Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart / Small Town Marriage Miracle

by Meredith Webber / Jennifer Taylor

  ‘I didn’t know what you’d like so I went for coffee and strawberry. Which do you want?’

  It was too domestic to be true—too huge a leap in his life—so it seemed as if he’d been transported to another place in time, another world where nothing was quite real. But he’d lived with pretence for a long time—pretence that he wasn’t in pain, pretence that his scars didn’t matter, pretence that he didn’t love—

  No, he wasn’t going there.

  ‘Coffee would be great,’ he said, no pretence needed but guessing she’d like the strawberry.

  She handed it to him and sat down beside her daughter—their daughter—and he saw immediately where the ‘neat freak', as Caroline had called Ella, had got her ice-cream eating techniques. For Caroline licked just as neatly, turning the cone in her hand, catching any potential drip before it could cause a mess.

  He stood and watched the pair of them, so different in looks, licking at their ice creams, his own melting so sticky liquid was running down his fingers.

  This was definitely an out-of-body experience, a dream, but if it wasn’t, what next? There might be a temporary truce between himself and Caroline, but where did they go from here?

  Anger, although tamped down, still burned inside him. It was where to aim it that bothered him. At fate? Too easy! At himself? Of course, this situation was, at least in part, his own fault for being so determined to return all her mail unopened.

  But try as he may, he couldn’t help but direct most of the anger at her. She’d kept his child from him then staged this grand reconciliation scene. There had to have been another way to have done this! And how hard had she really tried to contact him?

  ‘Your ice cream’s melting all down your hand.’

  He looked at her and realised all his anger should be directed at himself. At himself for still loving her.

  Watching him standing there, looking down at her and Ella, the ice cream melting in his hand, Caroline felt a surge, not of love this time but of pity for him. To have had so much emotion dumped on him, a man, she suspected, who had avoided any emotional connections for the past four years!

  ‘It’s impossible to even try to absorb it all at once,’ she said quietly. ‘Let’s just take one day at a time. Can you tell me a little about the settlement and the clinic?

  I know the people came from up north, but apart from that.’

  ‘Floods and mechanisation in agriculture in the north left a lot of the Toba people without homes or jobs. Why they came to Rosario I’m not sure, but they settled in this area, building, as you saw, basic shelters. At first the government’s reaction was to build affordable housing, but there was never enough. Now it’s different.’

  She remembered things they’d spoken of in Africa, how giving people things—housing, food, clothing—was not as effective as helping them arrange it for themselves.

  ‘Enabling?’ she queried, using a word that had been coming into vogue back then.

  Now he smiled and though her heart leapt she reminded herself it wasn’t personal. He, too, was remembering.

  ‘Yes, the government is taking that attitude,’ he told her. ‘They are trying to develop an environment where the people, using their own resources, can find solutions to their housing problems in particular. The government is there to offer resources and technical help, but the movement is being generated by the people themselves.’

  ‘And your work here is done?’

  Ella had finished her ice cream and was nodding sleepily, but Caroline was reluctant to return to the hut where the four walls enfolded Jorge and herself in false intimacy. She lifted the tired child onto her knee, holding her gently, rocking slightly, knowing Ella would soon be asleep.

  Jorge looked down at what could be a picture entitled Mother and Child and sadness overcame the simmering anger. He threw the soggy remainder of his ice cream into a bin, wiped his hands on the napkins, and returned to the bench.

  ‘I will carry her home,’ he said, and though he sensed Caroline wanted to protest, she stood up and handed the child to him. The little girl was heavy with sleep, and slumped against his chest, but the warmth of her body, the trust in the little arms that snaked around his neck, brought back the disturbance of feelings he’d had earlier when he’d seen her body and felt the connection between them for the first time.

  The connection of blood!

  Back at the hut, Caroline opened the door.

  ‘I should have looked properly earlier. Is the bed in the spare bedroom made up? If it is we can slide her straight into it. It’s not worth waking her to clean her teeth.’

  Teeth-cleaning? For the first time in that momentous day it occurred to Jorge that there was more to fatherhood than falling in love with his daughter. He’d have to think about things like teeth-cleaning and a properly balanced diet—noodles and ice cream surely didn’t count—and then there’d be kindergarten and school and—

  ‘Bed? Made up?’ Caroline repeated, and he shook away the myriad questions that were threatening to swamp him. How often should she clean her teeth? After every meal? Every snack? And was kindergarten good or bad for little people? He’d gone when he was three.

  ‘It’s made up,’ he told Caroline, and followed her as she walked to the second bedroom, pleased he’d installed solar panels on the roof of his hut so she could turn on lights to see her way. She folded back the bed covers and he placed the sleeping child in it, pulling the sheet up over her then brushing the wayward curls off her face.

  ‘That’s her done till morning,’ Caroline said, leading him out of the room, although he’d have liked to stay and just looked at the miracle that had come into his life—no matter she had brought such troubling questions. ‘Most nights she sleeps right through, which is a blessing.’

  He forced himself to leave the room, thinking maybe an early dinner would be the best idea. Caroline would be tired. She could eat and go to bed. Once again he thanked the heavens that he’d put in solar power. To have to eat with her by lamplight would have been too much to handle, for lamplight threw shadows as powerfully beguiling as a magician’s tricks.

  In the kitchen, he found the makings for carbonada—dried beans instead of beef, but he had corn and pumpkin and some other vegetables for the stew. With some flatbread Juan’s wife had made only that morning, it would do for dinner.

  He felt rather than heard her come out of the bedroom and not wanting to look at her again, even in electric light, said, without turning, ‘Did you see the shower out the back when you were exploring earlier? It’s fairly rudimentary but the water should be warm—I made my own solar water-heating system with a big rubber bag that sits on the roof of the bath-house. Test the water as sometimes it gets too hot, and don’t drink it—don’t even clean your teeth in it. I buy it from a truck that comes around but although it’s meant to be safe I don’t trust it. Our drinking water comes in large plastic drums. You might have noticed one by the outside tubs.’

  He’d shut himself away again, Caroline realised as she returned to the bedroom and dug into her backpack for her toiletries bag.

  Why?

  Had putting Ella into bed upset him?

  Did he fear any kind of sentimentality?

  Yet earlier they’d shared the beauty of the sunset and she’d believed he’d opened himself up, just a little, to her. Was he closed off now because he feared a fleeting moment might break through whatever barriers he’d erected within himself?

  She dug further into her backpack and found the long, loose cotton pyjama pants, black with yellow bananas on them, and the yellow T-shirt she wore with them. Good thing she hadn’t splurged on sexy lingerie.

  The bath-house was out the back, he’d said, which meant she’d have to walk past him to go through the back door. Or she could go out the front and walk around, which would be plain stupid and a dead giveaway that he was affecting her far more than she was, apparently, affecting him. So deep breath, and here we go!

  Another loud cry from outs
ide caught her in mid-stride.

  ‘Jorge, Jorge!’

  The desperation in the cry made Caroline drop her clothes and follow him through the door. A light above the clinic door showed a macabre scene, two small men, supporting between them a third, all three seemingly covered in blood.

  Jorge had reached the trio, speaking to them in what must be their native language, helping them into the clinic.

  ‘Only this man is injured,’ he said to Caroline when he realised she’d followed him. He was lifting the patient onto the table in the treatment room as he spoke, shooing the others out.

  Caroline looked with horror at the man’s left leg, which was minus half a foot.

  ‘They’ve tied a tourniquet around his leg but he’s still losing far too much blood. I’ll get some fluid running into him then tidy up the main wound. If you could suture the cuts on his hands and arms, it would be a great help.’

  ‘But, Jorge, he needs a hospital,’ she objected. ‘There are hospitals here, five, I think I read, in the city and in the outlying areas as well. You can’t expect to care for him here.’

  Jorge’s dark eyes glanced briefly at her.

  ‘Later!’ he said firmly. ‘I will explain later. In the meantime, if you will help, Juan will sit with Ella.’

  Apparently taking her agreement for granted, he spoke quickly to Juan who’d appeared from out the back, then unlocked and opened the tall metal cabinet, waving his hand to show her it should contain whatever she might need. Knowing Jorge’s task was urgent, she searched for what she’d need herself. A couple of pairs of gloves, saline for flushing out the wounds, antiseptic for cleaning the skin around them, local anaesthetic and sutures. She found a tray leaning against the cabinet and stacked the things she needed on it, then carried it to the head of the table, setting it down beside the man’s head.

  His skin was grey—probably with pain as well as loss of blood—and she knew they had to work swiftly. But as she unwound the dirty cloth wrapped around his arms and hands she felt nausea rise in her stomach.

  ‘These are defensive wounds,’ she whispered to Jorge. ‘He’s been attacked.’

  ‘Just stitch him up.’ Jorge spoke quietly, calming her with his voice, and she remembered that first and foremost she was a doctor. It wasn’t her business how a patient came to need her skills, only that she must help him. This had been her weakness in Africa, wanting to do more to help the refugees they’d treated there. Yes, they’d been able to improve their lives in small ways and certainly improve their health, but she’d had to learn not to get involved in their struggle to return to their homelands, or to try to understand the reasons they had fled.

  She wrapped a clean cloth around one of the man’s arms and concentrated on the other, swabbing the area around the deep cuts, shuddering as she imagined the axe or machete—what else could make such wounds?—cutting into the man’s flesh.

  ‘I’m giving him a general anaesthetic. It will be more effective as we’d need more locals than we have on hand. This is Lila, one of our nurses. She will watch him.’

  Caroline said hello to the middle-aged woman who was placing a mask over the patient’s mouth and nose as calmly as if a man minus a part of his foot was an everyday occurrence in the clinic. She had also, to Caroline’s surprise, produced a monitor and was attaching leads to the man’s bare chest so they could read his heart and lung movements as they worked.

  ‘Right to go,’ Jorge said, and Caroline saw him carefully pulling back the skin on the man’s foot, flushing the wound, preparing to cut away more bone so it wouldn’t protrude as the healing skin shrank.

  She knew the horror she was feeling was probably reflected on her face so wasn’t surprised when Jorge’s next reminder was far harsher.

  ‘Go,’ he ordered, and she turned her attention to her own job, flushing the gaping wounds before carefully drawing them together, suturing the skin, aware, as she’d always been in Africa, that supplies were probably limited so she had to space the sutures close enough to hold the skin closed but not so close she wasted precious resources.

  But as she worked, although ninety-nine per cent of her concentration was on her patient, that one per cent sped away, back to a street scene in Africa where, in Jorge’s company, she’d once recoiled from the sight of a badly maimed beggar. She’d tried to explain to Jorge that it wasn’t revulsion that had made her flinch but the helplessness she had felt at the fact that some scars and malformations couldn’t be fixed and how unfortunate it was that so much of a person’s self-worth was tied up in how he or she looked.

  Had Jorge remembered that flinch as he’d lain in hospital in France? Had he imagined she’d flinch from him? Did that explain why he’d pushed her away?

  She finished with the deep wound at the base of the man’s thumb, probing first to see if there might be nerve or tendon damage, wondering at the same time if it had been the memory of her recoil—and his reading of it—that had determined Jorge to send the email.

  ‘All we can do is sew him up,’ Jorge said quietly to her, apparently looking up from his task to see her hesitation. ‘It is likely he will have it cut open again next week. See the other scars he has?’

  So Caroline once again pushed the past back where it belonged and sewed, putting dressings over the wounds as she completed her stitching. She moved around the table and unwrapped the other arm, and began again, unaware of the passing of time until she was done, and Jorge touched her arm and she stepped back from the table.

  ‘Lila will clean up here and move him into our little ward and we have a night nurse who will watch over him and call if we are needed. I’ve given him a massive dose of antibiotics and have prepared morphine for him if he wakes in pain. We’ll go home and eat our dinner if it hasn’t completely spoiled.’

  Caroline had stripped off her gloves and was using a wet cloth Lila had handed her to wipe her arms, but what she needed most badly was a shower.

  Not to mention an explanation!

  The shower took precedence.

  ‘Will dinner spoil more if I take five minutes for a shower?’ she asked, and Jorge smiled at her.

  ‘Could I deny it to you when you have helped me out this way? I, too, need a shower, but I can have one here. We’ll meet back at the hut.’

  There had been absolutely nothing in his tone of voice to suggest that the idea of showering together, as once they would have done, had even flashed through his mind, but as Caroline made her way back to the hut she had a stupid longing for what might have been.

  Except if he hadn’t ever loved her they probably wouldn’t still be together, let alone sharing a shower.

  Jorge stood beneath the tepid water, running the soap over the puckered skin on his torso. Caroline had begun her journey back to Australia, frantic with worry over her mother’s diagnosis of breast cancer, when the rocket had hit their small hospital. He knew only what he’d been told of the accident, remembering nothing until he’d woken up in hospital in France, his body broken in so many places he’d wondered if it would ever heal. He’d been splinted and bandaged from head to toe, but not for long, the bandages being removed so he could be plunged into a bath where dead burnt skin was carefully peeled away.

  This treatment had been agonising, but no more agonising than his decision to break up with Caroline. Uncertain not only whether he’d live or die, but whether he wanted to live or die, his one seemingly rational decision had been to send her the email that would keep her from rushing to his side at the first available opportunity. He’d told himself it was because he knew her mother needed her but he knew the motivating factor had been not wanting to see horror and revulsion in her eyes, not wanting the burden of the pity he knew would be in her heart.

  He turned off the water and dried himself, slipping on a loose T-shirt—all his clothes were loose these days, illness having stripped off the weight and physical labour replacing it with muscle—and a pair of bombachas, the baggy cotton trousers worn by horsemen and outdoor worker
s all over the country.

  Now to face the woman who had brought such chaos into his life and such confusion to his mind.

  She was already in his small kitchen area, stirring the mixture in the pot, wearing long, loose pants not unlike the ones he wore, only hers had bright bananas all over them, and on top she wore a faded yellow T-shirt.

  ‘Very fetching,’ he remarked, determined to keep the conversation light. Back when he’d mentioned showers so many memories had flashed through his mind he’d thought he might lose it altogether, but he was back in charge of his thoughts and feelings now—touching his own scarred skin usually had that effect.

  ‘What would they have been fighting about?’ she asked, moving away from the cooking pot as if ceding his right to be in charge. She perched on one of his chairs, propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands as she waited for his answer.

  ‘A bit of tin for a roof, perhaps a scrap of pipe one of them found, a woman? Who would know?’

  ‘I thought the other men, the men who brought him in, would have told you. You spoke to them for some time.’

  She hadn’t changed much, Jorge realised. She’d always questioned everything, especially things she probably shouldn’t question.

  And persistent!

  He’d forgotten how persistent she could be, although her arrival here should have reminded him. Once she got an idea in her head, she followed through with it. Back in Africa she’d pushed and worked and wound officials around her little finger until she’d been allowed to run her clinic for the women in the village near the refugee camp, only to have to leave it when called home to her mother.

  ‘Well?’

  Yes, persistent!

  ‘I gather it was about a woman,’ he said, adding, ‘Isn’t it always,’ with considerable asperity, for his thoughts had led him back down paths he hadn’t wished to travel.