by Dianne Drake
The bitter-sweet ring was so distinct in her voice it was all he could to keep himself from going to the other side of the table and pulling her into his arms. She needed that comfort, and he wanted to be the one to give it to her. But with the way he was drawn to her, if he did, he’d never leave. And soon he had to go. “But you’re a good nurse, Solaina. No matter what you think of yourself, you have bang-up skills. Just look what you did for me.”
“I did the basics—everything could have been picked up from reading a good first-aid handbook.”
“That’s what you think, but I think that you underestimate yourself.”
“I know my skills. And what I do, I do well. Better than most, actually. But I’m not a clinical practitioner in any sense. I have the academic grasp of nursing, and the administrative ability over it, but clinical practices are for others. And that’s not underestimating myself, David. That’s being realistic.” She huffed out an exasperated breath. “Look, I need a bath. You sit here, wait for your tea to finish chilling, have another muffin. When I’m out of the tub, we’ll figure out what comes next—where you need to go, where I need to take you.” Then she was off in a trot before he could say another word.
“You are good,” he called after her. No matter what she thought, she was. And he truly wished he could stay around to help bolster her self-confidence, but he couldn’t. “Have a nice soak, Solaina.” And a nice life.
“You look bad, my friend,” Matteo Carlini said as he helped David climb into the battered old Jeep. The only transportation they had left at Vista.
“Compared to what?” David muttered, stretching out in the seat.
“Compared to one of the cadavers I dissected in medical school. He had much more color than you have, and he’d been dead a year.”
“He probably felt better than I do, too.” The headache was setting in now. Headache, general body ache. And his heart hurt a little, too. Leaving Solaina the way he had was not nice. But he hadn’t been able to think of any other way to do it. Just the act of walking out of her door had made him realize how much he hadn’t wanted to go. Knowing how much he hadn’t wanted to go, however, had made him realize just how much he’d needed to. Distractions brought disastrous results.
Solaina was definitely a distraction.
“So, if she was as beautiful as you described, why did you leave her bed? Another night and who knows?” Dr Matteo Carlini, a hopelessly romantic Italian surgeon, had joined David in IMO several years ago. They had become best friends in medical school, and had stayed that way.
“In case you didn’t notice, I’m pretty banged up. Another night wouldn’t have mattered, when it’s all I can do to breathe.”
“Another night always matters, Davey. Don’t you forget that. So, tell me what happened. We’ve been worried. Sending out search parties, getting the local police ministry involved…”
“Did you get my patient out of there? The one I went after?”
“When you weren’t back in twelve hours, we sent someone. We got him back, got him through surgery, and he’s almost ready to go home.”
“I was worried about him.”
“Of course you were, but I had your back, Davey. Like you always have mine.” Matteo grinned. “Although yours is in a bit of a mess right now, isn’t it? But a mess I’m damned glad to see again.”
“I wasn’t sure, for a while, if you would see it again.”
“Then came your angel of mercy…” Matteo shook his head. “Some men have all the luck.”
“Fat lot of good it will do me.”
“She’s rejected you that fast? That’s a record for you, isn’t it?”
“No record, because I didn’t even try. She’s not like that.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even get to the place where she could reject me. She put out the warnings first thing.”
“A wounded soul?”
“Aren’t we all in some way?” David replied. “Besides, Solaina wants none of it with anyone. She’s pretty clear about that.”
“Which works out well for you since you don’t trust marriage anyway.”
David chuckled, then winced. “It’s not the marriage I don’t trust. It’s the people involved.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. And if you hadn’t already taken a good whack to the head, I’d give you one, bringing that kind of an attitude around me. You know I’m a hopeless romantic, Davey. I’d marry in a minute if the right girl popped in.”
“Well, Solaina’s about to pop out. She’s leaving Dharavaj, so there’s no point in speculating about it.”
“Makes it convenient, doesn’t it? You’re falling in love and she’s leaving so you don’t have to open yourself up to it again. You don’t have to take that chance.”
David slumped down into the seat, and shut his eyes. “Why do I keep you around as my friend?”
Matteo chuckled. “To pound some sense into your head, Davey. That’s why. To tell you she’s the one when you refuse to see it.”
She’s the one…David could almost visualize Solaina lying naked in a jasmine bubble bath. It was a fantasy to soothe the aching body, and he relaxed into it. “Well, you’re right about one thing,” he sighed. “If I were better at marriage, she would be the one. But I’m not, so it doesn’t matter.”
“You’re sounding like a man in love to me. Coming from someone who’s been there a dozen times, I should know the sound.”
David didn’t have a comeback for that because the truth was, since the first time he’d laid eyes on Solaina in Chandella, weeks ago, he hadn’t thought about anyone else. And now that he’d gotten to know her, he still wasn’t going to think about anybody else. Whatever that meant.
“So how does Howard fit into all this? He rang me up yesterday to tell me you were fine, and to come get you this morning, but he didn’t tell me how he got involved.”
“He’s fatherly toward Solaina, as it turns out. They’re neighbors. And I think he was surprised to find me in Solaina’s bed.” David chuckled. “Unconscious. Oh, and he’ll be back at Vista next week. I couldn’t pin him down to how long we can keep him with us this time, but he’s usually good for a week.” The consummate physician even in his retirement, Howard often spent days at a time at Vista. Even with his arthritic hands he was a godsend for the hospital, whatever time he gave them. “I think he wants to get us together, Solaina and me.”
“He’s always done that, hasn’t he? Been a matchmaker? So, does he know that the one he wants to fix you up with is the one you want to be fixed up with?”
The Jeep hit a pothole, and David grabbed his ribs against the pain. “Would you slow down so the next bump you hit doesn’t crack another rib?” he snapped.
“Testy, aren’t you? As your personal physician, let me ask you—are you testy because you don’t feel well? Or are you testy because of…? How should I put this diplomatically? You’ve fallen in love with the fair lady and it scares you to death as you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t have both career and relationship? That you can do justice to one or the other, but not both?”
“Go to hell,” David muttered.
Matteo laughed. “I suppose that answers my question, doesn’t it? So when do I get to meet this she-devil who’s taken your heart?”
“Never. I don’t want her involved in this mess with the hospital, and as she’s leaving Dharavaj soon…”
“And you didn’t even kiss the fair lady goodbye?”
“Not even close.” Unfortunately. David let out a wistful sigh as he shut his eyes, hoping to dream of Solaina for the rest of the way back.
Solaina stood on her veranda looking out at the beach. She wasn’t surprised that David had disappeared. Disappointed maybe, and definitely perturbed with the way he’d chosen his exit, but she wasn’t surprised.
“He doesn’t do things with a great splash,” Howard commented. He and Victoria had returned for the morning, having decided to stay in the area for another day before returning to Chandella. “I
f ever there was a young man who was focused on his work to the point of excluding just about everything else in his life, that would be our David. I saw that in him the first time I met him in Toronto. Dedicated and self-sacrificing. A good combination, especially for the kind of work he has chosen to do. Not an easy lot, though.”
“And handsome,” Victoria said dreamily. She was lounging in a cabana chair, decked out in a white, wide-brimmed straw hat and an orange and yellow flowered caftan. Victoria was a beautiful woman. Ageless, Solaina had always thought, with her flawless porcelain skin. Although Solaina knew Victoria was much closer to sixty, it took several glances at her to determine that. “I remember the first time I met him, he’d come to our flat in London for dinner. I rather fancied that I might have given him a bit of a whirl if not for the fact that Howard simply refused to leave the two of us alone.” Laughing daintily, Victoria pushed back her hat and blew an adoring kiss at her husband.
“Handsome doesn’t make up for rude,” Solaina said. “And leaving here the way he did was certainly rude.”
“He’s focused on his work,” Howard defended David. “Sometimes to the point that he’s oblivious to everything but what he wants to see, including his marriage.”
“So he told me.”
“I think he loved her enough, but he loved his medicine more, and she found someone who put her first. Then he went to pieces for a while, as I would do if I’d discovered my lovely Victoria had walked out on me.” He blew an adoring kiss back at his wife. “But in spite of his little misstep, David’s a man who’s centered on saving the world, one grain of sand at a time. He’s one of the truly good ones, dear. And a man who’s learnt his lesson, in case you’re interested.”
Solaina ignored that last comment. He meant well every time he tried to fix her life. That was simply part of Howard, and her usual response was to smile patiently on the outside, bite her tongue on the inside. “So why did you recruit him to IMO?”
Howard chuckled. “Not recruited so much as persuaded. I spotted him as the right type and talent for the hard work, with the essential devotion that it takes. He wasn’t happy in the family practice, he was struggling in his life, and more than anything he needed a change at the precise time I was setting up the unit in Cambodia. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“History is right,” Solaina muttered. “And that’s what Dr David Gentry is, as far as I’m concerned. History!”
Howard chuckled again. “With the way that young man was looking at you when you weren’t watching him…and the way that you’re overreacting to such a simple thing as him leaving…that’s not history, dear. I think it could be the future. And a very interesting one indeed. If you allow it.”
“And after you’ve had that whirl with David that my dear Howard deprived me of years ago, you’ll simply have to tell me every detail,” Victoria exclaimed. “Every last, luscious detail of it.” She turned to her husband, and tilted back her hat to expose her face. “You wouldn’t mind, would you, dear?”
Howard strolled over to Victoria, bent and placed an affectionate kiss on her cheek. “As if you would, dear.”
Howard and Victoria had carried in a hamper stuffed with delicious food—breads and biscuits, fruits, caviar, smoked oysters, cheese, all accompanied by a nice selection of wine. The wine Solaina declined because she would be motoring back to Chandella shortly. But she stuffed herself on the rest of the delicacies until she couldn’t even force herself to top the meal with a wonderful little chocolate truffle. Then she said her goodbyes to the couple, promising to join them for dinner in a few days.
Once they were gone, on their way to spend another day at a resort up the coast, Solaina followed them along the high-way until she came to the spot where she’d met David. Stopping, she got out and walked slowly across to the place where he’d lain on the ground, then bent down and ran her fingers over the dirt there. “Howard speaks so highly of you,” she whispered. “That’s high praise. What is it about you, David Gentry, that attracts Howard, that attracts Victoria, and most especially attracts me?”
Yes, he was handsome, and she liked handsome. But looks were not a factor she’d ever weighed too heavily in any matter. And he was blond, and admittedly she did have a certain fascination for blonds. But once more that really was not a fact of any merit in all this, since she had no intention of an involvement any more than she already had.
“Is it your reputation, David? The fact that you’ve dedicated your life to a higher cause? Or that you actually picked yourself up and started all over again?” Something she hadn’t been able to do after Jacob.
“These are all such weighty things,” she said, righting herself and brushing the dirt off her hands. Weighty, indeed. But when she thought of David, she thought in terms of…happiness.
Yes, happiness. In spite of what they’d gone through together, and in spite of his rather odd social skills, she’d liked taking care of him, liked talking to him even when he’d been delusional. Liked looking at him when he’d been sleeping. So, yes, in a sense she had not expected from all of this, David had made her happy. And she missed him. “Two days, Laina, and you’ve gone all soft and gooey over him. You run him over with your car, then take him to your bed, and now look at you, forgetting everything you stand for.” What she stood for…a solitary life.
Just look at her, indeed! The instant Solaina climbed back into her car, she made a U-turn in the road and headed back in the direction from which she’d just come. Only she passed the turn-off to her cottage and drove south for another thirty minutes until she reached the turn-off for a road that would take her straight to Kantha.
“So, what are you going to do once you get there?” she asked herself as she contemplated making the turn. “Because either way you go, there’s probably no going back.” Was it back to the hospital to finish up her job then start over someplace else? Or on to seek out David and whatever it was he did out there in the jungle, just because…well, she wasn’t sure why. And maybe that was a reason to go after him. To find out why.
Solaina took a deep breath, looked both ways up and down the highway, then made the turn. Maybe the biggest turn of her life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
VISTA HOSPITAL was a tidy little facility sitting some way out of the tiny town of Kantha. Perched atop a modest hill overlooking a rubber plantation, it was neither a noticeable place nor an obscure one. Vista blended perfectly into the landscape—its natural wood-frame timbers in harmony with its environment, its giant rhododendron bushes and arrow-straight bamboo trees like everything else the eye could see for miles around.
From Kantha on over to Cambodia, an area David could navigate in his sleep—or, if necessary in a delirious stupor—the climate was hotter, and wetter, than the rest of Dharavaj. Or in the rest of the entire southeast region, for that matter. David preferred the cooler climes of Toronto, but he did love the lush jungle greens that came with the rainforest.
Resting on the front porch of the hospital, his feet propped up on a stool and drinking the soda Solaina had accused him of preferring over tea—which he did—he chuckled, thinking about his daft ramblings of late—deciduous trees and evergreens and the ever-fabulous rhododendron. Certainly that would have made no sense to Solaina, but it made all the sense in the world to him. That had merely been his mind fighting to stay alert, focusing on the things he knew, the things he loved. And right now, looking out over the vista, he was reminded of how much he loved this place—its vast beauty as well as its dark side.
If someone were to tell him he would spend the rest of his life here, he wouldn’t complain about it. Even though he might mutter a bit about the heat.
“It grows on you, doesn’t it?” Matteo said, stepping up behind him.
“You don’t know how much until you think you might never see it again.”
“You scared the hell out of me, Davey. After a couple of days, we got a rumor up here that you’d been killed.”
“And if I had, you�
�d have made a fine director here,” David said blandly. His mind wasn’t on the hospital yet, or on work either. It was on Solaina, and he wasn’t ready to turn off those thoughts and go back to the real world. Another minute or two was all he needed. Just a minute or two, then he’d put her aside and step back into the life he’d chosen.
“Still going all melancholy over her?” Matteo asked.
David shook his head, trying to shake off the feeling. Matteo was right about the melancholia, but he wasn’t about to let him know. “Just tired. And sore.”
“She did a good job on your shoulder. Couldn’t have done better myself. It’s clean. Your labs came back normal, and your white count’s fine. She saved your life, Davey. And you’re doing remarkably well so early on after that kind of a trauma.”
Matteo had changed the dressing, too, then X-rayed his ribs. Except for the fact that they still hurt, and he was still fairly incapacitated, he was doing remarkably well. “Do you believe in fate?” he asked.
“You’ve got it bad, haven’t you?” Matteo asked.
“A lot worse than I intended. But I’ll get over it.”
“Or not.”
“She runs away. She’s got it in her head that she’s not good enough, and I think she runs away from it. And I’ve done all my running. That pretty much says everything that needs to be said.”
Matteo laughed. “Or not.”
David spun around and jabbed his old friend in the arm. “I think I must still be loopy, talking to someone like you about all this.”
“Ah, but I am still a romantic at heart, Davey. My relationships may not be the lasting kind you’re mooning over with this Solaina right now, but at the moment they’re intense.”
