by Dianne Drake
Father Carlos led Bella through the door of the tiny one-room home. “Sorry it’s dark in here. But we do have a few lanterns.” He gestured for three men standing around the edges of the room with lit lanterns to move in closer. Grimness distorted their faces in the glow given off from the flames.
“How’s the boy?” she asked, rushing over to the man who held him. Miguel was sniffling, and scared in a way no child that age should ever be scared, but a quick exam satisfied Bella that, other than a few scrapes, he was fine. So she turned her attention to Miguel’s mother. “Where’s the closet?”
One of the man pointed to the closet door, a wooden structure that looked just like the room’s walls. Rough-hewn boards. An undersized door, at that. And, sure enough, Natali was lying in there, wedged into an odd angle and almost hunched over and kneeling—to protect her child, Bella guessed, a child now in the arms of one of the men.
Part of the exterior wall had collapsed from the outside, on top of her, effectively pinning her under a pile of debris. The men had pulled back the wood as best they could from the outside wall and, in essence, Bella was looking at the dark of the night through what was more hole than wall. “Natali,” she said, dropping to her knees, wondering why the woman hadn’t tried getting herself out of the closet after the quakes had ended. “My name is Bella, and I’m a doctor.”
She tried extending her hand to feel for a pulse, but found the woman nearly impossible to reach so she scrambled to her feet, ran outside and tried again from the hole in the exterior wall. And that’s when she saw what made her sick to her stomach. Natali’s back was nearly snapped in half, in two different places. Her spine was zigzagged at such odd angles…horrible angles. Fatal angles. The woman had taken her child to the closet when the earthquake had hit, thinking it was the safest place, and had literally used her own body to protect him. Which had cost her everything.
“Natali,” she said, gently, laying fingers over a very weak pulse in the woman’s neck. “Miguel is fine. We have him out of the closet, and he’s with Father Carlos right now. You did a good job protecting him. He’s safe now, Natali. He’s safe and he’s not injured.” It’s what a dying mother would want to hear, she thought. To give your life for your child, as Natali had done, yes, this was what she would want to hear. “You can rest now, Natali. Miguel is well and we will take care of him for you. You can let go.”
“Can we help you bring her out?” Father Carlos asked from the other side of the closet. He shone a light in Bella’s face, and her expression was all the answer he needed. “Can she hear me?”
“I think so.”
“Can I get closer to her from where you are?”
“A little.” Natali’s pulse was going thready. Skipping beats. She was sliding from this life now that she knew her son was safe. It was a mother’s last act of love, staying with her child as long as she could. How she must love her little boy, Bella thought as she took Natali’s hand in hers and held it.
Father Carlos ran around to the hole on the exterior and huddled into the closet interior, pressing himself up against Bella, performing the sacred duties to which he was entrusted at the end of a life. And that life ended before his words ran out. When Bella next felt for Natali’s pulse, it flickered away under her fingertips, and Natali let out her last breath. In that hollow fraction of a moment that came between life and death, a cold chill swept over Bella. It always did, and she thought about Rosie. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything for her,” Bella said, brushing back tears. “She was only waiting to know that her son was safe before she went.”
“No greater sacrifice,” Father Carlos replied, laying a gentle hand atop Bella’s. “The love only a mother could have for her child.”
“Only a mother, or a father.” Bella sniffled again, her thoughts now turning to Gabriel and Ana Maria. He loved that child, probably more than he knew. He would have done the same. Of that, she had no doubt. “So, let me go have a better look at Miguel now. And maybe you should go find the boy’s father, let him know…”
“No father. Natali was only sixteen. I met her in Andoas a few months ago, when I went to visit an old friend. I brought her here as a favor to her parents. They wanted her to learn responsibility by working on one of the farms down in the flatlands.”
“Then I think they’d be proud,” Bella whispered. “Will they take Miguel?”
Father Carlos nodded. “They’ll do the right thing.”
“It’s a miracle he survived,” she whispered, as she went to check the boy.
“Says the doctor who doesn’t believe in miracles.” Father Carlos gave her a kind smile. “I think you’ve had a change of heart?”
“Well, maybe there are miracles, but they’re always surrounded by so much sadness. Miracles and sadness.” Her own parents had been killed in the car wreck, yet she and her sister, both of them strapped into the backseat, had barely even been scratched. The sadness part of it she understood in so many painful ways, but the miracles she didn’t. Maybe that was due to the words she’d heard so often after their accident—It’s a miracle. Even at the tender age of five, she had known enough to understand that a miracle was a good thing. But she never felt good about her so-called miracle, and every time she heard the word, all it did was make her ache all the more. She might have been the miracle, but her parents were dead, which made the miracle unbearable. Which turned the miracle into the sadness.
So Miguel was the miracle. But at such a high price. That was the sadness he would have to face when he was older. And she felt that old, familiar ache for him.
“And who do we have here?” Gabriel asked, as Bella carried the boy into the church. All eyes went to her as she shifted Miguel, who was trying to reach out to Gabriel, to her other hip. “His name is Miguel Diego and I don’t know much about him except that he’s in good condition.”
“His family?” Gabriel asked.
Bella shook her head. “His mother stayed with him long enough to make sure he was safe, then she…” She wouldn’t say the word. While Miguel didn’t speak English, and wouldn’t understand what she was saying even if he did, she simply couldn’t utter the dreadful words around him. “Father Carlos is taking care of the arrangements, contacting his family, and for the time being, I think we have a young man to look after.”
“Are you OK?” Gabriel asked, his voice so gentle she nearly melted from it. When he reached out and stroked her cheek, she did melt, right into his embrace. “I couldn’t do anything,” she choked. “All she wanted was to make sure her baby was safe, that someone would take care of him, and when she knew that had happened, she just…She protected him, Gabriel. With everything she had, she took care of her little boy, and now…” She would have dabbed at the tears streaming down her cheeks but with her arms full of a rowdy little boy who desperately wanted to be put down so he could go play with the other children, she couldn’t. So she let the tears soak into Gabriel’s shirt.
“You need to rest,” he said. “A little while to yourself.”
“I need to work.”
“That’s how you avoid it, isn’t it? You work rather than giving in to what you’re feeling. You work to avoid your feelings, to avoid the grief, and that’s not good. Sometimes we need to welcome the pain in before we can start to heal from it.”
“I work because I have to. It’s the only thing I know how to do, the only thing that doesn’t let me down.”
“Arabella, have you ever allowed yourself to feel the things you want to, or need to? Or do you always bury so much of yourself away?”
“It’s safer,” she admitted. “And easier.”
“But is it really? Right now the only thing you want to do is stay here and mother that little boy, and that’s admirable. Yet you won’t admit it, and, to make matters worse, you’ve got your strong sense of duty to hide behind. Who would ever question a doctor who’s doing his or her duty? People will remark about the sacrifices you make, tell you how it’s a wonderful thing that you devot
e your life to your work, yet they’ll never ask why you have nothing left over for yourself. And that’s the question I’m asking, Arabella. Why do you want nothing for yourself?”
Bella pulled out of Gabriel’s arms and reared back. “What I want of myself is to be the best doctor I can be. That’s all, and it’s enough, even if you don’t think so. I don’t need anything else to validate myself to me, or prove myself to others, or make me happy.”
“What terrible things are you paying penance for?” he asked, reaching over to pull her back to him. But she stepped backward, then handed Miguel to one of the women helping with all the children, who took him straight away to the area set off to feed the little ones. Bella watched until Miguel was eating a tortilla before she looked at Gabriel again.
“You call it penance, I call it doing what I want to do.” So much guilt defied an explanation. No one could understand. And why should they have to? It was her life to live, her guilt to carry. No one else need be involved. “Which is being a doctor.”
“A doctor bordering on obsession?”
“Not obsession, Gabriel. And even if it were, would it really matter so much to you?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “It would matter.”
That surprised her. As many barriers as she erected, he just seemed to knock them down. Another time, another place it would have been different. They wouldn’t have been thrown into the close proximity, fighting so many battles shoulder to shoulder. Then she wouldn’t be so attracted to him, and he wouldn’t feel so obligated to take care of her. Simple as that. “Well, don’t. Because it won’t get you anywhere. I don’t get involved.”
“That’s not true. You get involved more than anybody I’ve ever seen, but you do a damn fine job of covering it up. And I’m not sure if you’re hiding it from others, or from yourself.”
“I have patients to see,” she said stiffly. OK, so maybe he was right about some things. She was a little obsessed sometimes, and she did tend to get more involved than she should. But that involved only her, which was the way she intended on keeping it. “Even more villagers are wandering in now, and by morning we’re going to be overcrowded. So I need to see as many of them as I can before the sun comes up.” Which was still a good eleven hours away.
“Then I’ll help you.”
“What about Ana Maria.”
“With my mother.” He smiled gently. “I’m not going to let you push me away, Arabella. To begin with, I want to be with you while we’re working to get through this crisis. But apart with that, I want to be with you…”
“No! Don’t say that.” It was what she wanted to hear more than anything else in her life, but it was the one thing she couldn’t hear. Wouldn’t hear. Especially now that she was sure she was in love with Gabriel.
“It’ll keep,” he said. “For now. But you have to know, it won’t go away just because you wish it away.”
Wishes, like miracles, were things that let you down. It would have been nice if she could have believed, though. Never in her life had she wanted anything so desperately as she did Gabriel. But she knew better, and that’s why she had to rely on the one thing she trusted most—her work. At the end of the day, that’s all there was.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT HAD been twenty-four hours since the first earthquake, and Bella was convinced, finally, that the worst of the medical duty was over. Stragglers from other villages were still coming in, but not in the droves of twelve hours earlier, and most of the injuries were minor now. Cuts, scrapes, reactions to fear. She and Gabriel had a small amount of medical supplies available to them now, too. A few odds and ends had been dropped in by helicopter several hours ago, along with some food staples, thanks to Father Carlos’s shortwave relay from Lado De la Montaña to who knew where?
The village itself was still pretty much cut off from anything down the nearest side of the mountain, unless the desire for escape and a good long hike became overwhelming, but that was fine with Bella. She had no reason to go anywhere.
Men were working to fill the giant sinkhole in the road and, overall, needs were being met. People were rebounding, they were digging around in the ruins for personal possessions, and even making plans to rebuild.
Finally, now that she had a chance to relax a little, Bella’s weariness was sinking in, the aches and pains of hard physical work catching up with her. But it was a good kind of tired. With so much potential for horrible things to have happened from the earthquake, there’d only been one fatality. One was never good, and it was so sad that such a young life had been taken. Though after everything she’d seen these past hours, she knew that Lado De la Montaña had been spared untold tragedy and suffering. Material objects could be replaced, houses rebuilt. But with so few lives destroyed here, she almost had to believe that some kind of miracle had taken place. Almost.
“How’s Ana Maria?” she asked Gabriel, who was about to stretch out in bed with her. It was amazing how much she missed her…even more amazing how quickly she’d gotten used to seeing her, and loved watching the little changes that took place day by day. It was as if a quick peek at Ana Maria just made things better, and she envied Gabriel a lifetime of that.
Bella had her little room in the back of the church all to herself now. The chapel part was still full to overflowing with people who’d lost homes and would have no place to go for some time to come. Father Carlos, bless his heart, had shooed away the people occupying her room, telling them the doctor needed rest. Which was true. She did.
“My mother took her to stay with one of her cousins, who lives in a little village just south of here. The road has easy access, and until I can manage to have her home rebuilt, I thought it would be best to keep both of them away from all this. Besides, they’re with family, which is good.”
“Your mother will stay here, in Lado De la Montaña?”
“She’s being stubborn about it, telling me this is her home, no matter what shape it’s in, that she’s not going anywhere.” He shook his head, and gave her a playful wink. “Stubborn women. The bane of my existence. Let’s hope Ana Maria turns out better.”
“You’re going to spoil her rotten, you know.”
“That’s your prediction?”
“A single father raising a little girl? I’d say it’s inevitable. One look at you with those big, brown eyes of hers and you’re going to be totally lost.”
“She is pretty, isn’t she?” He said that almost timidly, like he wanted to brag but didn’t know if he should. “I thought maybe I was a little partial since, as a rule, I don’t think most newborns are very pretty.”
“You don’t?” Actually, that was a familiar comment she heard from many new fathers…Will my baby get prettier? That said while trying to hide his turned-up nose from the adoring new mother who could see nothing but beauty in her child.
“You do?”
“Of course I do! Newborns have a unique beauty. And they have the most amazing baby smell…” That was the woman in her talking, not the doctor. “Then there’s the way they scrunch up their little faces and cry…”
“You should have children, Arabella. Lots and lots of newborns.”
Was he being sarcastic about that? Because she wanted children. Lots and lots of them, as he’d just said. But that required a commitment she just wouldn’t make. And a man, which she just couldn’t have…at least, not until her life was sorted out. “When I’m practicing in pediatrics, I have lots and lots of children,” she said, her voice edgy. Why did it always get back to something she couldn’t have? Why were the nice moments ruined by the realities? “So, you’re sure you can’t convince your mother to go back to Chicago with you, at least for a little while?” she asked, deliberately and not so delicately changing the subject. “I’d think she’d love the chance to be there with the two of you, watching her only granddaughter grow up.”
“Home is where the heart is, and you can’t fight the heart. This is where my mother’s heart is.”
But not hi
s? That caused a dull ache to well up in her, because in the back of her mind she’d wondered if he could stay. She’d allowed herself to dream into the future, with the two of them working together in a little clinic here. But now she had her answer. To be honest, it didn’t surprise her. In so many ways, Gabriel was as connected to his work as she was to hers. He didn’t see that, though. So, while she wasn’t surprised he wouldn’t stay, she was surprised by how disappointed she felt. “Be it ever so humble.” Bella’s words tumbled out on a sigh. “So, how long before you’ll be going back to Chicago?”
“Not for a while yet. I’ve got to take care of my mother one way or another, and I think the village is going to need both of us here to do the doctoring for a little while longer. A couple of weeks, I suppose. I mean, at some point I’ve got to figure out how Ana Maria and I are going to make a go of it together in our new life. You know, figuring out schedules and routines, those kinds of things. It’s going to be an adjustment, and I haven’t really given it much thought, but it’s going to happen sooner or later, no matter how many ways I put it off. So I think we’ll probably just rip the sticky bandage off the cut as soon as possible and get the initial shock of it over with.”
It all sounded so easy when he talked about it but, in reality, it scared him thinking about how many ways he could mess this up. To be honest, he’d pictured himself staying here in Lado De la Montaña, opening up a clinic with Arabella. The fantasy of a cozy little family of three had such a wonderful appeal he could almost feel it, but it was just another avoidance. He’d become so good at it that it was sneaking up on him now, pelting him in ways he didn’t even recognize. And this little fantasy was one of those ways. It sounded ideal but when he got down to the hard thinking, it was something he’d never wanted. Which could only mean that the reason he wanted it now was for the convenience of having Arabella nearby to bail him out when it came to Ana Maria, the way she had so many times already. And if not her, then his mother.
