by Dianne Drake
“Joanna!”
His voice caught her by surprise. Spinning around, Joanna saw Chay hurrying toward her, carrying a large cardboard box. “What are you doing here?” she called over the whir of the chopper.
“Found a ride heading this direction so I thought I’d come along.”
She was so glad to see him she wanted to throw herself into his arms, but they were otherwise occupied. “And you brought me a present?”
“Lots of PPD and tuberculin syringes.” PPD, purified protein derivative, was injected under the skin as a means of diagnosing TB. At some point in the next couple of days everyone in Douay would be tested. “Some BCG vaccine.” Bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccine used as a TB preventative. “And a few other goodies.” He set the box down and headed back to the helicopter. The next box he hefted contained other basic medical supplies—IV setups, bags of normal saline. She hoped she didn’t have to go that far in her treatment. Then came the medicines—isoniazid, more commonly called INH, which was the most popular treatment. Plus ethambutol to give along with the INH to help prevent those who already had TB from spreading it any further and streptomycin, an antibiotic helpful in treating secondary infections that might arise.
“You don’t happen to have a pup tent and a couple of cots with you, do you?” she asked after his third trip with more supplies, the trip where he waved the helicopter a safe trip back to Billings.
He winked. “I can do better than that, but it’s going to take a few hours.”
“What?”
“The real present I’m bringing with me. So what’s the deal here? Have you had time to figure it out?”
“I’ve only had a look at the White Eagles, and there are five cases for sure. Without testing, of course, but the symptoms are pretty advanced. And they’re living in a house with seventeen people so we could have a lot more people with either the active or latent disease.” Active meant it had developed into the full-blown sickness, latent meant the person had been exposed to TB but, instead of it developing into the illness, it was lying dormant in the body, without any symptoms. With treatment, latent TB usually never developed into the disease. “And I don’t have a clue about the rest of Douay. Haven’t even ventured out to take a look yet.”
“Is everybody you’ve seen so far stable?”
“The one who’s really sick is Rachel, and I’ve got her cooling down with ice packs right now, plus drinking fluids. She’s had a bout of hemoptysis, but not too bad, all things considered. Nothing that requires hospitalization for now. Just medication and rest.” Good thing, because unless it was a life-or-death concern, she knew the White Eagles would submit themselves to no more than that.
“How the hell did they get TB out here?” Chay asked, picking up the first box to move it out of the middle of the roadway.
“Actually, they had a small outbreak of it in Fort Belknap a few years ago. It happens. Maybe someone from over there who’s a latent made contact with someone here who’s prone. Who knows?”
“And you’ve treated it before?”
“That’s about all I treated when I was in Haiti. At our clinic we saw other patients, but TB was, and still is, endemic there.”
“So is this risky for you, being around the disease so much?”
“No more risky than it is for anybody else.” She smiled at him and pulled a yellow surgical mask from her pocket. “I never leave home without one of these. Oh, and before you start mingling with anyone, you need to take the vaccine. And I’d prefer that instead of you coming into direct contact with people who have the diagnosis, especially in contained areas such as the White Eagle house, you stay in the open air. TB’s not like it used to be, and it’s pretty easily treated and controlled, but there’s no sense taking unnecessary risks when you don’t have to.”
“So what you’re saying here is that you’re the boss?” He grinned at her. “Like that night at Fishback Creek?”
“As I recall, you were the one who dragged me down there.”
“As I recall, you were the one who insisted on getting naked up there on the butte.” He pulled her into his arms. “And I’ve got to tell you, never having been naked on the butte before, it wasn’t all that bad.”
She loved the feel of his arms, and she was glad her goodbye a little while ago hadn’t been a goodbye after all. Even a few extra minutes with Chay was worth the additional suffering she’d go through when he did leave. “I’m glad you came here,” she said.
“Is it me you want here, Joanna,” he asked, his voice suddenly so serious, “or is it the doctor you want?”
In answer, she snaked her hands around his neck and pressed her lips hard to his. It was a brief kiss, because in her life there was time for little else, but it was one full of her true answer, if only he could understand it. Within seconds it was over, and Joanna was the one to pull away. It was either that or lose herself in him, and that need was far outweighed by others.
“Look, I’m going back to finish examining the White Eagles and help with some kind of temporary setup to keep the sick ones isolated, then administer the skin tests. Maybe you could go door to door and ask if anyone has symptoms. Let them know that as soon as we can set up something sanitary we’ll be doing skin tests on everybody. And I’ll bet if you’re nice, you can borrow Lawrence White Eagle’s truck.” Smiling, she pointed to the three-decades-old rusted Chevy leaning against the side of the White Eagle compound. “Not as nice as that BMW rental you’ve got back in Rising Sun, but it will get you there. I hope.”
“Think I’ll walk,” he said, eyeing the bald front tires. “You know we’re going to have to talk about this sooner or later, don’t you? About us. Right now it’s OK to hide behind all these medical crises and rusty trucks, but sooner or later it’s going to have to be just the two of us. There will be a few minutes when we don’t have to rush after a broken leg or a diabetic coma. When we don’t have to squeeze everything into so little time. You avoided it when you left this morning, but I don’t want to.”
“Why, Chay? So you can tell me that you’re going back and I can tell you that I’m staying? What good’s that going to do either of us? Your life is what it is, and mine’s what I want. You work in a hospital, take care of people with insurance and nice cars. I work here and take care of people with nothing. I always have and I always will, and that’s part of me that I can’t change no matter what other kinds of feelings I might have going on…especially for you. So why complicate things? We’ve had a good time together, we even work well together. But that’s all it is, Chay. That’s all it can be, so why can’t we just leave it alone instead of making it harder than it already is?”
He smiled patiently at her—a smile that should have mellowed her, but she couldn’t afford mellow, not after working so hard on being detached about all this. Detached on the outside, anyway. “I’m sorry. I know we probably should have never started this, but—”
“Like I said,” he interrupted, “sooner or later it’s going to be the two of us without a medical crisis to pull us apart. It’s going to happen, Joanna, and I swear to God I don’t know what it is or how it will turn out. But it will happen, and avoiding it doesn’t mean that what we’ve got going is solved or put away or quenched. Because it’s not.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead, turned and strode across the road to the first house on the other side.
“It won’t work, Chay,” Joanna whispered as she watched him knock on the door, put on his mask then go inside. “No matter how hard you try to figure it out, it won’t work.” Sighing for the things that never could be, Joanna ran back to the White Eagle house, praying her medical duties would overtake the tears that were so close to spilling over.
Her career and her personal life didn’t mix and they never would. She’d learned that the first time with Paul. It was a lesson that should have stayed learned, and this time, with Chay, it would.
If she survived losing him.
It was early evening by the time Joanna and Chay met u
p again. She was exhausted, but glad to tell him that no more of the White Eagles had obvious symptoms. It would take a couple days for the results of the skin tests to appear, but in the meantime she’d started antibiotics and all the other TB-related drugs. The hardest part of the whole ordeal was getting the promise from Lawrence White Eagle that his family would continue the treatment after she was gone. Treatment would last for months, and naturally his concern was payment. So they’d struck a deal, and actually it was going to work out great for her. They would build a nice-sized addition to her clinic in Rising Sun, provided Macawi, the rightful owner, approved it. Which she would. The White Eagle men were skilled carpenters, and their payment for the TB drugs would nearly double the size of the clinic. Now all she had to do was come up with the money for the materials.
That little chore would keep for another day. The White Eagles’ payment for treatment was an open-ended contract they would honor whenever they were called upon to do so.
“So?” she asked Chay, resisting the urge to fall into his arms. That would have been the easiest thing to do, but she was desperately trying to toughen up. Sometimes she actually succeeded, like right now. Sure, it was only a small step away from him, but such a big one in so many ways.
“I have six with non-specific coughs, one with full-blown cold symptoms, no hemoptysis. And if you know anything about doing pelvics, Ruth DeLorme might be pregnant, or it might be menopause. She’s not sure which, and I’m not doing that exam.”
“How old is she?” Joanna asked, dropping down onto the stool next to the crate with the checkerboard.
“Mid to late forties, I’d guess. Didn’t ask.”
“Gosh, that’s getting up there in age if she’s pregnant.”
Chay settled in across from her and moved a black checker diagonally. “You ever thought about having children?”
Joanna matched his move with a red checker. “Paul and I talked about it, but we didn’t live the kind of life you’d want to bring a child into. Especially where we worked. Speaking of children, I called the Chamberlains a little while ago, and Kimi’s doing as well as can be expected. Emil says she seems to understand the idea that her mother isn’t coming back, and she doesn’t even mention her. But she wants to know when you’re coming to see her.”
Chay made another move, then looked over at Joanna. “I can’t do it. I guess that in a perfect world I’d adopt her and give her a happily-ever-after ending, but mine’s not a perfect world and I can’t raise a child in it.”
“I think the Chamberlains are leaning toward adopting her. Emil says they’re thinking about moving to South Dakota, to the Rosebud Reservation, to be closer to their family, and taking Kimi with them might work out.”
“Uprooting her?” Chay shook his head adamantly. “She’s already lost enough, and now they’re thinking about taking away her home?”
“Giving her a home, Chay. And, believe me, I don’t like it. But what else is there? She needs a family, the Chamberlains are a family.” She slid her checker into another move. “I was actually thinking about keeping her myself. It wouldn’t be easy, but I could make it work.”
“So why don’t you?”
“I’m not one of her kind, in case you haven’t noticed. Not a drop of blood in me other than Irish, and that won’t work.”
“You’d be a great mom,” he said, jumping her checker and grabbing it off the board.
“Well, I don’t know about that, but I sure know when to cheat in a game to let the other person win, and that’s definitely a mom skill.”
He chuckled. “You expect me to cheat so you’ll win?”
She double-jumped his checkers, then smiled. “Nope. It looks like I’ll win without it. Care to have me beat you again?”
“You’re bad, Joanna,” he growled, resetting the checkers and gesturing for her to start the next game between them. “Of course, I kind of like being jumped by you. Maybe as much as you like being jumped by me. Admit it, you do like that, don’t you?”
Joanna took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Checkers as the metaphor. Such an implicit comparison. Suddenly she was so hot she needed a fan, or a block of ice to sit on. Or both. “One game at a time,” she finally managed.
“One is a game, Joanna. The other is not.” He jumped her checker and picked it up off the board, then leaned across the makeshift table and rubbed it lightly across her lips. “And when I win, I win for keeps.”
“But you didn’t win this one,” she said, triple-jumping his latest move. Grabbing his checkers up off the board, she dropped them on her side, then stood up. “And you won’t, as we seem to have company.” Thank heavens! Because she was ready to take him right on the checkerboard, and it had nothing to do with those red and black game pieces.
Practically running for the road, Joanna watched a huge recreational vehicle roll into Douay. It wasn’t quite the size of a full bus, but it would certainly sleep a good many people. A regular home on wheels. “Do you know someone in an RV?” she asked, turning to see a mischievous glint in Chay’s eyes—one that definitely wasn’t the mischievous sexual glint she’d seen there only moments earlier. “Is this someone delivering that surprise you mentioned earlier?”
“It is the surprise,” he said.
“What? You rented us an RV?”
“Nope. Bought it. Couldn’t find a rental company who wanted to bring one out here in the middle of nowhere, so I bought it, offered the salesman a hefty little bonus to drive it out here himself, and now we’ve got a nice place to stay tonight. And to see our patients in the morning.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Not kidding.”
“I’ve been saving up for the past three months to buy myself a new pair of boots and you just go and buy this…this…” Joanna ran over to Chay, gave him a quick kiss on the lips, then ran to greet the salesman the second he stepped out the door. While he and Chay completed the sales transaction, then unhooked the car the salesman had towed in order to get himself back to Billings, Joanna explored the innards of Chay’s rolling home. It had a separate bedroom, with a huge, king-sized bed. Had he ordered that specially? she wondered. I’ll take any old thing you have on the lot as long as it has a big bed? Nice, fully equipped kitchen, cozy lounging area with several comfortable chairs, a dining room which she was already converting mentally into a place in which to administer the skin tests and vaccinations, an entertainment center with more equipment than she’d ever owned in her entire life, a bathroom to die for, including a luscious-looking shower. Oh, and a Jacuzzi. An honest to goodness Jacuzzi in an RV!
Truthfully, she’d never in her life lived in such a luxurious place, and by the time Chay wandered in to see if she liked it, she was waiting for him in the king-sized bed to show him just how much she did. Even if it was only for a day or two, it sure beat that cot in the back room of the garage that Lawrence White Eagle had offered her.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, rolling right into the middle and extending her arms to him. “This is absolutely the most wonderful RV I’ve ever seen. Actually, it’s the only RV I’ve ever seen from the inside. So what are you going to do with it when you get it back to Chicago? Will there be room to drive it on the roads there?”
Chay pulled his dusty T-shirt off over his head. “Hell, I don’t want it. Too big for my condo garage. It’s yours. I figured when you go to some of the outlying areas, like Douay, it might be handy to take your own traveling clinic with you from time to time.”
So much for all her resistance! “You know, Chay, somebody else might argue with you or tell you they don’t want it, to take it back. But I want it. You don’t know how much I want it and I’m not even going to try and pretend to be modest or humble here. Now that I’ve seen it, I don’t think there’s ever been anything I’ve wanted more in my life.”
“I could take that the wrong way, you know.”
She arched her eyebrows playfully. “I said anything, not anybody. Big difference, Doctor. Want
to find out how much?”
“Want to find out how much I want to find out?” Chay tossed his hat on the dresser next to the bed and unbuttoned his jeans.
“Do you think the Jacuzzi works?”
“Salesman said everything’s hooked up and fully functional.”
“Are you hooked up and fully functional?” she asked. “Because I need to show you some appreciation like you’ve never seen before, and there’s not a butte anywhere to be seen around here.”
Resistance be damned. She’d try for it again tomorrow. Or the day after.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BY THE evening of Joanna’s second day in Douay, everybody in town had been tested for TB and instructed on precautions, and now it would be another couple of days before positive results would pop up, if there were going to be any. Joanna was certainly keeping her fingers crossed on that one, because no one she had seen today had seemed symptomatic. Which was a good thing. Another good thing was that Rachel White Eagle was resting comfortably now, as were the other infected members of her family, meaning life was back to normal in Douay, and she could leave there for a little while instead of hanging around, taking care of them.
So for now she simply had to wait and see how the skin tests turned out. Of course, in her life there was no time to wait. Two of the White Eagle men worked on the ranch, which meant everybody there would have to be tested. By the time she arrived there tomorrow, the testing supplies would be waiting for her.
Well, so much for her day off. She’d actually planned to head back to Billings, buy that new pair of hiking boots, have the split ends of her hair trimmed, maybe go to a movie. A movie…how long had it been? Finding a place in the back row, eating that greasy popcorn she would tell her patients was so unhealthy for them, chasing down the popcorn with a box of candy and an extra-large soft drink full of sugar. So many of the goodies she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, eat anywhere near the reservation. But in the dark, maybe even with Chay, and she’d certainly intended to invite him into her little world of cinema decadence, two hours could have translated into a veritable vacation. And she was almost tasting it all, but unfortunately that taste was getting fainter and fainter by the minute. Maybe next week, or the week after.
