by Dianne Drake
“You’ve suffered a terrible tragedy, my dear. You’ve lost a great many friends somewhere near here, and your sister as well, and it can’t be easy to face so much sadness alone.”
“You haven’t told anyone about my sister, have you?”
A skeptical frown crossed the Father’s face. “No. I don’t divulge confidences, but I don’t understand why you keep that to yourself. People would open their hearts to you even more than they already have if they knew. It’s a tragedy to lose someone you love, Bella. I know the people here would want to help you through that.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” she said stiffly. “Not if they knew…” She bit off the words so close to spilling out. She didn’t understand why that had happened after all these weeks of holding it all in, and attributed it to finally coming to Lado De la Montaña and being so close to where her sister…“Not if they knew that I didn’t want to come here, not when it happened. That I refused all those times you contacted me. That…” That she had backed out of the trip with her sister at the last minute and accused Rosie of thinking with her heart and not her head where this medical mission was concerned. “That’s something the people here wouldn’t understand, because they want to be close, want to help each other. Outside what I do as a doctor, I don’t, and they wouldn’t like that once they saw it in me.”
“I think you’re reading some of your own confused emotions into other people, Bella. I’m sure your friends back home, as well as the people here, deserve much more credit than you’re giving them. It’s you who doesn’t want to be touched by them, not they who don’t want to be touched by you.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to be touched, because in the end I ultimately hurt the people who get too close. So what I’m giving them instead of that personal interaction is honesty, for a change. As for confused emotions? There’s nothing at all confused about my emotions. I’m hurt, and I’m angry as hell.”
“Emotions that will mellow.”
“Emotions I don’t want to mellow. And, see…that’s the thing. Everybody thinks they know what’s best for me. Give it some time, Bella. Think about the good times you had with your sister, Bella. Don’t dwell on things you can’t change, Bella. It’s all so…so lame. Words to fill in empty, uncomfortable spaces because no one can know, no one can understand.” She stopped, totally shocked that she was unleashing this personal war with the village priest. He didn’t deserve it. He was simply a compassionate man trying to show concern, and here she was, throwing it right back in his face. “Look, I’m sorry, Father. None of this is your fault and you don’t deserve my anger. But it comes out at all the wrong times, which is another thing the people here don’t deserve.”
“You don’t deserve it either, Bella. Neither do you deserve the guilt you’ve chosen for yourself.”
But she did. Every last speck of it, and more. That’s just the way it was, and it wasn’t going to change. “If you see Cielo Alcantara, tell her I’ll be back in time for the noon meal.” She spun away, then impulsively spun back to face the priest, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “Thank you for trying,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. This time when she spun away, she didn’t turn back.
“We’re fine,” Gloria Elena assured Gabriel. “Between the three of us, we’ll take very good care of Ana Maria the rest of this morning.” Two of his mother’s friends had stopped in to see the baby and they were so busy fussing over her he doubted anyone would miss him at all. That’s the way it had been since he’d returned home…friends dropping by to keep his mother company. People bringing gifts, food. He was grateful for the kind gestures as they kept her from dwelling on Lynda every waking moment of every day. So now, while the ladies fussed, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with himself. Maybe go and find Arabella.
Go and find Arabella—funny how that seemed the natural thing to do. “Damn,” he muttered on his way through the creaky gate. He was establishing a dangerous habit with her. One that would come to nothing since she was leaning toward staying here, and he was definitely on the verge of going home…to his real home, Chicago. Too many differences, he decided as he flagged the priest down. Even so, he was still going to go find her.
“She didn’t specifically say where she was going, but I think she’s gone off to look for the airplane’s crash site,” Father Carlos told Gabriel. “On foot.” He pointed toward the road to the west. “And I don’t think she’s going to be very happy if you go after her. Dr. Burke likes her solitude. In fact, she’s rather emphatic about it.”
“Maybe she’s emphatic, but she shouldn’t be alone out there.” Gabriel glanced down the road, catching a glimpse of her just as she veered off onto a path he knew well. “People don’t always know what’s for their own good.”
“Maybe so, maybe not. But there’s a time for solitude, Juan Gabriel, and there’s a time for friends. Keep that in mind because you may not get what you want when you catch up with her.”
“Believe me, I do keep that in mind. All the time. But when it comes to solitude versus the company of friends, sometimes it’s so easy to get lost in one that you don’t recognize when it’s time to surround yourself in the other. Look, if you’re going by my mother’s house, would you tell her I may not be back in time for lunch?”
“And if you have time this afternoon, do you think you could stop by and have a look at Alfonso Terrones? He’s not been feeling too well lately—stomach problems, I think—and I can’t convince him to go all the way to Iquitos. He says he’s getting too old to travel that far any more. So I thought that since you’re here, maybe you’d take a look. Or you and Bella could do it together, if you don’t mind?”
Gabriel’s attention was still focused down the road, where Bella had finally disappeared from his view. “This afternoon,” he promised the priest, then took off in a run, kicking up dust from the road as his feet hit the ground. It was crazy, chasing after her this way, and he knew that. But what he knew didn’t stop him. In fact, maybe it’s what he knew that compelled him to pick up his pace when what he really should have done was turn and run in the other direction.
Father Carlos watched Gabriel until he was out of sight. Juan Gabriel had his own devils to deal with, Father Carlos decided. And a life ahead of him he wasn’t sure Juan Gabriel was dealing with yet. “Maybe they’ll find what they need in each other,” he said to himself as he headed off to call on Gloria Elena. A smile crossed his face as he thought of the possibilities of the two doctors getting together. It wouldn’t be the easiest course he’d ever seen, but the prospects held promise. Only problem was, neither of them would recognize it if it was staring them straight in the face. And it was. He was sure of that!
“I told Father Carlos that I don’t need someone to go with me, and I meant it. So he sent you anyway?” she snapped. “Sent you to follow me, like I’m not capable of finding my way along this well-traveled path?”
“He didn’t send me. In his own way, I think he tried to warn me off.”
“And you didn’t take the warning! Why am I not surprised?”
“I didn’t take the warning because you’re heading out into the jungle alone, which isn’t the smartest thing to do even if it is on a well-traveled path. Ever heard of caimans and pumas and poison dart frogs? Not to mention jaguars?”
“I have a stick,” she said, holding it up to show him. “Big stick.”
“A stick and an attitude will still get you killed by a jaguar, Arabella. No matter how big that stick, or attitude, is.”
A bitter laughed escaped her. “Haven’t you heard? I’m the charmed one, the one who escapes death?”
“So why go looking for it in other ways?”
Bella stared up at Gabriel for a long moment, not sure how to respond to him. James had asked her once if she had a death wish. She hadn’t eaten for days, hadn’t taken much more than a sip of water every now and then. It hadn’t been that she’d been trying to kill herself. She’d just lost track of time. No appetite t
ogether with interminably long hours of nothing and she’d gotten herself in a weak state without even noticing. But it hadn’t been a death wish then, as it wasn’t now. It was simply the vast numbness that surrounded her, sucking the very life out of everything. It had completely robbed her of all but breath and even at times wrestled her for that. “I don’t go looking for it,” she finally managed. “Believe it or not, I value my life. It’s just that sometimes I…” What was she doing, standing out here confessing like this to Gabriel? First venting to the priest, now this? It had to stop! “Sometimes a walk in the jungle, alone, is just a walk, Gabriel. No hidden meanings or purposes, so don’t go reading something into a simple walk that’s really none of your business.” She drew in a deep, steadying breath and squared her shoulders. “So now, please, leave me alone.”
“I would, if I thought this is a simple walk, but once you find out that not too far off is a nice mountain stream where the villagers fish and the children swim, and what you’re looking for isn’t there, you’re going to take another trail, one that’s not so well traveled.”
She didn’t like the fact that he was right about her, as that’s exactly what she would do. “You don’t know that.”
He laughed. “You’re not as impenetrable as you think, Arabella. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but you’re here to look for the wreckage, and when you discover that it’s not on the well-traveled path, you’ll take the path less traveled, then one even less traveled than that. Even if you won’t admit it to me.”
“OK, I’ll admit it. I’m looking for the…” The words hurt, even the ones she couldn’t get out. But common sense had already told her the plane hadn’t gone down anywhere in this direction. With such a well-used trail, it would have been discovered. So maybe that’s why she’d chosen to go this direction her first time out—so she wouldn’t find the one thing she dreaded most in the world.
“Looking in all the wrong places?” he asked, his voice so gentle it almost hurt. “Because that’s what you’re doing isn’t it?”
She nodded reluctantly, rather than speaking, because she didn’t trust her voice. So much could be given away in a little crack or wobble, and Arabella Burke was still clinging to the desperate hope that she had some control left. Although she was afraid that to Gabriel it was all transparent.
A man who knew her so well scared her.
“Look, Arabella, I can deal with you pushing people away, and I can even understand it because sometimes that’s the easiest thing to do. But doing what you’re doing right now, alone…”
“I, um…” Bella swallowed hard, willing her voice to stay steady long enough to see this through. “I’m perfectly capable of hiking in the jungle without someone tagging along to help me,” she finally managed in a slow, deliberate cadence.
“That’s just it. You’re not. Not physically, not emotionally, and I think you know that, even though you won’t admit it out loud.”
“It’s so easy for you to judge, isn’t it?” The modicum of control in her voice she’d fought so hard to hang on to was gone and she didn’t even care now. All she wanted—the only thing she wanted—was to be left alone, to have Gabriel and everybody else pretend they didn’t even see her. She didn’t want to be responsible to a meal list, or have the village priest worrying about her. She didn’t want her friends back home speculating on whether or not she’d be fit to practice if and when she ever returned. No, she didn’t want any of it. Yet it was all being forced on her under the gentle guise of something that was for her own good. “You’ve known me for a couple of days, and you think that gives you some sort of right in my life. Well, think again, Gabriel. There are no rights here, not when it concerns me. Do you understand? No rights, nothing. I came here to see the area, and when I’ve seen enough I’ll return to the village. That’s all there is to it, and I’m not looking for concern, pity, or anything else along the way.”
“So it’s fine for you to extend yourself when someone else needs help, like you did to Ana Maria and me, but when you—”
Bella thrust out her hand to stop him. “I said I don’t need help. The rest of it’s irrelevant, and that’s the difference between us. You did need help. So did Ana Maria. I do not.”
Rather than being put off, Gabriel chuckled. “Are you always this stubborn?”
“What I am, Dr. Velascos, is none of your business.”
He chuckled again. “I have this patient back in Chicago. Her name is Millicent Montrose, and although she won’t tell me how old she is, I’m guessing she’s somewhere between seventy and eighty. Feisty old woman. Smart. Always wants to be in control of the situation no matter what. And to be honest, I do respect that most of the time. Except for the time when I had to do a repair to her bleeding ulcer and she insisted that she was not going to have a general anesthetic during the operation, that she wanted to be awake for it. In fact, she told me she’d either be awake or she wouldn’t have the surgery done at all, and I couldn’t convince her otherwise. She told me she’d sue me if I put her under.”
“What did you do?” Bella asked, in spite of not wanting to seem interested in anything he was saying. But for the moment the doctor in her took over and she wanted to hear more about his problem patient.
“In the end, I had the anesthesiologist put her under general anesthesia. She was totally out because you can’t do major abdominal surgery on a patient who’s awake.”
“But how did you convince her to let you do that?”
“I didn’t. She convinced herself, once I had the surgical tech trot out all the knives and various instruments I’d be using on her. Including a tribal machete left to me by my father.” He spread his hands in a wide gesture, separating them by a good two feet, grinning. “Big machete. Almost as big as your stick.”
“You didn’t?” she gasped, fighting back a smile.
“Sometimes you have to help people come to their senses. All it takes is a little friendly persuasion.”
Finally, the corners of her lips turned in just the tiniest of smiles. “A big machete isn’t friendly persuasion. It’s a big bluff.”
“OK, I’ll grant you that point but, no matter persuasion or bluff, it worked. So, remember when I said you remind me of her? In some situations, like Mrs. Montrose’s, or yours, being subtle doesn’t work.”
“So what are you going to do? Drag out the machete and threaten me with it, like you did Mrs. Montrose?”
“Persuade,” he said, keeping a straight face, although the twinkle in his eyes was unmistakable. “Not threaten. And, no, no machete or big stick. But I do want to be your friend, Arabella. It might not be quite as dramatic as what I did to Mrs. Montrose, but I think you do need a friend here, even if you’re too stubborn to admit it.”
Damn it, why did he melt her defenses like he did? She didn’t want him to, and she fought hard against it, yet it happened anyway. She resisted him, then she gave in. More like totally collapsed. Poor Mrs. Montrose hadn’t stood a chance.
She wasn’t Mrs. Montrose, however. So, what was it they said? Forewarned was forearmed? Well, this one’s for you, Mrs. Montrose, Bella said to herself as she turned away from Gabriel and walked on down the path. Alone. Without looking back. And definitely forearmed, even though she wasn’t sure that’s what she really wanted. Because, admittedly, having Gabriel walking by her side would have been nice. Except she didn’t deserve nice any more. Which was why she walked alone everywhere she went these days.
Just this once, though, she didn’t turn around and fight him off when she heard him follow her.
“My father used to bring me here when I was a boy. We’d spend the day fishing. Sometimes we’d stay into the night, build a fire and cook the fish right here.”
It was a lovely area. A nice, lush canopy of trees overhead, shadowing the mountainside stream splashing its way over a bed of jagged rocks. It was surprising how the area was so well used, yet still nearly pristine, cared for by people who respected the abundance of nature they had h
ere. So different from the city. And so quiet…She liked that, liked the peacefulness of it. “You were lucky,” she said on a wistful sigh. “When I grew up, all I had was…city. Lots and lots of city.” And no father to take her anywhere.
“Cities are nice. That’s why I live in one now.”
“This is what’s nice, Gabriel. Cities are tolerable. They suit practical needs and take care of people who thrive on a hectic lifestyle. But this is what’s truly pleasant. It suits the esthetic. And nurtures the soul. But I suppose it’s easy to take for granted all the same, isn’t it?”
“Why did you choose to volunteer with that group of doctors who wanted to start a mission hospital here, Arabella? Is that what suited your esthetic and nurtured your soul?”
“They needed a pediatrician, and I was about to become available.” Available because she had been on the verge of quitting her practice with James. His wife had insisted that an old fiancée didn’t have any place near a new marriage, and the situation had become increasingly uncomfortable. “You know the same old story. Involved with medical partner. He finds another woman, marries her and the little wife doesn’t think having her husband’s old lover working side by side with him every day is a good idea.”
Gabriel chuckled. “Sounds complicated.”
“Not really. We weren’t suited personally. Professionally we were good, but once you step over the personal line the way we did and it doesn’t work, it’s hard to go back.” That was the simplified version. Had she wanted to fill in the details she’d have told him that she had been the one who’d distanced herself from James, then kept pushing him away. She would have told him that James had loved her far more than she had been capable of loving him back. She would have told him that maybe she didn’t even believe in falling in love, or that she couldn’t, and she’d hurt a very decent man because of that. But she didn’t because none of it mattered. She wouldn’t do it again. “Why did you really follow me?” she asked, purposely changing the topic of conversation. “Even when you knew I wanted to be alone? You didn’t really think the animals were a threat, did you?”
