by Lexy Timms
Still, the resort was an hour away, or 45 minutes if you were angry and taking it out on the road. She’d give him some time to cool down, and if she hadn’t heard from him in half an hour she’d send out a search party. Besides, Joseph was working on the tree line; as a native Kriol, he knew the jungle as well as Mel could have found her way through Minneapolis.
You really want to leave him alone in the jungle for that long?
She stared uneasily at the foliage. To hell with half an hour, she’d just sit there and fuss until he was back where he couldn’t hurt himself, and she knew it. “Joseph!” she called.
Within moments Joseph was trotting over to her; his t-shirt, advertising American cigarettes, was pitted and torn.
“Joseph…” She sighed. “You look like a beggar!” She indicated his shirt.
His smile, bright and open against the rich dark skin of his face, was the smile of a mischievous boy who knew he could charm his way out of any trouble his natural instincts got him into. “Thank you, Doctor,” he replied. “But I’m not going to wear good clothing while beating back the jungle. When I go back on duty I’ll change.”
“You’re not going to work all day in this heat and then go back on your shift.” Mel tried to stay stern with him, but it was hard to refuse Joseph. “I need an orderly more than I need a gardener.”
“Without a gardener, Doctor, the jungle will own your clinic and you won’t have need for an orderly.”
She rolled her eyes. These little arguments got her absolutely nowhere, yet she somehow always seemed to fall into them with this man. If he wasn’t so good at his job… “Joseph, do me a favor will you?”
His only response was a lifted eyebrow, but the smile dimmed a little as he concentrated on what she was saying.
“We have a new doctor, a replacement for Dr. Martin.”
“Martin is not returning?” He seemed surprised.
“Yes, Dr. Martin is returning, Joseph, but not for a few weeks. This man, Dr. Layton, is filling in until Dr. Martin returns.”
“I would very much like to meet him.” He smiled again, looking very relieved.
“Dr. Layton’s a plastic surgeon.” Mel said, surprising herself. She didn’t know why it was important that he know that. Perhaps she was hoping he would be as outraged as she had been upon discovering Layton’s specialty. If that was case, she was severely disappointed.
“He uses plastic for his surgery?” Joseph frowned, and she had the distinct feeling he was searching out terms in whatever Spanish-English dictionary he had stored in his brain.
“No, it’s… it’s a slang term; it means he alters bodies, he makes women’s breasts larger and make their butts bigger or smaller…”
“Now I really want to meet him.” Joseph’s grin was back, bigger than ever, eyes wide with delight.
“He also does facelifts,” she added sourly. Seeing the expression on Joseph’s face, she decided to move on as quickly as possible. “The point is, Joseph, he just walked into the jungle, over there.” She pointed to where the thick vegetation had swallowed the man whole.
Joseph blinked. “You let him go into the jungle alone?”
“Well…”
“Does he know about jungles?”
“There aren’t very many in L.A.…”
“That is very bad, Doctor. You must hate him a great deal.”
“There’s nothing out there within miles that could hurt him.” The excuse sounded weak to her own ears, and Joseph’s neutral expression wasn’t helping. It was positively withering with neutrality. “Look, just find him and bring him back, okay? Please?”
“Of course, Doc.” He hesitated a moment, and the smile exploded on his face again. “Good thing I wore an old shirt today after all!”
Mel sighed and slapped the tall man’s arm, shoving him in the direction of the greenery. She smiled in spite of herself. “Just go!”
Joseph turned and bounded across the clearing, vanishing in the same place where Layton was last seen. Mel knew that Joseph had already found the trail of his passage, and would soon catch up with Layton.
She shook her head and turned, wandering back to the office where she could revel in the air conditioning. Even if the room was cramped and filled with supplies, at least it was an escape from the unrelenting heat. For that matter, at least she had supplies. Some of it was courtesy of Doctors Overseas, but the bulk of it was from the assistance of the resort. It wasn’t all that long ago that medical supplies were few and far between.
She sat heavily in the office chair, which pitched sideways as a bolt popped out and clattered to the floor. Again. More and more, this was becoming a daily occurrence. She sighed, rose, and crawled under the desk to recover it. Medicine was coming in regularly now, the clinic now looked like a clinic and not a location shot for an episode of M*A*S*H*, but office furniture wasn’t high on the list of priorities.
She slid the bolt back into the hole, testing the chair cautiously. The back was wobbling, but at least it was safe to sit again. Hopefully.
She sat gingerly and leaned forward to rest her head on the desk. In the cool of the window A/C, she let herself drift away to her memories, to the nightmares that haunted her.
Chapter 4
Dr. Brant Layton, M.D. and cosmetic surgeon, drew upon the vast history of his education and training and then came to the realization that he was hopelessly lost. In a jungle. In Brazil…no…Belize…? Someplace that had jungles that doctors got lost in.
A decade of higher learning and all his experiences were less than useless, except for the Tarzan movies that had played on the little television in his room when he was a boy. Those movies, at least, gave him solid, tangible things to fear. Lions and tigers, maybe one or the other? Though bears were in woods, not jungles. Right?
Something chittered behind him and he spun around. More trees, more bush, more… freakin’ jungle. Oh hell, and snakes. Snakes lived in jungles. Massive ones that ate deer. Probably elephants, too. They’d swallow anything. He swatted at his neck. So did huge, man-eating bugs, and gorillas, and rampaging elephants and…
He closed his eyes and stood still. It wasn’t to steady his nerves. He’d decided that he didn’t want to know what was about to attack or eat him. All this because of a few too many drinks. Karma was a bitch.
After a few moments, when nothing had taken him up on the offer to be their entrée, he opened his eyes again, carefully.
The jungle hadn’t changed. It was as though the great expanse had gone on with the day, uncaring that a highly-sought, high-salaried surgeon had stumbled into the dark interior of the thick bush and was offering no resistance to being eaten.
He nearly screamed when he heard a voice behind him.
“I’m sorry, Doctor. If you’re praying, I can come back later.”
He spun, hands half up, ready to ward off—a tall, lanky man with an easy smile, a dusky complexion, and a t-shirt that advertised an American health hazard. His thick hand reached out in a welcome and Brant took it cautiously, feeling like twelve kinds of idiot.
“No…” He had a momentary flash of pride that his voice sounded almost normal. No indication of screaming like a little girl at all. “No, not at all, just enjoying the quiet of the…uh…jungle—wait, you know who I am?”
“My name is Joseph, Doctor.” He smiled even brighter. “I work at the clinic for Dr. Bell.”
“You have my sympathies,” Brant answered under his breath.
The tall man laughed. It was as easy-going as his smile, and contagious.
“Dr. Bell tells me you make women’s breast larger,” he said, then he stopped. There was an actual twinkle in his eye. It was so cliché, yet Brant had never seen one before. He’d thought it was a saying, a myth, but here it was.
“That’s a small part of the practice.” Speaking of cliché, breasts were a mainstay of the business, but there was so much more to what he did. “There’s a lot more to it than that. I work on people who…” Brant looked at
Joseph for a long moment. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
Joseph laughed again and clapped him on the back hard enough that Brant stumbled. “Doctor, if you need help with inspection of patients before or after surgery, you let me know.” His leer was friendly, not serious. Darned if Brant wasn’t going to wind up liking this guy after all.
Brant looked at the plant at his feet and nodded slowly. “Yeah, I got you. Listen, uh, Joseph, do you think you could lead me back to the clinic and laugh at me there? I got a little lost out here. And I’d really rather not get eaten by a lion.”
“There are no lions in Belize, Doctor,” Joseph said, shaking his head sadly, as if sorry for the fact.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“There are panthers, of course.”
“Not better.”
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” Joseph assured him, “No panthers within 50 miles of the clinic!”
“That’s good to know at least. Why not?”
“They don’t like all the snakes.”
Brant took a breath. Tried to not be obviously examining the underbrush. “Instead of making me feel better, maybe you can just get me out of here? If you don’t mind?”
“Of course!” Joseph roared and opened his arms to encompass the Brant, the jungle, and the country of Belize. “The clinic is on the other side of those trees!”
“Joseph, it’s directions like that that get a man lost in the first place. Which trees?”
Joseph turned and waved for him to follow behind. It was less than ten steps away before he’d broken in to the clearing where the clinic stood. Joseph spoke in Spanish to some men gathered around a mass of what looked like gardening equipment, and each one of them jumped up to shake Brant’s hand.
“I should’ve taken Spanish instead of Latin,” Brant said with a smile frozen on his face, highly suspecting from the laughter that whatever had been said hadn’t exactly been flattering.
“Yes,” Joseph agreed. “Latin is dead, but Spanish is a beautiful, colorful language that pleases the ear. It is the language of saints and explorers and men of vision, taste, and culture!”
Brant looked at him in surprise. His estimation of the man rose sharply. “What did you tell them?” He pointed his thumb at the men, all smiling, who gathered around him.
“I told them you make breasts larger on women!” Joseph said with a big grin, and that damn twinkle came back.
“‘Men of vision and culture’?”
Joseph laughed. “But men, nonetheless, eh?” A quick translation, and the rest of the workers began laughing and chattering away. It didn’t require any knowledge of Spanish to understand the subject of conversation—several hand gestures indicated the general theme.
Brant shook his head and walked back to the clinic, leaving the gesticulating group behind him.
He found the side door to the office and walked back in without knocking. Dr. Bell was seated behind the desk, a sheaf of papers scattered over its surface, and an expression that could curdle milk faster than leaving it out in the jungle could. “Some boys never grow up,” he said without preamble.
“No boys ever grow up,” she replied, without looking up from the papers. “They just find a way to get paid to play with their favorite toys.
“Doctor.” Brant took a deep breath and counted to ten. “I recognize that you’re in a bad situation and that my rash actions may have contributed to it. However…”
“I’m not the one in a bad situation, Doctor.”
Damn this woman. She was deliberately drawing this out, staring at the papers and making him feel like he was an undergrad again, facing a disproving professor.
“I have my replacement for the next three weeks, so I’m fine.”
Brant smiled and quietly counted to ten again. This time in Latin.
Then, because he’d had enough of her damn nonsense, he quite simply grasped the edge of her desk and slowly pulled it out, away from her.
“What the hell are you doing?” She grabbed at the desk, sending papers cascading to the floor.
“Forcing you to learn some manners!”
“How dare you?” She pulled it back to her. A mug tipped, rolled off the edge, and shattered on the floor.
“You will NOT ignore me!” He yanked it back again, surprised a little by how hard it was to wrestle away from her.
“I have work to do, DOCTOR!” The desk squealed against the floor.
“So do I!” The desk turned a little. They were both right-handed; he was winning on that side, but her right was to his left, and she was determined.
“That’s not WORK!” she shot back. “And you signed on here! No one forced you to come!”
They had spun the desk so her back was to the office door. Papers crackled underfoot.
“Just look at me when I’m talking to you!” Why did this woman have to be so insanely impossible? The desk actually began to lift off the floor between the two of them.
“I AM LOOKING AT YOU!”
“FINE!” He intended to slam his hands on the desk in a gesture of frustration and storm out again. It was probably better to be eaten alive in the jungle than talk to this crazy woman anymore. He’d hadn’t realized that the desk was practically levitating between the two of them, and when he let go all of Mel’s weight was suddenly free to move the desk in any direction it wanted to go.
The direction of choice was into the boxes of supplies so carefully laid out from the Jeep and piled alongside the wall. Once the initial momentum of her weight was spent, the desk then proved it weighed nearly as much as she did and slammed into her stomach. She doubled over it with an OOF! and rebounded, where the carefully packed supplies waited for the back of her knees.
Melissa flipped over the boxes, landing against the wall in a scatter of bandages and creams and six bags of tongue depressors. Her head struck the wall with a solid THWUMP and she lay there, obviously dazed.
“Oh, shit!” Brant forgot his anger, forgot everything as he ran around the desk and crouched at her side. He touched her cheek to look at her eyes, tenderly examined the back of her head, and let his hand drift down her cheek. He cupped her chin and let his thumb caress her skin.
She looked up at him, large brown eyes focused on his, her hand wrapped around his arm. She breathed in heavily and licked her lips.
Brant hadn’t noticed the depth of those stunning eyes before, the softness in the brown shades. He hadn’t noticed the fullness of her lips, the beauty of her chin, the graceful expanse of her forehead. She lifted her chin to him and he bent down and touched his lips to hers.
A tender kiss. Just that. Then, breathless, he raised his head, just enough to let her decide the next move.
He didn’t see her fist coming.
He was on the floor, holding his eye, before it registered that she’d hit him. “What the hell was that for?”
“ME?! You attacked me!”
“I did no such thing!”
“Who said you could kiss me?”
“You…you licked your lips and…”
“I just hit my head! Who would do something like that?”
“I…” Brant shot to his feet, holding his eye. “I don’t know. A drunk idiot, who just woke up in Belize, got lost in the jungle, and is fighting with a madwoman?!” He shook his head, wincing at the ache in his own head. “I don’t know!”
Although the climb to her feet had to be made more difficult with the detritus around her, Melissa stood, her breathing coming in ragged puffs. “What the hell do you mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t know what I mean! Look, just…” He floundered for a moment. “Excuse me, I have to go get eaten by a bear!” He slammed out of the clinic.
“THERE ARE NO BEARS IN THE JUNGLE!” she yelled after him.
Joseph met him outside. “I heard yelling. Is everything—”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Brant stormed off to the edge of the clearing.
He heard Joseph open the offi
ce door behind him and then Mel saying, “I don’t want to talk about it!”
A door slammed shut hard enough to send a flock of birds flying out of nearby trees, flying overhead with enough startlement to make him wish he’d brought an umbrella. He dodged under a tree, not soon enough; bird excrement stained his left sleeve and gave him one more reason to curse bachelor parties, Belize, and beautiful doctors.
Behind him came rapid-fire dialogue. Workers converging, trying to figure out what was going on. It was amazing how little knowledge of Spanish it took to figure out what Joseph was telling the curious. A word that sounded suspiciously like “amor” was close enough to “amare” that he got the gist.
He leaned against a tree and held the side of his face, wishing for an ice pack and a flight home.
“Doctor?” Joseph said from behind him, a note of warning in his voice.
Brant looked up. Then he looked where Joseph was pointing.
Straight. Up.
The nearby workers laughed even harder when the lost schoolgirl scream finally made its way out of Brant’s throat.
What the hell do they feed snakes around here to make them that big?
Chapter 5
“Come, Doctor,” Joseph called calmingly, keeping his voice even, and waved him over. “Just walk slowly.”
Brant moved slowly, his eyes watching above his head as he moved. His pace quickened and he broke into a run as he slid behind Joseph.
Joseph pointed. “You’re safe now.”
Brant ignored him and took a few more steps away. Survival of the fittest, right?
“It’s sleeping. You’re not even its type.” Joseph laughed. “Come. I’ll show you where you can go and… change your underwear.”
“Laugh it up,” Brant said, a small, self-depreciating smile on his face. “I would love to see you in downtown L.A.”
