The Doctor's Lost-and-Found Heart

She smiled. “Remember the first time we met? You asked for a list of my credentials, even though I’d already worked with your nephew for several months, and his parents were pleased with his progress. But there you were all big and blustery and none too friendly, making your demands. Then what I found out later … You actually called and checked me out. Asked every last reference on my list about me. Which was fine. I wish more people would do that when it comes to hiring the people who take care of their children. And while that really wasn’t your responsibility since you’re Michael’s uncle, not his father, I liked that you were so forthright. Pegged you for a man who would always be honest, maybe sometimes brutally so. And you have your suspicions about my heritage, don’t you?”

“I’m not even sure why you’d come to that conclusion.”

“Because of the way you look at me. Sometimes you stare, and it’s so … penetrating.”

“The way a guy stares at a gorgeous woman, you mean?”

She shook her head. “That’s not it. Oh, I’ve seen that look, more here than back in Texas. But that’s not what I’m talking about. You give it away in your eyes, Jack. Not for long, but there’s this flash … I saw it when I asked you. Saw it before that, actually.”

She was probably right. What had caught him off guard, and what he’d tried to cloak, was that he saw Rosa in Amanda. Same eyes, same beautiful wild hair, same delicate bone structure. It was a look he wouldn’t confuse with any other look in the world because the person he’d loved most had had that look. He’d come unglued, tried not looking, but sometimes couldn’t stop himself. He was like a moth attracted to the flame. So if Amanda had caught that flash in his eyes, she’d caught it correctly. “Maybe this is something you should discuss with your family.”

“I have. Too many times. Which is why I’m talking to you now. Why I’m asking you. Please, be honest with me, Jack. Respect me enough to do this one thing. When you look at me, who are you seeing?”

“A beautiful Mapuche woman.” They were words he shouldn’t have said, but words he felt bound to say because anything else bought into the lies that had cost Rosa her life. And for Rosa, he had no choice but to be honest.

“Mapuche?”

Nodding, he said, “Someone I loved once, a long time ago, was Mapuche. They’re an indigenous people from the Pampas. I lived with them for a couple of years, working as a doctor in some of the villages.”

“And you recognized that in me?”

“I did.”

“Then thank you for your honesty.”

“Amanda, I …”

She shook her head. “Just leave it where it is, Jack. I asked, you answered. It’s what I wanted.” More than that, it’s what she needed, and she was numb with it, didn’t know what to think, what to do. But Jack had given her something no one else ever had and for that she was grateful. “I think I always knew,” she whispered.

“Knew what?” he asked gently.

“That what my parents told me was … off, somehow. Doesn’t matter, though, does it?”

“Who we are always matters, Amanda.”

“Or who we aren’t? Anyway, I have a very important date in a few minutes, so back to the problem at Caridad. What’s your plan?” She needed time to think about this, to readjust. To let the emotion catch up. But not here, not now. “And tell me what we can do to assist you.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

She cut him off by nodding her head. “I’m sure.” Not said convincingly enough, but Jack understood. The tone of his voice, the sense of concern emanating from him—yes, he understood.

“Fine.” He paused, nodded. “But anytime you want to talk …”

“The hospital, Jack. Please, make this about the hospital now.” No matter how distanced she was feeling from everything she knew.

“Well, then, no more cleaning, to start with. I need to find the source of contamination before I do anything else, then culture it to see what grows. Which means I’ll look in all the usual places and get creative after that because in my experience the usual places don’t really yield what I want.”

“It’s an odd specialty.”

“But, as they say, someone has to do it.”

“Why?”

“Public health was always what I wanted to do. You know, take care of the people no one else wanted to take care of.”

“Because of Robbie?” she asked. Jack’s brother Cade had told her once about Robbie, about how his parents hadn’t wanted to raise a child with severe autism.

“You know about my brother?”

She nodded. “The child nobody wanted.”

“After he died, I wanted to find a way to take care of people who were overlooked the way he was. He died because no one noticed him.”

“He ran off, didn’t he?”

Jack nodded. “No one saw that he had been missing for a while and he wasn’t found until it was too late. When I became a doctor I wanted to make a difference for people who, like Robbie, weren’t noticed until it was too late, which was why I chose public health. What I do now grew out of that as conditions in some of the places I chose to work in weren’t good. So, you’d cure the patient and find the source of the illness in so many cases—fleas, ticks, four-legged critters, bacteria.”

“But you quit or, at least, you’ve stepped away for a while, haven’t you? That’s what Cade told me. He said it’s why you were hanging around Big Badger, why you were thinking about working with them at the hospital they were starting.”

“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.”