To Save This Child

“And neither are you, Mother Martinez. What you are is the most efficient and kind nurse I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. And you are absolutely gorgeous.”

Kathy rolled her eyes at him. This is why he was such a lady-killer. “You can just stop that old sweet talk.”

“You know you look fine.”

She swatted the compliment away. “I wish I could say the same about you, Doctor. You need a shower.”

He finished with the PalmPilot, scratched his chin again and checked his watch. “It’ll have to be a quickie in the doc’s lounge. I’ve got to be in surgery by seven-thirty.”

He probably hadn’t caught a wink of sleep since he’d rolled out of bed, jumped in that silly little sports car of his and raced to the hospital in the middle of the night. Kathy frowned at his unshaven face. And he’d probably come back to the office after surgery looking just as scruffy. She had very particular ideas about how surgeons ought to comport themselves, and those ideas didn’t include running around looking like a wild man.

He narrowed his gaze at her. “I can either rebuild people’s faces or keep myself all purty. Take your pick.” He gave her an engaging grin as he thrust out the other hand in a gimme gesture. “Are you gonna let me see those charts before I head back down to the O.R.?”

Kathy handed him the charts. “There’s a bunch.”

“Excellent. Now maybe we can pay the light bill.”

She eyed Dr. Bridges’s backside as he sauntered down the hallway, already absorbed in the day’s cases as he walked. Pay the light bill. Because he worked like one possessed, the man was making money hand over fist. But money wasn’t his motivation.

Kathy Martinez was one of the few people who knew the truth about The Wolf. Before he’d even arrived at Integris, her sister from Texas had told her all about the new doctor, about his sad history down in Dallas. It had been on TV, her sister said, had made all the papers, back when it happened.

“Oh.” The doctor stopped and tossed a killer smile over his broad shoulder. “Could you please get me a cup of coffee?”

When she scowled at him, he said, “Pretty please, Mother Martinez?” and blew her a kiss.

The Mother Martinez bit didn’t bother her. She was a mother, the uber-mother, and he gave everybody nicknames. But beneath the teasing, Jason Bridges exhibited more respect for and far more trust in his staff than any other doctor she’d ever worked for. And even if Kathy was old enough to be his mother, that didn’t stop her and every other female in Dr. Bridges’s orbit from appreciating his astonishing male beauty. It was sad, really, and a major waste that such a handsome specimen of a male remained so stubbornly alone.

What that young man needed was a good wife.

But Kathy suspected that the same thing that made him so driven kept him alone, too. That his past, in fact, was the cause of his loneliness.

She went into the break room and filled a foam cup with the coffee she’d put on to drip when she arrived at seven o’clock. While she stirred in the right amount of sugar, she heard some of the other staff calling out as they came in the back door. She looked at her watch. Seven-fourteen. They were getting a jump start on the day. Well, who could blame them? The week before the doctor left for Mexico was always a crazy one.

“Is Dr. Bridges here?” his scrub nurse Ruth asked as she swept into the break room.

“Back in his lair, getting ready to rev up on coffee.” Kathy held the cup aloft. “Pulled an all-nighter. No rest for the wicked today.” She headed down the hall. She hated to tell the doctor her bad news right before he went into a difficult surgery, but the sooner, the better.

She opened the door to his office. He was standing behind his desk, threading his long arms into a stiffly pressed lab coat with his name stitched above the pocket. A grudging concession to her standards, she supposed. But the crisp white garment only accentuated his bronzed skin and made his looks seem all the more rugged by contrast.

“Now do I look doctorly enough?” he taunted.

“No. Is this car accident case going to interfere with the trip to Mexico?” She handed him the coffee.

He took a sip before answering. “Hope not. I think Mike can cover for me.”

He sipped the coffee again with a concerned frown. “My main worry is the kid’s maxilla. Both sides were affected, and there was a lot of swelling before I got to her. I couldn’t really tell what she was supposed to look like. May end up with a redo. I’ll decide once I see her ‘before’ pictures. The mother’s bringing them this morning.”

Kathy nodded and stepped to the window where the morning sun was winking up over the matching Doctors’ Tower to the east. She closed her eyes against the brilliance. Their work could be so heartbreaking, but they seldom allowed themselves the luxury of dwelling on their patients’ grief. Bridges kept his team on an even keel with his own resolve, with his cool decision-making style, with his constant jokes. But it proved a delicate balancing act. Because the more his reputation spread, the more challenging the cases he attracted. His skills just kept growing, and he kept pushing the envelope while the staff scrambled to keep up. He decided what had to be done and then they all did it. They went to the wall for their patients, nothing held back, nothing spared in the fight against their enemies—disfigurement, deformity, pain.

When he had relocated to Oklahoma City three years ago, Jason Bridges had assembled an experienced, top-notch staff. He paid them well and expected them to give their jobs their utmost, just as he did. Every day they threw themselves into the fray, warriors in a never-ending battle.

But no one seemed to mind the long hours and the exhausting work. None of them had ever been involved in a practice this exciting, this dedicated. Dr. Bridges was truly a young miracle-worker, an amazing leader. He had already treated patients from a four-state area. Their work made them all fiercely proud.

And then there was this yearly mission to Mexico. The ultimate payoff—three weeks working down in the remote state of Chiapas. They had started out with the Doctors Without Borders organization, but now Jason had turned renegade, flying his own plane in, circumventing customs.

Oh, yes. Working for Dr. Jason Bridges was exciting, to say the least.

Mexico had become their ultimate proving ground, their yearly high. Every spring Jason Bridges closed his office for three weeks and headed south to continue his humanitarian work. He was welcomed with open arms by the indigenous people in the isolated mountains and jungles.

The back-to-back surgeries in the horrible conditions—dust, heat, mosquitoes, flies—always seemed to go on without end, but when their three weeks were up, nobody ever seemed to want to leave. They’d all become as hooked on the experience as the doctor himself. Every year Bridges took along his scrub nurse, Ruth Nichols. Every year he took Kathy. The rest of his staff rotated, but Kathy and Ruth were indispensable, Kathy because she was the only one in the office who spoke Mexican Spanish fluently. She’d learned it from her husband, a gentle Hispanic from south Texas.

Damn. She was going to hate missing out on the Mexico excursion this year. She so hated to tell Dr. Bridges the bad news.

He had seated himself at his desk, sipping coffee and pouring over the charts with a concentration that seemed totally undimmed by sleep deprivation. He wasn’t a wolf. He was a superhero, that’s what Kathy thought.

“Doc, I need to tell you something.” She turned from the window to face him.

He glanced up, caught her expression. “Hey. You okay?”

She sighed. “Not really.”

“Martinez?” His deep voice became quiet with concern. “What’s going on?” He stood and rounded the desk, propped his rear on it and folded his arms over his broad chest. His blue eyes fixed on her with the kind of sympathetic attention he usually reserved for his patients.

She crossed to one of the chairs facing the desk and lowered herself into it. “I’m afraid you’ll have to find a new interpreter for the Mexico trip.”

“Really? Why?” His face was intent, serious. All hints of the teasing Dr. Bridges was gone. She had to hand it too him. The man had infallible instincts.

“I’ve got to have surgery. Doc Marshall said the sooner the better.”

“Marshall? It’s a G.I. thing?”

“Gallbladder.” Kathy felt her face heat up. Fat, fifty and flatulent, that’s what she was. “He’ll do a laparoscopy, of course. No big deal. But I thought I’d better get it over with while the office is going to be shut down for three weeks. I’m sorry. I really hate to leave you without an interpreter. And on such short notice.”

“Don’t sweat it.” His gentle, compassionate tone made Kathy feel all the worse for letting him down. She wished he’d say something smart-alecky now.

But instead he crossed to her chair and squeezed her shoulder with his large, warm palm. “Your health comes first. I’ll find another interpreter. No problem.”

But it was going to be a big problem, Kathy knew. Jason Bridges understood Spanish, of course, but the Mayan cadences of the dialect spoken in the Chiapas region were tricky. Especially when the patient was a frightened peasant or when Jason started firing off fast and furious instructions to the local help. An interpreter who could put the patients at ease was critical. Finding somebody with the right combination of medical knowledge and compassion was going to be really tough. And finding somebody willing to endure the physical discomfort of the region, the daily rigors of Jason’s mission, was going to be an even bigger problem. An enormous problem. But problems didn’t stop Jason Bridges. He plowed through them like a machete through jungle growth.

Jason didn’t want to make Kathy feel any worse than she already did, but she knew he was thinking, Where? Where on earth would they find someone who could drop everything to hop on his private plane to Mexico in only one week?

“I’m sure I can find someone,” he repeated.

“I know I shouldn’t even ask,” Kathy glanced up at him, wincing. “But I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d postpone this trip? I’ll be good as new in a couple of months.”

Jason stepped around his desk to a giant topographical map of Mexico that was anchored to the wall. Just looking at the thing made him wonder what fresh atrocities Benicio Vajaras had inflicted on the people in the Tzeltal villages around San Cristóbal.

“Right here—” he tapped the area at the bottom where Mexico funneled into Central America “—we have good old Jose and his family. And their baby girl, Chiquita.”