Changed by His Son's Smile (11 page)

“How’s that feel? Better?”

“Yes. Good. Thanks, that’s enough.” She stood and stepped to a cupboard, gulping in oxygen not infused with Chase’s scent.

Why, oh, why did her body and mind so want to get physical with him again, instead of listening to logic? But it was more than obvious it would take very little persuasion on his part to start what they’d had last night all over again.

And why not?
that traitorous part of her brain whispered. Just like last night, she was finding it harder and harder to come up with a good reason why she couldn’t just enjoy the unbelievable way he made her feel. To give herself up to it until he left.

Until he left. How she’d feel then, she had no clue. Tough as it had been leaving him three years ago, she’d survived it. Even managed to stop thinking about him constantly. Stopped wondering where he was and what he was doing and who he was doing it with.

But this time would be different, and that knowledge brought heaviness to her chest and a painful stab to her soul.

This time, because they had Drew to share, she’d be in contact with him. Know all that she hadn’t known before, including if he had a serious relationship with someone else. That most definitely would not be a good feeling, but she’d have to toughen up and deal with it. The question was, would making love with him or not making love with him while they were here together make it any less painful in the future?

Was it worth the risk to her heart to fall headlong into the heady, emotional crevasse that was Chase Bowen? A crevasse she’d foolishly thought three years ago that he’d fallen into along with her?

Through the doorway the sun glowed low in the sky and the tall man walking in seemed to bring a sweep of muggy heat along with him. He wore a cylinder-shaped striped hat and a bright and colorful tunic completely at odds with the grim exhaustion etched on his face. A boy of about fourteen followed him. Nearly expressionless except for his deeply somber eyes, he had a length of equally bright fabric wrapped around his shoulders and arms like a cape.

Chase stepped over to them and spoke to the man, who turned to the boy with a single nod. Like an unveiling, the child slipped the fabric from his arms.

Dani’s breath stopped and she stared in disbelief. She’d thought Apollo had had a terrible injury? This was something straight out of a horror movie.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
WO
LONG
BARE
bones stuck out below the child’s elbow from what was left of his arm. The normal soft tissue abruptly ended, with the skin black and mummified.

Dani could hardly believe what she was seeing. Her chest constricted at what unimaginable pain the boy had to have suffered over what must have been weeks, or even longer. Clearly his hand had completely rotted off and left behind what they were staring at.

Dani lifted her gaze to Chase’s. His expression was carefully neutral as he asked questions of the father and the boy. But his dark eyes held grave despair.

“Okay.” Chase’s chest rose and fell in a deep breath as he turned those eyes to Dani. “I don’t have to tell you we have to remove what’s left of his arm. I’ll take it off above the elbow. You’ll have to act as my assistant. If you don’t want to, we can have them spend the night and I’ll have Trent or the nurse help me tomorrow.”

“Of course I’ll assist.” Did he think she couldn’t handle the tough stuff? She’d feel insulted if the situation wasn’t so awful.

“Let’s get him set up in the OR. I’ll scrub then get him anesthetized.”

With a few quick words to the father he laid his hand gently on the boy’s back and guided him through the doors to the OR. Dani tried to give a reassuring smile to the man, reaching out to touch his forearm, trying to let him know it would be okay, but the man’s expression didn’t change.

The ache in her chest intensified, imagining what not only the boy but his parents, too, had been through with this. Why, oh, why hadn’t they come in sooner? It was a miracle that infection hadn’t killed the child.

As she entered the room, she was struck by the stoic expression on the boy’s face. Just lying there, quiet and still, looking at her and Chase with serious, deep brown eyes. Not upset. Not even grim. Just accepting of this horrible thing that had happened to him, which would affect him for the rest of his life. She swallowed down tears and busied herself getting the surgical equipment together.

Chase put the boy under sedation with some antiquated-looking equipment. “I’ve never seen a machine like this,” Dani said, both because she wondered about it and to distract her from what was about to happen. “Does it ever fail?”

“It looks like hell, I know. But it’s reliable and safe, believe it or not. A hospital in Cotonou donated it.”

Dani watched Chase prep the skin above the boy’s elbow, waiting for him to tell her the story about the child. When he said nothing, she had to ask. “Did they tell you what happened? Why they waited so long to come in?”

“This kind of thing happens way too often.” Chase picked up the knife. “He fell from a tree. They live over sixty kilometers away, with no easy way to get here.”

Dani thought about Drew learning to shinny up the palm tree, at the climbing competitions Evelyn and Phil had told her about, and her heart stopped. “If kids fall from trees all the time, why do parents allow it? Why did
you
do it?”

“They’re not climbing for fun. They’re gathering leaves for their livestock. During the drought that can follow the rainy season, there isn’t enough food to feed the animals. After a long time working in the trees, they get careless or just lose their footing.”

Chase seemed fiercely focused on making a circumferential, fish-mouth incision above the child’s elbow to leave plenty of skin and flesh to fold beneath what would end up being the stump of his arm. Dani noted the tightness of his lips, his jaws clamped together, and knew that, no matter how many times he’d seen these kinds of horrific things, he never got used to it. Never just took it in his stride but felt deep empathy for all the people born without the privileges so many others took for granted.

She suddenly saw what she hadn’t completely understood before. Why he’d said this wasn’t just what he did but who he was.

He had been born into this life. Accomplished more in a year to help people on this earth than most did in a lifetime. And she again felt overwhelmed with the admiration and respect she’d felt yesterday. Had felt in Honduras when she’d seen the lives he’d changed.

From the moment she’d met him, she knew he was like no one she’d met before. And with painful clarity, she understood even more what a nearly insurmountable situation yawned between them. His work was his life, and while he wanted to be a good father, he’d never be able to be that unless they lived together. He didn’t want Drew anywhere but the U.S., but she, too, wanted to make at least a small contribution to people like this young boy. So where did that leave them?

There was no good answer. Marriage? Leaving her alone and Drew wondering why his dad didn’t want to live with them? No marriage? Leaving them even more distant from one another? Dear Lord, she just didn’t know.

Chase clamped off the artery and vein then reached for the bone saw. As he sawed through the humerus she clenched her teeth at the horrific sound and thought of her own son. Wanted to know more about why the family had waited until the situation was this bad.

“Why didn’t they come in sooner?”

“I told you. They live far away. Just spent two days walking here. Obviously, it was a compound fracture, and the local healer tried splinting it and called on the spirit Sakpata to help him heal. They probably thought it would be okay. But I’m sure it was full of debris just like Apollo’s and got infected.”

He set aside the bone that would never again be a part of the child. With heavy sadness weighing in her chest, she pressed sponges against the opening to soak up blood and fluids. “But they must have seen that it wasn’t getting better. I can’t even imagine what it must have looked like.”

“Don’t judge them. Don’t impose your Western views on the life they have to live here.” His voice was fierce as he clamped off the artery and vein and began to sew the fish-mouth incision back together over the stump. “They didn’t know what to think. Thought maybe it was healing, part of Sakpata’s plan when his hand turned from pink to purple to black.”

He leaned more closely over the gaping, raw flesh, carefully stitching the tissue. “But, as you can tell, there was superficial dry gangrene of the exposed tissue. He must have a good immune system, which sealed the gangrene off in the junction between the wound and the rest of his arm. Kept him alive. By the time his hand was mummified and hanging on by just the neurofiber bundle, they knew it was too late.”

“My God,” she whispered, and tears stung her eyes again. It was hard to even process what the child had gone through.

Chase glanced at her, and his grim expression softened slightly. “Please don’t cry. It doesn’t accomplish a damned thing. These people are tough and used to challenges we can’t even imagine. To absolute hell being handed to them on a platter.”

A tear spilled over and Dani lifted her shoulder to swipe it away. “I’m not as hardened as you are to all this.”

“I hope I’m not hardened.” He laughed without any humor in the sound at all. “I’m just determined. Determined to get more doctors and nurses in places like this. Determined to get more funding. And as much as you might not understand his parents letting this happen, I give the father huge credit for bringing him in now. I’ve seen people who lived with something this bad for years that was never addressed by modern medicine.”

She looked at him, at the intensity in his eyes as he worked. “If more doctors are needed here, why are you so determined that I take Drew to live in the States? Why wouldn’t you just want us to stay here? For me to work alongside you?” Wasn’t that the obvious solution? He claimed to want her to marry him. At least that way they’d be together as a family.

“Didn’t you just hear me say it can be hell in a place like this? Drew doesn’t belong here. Not until he’s an adult.”

“It’s not the same thing for him as it is for the people who live here. Obviously, he wouldn’t be exposed to the same problems.”

“To some of them he would.” His anger seemed to ratchet higher, practically radiating from him as he pinned her with a ferocious gaze. “He cannot and will not live in developing countries. Period. Now, are you going to just stand there or are you going to help?”

Sheesh. “Yes, Dr. Bowen.” She couldn’t remember him ever being this domineering and cranky before. Must be the stress of this poor boy’s injury compounded by the stress of their personal situation.

She grabbed thin suture material and handed it to Chase to finish tying off the artery and vein, then continued to sponge out the blood as he worked. There was clearly no talking to the man once his mind was made up, and now wasn’t the right time anyway. Though, so far, there hadn’t seemed to be any right time to come up with a solution they could agree on.

“While I finish the ligation of the artery and the stitching, you can pull together the sterile cotton dressing and elastic wrap.”

When it was over, all that was left of the child’s arm was a stump neatly rounded in a compression dressing. Dani wondered if he’d be relieved at no longer looking at his own bones, or if the final loss of his arm would grieve him, too.

Her heart squeezed. As Chase had said, the boy had been handed hell and, unlike in the U.S., would probably never have a prosthesis that would give him a usable limb. Her own mom had always told her to remember that life wasn’t fair, and wasn’t that the truth? Next time she felt like complaining about something, she’d step back and picture this boy’s arm and his tragically stoic expression.

They settled the boy into a bed, and Chase told the father they could stay for three days until it was time to change the dressing.

“Usually, we’d just send him home tomorrow and have them come back to have the dressing changed in a few days, as we’re pretty full up in the hospital,” Chase said as they headed out the doors to find Drew. “But I bet they wouldn’t come back, because they live so far away. We can’t risk infection.”

Dani nodded, and they continued walking, not saying anything. His expression was still grim and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the boy or their conversation about Drew or both. She felt emotionally spent from the whole experience and, really, what more was there to say?

“I forgot to tell you,” Chase said, shoving his hands in his pockets as they walked side by side. “Mom has a bee in her bonnet about going to some hotel in Parakou that a friend of theirs owns before they leave. It’s about thirty kilometers from here. Wants to have lunch there. I guess there’s a nice pool too, and as we have tomorrow off, she wants us to take Drew swimming. Is that okay with you?”

“Drew doesn’t know how to swim. He’s only two.” Climbing trees and swimming with the child barely out of diapers? What was with this family?

“Two and a half,” he said, his expression lightening in a slight smile. “I’ll teach him. The sooner he learns, the better.”

“I assume you won’t just throw him in the deep end and tell him to flap his arms and kick?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll show him the basic moves before I send him off the diving board.”

“Chase!” She stared at him then frowned as he chuckled. He’d always delighted in teasing her, and too often she fell for it.

He put his arm around her shoulders. “I promise not to scare him. We’ll just have fun. He won’t learn how to be really safe in the water for a while, but it’s a first step.”

Apparently his anger with her had cooled, as he touched his warm lips to her temple, lingering there for a moment, sending a tingle across her cheek and down her neck. “If it works out, we could probably take him to the hotel weekly, even though Mom and Dad will be gone.”

She looked into his deep brown eyes and wanted to ask the question hanging between them. What was going to happen when he was gone, too?

“Sure. Sounds fun. I’d like to see more of the countryside. And another city.”

“Good.” He stopped walking, and since his arm was around her she stopped, too. He used his free hand to cup her cheek and gave her a soft kiss she should have stepped away from. Should have prevented from quickly morphing into something hotter, needier.

His tongue slipped inside her mouth and the taste of him was so delicious, so overwhelming she couldn’t resist. One tiny taste. One more minute. One more time.

On their own, her arms wrapped around his waist and held tight as he moved his hands down her body, firm and sure and insistent. One large palm cupped her behind as his other hand slipped beneath her shirt, caressing her skin, making her gasp as he pulled her close against his hardened body.

His lips separated a whisper from hers, his breath quick against her moist skin. “Dani.” His mouth covered hers again, slanted to deepen it, intensify the taste and feel of his kiss, and the heat between them became so scorching she was sure she just might combust right there outside the building.

He tore his mouth from hers, his eyes passion-glazed and nearly black as he stared at her. “How about that back rub? Like now, and naked?”

Now and naked sounded very, very good, but the moment without his lips on hers gave her enough time to gather a tiny semblance of sanity. A second to protect her heart. “I just...don’t know if that’s a good idea. I admit last night was wonderful. But I’m afraid it just makes things more...confusing.”

She pulled out of his arms completely, regretting no longer having his arms around her, his fingers touching her skin, his mouth igniting hers. But her brain told her she should stay strong. Wouldn’t having sex, being together again intimately, just lead to heartache?

For a moment he didn’t speak, and she wasn’t sure what emotions flickered across his face. Frustration? Contemplation? Agreement? She was surprised he didn’t reach for her again, and quickly turned to continue into the building before something else happened that might put her yet again under his spell. Again weaken her resolve.

“Dani—”

“Let’s not talk about any of this right now.” She kept going, counting the steps to the door. Maybe it was cowardly, but she needed a minute to regroup. Some time to get her breath back and her heart back into a normal rhythm. Some time to figure out the confusing messages her brain and body kept sending through every nerve. “After your parents leave, we’ll sit down together and discuss options. When we make some decisions, I promise to be reasonable.”