “Do I know you?” he asked. “Have we met before?”
“Is that a come-on, Casanova? Because, if it is, it’s not very original.”
“Not a come-on. At least, I don’t think it is.” He smiled at her. “But if it was, did it work?”
She laughed. “Silly me, thinking that everything you said when you were delusional was delusional.”
“And you have me at a disadvantage, since I don’t recall what I said. But I do recall you. So, you and me. We haven’t…”
She gave her head a vehement shake. “We haven’t.”
“Pity,” he said, lying back down. He was too weak, he had no idea where he was…all good reasons to sleep for a while longer before he did anything so drastic as to walk, or crawl, as the case might be, out of there. “Because I thought that for once in my life I was showing some extraordinarily good taste.”
“That flattery will get you another antibiotic, Doctor.” She crossed over to the bed and felt his forehead. “I think your fever’s coming down quite nicely now.”
“Good nursing care will do it every time.”
She spun away from him and headed to the tiny kitchen area. “Don’t ever confuse what I’m doing for you as good nursing care, Doctor. That could be a fatal error in judgement.”
“But you are a nurse. Correct? I wasn’t dreaming that, was I?”
“I have a nursing certificate, yes,” she said.
Her demeanor switched from warm to icy cold so quickly, David wondered if she’d told him something else he was forgetting.
“But having my certificate doesn’t make me a nurse. At least, not in the abilities you’ve come to expect from a nurse. I direct a nursing program, make administrative decisions, prepare budgets, have meetings with the board of directors. And I never go near patients.”
“The bandages are good,” he said, running his hand over his chest. “Expert job of getting me strapped up.”
“Anybody can apply a bandage.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Now, would you care for something to eat? Fruit salad, maybe? Or I could cook some rice.”
He shook his head. Truth was, he wanted to know more about her. What made her so edgy on the subject of nursing? And why did someone so glorious coop herself up in this tiny hole? The mental part of him wanted it anyway. The physical part of him wanted sleep again. Two minutes awake and he could already feel his bedraggled body dragging him right back down. “So did I tell you I’m a surgeon?” he asked,
more to keep himself alert than for the purpose of meaningful conversation. He liked talking to Solaina. Liked listening to her. Liked watching her when they weren’t talking.
“You told me your name. I knew you were a surgeon. By reputation.”
He wasn’t sure how far he should go with this. Finding a way out of here was probably the better choice next time he came around. Someplace far, far away from her. Someplace so that her not being around him would guarantee her safety. But damn! Even trying to raise his head off the bed was more effort than he was capable of. “Tell me about my reputation. That seems to be one of the things I’m blurry over. And maybe just a couple of small bites of fruit would be nice. My stomach seems to be in a bit of a roil.”
Solaina pulled a star fruit from a basket sitting on the counter next to the tiny kitchen sink and ran it under the running water. Then she pulled a paring knife from the drawer and began peeling. “I’d heard you were a very good surgeon. By reputation, maybe one of the best in the area.”
“And?”
Solaina sliced the star fruit into a bowl and pulled out a white, pulpy mangosteen and broke it open, dropping the sections into the same bowl. Her third selection was a Japanese pear that resembled a yellow apple more than a pear. “And that’s it. Except jai ron. Do you know jai ron?” Hot heart.
“You think I have jai ron?” He chuckled.
“Even in your delusions, Casanova.”
David watched Solaina pull a durian from the fruit basket then return it. The durian was the most expensive of all Dharavaj fruit, and probably the oddest. A delicacy actually, it was not too bad to the taste when combined with coconut milk or sticky rice. But it had a horribly repugnant smell, and personally he’d never developed a fondness for it. The locals loved it, though. They revered it, in fact, and for the farang—foreigners—who weren’t brave enough to venture past its smell, there was always durian ice cream, durian cake and even durian chewing gum. But he’d never braved those forms of the fruit either.
Funny how he remembered all that. And, yes, he did seem to recall some blather about a rhododendron. “I didn’t guess you for a durian. You seem more the pineapple or coconut or strawberry type.”
“You never know, do you?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at him. “Although I will say a strawberry is much better than a durian.”
Suddenly, David caught himself fantasizing about Solaina eating a strawberry…her luscious lips on that succulent, red fruit…“Jai ron,” he murmured. Solaina was a woman who would make any man’s heart blaze; even a man in his precarious condition. “And I suppose you would be jai yen?” Cool heart, or calm.
Solaina smiled as she carried the bowl of fruit over to the bed. “Not jai yen so much as krienjai.” One who avoided confrontation. “That is, until I met you last night, and since then you’ve been one big confrontation for me, Doctor.”
“For which I apologize.”
“Accepted.” She sat the bowl of fruit on the table next to the bed. “So, in order to maintain my status as krienjai, I need to figure out what to do with you. Any suggestions? Perhaps after my friend has had a look at you I can take you to Chandella. It’s a long drive, but that’s where I live and I’m used to it.”
Chandella? He needed Kantha. He wanted to alert the minister of police about this latest attack, then get back to normalcy. Or try and get back to normalcy and hope that whatever this vendetta was, it was over. And pray that he hadn’t involved Solaina in any way. “A little more rest and I’ll be able to leave on my own.” He wasn’t sure how far he would get, but if someone was after him, she would be safer without him.
Solaina chuckled. “The people of Dharavaj may be liberal-minded, but I don’t imagine the sight of you wandering down the road in your condition, without your pants, is going to go unnoticed. I think you’d better have another think on that before you set out.”
His pants. He hadn’t thought about that. If he remembered correctly, she’d cut them up last night and bandaged him with the strips. So no pants seemed the end of that round, since right then he didn’t have enough reserves to try for another plan of escape—one without his pants. Rather, he invested in a piece of the star fruit, then a bite of the Japanese pear. Then he lay back and shut his eyes, resigning himself to whatever lot his fair captor had in mind for the next little while. “Since I can’t leave without my pants, when I wake up again, I think you need to do a little surgery on me,” he said as he drifted away.
“I’ll cut your fruit, David. But that’s all I’ll cut. Remember krienjai ?”
Settling down into her cabana chair with a nice naam phon-la-mai—the fruit juice she had blended from the fruit David hadn’t eaten—Solaina picked up her Marion Lennox book and opened it to the second chapter. Even without David in her bed, this was how she would have spent the weekend. Reading, relaxing, dozing…So, no reason to do otherwise just because her bed was in other ways occupied.
Solaina sighed contentedly, settling in. She was almost through the first paragraph when a crash that nearly shook the thin cottage walls, followed by a string of profanity, ripped right through the closed veranda doors.
Solaina dropped the book on the bamboo floor and jumped up from her sling chair, then flew back inside, only to find David on the floor next to the overturned bedside table, his shoulder bleeding. Sitting there among the shards of the broken water glass and her little Buddha, he looked more angry than injured, and Solaina thought it best not to ask him what had happened. She knew. Another little bout with delirium most likely, and he was getting up—probably to leave.
Slipping into some leather-soled huaraches, she walked over to where David was pulling himself out of the wreckage. “You’ve opened your shoulder wound,” she said, holding out a hand to help him stand. There was no other obvious injury. Except to his ego, probably. And that was a wound she wouldn’t even pretend to touch.
“Bullet’s gotta come out this time,” he grumbled, righting himself, then falling back into the bed. “Risking infection to the bone. I was coming to get you.”
“Which means?” She had a hunch—change that to a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach—that the next words out of his mouth were going to be something like, You can do it, Solaina. Which, of course, she could not.
“Which means a simple procedure. You cut, I bite the bullet. Five-minute procedure. That’s all.”
His eyes fluttered shut and Solaina nudged him. “I can’t do it, David!” Can’t, wouldn’t. She had no equipment, no skills. Panic started rising and immediately Jacob Renner sprang to mind, as he always did. Then her hands started trembling, as they always did. But she reined in the breathing and fought off the lightheadedness before they overcame her. Deep breath…slowly. Focus, Laina. Focus.
Jacob Renner—that incident always came back when she thought she could do something. But she’d learned the awful truth at the cost of poor Jacob’s life. She could not. “Look, David,” she said, fighting to maintain her carriage, “the biggest delusion you’ve had so far is that I can do this for you. But I cannot. I don’t have the skills. You’re just going to have to wait until my friend gets here.” She glanced at the clock on the kitchenette wall. Twelve hours since she’d called him. The roads in Dharavaj were often indirect, and not in good shape. But surely he wouldn’t be much longer.
“OK, if not you, Solaina. Me. I can do this.”
“You?” Solaina sputtered. “You’re not delusional, David. You’re crazy!” She saw him glancing over toward the kitchenette. “Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I think I’ll just go hide all the knives. And in case you don’t remember me saying this a dozen times, I have a friend en route to take care of you.”
Howard Brumley, a British transplant to Chandella, and Solaina’s neighbor, was a very good surgeon. He’d retired to travel the world with his wife, Victoria, and had made it no further than Dharavaj, the Brumleys’ first and only stop on their worldwide jaunt. Now they were like family to her, even though, admittedly, sh
e didn’t see them nearly often enough. Howard and Victoria were both godsends to her right now, and she trusted them like she trusted no one else except her sister.
“I’m not waiting for your friend,” David replied, his voice too calm for the situation. He was lucid, and determined. A dangerous combination in his condition. The man was either crazy in the truest sense of the word, and having nothing to do with his present condition, or he was the bravest man she’d ever met. And at the moment she wasn’t leaning one way or another on which he was.
“He has a scalpel, David. A real scalpel and not a kitchen knife. And antiseptic and forceps. He’s a qualified surgeon, and he has everything he needs to do it the right way.” A surgeon with advanced arthritis in his hands, which had been a worry to her since he’d retired. “For a weak man—and one who doesn’t have a pair of pants, in case you’ve forgotten—you’re being awfully argumentative about this.”
“Not argumentative. Practical.”
“Weak,” she countered. “Weak, strong-willed, very opinionated. And none of that leads to being practical, when you’re threatening to take out your bullet with one of my kitchen knives.” Briefly, Solaina wondered how strong he might be when he recovered. She had always had a fascination with strong men. Strong physically was nice, of course, but that’s not what she meant. She was thinking strong in the ways that counted—morals and principles. “Andhe’s bringing you some pants, too,” she continued. “Which is very practical for a man in your condition. So, no options, David. No kitchen knives either. We wait. Or you can get up and walk right out of here and take your chances.” Of course, she knew that he knew he couldn’t.
“I’m sorry about everything I’ve put you through,” David said. “About breaking the glass, and your lamp. And that little Buddha. About being so grumpy, too.”
Solaina glanced at the little porcelain bedside lamp, which was now a mound of fragments lying in the bottom of the waste basket. And, wistfully, her Buddha. It was only a trinket, she knew. But losing him made her a little sad. Funny, now that it was gone, she recalled how often she’d looked at it just to make herself smile. “Technically, it’s not my lamp since I only rent the cottage,” she said. “But apology accepted for the lamp. And for being grumpy, too. After what you’ve been through, I suppose you deserve to be grumpy. But can I ask you one thing?” His head propped up on a stack of pillows and with his hands behind his head, the sheet covering him to the waist, David was the picture of casual charm all sprawled in the middle of the bed. He was putting on a brave grin, but she could see the worry behind it, the concern in his eyes that even his forced twinkle couldn’t cover.