by Rhonda Bowen
They arrived at the health center in less than twenty minutes. It was by far the best-looking building she had seen since they landed, but nothing near as good as the worst walk-in clinic JJ had seen in Toronto. This time she helped carry the medical supplies inside. People were already lingering outside the doors, waiting for someone to come. JJ didn’t know why Simon had asked her to come with him. She had no medical knowledge beyond basic first aid, and most of the people here would require more than that. But she was here and she would be useful.
She turned to Simon. “What do you need me to do?”
He ran a hand over his dreads then looked around. “Help Marianne with intake,” he said. “We’ll need to find the files for everyone who is here and make files for the first-timers. There’s an intake form that you can go through with them. For those who don’t speak English, Marianne will help you.”
“Okay,” JJ said, turning to go. Before she did, however, he grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
He glanced around before lowering his voice. “Are you going to be okay with this?”
She met his gaze. “I’ll be fine once I get working.”
They worked for hours. JJ got to know Marianne, a quiet, middle-aged woman with long, silky dark hair and kind, generous eyes. She reminded JJ of Diana from the audition. She told JJ that she had grown up in that very reserve, moved away, and then come back to work there as a nurse. She had three daughters and four granddaughters. One of her granddaughters had committed suicide the year before. She said it as if it was a tragedy similar to having one’s garden of flowers die from frost—sad but not entirely uncommon. JJ soon learned that indeed that was the case. Everyone in the reserve had a family member or knew someone who had died this way.
When the crowd finally cleared, JJ stood up and stretched. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was almost two p.m.
“Is that really everyone?” she asked Marianne.
“Oh no,” Marianne said, putting some files that Nigel and Simon had returned back into the filing cabinet. “That is just the morning group. After five p.m, when work is over, there will be more.”
“Wow,” JJ said, sitting back down. “Is it like this every day?”
“Every day?” Marianne chucked. “No, my dear. The doctors only come here once a week. Sometimes once every two weeks, depending on if they have time. Before Dr. Massri, we only had one doctor. Then Dr. Massri came and brought his friend and now we have three, though the other one was not here today. We are so blessed to have them. God has smiled on us.”
JJ’s eyes opened wide. “Are you a Christian, Marianne?”
Marianne smiled. “I believe there is a God. I believe that he is everywhere, and that he is in everything—even in us, if we let him. The problem is many of us do not let him. Or we let him only when it is convenient for us. But we must accept the way of God always, even when it does not follow a straight path.”
Marianne might have expressed it differently, but the concept was one JJ was familiar with. God’s ways were not always easy to understand, but trusting him was our best option. But JJ had been struggling with the trusting part lately. Especially the trusting part that required her to wait on God to do what he promised for her. But why should it be a challenge? Her needs—if she could call them that—were nothing like the needs of the people she had met in the last few hours. She knew that. Marianne knew that. And if Marianne could live in this place and believe in trusting God the way she did, why was it such a challenge for JJ?
Chapter 13
Simon watched JJ eat the sparse meal without hesitation as she chatted with the young woman who had helped serve them. It was lunchtime, and the team had traveled a short distance from the clinic to a place Marianne knew where they could have lunch. The day was warm enough so they sat outside at picnic tables, eating and enjoying the weather in the few hours’ break they had before the crowd would turn up again at the clinic.
“See something you like?”
Simon tore his eyes away from JJ to glance at Nigel.
“I see you’ve regained your energy,” Simon said, smiling at his friend as he dodged his question. “Been a while since you worked so hard?”
“You got that right,” Nigel said, putting his fork on his plate and stretching. “Feels like MSF days all over again.”
Simon turned around, resting his back against the table. “Those were good days.”
“They were,” Nigel agreed, fishing a toothpick out of his top shirt pocket. “But not days I can go back to. I’m too old for all of that. A brother’s gotta settle down, start a family. Forty is right around the corner.”
“Maybe for you, old man,” Simon said with a chuckle. “Forty is still a ways off for me. And in any case, forty’s not old. We have doctors in their midfifties with us at MSF.”
“Yeah, but that’s too late to start having kids,” Nigel said. “I need to be able to run around with my little rug rats while the ligaments in my knees still work.”
“Does that mean you’re ready to give up your player card?” Simon asked.
“Hold up now,” Nigel said, glancing at his friend. “I didn’t say all that was gonna happen right away. It’s a transition, my friend.”
Nigel glanced over at JJ then back at Simon. “You, however, look like you’ve already traded in yours.”
“It only looks that way ’cause I never had one.”
“Either way, looks like Elevator Girl has got you by the nose.”
“Elevator Girl?” Simon asked.
“Yeah,” Nigel said. “The one from that elevator incident in Paris?” He shook his head. “See, that’s what you get for staying in those cheapo roach motels. I keeping telling you, Massri, you’re a doctor. They pay you those big paychecks for a reason, so you can stay in the Marriotts and Crown Plazas of this world and avoid anything that doesn’t have an international name. If that had happened in the Sheraton, do you know how much you could have sued them for, bruh?”
Simon ignored his friend’s rant. Despite the fact that he had been close friends with Nigel since his undergrad days, the men were polar opposites. While they both appreciated the opportunities for humanitarian work their jobs allowed them, Simon had always suspected that Nigel did it to assuage his conscience for all the other non-humanitarian things he did, like the revolving door of women he was involved with, the huge sums of money he spent on entertaining himself, and the scant regard he gave to his family—particularly his devoutly Catholic parents. In fact, Simon had given the issue a lot of thought and concluded that Nigel remained so invested in their friendship because Simon’s own Christianity—though not of the Catholic type—reminded Nigel of his family. Being with Simon allowed him to support some of the values of his family without his parents’ constant pressure to be religious.
“Anyway, I’ve pieced it together and I am pretty sure that Miss Hot-Bod over there is the girl from that elevator, the one you were sweatin’ for months after—”
“I was not sweating her.”
“And the one you just ran into the other day,” he said. “Now, I don’t know what you told her to get her on a plane with you, but . . .”
“I just told her the truth,” Simon said.
Nigel glanced at his friend through the side of his eye. “I’ve never seen you bring anyone else out here. In fact, I’ve never seen you bring any other female anywhere since you flew into Canada. So something must be special about this one.”
“Stop trying to stir up something,” Simon said. “Don’t you have enough to worry about with your own love life? For all you know, your girlfriend might be burning your clothes in your car as we speak. Wasn’t that what the last one did?”
“And you know what I learned from that, bruh? No one gets the key to my place but me.”
Simon laughed at Nigel’s light chatter. Their conversation was trivial, because it was the only way to survive trips like this. If they focused on everything that was wrong, all the patients they hadn’t been abl
e to help completely, all the people they weren’t able to see, it would kill their spirit. Better to keep the mood light so they could make it to the end.
When Nigel wondered off to catch a nap in the back of the truck, Simon went in search of JJ. He found her in an open field across the street from where they had eaten. She had left her jacket as well as her shoes and socks in a pile near the edge of the field, and in the distance he could see her trotting barefoot through the grass, the wind blowing her hair and the grass brushing her legs. At one point she stopped and held her face up to the sun, her eyes closed, and Simon felt his breath hitch in his throat. Okay, so maybe Nigel had a point after all.
“Judith.”
He knew everyone called her JJ, but he couldn’t get used to it. The first time he’d met her that fateful day in Paris, she’d told him her name was Judith, and she would always be Judith to him.
She looked over at him and smiled a lazy smile, then twisted her head to the left in an invitation. Before his mind even formulated an acceptance, his feet were moving in her direction.
He forced himself to walk easily over to where she had plopped down on the grass. When he reached her, he followed suit. For a while they sat in comfortable silence, the cool afternoon wind blowing over both of them, bringing with it only the sound of the leaves rustling in the trees and the call of a bird or two. Simon sucked in a deep, cleansing breath. You didn’t get this kind of quiet in the city.
“How long have you been in Canada?” JJ asked.
Simon let out the breath he had inhaled. “About six months now.”
“And how long have you been coming here?”
“The same,” he said. “My dad told me about some of the needs on the reserves and connected me with Marianne.”
“Your dad?” JJ asked, looking at him. “Is he a doctor too?”
Simon smiled. “Yes. But not the medical type.” He paused, squinting at her for a moment. “My dad works with the United Nations.”
He watched as all the pieces came together in her mind. “That’s why you moved around so much growing up?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you think that’s why you ended up doing the kind of work you do? You know, working with MSF?”
Simon tilted his head to the side to consider her question. “I’ve thought about it a lot over the years,” he began slowly. “I think some of it must have to do with how I grew up, traveling around the world, seeing the unglamorous side of it, thanks to the job my parents did. But then, so did my brothers, and they are so different. One’s an accountant. The other’s a personal trainer.”
“True,” JJ said. “But you also are the oldest. You experienced a lot more of that life than they did.”
She did have a point. Simon was eight years older than his closest brother, and ten years older than the next. He still remembered a lot of his life before they were born, a lot of the places his parents had lived when he was a little boy. He remembered the nanny who took care of him when they lived in what was now Myanmar. He remembered when she stopped coming to work and no one explained to him why. He also remembered how he’d had to leave all his toys behind the night they left.
He remembered going to his father’s hometown in Egypt and meeting his father’s cousins. They had looked different from him, lived differently, and had not had a lot of the things he had been used to, growing up. He remembered the arguments his dad had with his uncle there. They never went back again. His brothers had never met that side of the family. As an adult now, he understood so much more than he had then.
“Our childhood really influences the life we choose as adults, doesn’t it?” Simon said.
JJ nodded. “It does. It always makes me wonder what choice we really have in who we become. After all, if our parents raise us in a certain setting or under certain beliefs, isn’t it almost inevitable that those are the beliefs we are going to have? The things we are going to desire? It’s almost as if they chose for us.”
“I think so, to some extent,” Simon said. “But if they teach us to be critical thinkers, then, though we might have grown up with a certain set of values, being able to think and assess for ourselves should open our minds up to appreciate new and maybe better ways of thinking and being.”
“I am surprised that you think that way,” JJ said, looking at him. “Given all the places you have been and all the people you must meet. How many people really end up being different from the way they were raised?”
Simon didn’t have much to say there. The evidence seemed to suggest that people were more a product of their environment than anything else. But he couldn’t accept that argument as definitive, because that would mean that people couldn’t change. And they could. He had seen that.
“Take me, for example. I grew up going to church every week, having devotions with my parents every day. Even after my parents split up, my mother never faltered in her belief in the power of God. There was never room for me to believe anything else, so why would I? But what if I hadn’t grown up that way? What if I had grown up in a home where my parents were atheists, or where belief didn’t matter one way or another? I probably wouldn’t have a relationship with God at all. Who would, under those circumstances?”
Simon shrugged. “I would.”
He watched her turn to look at him in surprise. He met her gaze without faltering.
“I never grew up in a religious home,” he admitted. “My mother grew up Catholic. She believed God exists but thought that being a good person was enough. My dad? Complete atheist.”
JJ’s jaw fell. “But how? They dedicate their lives to an organization committed to helping people. How can they live like that and not believe?”
Simon raised an eyebrow. “How? Lots of people do. My parents happen to be two of them.”
He could see that she was fascinated. She had twisted around, her body now facing him completely, her deep brown eyes probing him like a newly discovered mystery.
“But you told me you believe. That your relationship with God is the center of your life . . .”
“It is.”
He watched her squint at him in confusion. “How?”
How did he come to know Christ? That was a long story and a hard one to tell because in some ways it was incomplete.
“Short version? I got to know Christ during medical school, and I had experiences not long afterward that confirmed his existence for me,” Simon said. “I read the Bible, critically at first, and tried to prove him through everything he said, and found him to be true.”
JJ started at him, rapt. “And that was it? That was enough for you?”
He chuckled. “That took a number of years. And like I said, it’s still incomplete. There are still some things”—he looked away from her—“some things I struggle with.”
JJ shook her head. “Wow. I never would have guessed.”
Simon rubbed his hands together self-consciously as JJ looked at him, her eyes glowing. It was like she was seeing him for the first time. It was unnerving.
“So what did your parents think?” JJ asked.
He rested back on his palms. “I guess they thought it was a phase at first. But eventually they came to accept it. They both are very open-minded people. How else could a white woman from high society Ireland and a dark-skinned Egyptian from the slums of Cairo ever end up together?”
JJ smiled. “Sounds like a good story.”
“It is, and they love to tell it. The summary is, they met at the UN, they met on an assignment, fell in love, and got married. After my youngest brother was born, my mom retired.”
“So your parents are here in Canada now. Is that why you’re here? To be close to them?” JJ asked.
Simon shrugged. “My mother sure hopes so. She has many plans for me.”
JJ chuckled. “Plans to marry you off and have her some grandbabies?”
“Are all mothers like this?” Simon asked with a laugh.
“Most,” JJ said with a smile. “My mom is
really looking forward to the birth of her first grandchild. It may have been unexpected, but the occasion won’t be any less joyful. Speaking of which”—JJ smiled sweetly at him—“can I assume then that you will be staying with us, Dr. Massri?”
“You know what you do when you assume.”
“I am hoping this time the rhyme will be less true.”
Simon got to his feet and held out a hand for JJ. “The day is still young, Miss Isaacs,” he said, pulling her to her feet.
She squeezed his hand before letting go. “Indeed it is.”
Simon watched as she turned and headed back the way they had come. He felt his stomach twist as he watched her hair toss in the wind, the sunlight bounce golden rays off her skin. The day might be young, but he already knew how it was going to end—with JJ getting her way and him being led around by his nose. He closed his eyes. Lord, what had he gotten himself into?
Chapter 14
The hospital hallways seemed longer than usual to JJ as she raced through them to the maternity ward. It had taken her almost half an hour to get to the hospital after she got the call saying something was wrong with Sheree and the baby. Thankfully, she had just stepped out of rehearsal or she might have missed the call completely.
“What happened?” JJ asked when she was finally face-to-face with the doctor handling Sheree’s emergency.
“Your sister came in with bleeding and pain a few hours ago,” the doctor began. “We did some tests and noted that the baby’s heart rate was elevated and that your sister’s condition was deteriorating fast. Based on what we note in her file, we think that there might be close to total placental abruption. The best option right now for the health of both baby and mother is a C-section delivery.”
