The Baby Who Stole the Doctor's Heart

by Dianne Drake

  He wanted her. The question was, how?

  “No luck inside,” Eric shouted from the other end of the corridor. “I’m going to leave several of my people searching inside the lodge in case she came back, but the rest of us are headed out. And Neil’s here with his group. They’re starting at the bottom of the foothills and working their way up. We’re going to the top and start working our way down.”

  “I’ll start on the middle ground, see if I can track anything,” Mark said. “Angela’s with me.” In front of everyone he gave her a tender kiss on the lips, wishing it was the time and place for more, then dashed off to huddle with Neil and Eric for another moment, as the three of them took one final look at the grid they’d laid out for the search.

  “He doesn’t scowl anymore,” Emoline said. “I wondered why. Guess I have my answer now.”

  Emoline had her answer. So did Angela. But her answer came with so many other questions…questions she didn’t have time to think about right now.

  “Time to take a break,” Mark said, dropping down into a bed of pine needles. They’d been searching for three hours, nonstop. The area was relatively small, because Mark, Eric and Neil all agreed that Aimee wouldn’t have wandered very far. She was too young, would have been too frightened and too cold. So the search assignments were specific and the areas fairly limited. But with so many places to hide…behind rocks, under bushes…the search was exhaustive, and everyone was literally turning over everything they encountered on their various paths. It was slow. Frustrating. Somber.

  “Do you suppose Karen is lying about this?” Angela asked, dropping down next to him. “I know we considered that earlier, and maybe…”

  That thought had crossed his mind. More than once. “The thing with a search is that sometimes you don’t know. The best-case scenario would be that Aimee is safe and sound somewhere her mother has hidden her. But you can’t count on that. I mean, what if she really is lost? Or what if Karen has hidden her somewhere that could be harmful? In a situation like this, there are always so many things to consider, and the only thing a rescuer can do is assume there’s a reason to search, and hope that, ultimately, there isn’t.”

  “Thank you for letting me come with you. I feel like I might be slowing you up, though. And if I am…”

  “It’s a basic search. Right now we’re just walking and looking for signs. Anybody with a good eye can do it. And you’re not slowing me up.”

  “But what you’re going to teach…”

  “Advanced field technique. Field medicine. Survival. It goes well beyond the looking stage. It’s what I…” He stopped, swallowed hard. “I grew up searching. In some ways, it’s all I’ve ever done.”

  “For whom, Mark?”

  “Remember how I didn’t want you to quit on Scotty?”

  Angela nodded. “You were right about that. And he’s doing so much better right now.”

  “Well, I wasn’t right for the reason you think. When I was Scotty’s age, my father quit on me. Simply got up one day and left. Never came back. And the thing about it was he blamed me. It wasn’t a case of the child taking on the blame for his parents’ separation. My old man came right out and told me it was my fault he was leaving, that he’d had enough of me, that I’d taken up too much of his time. So I’m this seven-year-old kid who has absolute knowledge that it was my fault…like Scotty would have if we’d have him leave camp. And I know you weren’t going to quit on him, Angela, but that’s how he would have seen it.”

  She shut her eyes. Shook her head. “I know. And I’m glad you argued me out of it. I wasn’t…wasn’t thinking.”

  “Don’t be hard on yourself, because you were thinking…about everybody involved. It’s just that I was that seven-year-old little boy who got rejected, and I know what can happen. My dad, in so many words, told me I was the worst kid in the world and I believed him, spent years trying to prove him right. I became a problem child. Not bad, but hard to handle. My mother’s idea of parenting was not getting involved, so after he left I started turning myself into the child he told me I was. His rejection of me gave me free rein to be the child he rejected. But the thing was, I spent my whole childhood looking for him. When I was young, I wanted to beg him to come back, wanted to promise him I’d be a good boy. Then later on, as I got more and more angry, I wanted to confront him show him just how bad I was. I was planning it in my mind. Always searching…crowds, stores, on the street. That’s all I did.”

  “That had to be awful,” Angela said. “Did you ever find him, or did he ever come back?”

  “No. By the time I was eleven or twelve, I’d given up on that and was concentrating on being that bad child he’d predicted, fully inundated in the things bad children do.”

  “Not bad child,” she said. “Hurt child. Heartbroken child.”

  “Except at that age you don’t understand the emotions. It was just boiling out of me in anger.

  “I was shoplifting, committing vandalism, bullying…nothing serious, but things that put me well on the way to bigger crimes. And I knew I was justified because I was bad enough to break up my parents’ marriage, which made stealing the occasional candy bar seem petty by comparison. Then one day there were three of us in the corner mini-mart. One of the guys was stealing cigarettes, one was after beer. I was going for the usual candy. We were fourteen, by the way. The only thing I can say in my defense was that I didn’t smoke or drink. Anyway, we were busy helping ourselves, and we got caught. It was my first time, my buddies were pros. Had been arrested a few times already. No big deal to them, but it was to me when I was taken, in handcuffs, into the courtroom to be arraigned after a night in jail, huddled in the corner with my back to the wall.

  “At that point, the bad kid wasn’t quite as cocky as he thought he was, and he…I was scared to death. But on my way to the courtroom, I encountered a man. To me, he just seemed strange, standing there staring at me, while I was waiting my turn to go into the court. He asked me if my parents were there to stand with me. I smarted off some stupid answer to him, and he simply smiled at me. Then he asked me if this was my first time. Naturally, I was ready to square off with him…my big, bad attitude on the defense. I told him it was my first time getting caught. Then he asked me the oddest question… Will you get caught next time?

  “Next time? Did I want a next time? I’d spent the longest, roughest night of my life in the corner of that jail, and hated it. Well, I’m not sure what he saw in me, what he read in my face…he never told me. But he asked me if I wanted another chance. I didn’t hesitate to say yes. And that’s the day my real life started. Tom Evigan went to the judge and arranged to mentor me, while my buddies went off to lockup for six months. It seemed Tom volunteered medical services to the juvenile detention facility, which was my big break because he was the one who kept me out of jail. I can’t even imagine what would have happened to me if he hadn’t found me… Anyway, Tom required me to do one year cleaning his office floors, swabbing the messes, emptying trash cans. And one day a week he took me to the hospital where I…” Mark paused. Smiled, remembering. “Let’s just say that my duty there was a real eye-opener for a cocky teenager. If there was a bedpan that needed to be collected, or a vomit basin rinsed out, I got the call. A whole year of that. A whole year of seeing other things going on that were…worthwhile. Tom was also the one who persuaded me to turn my searching into something useful. He was the base-camp medic for an outfit that did rescue in the California wilds, and he started letting me tag along… Saved my life literally by taking the time to help me.”

  Angela didn’t say anything for a moment, but tears were welling in her eyes when she thought of Mark as a child who’d always looked for his father, a child who’d shouldered so much brutal blame. “I’m so sorry for all the things you went through, Mark. There’s no excuse for any parent to do that to a child and I don’t even know what to say except I’m glad Tom found you.” She worried about Sarah, though. Would she always search for her father?
>
  As if reading her thoughts, Mark reached out and squeezed her hand. “My mother was weak. Emotionally absent. But Sarah has you and you’ll never let anything like what happened to me happen to her. It takes the kind of love you have for your daughter, and it doesn’t matter if it’s from one parent, two or an entire army. It’s only about the love.”

  “Parenting scares me, though.” Angela leaned her head against his shoulder. Liked the feel of his strength. Liked the feel of the arm that closed in around her and pulled her closer. “I keep wondering what will happen if she grows up and makes the same bad choices I did.”

  “We all make bad choices, but we make good ones, too. Somewhere along the way we just have to realize that the good ones outweigh the bad ones. And the good choices are never so far away when we have someone who loves us waiting, with open arms, for us to come back.”

  “Did you ever get over it? Over your father rejecting you?”

  “Yes and no. Remember when you accused me of having those unrealistic expectations of myself? You were right. I’ve always put myself up there higher than anybody else, probably trying to prove to my father that I wasn’t that bad kid he’d walked out on. Tom Evigan turned me around in so many ways, but he couldn’t remove that hurt little boy from me. Not completely. But I don’t think your ex-husband would hurt Sarah that way. You said he’s not mean.”

  “He’s not. He just doesn’t want her.”

  “Which is something you’ll have to deal with when she’s old enough. Because it will have its impact, and I’m not going to lie to you about it. At some point Sarah will be hurt, but you’ll be prepared to deal with it, to help her through it. And she’ll know your love, Angela. That’s what’s important. She’ll know your love.”

  “You knew Tom Evigan’s love, and look what you’ve done with your life because of it. You shouldn’t have had to prove yourself to anyone, not even your father.” She laid her hand on his chest, over his heart. “Everything you do comes from here. And leaving medicine to shake yourself of your dad’s shadow won’t shake anything.”

  “My dad’s shadow?”

  “He said you were a bad boy, and after your father-in-law died and you blamed yourself, didn’t that just prove it again?”

  “When I leave medicine, I won’t have to deal with that shadow anymore, will I?”

  “But don’t you love being a doctor? At the beginning of the day, and even at the end of the day, isn’t that what your life is about? The thing that matters most to you?”

  “What matters most is…” He shrugged. “Hell, I don’t even know where I’m going, so until I do, I don’t have a right to anything that matters most.”

  “When Brad left me, I was a mess. I wanted him back. Took him back a couple of times, only to find out that the more I was away from him, the more I didn’t need him. The adversity is what made me stronger. What gave me direction. Maybe more direction than I need because I do tend to hide behind it, as I’m only beginning to realize. Nevertheless, I did have direction. Knowing what I don’t want to be is what’s turning me into what I do want to be. And that’s what you need for yourself, Mark. Not so much a clear understanding of where you’re going as a clear understanding of where you’re not going.”

  “Like I said before, I didn’t expect to meet you here, Angela. Didn’t expect to find anything good.”

  She snuggled in a little closer. “The way you say it sounds like you almost think that meeting me was a bad thing.”

  “Not a bad thing. Maybe more of a challenge than I’d wanted at this point in my life. But definitely not bad.” He held on tightly for a moment, then finally pushed himself up, extended a hand to Angela and pulled her along with him. “Ten minutes are up, and now it’s time to get going again. And for what it’s worth, I appreciate what you said. I’m not where I need to be yet, to take it to heart. But I want to, Angela. I want to because I respect you. Respect everything about you, even though I haven’t been good about showing that.”

  “Or saying it?” she asked, smiling.

  He chuckled. “You really do want a pound of my flesh, don’t you?”

  “More than a pound, Mark. I want much more.” She brushed the pine needles off her backside. “So, lead on. I’m right behind you.”

  “Yeah, like I believe that one. You’ve been a step ahead of me from the first time I laid eyes on you. Thing is, I never realized that until now.”

  “But do you respect that, too?” Laughing, she grabbed up her little backpack of supplies and slung it over her shoulder.

  He grabbed her by the backpack, pulled her over to him, but long enough only for a quick kiss. “I love it, and you, and my plan is to show you just how much later on. But right now I’m going to climb up there on that ridge…” he pointed to a narrow, rocky shelf above their heads “…and see if that vantage point is better than what we’re seeing from down here. You go parallel to me down here.”

  She watched him scale the rock face. It was an easy thing for him to do. Not steep, not particularly dangerous. No harness, no equipment whatsoever. Just one man with so much ability… A lump formed in her throat as she watched him. Could she leave White Elk? Take Sarah and go with him, follow the man until the man found his dream?

  If home was where the heart was, then her answer was yes. Because her heart was with Mark. And she couldn’t imagine her life without him, no matter where that life took her. As much as she loved White Elk, she loved Mark Anderson more. And that was her answer, the only answer she needed.

  “Head north,” he shouted down to her, as he skimmed his way along the rock ledge.

  She did, taking in everything around her. The pine-tree cover had let little snow in, so the walk was mostly on a bed of needles, with only snowy patches here and there. No tracks to find. No sign that anyone had come this way. But it was an easy walk, one a child might have taken. And not so far from the lodge that she couldn’t run straight back there in ten minutes, if she had to. A good place to bring her camp kids…her kids. Another lump formed in her throat when she thought about how she might not be here in another eighteen months. She did love her JD camp, more and more every day. Even with the frustrations, like Scotty’s proclivity to find food. Just last night Walt Graham had reported impressive gains in blood-sugar control for all but a couple of the children. Physical activity was up, eating problems were stabilizing. All in all, her kids were getting healthier and she couldn’t wait for the six-week interval, when they’d all have a follow-up A1C test. She was expecting big things. Good things.

  But she was expecting good things with Mark, too. Things that would be good for the rest of her life. And even though he hadn’t asked her to come with him, she knew he would. For her, for Sarah, going with him would be a good decision. The right decision.

  They’d gone several hundred feet when she spotted something in the rock. Not an opening so much as a crack. “Mark,” she called up to him, “I see something. Down here…not sure…” She dashed off the trail, went straight to the rock face beneath him, looked at just the tiniest crevice going straight into the rock. Immediately, she flashed her light inside, didn’t see anything. But the little mound of snow off to the side…was that a partial footprint in it? She couldn’t tell, it was so chopped up. “Aimee,” she called, not so loudly as to frighten the girl, if it turned out she’d crawled in there. “Can you hear me, sweetheart? Aimee?”

  She listened. No noise.

  Mark came down off the ledge in an instant, and knelt beside her. “Anything?” he whispered.

  Angela shook her head, but pointed to the area where the snow was disturbed.

  He arched his eyebrows in admiration. “Aimee, it’s Dr. Mark. We’ve come to take you home now. Can you hear me?”

  They listened. Still, nothing.

  “Aimee?” he tried again. “If you’re in there, please tell me so we can come get you.”

  This time there was a faint rustling. “An animal?” Angela asked, looking at the size of the opening
. “Nothing much larger than a small animal could have crawled in there, could it?”

  He shook his head. “Aimee?”

  This time the response was a tiny moan, and his heart pumped an extra beat. The problem was, he was too large to fit the opening. And even if he could get through, if the passage narrowed in there, he might end up being the one who needed rescuing. “Eric,” he said, into his walkie-talkie, “I’m pretty sure we’ve got her located, don’t know her condition, haven’t seen her yet, but we’ve also got a problem. She’s crawled into a crevice, and I don’t think she’s coming out of there on her own. I can’t get in, and we need someone small enough—”

  “I’m small enough,” Angela said without hesitation.

  Mark shook his head, and continued talking to Eric. “I’m not sure who you’ve got, but we’re talking tiny.”

  “I’m tiny,” Angela interrupted.

  “But not experienced. Look, Angela…”

  “Neil’s got a couple of people with him who might work,” Eric said. “Let me get that taken care of and I’ll get back to you.”

  “So we just sit here and wait?” Angela snapped. “You’re too big, so we just have to sit here twiddling our thumbs? Because I can do this, Mark. I can go in, see what kind of shape she’s in, maybe comfort her…”

  “I said no!”

  “I’m not your father, Mark. I’m not going in and never coming back. There’s a child in there who needs me. Needs you to let me do this. She could be injured. Broken bones. Hypothermic. Concussion. I’ve studied those things, I know what they’re about, and I know what they can do to a child her age. She’s been out for hours, maybe suffering exposure, and for your information I know about that, too. And I can do this because I have you here to help me.” She took a deep breath. “So let me go. More than that, Mark. Help me go.”

  Mark studied her for a moment. The hardness in his eyes softened and he shook his head in surrender then smiled. “You do have me, Angela. Now, put on your climbing harness,” he said. “Just like I taught you. You’ll wear it in and if you can’t get out on your own, I’ll pull you out.”