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His gaze still holds mine and he smiles slowly, lazily, and I smile back. I don’t even know why I’m smiling, but here everything is different.
I feel different. I feel as if all the superficial bullshit of Hollywood is falling away and the real me can breathe again. I’m finding myself and remembering what matters.
When the hospital van arrives on its final trip to the community center for the night, I try to slip away quietly from the group to get a seat in the van. But Michael sees me rise and reaches out to touch my arm as I pass. “Where are you going now?”
“Heading to bed.”
His fingertips brush my forearm and my skin tingles, hot and electric. “Always running away.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s the last van of the night.”
His dark gaze gleams. “Good night, Tiana. Sweet dreams.”
Chapter Fifteen
I feel alarmingly giddy during the ride back to the community center’s guesthouse. Giddy as I wash my face and strip off my clothes and turn out the light.
Giddy, and hot, and restless.
I shouldn’t be feeling this way, either. I should be smart. Focused. Honest.
Michael’s a playboy. An Irish charmer. The compliments drop easily from his tongue, but does he mean it? Or are they just lines?
It rains now, and I climb into bed, listening in the darkness to the rain drum on the metal roof above my head. Even with the fan, it’s oppressively hot.
If only I could just forget Michael. But I can’t, and thinking of him just makes me warmer. I hate that I miss him and I’ve only just left him.
How funny. I barely know him, yet I already miss him more than I missed Trevor after six months of dating.
There’s something about Michael that connects with me, touches me. But along with the hope is fear, and the fear is growing, too. Love never lasts. People either die or leave. Just look at Keith. And Shey and John.
No matter how interesting I find him, no matter how appealing he is here, I can’t want Michael. I can’t love him. And I can’t possibly let myself need him.
Keep it as friends, I tell myself, reaching up to touch the mosquito net cloaking the bed. My fingertips brush the fine net. He’s safe, and I’m safe, as long as I don’t let him close.
The van comes far too early to pick us up from the center for St. Francis, but I’m ready when it arrives and squeeze into the back with Howard’s camera equipment and my notebook and pen. It’s only a ten-minute drive and I’m wearing a tomato red sundress with spaghetti straps, but I’m still sweating by the time we reach the hospital grounds.
Fortunately, coffee and a hot breakfast await. After stacking the equipment in a corner of the tent, I get in line with everyone else for my eggs, potatoes, sausage, and bacon.
I see Michael at a table across the dining hall, and despite my resolve, my heart does a funny little jump. He’s sitting in a sea of females.
With my eggs and potatoes, I go sit at a table near Howard’s equipment to keep an eye on it. No one else is at my table, so I get out my notebook and scribble notes for myself about what I need to do today.
I’m halfway through my breakfast when Michael stops by the table. “Good morning, Ms. America.”
My pulse quickens. “Good morning, Hollywood.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “You should have joined me for breakfast.”
“You had quite a bit of company already.”
His eyes spark. “There’s no competition.”
I blush, and I don’t know why I’m blushing. It’s silly that I suddenly feel nervous. “You’re sounding very Irish lately, Dr. O’Sullivan,” I say crisply to hide my uneasiness.
He sits on the bench across from me. “Hard not to. My mum and dad are both from Galway, on the west coast of Ireland.”
“So you were born in Ireland?”
“La Paz.”
“Bolivia,” I say, making sure I understand.
His smile is crooked. “Travel’s in my blood.”
I’m even more curious now. “Was your father a doctor?”
“No.”
“So why do you do what you do?”
His smile fades and he doesn’t answer immediately, and then he raps the table with his knuckles and stands. “Because I can.”
The camera’s dead. I didn’t think to check the battery last night, and now I scramble to find the plug and a converter and an available outlet. But just as I’m about to plug in the camera, Tomas, one of Michael’s doctor friends, tells me to stop. “You’ll fry your camera,” he tells me. “You’re missing a piece of the converter.”
I’m embarrassed but grateful and have to go without filming until I can see Howard and find out where the missing piece is.
Michael is scrubbed in for surgery, and I’m in the corner of the operating room in a mask and robe with my notebook and pen, to make notes during the operation of questions I have and things I need to research.
In between procedures, Michael steps outside to drink water or talk with his surgical team. I keep my distance as the staff talks. They’re truly on a mission and sharing something very special together. It’s bonded them, turning a collection of international medical specialists into a team. They know they’re doing something good, know they’re making a difference, and their satisfaction is evident in their expressions.
I want what they have. I want to feel what they feel. I want to know I’m doing something good in my life.
The medical team is scrubbing up again, and Jon, Michael’s friend, appears with a black box and plug. “This will work for your camera,” he says. “And I moved some things around in the operating room. You’ll find a free outlet against the wall by the door.”
I’m surprised by the unexpected gift and thrilled. Impulsively, I lean forward and kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you!”
Red-faced, Jon leaves and I glance up to find Michael looking at me.
I lift the converter and plug to show him. He smiles and there’s something warm in his eyes, something so good that I feel his warmth burrow all the way through me and into my heart.
If only he could be the right one… if only I could be brave enough… if only there could be some kind of guarantee that if I fall in love again, this time everything would work out….
During the next round of surgeries, I stand next to the camera and film with my best professional detachment, which is very hard to do in these circumstances. These patients are but babies, and Michael’s hands are like those of a giant as he works inside, restructuring the palate and connective tissue and bone.
This “devil” of a man is gentle with the smallest and weakest.
* * *
I spend the afternoon filming the screening process. There must still be several hundred families waiting, and with only a week left to the mission, less than a fifth will be chosen.
I have the camera rolling throughout the afternoon as women stand patiently in line for their child to be evaluated. The mothers know only a few will be selected, and they all want one of those coveted spots.
Later, as the screening team of pediatrician, dentist, speech therapist, and nurse examines the candidates, I film an anguished father begging the doctors to help his son.
Tears spill from the father’s eyes as he motions that his son cannot eat and is starving to death and if we do not help him, he will die. He will die.
Whispering into the mike, I repeat the father’s desperate words, and I zoom the lens in on the father’s face. It’s difficult for me to keep my composure as the father’s words are translated for the screening team’s benefit.
I pan to the thin little boy with a hole where his lip and gums and teeth should be and then have to pause filming because my vision is too blurry to see.
They’re not going to choose the little boy. I know they’re not, and it undoes me.
Late in the day I see Michael, who is finally finished until tomorrow, and I ask him about the little boy who moved me so much.
&nb
sp; “Will he be one of the ones chosen?”
“Not all children can be chosen.”
“But some children who aren’t helped will die.”
He nods imperceptibly.
“How can you bear it?” I ask, my voice breaking.
“Because I’ve learned the hard way that we can’t save everyone, so here we have to be careful, we must make good decisions. We evaluate the cases and choose the best possible candidates, children who are relatively disease-free and physically strong enough to tolerate the surgery. Children who can undergo anesthesia. Children without heart and lung problems. Children who won’t die from infection afterwards.”
“They’re not going to pick the little boy, are they.”
