The Doctor's Lost-and-Found Heart

Surprisingly, there were people milling around. Some appeared native to the area, some didn’t. A few seemed to work here, others may have been visitors. All in all, he was more impressed by Hospital de Caridad than he’d expected to be. “Thanks for the tour, Ezequiel,” he said, even more impressed by how the kid knew his way around the hospital. So, was it customary to tip the tour guide? He wondered about that since Ezequiel wasn’t making a move to get away from him. In fact, if he hadn’t known better, he might have thought the boy was latching on to him. “Is there something else we need to do?” he finally asked him.

Ezequiel shook his head. “Unless you want to see where you’ll be staying.”

“Sure. Show me.”

“It’s over there,” Ezequiel said, pointing to a small hut adjacent to the hospital building.

It was nice enough. He’d stayed in far worse places, carrying out far worse duty, than what he was going to do here. “Okay,” he said, still not sure what to do about Ezequiel. Then inspiration struck, and he slung his backpack off his shoulder and pulled out the stainless-steel water bottle. “You don’t have one of these, do you?” he asked, holding it up.

Ezequiel shook his head.

“Then take it.” He tried handing it over to Ezequiel, but the boy only looked perplexed.

“Back where I come from, when somebody gets lost, the person who finds them gets a reward.”

“Reward?” Ezequiel questioned. “What’s a reward?”

Jack thought for a moment, trying to come up with the right word to translate it. “Recompense,” he finally said. “Regalo.”

“For me?” Ezequiel cried, sounding as excited as any child would who’d just received a gift.

Jack regretted he didn’t have something better, something more suited for an almost twelve-year-old boy, and he wondered if he’d have an opportunity while he was here to find something else for Ezequiel. “Next time you have to go looking for someone … even if it’s me … you can fill it with water and take it along in case you get thirsty.” His second attempt to thrust the bottle at Ezequiel was met with success, and as soon as they boy latched on to it he opened it up and took a drink of the water still inside.

“Thank you, Doc K. I like it.” Then the grin started, ear to ear. And Jack’s heart melted. Damn it, he wasn’t going to do that again. Wasn’t going to get involved. Wasn’t going to let another kid get to him. Not after Robbie, or Rosa. Shift, refocus, get his mind off children. Clearing his throat, Jack inhaled a deep breath. “Care to help me get settled in?”

Ezequiel frowned, again unsure of what Jack had just said. So Jack tossed him the backpack and motioned for him to come along to the guest hut. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t here to make friends, but Ezequiel was turning into the exception, with that smile of his, and that unassuming nature. Besides, what did a couple of days’ interaction with the kid hurt? Interaction didn’t have to equate to involvement, did it? Especially if he kept reminding himself that in another few days all this would be behind him. “Then you can help me find Dr. Robinson, if you have time.”

“He’s in clinic now.” He pointed to another hut, a much larger version of the hut he was headed to. “Over there.”

Hospital de Caridad, translated to mean Charity Hospital, was like a small village in itself. A well thought-out place, keeping the clinic out of the hospital. Even though he hadn’t yet met Amanda’s brother, Jack was already beginning to like the man. Or at least appreciate his vision. The care and concern surrounding this hospital had been obvious to Jack almost the instant he’d stepped into the compound, and he hadn’t even seen the actual hospital operation yet.

“Then that’ll be our next stop, after we go in here.” He stepped up to the door of the guest hut, which was an opening covered by mosquito netting, then pushed back the gauzy material and motioned for Ezequiel to go in first. Then he followed, got halfway into the hut, and stopped. “What the …?” he said, obviously surprised by who he found there. “You never said you were coming to Argentina, too.”

Amanda, who was stashing a few clothes in the small bureau next to her bed, spun around. “Maybe not, but here I am anyway.”

“Precipitated by what? Your need to keep an eye on me?”

“Don’t sound so defensive, Jack. I’m inspired by your work. Wanted to watch it in progress.”

“So you just packed up and came here on a whim.”

“Yes, I just packed up. But you don’t get to call it a whim.”

“Why not?”

“Because coming to Argentina on a whim makes me sound irresponsible.”

“There’s something wrong with being irresponsible? Lots of people do it every day, and do it well.”

“You sound like you believe irresponsibility could be an admirable goal.”

“Not admirable. But definitely a goal for some people. Me included, if I get my way. And don’t pull out your analyst’s couch and tell me to lie down because there’s nothing there you’d be interested in.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Doctor. I think I’d find plenty to interest me if you were stretched out on my couch.”

“Let me guess. You’re psychoanalyzing me, aren’t you? Because my goal is not to have a goal.” It was said with a certain amount of amusement, because the idea of boots off and under her analyst’s couch was suddenly the only thing on his mind. Boots off, belt off, stethoscope off …

“I don’t psychoanalyze. I treat conditions.”

“And I’m a condition to treat.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion,” she countered, her smile never breaking.

“My opinion is I’m the challenge you may want to take on, which is why you’re here. But I’m also the challenge you won’t crack, which is why I came.”

“Faulty logic,” she quipped. “You’re here because you did crack under the challenge. Caved right in when I asked.”

“Or agreed because there was a need for my services, as simple as that.” Caved right in was more like it, but he wasn’t about to give her the advantage of letting her discover she was right about him. Amanda was resourceful. She’d find a way to use that kind of information again. Which, on second thought, might be interesting. Too bad he didn’t even go as far as interesting. “Oh, and in case you’re interested, I’m impressed by your hospital.”

“Changing the subject, Jack?”

He laughed. “You bet I am. It’s safer that way.”

Her smile didn’t waver, but the edges around it softened. “Then the conversation is changed. Wouldn’t want you feeling uncomfortable.”

“Sounds like you’re not really changing the conversation, just twisting it around to suit your purposes. Only my opinion, of course.”

“My only purposes are what concerns the hospital. But Caridad is nice, isn’t it?” she asked, taunting him with her eyes. “I’m proud of what Ben’s done here. Which is why, when I’m running off to Argentina a few times a year, it may seem like a whim to some, but I’m actually here doing something I believe in with all my heart.”

Something about her looked different. He studied her for a second, realized her hair wasn’t twisted into its usual tight, librarianesque knot at the nape of her neck. It was loose, full of curl, wild. And her eyes had … The only way he could describe what he saw was los ojos del fuego. Eyes of fire. She was Amanda Robinson, but a different version from that he knew back in Texas. “So, I’m assuming we’re roommates?” he said, turning around and walking over to join Ezequiel at his bedside.

“Yep, roommates. You over there, me over here, curtain down the middle.” She bumped her bureau drawer shut with her hip, then grabbed a handful of clothes she’d left on the bed, and headed for a nook he figured had to be the bathroom. “You don’t mind sharing, do you?” she called back over her shoulder, as she pushed back the door to the nook and walked into the room behind it. “Because the supply closet in the hospital isn’t taken, if you’d rather have that. But you’d have to sleep sitting up.”

“I’m fine,” he said, kicking off his leather cowboy boots and letting them fly to the floor in the middle of the room.

“Good. Because the supply closet is a tight fit, especially if you’re claustrophobic.”

Except he wasn’t claustrophobic. Right now, though, he was feeling a little gynophobic. Afraid of women. One woman in particular. Amanda Robinson was different, and that bothered him. What bothered him even more was that he was bothered about it in the first place.

In the tiny bathroom, the only place where’d she’d be able to find privacy in their living arrangement, Amanda leaned back against the door and drew in a deep breath to steady her nerves. She was shaking. Actually shaking … hands, knees, a few parts in between. So, what was that about? She knew Jack, had been the one to ask him here. Now, seeing him out of his Texas element … Even her breath was shaking as she shut her eyes and conjured up his image. Usual rough cut even rougher. Hair mussed, that sexy, sexy dark stubble on his face. Even the glisten of sweat on his face made him sexy. Sexy …

No! He couldn’t be sexy. This wasn’t about sexy.

Amanda’s eyes flew open to stop the flow of pure sexual fascination with a man she was trying hard to repudiate as sexy. And failing miserably. Yet what had all that dialogue been about, especially the part where she had been getting him stretched out on her couch? Really? Was that what she’d said to him? Her analyst’s couch, for heaven’s sake!

Another round of shakes hit her because she didn’t know what had come over her, and she didn’t like it the least little bit that, rather than annoying her, his streak of opposition had tweaked something. Woken it up. Lit some kind of a fire.

It was like she was seeing Jack for the first time. Enjoying what she was seeing way more than she should. And now she was getting stressed out about sharing quarters with him, sleeping mere feet away from him. Forming an intimacy by proximity, something that had never bothered her all those years she’d slept in the hospital on call with colleagues and strangers alike. It was a bed, and everybody concerned was too tired to care who was in the bed across from theirs.