Terrified screams had rent the air as the passengers had been tossed around like corks in a savage sea. Elliot’s head had hit the window with a sickening thud, making his ears ring. The two chubby little girls from the seat across from his had tumbled against him, inflicting various blows from sharp little elbows and hard soled shoes as he cushioned them from serious injury.
It had been chaos then. Noise and confusion and near hysteria—all very familiar to a man who spent most of his days working in places sane doctors prudently avoided.
As a trauma surgeon working with MWL for the past three years, he had experienced firsthand the aftermath of war, terrorist attacks and natural disasters. He’d learned to block out the noise and confusion and terror in order to function.
After discovering that the stocky, middle-aged driver spoke decent English, he’d handed the man his cell phone to call for help while he conducted an informal triage, identifying those passengers whose injuries required more than a soothing word and a Band-Aid from the bus’s pathetically inadequate first aid kit.
He’d just finished applying a makeshift splint to a teenage girl’s broken arm when a furious barrage of high-pitched Spanish had caught the driver’s attention. Minutes later, Elliot had found himself struggling to deliver a baby in the bed of a wrecked pickup, with several matronly passengers assisting.
Beneath the hand he kept splayed over the laboring girl’s swollen belly, another contraction rippled, then strengthened, until her entire belly was rock hard. Her hand desperately clutching that of her terrified husband, the frantic young woman screamed. Elliot murmured reassurance, hoping she would understand the tone if not the words.
“Ayudame, por favor!” she begged between cries.
“Help me, please,” the driver translated, his eyes dark with worry.
God, Elliot wanted to, but the baby was a posterior presentation. A damn breech. He glanced toward the empty stretch of road ahead. The driver had made three more calls to the authorities in Puebla del Mar, who promised to hurry.
Standing in a ragged circle around the truck, solemn-faced onlookers waited in an eerie silence broken only by the sound of prayers uttered in low, urgent tones.
Elliot had prayed in just that same way once, his voice thick with an icy terror, his eyes stinging with tears instead of sweat. Over and over he’d begged God to spare another young mother and her child. A baby old enough to lift up her arms to her daddy when he walked in. A dark-haired, dark-eyed bambina with the smile of an angel and a bubbling laugh.
His thoughts began to shatter the way his life had after he’d lost his girls. His chest hurt from the wound where his heart had once beat strong and steady.
Another contraction ripped across the girl’s stomach. Her eyes were huge pools of suffering and fear, beseeching him for help. For a bloody miracle.
Leave me alone, he wanted to shout. Don’t you think I would perform miracles if I could? But I can’t, damn it!
He took a second to pull back from the black empty pit that had been his prison for so many years. He wasn’t God, but he’d sworn an oath to do his best.
“Tell her husband to get behind her and support her shoulders,” he ordered the driver crisply. “I’m going to push the baby back into the birth canal, then try to turn it.”
“Ah sí, comprendo! Like birthing a…a calf, no?”
Elliot nodded. “Sí, exactly like that.” He only hoped he didn’t kill both mama and baby in the process.
Elliot didn’t care where he died. Still, it surprised him to discover he still had enough humanity left not to kill himself where his body might be discovered by someone who cared about him.
The third-rate, bug-infested hotel in the nowhere village of Puebla del Mar was ideal. Here he was just one more gringo. An outsider with a surly attitude and the take-no-prisoners swagger of a barroom brawler.
Hell, most of his fellow guests rented their rooms by the hour, so he doubted they’d even flinch at the sound of a shot. The desk clerk might even take it as a favor, given he could rent the room twice in the same night.
After twisting the cap off the tequila he’d bought after leaving the public clinic this evening, Elliot drank straight from the bottle, one fiery swallow after another until his head was swimming. Reeling a little and careful to keep a tight grip on the bottle, he walked to the sagging bed with its worn gray spread and lumpy mattress.
Old-fashioned wire springs creaked under his weight as he sank down. He took another long swallow, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before reaching under the thin pillow for the worn leather photo case he’d stashed there this morning after checking in. It fell open easily, the fold thinned by constant handling during these past ten years.
A familiar ache spread through his chest as he gazed into the laughing eyes of his two dearest loves—his wife and daughter. Sweet, generous Candy with her open smile and shiny black hair that always smelled like apples and sunshine. Feeling as though he were being strangled, he shifted his gaze to the face of his baby girl, his angel, Lauren, who had her mama’s stubborn chin and beautiful smile. Today would have been his fifteenth wedding anniversary—and his daughter’s eleventh birthday. Ten years was long enough to wake up every morning telling himself his work was enough. No matter how many broken bodies he put back together or how many lives he saved, he still felt empty inside.
He’d tried once, to put it behind him. On a miserable night shortly after the funerals, when he’d hit bottom, Katie had come to him. Sweet, innocent Katie, his sister’s best friend, wearing her heart on her sleeve.
She’d held him, talked to him, made love with him—and in that small window of time he’d felt peace. But afterward, the guilt had nearly crushed him—and Katie. It still hurt, the way he’d treated her.
His mind drifted. It had been a close call this afternoon on that hot, dusty road, but the mama and baby had survived. He’d damn near lost it when he’d drawn that tiny little body into the world. Mad as a little hornet, she’d started squalling as soon as he’d cleared away the amniotic fluid. Despite the temper, she’d been a dainty little girl with dark fuzz covering her little round head, and milky-blue eyes sure to turn dark.
Suddenly it had been Lauren there on her mommy’s tummy, and Candy gazing down at her daughter with dark, shining eyes. It was too much for one man to bear, this crushing grief that never let him rest, no matter how tired he made himself. God knew, he’d fought it, pretending that he had put the grief and despair behind him, hoping he could make the pretense real if he repeated the lie often enough.
Only now he’d simply stopped caring. He couldn’t fight any longer. He missed his girls. If there was a heaven—and he had no faith that there was—he wanted to be there with them.
His parents and his sister would mourn for him, he knew, and that hurt. But Mom and Pop had each other, and his baby sister had her friends and her job as a social worker. And sweet little Katie? He did regret not being able to make amends for the way he’d treated her. He tried, but every time he was home, she made it a point to avoid him. Not that he blamed her.
He smiled a little sadly as he drained the last drop from the bottle, then let it fall to the mattress. Head swimming, he unzipped the duffel bag at his feet and took out the .44 Magnum his dad had given him when he hired on with MWL.
“Keep it loaded and never point it at anyone you’re not willing to watch die,” his dad had said in a steely voice Elliot had never heard before.
Even as he slipped the barrel between his lips, he grieved a little when he thought about how upset Pop would be if he ever found out it was his gun that had fired the bullet into his son’s brain.
Elliot closed his eyes and his finger tightened on the trigger.
Washington, D.C.
The tall, white-haired gentleman with chiseled