Dianne Drake - The Doctor's Lost-and-Found Heart

“You’re right. I’ve stepped away. Not sure if I’ll go back and work at the hospital, or not. Haven’t decided … personal reasons. It’s complicated.”

Personal reasons he wouldn’t divulge. She could see it in his eyes, like she could see the well-practiced resistance there, as well. Jack had given her what she’d wanted and now it was her turn to do the same. She’d broached a subject he didn’t want to talk about, so she wouldn’t pry. As a psychologist, it was her second nature to ask, especially when she saw so much distress. But for Jack she would go against that nature. It was the least she could do.

“Okay, well … You have free rein here, Jack. Whatever you need to do is fine, and if I can help you, let me know. We do have some funds … ” She stood, then spun around to the beat-up old refrigerator behind her, opened it and grabbed a pitcher of juice—apple-pear mix from Patagonia. “But not a lot. So whatever you can do to be conservative would be appreciated. And right now I’m going to go have juice in the garden with Maritza Costa. Ventricular septal defect. Congenital.” Meaning, a small hole in her heart. “She’s feeling better today, and I think a nice walk in the fresh air will do her good.”

“You’re treating her how?”

At the mention of a child with a heart condition Jack’s face turned to stone. Amanda saw it, saw the visible change come over him. Such a drastic turnabout, it made her curious. One curiosity among many, she was only beginning to discover. “With medicine only, for the time being,” she explained. “And observing her. She got sick, probably a cold, and it lingered, so her parents brought her in and that’s when Ben made the discovery. She’s been a normal, healthy little girl, without any cardiac problems. So we’re being cautiously optimistic we can keep her regulated with the most conservative treatments, because we can’t convince her parents to let us send her to another facility for more sophisticated testing, maybe even surgery.”

“What about a cardiac cath? They use them more and more these days to close small holes, and it’s a safe procedure. Proving itself worthy of the task.”

“Maybe it is,” she continued, “if we had the means to perform a cardiac catheterization, which we don’t. That equipment’s on the list of things we hope to be purchasing in the next year or so.”

“So in the meantime …”

“We keep a close eye on her and try to keep her as healthy as we can.”

“Or go argue some sense into her parents.”

“Believe me, Ben would have done that months ago if he’d thought it would work. But we have to maintain the balance here, because the people … While they want the medical help, they’re always a little suspicious of outsiders.”

“A little?” he snapped. “They’d let that child die because they’re a little suspicious?”

“She’s not critical, Jack. And we’re doing the best we can.”

“But what happens when your best isn’t good enough anymore?”

It was a rhetorical question. She knew that, and decided to let it pass. “Look, it makes me angry, too. And my brother paces the floor he worries so much. But that’s the way we have to do things here, because we want to get along. It’s for the good of everyone, including Maritza. Things are changing here in the way we’re accepted, and those changes have their own pace. I mean, you lived here, so you already know that. Probably better than I do.”

“Look, I’m sorry. You have a nice facility here at Caridad, I’m not criticizing it. And I’m not criticizing either you or Ben. What you have works, and it’s none of my business how you treat your patients, so forget what I said because I’m not the one trying to take care of medical services on so many levels with so few means.”

Amanda stepped closer to Jack. “I appreciate the concern. No apologies necessary for that. And, Jack … thank you for earlier, for telling me who I might be.” She bent and kissed his cheek, her voice catching as the words came out. “Sincerely, thank you.”

As she was leaving, Ben was entering, and she gave him a bye-bye wave as she flitted out the door like a butterfly on a light breeze.

“She’s … ” Jack shrugged, not able to come up with the right word to describe her.

“A force,” Ben supplied.

“A force,” he repeated, just a little bowled over by Amanda’s passion. She was so out there about it. In his life those kinds of emotions were kept hidden, and he wasn’t used to being around someone like her, who showed all of it so naturally. It was a little off-putting to that self-admitted stodginess in him he tried to sustain. But it was also fascinating, much more than he would have expected. Still, should he have told her who she might be? It bothered him, made him uneasy being put in that position. Part of him was already realizing, though, that turning her down in anything she asked was going to be tough. Maybe damn near impossible. Because she was a force.

“Anyway,” he went on, trying to shake Amanda from his mind, “about this hospital-acquired infection you’ve got going …”

“Seven diagnosed cases right now, all of them limited to the children’s ward. General symptoms but not that serious—abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, malaise.”

“Fever? Cough?”

“Not yet. And the good news is we can do a limited amount of cultures here. But the bad news is, since we’re not really set up for it, I’m not sure I’d totally trust the results, if we were getting results, which we aren’t.”

“Which means everything’s turning up negative?”

“No positive test results for anything we’ve cultured. We’re set up to treat patients, and our lab, well … Let’s just say you’re not going to be impressed with it. So let’s just get this tour over with so you can figure out what to do with what we’ve got.”

“You mean Ezequiel’s tour wasn’t a real tour?” Jack asked, smiling. “Great kid, by the way. Smart.”

“We’re fond of him.”

“It’s good you let him hang around. Gives him a purpose.”

“And a home,” Ben commented.

“He lives here?”

“For a little over a year now. His mom brought him with her when she came for treatment, but she died from cancer, and we couldn’t find anybody who knew Ezequiel, let alone wanted him. No relatives, no family friends. So we set up a room for him … turned a large storage closet into a room, actually, and we all keep an eye on him. Make sure he’s fed, clothed.”

“Then he’s one of the lucky ones,” Jack said, thinking about Amanda, who’d also been one of the lucky ones. Thinking about Rosa, who hadn’t been.

“Lucky maybe, but he’s not getting a proper education, which is a problem. We’re each taking turns teaching him, but there’s no consistency to it. And he’s not with a family, not getting that kind of nurturing, which is an even bigger problem, because all kids need that. Yet if we turn him in to the authorities we might as well give him up for good. He’s too old to be adopted, probably wouldn’t do well in an institutional situation, which is where he’d end up if he didn’t run off. So we just …”

“Look the other way and hope for the best.”

Ben cringed. “When you put it that way, it sounds bad, doesn’t it?”

“No. Not really. I’ve worked in a lot of difficult situations and seen these lost children everywhere. Ezequiel’s sharp. A real survivor. You’re giving him more than he would have any other way, and he’ll make it through.”

“Let’s hope so, but he deserves better. Anyway, welcome to our lab,” Ben said, pushing open a door to reveal a closet-size space, set up with a table and two antiquated microscopes. “Like I said, don’t expect much. I found these in storage in a public hospital in Buenos Aries. They’d upgraded, and told me to help myself. So I filled our communal Jeep with everything I thought we might be able to use, which makes us, officially, a hand-me-down hospital.” Said with a big smile.