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

by Meredith Webber / Jennifer Taylor

  ‘He was attacked with an axe or machete over a woman?’

  She’d lifted her head, her eyes watching him more closely now, as if she might read a lie or evasion in his reply.

  ‘I suppose the other man just grabbed whatever was handy.’

  ‘But the hospital? You didn’t want to send him there.’

  He turned the gas down under the pot and leaned against the small kitchen bench.

  ‘Sending him to a hospital would involve the police. These people have a fear of being locked away and they also do not fare well in a general prison population. They are small, and too fiery for their size. The settlement has its own wardens—the two men who brought him to me are wardens—and they will deal with him and with his attacker in the appropriate way.’

  Caroline shuddered at his words, although she knew Jorge wouldn’t condone further violence as ‘an appropriate way’. There was more to the story than Jorge was telling—perhaps more than he knew—but here she was, again wanting to probe deeper, to learn more, when it was, as he had used to say, none of her business. Only he’d always said it in Spanish, Qué te importa, so it sounded as if her query had been rude, his words a ‘stay out of it’ command.

  Well, she’d stay out of local affairs—after all, it seemed as if she wouldn’t be here even for a full month. Where she’d be when Jorge left she wasn’t certain, but it would be somewhere near where he was. She hadn’t come all this way to give in easily. Besides, now he’d met Ella, Caroline was reasonably sure he’d want to get to know her.

  Perhaps it was time to talk about the future. Surely she could do that without being told, ‘Qué te importa'!

  ‘You said you wouldn’t be here for much longer. Where will you go? To another squatter settlement like this in another city?’

  He looked blankly at her, as if he hadn’t understood a word she’d said, but then blinked himself back from wherever he had been.

  ‘Home,’ he said, but there was little joy in the word.

  ‘Home to your father? He is ill?’

  She sounded concerned but, then, she’d always been empathetic and perhaps not having known her own father had listened avidly to stories of his. But Jorge had to answer her, and how to answer when he wasn’t one hundred per cent sure of his motives himself?

  ‘He is not ill—the very opposite—but he is not getting any younger and I feel not a duty to return but something pulls me back there. He gave so much of his time to me, bringing me up when my mother died, taking time out of his day to do it when he could have left it to Antoinette, that I feel the least I can do is give him a little of my time.’

  ‘Did you go straight home to his place from the hospital in France? Did you recuperate there? ‘

  Caroline sounded interested enough for Jorge to explain further. Besides, talking about his father—about that time—took his mind off the other things he was feeling with Caroline here in his little hut.

  ‘I stayed until I could walk again and my internal wounds had healed. Then I came up here. My father understood my need to get away for a while, to rebuild myself, both physically and mentally, and he would accept my absence if I felt my work here was necessary—if there was no one else who would do it. But the article you must have read on the internet was old, and now I have the clinic operating, the government is happy to step in and staff it.’

  ‘And back in Buenos Aires, you have a job to go to?’

  She was watching him closely, as if sensing that returning to the city of his youth, back among people who had known him as a handsome man, working with people with whom he had trained, was going to be hard for him, and because he knew himself well enough to accept that it was nothing more than pride that would make it difficult, he hoped his face was as unrevealing as the words he used.

  ‘As you said earlier, doctors are always in demand.’

  Was that enough?

  Would she stop questioning him now?

  Move so the ray of light from the lamp above her—the ray that had found a strand of silver hair to reflect off—would not be picking up the colour?

  Silky!

  Her hair had felt like silk—or maybe softer still, water washing through his fingers. They had loved with a fierce passion but had shared tenderness as well, not worshipping each other’s bodies but learning them, giving and receiving caresses as soft as angels’ wings.

  He had the feeling he’d been split into levels like some multi-storied building, one level in the past with silky hair and angels wings, another, above that, the hidden fire that attraction had reignited in his belly, and on the top level the person he was pretending to be, talking calmly—he hoped—operating normally, keeping up the pretence that his world hadn’t shifted beneath his feet, and his life hadn’t been thrown into disarray.

  Up on the top level he returned to stir the pot.

  ‘Do you want to eat now? I imagine you must be exhausted.’

  How was it possible to make such conversation, sound so normal, when his mind was replaying images of long ago—a film of love and longing, of passion and then pain—such pain—emotional and physical …?

  Now he’d mentioned exhaustion. It dropped down on Caroline like a shroud but, tired as she was, she couldn’t help but wonder if Jorge’s offer to feed her now wasn’t simply because he wanted to get rid of her, if only for the night.

  She’d once thought she could read his mind, but probably she’d only imagined what he had been thinking—certainly imagining he’d loved her. Although that had been more than imagination for he’d said the words.

  But words were empty things without emotion, deceiving those who wanted to believe them.

  Was that how it had been?

  She’d believed he’d loved her because she’d wanted to believe it?

  She shook her head, angry at her thoughts. She was here to find a father for her daughter, not a lover, for all she might have imagined other scenarios. And the fact that Jorge had made it obvious he didn’t want her here only made her more determined.

  ‘Now? You are ready to eat? ‘

  His voice jerked her out of the half-dream state into which she’d sunk.

  ‘Sorry! Yes, please,’ she replied. ‘I must be more tired than I realised. I thought I’d answered you earlier.’

  She had to stay awake long enough to eat. Talking would help. What had they been talking about?

  Certainly not love.

  Work, that was it. Even in her befuddled state she could manage work conversation.

  ‘Do you want to specialise in anything when you get back to Buenos Aires? ‘

  He was serving the stew onto two tin plates so didn’t reply immediately.

  ‘I’m going into research.’

  He said the words with the same abruptness that he dumped her plate of stew onto the table in front of her, turning away before returning with two spoons.

  ‘What a waste! You’re the most empathetic doctor I’ve ever met!’ She knew he’d intended the manner of his reply to cut the conversation off, but the scar on his face was the proverbial elephant in the room, there but unmentioned.

  Time to point at it—to talk about it!

  ‘If you think people would be repulsed by your scar, you’re being precious,’ she declared.

  ‘Only some scars are visible!’ he growled, glaring at her across the table, his dark eyes as hard as stones.

  ‘Of course,’ she agreed, hearing pain he’d probably never spoken of in his voice. ‘But unfortunately it’s the visible ones people react to. They don’t see the broken bits inside or the mess terrible injuries can cause in the way a patient thinks of himself. But it seems to me in just the few hours I’ve been here that you’ve risen above that—that you’ve rebuilt yourself the way you built this house, bit by bit.’

  Had she made too light of it that he pushed his plate away and walked out of the room, out of the back door of the hut?

  Should she follow him? Put her arms around him?

  Kiss the scarred
skin and show him how little it meant to her?

  But if he didn’t love her—if his words had been the truth—how humiliating that would be for both of them, and she sensed he’d suffered enough humiliation already, enduring people’s stares and carelessly hurtful remarks.

  So much for pointing at the elephant!

  She ate her stew, which was extremely tasty, scraped his back into the saucepan and put the lid on it, then washed both plates. She found an earthenware pot, painted with broad white and black stripes, perhaps local pottery, and filled it with water from the container outside, sneaking looks into the darkness to see if Jorge was lurking somewhere.

  Lights were on in the clinic so presumably he was over there. Perhaps their patient had a fever. Perhaps he had to talk to the people he called wardens.

  Sighing with frustration—there was nothing she could do—and a little disappointment as well—she’d have liked so much to sit and talk with Jorge—she brushed her teeth, drank some water, then went to bed, pulling a book out of her handbag but finding it too difficult to concentrate on the words, so letting it slide and remembering instead.

  Her light was on but she was asleep, asleep as he’d so often seen her, with an open book resting on the bed covers, a little bundle beneath the quilt beside her showing where Ella lay. He should have turned out the light and walked away, but he indulged himself for a moment, doing nothing more than looking, not at the bundle that was his daughter but at Caroline as she slept. Her silvery hair was splayed across the pillow, and her pale eyelashes rested on faintly pink cheeks, but it was her mouth that drew his gaze—that wide, generous mouth with the full, rosy lips.

  Jorge sighed. He knew about physical attraction, had shared it with the women he’d had in his life since Caroline, not many but enough to know that physical attraction without love was not enough—well, not for him.

  But another love had come into his life as well—a simpler love to feel, though perhaps a far more complex love in the long term.

  He looked from the mother to the child, the only visible bit a tangle of brown curls.

  ‘Que te duermas con los angelitos,’ he murmured, using the saying first his mother and then his father had used to him as they’d turned out his light at night.

  ‘I hope you sleep with little angels.’

  It sounded just as good in English.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TO CAROLINE’S surprise, Jorge made no objection to her attending the clinic the following day. In fact, he offered a young female nurse as an interpreter for those who didn’t speak Spanish and suggested Caroline conduct the mothers’ and children’s clinic due to start at 8:00 a.m.

  ‘The nurse usually conducts it,’ Jorge had explained over a breakfast of fresh sweet pastries and delicious, milky coffee. They were on their own as Ella had woken with the birds and insisted on being taken outside to explore her new surroundings.

  ‘Go back to bed,’ Jorge had told Caroline. ‘I will take her to the bakery up on the main road. If she tires, I can carry her on my shoulders.’

  He’d not only bought the pastries but had fed Ella then watched her play with the children who had gathered outside until Mima had appeared to take over her child-watching duties, and Caroline, feeling jet-lagged and heavy-eyed, had dragged herself out of bed.

  ‘The young nurse who runs the clinic comes to me if she needs medical help or will send a woman or child to me if necessary, but we have been encouraging the women to come so they and the children become used to the place in case they have to use it in the future. I suppose it is a form of a well-women’s clinic.’

  To Caroline’s surprise, it seemed more like a play-group—a chance for the mothers to get together while the children played. The topics of conversation were mainly health-related—how to prevent infection developing from minor cuts and scratches, how to teach their children to always wash their hands after going to the toilet and before eating—but some of the women brought up personal problems as well.

  ‘It’s the same the whole world over,’ she said to Jorge later. They were back in the hut, Ella asleep after a hectic morning, the two of them stepping back from the doorway where they’d been watching their sleeping daughter. At times like this, Caroline found herself relaxing, just slightly, in Jorge’s presence, professionalism keeping her emotions in check.

  ‘Actually, I think there’s a song like that,’ she continued. ‘My grandmother used to sing it. But those women worry about making sure their children get the proper food they need to grow and while their worries are more basic—is there enough food?—mothers in the Western world are worrying that their kids might be hooked on junk food.’

  She stopped, thinking back, then frowned at Jorge.

  ‘Is there enough food?’ she asked.

  He nodded, but so slowly she had to wonder.

  ‘Well?’ she finally demanded, and he smiled, melting her insides and showing her how thin the crust of professionalism was. She strengthened it with willpower.

  ‘There were times when a lot of the health problems these people had were perhaps not caused by malnutrition but lack of a balanced diet was certainly a contributing factor. It was one of the reasons so many of the Toba moved south.’

  ‘And one of the reasons you became involved with the settlement here? Because you could see more needed to be done to stabilise their lives?’

  ‘Many people have worked, and still work, to help the Toba. I am only one small cog in the wheel. Other people see different needs, some put an emphasis on accommodation, others on education. I learned that although there are plenty of excellent medical facilities in the city, these people, for a variety of reasons, didn’t like to use them, hence the clinic.’

  ‘And now you have the structure in place, you’ll move on. But will whatever you intend to do be enough of a challenge for you? ‘

  Persistent again, Jorge thought.

  But did he have to answer?

  He looked at the woman who had chased him halfway across the world. Yes, she’d had a reason, wanting her daughter—his daughter—to know her father, but it still must have taken a lot of guts to do it—even to face up to him again after he had treated her so cruelly.

  So, didn’t she deserve an answer?

  He offered a smile first, although painfully aware that smiling drew attention to his ruined face. Ruined face? That was vanity talking when it was the internal scarring—the mental scarring he’d suffered when he’d thought he’d never recover—that had really affected his life and made him deny his love for this woman.

  Not that he intended to admit it …

  ‘Don’t you think going to work in the city, working with other people, getting again used to the stares and murmurs and, yes, kindness won’t be enough of a challenge?’

  ‘Oh, Jorge,’ she whispered, but as she stepped towards him, her intention to put her arms around him and hug him quite clear, he stepped away. It broke his heart to do it—quite literally, it felt, from the pain that stabbed his chest—but he couldn’t bear her pity—couldn’t accept it—not from Caroline …

  ‘We’ve the afternoon off—do you want to drive into the city and have a look around? There are any number of new high-rise buildings but in amongst them some wonderful examples of early twentieth-century architecture, and great plazas along the river bank.’

  The stricken expression on her face, the one he’d put there with his rejection, eased and he saw her almost physically pull herself together, straightening her shoulders, lifting her head, tilting her chin.

  ‘If you’ve the time to spare, it would be wonderful,’ she told him. ‘Ella usually sleeps for an hour. We can go when she wakes up. Will we be able to get lunch somewhere in the city?’

  He’d regretted the offer almost as soon as he’d made it as they’d be sitting in the car together for three-quarters of an hour each way and being anywhere in Caroline’s vicinity was causing his body enough tumult without plunking them both in a car together.

  �
��We’ll stop on the waterfront—near the river, the Paraná. There are many beautiful parks along the river bank.’

  Apparently his reluctance and regret hadn’t manifested themselves in his voice for Caroline showed every indication of excitement as she said, ‘I’ll get changed,’ before disappearing into the bedroom.

  He could tell her he’d changed his mind, plead paperwork—there was plenty with the handover of the clinic looming—but now he’d suggested it he realised just how badly he wanted go somewhere—anywhere—with Ella, and this need to be with her was proving stronger than his need to avoid Caroline.

  Ella!

  His child—his daughter.

  ‘Mi hija.’

  He whispered words he’d never thought to say and felt a swell of what could only be pride.

  And love!

  But the idea of having a child—a daughter—terrified him as much as it thrilled him. He knew children were far more accepting of people who were ‘different’ than most adults were, but again he felt actual pain in his chest at the thought of his daughter seeing him as ugly and therefore frightening.

  Not that she’d shown any signs of it when he’d spent time with her so far, confidently going off down the road with him that morning, chatting away, drawing his attention to this bird or that flower, her happy ‘Look, Hor-hay!’ filling his heart with love every time she said it.

  Would her calling him Papá give him more joy?

  Could it?

  ‘Well, I’m ready, so all we need to do is wait for Ella to wake up.’

  Caroline was back, changed out of the trousers she’d been wearing earlier into faded—from age, not fashion, he imagined—jeans, the neat navy blouse replaced with a bright pink T-shirt with a huge glittery butterfly on it.

  ‘Ella’s Christmas present to me,’ she said, pointing at the shirt with a slight colouring of embarrassment. ‘Of course, she picked it out herself and insisted we buy it so I could hardly refuse to accept it.’

  ‘It suits you. You should wear pink more often,’ Jorge found himself saying, which deepened the colour in Caroline’s cheeks.