“Si, señor. She is becoming conscious. I will get the doctor.”
Relief swept through him. He leaned down and placed a kiss on Pilar’s frowning forehead. “Hush, mi querida,” he told her. “Everything is fine. You’re going to make it. You hear me? You’re going to live. Rane is safe, and so am I. Just rest.” He watched the wrinkles on her brow ease. Somehow, Pilar had heard him and responded. The knowledge shook him to his soul. Her thick, dark eyelashes stood out in stark contrast to her pale skin.
Lifting his hand, he began to caress her hair with gentle strokes designed to soothe her. Pilar wasn’t moving much, but he could feel a shift in energy around her. And then he laughed harshly at himself; he was so deprived of sleep he wasn’t sure whether he was dreaming or if this was real. Still, her small, slender fingers in his hand provided a definite connection to reality. As Culver looked down at her, he felt his heart open like a flower. Without thinking, just following his instincts, he leaned forward and gently laid his mouth on hers in a kiss designed to breathe life and strength back into her.
“Eh, Señor Lachlan?” the nurse inquired.
Culver broke the kiss and looked up. The doctor and nurse stood expectantly in the doorway. “Oh…yeah, come and take a look at her, Doc.” He flushed a little as he stood up and stepped aside. “I think she’s going to make it. What do you think?”
It didn’t take the doctor long to make his assessment. He briefly studied the raw, swollen wound briefly and had the nurse apply a new dressing. He nodded his gray head when he took her blood pressure. As he lifted each eyelid to check her pupils with a small light, he even had the ghost of a smile on his mouth.
“You are right, Señor Lachlan,” Dr. José murmured as he straightened and looked across the bed at him. “Señora Martinez will live.”
Joy swept through Culver, strong and overwhelming. He stared at the tall doctor. “She’s going to live?”
He smiled slowly. “Sí. You are a tough hombre, eh? Maybe it was you being here that made the difference. Your love for her. Your prayers, perhaps? Or—” he pointed to the small medicine bag that Pilar still clutched in one hand “—maybe the power of her jaguar medicine.”
Culver struggled to find words as emotions overwhelmed him. Pilar was going to live. Live! Gulping, he rasped, “Or maybe all the above, Doctor?”
Tapping his chest, the doctor smiled wider. “Many times I have seen people hover in the arms of death in this room. I see the families of these patients sitting in the lobby, praying for them. Prayer is very powerful, eh? Especially prayers of a loved one. No, I think your love brought her back to us. I do not take the medicine of the jaguar lightly, for I’ve seen it work, too. But there is nothing like the heart, eh?” He gestured to the chair. “Señor, you still need sleep. She has decided to come back and live with you on this earth. The nurse will show you to a room with a bed. If Señora Martinez awakens, I will have someone come and get you.”
Culver studied Pilar, who had sunk into a healing sleep. The bed sounded damned inviting. “Yeah, I’d like that, Doctor. Thanks…”
Culver awoke on his own. Glancing sleepily at his watch, he realized it was six in the morning. Hoisting his feet over the side of the narrow bed, he sat up. A small knock sounded on the door and he looked up.
“Come in.”
A nurse poked her head in the door. “Señora Martinez is awake and asking for you, señor.”
Instantly, Culver was on his feet. He still hadn’t shaved, but at least he’d showered and had clean clothes. The nurse couldn’t walk fast enough to keep up with him as he hurried down the hallway toward ICU. Dr. José was standing just outside Pilar’s glass-enclosed room, and he smiled as Culver approached.
“She is asking for you, señor.”
His heart soared. Yet it pounded with dread, too. As Culver reached the glass enclosure, his gaze swept immediately to Pilar, who was sitting up in bed, propped by many pillows. Her dark eyes looked almost black in her ghostly face. Yet when their eyes met, Culver felt his heart mushroom with joy, leaving him breathless. Entering the room, he closed the door quietly behind him. Someone had brushed Pilar’s hair, and it shone like an ebony frame around her oval face. The look she gave him was shy and uncertain. Why?
Reaching her bedside, he took her delicate face between his hands. His eyes filled with tears as he croaked, “Welcome back, mi querida…” Culver leaned down and brushed his mouth against Pilar’s lips, feeling her soft response to his tender foray. It was all he could ask for. Sensing her weakness, he eased his mouth from hers and allowed her to lean back against the pillows.
Pilar’s eyes were luminous with tears as she stared up at him. He saw that she had the medicine bag gripped in her right hand, resting on her blanketed stomach. Retrieving a chair, Culver brought it over and sat down close to her. He laid his hand on her arm and discovered she felt full of life now, not death.
“How are you feeling?” he asked thickly.
Pilar sighed softly and studied him. “Very weak,” she said, her voice rough from disuse. “I—I didn’t think I would live.”
“I know.” His fingers tightened briefly on her arm. “A lot of people were praying for you.”
Her throat constricted. “You stayed…”
He frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Pilar felt a panic cut through the calming effect of the painkilling drugs. “I thought I dreamed it—or maybe I did not… .” She gazed at him. Culver’s face was shadowed by several days’ growth of beard, giving him a dangerous look. His eyes were bloodshot, his features haggard with exhaustion. His hair, too, was uncombed, and she longed for the simple strength to lift her fingers and tame some of those dark strands back into place.
“What are the tears for?” he inquired gently, taking his thumbs and wiping the moisture from her cheeks. “Pilar?”
Closing her eyes, she absorbed his grazing touch. Oh, how strong Culver was. “Did I dream saying it?” she asked brokenly. She felt his fingers drift away from her face and his hand move slowly up and down her arm, as if to soothe her. Pilar had no strength to protect herself from whatever answer he might give her. She thought she’d told him Rane was his child. But had she? Or had it been a fevered hallucination? Wearily, she forced open her lashes and looked up at him. The tenderness burning in his eyes would dissolve when she told him.
Gathering what little courage remained to her, she murmured, “Rane…is your daughter…our child… .” She could barely hold his gaze. Trying to steel herself against the coming explosion, Pilar realized she was completely defenseless, with no way left to shield her raw emotions. Had she been brought back from the upper world by the jaguar goddess to tell him the truth? Was that why she had been sent back through the tunnel of light into her body?
Culver’s lips parted, and he felt hot tears well into his eyes. He reached over and covered the hand that gripped the medicine bag. “I know, mi querida. You told me out in the jungle when you were dying. Don’t you remember?”
His voice was rough with emotion and to Pilar’s shock, she could detect no recrimination in Culver’s eyes—only the tears that had begun to wind down his cheeks, disappearing into the bristles of his dark beard. Short-circuited, her senses spun. She had told him! “But…you are still here… .” she whispered weakly.
Culver slowly stood, then leaned over and framed her face with his hands. Pilar looked so frightened, so unsure. He understood why. “Listen to me,” he said rawly, his voice gruff with emotion, “I love you, Pilar. I love Rane. Nothing matters to me but the two of you. Do you understand?” He blinked and looked up. “I didn’t want to lose you. When I got you to that chopper, all I could think was that Rane was ours, and that I didn’t want you to die.”
Gazing at her, not caring that he was crying, Culver leaned down to caress Pilar’s mouth. Her lower lip trembled, and he felt a sob catch in her throat as his lips gently took hers. In that golden moment, all he was aware of was her warmth, her softness and her incredibl
e courage. Easing his mouth from hers, he stared deeply into her tear-filled eyes. “Nothing matters except you and Rane. Do you understand me, Pilar? The rest of our collective worlds can go to hell. All I want—all I’ll ever need—is you. Rane is ours—created out of our love.” He took a deep, ragged breath. “And God knows, I loved you all those years. I never stopped loving you.”
Culver didn’t approach any other serious topics with Pilar for several days. She had lost consciousness shortly after his admission, and Dr. José was concerned that too much stressful emotion would cost her dearly in terms of surmounting the infection that had nearly taken her life. Culver agreed. Pilar was transferred to a private room, and Culver had a bed brought in for him. He slept nearby, and whenever she awoke, he did, too, as if an invisible cord connected them.
Pilar had a number of nightmares, and Culver was grateful that Dr. José allowed him to stay with her twenty-four hours a day. Culver brought her books and read to her. She hated television, preferring instead to talk with him about many things—but never again did she broach the subject of Rane being his daughter. Sometimes Culver wondered what was going on inside Pilar’s head. Had she heard his admission? That he was willing to take responsibility and become Rane’s father? Perhaps she’d been too drugged from the surgery to remember his words.
At times Culver wanted to say something, but recalling Dr. José‘s warning, he took the man’s advice to heart. Pilar, he discovered, had been badly broken by her recent experience. She wasn’t as strong and resilient as he’d thought. But then, he ruminated as he walked down the hall toward her private room with a handful of orchids in a vase for her, Pilar had carried a heavy load for eight years by herself. Culver ached to talk to her of all she’d been through, to share with her his understanding of why she’d made the decisions she had.
Maybe today, he hoped. It had to be Pilar’s decision, though. As he knocked on the door, he smiled to himself. Every day, Pilar grew a little stronger, and despite everything, it was sheer joy for Culver just to be with her. As he opened the door, he saw to his surprise that she was out of bed. She wore a dark pink cotton robe, her right hand deep in one pocket as she stood with her back to him, looking through the venetian blinds.
When Pilar heard him enter, she slowly turned. Her left arm was in a sling and she managed a small smile of welcome. “You were gone a long time.”
Culver grinned roguishly and lifted the vase of purple-and-white orchids so she could inhale their heavy, sweet fragrance. “One of the nurses in ICU told me about this old woman, a jaguar priestess living just outside Tarapoto, who raises the most beautiful orchids in the world.” He smiled down at Pilar and watched a rosy flush come to her pale cheeks. “Well? What do you think? Are they half as beautiful as you are?”
Touched, Pilar leaned over and inhaled their heady fragrance. The burning hope in Culver’s eyes lifted her depressed spirits. Straightening, she caressed the thick, waxy petals. “They are far more beautiful than I am,” she whispered. Pilar had never thought of herself as beautiful, though the way he looked at her made her feel that way.
Snorting, Culver slid his hand around her elbow and guided her to a wooden rocking chair near the window. “Your face could melt the hardest of hearts,” he said. Pilar moved slowly, her balance not yet totally restored. As she lowered herself carefully into the rocker, Culver placed the orchids on the table next to her bed.
“It’s good for you to get away from here for a while anyway,” Pilar said. She loved the rocking chair because it reminded her of being rocked in her mother’s arms when she was small. “You are built for the outdoors, not places that close in on you like this.” She looked around the sterile room and then back at him. Culver took another chair and brought it over to sit down facing her. How much she enjoyed their quiet moments together. In the past few days he’d talked a great deal about himself and his family. She’d learned so much. He was sharing a side of himself she hadn’t known, and it left her yearning for him, for his kisses.
Oh, how she’d missed his kisses! She could recall each one with burning clarity. But since she’d been transferred to this room, he’d oddly removed himself in that sense. Although he slept here with her, on his separate bed, and he held her hand or caressed her hair occasionally, he hadn’t kissed her again. Pilar’s spirit died a little each day, bereft of the feel of his healing mouth upon hers. She was so needy right now, but she didn’t expect Culver to understand her physical need for his touch. She was like a battery that had run down, and his kisses recharged the very depths of her spirit, infusing her with light and hope.
Sighing softly, Pilar folded her hands in the lap of the cotton robe. It was time. She felt strong enough now to talk to Culver without sleep overtaking her as it had been doing, suddenly and without warning. The antibiotics had worked their magic, and she had come back from the arms of death, fully back in her body and in the present. Glancing up, she saw Culver watching her with a curious, burning gaze. Her lips parted, and the corners of her mouth lifted slightly.
“I’m afraid,” she admitted, opening her hands and giving a weak laugh. “I felt I understood jaguar medicine, but I do not. I felt it was about strength and power. It is more than that. It is about living honestly.” Pilar held his caressing gaze. “When I met you, Culver, I felt my heart open and embrace you. I had dreams all during my young life of a man’s face, and it was your face. I did not know the gift of the jaguar was to bring visions of the future to me until Grandmother Aurelia told me. It was then I confided my dreams of your face to her.
“She laughed and hugged me. She said that was the man who would hold my heart gently in his hands. I asked her how I could know when I was so young who was going to love me. Grandmother said there are many things we can never explain. But when I saw you, I felt my chest open up, like one huge orchid unfolding all its rich, beautiful petals.”
Pilar studied her tightly clasped hands for a long moment, searching for the right words to convey her feelings. The silence stretched out between them, but without tension. Instead, she felt Culver’s respect and interest in her words, in how she saw her world—and his. That assurance gave her the courage to go on.
“When you compared me to an orchid, I felt this cord strung between us.” She lifted her hand and moved it gracefully from her solar plexus to his. “How could you know of my special love of the orchid people? You seemed to know so much about me, and I felt it was because you remembered coming to me in your dreams. I didn’t know how a Norte Americano could do such things. In South America, it is common and accepted, but…” Pilar shook her head and gazed at him in awe. “We had three months together, mi querido. I was so young at the time. Young and thinking that my life was endless. I laughed at the danger around us. I jeered at the violence always nearby. And when you loved me that first time by the pool in the jungle where the orchids grew, I felt my spirit fuse with yours. I felt our hearts melt into one. I felt my womb expand with a warm, golden light, and I felt your life within me.”
Pilar licked her lower lip and went on in a softer voice. “I did not know it at the time, but I was pregnant with your daughter, our child—Rane. A wonderful, joyous sensation emanated from my womb. I felt the pulse of life in there, and I thought it was because we had become one and loved without regret or shame.” She laid her hand across her abdomen and smiled fondly in remembrance. “Each time we made love after that, I felt stronger, more sure of you and of myself.”
Pilar touched her forehead and frowned. “And then you were wounded. I was so afraid you were going to die. I didn’t know at the time that I’d suffered a small bullet wound in my thigh—it was no more than a stinging sensation. When they took you into surgery in Lima, the doctor examined me thoroughly. I was bleeding.” She pointed to her thigh beneath the robe. “That was why he examined me. I thought it was my moon time, though I’d not had one for three months. The doctor said no, the blood between my thighs wasn’t moon blood, nor was it from the fleshy wound on my thig
h.”
Pilar looked up, and her voice grew hoarse. “He told me I was two months pregnant. He said I would lose the baby if I stayed on my feet, that the shock of the mission had started to tear the infant from the wall of my womb.” Pilar covered her abdomen and rubbed it gently with her hand. “I had never lain with another man. I knew you were the father of this baby who was fighting to survive. The doctor said I must go home, stay in bed and rest, or I would lose her.”
A ragged sigh escaped Pilar’s lips as she looked up at the ceiling beyond Culver. “I had no one. My parents were dead. What was I to do? I had only one friend, and that was Fernando. Hector called him, and he came immediately to the hospital. I told him that you did not want children right away, that you were not ready for them. And he asked me if you had said you loved me. I said no. He said it was a bad sign, and I could not disagree. I wanted my baby to have a name, Culver. I did not want her to suffer as I had, with mestiza blood. To be a child out of wedlock is a curse here. She would be called the child of a whore. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted Rane to be able to overcome her mestiza blood and hold her head high. She would not have been able to do so with a mother who was pregnant and unmarried. Fernando convinced me you would not want me pregnant.” Frowning, Pilar shook her head. “Now I wonder about that. At the time, I believed him. I was so confused that afternoon. I was in shock from your nearly being killed. I was traumatized by my own bullet wound, though it was small in comparison to yours. And to be told I was pregnant…” Her voice wobbled. “It was too much for me to cope with.” She rubbed her furrowed brow with trembling fingers, and her voice lowered with feeling. “We were married that evening, so that when Rane was born, I could say she was premature, and no one would suspect she had been conceived out of wedlock.”
Opening her hands, feeling drained, Pilar held his tender gaze. “Oh, Culver, I hated leaving you in the hospital. But the doctors told me you would live. Fernando said it would be best never to see you again, but I sobbed myself to sleep for weeks afterward.”
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