To Play With Fire

“DO THEY HAVE to shave all my hair off?”

Teresa Allen’s big blue eyes looked up at her with a pleading expression. The seven-year-old had come in to have her ventriculoperitoneal shunt checked. She’d been having headaches for the last couple of days, and Marcos wanted her in his office right away to make sure the device was draining off the excess cerebrospinal fluid the way it should.

It wasn’t. And now Maggie’s task was to keep their young American patient and her mother calm while Marcos prepared for the emergency surgery. Once Teresa was anesthetized, however, she’d be able to scrub up and join the surgical team.

Maggie smiled. “No, they won’t shave all your hair, only this little spot right here.” She drew a U-shaped figure with her fingertip behind the little girl’s right ear. “You can comb the rest of your hair so that it covers it once you’re out of surgery. But it’ll all grow back before you know it.”

Her mom, seated beside her daughter, smiled. “Thank you for speaking to us in English. I really need to learn Portuguese, but there are so many ex-pats here I haven’t needed to. Your English is excellent, by the way. Congratulations.”

Maggie grinned back. “That’s because I’m an American, too. And believe me, once I open my mouth, no one would mistake me for a Brazilian, even when I’m speaking Portuguese.”

It felt so good to speak her own language. It was also the reason Marcos had left her here with the mother and daughter. And although she knew she deserved to be in that operating room every bit as much as he did, she didn’t resent being here. She could remember the times her own mother had held her hand when she’d gone to the doctor to have her inoculations...or when she’d been sick. It was important to feel safe.

And Maggie could remember, down to the minute, when she’d no longer felt that way. It had taken her a long, long time to recover. Even now she wondered if she was functioning one hundred percent normally.

Her ex-boyfriend certainly hadn’t given her much reassurance on that front.

But Marcos hadn’t seemed to sense anything weird during their brief interlude. Then again, she hadn’t been paying attention to much outside of how he was making her feel.

One of the nurses came into the room with a pair of hair clippers. “Are we ready?”

“I think so.” Maggie stroked Teresa’s head. “What do you think? Are you ready for those headaches to go away?”

Teresa nodded. “I’m really scared, though.”

Meeting her mother’s eyes, she could see it was taking every ounce of willpower for the woman not to burst into tears in front of her daughter.

Maggie smiled. “I’m going to be with you the whole time. I promise.”

“Even during the operation?”

She nodded. “Even then.”

Her mom’s chin wobbled even more as she mouthed, “Thank you.”

Forty-five minutes later, Maggie stood beside Marcos as he carefully examined the shunt valve he’d removed from Teresa’s head. “The problem’s in here. We’ll need to replace it with a new one.” Setting the device aside, his fingers followed the path of the tubing down the child’s neck and chest, feeling it through her skin. “Everything else seems okay, and she’s got plenty of room left for growth. So let’s get in and get out.”

Maggie busied herself with retrieving the replacement valve and carrying it over to the table.

Marcos took a step back. “Why don’t you connect it?”

Surprised, she glanced at him for a second, before moving closer. Taking hold of the lower section of the catheter tubing, she carefully worked it into the connecting port, and then did the same with the upper end. She checked the seals. Hooking it up took less than ten minutes, but it felt good to be doing actual surgery, instead of feeling like a useless hanger-on.

She also realized that she hadn’t needed to translate Marcos’s words in her head when he’d spoken but had automatically processed and understood them. She gave him a huge smile, only realizing a second later that her mask kept him from seeing it. But evidently he’d seen something in her eyes because he said, “Good job.”

It had taken almost seven months, but maybe she was finally getting the hang of this crazy language.

And maybe even gaining the trust of her fellow neurosurgeon?

They finished up the surgery, each of them moving forward and then back to allow the other person to have a turn securing everything in place and then finally closing the incision. Marcos examined the site with a critical eye. “I think that about does it. Let’s bring her out of anesthesia while I clean her up.”

Marcos gently swabbed the blood from the side of the child’s head as the anesthesiologist began lightening the sedation and removed the tape from her eyelids. Within minutes, Teresa’s eyelids fluttered.

Leaning over her, Maggie smiled and said, “Can you hear me, pumpkin?”

Teresa nodded her head, her gaze still unfocused.

“That’s wonderful.” It suddenly didn’t matter that she was standing in the middle of a team of Brazilian doctors and nurses speaking English. All that mattered was that this child understood her. “See, I promised you I’d be right here with you every step of the way, and here I am. I’ve never left your side.”

She glanced up to see Marcos staring at her with an enigmatic look. “Pumpkin?”

“It’s an endearment.” She couldn’t help raising her brows in challenge. “Kind of like Markinho.”

The whole room went silent for a second or two, and she realized she’d made some kind of serious gaffe.

In a low voice he gritted, “I’d rather you didn’t call me that.”

Oh! She hadn’t meant to insult him, had just been trying to explain why she’d addressed their patient using the name of a vegetable. “Sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Thank you.” With that, he stripped off his gloves and headed out the door without a word to anyone.

What was with him?

She could no more imagine Marcos being embarrassed by her playful comment than she could imagine herself being. Then again, she didn’t know the man at all.

And probably never would.

* * *

No one called him that.

No one except his father and his brother. And Graciela, who’d begun using it after hearing Lucas do so. Once his brother had left with his adoptive family, her use of the diminutive form of his name had made him feel cared for—and a little less lonely.

But hearing Maggie say it had made his gut do a slow burn. He knew she wasn’t trying to be unprofessional, and hadn’t actually been calling him Markinho. But that soft accented voice murmuring his childhood name had made those same sensations go through him that he’d had as a child. Only Maggie wasn’t interested in making him feel cared for.

And he certainly wasn’t lonely. Not with all the noise and activity of the hospital going on around him.

He’d overreacted. Had stormed out of that operating room like a child.

Like Markinho might have done, once upon a time?

No, he wasn’t a child. He was temperamental. He’d heard the nurses use that term to excuse his lack of social interaction.

Because as much as Marcos liked to be surrounded by noise, it was more as an observer than a participant. Except with Maggie, evidently. He found he had to fill the silence that was her with talking...or, worse, groaning.

Like in his car?

The tinted windows had been dark enough to block out everything that happened inside, cocooning them in a private world where anything could happen. And it had. His eyes had been locked on Maggie’s face while her eyelids had fluttered closed the second he’d moved her panties aside and found her wet and ready. Her tight heat had massaged his flesh again and again, his words of encouragement every bit as suggestive as the hand sign she’d used with his patient.