Donna Clayton - The Doctor's Medicine Woman

Knowing she could clarify in a way he would understand, Diana offered, “Long ago, the infant mortality rate was very high. Parents discovered it was best to wait—”

“That is the rationalization given by cultural professors at colleges and universities.” Diana’s grandmother enunciated the words with gentle but firm disapproval. “The real reason is that the Kolheek believe a child should have the chance to develop a personality before he is gifted with a name.”

A patient smile tugged at the corners of Diana’s mouth. This wasn’t the first time she and her grandmother had clashed over her academic cultural studies of the Kolheek people.

“Had you given me a chance, Grandmother, I’d have explained fully.”

“I know you would have,” her grandmother granted. “But the day is quickly passing. And surely the good doctor is anxious to collect his children.”

Now Travis was smiling. At the Council. Diana could sense the warmth of it, but because she stood slightly behind him and to one side, she could not see his face and was only left to wonder if her thoughts about how a smile would transform his features was true or not. Somehow, she felt deprived.

When next her grandmother spoke, the woman’s voice was louder, more formal than it had been just a moment before, and Diana knew an edict of the Council was being declared.

“Our Medicine Woman will live with Dr. Westcott and the boys until such time as she deems them ready to be named. She will teach the children all she can of the Kolheek and the essence of what it means to be part of The People. She will prepare Jared and Josh for their naming ceremony, and she will perform that ceremony.” After the very briefest of pauses, she added, “Then we shall see what fate has in store.”

Diana shot her grandmother a curious glance. What on earth had she meant by that last peculiar statement?

The flight back to Philadelphia was packed with business travelers and vacationers, but Travis paid little attention to his fellow passengers—except the two young boys sitting beside him. Jared and Josh were craning to see out the small window on what was so very obviously their first trip in an airplane. Jared chattered away excitedly, while Josh just seemed to silently take in everything with his huge, dark eyes.

All Travis had to do was look at the boys and his chest swelled with pride, his heart with paternal love. He’d thought the fatherly feelings would take time to develop, that becoming the boys’ daddy would have to grow on him. However, he’d discovered rather quickly when he’d picked up the children at the orphanage this afternoon just how wrong he’d been.

Jared and Josh already knew Travis as he’d been to visit them twice a year since arranging their operations—and more often since he’d started the adoption process—so that made the meeting less stressful for everyone concerned. Upon being told that Dr. Travis, as the boys had referred to him until now, was taking them home to live with him, the boys’ reactions had made Travis’s heart literally ache with throat-closing emotion.

Jared had grinned and seemed to accept the situation eagerly. He’d asked if Travis was really going to be his daddy. The question had made Travis nearly strangle with the surprising magnitude of love that surged through him. He hadn’t been able to answer with anything other than a silent nod.

Josh’s reaction had been poignant, too, but in a very different way. His silence was profound, his large, chocolate eyes shadowed with some emotion Travis couldn’t quite identify, but that he suspected was suspicion. And fear. Travis had wanted desperately to comfort the boy, embrace him, assure him there was nothing to be afraid of. However, he’d been worried that becoming physical too soon would only compound the child’s fear. Trust would come in time, Travis was certain.

The child’s misgivings were abated somewhat when Jared had tossed his arm over his brother’s shoulder and had said, “It’s going to be okay, Josh. You’ll see.”

Although Jared’s chin had lifted with what looked like much bravado, Travis hadn’t missed the anxiety lacing the boy’s reassuring remark. He’d wanted to hug the boys to him, to tell them they needn’t worry another second, that he’d move mountains to see that they were loved and well cared for. But he’d stifled the urge, silently noting again that trust—like Rome—wasn’t built in a day.

The boys’ meager belongings had been packed into one suitcase and they had spent a tearful half hour saying goodbye to the friends they’d made at the state home and the staff there that had cared for them for the first five years of their lives. Travis had patiently given the children as long as he could before telling them they had to get on the road to the airport.

At the mention of airplanes and runways, Jared had come alive with excitement. Josh did his best to underplay his feelings about all this commotion, but Travis knew the child was just as eager for this new experience as his brother.

As he now watched the boys press their faces against the small, double-paned window, Travis sighed. The trip to the reservation had been pretty close to perfect. He’d come home with the boys…

The sigh he now expelled was filled to the brim with doubt and agitation. He wasn’t really angry that he’d had to agree to Diana Chapman’s presence in his home for the next couple of months. He agreed with the Kolheek Council’s opinion that Jared and Josh needed some roots. They were young. And impressionable. They needed a sense of heritage. A heritage that Travis couldn’t give them because he didn’t have it himself.

He looked across the aisle at the woman’s arrow-straight, black-as-midnight hair, her tawny skin, noble cheekbones, perfect nose.

What was it about Diana Chapman that unsettled him so? Was it because she was a Medicine Woman? Someone living the very culture he was so totally ignorant of? Or was it because she had been forced on him? Because she was someone he’d see as an invader in his house? In his new family? Or, a quiet voice silently stressed, was it because she was too darned beautiful for words?

She turned her head, her nut-brown eyes connecting with his, and she caught him staring for what seemed the umpteenth time since they’d boarded the plane. Awkwardness crept over him, thick and straining. What was it about her that made him feel so…rough and unrefined? Ham-fisted, even?

Her dark, steady gaze was trained on him, and he felt the silence swell and grow even more awkward than it had been only a moment before. The urge to reach up and tug at his collar welled up in him like an unreachable itch, but he firmly squelched it.

Her quiet dignity, her almost patrician manner, was what had him feeling so damned uncouth.

Say something, you idiot, his brain silently poked him like a stick. Say something that will bridge this difficult stillness.

“So,” he began, hating the dry-as-dust sound of his voice, “tell me…what exactly does a Medicine Woman do?”

Diana went utterly still. When she had left the reservation in order to attend college in southern California, she’d shied away from telling anyone in the outside world that she was training to become a Kolheek Medicine Woman. The title was archaic to the modern world. And to people who weren’t familiar with Native American culture, the term often provoked snickers and thinly disguised jeers.

She remained silent for several seconds as she tried to decipher whether the doctor’s query had been prompted by disdain or honest curiosity.

He hadn’t said much to her since they had left the reservation together and traveled to the nearby small town of Iron Hill, Vermont, to pick up the boys at the state orphanage. Diana had pretty much stayed in the background as Travis happily broke the news to Jared and Josh that the adoption had been successful, that they would be going home with him. To stay.