“I’m going to need room to save him, and I can’t do that with you standing this close.” Marie sassed back. It had been a long time since she’d had to deal with someone who demanded attention without letting her do her job. There were many times when she’d been working at the busy LA hospital she’d been at before taking this assignment, where impossible demands were made of her by people who didn’t understand that not everything could be dropped just because they demanded it.
“You dare to speak to me this way?” the guy argued back.
Mentally she counted to five before answering him. Didn’t he get that the longer he argued with her, the longer he kept her from dealing with his son? “I do. If you want me to save your son, you need to move. Now!”
She was done being polite. Done pandering to this asshole. She didn’t care what happened, all that mattered was helping the boy, who was losing more and more blood with every passing second.
“You heard the doctor. I suggest you move before I make you.” Samuel’s voice sounded behind her. Hard and unmoving.
The man stood taller and puffed his chest out. “Who the fuck are you? Do you know who I am? WhatIcan do to you?”
That was the second time he’d intimated he was someone that should be revered and be bowed down to. In all the time Marie had lived in this small Guatemalan town of San Carlion, she hadn’t seen him. But the moment he’d arrived, the buzz of conversation had died, and many of the townspeople who were there to help, had all but disappeared as if they feared him.
“I know who you are,” Samuel responded quietly. “But if you want the doctor to help your son, then you need to give her the space to do so.”
The hardness appeared to have disappeared from Samuel’s voice, but if possible, the quietness of his tone seemed more threatening than it had seconds ago.
The last thing she needed, what they all needed, was for this altercation to turn violent, but she couldn’t deny having Samuel at her back was reassuring. There was something about this stranger that was giving off dangerous vibes, and if there was anyone else who could deal with his son, then she would get them to do it. Unfortunately, it was only her, and it didn’tmatter that she was reaching the end of her rope. That her emotions were so close to the surface that it wouldn’t take much to send them over the edge and for her to collapse in a heap on the ground where she stood.
Falling apart wasn’t an option, so she sucked it up, attempting to push her splintered emotions down even further. Later, when she was alone, she’d fall apart.
Marie reached out and touched Samuel’s arm, once again fissures of electricity skipped along her skin. Something else for her to examine later—her body’s uncalled for reaction to the handsome stranger who’d been a tireless pillar of strength and help. “Sam?” he flicked his gaze to her, his brown eyes, almost black with intensity. “I got this.”
Whether it was her tone and the way she’d shortened his name or something he saw in her own eyes, she didn’t know, but Samuel gave a short, sharp nod and stepped back, just enough for the other guy to know he was still there if she needed him.
The stranger smirked smugly as if he’d won a battle. He hadn’t, and the outcome for his son wasn’t great. Marie tried a different tactic while she ran her hands over the little boy’s body. “What’s your name?” If she had a name maybe it would diffuse the situation.
“Alfredo Vargas, but you should already know that,” he declared.
Marie let his comment slide, not worth getting into it with him, because it would only delay her ability to help his son. “Can you tell me what happened to Tito?”
“What do you think happened?” he scoffed. “He got hit by falling debris because of the earthquake.”
“Right.” Falling debris didn’t cause the boy’s injury, but she was smart enough to know that if she questioned Alfredo, she would likely end up with a bullet in her head.
How do I play this?
The thought swirled in her mind, and she knew the only answer was to keep up the pretense that he’d been hurt during the earthquake. “Did you or someone else remove the piece of metal that pierced his chest?” she pressed around the area, even though it wasn’t necessary.
She once again placed her stethoscope over little Tito’s heart and, as she’d suspected, there was no beat. The boy was gone, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“I did.”
Taking a deep breath, she reached over and touched the boy’s cheek. He was so young to have lost his life, but she was also not naïve enough to know that there were drug runners in the area. Evenamidst an earthquake, something had happened and Tito had been caught in the crossfire.
“I’m very sorry, but Tito is gone. There’s nothing I could do for him. If you’d left whatever had hurt him in, I may have been able to do something, but even then it would be unlikely. Whatever hit him in the chest, hit him directly in the heart causing catastrophic failure.”
It went against everything she believed in to keep up the lie Alfredo had instigated, but she was needed here. Although there was no guarantee after delivering this news, that she wouldn’t end up dead. Or kidnapped. Or something equally worse.
Alfredo stared at her, his hands curled into fists, and she braced herself to feel one of them connecting with her flesh. “I told you to save him.”
“I know.” What else could she say? “There really was nothing I could do for your son.”
Alfredo loomed over her. “Do you want to stay working here?”
That was the last straw for Marie. The day had been stressful. They’d lost so many people, and she didn’t have the energy to deal with this overbearing man. “Your son was shot in the chest. Even if you’d brought him to the hospital as soon as it happened and we were able to operate on him, it wouldn’t have madeany difference. The injury was too severe for him to have survived.”
Had she signed her death warrant by dropping the ruse and saying his son had been shot and not hurt during the earthquake?
