“Dear God…” She allowed the newspaper to fall off the bed onto the floor. Ann pressed her hands against her face. She felt so terribly cold as another chill swept through her. None of the men in the photos looked like Mike, but how could she really be sure?
Anguished, she raised her chin and took a gulp of air. Tears burned in her eyes and she angrily wiped them away. She jerked off the covers and climbed out of bed. Reeling with shock, she walked out to the darkened living room. There was a purple-and-white afghan on the back of the couch and she took it, pulled it around her shoulders and curled up on the sofa.
She tried to think rationally, logically, but it was impossible. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She wanted to cry. She rarely cried, not since—Ann savagely slammed the door shut on the incident that had changed her life, changed how she reacted to men. All men except Mike. He had captured her heart.
Ann sat there, rocking slowly back and forth, as she always did when she was distressed and feeling out of control. The stories she’d heard all week about Mike, about his mysterious “jaguar medicine,” as the Indians referred to it…They swore he’d stopped people from bleeding to death with just his touch! Baloney. He was a paramedic. Direct pressure on a wound with his hand would stop most hemorrhaging. Ann gazed around the empty, silent apartment. She alone knew that he was just a man.
A sob rose in her throat. Her eyes burned. Bowing her head, Ann rested her brow against her drawn-up knees. The scratchy wool of the afghan felt somehow soothing. She ached for Mike’s loving, intimate touch once again. From the beginning, he’d sensed her distrust of him, and he’d approached her slowly, allowing her to get used to him being in her life. He hadn’t tried to get her into bed. Rather, his touch, his exploratory kisses, had laid a groundwork of trust between them. Now she was ready to seal her love with Mike completely and it was an impossibility.
Suddenly Ann felt Mike’s brief touch on her skin—or at least she thought she did. Her flesh tingled in the wake of his grazing, invisible contact. As she allowed his craggy face to appear in her mind’s eye, she felt comforted, the edge taken off her fear that he was dead. The sensation was not new to her; every time in the past week when she thought of him there would be almost an instantaneous returning warmth that soothed her, and she would feel undeniable love sweeping around her, as she did now.
Eventually, Ann fell asleep, curled up in the fetal position on the couch. In her dreams, she was back at the magical pool, wearing that vanilla-scented crown of red-and-yellow orchids in her loose hair. Here, she felt safe. Here, she felt protected from the harsh, brutal reality of the world that she had stepped unknowingly into.
“You are worried?” Sister Gabby inquired sweetly.
Ann had just finished examining a baby with a high fever from the flu that had hit Lima hard in the last week. The mother anxiously looked on. Slipping off the latex gloves which had been bloodied due to the severe nosebleed the baby had suffered during the high fever, Ann deposited them in the new waste container that had arrived only yesterday. “Just tired, Sister,” she replied finally.
“Hmm, it is more than that, mi pequeña,” the nun said, calling her by the nickname she and Dominique had given Ann on her first full day at the clinic. It meant “my little one” and they called her that because she was so thin. Even though Ann towered over them heightwise, the nuns saw her as small and vulnerable, like a child who needed to be protected. Ann had protested, of course, but when Sister Gabby explained that agewise, Ann was like a child to them, she relented. Now the words were said with such love that Ann surrendered without resistance.
Thinning her lips, she busied herself around the room, tearing off the soiled paper on the examination table and replacing it with clean paper after the mother and baby left. “Really, Sister. I’m just tired.”
“Hmm,” Sister Gabby said again, helping her to pick up the bloody gauze she dropped on the floor. “You must have seen the newspaper last night, eh?”
Ann froze. She slowly turned and regarded Sister Gabby.
The nun’s brown eyes sparkled fiercely. “You must be going through a very special hell,” she whispered.
Ann straightened. The pain in her heart almost exploded. She stood there, wanting to cry. Wanting to sob out her fear for Mike.
“Listen to me, child,” Sister Gabby said, coming over and gripping her arms and giving her a small shake, “the newspaper often carries horrid photos. But those pictures may not have anything to do with mon petit chou, did you know that?”
Ann blinked. “What are you saying?”
“Oh, the account may be true, but this newspaper likes drama and tries to sell more copies by printing terrible pictures of death. Many are from years ago! I can tell you took that photo to heart last night. Your face is pasty today and your eyes show me grief and longing. But you shouldn’t have let it bother you.”
Trembling, Ann whispered, “It was horrid, Sister Gabby. I—I was afraid—for Mike….”
“Of course you were, mi pequeña.” She smiled tenderly up at her. “The heart has no brain, no eyes, eh? It only knows how to love. That is enough, oui?”
Love. Ann stared down at Gabby’s kindly features. She instantly tried to reject the word, the feeling. It was impossible, because she felt so helpless and weak emotionally right now. “I worry for him, Sister Gabby.”
The nun’s mouth drew into a gentle smile of understanding. “Our Michael is a very special man, but I sense you already know that. At least your heart knows that.” Patting her arm, she added, “You worry too much for him. He knows how to care for his men and himself. Do not put such great stock in the newspaper accounts of him, eh? You are working too hard. You need more rest.”
Still, Ann continued to work endlessly to keep her mind and her aching heart off Mike Houston. What had he done to her? she wondered. It was as if an invisible umbilical cord was strung between them. Every hour, Ann could feel him. Actually feel his invisible, loving presence. It frustrated her. She couldn’t get rid of the sensation or ignore it. Nor could her rational mind find any logical reason for the feeling. At night, in her dreams, when she was by that magical pool, was the only time she found a moment’s peace and rest from her anxiety. Maybe she worried so much because she’d been in the military too long herself. She knew what kind of guerrilla tactics Mike was using out there. She knew in the jungle it was simple weapons like knives and machetes that took a man’s life rather than bullets, because the foliage was so thick that bullets would easily ricochet off the trees. No, the kind of fighting Mike was waging was hand-to-hand combat in many cases. The worst kind.
On the fourteenth day, Ann closed the clinic early—before midnight—because she wasn’t feeling well at all. Both nuns had left for the evening and were more than likely tucked in bed already. Every step up to her apartment was an effort and Ann tried to hide how she felt from the alert and discreet glances of Pablo, who was very concerned about her.
“Eh, Dr. Parsons, should you not take a day or two off? You have lost weight and you work your fingers to the bone. You must rest more, sí?”
It took too much effort to shrug. “Pick me up at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow, Pablo.”
After he’d checked out her apartment, he nodded. “Sí, Doctor.”
When she finally shut the door behind him, she sank against it, feeling terribly weak. A chill like she’d never encountered before worked its way up her spine. God, she was cold. Icy cold. Pushing away from the door, Ann picked up the newspaper and went to the kitchen. Despite Sister Gabby’s warnings, she couldn’t help herself from being driven by an almost obsessive need to check out the evening edition for information on Mike and his men.
There had been a blaring headline in every edition for the last seven days. Houston had launched a major counteroffensive operation against Escovar’s attempts to invade and reclaim Ramirez’s old territory in the highlands. Every night Ann read with eyes blurry from tears how the body count was rising on both sides. And horrific pict
ures always accompanied the text. Ann felt herself tense as she opened the paper.
Gasping, she felt her eyes widened enormously. The headlines blared Jaguar God Killed By Escovar!
“No!” Ann cried. Her startled shout sank into the silence of the apartment. She flattened the paper out on the table in desperation. She had to be reading it wrong! She just had to be! There was a photo of Mike in his U.S. Army uniform, the beret at an angle, his face hard, his eyes narrowed. It was an official military photo.
“Oh, God, no…No…” Ann rapidly skimmed the article.
During fierce fighting in and around the village of San Juan, Escovar personally led his men against Major Mike Houston’s contingent, which was protecting the village from Escovar’s attack. One helicopter was destroyed as troops disembarked from it and it was reported that the legendary Houston, known as the jaguar god to the people of the highlands, was on board. The helicopter had landed with Houston’s squad, in an effort to reinforce embattled soldiers who fought bravely side-by-side with the villagers to stave off Escovar’s well-planned attack.
A second black-and-white photo showed the twisted wreckage of what remained of a helicopter. White wisps of smoke floated upward from the gutted aircraft. Ann couldn’t tear her gaze from the macabre photo. With a horrible, sinking feeling, she felt the pit of her stomach drop away. Uttering a small cry, she sat down before she fell down. Mike was dead! Oh, God, no! No! It couldn’t be! The paper had to be lying! Wasn’t it lying? Her mind reeled. Her emotions and heart exploded with wild, animal grief so raw that she cried out.
Hot, unchecked tears flowed down her taut features as she walked unsteadily to the living room. She had to get hold of Sister Gabby. “She would know….” Her hands shook badly as she dialed the phone. There was crackling and hissing on the line.
Groaning in frustration, Ann hung up and dialed again. There were very few telephone lines into the barrio. The one that led to the Catholic church was over thirty years old, and when it rained, as it had earlier today, the water seeped into the cable and calls would not connect until the line dried out. Every time Ann tried to call, the line hissed and went dead.
Ann sat there, wondering who else to call to verify the story. Pressing her hand against her head, she felt another violent chill pass through her. The icy coldness she felt was not to be ignored. It was then, only vaguely, that she realized she was burning up with a fever. She stood up, in a quandary. The earliest she could reach Sister Gabby, if the phone started working again, would be tomorrow morning. No one at the U.S. Embassy would tell her anything about Mike. He worked for the Peruvian government, and she knew they weren’t about to talk to her, a stranger, to confirm his death.
“God…” She sobbed as she reeled down the hall toward the bedroom. As she stripped out of her clothes to take a shower and warm up, she knew she’d caught the viral flu going around the city. How many cases had they handled at the clinic in the last week? It must have been over a hundred. It was an upper-respiratory flu with a high, sudden fever, and though Ann knew there was no prescription drug to fight a virus, the sisters had homeopathic potions that seemed to arrest the deadly flu in its tracks.
Yes, she must have contracted the flu. She was run-down. Overworked. Getting too little sleep. Stress had lowered her immune resistance to the nasty virus. Moving in a daze to the shower, Ann turned on the faucets with shaking hands. Shivering, she avoided looking at herself in the mirror. Tears kept streaming down her face. She stood there naked, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as if to hold herself together so she wouldn’t explode in a million, out-of-control pieces. She wanted to shriek and scream like a madwoman and give her grief voice.
She had never told Mike she loved him. She hadn’t even been able to admit it to herself. Until now. When it was too late. That fact pounded throbbingly through her aching head. It hurt to move, the pain was suddenly so intense. Climbing into the shower, Ann thrust her head beneath the hot, massaging stream of water. She stood under the spray, trembling and shivering uncontrollably. The water was so hot that clouds of humidity filled the bathroom and her skin turned pink.
By the time she staggered from the bathroom dressed in her apricot silk nightgown and robe, Ann was feeling vertigo. She knew her temperature was high, maybe 104 degrees. She could feel her pulse pounding like a freight train through her body; her heart was pumping hard in her chest. Her hand against the wall, she managed to make it to the living room. The door was locked but the dead bolt was not in place. She should secure the door, but she suddenly didn’t care any longer. Mike was dead. She felt as if she was dying.
As she crumpled to the couch and weakly drew the afghan over her shivering form, Ann could feel all hope draining out of her, as if someone had sliced open her wrists and was bleeding her dry. As she nestled her head on one of the pillows, she drew her legs up against her body, absorbing the warm comfort of the afghan. She was sick. Very sick. Mike was dead. Was he? Or was it a lie designed to sell more newspapers?
More tears leaked out of her tightly closed eyes. The fever was climbing. Her skin felt hot and dry. The chills racked her body every ten or fifteen minutes. Her mind turned to jelly beneath the violent assault of the burning fever. Tiredness, a spirit-weary kind of exhaustion, swept through her. Never in her life had Ann felt so weak, so alone…so horribly grief stricken. She lay on the couch, the sobs coming softly at first as her fever dissolved the massive control she usually kept over her emotions. Little by little by little, tears flooded her face and her sobs became louder and violently wrenching.
At some point, as the fever skyrocketed through her, Ann’s sobs turned to weakened whimpers. The ache in her pounding heart was so painful that she no longer cared if she lived or died. Everything good in her life was now gone. Why hadn’t she told Mike she loved him? Ann knew even in her delusional state that her feelings for him were real. The past. It was her past. Her fear had not allowed her to reach out, to admit even on some deep, intuitive level that she’d fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love with Mike during those eight weeks she’d spent with him at the ranch in Arizona. What a fool she’d been! A horribly frightened fool. As she lay weakly on the couch, in the grasp of the fever and hallucinations, Ann grieved.
At some point, she fell into a disturbed sleep filled with chaotic visions of the past, when she’d worked with Morgan’s mercenaries in dangerous situations. Near dawn, with the apartment swathed in gray light, Ann jerked awake. She was burning up. She could not move, she was in such a weakened condition. Trying to think, she realized belatedly that what she had contracted wasn’t the flu. It couldn’t be; not like this…This was septic. Deadly. Trying to move her hand from beneath her chin, where it was tucked, Ann felt warm liquid flowing out of her nose. The warmth continued across her dry, parched lips. It tasted salty and metallic. What was it?
Barely able to move her hand, Ann laid her fingertips against her lips. The flow increased from her nose. Fighting to open her eyes, which felt like weights, she lifted her fingers just enough so that she could see them. In the gray light, she saw the darkness that stained her fingers.
Blood. It was blood. Her blood. What was going on?
This was no ordinary nosebleed, Ann thought blearily. No, the blood flowing from her nose was heavy, almost as if an artery had burst, but that was impossible. I’ve got to get help. Now. Ann used every ounce of her reserves and slowly sat up. She sank against the couch, a soft gasp coming from her. Blood flowed down across her lips, her chin, and began to drip down the front of her nightgown. Her panic escalated.
The fever had not broken. She was still burning up. The chills were racking her like birthing contractions every few minutes. Septic. Somehow, I’ve gone septic. Her mind fragmented; her vision blurred and became unreliable. Ann knew for sure now she hadn’t contracted the flu. This was something far more deadly. A lethal jungle virus of some kind? Where—how had she picked it up? She’d had all her shots before coming down here. But there were many new viru
ses that had no vaccination protection available.
And then she recalled that yesterday, a little boy had come in with a broken arm that she had set and placed in a cast. He’d been a brave little six-year-old. His mother had been so grateful for her help and care. One of the last things that little boy did was pull a piece of half-eaten candy from his pocket and give it to Ann. She had ruffled his hair, taken the candy and thanked him. Without thinking, she’d popped it into her mouth and made big, smacking sounds of enjoyment for the child’s benefit. The little boy had smiled bravely through his tears, and Ann knew that his priceless gift of candy, which few in the barrio ever got, had been a loving gesture toward her.
Reaching forward now, her breathing shallow and erratic, she knew she was going into septic shock. It was one of the most deadly kinds. She had to get help or she’d die! Something in her rallied. As grief stricken and delusional with fever as she was, there was a core in her that refused to give up and just lie down and die. Her fingers closed over the phone. The keypad blurred. Ann tried three times to recall the number at the clinic. Oh, God, what was it? Her fingers were shaking so badly that she kept missing the number pads on the phone as she tried to dial.
Everything in front of her began to go gray. She could feel a coldness stealing upward from her feet, flowing like a dark river into her ankles. No fool, she knew this was the shock…killing her. She was dumping.
The phone fell out of her nerveless hand.
Help. She had to get help.
Something drove her to try and stand. Caught in the grip of the fever, not thinking clearly, Ann leaned forward. Her knees buckled. The next thing she knew she was landing on the carpet. A groan rippled through her. She felt the carpet’s springy texture against her cheek as she collapsed onto it. All her strength ebbed away. The blood was flowing heavily from her nostrils, unabated. Dying. I’m going to die.
Morgan’s Mercenaries: Heart of the Jaguar Page 15
