Marisa Carroll - Winter Soldier

Adam wasn’t in the lobby. He wasn’t on the sidewalk outside the hotel. He wasn’t on the bus. She shoved her duffel bag into the overhead bin and looked around. The passengers were all women, except for Roger Crenshaw.

“Glad you’re here, Leah. Only two more to come,” he said, putting a tick beside her name on the clipboard he was holding.

“Join me. We’re almost ready to leave.” Kaylene smiled and beckoned from across the aisle.

“Where are the others?” Leah asked, sliding onto the cracked leather seat beside the woman she already considered a friend.

“B.J. and most of the men left for the airport—” Kaylene glanced at her watch “—half an hour ago.”

“Dr. Sauder, too?”

“Yes, I believe I saw him with the group.”

Leah was relieved to learn that Adam had made it safely back to the hotel. Something of what she was feeling must have shown on her face, for Kaylene looked as if she wanted to say more. But just then the bus doors screeched shut on unoiled hinges behind the final two members of the group. Moments later they pulled out onto the street, parting the waves of opposing traffic like a whale in a school of shrimp.

The ride to Dalat was one of the most nerveracking experiences of Leah’s life. The highway out of Saigon was crowded with all manner of vehicles, from eighteen-wheelers to high-wheeled carts pulled by water buffalo. There were seventies-era American cars, Japanese motor scooters, Chinese trucks and buses, cyclists and pedestrians, and no one paid any more attention to the traffic laws here than they had in Saigon. There seemed to be only one rule of the road: have a horn and use it. It was a long, harrowing drive, and even the beauty of the mist-washed hillsides was not enough to take Leah’s mind off their driver’s suicidal tendency to pass other vehicles on the winding stretches of narrow roadway with sheer, unguarded drops only inches from the bus’s wheels.

The sun had set and the short twilight had almost faded when they arrived at the hospital compound in the jungle, several miles outside the hill-country city of Dalat. Father Gerard, the French Canadian priest in charge of the hospital, and two of the nuns, whom he introduced as Sister Grace and Sister Janet, came out of the square, two-story, brick building to welcome them.

Leah took a moment to look around and get her bearings before following the white-cassocked Father Gerard and the others on a tour of the compound. To the west of the hospital was a church made out of the same dusty-red brick, its copper-roofed steeple green with age. Grouped between the two buildings were half-a-dozen thatched-roof huts. Smoke from cooking fires curled through holes in the roofs while small children played outside in the dirt, among chickens and potbellied pigs. Here, Father Gerard explained, as he led them to their rooms in two larger communal huts, the families and friends of hospital patients stayed while their loved ones underwent treatment.

They drew names out of a hat for room assignments, and Leah and Kaylene found themselves paired up, an arrangement that suited them both. Their room was at the end of the long building closest to the hospital. Barely big enough to turn around in, it held two hard, narrow beds draped with mosquito netting, a small table and one chair, a metal washbowl and pitcher. A single bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The hospital had electricity provided from Dalat, but in the compound there was only an aging generator that produced electricity for two hours at dusk and one hour in the morning. Showers and toilets were in the hospital building. The kitchen and refectory were there, too.

The evening meal had been held for them. They took their places at the long benched tables and the Vietnamese nuns brought them soup thick with noodles and bits of pork and chicken. It was spicier than anything Leah had ever eaten, but delicious. The rest of the meal consisted of steamed rice, stale French bread, dried fruit—and tea—no coffee. Adam wouldn’t like that, Leah thought. When they’d finished eating, they toured the wards and the operating suites. It was dark by the time they returned to their rooms to unpack. The generator shut down at eight as advertised. They undressed by candlelight and were in bed by nine.

Leah was so tired she ached in every muscle, but still she couldn’t sleep. Where were the supply trucks? They should have arrived by now. The highway they’d traveled was treacherous enough in daylight. At night, with only the moon to guide them, it would be even more dangerous. She stared into the darkness and listened to the unfamiliar but comforting sound of Kaylene’s gentle snoring. She found herself straining to hear the sound of trucks laboring up the steep grade to the hospital compound. What if something had happened to them? To B.J. and the others? To Adam?

She forced herself to relax. There was nothing she could do to get the trucks and their occupants here any faster, and tomorrow was going to be a long, busy day. The two operating suites would have to be evaluated and arranged to the surgeons’ satisfaction. The electrician would have to get the generator that would power all their high-tech equipment and computers up and running. All the surgical instruments had to be checked and checked again. There would be patients to evaluate, operating schedules to draw up. But still she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she watched the luminous hands of her travel clock creep forward in slow circles until at last her vigil was rewarded with the unmistakable sound of heavy trucks pulling into the compound.

They were here. They were safe. He was safe. Leah closed her eyes, but it wasn’t until she heard the low rumble of Adam’s voice as he exchanged greetings with Father Gerard that she relaxed enough to fall asleep.

THUNDER RUMBLED in the distance, barely audible above the steady roar of the generator on the other side of the wall. Adam looked out the operating room’s one small window, saw the dark clouds rolling down from the mountains and knew they were in for a downpour. He would be surprised if they didn’t get a thunderstorm at this time of the afternoon every day for the next three weeks. He saw Leah Gentry glance over her shoulder to the same spot and then continue her conversation with Roger Crenshaw.

He’d been avoiding her all day. He owed her an apology and an explanation. The apology he could handle; the explanation he wasn’t so sure about. Adam watched as Leah and Roger inspected a pressure gauge they’d just unpacked. Roger would oversee the larger operating room next door where the orthopedic and general surgeons would set up shop. He and Leah would work together here. The generator’s staccato beat stuttered and faltered. The lights flickered and dimmed, then steadied again. Leah dropped a screwdriver on the cement floor and mumbled an apology in his direction.

He acknowledged it with a nod and went on checking his own instruments, thousands of dollars’ worth of specialized scalpels and retractors, drills and clamps. He hadn’t bothered to keep them with him on the plane, as Leah had with her red toolbox. If they’d been lost, he wouldn’t have to operate. He could have turned tail and run back to Chicago. He closed the case and set it on the table by the antique autoclave in the corner. From now on they were Kaylene Smiley’s responsibility.

Roger Crenshaw left the room, and Adam found himself standing at the head of the operating table watching Leah work. “Everything check out okay?” he asked.

She was apparently so involved in what she was doing it took a moment for his words to sink in. Then she looked at him and blinked. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes, as though she hadn’t slept well. She probably hadn’t, if her bed was as hard and uncomfortable as his.