by Lynne Gentry
From the woman’s nod, Maddie knew the woman had understood every word of her request. When she spun in the direction of the five rooms in this tiny place, Maddie hurriedly followed after her.
The yeasty smell of typhoid hit Maddie’s nose the moment the door to Parker’s room opened.
“Oh, no.” She rushed to the small metal bed filled with a man’s limp 6’4” frame. “Parker?” She leaned in. Beneath the sour odor of sickness she detected the faint scent of Aqua Velva. He’d worn this cologne since the day he showed up in Sunday school with little pieces of bloody toilet paper stuck to his chin. A sweaty curl clung to the scar on his forehead, the scar he’d gotten the night he came to save her. She brushed the wet strand away. He felt too warm for someone who’d been dosed with proper antibiotics. “Let me see his chart,” Maddie barked in Spanish.
“Lucia,” the woman said in perfect English. “My name is Lucia.” And from her crossed arms, Lucia did not appreciate an American doctor bursting in on her patient and telling her what to do.
“Lucia, I’m concerned by his toxic appearance.” Maddie stomped around the bed and helped herself to his chart. “He’s been here nearly...seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours and he still has fever?” She stared at the single page. “Chloramphenicol? No one uses that anymore.”
“Maddie?” The sound of Parker’s gravelly voice made her heart skip a beat.
She whipped around. Parker was struggling to open his eyes. She closed the chart, leaned close, and whispered. “Parker.”
“You smell like a wet dog.”
“And you smell like a dinner roll.” Maddie straightened and pushed a strand of wet hair behind her ears. “Do you know what that tells me?”
“It’s Thanksgiving?”
“It tells me you probably have typhoid. I thought I told you not to make me come down here to save your butt and—”
“And yet, here you are.” His heavy eyelids were barely cooperating, forcing him to scrunch to focus.
Unwilling to let herself get lost in his continued belief in her selflessness, she spouted, “Somebody has to keep you from killing yourself.”
“Don’t make a fuss.” His weak smile stopped the lecture forming on her tongue. Maybe he was in better shape than she thought. His crooked index finger motioned her closer. “Tell Isabella she’s pretty.” His eyes drifted closed. “And that I love her.”
“Isabella?” Maddie took a step back. “Who’s Isabella?”
He didn’t answer. Was he delusional? Or had he found someone and moved on? The possibility was a sledgehammer to her chest.
“He’s been talking out of his head since he arrived,” the woman in scrubs explained in very good English. “The antibiotics don’t seem to be working.”
“Because you have him on the wrong one.”
“We have nothing else.”
“No Cipro?”
“No.”
Maddie ripped Parker’s gown up. Her gaze bolted past his lack of underwear. Rose spots covered his lower chest and distended abdomen. She pressed one of the spots. The welt blanched under pressure, but Parker remained unresponsive to her touch. “How long has he been on the Chloramphenicol?”
The nurse looked at her watch. “Forty-eight hours.”
Complications from a drug-resistant Salmonella typhi spooled in Maddie’s head. She didn’t have enough Cipro to risk letting him ride this out here. If his bowel perforated, she’d have between six to twelve hours before he became septic. Moving him across town didn’t guarantee access to a full drug regimen or the highly-skilled surgeons he’d need to give him a fighting chance. She could fly him home in less than three hours. “I need an ambulance STAT.”
“Why?”
“Because he’ll die if he stays here.”
Maddie was used to people responding to her orders, but American doctors had no clout here. This nurse took her time finding the doctor to sign Parker’s release. The ambulance had a flat on its way to the hospital. No one could tell her when the tire would be fixed. And Parker kept asking for Isabella. To keep from climbing out of her skin, Maddie monitored Parker’s vitals in between checking her watch and pacing.
Frustrated at the lack of progress toward securing Parker’s release, Maddie snatched a fresh trash liner from an empty bin. She stormed to the chair by Parker’s bed loaded with a pile of his personal belongings. “I’m going to get you out of this dump before they kill you,” she whispered as she dropped his underwear in the bag. “Leave everything to me.” Next, she stuffed Parker’s scuffed cowboy boots into the trash bag. The heels were worn and there was a dime-sized hole in one of the soles. She tossed his threadbare flannel shirt in with the boots. His jeans were shredded at the knees, not because Parker had paid attention to the latest fashion trend, but because he’d had these Levi’s since high school. She knew this because the back pocket still had the swipe of yellow paint she’d dragged across his backside during their last youth group service project. That was nearly thirteen years ago. Refusing to believe he’d kept the jeans as a reminder of their high school flirtation, she wadded the pants. His phone fell out of the front pocket and bounced on the Saltillo tile.
Praying the screen hadn’t cracked, she grabbed up the phone. The case, sleek, silver and obviously new, was such a contrast to his other possessions. She turned the phone over. A picture of a silky-haired brunette wearing pale blue scrubs and a stunning smile flashed onto the screen.
Gabriella?
Before Maddie could make a positive ID, the screen reverted to black. Maddie’s thumb hovered over the home button. If the beautiful nurse from the mountain clinic was Parker’s screensaver choice, why did he keep calling for someone named Isabella?
Maddie glanced at Parker moving fitfully in his sleep. He seemed as confused as she. For all she knew, he’d mixed-up Gabriella’s name with the people he rented a room from or a stray dog he’d taken in while living here.
But what if she’d misunderstood him? What if he was really saying Gabriella instead of Isabella? After all, he was dehydrated and his throat was very dry.
Searching for clues, Maddie tilted the phone again. The woman in the photo was definitely Gabriella. No question about it. Were Gabriella and Parker a couple? Possible. But if that was the case, then where was Gabriella? Maddie had lost touch with the girl she’d bunked with for a whole summer, but she remembered the beautiful nurse as a loyal and dedicated friend. If Gabriella had, in any way, returned Parker’s infatuation, she’d be at his side right now.
Maddie moved her thumb away from the phone’s home button. Satisfying her curiosity didn’t give her the right to invade Parker’s privacy. Once she had him tethered to proper antibiotics, he’d be up and around in no time. Then he could call whomever he wanted...Gabriella...Isabella...as long as he was no longer fraternizing with Salmonella, she couldn’t care less whom he hung out with.
As she slipped his phone into the bag with his clothes, Lucia brought the doctor into the room and announced, “The ambulance is here.”
“Finally.” Maddie growled as she signed off on the transfer of care. She should be calm now, her worry banished because she’d have Parker in a decent medical facility in a few hours. She’d been raised to be sweet, but ever since her father died it didn’t take much to stir up her anger. “You better hope I get him home before his bowels perforate and he turns septic.” She shoved the gurney toward the door and plowed into a woman stepping across the threshold. “I’m sorry.” Maddie flew around the gurney and examined the legs of the little girl the woman was holding. “Are either of you hurt?
The woman shook her head and checked the toddler. “We’re good.”
“Good.” Maddie shot back around the gurney. “I’m in a hurry. Could you move please?” Incensed that the woman who’d clearly entered the wrong room just stood there staring at her, Maddie snapped, “This is an emergency.”
“Where are you taking our Parker?” the woman asked in Spanish.
Maddie’s grip
tightened on the bed railing. “You know him?”
The woman’s eyes widened as she took in Parker’s condition. “He’s the big farmer who fixes our well. He rents a bed and a crib from me.”
“A crib?”
“For his daughter,” the woman cut her eyes toward the dark-eyed girl in her arms. “She’s been crying for her father.”
Maddie shook her head. “There’s been some mistake.”
“No mistake, senorita.”
“I would know if Parker had a child.”
The woman bristled at Maddie’s accusation. “I no lie.”
Parker coughed then grimaced as if every muscle in his body ached.
“This man doesn’t have time for wells or children.” Maddie pressed her lips and took a big breath through her nose. Yelling at everyone was not going to get Parker on that plane. “I’m sure someone here can help you sort this out. We need to go.”
“The farmer told me a horse had hurt his father. That is why he was packing to take his daughter to America. Then the diarrhea came. The clinic said my tamales had made him sick. When he got worse, I found a man to drive him to the city. I finished packing his daughter then waited in the rain for the bus.” She held out a soggy bag woven from brightly-colored grasses. “The farmer is a good man.”
As the woman who smelled of cooking fires and damp hemp squeezed past the gurney, the little girl lunged for Parker. “Paki.”
Parker’s heavy eyelids fluttered open. “Isabella?” He raised his hands a couple of inches off the bed. “Come to Daddy.”
CHAPTER THREE
Typhoid tended to cluster in families. Had Parker contracted the illness from water contaminated by his own daughter’s dirty diapers?
His daughter?
The child had called him Paki. Was that a toddler version of papi, the Spanish name for father? Or was Paki some sort of nickname? Like one you’d give to a favorite uncle or dear friend? She really wished Momma was here. She was much better at understanding childish gibberish.
Hurt throbbed in Maddie’s chest as she studied the little girl Parker’s insistent landlady had shoved into her arms before she boarded. The woman claimed the apple-cheeked cherub was eighteen months old. Maddie leaned forward and lightly touched the sleeping girl’s tiny forehead. The child stirred. Maddie jerked her hand back. Other than being exhausted from a night of traveling, the toddler didn’t feel warm to the touch. She may appear to be perfectly healthy, but she’d still have to be tested for typhoid when they reached Mt. Hope. Simultaneously running a DNA test on the kid crossed Maddie’s mind as well.
Which was pure craziness.
But none of this made any sense...unless...Parker had gotten married. The possibility was a kick in the gut she found hard to believe. Momma wouldn’t have been able to keep a disappointment of that scale to herself.
The only other scenario was almost as crazy as the idea of her risking her medical license to run a secret DNA test. Parker might not have married Isabella’s mother. After all, he’d been gone a long time. People get lonely. Lines get blurred. She’d fallen victim to both of those traps. But wrapping her mind around the possibility that Parker had randomly slept with someone and fathered a child was impossible. Parker believed in old-fashioned relationships: love, marriage, and then babies. He wouldn’t keep his parents in the dark about a woman who’d given him a child he obviously adored.
The man on the gurney was too delirious to interrogate now. That’s why she’d made the decision to text Momma before the medevac charter took off for Texas. Not details. Only that she and Parker were in route and that when they landed they would need an ambulance...and a car seat.
Except for the addition of a baby, this crazy rescue trip was reminiscent of the time Parker drove all the way to Dallas in a blizzard to pick her up at the airport. On the way back to Mt. Hope, they’d spun out in the snow and totaled Parker’s truck. Parker had suffered a head injury. Maddie had been so terrified of losing him, she’d kissed him.
Hard.
For the past four years, she’d thought about that kiss off and on. Sometimes, she’d even wondered what it would have been like if she’d chosen to go with him and kiss him every day for the rest of her life. But right now, all she wanted to do was smack him.
Hard.
Maddie rummaged through her backpack and retrieved the flimsy paper Isabella’s caregiver had shoved into her hands along with the child. The legal document was written in Spanish and stamped with an official-looking seal.
Maddie could only decipher scattered phrases, but she had no trouble recognizing Parker’s sloppy signature. The man had agreed to something, and from the looks of it, he was now legally bound.
“It is proof of Parker’s right to take the child from the country,” Lucia had said when Maddie asked for a quick translation.
Maddie folded the paper and slid it into the trash bag with Parker’s belongings. She unfastened her seatbelt and assessed Parker’s condition for the tenth time. Fever was still high, but his lack of intense abdominal pain gave her hope that with proper treatment he could avoid a possible leak in his intestines.
She checked her watch. According to the pilot, they’d touch down in Mt. Hope in less than thirty minutes. Momma’s curiosity about the need for a car seat couldn’t possibly rival Maddie’s growing need for answers. She reached in the trash bag and pulled out Parker’s phone. A slight tilt brought up the screensaver again. She gasped. She’d been so focused on trying to figure out why Gabriella’s photo was Parker’s favorite pic that she’d missed the dark-haired baby on the nurse’s hip.
Isabella.
Maddie glanced from the sleeping child back to the child on the screen. It was her. A few months younger, but the dark-haired beauty in Gabriella’s arms was the same child Parker’s landlady had insisted he would never leave.
Had Parker fallen in love with Gabriella? Was the nurse Maddie had admired and trusted the mother of Parker’s child? Everything was beginning to make sense.
Gabriella was everything Maddie was not. Kind. Compassionate. Gentle. A lover of children. Maddie dropped the phone back in the trash bag. She was letting emotions get the best of her. Jumping to unfounded conclusions. Isabella most likely had been a motherless child brought to the clinic for care. If so, then how did Isabella’s care get sloughed off on Parker?
Nerve endings sparking with unanswered questions, Maddie yanked open a small overhead bin. She removed a blanket and carefully draped the sleeping child.
“I wish you could talk, little one,” Maddie whispered as she sunk into the seat opposite the little girl.
She studied Isabella’s features for parentage clues that might definitively exclude Parker. She dismissed their matching hair, eyes, and skin tone. Most of Latin America’s population had Parker’s darker coloring. It was the unique similarities that made a strong paternity case against him.
Wispy, dark curls had escaped the child’s high-placed pigtails and stuck to her skin...exactly like Parker’s curls clung to his face when he became overheated. The child’s long legs were folded close to her chest the same way Parker used to curl his lanky frame into a bus seat on their high school mission trips. Lengthy, thick lashes—exact replicas of the fringe on Parker’s lids—rested on her chubby cheeks. Parker Kemp was written all over this enchanting little thing.
Maddie leaned forward for a closer look. Isabella’s eyelids flew open. Two midnight-black eyes studied her back. Afraid to make any sudden moves, the only thing Maddie could think to do was to simply return the child’s stare. To her surprise, Isabella’s eyes didn’t immediately tear up.
“Paki?” the little girl asked without moving.
“He’s sleeping.” Maddie pointed to the gurney strapped into place. “Right there.”
Isabella’s tiny face puckered. “Paki?” She slowly sat up and stretched her neck for a better look at Parker. “Paki?” Her lip began to quiver.
Unwilling to spend the rest of the flight with an incons
olable child, Maddie searched the cabin for a distraction. She remembered the granola bar in her backpack. “Are you hungry?” Once again, she was met with a trusting stare. Maddie opened the snack bar. Before she held it out, she did her best to ascertain if the kid had teeth. It was Parker she wanted to choke, not the child. “¿Tienes hambre?” she asked in Spanish. Relieved by Isabella’s toothy smile, she broke off a small piece of the crumbly oatmeal.
Isabella’s mouth opened like a little bird.
Maddie chuckled and offered the pieces in her palm. Isabella took it cautiously from her and ate the bite quickly, then held out her empty hand.
Surprised the child hadn’t reacted like her nephew and run screaming to the other end of the plane, Maddie asked, “More?”
Isabella’s lips immediately stretched into a big smile. “Peeze,” she said in very good English.
“You little stinker. You could understand me all along.” Feeling as if she was trying to lure a wild creature close, Maddie smiled and offered Isabella another piece. “You wouldn’t want to explain all of this to me, would you?”
Isabella chomped granola happily.
“Didn’t think so.” She handed Isabella another small piece. “Well, my name is Maddie. Can you say, Maddie?”
“Maa-d.” Isabella’s attempt sounded like a cross between a calf crying for its mother and mad.
Maddie gave her another piece. “Close enough.”
When the last crumb was gone, Isabella folded both hands in her lap like an old lady, cocked her head, and looked at Maddie expectantly. Her big doe eyes seemed to say: Now what?
Now what, indeed?
Parker wasn’t able to run interference for her and that little snack diversion had taken all of two minutes. They had at least another twenty-five minutes before she could pass Isabella off to the capable hands of Momma. Maddie scanned the cabin for another distraction. Tubes and monitors didn’t seem like age-appropriate entertainment.
“Want to look out the window?” Maddie motioned to the seatbelt cinching Isabella’s waist. “I can let you out until the pilot says we’re ready to land.” She undid the clasp and Isabella sprung across the aisle and into Maddie’s arms. The agile little girl wrapped herself around Maddie’s neck and waist tight as a little capuchin monkey. “I can’t breathe.” Maddie peeled Isabella’s arms free but the kid just flung them around her neck again. “Okay, then.” Being squeezed tight by a child sent a warm flush pulsing through Maddie’s veins. Was it fear or a sudden realization that her biological clock was ticking and she was actually enjoying this?
