The Doctor's Courageous Bride

by Dianne Drake

  “Holding his own, Papa,” Solange said, stepping into her father’s embrace. “It’s a serious injury, but not grave.”

  “And you were not injured?”

  “No, Papa. I was in the infirmary when the storm hit, and it’s a much newer, much stronger structure than the old chapel was.” She waited until he had kissed her on top of her head before she stepped away. “All things considered, we were very lucky that no one was killed.”

  “He’s ready to go,” Paul shouted to Bertrand. “And I’d like to get him to Port Georges right away, so he can still have surgery today. Can you radio ahead to the hospital once we’re en route?”

  “Of course,” Bertrand said, stepping past Solange. “Do you have a stretcher, mon ami?”

  Five minutes later, Solange stood back as her father and Paul lifted Frère Léon into the helicopter. Paul righted the IV set-up, made sure the oxygen cylinder was full enough to last the trip, then ran back over to Solange. “There’s only room for one of us, so you go to Port Georges with him,” he said. “I’ll hike down and catch up with you there, probably some time tomorrow.”

  “Tell my father I said thank you for doing this,” Solange said. Then she turned around and went into the infirmary, shut the door, and locked it.

  “Solange!” Paul shouted. “This is crazy. You can’t stay here alone.”

  Her back to the door, she shut her eyes, trying to pretend that if she couldn’t see it, it did not exist. But it did. She saw it, she felt it, she heard it. This was where she would walk away from Paul. He would go to Port Georges in a few minutes. And they would resume the lives they’d had before they’d met. “Go away,” she whispered, brushing back the tears beginning to slide down her cheeks.

  “Come on, Solange. You go with your father and Frère Léon.”

  “Go away,” she whispered again.

  “Solange…”

  Solange didn’t open the door until the helicopter had lifted off. She watched it from the infirmary window until it was a but a tiny speck in the sky. Then she grabbed up her backpack and began to fill it with her traveling necessities. “So this where I start over again, maman.” Once the pack was full, she locked the door behind her and headed up the path to the first village on her rounds.

  “I don’t know about resting for another three months,” Frère Léon said, gingerly swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “That’s all I’ve been doing these past three weeks, and frankly I’m tired of it. Although the nurses are pretty, I will say.”

  “Are you supposed to be looking at the nurses like that?” Paul asked, helping Frère Léon adjust his feet to the floor. The monk was in a flimsy hospital gown, one white support stocking and a single blue scuffy for his right foot as his left was in a cast up to the knee. The surgery had turned out to be far less invasive than it could have been: a few pins in his ankle for support, and he had been practically good to go—at least for several trips up and down the corridor daily.

  “I’m celibate, not dead.” He laughed. “Speaking of which…”

  Paul shook his head. “Not a word. I know she’s out there, but I haven’t been able to catch up with her. With my schedule I don’t have much time to go out and look for her, and when I do manage a few hours, she’s either just been through the village or they have no idea when she’ll come around.”

  “She’s lost a lot in her life,” Frère Léon said, pulling on a hospital robe to cover the gaping back of his gown, then grabbing up his metal walker. “She needs time, and Solange has an odd way of working these things out.”

  “These things.” Paul snorted. “I have no idea what these things are.”

  “I expect that being in love with you is one of them.” Frère Léon winked at one of the nurses lumbering sluggishly through the hall pushing a medicine cart ahead of her. She was an older woman with an unfriendly scowl on her face and obviously at odds with her life. She lit up at Frère Léon’s approach then walked away, smiling. “Wilhelmina there is a lovely woman, really. She just needs someone to coax it out of her.”

  “But sometimes it’s just too risky. I’ve tried to coax it out of Solange but she’s scared to death of the risk.”

  Frère Léon stopped and spun cautiously to face Paul, taking care not to bear down too much on his bad ankle. “Life is about risk. Every step you take is a risk, and every step you don’t take an even bigger risk. I don’t know where my steps will take me just yet, but at least I’m willing to take them. And right now, as you can see, I need help in doing that, just as you do.”

  “It always gets back to Solange, doesn’t it?” Paul said, his voice full of sadness.

  “Does an hour ever go by that you don’t squeeze in a thought or two of her?”

  Paul shook his head. “I admitted that I love her, so thinking about her is natural.”

  “You love her, and here you are, wandering up and down the hall with me.” Frère Léon shook his head. “I’d suggest you go take a little risk yourself. The sooner the better, since it’s time for me to wander over to the vending machine and see what candy bar I’ll be risking today.”

  Paul gave him a hug. “If it’s appropriate for one man to hug another and tell him that he loves him, that’s what I’m doing here. Because I do love you, and I want you to come stay with me in Abbeville once they let you out of here. It’s not the hike in the mountains you want, but I do promise you something close to it.”

  Wilhelmina scooted by the two men, casting them a dubious glance.

  “I might just do that, Paul,” Frère Lèon said. “I might just do that.”

  It didn’t look much different than it had every time Paul had come through the past several weeks. Empty. No life whatsoever. He knew Solange came back here for supplies, and that her father did continue to send fresh medical supplies up. But she was never here when Paul arrived, and perhaps he hadn’t stayed to wait for her because he was afraid of what might happen when they did finally meet again.

  “It is time,” he said aloud, as he sat down on the floor of the infirmary porch. “One way or another, it is time.” He certainly could not go on like this, loving Solange the way he did and not knowing why she kept running from him. Actually, running from everything. He’d been patient. No questions asked about the time she’d stayed at the monastery with the brothers, no questions asked about her special relationship with Frère Léon. Pretty much no questions asked at all, because he respected her privacy, and he truly believed that in time she would be forthright with him. Or he’d hoped so, anyway.

  So now he was going to wait it out. No turning back because she wasn’t there. It was time.

  Almost home. Solange couldn’t wait to sleep in her own bed that night. Maybe two nights. She was tired now. Constantly on the move for over three weeks tended to do that. But the good thing was, she didn’t have much time to think in between her stops. And the villagers were genuinely pleased to see her when she arrived. Several had volunteered to build another structure here—a place to live. Some had offered timber and other goods. “It’s going to work, maman,” she said. “So many people want to help.” And as soon as she had shelter, Ayida and Keskeya would come back to her. She’d run into them in one of the villages and they were eager.

  She wasn’t sure about Frère Léon, however. She hadn’t gone to see him. Actually, she hadn’t gone off the mountain at all. But word spread quickly, and where Frère Léon was concerned, word about him was good. He was making a good recovery, and she would definitely go to see him once he returned to the monastery to recuperate. At least, she assumed he would return to the monastery.

  Of course, he could come back here, too. Perhaps when things were built back up, he would and she could help him find his way back, as he had done for her.

  At the edge of the compound, Solange stopped to look at the rubble. It was still there, the way it had been the day the chapel had collapsed. It always made her catch her breath, seeing it like that. Of course, she knew it was there, yet it never fa
iled to give her a shock. Then, as always, after the reminder of what had happened to the chapel, her next thought was of Paul. She missed him so badly, and she had actually headed toward Abbeville more times than she could count over the weeks, only to turn around when good sense had prevailed. Absence might make the heart grow fonder for a while, but in time he would get over his feelings for her. Maybe he was now. Maybe he was so angry with her that everything else was gone from him.

  She didn’t see him on the porch until she was almost there. He was sitting in the shadows, sleeping, looking scruffy, like he hadn’t shaved in days. Her first thought was to tiptoe away before he woke up. If he’d been staying there, waiting for her, his schedule would eventually pull him back to Abbeville, then on to destinations unknown.

  That would have been the smart thing to do, but just watching the rise and fall of his chest and listening to the gentle little snore…She ached so badly from missing him that pain of it paralyzed her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t run away. And maybe she didn’t want to.

  “Paul,” she whispered, setting down her pack and stepping up onto the porch. “How long have you been waiting here?”

  “Three days,” he said, without opening his eyes.

  Three days. He’d been waiting here on the porch for three days. The thought of it made her want to cry, but she had to find that hard exterior and get herself into it immediately, before what she truly wanted slipped right out. For Paul, she told herself. “I’d think you’d have better things to do with your time,” she replied, hoping it sounded appropriately stiff.

  Solange stepped past him, unlocked the infirmary door, went inside, and closed the door behind her. Then she almost melted into the floor. This was so difficult. But she had to end it here. Once, and for always.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “DO YOU really think shutting the door is going to keep me out?” Paul shouted.

  Solange ran into the other room, shut that door, then stood with her back to it. Her breaths were coming in bursts now, and her hands were trembling. The frightened rabbit running away from the wildcat. If the rabbit was quick enough, or found a sufficiently deep burrow, it would live to run another day. If not, the wildcat had its meal.

  So why did she feel like she was standing in the middle of a big pot of rabbit stew?

  “Come on, Solange,” he yelled, this time from the next room. “I’m sure you want to hear all about Frère Léon.”

  “He’s fine,” she replied. “I’ve had word.”

  “He’s worried about you.”

  “He knows I’m capable of taking care of myself.” Her knees were shaking now. The heat was turning up on that stew pot, and she wished to heaven she’d had a back door built in this infirmary. “Paul, go away. Whatever you think it was we had between us, it wasn’t.”

  “Are you sure?” He was just on the other side of the door now.

  “It was sex, Paul. That’s all. Just sex. One night. One-night stand.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked again.

  “I told you the first night we met that—”

  He pulled the door open and she practically fell into his arms. Once she’d recovered, she scrambled away from him to the opposite side of the room. “I told you the first night we met that I liked my life the way it is. And the way it is, Paul, is without you in it. You were a nice diversion, and I’d hoped that we might be friends, but you took it too far. You’re taking it too far right now, coming here like this, waiting for me to return. That’s crazy!”

  He nodded. “I agree. It’s quite crazy, considering how the woman I love resists me at every turn.”

  “So why do you keep coming back when you know what I’ll do?”

  “Actually, I’ve been asking myself the same question for the past three days. And I’ve got to tell you it’s bloody boring up here all alone. But I knew you’d return eventually so I waited until you did. Which gave me lots of time to think.” He took two steps toward her and she took two steps backwards. “And it wasn’t sex, Solange.” He chuckled. “Well, maybe in the technical sense, that’s what you could call it. But on my part, it was making love to the woman I love. Does that make you uncomfortable, hearing it put like that? That you’re the woman I love? That’s what I’ve been telling myself, over and over these past three days while I was waiting. That I love you and you’re worth fighting my way through this hell you’re putting me through.”

  She took another step backwards. “You can call it what you like, but that doesn’t change the facts between us.”

  “What facts, Solange? That you don’t love me?” He took a step forward.

  “That this will not work between us. You want one thing, I want another.” She sidestepped over to the medicine cabinet, then slipped to the side of it, pressing her back to the wall.

  “If you’re talking professionally, I believe we want the same things. We just go about accomplishing them differently, which isn’t a problem. I’ll have my schedule, you’ll have yours, and we’ll have ours. And we can do that, Solange. We’re both strong enough to know that we don’t have to fit into the typical mold. And who knows? Situations change. We may want to make a new mold together in a year or two. Something where we are together more often.”

  “Doing what, Paul? We’re together more often, doing what?”

  “Doing whatever it is that married couples do, I suppose. Married couples in our situation, anyway.”

  “Like starting a family, putting baby photos in the picture album, taking Paul Junior to play baseball in the Little League?”

  He walked over to her corner and stopped short of it by only two feet, then reached out to brush a tear off her cheek. “Tell me, Solange. I have to know.”

  “There’s nothing to know,” she said, slapping his hand away. The defiance in her was dying, the hard exterior slipping away.

  “Are you afraid of a relationship like your parents had? Is that what it is?”

  “My parents dealt with their situation, and what they had worked for them,” she said, casting her eyes to the floor.

  Paul drew in a ragged breath, then reached out to brush another tear from her cheek. “So tell me,” he said, his voice so tender it broke her heart.

  “Tell you what, Paul? That I don’t want a relationship with you? I thought I’d already said that.”

  “Tell me that you don’t love me.” He titled her head up with his fingertips. “Look into my eyes and tell me that you don’t love me. If you’re telling the truth, I’ll leave, and I won’t bother you again.”

  She looked up into those eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, and prayed she could lie convincingly. “I don’t…” She swallowed hard. “I can’t…” Then she shut her eyes, drew in a steadying breath, and opened them again. “Paul, I don’t…”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “You do. So tell me, Solange.”

  She swiped back a tear and nodded. There was no other way. Paul would not leave her until he knew. So she would tell him her story and pray that pity, or honor, or sense of duty didn’t stop him from leaving.

  Solange took in a calming breath, then began. “I’d been with Mauricio a year when I started feeling bad. Nothing serious, mostly tired. But with my work schedule I didn’t think much about it. Then my periods got heavy and irregular, and I’d have cramps that would double me over.” She stepped away from the wall, going over to the window. Turning her back to Paul, she looked out over the compound to the ruins of the chapel. “It was endometriosis, which didn’t surprise me because the symptoms were classic. When I told Mauricio what it was, he looked at me with revulsion.”

  “Because he was a fool.” Paul stepped up and wrapped his arms around her. “A damn fool.”

  “I struggled for nearly two years with it, until I couldn’t bear it any more and I had a hysterectomy. I was thirty-one, Paul. No babies for Solange. Not ever.”

  “And the jerk left you because of that?”

  “I left him. He wanted children that I couldn’t have, and su
ddenly the whole life we were building wasn’t good enough for him. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t the life that was not good enough. It was me. I ceased to be good enough when my ovaries were removed.”

  “He wasn’t good enough for you, using something like that as an excuse to push you away.”

  “It wasn’t an excuse, Paul. He wanted children. You want children, too. You’ve said that over and over, in many ways.”

  “No wonder you wouldn’t let me kiss your belly that night.”

  “My scar…always the reminder,” she said sadly.

  “So let me get this straight. You can’t have kids and you knew that I wanted them so you decided to make a grand sacrifice by turning me away for my own good. Admit it, Solange. Isn’t that what you were doing?”

  Solange spun around to face him. “Yes, that’s exactly what I was doing. And nothing has changed. Right now, you’re thinking that my condition doesn’t matter, that you love me no matter what. Which turns you into the one making a grand sacrifice since I know what you want, Paul.”

  “That is a pretty grand sacrifice, isn’t it,” he snapped, running his hand angrily through his hair, “for a man who wants a breeding machine, as you think that I do?”

  “Stop it, Paul. Don’t make light of this.”

  “But that’s what you’re doing, Solange. Making light of it. Making light of me. Isn’t it? By not allowing me into the decision, by not telling me what’s motivating your decision…your decision for me, that is making light of everything.” He thundered across the wooden boards of the floor to the two metal chairs lined up against the wall, and kicked the first one he came to. “That’s your father, Solange. Don’t you see that? You’re trying to control the situation to the outcome you want, just the way he does. Always trying to manipulate the situation in the way he…or in this case you…think is best for the other person.”

  “It is best for you, and someday you’ll see that.”

  “Says you!” he shouted.

  “Yes, says me.” She swallowed hard, fighting to stay calm, fighting not to cry. This was harder than she’d thought it would be. He should have heard the pronouncement and walked away. But to fight her?