Page 36 of It Takes a Thief

“We were just leaving,” said Monique. “I think Duji had too many tequila shots, so I’m driving.”

“No, no!” said Duji, irascibly. “Ford wants that cruise for his wife. You gonna go on it with her? You gonna go on it with her?”

“Yes, I’m going on it with her,” I assured the guy who’d been a friend of my father’s since the short pants days. “That’s part of our deal.”

“I’ll do it if you’re going on it with her,” he kept saying.

“Yes,” agreed Monique. “She really wants to go somewhere with you.”

So that was how I won Maddy her dream vacation. But at what price? I’d made an ass of myself, injured a very good worker of ours, and Maddy never did come home that night.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MADISON

“Are you married?”

I’d been waiting ages to ask Dr. Chesbrough this.

We were hiking down into a slot canyon, one of the many narrow, towering sandstone valleys of Canyon de Chelly. There had been a welcoming ceremony for student and visiting nurses at the hogan outside the hospital. A bilagáana faculty member talked about how the hogan and sweat lodge were used for native holistic healing, and we saw the sage bundles and flat rocks where medicine men pounded herbs. I wanted to know more, but we were whisked off on this hike.

There were students from Southwestern in the van with me—three women and one man. Interns from Brigham Young had just returned home. These students were all so enthusiastic and idealistic, reminding me of myself at that age. One gal, my roommate Penny, was studying to be an optometric nurse. She’d been using all the highest tech equipment at school, and kept pointing out how sparse tech was at Chinle. I’d thought the optometry program was a good one, but she kept saying it didn’t have this or that.

Finally I said, “Well, isn’t that one of the points of deciding to work here? Like Ted just said. We’re nurses and must work harder than others to earn our place. There is no safe passage.”

A couple of them stared at me, probably wondering what a thirty-year-old mother of two was doing there. What sort of crime I was running from, what offenses did I commit back in my hometown.

But Penny looked abashed and said, “You’re right. I should be grateful to be here, not bitching about the lack of equipment.”

“Right,” I said, trying not to sound sanctimonious. “I think he was trying to say none of us can slide by on a whim, by the seat of our pants. There really isn’t any divine passport to save us. We’re all going to meet dangerous situations where a split-second decision will alter the lives of others around us.”

“Preach,” said Penny.

She gave me the confidence to continue. “We’re going to get beaten up by the world and the things we see. We need to take comfort in each other, to buoy each other up with our stories, so we don’t feel so alone.”

“Sing it, sister,” said Desiree, a young black woman studying obstetrics. “No one else knows what we go through.”

“Dr. Chesbrough is a dreamboat,” said Alyssa, a pediatric student.

Well, that was completely apropos of nothing, but I wanted to dig farther. “He sure is. I wonder if he’s married?”

All four students shrugged. Yeah, how would they know? They were newer than I was. And why was I asking, anyway?

“Aren’t you married?” asked Justin. I knew he rode a motorcycle back in Kansas and that was about it.

“Of course,” I said haughtily. Another strange reaction. “My husband is a businessman over near Flagstaff.”

They all looked at each other again, like who is this chick? If my marriage was so stupendous, what was I doing alone serving three months in the middle of nowhere, on a godforsaken Rez?

But my lecture about camaraderie must’ve stuck, because Penny said, “You’re really enhancing your career with this service, Madison. I know it probably pays less than you’re used to in Flagstaff.”

I nodded tersely. “Sure does. I don’t give an eff.” Which was true. Zero effs were given about my new salary. I had complete access to enough money to pay for whatever I wanted and then some. I tried not to spoil my kids, but sometimes I just saw something online I had to have. Now? Not so much. I still had access, of course, to funds. But I was going to try to live within my means now.

That meant sharing an apartment with Penny—we’d just spent our first night together in Chinle in the place that looked like military housing. The inside looked fairly military, too, functional and bland. A calendar from 2010 hung on the living room wall, the furniture was of 80s oak and fabric, and the only thing in the kitchen that seem used was the coffee pot. Our bedrooms were along the wall that had a view of rusty bluffs. I tried not to think of all the other exhausted, sweaty interns who had slept in my bed. In other words, a perfect place for nurses to spend three months. It was a world apart from the six bedrooms, granite countertops, and 360 degree views of my Mescal Mountain spread. Ford had wanted to build me my dream house, and so he had. But now I wanted more.

“Married? Not at the moment.” Dr. Chesbrough had been waiting for us with the Navajo guide who’d take us to the bottom of the canyon. The guide vanished almost right away. He was probably already waiting at the bottom while we stumbled down over every rock, root, and slippery sand known to man. The other students got ahead of us, and I was more than glad to talk to the sexy MD. I knew how to walk very well in canyons, having been practically raised in one, like a coyote. I exaggerated my incompetence to stay behind with the doctor.

“Divorced?”