by Dianne Drake
It wasn’t like she didn’t want to be around all these people, because she did. They were so gracious in the face of such a large catastrophe that it overwhelmed her. But she needed time to be away from it all. Time to unwind. The quiet time Gabriel had promised her. Which wasn’t to be had even in her tiny room, as it had been turned into a nursery for the youngest babies. In total, there were nine of them in there, all nestled into various boxes that had been scrounged, all attended by mothers or other village women who were busy diapering, feeding and rocking.
Immediately, Bella looked for Ana Maria, but couldn’t find her.
“Gabriel’s gone over to the rectory,” Father Carlos said. “Which is where you need to go, too. We need you both to stay well so you can help us through this. Oh, and he took the baby with him, and I believe they’ve gone to my room.”
Gabriel had taken Ana Maria with him. That made her feel good. Even a little warm and mushy, considering the hard shell he’d put on about the baby at first. “Then you know where I’ll be,” she said. “And if anything comes up…” Before her last words were out, the father shooed her out the side door to the chapel, the one with the portico leading straight into the small rectory. “You have yourself a good rest, Bella,” he called after her. “It’s a blessing for us that you were here at the time we needed you. A blessing, and a miracle.”
“A blessing maybe, but there aren’t any miracles, Father,” she said, as she stopped long enough to have a look out over the village. It was getting dark now, and even the fading evening light couldn’t hide all the destruction here. What had been so vibrant when she’d woken up that morning was gone. Vanished, in the blink of an eye.
Like her sister.
Sighing under the weight of the world on her shoulders, Bella shook her head. “No miracles anywhere,” she whispered.
“I understand that your heart is broken, Bella, but I promise that if you allow it to happen, it will heal in time. You will find what you need to heal it when you most need it, and with that you’ll also discover there are miracles everywhere. All you have to do is look around and open your entire essence to them.”
How could he even think such a thing? After a long day of earthquakes and aftershocks, and with nearly half of Lado De la Montaña in ruins, how could anybody…even a priest…look for miracles here? Certainly, she admired him for his optimism because when all else failed, being optimistic went a long way. But she didn’t share it. “I think I must see something different than you do when I look around because I don’t see any miracles anywhere.”
“You saw George Gabriel Reyes today, didn’t you?”
Bella laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“Go to the rectory. Take care of yourself,” the priest said, then winked. “And Gabriel. Take care of him, too. He’s part of that miracle you’re not ready to see yet.”
“You take care of yourself too, Father,” she said. “Get that rest I prescribed hours ago because the people here need you…need your optimism.” That included her. And for the first time since she couldn’t remember when, she thought she actually felt a little of it.
There were several people inside the priest’s house when she stepped in the door, people who’d taken refuge there, but Bella found Gabriel alone, in the tiny bedroom at the back where Father Carlos had said he’d be. The door was closed, separating Gabriel from the dozen or so other people there, and when she went in, he was stretched out on the bed, holding Ana Maria. It was a picture-postcard scene, with the baby sound asleep against his chest, all nuzzled into his cotton T-shirt as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Gabriel wasn’t sleeping, though. His eyes were open, and even in the dim light of the kerosene lamp Bella could see that he was simply staring at the ceiling. “Can I come in?”
“You know don’t have to ask, Arabella,” he said, very quietly. Then he scooted over in the single bed, moving himself as close to the wall as he could get, until his injured shoulder was touching it. “There’s not much room here, but you’re welcome to share it with us.”
It didn’t take a second invitation for her to crawl in next to him and, right away, she was making herself comfortable in the creaky old bed. “How are you?” she whispered.
“Tired, but good. Most of the people I’ve been treating are in about the same condition I’m in. Minor injuries, a few major ones like broken bones, that we’ll eventually have to get out of here for proper treatment. Nothing critical, though. And you?”
“Tired, but good, too. Marisol and her family are doing well, and the ladies promised to stay there with them for the rest of the night. We’re beginning to get more and more people wandering in from other villages and I actually saw a couple of them on my way over here. They’ve heard the doctors are here…”
“Doctors without supplies. This is crazy, Arabella. We need—”
“Everything. I know, and, believe me, I’ve been trying to think of a way to get in touch with someone…anyone. But we’re so cut off right now. Although Father Carlos did say he’s trying to reach Father Frank Marcos, an old friend of mine in San Francisco, by shortwave radio. Apparently he has one in the church. In the meantime, I’ve sent two men off to Iquitos. They may have to walk a good bit of the way to get past that hole in the road and its not going to be easy doing it in the dark, but maybe somewhere farther down the mountain they’ll be able to find someone to help us.” She reached over and laid a hand on Ana Maria’s back, just from the pure need to touch something so unaffected by all the tragedy and uncertainty encircling them. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? All’s right with her world because the person she trusts most is here to protect her. For her, it’s just that simple. And she senses that protection, you know. Babies are so aware…maybe more aware of things than we are.”
“Do you really believe that?” he asked.
“More than believe it. I know it. Babies come from a relatively safe world inside their mothers into this strange new place where they’re totally helpless, one of most helpless infants of all species, and all they have to rely on are their instincts.” Bella twisted to her left side, pressing herself even harder to Gabriel. Ana Maria felt protected there, and so did she. It was a feeling she hadn’t expected to find here, in this place so near where her sister had died. It was a feeling she hadn’t expected to find ever again. But in the span of only a few short days so much had changed in her life. Different outlook and different sensibilities, and…Gabriel.
It wasn’t time to admit her true feelings for him because there was the possibility that proximity and circumstances were causing what she thought was happening to her…those strange, stray emotions she tried to fight off. And was failing so miserably at doing now. This could all be a matter of her needing someone now that she didn’t have Rosie, and Gabriel was there, convenient for her. That was a definite possibility. But so was falling in love with him. It was bad timing, though. Really bad timing when nothing was normal and everything was so confusing. No time to think, no time to pose the arguments with herself. “My sister died on this mountain,” she said, surprised how easily it had come.
“That’s right. You started to mention your sister just before the earthquake. Was she one of the medical group coming here?”
“A nurse. It was her medical group, actually. She was the one who was fighting so hard to set up a clinic here.”
“Arabella, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I knew that you were connected to them somehow, but I never guessed how deeply, and I’m so sorry for your loss.”
It felt so strange, telling him. “When we first met, Gabriel, there was no need to tell you. You were merely a stranger who needed help with a baby, and I happened to be particularly good at caring for babies. But then when you came here and we became…friends, and after I found out that your sister had just died…I couldn’t tell you, Gabriel. Your sister’s death, my sister’s death…what would have been the point? You had your own tragedy to suffer and I had…That’s the thing. I had nothing. When
all the searchers were here, looking for the airplane, and all the families of the people on board came down, just to be closer…I didn’t. I couldn’t. I simply…went back to work. And that’s what I did when the searchers gave up their hunt and all the families huddled together, mourning their losses. I worked. And here you were, doing the right thing by your family and the people who loved Lynda.
“There was a memorial service, Gabriel, for my friends. For Rosie, and I…” She swiped angrily at a tear trickling down her cheek, the saltiness of it stinging the cuts and scrapes there. “She was all I had in the world. It was just the two of us, no parents, and all I did was…”
“The best you could do,” he whispered. “You did the best you could do. In the end, that’s all any of us can do, Arabella.”
“No one thought so, though. Not my friends, not my coworkers. They all thought I was cold, indifferent. Or having a mental breakdown because I wasn’t investing all the same emotion the others were showing. But I was. My heart was breaking and I was doing the one thing I knew would get me through it, because if I didn’t…”
Gabriel shifted position as Ana Maria snuggled into him a little more. “There’s no instruction book telling us how we’re supposed to act in difficult situations, Arabella. Truth is, we all act, and react, differently. Do the best we can, I suppose. I mean, I wasn’t exactly great about Lynda. My immediate reaction was more about being inconvenienced by her child. I looked for excuses, I avoided…You were there. You saw me—you know.”
“What I know is that you came here right away, and did everything right when you had to. You took care of Ana Maria, and helped your mother. You’ve been the support she needed.”
“On my own terms.”
Bella laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Changing your life isn’t easy. I’ve had to do that a few times in my life and sometimes you can’t be as gracious about it as you want to be. But that’s understandable.”
“And you’re about to change your life again, aren’t you?”
“I think so.” She liked it here, liked being needed. Liked taking care of the people. More than that, she felt like she could belong, be part of Rosie’s dream. Or maybe, finally, have a dream of her own. “But, like I said, it’s not easy.”
“No, it’s not. When my mother told me I would have to raise Ana Maria, I argued with her. My very first thoughts were how she wasn’t going to fit into my life.” He ran a gentle hand over the baby’s back and it was like a sense of peace, and purpose, came over him. “I should have been thinking about how she’d lost her mother and her father, and how that would affect her life, but I was thinking about myself. I didn’t want her and, to be honest with you, after the nurse from the adoption agency approached me, there was a moment or two when I thought that might be a good decision. To find a nice home for her with people who really wanted a daughter. Give away my own flesh and blood.”
“But the thing is, that thought lasted only a moment or two. It was a reaction to a situation, Gabriel, not a real thought or plan. My sister and my friends died weeks ago, and I’m only now coming here to face this. Only now having my own reactions.”
“Like I said, we do the best we can, Arabella. That’s all we can do, and I know you didn’t grieve any less for not coming here with the others. Being by yourself through it could have been harder, could have made you grieve even more because you didn’t get that support everyone else had. My mother and I…we have that, and I don’t even want to think what it would be like going through Lynda’s death alone.”
“And I’m just the opposite. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like going through Rosie’s death with so many people around me. So I didn’t because I’ve never had support other than my sister’s and I didn’t know how. It was, like, if I did all those things everybody else did, I wouldn’t have Rosie any more.”
Gabriel shifted slightly, taking Bella’s hand in his, then he raised it to his lips and kissed it. “She sounds like she was an amazing woman. Was Rosie as dedicated to her medical work as you?”
She hadn’t talked about her sister, not in any real sense, since the accident, yet this seemed so right. Like it was time, and Gabriel was the one meant to listen. “More dedicated. She was the best nurse…the one who inspired me to go into medicine in the first place. Rosie always wanted to be a nurse, and she’d talked about it from the time we were little. After my parents died there was a great deal of money left in trust for us, so that was never a problem. She wanted to be the nurse, I wanted to be the doctor, and we made plans. Just the two of us together, forever.
“Rosie was amazing. Happy in spite of everything we went through, everything I put her through. Dedicated. The person I most admired in the world.” Until she’d met Gabriel.
“It sounds to me like she was a woman who would have wanted her sister staying back and taking care of children who needed her rather than spending that time in a futile pursuit, huddling around with a bunch of strangers waiting for, as it turned out, nothing. Am I right?”
Odd he would say that, because that sounded just like Rosie. Do something that counts, Bella. That’s what will always make you happiest. “You are. She was just like that,” Bella whispered. “She was everything that I’m not.”
“I don’t believe that. Not for a minute. From the way you talk about her, and from what I’ve seen in you, I think your sister was every good thing that you are, and you are every good thing she was. You’re too overwhelmed with grief right now to recognize that, though. You can’t see past that grief to find what’s on the other side—and there is another side, Arabella.” He stroked Ana Maria’s head. “I promise. There really is another side…a better side, when you finally let yourself see it.”
Bella couldn’t respond to that, couldn’t find the words. Maybe there wasn’t anything to say, or maybe she simply didn’t know how to take Gabriel’s words to heart yet. Whatever the case, she tucked her head into Gabriel and shut her eyes. A few minutes later, as she drifted off to sleep, so physically tired and so emotionally raw she was pretty sure she knew the answer to one of her questions. This was the man she loved. The only man she’d ever loved. She wasn’t ready for it, and the time wasn’t right. This was the first time she’d ever wondered if there could be a time for it, however. The very first time in her life, as the tiniest spark of hope ignited deep inside her. It was enough for now. Better than she’d expected. More than she deserved. “Thank you,” she whispered as a wave of sleep washed her away on its tide. A pleasant, gentle tide, for once.
“I hate to disturb you…” Father Carlos poked his head in the door, keeping his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Juan Gabriel, Bella, we have a situation…not so good, I’m afraid. I need a doctor. Either one of you. And quickly.”
Instantly, Bella sat up, as did Gabriel, who startled Ana Maria wide awake, and that’s when the screaming began. “Let me go and find my mother to take care of the baby,” Gabriel began, but Bella was already out of bed, quite surprised that she’d slept for nearly two hours—slept deeply, no disturbing dreams.
It was amazing what a nap could do to make a body feel better, because hers did. She felt like she’d slept a full night. Or maybe she felt better due to all the things Gabriel had said before her nap. She may have heard those things before from other people…she didn’t remember, but she’d needed to hear them from him for them to make any sense. The reconciliation wasn’t lodged fully in her heart yet, and might never be, but on another level she knew he was right in some ways. There really was another side for her, when she was ready to see it. The question was, would she ever be ready? “I’ll go,” Bella volunteered to the priest, who immediately trotted out of the room. She turned to Gabriel, who was sitting up now, trying to quieten Ana Maria. “You take care of her and I’ll meet you back in the church in a little while. Maybe we can figure out what we need to do next.” Medically speaking. Not romantically because, for all practical purposes, that couldn’t happen, even though she thought it would be so easy
. And nice.
“Next, for me, is a diaper change,” he said, turning up his nose. “That’s the one part of this whole parental responsibility thing I don’t like so much.”
Bella laughed. “Says the surgeon, who has no problem cutting people open.”
“That’s different.”
He looked so adorable, so helpless and adorable, she couldn’t help herself. Before she left the room, Bella bent over the bed and first kissed Ana Maria, then kissed Gabriel tenderly on the lips. It was a lingering kiss, not so much in duration as it was in the way it made her feel afterward. It was as if she’d waited a lifetime for Gabriel’s kiss. Who knows? Maybe she had. “You’ll do fine.” She hated pulling away from him then dashing from the room, but she had to. Duty called.
“They found Natali Diego still in her house just a little while ago. She’s not good,” Father Carlos called back over his shoulder once Bella had caught up with him. He was winded, his voice filled with exhaustion and rough emotion as they ran along the dark trail to a house that sat just a short way away from the main road through the village. “When some of the men went there earlier to see if anybody was in the house, they didn’t find her, and assumed she’d gone to shelter, like so many of the people were doing. But later, when we started making a list of everybody in the village, and realized nobody had seen Natali, some of the men went back to her house and found her hiding in the closet, holding little Miguel. Protecting him.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “When they looked at her she was not so good. We decided not to move her out of there until you or Juan Gabriel took a look.”
They’d been lucky in Lado De la Montaña so far. No deaths, no serious injuries. But the people here were of hearty stock and while a few of them would be laid up awhile recovering, the worst of the damage had been to the buildings. Everything considered, it could have been much worse, and she only hoped some of that luck had rubbed off on Natali Diego and little Miguel. Judging from the sound of the priest’s voice, though, she wasn’t very optimistic about that.
