A tiny sound scratched at the side of his sleeping bag. It sounded a bit like a mouse had gotten into the tent, but the mice should have been hibernating in Nepal at that time of year. Maxence unzipped his sleeping bag just a little bit and explored with his fingertips to where the sound was coming from.
Small, warm fingers were plucking at the nylon of his sleeping bag and, as he touched them, twined in his.
Dree whispered, “I don’t know what that story is a symbol for, but the loneliness and desperation are breaking my heart.”
Maxence held onto her hand. “It’s just a story. You wanted a story about Monagasquay, and it’s just a story.”
The darkness stayed unbroken within and above the tent, and Max slowly, fitfully, fell into sleep.
The next morning when he woke, Dree was still holding his hand.
He held his breath, clinging to the moment of their palms touching and fingers intertwined.
The beige sides of the tent glowing with sunlight, the boxes at the back of the tent, her burgundy sleeping bag, the rattle of wood and crunch of tinder as some of the guys were building the morning fire outside, the feminine scent of her filling the air and his nose and his mouth and touching his skin.
He held on.
Chapter Ten
Pashmina
Dree
When Dree awoke the next morning, Maxence’s eyes were closed, his eyelashes dark against his tanned skin. His hand under hers was limp, except his fingers twitched. His breathing was more ragged and high in his lungs than the deep rhythm of sleep.
Maybe he had allergies or was dreaming or something.
Her arm was cold, but her hand was warm where she held his palm.
Just as Dree was slipping her fingers out of his, his eyelids fluttered, and Maxence rolled over and stretched. “G’morning.”
He didn’t say anything about their hands, so neither did she. “Morning! I guess we’ve got to go look at the possible sites that Isaak and Alfonso found for their NICU micro-clinic, huh?”
Maxence groaned. “I really should not have started that argument around the campfire last night.”
“It needed to be said. Those NICU clinics are going to be a waste of money and time that could go to help people.”
They packed up the camp quickly and were just mounting the motorcycles when an older woman approached them from the direction of the village. They always made their camp close to the village, maybe a hundred yards away, for their privacy and to give the town the illusion that they weren’t invading.
The woman walked carefully on the thin crust of ice that had grown on the rocky ground overnight. She wore the trailing end of her dupatta draped over her head like a hood.
When she was quite close, she yelled something in the Nepali language.
Batsa, who was holding his helmet under his arm and watching her, said, “She says she is looking for Lady Doctor Dree.”
Dree supposed she looked different when she was wearing her bright red-and-white ski suit for riding the motorcycle. She lifted her arm and waved at the woman. “Here I am.”
The woman walked over to Dree, and she recognized the woman as the mother-in-law of the child with scurvy the day before. “How is he?” Dree asked because Alfonso’s words that the vitamin C deficiency should be diagnosed in a lab still rang in her ears. “Is he doing better?”
The woman held out a small, pale blue bundle that looked as soft as a cloud, and said something that Batsa translated as, “My sickly grandson is alive and doing much better today. He is better than he has been in weeks. His body is not bleeding from his skin anymore. His elbows and knees are less bad. He smiles. I thank you for saving the life of my grandson. I would like to give you this as my thanks and to give you my blessings.”
Dree took off her gloves and took the bundle from the woman’s hands, which turned out to be a shawl of the softest yarn Dree had ever felt. “It’sbeautiful.”
Maxence was standing beside her. “It’s a pashmina. It’s cashmere, but thepashmwool is the softest kind of wool the goat produces. This is probably one of the finest things she owns.”
Dree glanced up at him, nervous about what was going on. “If it’s so valuable, should I accept it? I don’t want payment. I’m not doing this for payment.”
“Yes, you should accept it,” he said. “You saved her grandson’s life. She’ll probably pray for your health and happiness for the rest of her days. Community and family are the most important things to them. This is how humans have always lived, in groups of two to three hundred people. People are happiest when they form and live in highly interconnected communities. It doesn’t matter if it’s your birth family or a family unit you form, but it’s essential. Even serious introverts like my friend Arthur live their best lives when they have people around them, for when they need them. You should accept the shawl and receive her blessing because she’s giving it in the spirit of the ties that bind a community, not as payment.”
