“Twenty-five, twenty-six tops.”
She stopped to catch her breath and he balanced the bed so she wouldn’t have too much weight leaning on her. “Thank you. That’s a nice compliment but a bit much, don’t you think?”
He raised his brows. “I’m not playing you.”
She motioned to the bed and began pushing again. “Oh, yeah, you are. I’m thirty-eight.” Well past her reproductive prime, as the ob-gyn said. Still, Dr. Li at Guam Hospital had told her that if she started soon, she could have one, if not two, children. But the clock was not just ticking, it was clanking loudly.
Now it was his turn to stop, and he looked genuinely amused. “You’re kidding.”
“What, you think a woman likes to make herself sound older than she is?”
Once they were done with all the beds, she went to check on the patients with the governor following closely behind.
Lenny, one of the men who’d been helping them since the tsunami, ran up to them. “Maria, we have a problem.”
“What’s going on?”
“Ingrid isn’t doing well, and she won’t leave.”
Maria went to talk to her. She’d been worried about the seventy-year-old woman since she’d gotten here. Ingrid had arrived after Anna left, and Dr. Balachandra still hadn’t returned. The nurse had proclaimed her stable, but Maria could tell by her face that she was suffering. She wasn’t a doctor, but she knew Ingrid and something was wrong.
Ingrid was sitting in a chair with old Leo Berman at her side. Ingrid and Leo had both lost their spouses years ago and rumors abounded that they were more than just good friends.
Ingrid was wheezing audibly. Maria turned to Lenny. “Go get Betty.” Betty was one of the nurse practitioners and right now she was the most highly trained medical person they had on-site.
Leo shook his head as Lenny took off. “She’s not gonna make it. It’s her emphysema. Dr. Balachandra told her that all those years of smoking are catching up to her.”
Maria crouched, noting that the floor, which had simply been wet an hour ago, was now covered in an inch of water. She’d changed into sandals but didn’t enjoy the feel of cold water beneath her feet. Good thing she’d thought to wear capris so at least her pants weren’t soaking.
Almost everyone was upstairs now, and she didn’t like the idea of leaving anyone alone on the waterlogged floor.
“Let’s get you upstairs where you’ll be more comfortable.”
Ingrid grabbed her hands. “I want to marry Leo.”
“What?” Maria had been expecting any number of things, but this wasn’t one of them. While everyone knew Ingrid and Leo were secretly dating, she had no idea they were that serious.
“I want to marry Leo before I die. I want him to be my husband. I want him to bury me.”
“Please, Maria,” Leo begged.
Maria stared at them. As much as she wanted to marry Nico, if today was her last day on earth, that would not be at the top of the list of things she’d want to do.
“Please,” both Ingrid and Leo implored her.
She could do this. It was Ingrid’s dying wish. She went through her mental inventory of everyone who was upstairs. No priests, no ministers. No judges. Who else could do it? Then it hit her. She turned to the governor.
“Will you marry them?”
He looked surprised. “I’m not a priest.”
“But you’re head of State. It’s the Government of Guam that makes marriage legal, and you’re the highest ranking official.”
She silently pleaded with him. Even if he didn’t have the proper authorizations, they could figure it out later. Right now, Ingrid needed to marry Leo. Seemingly reading her mind, he nodded.
“I’ll be your witness,” Maria said, closing the discussion.
Betty and Lenny arrived and Maria filled them in. Examining Ingrid, Betty conveyed with her eyes what Ingrid had already told Maria. She didn’t have much time left.
“All right, then,” Maria said. “Let’s get this going before we have to make it a floating wedding.”
“Do you, Ingrid...”
“Rodgers,” Maria supplied.
“... Ingrid Rodgers, take Leo Berman to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold until death do you part?”
“Death do us part, I take him as my husband in this life and in eternity beyond. He’s not getting rid of me that easy.”
The governor smiled, and for the first time Maria noticed that the man was quite handsome. Unlike on the mainland, politicians in Guam didn’t get elected on looks. In fact, most were short, fat bald men.
“Okay then, Leo, Do you take Ingrid to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold for this life and the eternity beyond?”
“I do, and I’m gonna be right behind you, my darling.”
“Then by the power I’m vesting in myself on behalf of the Government of Guam, I pronounce you man and wife.”
They all looked at him. “You forgot to say ‘You may kiss the bride,’” Maria whispered. He slapped his head.
“You may kiss the bride.”
Leo hugged Ingrid, kissing her so hard that Betty leaned forward to make sure Ingrid could breathe.
Leo turned to them with shining eyes. “Can you leave us here? We don’t mind the water, I just want some time alone with her.”
Maria shook her head but the governor placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll take responsibility. Let them be.”
She gave them some drinking water and power bars along with a wrench that Leo could use to bang on the grate if they needed someone to come down and get them. With the wind howling outside, they might not hear screams or shouts. They established a signal of taps, but Maria had a feeling she wouldn’t hear from him. Not until Ingrid died.
After checking on everyone upstairs, she sat in the stairwell. Her office was being used by the staff.
Ingrid and Leo! Everyone suspected they were a couple; why had they waited so long to make it public? All that wasted time that they could’ve spent living together and enjoying social life as a married couple.
The governor came and sat beside her, handing her a bottle of water. She shook her head. “Save that, we don’t have a lot.” Then she slapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have told you that. Forgot for a second you’re the governor.”
He stuck out his hand. “How about tonight I’m just Tom.” She took his warm, callused hand.
“Okay, Tom. Thank you for that, because every cell in my body hurts, and I don’t have it in me to keep up appearances.”
Grinning, he cracked open the bottled water and pressed it into her palm. “Drink. You need this. I brought along water filters from our emergency stash. We can use those to filter the water we collected in the containers before the storm started.”
Right, that’s what she’d forgotten to do. It was the kind of thing Nico took care of. Good thing the governor—Tom—had remembered.
“So where’s your partner in crime?”
Somewhere safe, I hope, because I want to kill him myself as soon as I lay hands on him.
“He went to the field hospital and must have gotten caught in the storm.”
“You two are engaged, right?”
“Kind of.” She didn’t want to get into it with him. “How about you? Married?”
He shook his head.
“Divorced?” She could’ve kicked herself. Why was she being so nosy?
He shook his head. “No, never been married.”
Her eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“What you’re really asking is what’s wrong with me that I’m not married yet?”
She put a hand on her mouth. “Listen, I really put my foot in it. What I meant to say is that you’re an extraordinary man and I
find it hard to believe that someone didn’t snag you. I waited, and before I reconnected with Nico, I was finding that most men my age married ten years ago.”
Stateside, it wasn’t unusual for women to marry in their thirties, but on Guam, that was considered downright ancient.
He smiled and leaned forward conspiratorially. “My third cousin advised me to tell people I got married overseas but that my wife divorced me rather than move to Guam. So everyone will stop wondering what’s wrong with me.”
She leaned back and laughed, and he continued. “My campaign staff went so far as to advise me to hire a wife for the campaign. They said no way a man without a family would get elected governor. And look at me now.”
She hadn’t followed the election or voted because she’d been too busy getting the hospital up and running.
“So what does kind of engaged mean, anyway?”
It was a genuine question, but suddenly she was too weary to give the pat explanation she gave her family and friends. Especially her sister, who was bugging her for a wedding date so she could arrange time off work. It wasn’t as if Guam was a quick ride over; it took more than twenty hours to get to the island from most places.
“It means Nico is still hung up on his soon-to-be ex-wife and can’t decide whether he’s truly committed to me.” The bluntness of her answer shocked her more than it startled him.
“Then why do you want to marry him?”
That answer was much simpler. “Because he’s a good man, and I love him.”
“Does he love you?”
She nodded. “He loves me as much as he will ever love anyone who isn’t Anna, if that makes sense. I’m at peace with the fact that I’m not the big love of his life.”
“Why?”
She looked at Tom, confused. “Why what?”
“Why would a woman like you want to be second choice?”
“That’s not how it is.” Her voice held more force than she intended. Perhaps because she’d never had this conversation the way she wanted. With Nico it was guarded, with her making sure she encouraged his honesty. Family and friends were already judgmental, so she kept it upbeat with them. She normally picked her words carefully, but this time she wanted them to come naturally. “I tell people that Nico is a good man and that I am thirty-eight years old, I need to stop being choosy. But the truth of the matter is, I’ve been in love with him since I was fifteen.”
Tom raised his brows. “You were high school sweethearts?”
She nodded. “At the time, I didn’t really appreciate him. You know how it is when you’re that young. My parents moved us to Hawaii. Here, I was this awkward girl, and Nico was my best friend. In Honolulu, I ran with the cool kids. I was enjoying my new identity as a popular girl and I wanted to fit in. So I broke it off with Nico to free myself to date the boys I needed to be seen with. But the more boys I dated, the more I realized what I had lost. First I chalked it up to young boys. Then I went to college and learned that what I had in high school with Nico was the best I was ever going to get. By the time I screwed up the courage to find him on Facebook, he was already in love with Anna. So I let it go.”
“Did you return to Guam for him?” There was no judgment in Tom’s voice. No silent admonishment reminding her that she was a woman of the twenty-first century and men should fall at her feet, not the other way around. Just a simple question, one to which she had hardly given herself an honest answer.
“Yes.” It felt good to say it out loud. She’d given herself and others a really nice story about needing to return to her roots, do something for the community, fulfill her need for public service. All those things were true. And she’d done many of them when she was in the Peace Corps. She’d spent time in El Salvador, in Indonesia. She could’ve chosen any place on earth to go work. But it had never been a choice for her. Then a photo of Nico on Facebook one day, with a caption from one of his friends about how Nico was finally getting dressed for a date, had her packing her bags. Not immediately, of course; she’d waited a year. She wouldn’t have wanted Nico on the rebound; if there’d been any chance his marriage was going to work, she would not have been the one to stand in his way.
“I came to the island with no plan. I just wanted to see what it would be like here. I left when I was a teenager, and you remember things a certain way, but reality is always different as an adult.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve lived here my whole life, but when I deployed for the war, I came back to the island seeing it in a whole new light.”
She nodded. “I know. When we first moved to Hawaii, I remember thinking how nice Honolulu was, how much more developed it was. The people were nicer, there was so much culture. Then when I returned, I realized how much I missed the sense of community here, a feeling of belonging. We do things for each other, and not just in extreme situations like the one we’re facing right now. Every day, we sacrifice for the collective good.”
Tom nodded. “When I came back, what struck me was our acceptance. I know we have our differences sometimes, but nothing like what we see on TV and in the news. There’s no major fighting over religion or the color of someone’s skin.”
They sat in companionable silence sipping water, taking a moment to reflect on their day.
“So was it love at first sight when you saw Nico again?”
Maria smiled at the memory. “Not quite. I had this whole thing planned—my cousin was friends with Nico’s aunt Mae. They were having a get-together at her house and Nico was invited. So I was going to go get my hair and nails done, had even bought a new dress at the tourist mall. But wouldn’t you know it, it’s the middle of summer and my air conditioner breaks down. So here I am sweaty and smelly, my hair a total disaster and I go to Old Man Pete’s shop to see if I can rouse him ’cause he hasn’t been answering my calls. And who’s there? Yep, Nico.”
Tom laughed. “Why do I get the feeling that he fell in love with you the instant he saw you.”
“He sure smelled me a mile away, and I couldn’t even hide—he totally recognized me. But it was good. We started to chat and then we kept on talking. He had this land to build a hospital and he wanted me to come tell him what I thought, which I did. Then before I knew it, we were working together to get the funding.”
“And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“Hopefully. But I don’t know for sure that there’s a happy ending to this story.”
“You think he’ll go back to his ex-wife?”
With all of her heart, she wanted to say no. Nico had assured her over and over that there was no repairing his relationship with Anna. “Nico has only known a marriage with Anna, so he considers it something great. He clings to what he knows. All I can hope for is that he gives me a chance to show him a different life.”
Tom held up his water bottle in a mock toast, and she tipped hers toward him.
“I sincerely wish that it works out for you, because that leaves me with hope that an old man like me can one day find a woman like you.”
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN SHE WOKE, the room was pitch-black and she was on the bed. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Anna tried to clear her head. Nico! Fumbling in the dark, she found the flashlight she remembered them using to get to the bathrooms. Nico was lying in front of the hearth. She kneeled beside him and touched his head. He was burning up. Lifting his shirt, she checked his wound. The torn bedsheet was soaked through. His breathing was shallow, but he seemed to have decent capillary reflex, so she ran up the stairs to find the priest.
The main hall was bathed in light. Out of the dungeon, she could hear the wind howling. Why hadn’t she thought of this last night? She went through the church until she found the rectory and rapped on the door. The priest opened it right away.
“Everything okay, my child?”
“Do you have any medical
supplies? Nico is injured.”
Without delay, the priest rummaged through a cupboard and came up with two boxes. One was an automatic external defibrillator. Anna sincerely hoped she would not have to use that. The other box held a medical kit. Taking it from him, she raced back downstairs, hearing his footsteps behind her.
Back in the dungeon, Nico was awake and rubbing his head. Anna opened the kit to find more ibuprofen, which she gave him right away. There was also Betadine and bandaging supplies, and a QuikClot kit. It wouldn’t take the place of proper sutures, but was far better than the unsterile, amateur dressing she’d done last night.
“What time is it? Has the storm passed?” Nico asked.
“It’s five in the morning,” the priest said. “They say we’ll have strong wind gusts for the next few hours, but the rain seems to be dying down.”
“Any reports from here or the surrounding islands?”
The priest shook his head. “I have a shortwave radio—that’s how I’ve been getting weather updates—but all other communications are down. No cell, no landlines, and I don’t have a sat phone.”
Anna kicked herself for being so careless with her backpack.
“I’ll have to go out there to see for myself.”
“Nico! You’re running a fever and I’m pretty sure your wound is infected.”
“The people need me. I should’ve been at the hospital last night.”
Instead of saving me. He was gathering the contents of his own backpack.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Oh no you won’t. I don’t need to be worrying about you. It’ll be a trek to my car alone, then who knows whether it’s drivable.”
“I hiked it from the field hospital to the cemetery, I think I can manage.”
“You collapsed at the cemetery.”
“And you’re injured.”
They stared at each other. There was no way she was letting him go out with that injury. Who knew how much blood he had lost carrying her over here in the rain.
“Besides, I have to get back to the hospital. There’s a shortage of doctors right now.” That finally convinced him.
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