She said, “Maxence, I’m not sure what-all that story about the piratesreallymeant, butof course,Inoticedyou were missing within a few minutes.Of course,I came tofindyou. I wouldneverleave youlostsomewhere andnotcome andfindyou.”
Maxence flipped his fingers in the air. “I was fine on my own. I would’ve made it to the next town eventually.”
“Maxence.” She stared straight into his eyes, and he blinked at the intensity of her blue gaze. “I wouldneverfail to notice that you were missing for more than a few minutes, and I willalwayscome to find you.”
Maxence’s heart quivered, and he looked away. The blue-gray mountains in the horizon looked like towering waves that would batter a rusted-out hulk of a cargo ship to pieces. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”
She touched his hand. The pressure of her fingers on his motorcycle glove grabbed his attention. “You deserve to have people around you who love you and who will notice if you aremissing.”
He said, his voice lowering,“I’m fine.”
“Did you—” She took a deep breath, and her red-and-white ski suit expanded with her breathing. “Did you—panic?”
“Oh, no.” He flipped his hand in the air again, dismissing that. “I was a little disoriented from crashing the bike and landing on my ass for a few minutes, but that’s not a kidnapping-claustrophobia thing. Kind of a dark places-thing. I don’t like boats very much. But it’s not every situation. I’m pretty reliable in a lot of emergencies, and it only hits me afterward, anyway. And, this just didn’t apply. This was a vehicle accident, outside, under a very open, sunny sky, and no one was grabbing at me. It’s a different situation.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “When I realized you weren’t with us, I freaked. I slammed on my brakes. Alfonso and Father Booker nearly ran over me as I skidded like I was motocross racing and flipped my bike around on the road. Thinking that you might be dead freaked me out. Thinking that you might be alive, hurt, and panickingreallythrew me.”
His eyes were full of the mountains because they did not move. “Like I said, it might have taken me a day or two, but I would have walked into the village and caught up with you guys.”
Dree went on to set up her clinic, and Maxence stared at the jagged, slate-blue horizon until the blood stopped rushing through his veins and he could breathe again. That wasn’t due to the motorcycle accident or finding himself alone, he knew. Dree’s insistence that she would always come and find him if he were lost cracked something inside him, and he didn’t know how to fix it.
After Father Booker and Batsa procured a suitable house for the day’s clinic, Maxence stole Batsa away for a few minutes during the set-up phase to find a seamstress who could repair the tears in his motorcycle gear and a cobbler for his boots. A woman assured him that she and her daughters could do a first-rate job on everything, and considering the delicate embroidery on their clothes, he believed them.
When they delivered his outfit back to him a few hours later, he had to tilt the leather in the sunlight to find the tiny black thread of the repairs. The boots were more comfortable than before, so he paid them ten times their original negotiated price. He’d planned to do something like that, anyway, but their stitching was excellent work. He was keeping these repairs as a souvenir and wouldn’t buy a new kit when he got home.
Maxence walked back to the house where Dree had her clinic so he could help.
After the woman with cancer yesterday, the way Dree had tossed and turned in her sleeping bag all night, and then his motorcycle accident, Maxence prayed to every saint he could think of to intercede and give Dree a calm and easy clinic that day.
The saints did not listen.
A middle-aged woman was led into the house they had appropriated as clinic space by her adult daughter while two small children ran around their feet. Dree inspected the woman’s eyes with an ophthalmoscope and then squeezed her own eyes shut, sighing. She told Batsa, “Please tell her that she has exudative macular degeneration, or ‘wet’ MD. I’m sorry, but her eyesight will continue to worsen until it is gone.”
After they left, Max sat beside Dree as she gathered herself.
A mother and her sisters brought in a young boy who they said was twelve years old. Two of the aunties half-carried him by slinging his arms over their shoulders. He was light enough for them to carry because his arms and legs were severely wasted. When Dree inspected him, his muscle tone was diminished. Between that and other signs, she had to tell the mother, “I’m so sorry, but I believe he has muscular dystrophy, most likely Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.”
Dree went on to explain the terrible course of the genetic disease to the mother, how her son would become weaker and weaker during the progression of the fatal disease, and that if she had any more sons, half of them would also be afflicted with it.
As the sobbing family was leaving, Dree asked Maxence, “Should I tell her that half of her daughters are also carriers, and half of their sons will also have it?”
“No,” Maxence said. “They don’t have access to genetic testing facilities up here, anyway. Half of the girls are not carriers, and the family would be ostracized.”
As darkness was falling, Dree laid her head on her arms on the table and sighed.
The waiting area had only two more people, both of whom Father Booker and Maxence had triaged.
One had a minor rash that Batsa had translated as having been on his arm and unchanged for six months. Maxence thought that it looked like a second-degree burn, and Batsa discovered that the man leaned against his family home’s heating stove at least once a week, burning himself in that spot. Max put a bandage on it and told the guy to wear sleeves around the stove or move his chair.
The other was a little girl with a slightly inflamed scratch that looked like the family cat had gotten mildly peeved at the child. He and Father Booker dressed the scratch with antibiotic ointment and sent her home.
Maxence crouched beside Dree. “Chérie, come back to the campsite. You need to rest.”
She rolled her forehead back and forth on her arms, shaking her head no. “There’s more. I can’t leave them.”
“You are all done. You saw them all and helped them. You need food and sleep now.”
When she rolled her head back and forth to signify no again, Maxence helped her into her ski suit, gathered her up in his arms, and walked out of the small house. She was nothing but blond fluff against his chest, and her arms reached around his neck.
