by Dianne Drake
She didn’t want to leave him, but she did have to walk away from him some time, and this was as good a time as any to do it. Before anything happened between them. She could read it in his eyes, and she was sure he could read it in hers. So why keep testing fate? Why keep tempting each other? Call it back in, then walk away.
It was for the best. For Paul’s best.
“And if I follow you?” he asked, stepping into the door opening, completely blocking it with his massive form.
“If you follow me, I can’t stop you. But I’m asking you not to, Paul. There’s no point.” She ran her toe across the dusty floorboards and marked a line. “We’re divided, and we have to stay that way. You on your side, me on mine, and we’ve been coming too close to the line. But that won’t work in your life. And it won’t work in mine. So this is as close as it comes for us. Toe to the line, and no further. But if it’s of any consolation, if ever there was a man worth crossing the line for…”
She leaned up and bushed a kiss to his lips. Soft and gentle, and it roused such a heat in her so quickly, she stepped back and did not look up at him. “I got carried away. You coming back with me, a nice afternoon in the rain, even the lobster…it shouldn’t have happened. That made it personal, and this cannot be personal. My life doesn’t have room for personal.”
“I won’t force myself on you, Solange. Not in any way.”
“It’s for the best,” she said, trying not to allow despondency to show through her voice. Such a perfect afternoon ending like this. How could she feel anything else?
“Is it?”
“Yes.” For Paul, it was. And since she was already used to making the sacrifices, he was just one more sacrifice for her. Pure and simple. One more on her list. And she wanted desperately to be pragmatic about that, but there was nothing at all pragmatic about the way her heart was aching.
Solange reached up and brushed her hand across his cheek. Earlier, he had told her she could be easy to love. Such cherished words…words she would never forget because they had come from a man who was so easy to love. And she was in love with him. As silly as it might seem, and for as little time as she’d known him, everything about Paul Killian had made her fall in love with him. More and more each passing moment. So now she had to protect her heart. And him. “Thank you for everything,” she murmured, then slipped through the door and into the night.
The hike back to The Mission took a little less than two hours, and by the time Solange arrived she was exhausted, physically and emotionally. And she was beginning to feel that old frailty setting in again. One she didn’t want to come back. One she was very grateful Paul hadn’t seen. In her emotions, in her physical actions…it caught her in times she didn’t expect it to, and dragged her down when she could least afford it. Hard work, long hours. Exhausting to anyone on a normal schedule, and nothing about her schedule was normal.
Whatever the case, as Solange tumbled into her own little bed in her own little room, she was glad to be there. Sleep. That’s all she needed, and in the morning she would feel much better. She always did. “Alone,” she murmured, as she pulled the mosquito netting into place around her for the first time in ever so long, she truly wished she wasn’t alone.
“Maman Solange! Maman Solange!”
“Let me sleep,” she begged. It had been only a few minutes, and tonight she needed more than that.
“Maman Solange!” the young voice persisted. Chanté, she thought. Ayida’s granddaughter.
“No,” Solange mumbled, fighting to stay asleep. “Maman is tired. Très fatiguée. You go tell your grandmère to wake me up first thing in the morning.”
“It’s afternoon,” Keskeya said, shuffling over to Solange. Keskeya Volcy, a young woman with a club foot that slowed her down, and a heart of gold that never failed her, was not a trained nurse, but, then, neither was Ayida. Solange couldn’t run the infirmary without them, though. “And Frère Léon has been fussing all over the place about the line of people out there waiting for you.”
“Mon Dieu!” Solange exclaimed, jumping up. Clinic day! “Why didn’t somebody come and wake me up?”
“Because he told us not to.”
“Frère Léon told you not to wake me up?”
“No! Frère Léon wanted to wake you up hours ago, but the other one wouldn’t let him. The kiddies call him Doktè Candy because he tosses candy out to him.”
“Paul’s here?”
“If you mean that handsome white man with the blue eyes out there, yes, he’s here. And he’s seeing all those people who expected to see you.”
Solange drew in a deep breath. “Paul’s taken over my infirmary?”
“Somebody had to do it, as you were all set to sleep the whole day away. If you ask me, that man is a blessing to us. Don’t know where you found him, but I sure hope you don’t send him back where he came from because he’s got things better taken care of than you do.”
A heart of gold and a very blunt tongue. Solange laughed. She loved Keskeya. “I’ll take a shower and be over to the infirmary in ten minutes.”
“Are you getting down in the womanly way again?” Keskeya asked, her face twisting into genuine concern. “That happens when you don’t take care of yourself, you know. It comes back on you and your body can’t be taking much more of that punishment.”
“There’s nothing coming back on me,” Solange snapped, then instantly regretted it. Keskeya was concerned, and Solange appreciated that. But the womanly thing, as her dear friend called it, was still a touchy matter. At thirty-one, no woman ever expected to have her uterus and ovaries ripped out of her, but that’s what had happened. A few swipes of the gynecologist’s knife and her life had changed for ever. “I’m just tired. Off my regular schedule.” Falling in love without the hope of a chance to act on it. “But I’m fine now.”
“Maybe your Doktè Paul should have a look at you. He seems competent, for a man.” Keskeya laughed. “Bet you’ve been noticing that all the time you were gone, weren’t you?”
Precisely the problem, Solange thought. And now Paul was having such a distracting effect on her that her work was suffering. “I’m fine,” she insisted again.
“You may think you’re fine, but you’re not, and the last person to have an appointment with a doktè is a doktè.” Keskeya snorted. “That makes no good sense to me!”
“I have a perfectly good doctor.”
“In Miami. And how long since you’ve been in Miami?” Keskeya stepped away, then turned back for one final retort. “You need to get your blood levels checked and get those drugs readjusted, and you know that. Don’t take no doctor to prescribe that.”
“What am I going to do, maman?” Solange whispered, on the verge of tears, after Keskeya left the room. Keskeya was right to a certain point. Something was coming back on her, but it wasn’t the so-called womanly thing over her hysterectomy and hormones, unless falling in love and knowing it could never be was considered womanly. Their schedules didn’t permit it, and even if they had, Paul wanted children. He needed children. At his age, he expected children. “What do I tell him, maman? ‘Here I am, the one doesn’t have a son or daughter to bear for you?’ What do I tell him, maman?”
She didn’t wait long for an answer because there was no time to waste fretting over things that could never be. She had patients to see. Swiping at a stray tear sliding down her cheek, Solange drew in a deep, resolute breath and grabbed a handful of clean clothes out of a bureau drawer. Then she headed out the door to the shower across the hall, thinking about everything she had, and not what she couldn’t have.
The Mission…lovely work here. She loved it. And the chapel. The accommodations were splendid—several small sleeping rooms up and down both sides of the structure, a commons area in the center where they took their meals, watched television when the satellite was pointed in the right direction, a retrofit of modern and semi-modern kitchen and bathing facilities…This was a wonderful place, a tremendous situation. That’s what sh
e had to think about.
Not completely over her momentary regret over what she couldn’t have, but becoming more heartened the harder she thought about what she did have, Solange ducked in and out of the shower in record time, even for her, dried off and headed straight to the infirmary, where there was still a considerable line outside, men, women and children all waiting their turns.
“Your friend gave the children a hacky sack,” Ayida said, as she scurried by with a baby in her arms.
“What’s a hacky sack?” Solange asked.
Keskeya smiled, coming to Solange’s side. “A little cloth bag of beans that they kick to each other with their knees. I thought it was such a waste of good beans, but the children already love it as a toy, and that man of yours has brought all kinds of hacky sacks with him.” She pointed to several small groups of children playing in the commons. “It takes up their time while their parents see the doktè.”
“He’s not my man,” Solange protested, against a force she knew would never give in. Keskeya had made up her mind, and it wouldn’t be changed. But Solange somehow felt obligated to make her position in this matter public, if Ayida and Keskeya could be considered public.
“Ha!” Keskeya snorted. “You tell the lie as poorly as you look.”
In response, Solange merely shook her head and walked away. No use arguing. No time for it, anyway.
“I knew you two would hit it off splendidly!” Frère Léon called from across the compound, where he was playing hacky sack with a group of younger kiddies. Short, chubby, balding, and true to his vocation in his long, brown robe, he was a man of seventy, or somewhere close to it, with the spunk of someone half his age. He came from a French monastic order that had been in the islands for well over a century now, delivering humanitarian aid wherever it was needed. The first time she’d met Frère Léon had been shortly after her mother had performed open heart surgery on him. After that, for years he kept popping back into her life at odd times, but mostly at times when she needed him, and she loved him dearly.
Instead of responding, she waved him off and continued toward the infirmary, where a dozen people were waiting patiently outside. “Are you expecting me to thank you for your interference?” she snapped at Paul as she entered the small building. He was helping an elderly man down off the exam table, a man who was beaming from ear to ear and lavishing Paul with profuse thanks.
“Stomachache,” Paul said, ignoring her outburst. “A week in duration now.”
“Ulcer?” she asked, suddenly forgetting her impatience with Paul.
“Ti-Malice,” Paul answered, then grinned. “With every meal. I think it finally burned right through his stomach. He’s promised to cut back to one meal a day using the Ti-Malice he normally makes. Or switch the pepper in his usual recipe to one not so hot. His choice, and he’ll be back to see you in a couple of weeks.” Ti-Malice—a diabolically hot sauce many islanders loved on their food. Hubert Aubin apparently loved it more than most, but the love affair was now waning, at least in the Ti-Malice’s love for Hubert, although not in his love for the Ti-Malice.
Paul handed Hubert a bottle of generic antacids and sent him on his way. “So, are you feeling better?” he asked, once the office was empty. “Ayida and Keskeya said you were awfully tired.”
“So you let me sleep late!” she snapped.
“Actually, I didn’t let you do anything. You slept late because you needed it, and I did nothing to stop you. You can’t have it both ways, Solange. Either I get to interfere, or I don’t. Since I’d assumed your preference was no interference, I didn’t.” He stepped over to the tiny sink to wash his hands. “And before you snap my head off about coming here against your wishes, you’re not the only person involved here. I wanted to have a short visit with Frère Léon, too.”
“And stand in for me, while you conveniently didn’t interfere with my over-sleeping.”
Paul spun around to Solange, then took a few steps toward her before she thrust out her hand to stop him. “Are you OK?” he asked. “Keskeya says you’re feeling poorly, and she asked me if I would take a look at you.”
“What else did she say?” Solange hissed, sucking in a sharp breath. Paul wasn’t to know. Beside Ayida, Keskeya and Frère Léon, no one was to know. People looked at you oddly when they knew you were barren at such a young age. Poor Solange, she would have made a wonderful mother. There’s always adoption. You still have your work. And Mauricio had looked at her with such revulsion when the news had been give to him. He’d wanted his woman intact—womb, ovaries and hormones. Ready to make babies for him.
She couldn’t bear to see that look in Paul’s eyes.
“Nothing, except that she’s worried.”
He wasn’t lying. Paul didn’t have it in him to lie, which meant he didn’t know. For that, she was relieved. “I’m just tired. It catches up to me sometimes, I suppose. And I’m sorry for being so grumpy, but I don’t like shirking my responsibilities and expecting someone to make up for my shortfall.”
“Being tired isn’t a shortfall, Solange. It’s natural. And I’m rather enjoying stepping back into a general practice for a little while. Even if my most difficult diagnosis of the day was hot sauce.” He grinned. “So, shall we do the rest of this together, or do you want me to leave?”
“I’d love to do the rest of this together,” she said, “if you don’t mind working here. We don’t have the facilities you do, as you’ve already noticed.”
He walked the remaining steps to Solange, then pulled her into his arms. She started to protest, to pull away, but gave it a second thought and stayed there for a minute, just letting herself enjoy the feel of him. It was nice, and she would have stayed there much longer but there was work to do, and the work always came first. For both of them. “We’ve got at least a dozen more out there,” she said, pulling away. “And I’m sure you’d like to get done here so you can have a nice chat with Frère Léon before you leave.”
“Sounds like you’re pushing me away.”
“Just what the doctor prescribed.”
“Which doctor?” he asked. “Because there are two in the room, and I know for a fact that one of them isn’t prescribing.”
“Where is he?” Solange asked, grabbing a gown and a mask.
“He’s sitting under a tree right now, watching the others play hacky sack,” Frère Léon said. “I know I should have brought him in straight way, but he wanted so badly to play with the other children, and I thought that a few minutes of fresh air, watching, might do him a spot of good, poor boy.”
“How long has he been showing the symptoms?”
“Last time I was through his village he seemed fine. That was two weeks ago. I thought he’d lost a little weight, but he’s getting taller now, so maybe that means thinner, too.” He patted his ample belly, smiling. “Since I’ve never been thin, I don’t know how those things work. But besides looking a little thin, Tsombé seemed as bright was usual.”
Tsombé Patchou, age twelve. Solange suspected TB, and, judging from the look on Paul’s face, so did he.
“I got him masked up good, and well away from the others,” Frère Léon continued. “He’s only been here a few minutes, and he’s so enjoying himself, just watching.”
“But you say he’s feverish?”
“When his parents left him here, they said he’d been burning with the fever for three days now. Not eating. Bad cough rattling around in his chest, and I did hear that for sure. Even through his mask.”
“Probably TB, and I’m going to act accordingly until we know otherwise.” She glanced out of the door and saw Paul squatting under the tree where Tsombé was resting. “Are his parents still here?”
Frère Léon shook his head. “His father went off to work in the sugar cane, and his mother has other children. I told them we would take care of Tsombé, that they didn’t have to worry. But I think his father will stop to see him in a few days.”
Solange bent forward and gave Frère Léon a kis
s on the cheek. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”
“Save the sweet talk for Paul,” he returned, blushing.
“So you are trying to play matchmaker. I suspected as much.”
“When two people are so perfect for each other…” A broad grin crossed his chubby face. “What can I say? I may be celibate, but I’m still a romantic at heart.”
“A romantic who knows my circumstances.”
“The only circumstance I know is that you hide yourself behind your problems, and you make those problems for yourself because you still believe what that no-good Mauricio told you, that without those parts, you’re no longer a woman. And the stupid man was a doctor. He should know better.”
“Maybe I still hide a little, but I’m dealing with it much better now.”
“You hid for a year at my little monastery. Locked yourself up in your cell when you weren’t working in the infirmary or tending the garden, and dwelt in the past.”
“Hormonal adjustments,” she defended herself.
“Depression, hormonal adjustments, breakdown. All the same, when you spend a year in a monastery with a group of men who collectively didn’t come close to looking at you the way Paul looks at you. It’s in his eyes, Solange. The whole story, and all you have to do is look for it, because he very much wants to open those pages to you.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“He told me he’s through with relationships. That’s all.”
“And he means it.” Which was just as well, as she was through with relationships, too. At least, the kind Frère Léon was trying to promote here.
“Then you would be perfect together since you’ve sworn off yourself.” He gave her a kindly smile. “I know you’re still having a bad time of it, Solange, but leave a little window open for a possibility. You deserve it.”
“If you keep going on and on like that, I might have to give you another kiss.”
