Winter Soldier

Leah lifted her hand and brushed back a strand of hair that had worked its way out of her braid. “That does sound like a good idea.”

“The only problem is I’ll have to get out of this chair to do it.”

“You know you hate cold showers.” The hotwater heater that supplied the showers was ancient and unreliable.

Kaylene took another swallow of her soda and swung her feet off the chaise with a groan. “You talked me into it. I also have to do some laundry. I’m not celebrating Thanksgiving with dirty undies. Hello, Doctor.”

“Good evening, ladies.”

Leah turned her head, but she didn’t have to see him to know it was Adam. She nodded hello, not trusting her voice.

“Is there something you need in the operating room, Doctor?” Kaylene was from the old school of nursing. She didn’t call any of the doctors by their first names.

“Everything’s perfect in the OR and you know it,” he said with one of his rare smiles.

“Just making sure, because once I get out of these scrubs, you’re not getting me back into them for forty-eight hours.” There were no surgeries scheduled the next day in honor of Thanksgiving.

Kaylene went back into the hospital, leaving Leah and Adam alone on the veranda. Leah stared down at her soft-drink can. Adam stared out into the compound. The church bell began to chime.

“It’s time for mass,” Leah said unnecessarily.

“Don’t let me keep you.”

“I wasn’t planning to attend.”

“Then would you care to come with me to the orphanage?”

The nursing sisters ran a small orphanage together with a school in another building about half a mile away. Leah, Kaylene and one of the doctors made the trip down the road at least once a day to visit the children and check on their patients.

“Has something gone wrong with My Lei’s shunt?” The six-month-old girl had been born with a condition that caused fluid to build up on her brain. Five days ago Adam had implanted a shunt, a tube to redirect the excess cerebrospinal fluid. She had been doing well ever since, but any kind of surgery was risky for an infant, especially brain surgery.

“She’s fine,” Adam said quickly. “But I promised Sister Grace I’d check on her today. If you’re too tired or you still don’t want to be alone with me, just say so.”

She’d hesitated too long in answering his invitation. He was impatient with personal interaction, she was learning, as though he spent little time in idle conversation. It was only a few minutes’ walk. Surely she could keep her feelings under control and her hands to herself for that length of time. “I’m always tired,” she said. “But I’m not worried about being alone with you.” It was the first mention he’d made of that afternoon in the OR. The first for her, too. She stood up and walked to the screen door.

Adam stepped in front of her and held it open. Leah searched for a topic of conversation. “Have you seen B.J. today?” she asked as they passed the church and headed for the roadway.

“Not today, but it’s obvious by the sound of your voice he’s hatching some new scheme, and he’s got you as excited about it as he is. Am I right?”

“You seem to know him very well.”

“We’ve been friends a long time. What is it? A new program to revolutionize the Internet? Although I didn’t have you pegged as a computer geek.”

“I’m not.” She laughed. “I use one, but I don’t understand it.”

“Don’t tell me he’s planning to try and fly a hotair balloon around the world. No, that was last year.” He smiled. “I give up. What is it today?”

“He told me he has a new project he’s working on—containerized hospitals. They’ll fit on the back of a semi-rig or you can sling them under a helicopter and drop them just about anywhere in the world. Pod-Meds, he wants to call them. Completely selfcontained and fully equipped operating rooms with labs, X ray, physical therapy and even water and electricity.”

“What about a stable blood supply and competent follow-up care?”

“I didn’t say there weren’t problems. Big ones. But that’s where people come in,” she said. “To donate blood, solve the problems and teach others how to care for themselves.”

He looked at her and smiled, but it didn’t lighten the shadow behind his eyes. “Never underestimate the power of a dreamer. You and B.J. are two of a kind.”

“I think it’s a great idea.”

“I do, too. I hope he brings it off.” This time his response seemed more genuine, heartfelt, and his smile took her breath away.

They walked in silence, listening to the sound of children’s laughter carried to them on the smoky air. “I always marvel at how wonderfully happy these children are—except for love, they have so little,” Leah said as they moved into the shade of the tall stands of bamboo that grew beside the road where the humid air felt ever so slightly cooler.

“Family is important to the Vietnamese. They’ll do just about anything for their children. Even children like My Lei who haven’t got much of a future.”

“I wish there was something I could do,” Leah said, thinking aloud.

“You’ve done plenty already.” Adam’s tone sounded harsh, resigned.

Leah kept her eyes on the track. “But it isn’t enough.”

“With a case like My Lei it’s never enough.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and lowered his head.

“Are you sorry you operated on her?” Leah asked. If he said yes in that same stony voice, she would turn around and go back. She thought of the happy, smiling baby. Her life was precious even as imperfect as it was.

“No,” he said at last. “I’m only sorry I couldn’t make her well and whole. There’s still so much we don’t know about the human brain. So much that can go wrong.”

“And some things that can be put right.”

They’d come to a place where a small runnel crossed the road. It wasn’t deep, but too wide to step easily across. Adam held out his hand to help her. Leah hesitated. She didn’t want to touch him. She remembered all too well the feel of his hands on her arms, the heat of his body, the taste of him in her mouth. A craving for his touch was part of what kept her awake at night.

A bird called somewhere off in the distance, another answered, calls as strange and exotic as the setting. She and Adam would be together only a little over a week longer, then he would go back to his world and she to hers. She would remember that and keep this attraction between them in perspective. She put her hand in his and jumped across.

“If Vo’s family can’t be located, perhaps I could sponsor them,” she said, hoping he’d attribute her breathlessness to the steepness of the rise they were now climbing. Vo was My Lei’s father, a young widower.

“You can’t take on a responsibility like that. The child has no mother. Vo doesn’t speak English. He has no marketable skills.”

Leah thought of the dying old woman she’d befriended back in Slate Hollow, along with the woman’s pregnant great-granddaughter, Juliet Trent, She had already made herself responsible for the two of them. Adam was right. She couldn’t do the same for My Lei and Vo. “I was only thinking—”

“With your heart, instead of your head.”

She turned on him, stopping him dead in his tracks. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“Yes, when it blinds you to the realities of the situation.”

She started walking again. “I’d rather be blind to reality, if it keeps me from seeing things as callously as you do.”

He reached out and grabbed her wrist, spinning her around to face him. “I’m not blind, Leah. I’ve only learned the hard way how it tears you up inside when there’s no more you can do than what’s been done. I stopped believing in miracles a long time ago.”

“You did work a miracle for My Lei. For the others, too. The old man whose pain you took away, so he can enjoy his last months with his family, and the nurse who will have babies to love and cherish now.”