DISCLAIMER: Not mine. No money made. Maca, Esther and (to my great disappointment also Cruz), along with the entirety of Hospital Central, belong to Telecino. All I own is my brain and a very vivid imagination. I only lay claim to the journey I'm sending the characters on.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: After taking refuge in the Hospital Central fandom almost a year ago, I am delighted to see the growing interest for Maca and Esther in the international community, where Ralst's call for submissions finally convinced me to post this story here as well. It is originally being written in single chapters on the Spanish Maca y Esther board at miarroba (Ralst has kindly added the link to the HC link section, and if any of you speaks Spanish, I'd advise you to run and don't walk over there and take a look at the fan fic section) and is as of yet unfinished.
TIMEFRAME: uh… let's call it al Alternative AU, which is like an Über, but not quite. The Spanish folks on miarroba write nearly exclusively in this form.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.

By Nordica aka Nique Bartok

61

The sounds of the morning birds woke Maca up and when she sleepily blinked her eyes open, she could see the first gray light of day fall in through the window opening. These were the coolest hours they had, and from the amount of light, Maca estimated that she had at least another, possibly two hours left before they had to get up. She wrapped her arms more close around the warm body in her embrace, using her other hand to slowly brush up the long line of a spine, and then to stroke long hair away from a slender neck. Slowly, she leaned in and pressed a kiss to that nape, her lips smiling against soft skin as she felt the body within her hold move, a pair of hips pressing more tightly back into her groin as the breaths next to her own quickened.

Maca dropped another, slow kiss to the skin under her lips. "Good morning…" she murmured against it.

"It's the middle of the night," the woman in her arms complained, but then she turned around, and Maca was left with the familiar sensation of falling into her, into the warmth of her eyes, into her smile, her embrace and the heat of her body.

"I don't think I ever let anyone wake me up this early," Esther murmured, her voice heavy with sleep and Maca held her breath when she moved underneath her. "With one exception."

Maca arched an eyebrow, balancing her weight on her hands as she looked down at Esther. "And who might that have been?" she questioned lightly.

"You…" Esther smiled, running a finger across Maca's raised eyebrow before she trailed her hands through Maca's hair, wrapping them lightly behind her neck. "Nobody else but you."

Maca ducked her head, answering that precious smile and just as she leaned in to kiss Esther, she knew that she was perfectly happy. There could be nothing more perfect than this – the two of them, a quiet morning, alone in their little space.

Maca noticed that the door to their room was slightly ajar and she was puzzled for a moment since they were always careful to close it. And then she herself was suddenly standing in the door, looking at the bed and watching the two of them from afar, but then it was not her with Esther anymore. There were the broad shoulders and the back of a man moving above her, and then she saw Esther's hands come up, wrapping themselves lightly around the man's neck. Maca couldn't see his face, and she couldn't move, even though she wanted to run there and hit him, hit him hard and push him out of what had always been hers and Esther's space.

She heard how Esther said something to the man, in a low tone, and her voice drifted over to where Maca stood. "You… nobody else but you…"

With a start, Maca sat up in her bed. She looked towards the window and the darkness outside and the smell of the sand in the air immediately let her know that this was not Kasaï-Oriental. This was the Tanzanian border, and Esther was far away. She was alone.

Maca tried to take deep, slow breaths, fighting the sensation of loneliness and despair. "It was just a dream," she muttered to herself. "A nightmare like any other. Get a grip."

But it had not been a nightmare like any other. She often dreamt of losing Esther, of trying to run after her and having her legs shot away under her, forced to lay motionless while she watched Esther walk away, or calling out for her while Esther didn't hear her. But she had never dreamt of her like this, with someone else.

Maca had known for a long time that Esther was back together with Miguel, but right now, she still wanted to curl up and cry. And she was angry, angry at Esther and at herself for still letting it affect her like this.

On nights like these, she was so weary, weary of the heat and the stress and the sparseness of her life. On nights like these, she thought about going back to Spain, about asking her parents to help her out and returning to Jeréz, sleeping in her old room and sneaking down into the kitchen late at night and steal one of Carmen's cookies. But what stopped her was her father's face when she had left in anger all those years ago, the sneer with which he had called after her, "You'll come crawling back here yet!" And Maca would rather spend another year listening to Cjelko's jibes than letting her father have that kind of satisfaction.

She also thought about traveling up to Madrid in these nights, about confronting Esther and asking her face to face just why she had left her, why she had lied to her about leaving Miguel and why she hadn't had enough faith to wait for her. But when she tried to imagine how Esther might look at her, her Esther, but without the affection that had always shone brightly from her eyes, she knew that she wouldn't be able to take it.

A knock on the door interrupted her musings. "Dr. Fernandez?"

Maca looked up to the door, immediately alert. "Yes, Tatyana…come on in."

The blonde nurse seemed startled at the quick reaction, quick even for Maca who tended to have a very light sleep. "We have another one," Tatyana announced briefly, pushing her frame into the room.

Maca nodded, reaching for a pair of pants and her coat. These were her Wednesday and Thursday nights now, quiet consultations in the early morning hours. Their weekly medical supply transporter arrived on Wednesdays, so Cjelko usually didn't come out of his quarters again until Friday, a fact that also the patients knew about. So they came during these nights, quietly – women, children and elders, mostly. And Maca treated them as good as she could, mostly aided by Tatyana, sometimes by one or two of the other medics.

Ever since Maca had defended Tatyana against Cjelko, the blond nurse called her 'Dr. Fernandez', much as Maca had assured her it wasn't necessary. But for Tatyana, it was a measure of granting Maca the professional respect that Cjelko denied her, and Maca had come to appreciate it deeply. Like this, it had become easier to ignore Cjelko's jeering comments. For the first time in months Maca felt that she was making a difference. In the regular day clinic, among what were basically hardened militia members and ex-soldiers, smiles were generally a bad idea. But the people who came to her in the evenings and nights, outside the regular hours, came with their fears and with broken biographies much like her own, needing a talk as much as anything else.

Maca closed her doctor's coat while she hastened across the yard. Reflexively reaching for the last button and finding an empty space, she remembered that it was missing. She had meant to sew it on again for days, but had never gotten around to it. For a second, she was reminded of Kasaï-Oriental, and how Esther had sewn back on her buttons after she had ripped them off… Maca almost smiled, but then she shoved the thought away, following Tatyana into the offices.

Two slender shapes leaned against the wall inside, scarves pushed back from their heads, and Maca saw the commonplace unnatural thinness on them. It was hard to estimate how old they were, perhaps sisters, perhaps mother and daughter. One of them seemed to be an adult, the other one a younger girl, perhaps four or five, but age was a hard thing to guess like this. The girl gingerly cradled her own hand that was stuck in some kind of twisted metal or aluminum, looking as if she had tried to push her hand through a torn coke can. It was obvious she had tried to free her hand herself, angry red marks lining her fingers and wrist.

"A mother and her daughter," Tatyana supplied next to her, nodding at taller of the two figures. "She says they were scared to come during the day, because of the soldiers," she added under her breath as they walked closer, washing their hands at the entrance of the office. "Can you check on the girl?"

"Sure…" Maca replied, already bent over the twisted hand of the girl. "Hey… so what's your name, little one?"

The child – Maca really had no way of telling how old exactly she might be – looked at her with pained eyes, but she didn't cry or say a word.

"Eduige," the mother supplied nervously from the background.

"Alright, Eduige… how about you get to take a little nap, and we will take care of your hand, hm?" Maca suggested gently, lifting the girl up without touching her arm and settling her onto a medical cot. "Can you tell me when you got your hand stuck in this? Because it doesn't look like it only happened yesterday…" She smiled encouragingly at the frightened girl.

It took them a few minutes to get the story out of the mother, but even from the spongy corners of the wound where the metal cut into Eduige's hand, Maca could tell it had to have been three days, give or take. "We need to operate this," she said over the head of the girl, looking at Tatyana. The smile had slipped from her face. "This is not something I am good at… and she is extremely malnourished, we need an anesthetist for it if we want her to wake up again."

Tatyana looked at her for a moment. "Baptiste," she suggested finally.

Maca grimaced. Baptiste was one of the rougher guys, someone who had lost his former position somewhere in the French Overseas due to malpractice. An accident, as he said, but rumor among the clinic was that someone had died. Also, Maca couldn't recall any occasion where Baptiste hadn't referred to her as 'doll'. When he called her 'Penelope', he was already having a good day. But it wasn't like they had much time, or many choices.

Maca nodded at Tatyana, gently setting the little girl into her hold. "Can you look after her for a while?"

Tatyana took over wordlessly and Maca hastened out of the quiet operating theatre towards the medics' quarters, knocking sharply on a nondescript wooden door.

"What the hell…?!" Baptiste appeared sleepily in the door, running his fingers over his unshaven neck. It took him a few moments to realize who was standing in front of him. "Penelope…" He leered at her.

"I need your help with an operation," Maca informed him without preamble. "Now. – Are you sober enough?"

"An operation? Now?" Baptiste stared at her and even though there was alcohol on his breath, his eyes were clear. "And why should I help you, Penelope?"

Maca shrugged. "I heard you were a good anesthetist once."

For a moment they stared at each other, his vanity against her arrogance and Maca could feel the energy shift back and forth between them. One day, she would really have to thank her mother for installing this attitude in her.

In the end, Baptiste leaned back, eyeing her from head to toe. "I guess I could take a look at it," he allowed casually, reaching for his crinkled coat. But when he walked into the operating theatre, close enough for Maca to hear his sharp intake of breath when he took a first good look at Eduige, he seemed suddenly wide awake. "Electrical saw, or pliers," he stated curtly and Maca nodded, agreeing with his assessment.

With any conventional sawing, they'd most likely lose the hand, but they would need one point of leverage at least. "Blood poisoning, beginning stages," Maca commented just as matter-of-factly as Tatyana continued prepping their patient. "And malnourishment."

"Fingertip dose," Baptiste murmured with a nod. "Some more on the hand…" He reached out with surprisingly gentle hands. Eduige's head nearly disappeared within his grasp. "All right then, doll…"

Maca looked up at that from where she was pulling on a pair of gloves, surprised that the expression for once didn't sound derogatory in the least. And then she didn't have the time to notice things like that anymore since Tatyana sent the reluctant mother outside and they spent the next two and a half hours working on saving the young girl's hand, cutting away what they could of the bent and twisted metal until they had to go in and part it with pliers in two places. They did not manage to stay off the blank bone completely and Maca had to swallow against nausea as they scraped it twice, but at least they put as little pressure on it as possible. In the end, Maca wasn't sure whether Eduige would be able to keep all of the fingers, but at least the hand would be alright.

And she had to admit that Baptiste managed to keep the girl evenly out of it despite their limited resources. At last, they stood in the cooler night air outside, watching the mother – who had refused to stay in one of the patient huts, afraid for her daughter and herself among all the teenage soldiers – carry Eduige out of the clinic, the thickly bandaged hand posed protectively in front of her small body.

"Good work, Baptiste," Maca said quietly to the man at her side who had his hands pushed into the pockets of his coat. The front of the garment was lightly sprinkled with blood. "Thanks for helping out."

"It was a good operation." Baptiste shrugged. He looked at her, and Maca thought for a moment she saw something like happiness there or perhaps contentedness at least. Then it was gone, as unexpectedly as it had come, and Baptiste stepped back. "I better catch some sleep while I still can…" he nodded at Maca, hesitating for a second. "…Dr. Fernandez." With that, he turned on his heel and left.

Maca couldn't help the huge grin that spread across her face while at the same time, she wanted to cry. It was just a small victory, but it felt huge to her.

It was four in the morning in the end, and the first hint of dawn was creeping up over the roof of the main building while Maca sat on the steps to the back porch, smoking a cigarette with Tatyana in companionable silence.

"I don't think Baptiste ever called a woman anything else but 'doll'," Tatyana commented thoughtfully when she finally got up, extinguishing the glowing tip of her cigarette underneath her heel. Tatyana always wore heels. "You're changing this place, Dr. Fernandez." She waved at Maca as she started to walk over to the nurse's quarters. "Good night."

"Night, Tatyana…" Maca smiled and waved back at her. She was not in a hurry to crawl back into her bed. There was no Esther waiting for her, after all. She took a last, long draw before she pushed the stub into the sand. Perhaps it was about time some things around here changed.

Maca hadn't told anyone, but she had finally filed a complaint against Cjelko. It had taken her quite a bit of persuasion and taking on some gruesome shifts, but she had finally convinced two of the more dauntless medics to sign the complaint as the necessary witnesses in exchange. She had promised them to keep their names out of it, at least in front of Cjelko, but she had reported enough incidents to have him removed, even if he was the last goddamn surgeon on the face of the earth. Unless Cjelko had bribed someone further up the line, which, as Maca had to admit, was very likely. And in that case, her plan would backfire in a way she didn't really care to think about. Her letter would probably not even reach headquarters, and Maca had no doubt that Cjelko wouldn't hesitate to send some of his local warlord contacts her way if she degraded him in front of the entire clinic like that.

But Maca had made her own contacts over the past year, gaining respect perhaps not with the local thugs, but with her coworkers, and with the families whose children she had cured in those silent nightshifts while Cjelko was out of it. She knew that this clinic wasn't much to write home about, but she would be damned if she didn't try to make it the best clinic possible. She had spent too much time not doing anything about it already and now she was surprised to find that it actually felt good to care about something again.

62

It was late in the afternoon when the couple hastened into the hospital, the mother's heels resounding on the linoleum of the hallway floor, the father's thin coat flowing around his stout form as he carried a boy of perhaps seven or eight in his arms.

"We need help," he proclaimed, "My son is not feeling well…"

Standing where she was next to Teresa at the counter, Esther noticed out of the corner of her eye how Aimé and Hector, two nurses in tow, rushed over to the couple. The pair looked well off, but not rich enough to be beyond the state of needing to exhibit the fact.

Esther was about to make an internal bet with herself when Teresa would interrupt the story about her youngest son's latest scandalous girlfriend and stop to comment on the wife's earrings instead, but then the father turned half around and Esther could see the young boy who seemed to be in a state of semi-consciousness, his legs and dangling off to the side with an odd kind of tension. It was something that Esther had seen more than once out in the Congo and that had not ended well in most of the cases. "Shit… I know what this is!"

Before Teresa could say a thing, Esther had already rushed around the counter, hearing Aimé ask, "What did he eat?" as she made her way through the entrance hall.

"Esther, wait…" Teresa called warily from behind her, but Esther had pushed through to the couple with the child, barely avoiding to roll her eyes at Aimé's innocuous question. "This isn't food poisoning or drugs, this is a snake bite," she informed him without preamble.

"Would you mind letting me go on?" Aimé asked somewhat miffed while two nurses lifted the boy onto a cot.

"Yes, you' re not even a doctor…" the mother observed nervously, staring at Esther who was checking the boy's arms.

"Snake bite?" The father snorted. "We don't have snakes! This is ridiculous."

"Somewhere in the extremities… with a torso bite, he would be out already…" Esther murmured and only spared the father a short glance as she looked up from where she was checking the boy's hands. "With the way terrariums are in fashion with the rich, you could be bitten in the middle of a dinner party," she commented, raising the first pant leg. "Here!" she called, motioning at the small double imprint, the edges of the bite marks oddly white. The bloodline was already moving up towards the thigh.

With a quick grip, Ether reached for the nearest flexible thing she saw which was the stethoscope Hector had slung around his neck. With two quick motions, she had bared the boy's leg and had begun to tie it off. "Ice this to slow the blood flow," she said to the two other nurses who were staring at her, but listened to the command edge in her voice without a question.

"What are you doing?" Aimé asked in consternation, now seriously annoyed. The parents kept staring at him, uncertainly looking at Esther in between.

Hector held up his hands. "She's seen snakes up closer than most of us," he reminded the others. He looked at Esther who was finishing to tie his stethoscope just underneath the boys knee. "Anything else, Esther?"

"When did this happen?" Esther asked the parents, her tone curt. They had no time to waste.

"He didn't feel good all afternoon…" the mother explained helplessly, half looking at Aimé, half at Esther, unsure who was the more informed one.

"Shit…" Esther cursed under her breath, exchanging a worried look with Aimé who was trying to talk to the child. "Hey buddy, can you hear me? Can you tell me what happened?" The boy reacted, but he didn't manage to speak, clearly uncertain where the sounds came from. His head lolled back.

Aimé nodded, looking a lot more serious than only a minute ago. "We better hurry – we need to stabilize him first." He glanced at Esther as if to make sure and Esther noted that at least at this point, she was finally having Aimé's undivided attention.

She nodded. "I'll call upstairs for the venom specialist from Tropical Medicine." She was already half on her way to the phone.

In the end, they had managed to save the boy. A few nerves in his leg had been beyond saving, but given the state the boy had arrived in, it was a small miracle that there weren't more lasting effects. Of course, Aimé hadn't been too amused about her interference, and even less about her having been right, but Esther had secretly cherished it – that she had been able to help, and that she had been right in her assessment. It had felt good, a sensation of being useful that she had last had in Africa. Aimé had been kind of prissy with her for a day or two afterwards, but Esther could live with that.

Now it was a week later and in the morning, the parents of the boy had called the hospital, informing them that they would file a malpractice suit since the boy would keep a limp. Esther, who had been standing next to a baffled Teresa who had taken the call, had been cursing under her breath, but apparently not quietly enough.

Teresa had passed the call onto Cruz's office and this was where Esther found herself now. Hastening it for a quick coffee – decaf, to her chagrin – Cruz had asked her to come by in the afternoon and now Esther was waiting, nervously. She and Cruz had become friends over the past months, but Cruz was also still her boss, so if the parents or Aimé had filed a complaint against her and wanted her fired, it would be Cruz's decision and Cruz would be the one who would have to tell her about it.

"Hey…" Cruz called from the door, interrupting Esther's sinister brooding. She pushed into the office, letting the door fall shut behind her. Her hair was half matted to her skull, indicating that she had been wearing a scrub cap until mere minutes ago. "Sorry, I got held up in an operation." She quickly drew the blue shirt she was wearing off her frame and reached for a fresh set of blue scrubs to pull over her form and Esther could see that Cruz was already showing again. She tried to look away, thinking it wasn't her place to notice that being pregnant looked very attractive on Cruz.

Cruz didn't seem to notice Esther's momentary distractedness. "Now I am the boss of this place, and do you think I'd finally get them to issue a mama line of these things?" She tossed the blue shirt she had been wearing over a chair, shaking her head in annoyance. "Not a chance." She moved to pour herself a glass of water, curiously looking over at where Esther stood and taking in the way she was fidgeting. "So…"

"What's this about?" Esther couldn't hold back anymore. If this was about her clash with Aimé and the parents of the boy with the snakebite, she'd prefer to know it right away. If Cruz was about to fire her, Esther thought they could skip the niceties. "If it is about the parents who want to sue us because the boy with the snakebite will be keeping a stiff leg…"

Cruz waved her off. "I managed to dissuade them," she said with uncanny serenity and Esther knew from experience that when Cruz got this silky tone, she generally had told someone to go to hell crawling on their gums, and in no uncertain terms at that. "They can be lucky he made it at all." She nodded at Esther. "No small thanks to you." With a small sigh, Cruz sat down behind her desk, closing her eyes for a moment as the chair took the weight off her legs and back. She motioned for Esther to sit. "I also had a little talk with Aimé. – He thought it was not your place to interfere…"

"I heard that," Esther said dryly, thinking that Aimé probably would have minded a whole lot less if she hadn't interfered in front of the preppy parents, but behind closed curtains instead.

Cruz nodded. "So I decided to do something about that."

"Yes…?" Esther slid a little deeper into the chair. This didn't sound too good and Cruz looked more serious than usual. Of course, usually they spoke as friends, not as boss and employee, but this was not one of the friendly occasions.

Cruz surveyed her intently for a few moments before she spoke. "I want you to take over as Head Nurse for the ER."

Esther blinked, her brain coming up blank for a few seconds. "…Me?"

"I need someone who knows this hospital, and the staff," Cruz stated simply. "Someone who is quick and knows when to jump in, and whom the others respect…" She grinned, taking in Esther's stunned expression. "…and who doesn't take shit from anyone, including the doctors."

"Uh…" Esther felt warmth rise up her cheeks and she knew she was blushing like a school girl. She tried to remember the last time she had blushed and was startled to find that it had been out in Kasaï-Oriental, one slow day where Maca had locked the door to the office, slowly stripped her off her clothes and then had spent long minutes just looking at her, with an expression Esther could feel like a touch even now. It was a good thing that there had been no more patients knocking on the door that afternoon, although Esther wasn't sure they would even have heard them.

"The proper answer is 'Yes, and thank you for the offer and the significant pay rise it brings'," Cruz supplied with a gentle smile, shaking Esther out of her musings. "Of course, your hours will be hell. Unless you tweak the duty roster a bit." Cruz smiled angelically. "Which would be perfectly within your competencies."

Esther laughed, somewhere between incredulity and relief. "I guess I can't say no, can I?" She shook her head. "And I thought you were going to fire me…"

"Esther…" Cruz gave her that patented patient look she had in her repertory and for a moment, Esther understood how Vilches had made it through everything, through the guilt and the ire and the helplessness. "I'm not stupid." Cruz seemed amused, but then the levity slid from her features. "I know I'm asking a lot of you with this, but I also know you can make a difference in this job." She nodded slowly at Esther. "You are the best choice."

Cruz's seriousness made Esther realize that this offer was real, and that, more so, it was a huge chance for her. She swallowed, now nervous about the responsibility that she was being offered. But other than that, she was feeling good – this was her work, something she took pride in, something that gave her the feeling of having a place where she belonged. Cruz had hit the nail on the head with her comment: It was something where Esther felt she could make a difference. She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Then, she nodded at Cruz. "I'll do it."

When Esther returned home that evening, she was still feeling elated, as if she was finally on top of things again. She didn't remember feeling this happy since her days with Maca in the Congo.

"Guess what, I got promoted!" she called already from the hallway when she heard noises from the kitchen.

"Really?" Miguel came out of the kitchen, a dish towel pushed through the belt loops of his jeans as a makeshift apron. Two unruly locks of hair fell across his forehead. "That's great, I'm happy for you – so what happened?"

"I thought Cruz was going to fire me or give me a least a reprimand over the snakebite boy from last week – so I was nervous as hell, but in the end she promoted me to Head Nurse…" Esther followed Miguel into the kitchen while she talked, trailing off when she saw on the way that the table in the dining room was set with candles and china. "Did you know about this?" she asked suspiciously. "Did Cruz tell you beforehand?"

"No, she didn't," Miguel laughed, raising his hands as if to demonstrate his innocence. "It's a coincidence."

"So what are we celebrating then?" Esther asked curiously. She moved to open the door to the oven for a bit and breathed in with a huge smile. "If you are making my favorite casserole and set the table in the dining room, there has got to be a reason!"

Miguel shook his head, smiling at her. "Do I need a special reason to cook for the newly appointed Head Nurse and make us a nice evening?"

Esther smiled back at him fondly. "I guess not," she allowed, leaning in to kiss him, a little longer than she usually would have.

"Here…" Miguel pressed two wine glasses into her hand, and Esther blinked when she saw the label on the wine bottle, with a napkin tied around the neck. "We get such noble wine with a simple casserole?"

"You like the 'simple casserole'," Miguel pointed out. "And you like the wine. So why not? If we enjoy it…"

Esther grinned, stroking a hand across his shirtfront. "I should have let myself be promoted to Head Nurse a lot earlier, if I get dinners like this for it."

They didn't get to dine together that often, with Esther's shifts being prone to sudden changes and Miguel often working late or spending a few days in a row out of town to meet with clients. And if they were both home, they were mostly too exhausted to cook, ordering in and perhaps sitting on the couch for a while before they fell asleep.

Tonight was a welcome exception and Esther enjoyed the evening a lot. Miguel had even set up candles. She was feeling happy, in a way she hadn't expected to feel ever again. She had a new challenge at work, a job she loved, and someone caring and supportive at home who even cooked her dinner when he had the time. It was a gentle, quiet contentment and Esther thought that this was perhaps the real, normal happiness, the kind that people had and that could last for a whole life.

Miguel refilled their glasses, and Esther split the last bit of the casserole between the two of them, laughing when Miguel said that he would have to go to basketball practice with his colleagues an extra time this week if Esther kept stuffing him with his own food. But of course he cleared his plate just the same.

"This was great," Esther stated with a happy smile, contentedly leaning back in her chair for a moment. "And since you cooked, I guess I can at least do the dishes…" She moved to stand up.

"We can always do the dishes later," Miguel said, stopping her with a hand. "Why don't we just sit here for a while longer and enjoy the evening?" But then he got up anyway and wiped his hands on his jeans and Esther looked at him somewhat puzzled. "I know we talked about this before, but never for real." He smiled apologetically. "I thought I would be nervous, but not this much!" He walked around the table, closer to her, and Esther smiled, charmed by his honesty. She wasn't sure what exactly he meant to say until he took her hand and lowered himself onto his knees so that he had to look up a tiny bit to see into her eyes.

Then, a split second before he spoke, she knew what he was going to ask, and the whole evening made sense to her, the dinner, the wine, and Miguel's nervousness.

When he finally did speak, he was only echoing her thoughts.

"Esther… would you marry me?"

63

"Dr. Fernandez?"

"Yes?" Maca replied without looking up from where she was bandaging a young boy's knee.

"The transport," Tatyana announced from behind her and Maca nodded, taping the bandage in place.

"There you go, buddy. You'll be as good as new in no time." She smiled at the boy who tentatively smiled back at her before he scrambled off the cot and back to his waiting sister as Maca walked out to wash her hands.

There still weren't too many patients that smiled back at her, but things had been changing a lot around here ever since Cjelko had received his letter of lay-off. Despite his cocksure attitude and his warlord connections, the central committee had heeded Maca's protestations, calling Cjelko back to Mbuji-Mayi immediately.

The transporter had arrived in the evening, when Maca had already been in her quarters after the shift, in that quiet half hour where she lit the little paper lantern and allowed herself to daydream. She remembered Cjelko's cry of rage shaking her out of her idle thoughts and how he had stormed over, kicking in the door to her modest habitation with brute force, fueled by ire and alcohol, the letter still in his hand. "You bitch!" It was the most coherent of the insults he kept yelling at her as he rampaged through her quarters.

He was drunk and unfocused in his rage so that Maca managed to dodge most of his blows easily, something that only enraged Cjelko further. He kept looking for something to break, but since Maca didn't really own anything, there was nothing that would have left him with the satisfaction of breaking under his grasp.

In the end, still yelling at Maca, it was by accident that with one of his sloppy gestures, he wiped the small paper lantern off the ledge where it stood, not even looking at the cheap lamp as it went up in flames within seconds.

That night, Maca had cried for the first time in many, many months as she carefully brushed ashes, wax and last singed bits of red paper off the ground.

Cjelko had stormed off that night, stoned and drunk. He hadn't returned to his quarters by next morning, and nobody at the clinic had felt too inclined to go looking for him. They had found him three days later, when the black cut above Maca's eye was already half healed. He lay in one of the dusty, empty lots at the outskirts into the wilderness, his body looking thin and unthreatening, shrunk in the heat of the sun already, like a deadly insect that looked oddly harmless in death – dried, bloodless and curled into itself.

From the stab wounds, Maca concluded that Cjelko had probably gotten into a skirmish with some of his warlord associates, another victim of the conflict between two rivaling groups in the area. With a certain fatality, the groups had almost eliminated themselves in the subsequent weeks and months, leaving a power vacuum that, thankfully, was filled by a local clan where Maca and Tatyana had helped one of the wives through a very difficult birth. Thus, there was little protest when Maca got appointed head of the clinic after Cjelko's demise. Nobody seemed to interested in finding out the exact circumstances of his death, anyway.

Some of his more loyal followers, medics and personnel, left the clinic after that, most of them simply been gone one morning, having taken with them whatever they could carry. Within the rest of them, the mood shifted. They even had two new arrivals, expecting a third.

Maca knew that this would never be a happy place, not like their old clinic out in Kasaï-Oriental had been on some of the better days, but it had changed a lot. They had more normal clients apart from the soldiers now: elders, small children, pregnant women. Also, Maca had put up a few clear rules about soldiers in the clinic, something none of them had taken too seriously, until – at least this was the story that ran around the area – Maca had ripped the IV line with the painkillers out of a recently operated soldier's arm after he had tried to grope Tatyana, not reattaching it until he had apologized to her in front of everyone present in the habitation.

Even the gruffest of the clinic personnel had begun calling Maca 'Dr. Fernandez' after that incident. And something else had come out of Cjelko's unexpected demise: Maca finally had papers again. Granted, they said 'Dr. Penélope Fernandez' instead of Macarena, but they were real papers, acknowledging that she was a proper doctor, and of Spanish nationality. For the first week, she had kept them under her pillow, reaching for them in the middle of the night when she woke up, just to look at them again and to make sure they hadn't suddenly disappeared.

"Boss?" Maca looked up from where she was washing her hands, finding one of the nurses, a squatty, muscular man called Diego, waving over to her. "The transporter is coming up, it should be here any minute. They're bringing the new nurse."

Maca raised a hand, signaling that she had heard him. "Thanks, Diego." He was one of the medics who had stayed after Cjelko's death, only slowly accepting her as the new boss.

Walking out of the clinic area onto the dusty road, Maca positioned herself in the slim stripe of shadow that the solid fence around the clinic offered in the midday heat, waiting to hear the stutter of the transporter motor in the distance.

She had stood here many times, waiting for medication, equipment, new personnel, her papers and the mail, mail that she never got. Maca had made sure that her current NGO address was known to the staff at headquarters in Mbuji-Mayi, she had let them know again over the issuing of her papers. But apparently, Esther never had asked about her. At least she had never written. For a while, Maca had entertained the illusion that perhaps Esther simply hadn't received the letters that she had sent to her work address, but the last one, from right before she left for Tanzania, she had specifically marked to be sent back to Mbuji-Mayi if the addressee were untraceable. But nothing had been returned to Mbuji-Mayi, and like this, Maca had to accept that Esther had gotten her letters, but had not wanted to reply. She still didn't understand why and a few times, she had been terribly tempted to write another letter, just one, asking for the explanations she had already asked for in the last one. In retrospect, Maca was glad that she had thrown away the joint address of Esther and Miguel on the spot, without memorizing it, because otherwise she surely would have given in to temptation, writing to Esther despite everything that had happened.

Maca shaded her eyes, gazing up towards the midday sun. Even after all this time, she was not getting used to the heat. These past few weeks, after the clinic had finally begun to run with a certain normalcy – as far as that was possible out here – she had found herself plagued with bouts of homesickness. Perhaps now that she didn't have to struggle to make it through every day, fighting Cjelko's bullying and insinuations, her mind simply had idle time on its hands and suddenly Maca was thinking about her parents again, about weekends at the seaside, about the sounds of the gravel underneath her feet when she had walked up the pathway to their mansion in Jeréz. And of course, she thought about Esther. Sometimes during these last weeks, she had played with the thought of handing things over to Tatyana and Baptiste, at least for a little while, and go back to Spain, if only for a visit.

The noise of the old truck that did most of their transports alerted Maca to the arrival of their latest charge.

The car drew to a halt and a woman got out of the side door of the worn truck, rubbing her shoulder. Dark hair fell in wild curls around her face. She was pretty, Maca thought. Most likely a few years younger than she was herself, but it might simply be the fact that people who came out into these clinics always looked younger than the others who already had been there for months or years. Esther had looked the same when she had first arrived out in Kasaï-Oriental, with her hair in a fancy cut and exuding an energy and friendliness that Maca had thought was just naïve idealism. Little had she known back then that this very energy and friendliness was simply how Esther was and that she would fall in love with it so deeply that without Esther, it always felt as if something was lacking, even now, more than eighteen months later.

Maca watched as the foreign woman lifted a dusty red suitcase off the back of the truck and cursed under her breath. She spoke Spanish, Maca noted with surprise. She must have moved because the woman suddenly turned to look at her, squinting at her against the sunlight.

„Dr. Fernandez...?" The unmistakable accent, paired with a frank look that reminded her a bit of Esther, left Maca dumbfounded for a moment.

"You're Spanish…" Maca was unprepared for the wild surge of homesickness that rolled over her.

"Yes," the woman said slowly, trailing a curious gaze over Maca. "I'm Paula. Nice to meet you."

"I'm Dr. Fernandez," Maca shook herself out of her stupor and introduced herself. "Welcome to the Congo." She smiled without being conscious of it. After more than a year of broken English, Shaba and Tutsi, and the heavy Congolese French, hearing some authentic Spanish – not the South American dialect Diego spoke – was like a postcard from a long forgotten home. Maca couldn't resist asking. "Where are you from?"

Paula looked up from where she was inspecting her battered suitcase. "Madrid," she replied succinctly. Something in Maca's expression, the way she almost gasped at the simple word, raised her curiosity. "Are you from Madrid yourself?" She shook her head before Maca could even reply. "No, you don't sound like that… you sound more Southern." Again, she looked at Maca in that strangely alert way, almost making Maca withdraw a little. People out here didn't look each other in the eye like that.

And for a split second, Maca was incredibly tempted to ask – granted, there were thousands of nurses in Madrid, but perhaps they had met, in college or at some conference or vocational training weekend… Then she shook her head, telling herself that it would be too great a coincidence. Besides, it wouldn't change a thing, even if Paula knew something of Esther. "No," she hastened to reply. "No, I don't really know anyone there."

64

Looking down at her manicured hands, Esther found herself distracted by the unusual sight. It was a strange image, not quite befitting these hands that were used to hold and sooth and save, used to wielding syringes and tubes, to stroke comfortingly across people's backs and to lift heavy boxes of medicine packages into high cupboards. There was no place for fancy nail care in Esther life, and the sight continued to strike her as odd, as alien as the delicate bouquet of flowers in her grasp and the whisper thin bracelet that was wrapped around her wrist.

The only bracelet she had ever worn had been a simple string of carved wooden beads.

"The people here are simply big on wood-chopping," she heard Vilches' voice echo in her mind and she had to smile. Vilches wasn't here today, though. Cruz had gone into labor earlier this morning and Esther had only gotten a call from a very nervous Vilches who stopped to yell at the cab driver to hurry on in between sentences. Cruz had been stating in the background that she was the one who was supposed to be nervous, grumbling in good humor that giving birth had been less complicated last time, with Vilches away in the Congo.

Esther had had to laugh despite the stressful situation. She would have loved to have her friends here, of course, and she kept thinking about them. She had called Vilches' cellphone twice more before they left, but there were no news yet. Even now, ten minutes before walking in here, as she was standing there on heels much higher than she usually wore, Miguel had just passed her his phone with an understanding smile. "Check on them," he had advised gently, and Esther had accepted the small device with a grateful smile, thinking that he was truly the most understanding and considerate partner anyone could wish for.

She was doing the right thing.

Still, right now she was glad about the timely distraction of Cruz's baby that allowed her to not really listen to the words around her, words that suddenly sounded a lot heavier than she had expected and she was irrationally relieved that she had decided against a big church affair.

Reflexively, she reached for the pendant around her neck, only then remembering that it wasn't there. She hadn't put it on this morning; it hadn't seemed right. Besides, with the low cut of the camisole she was wearing – she didn't think she had ever in her life paid that much money for a shirt, even though her mother had kept complaining that it at least could have been white instead of eggshell – the black leopard's head would stand at stark contrast, visible for everyone to see.

Although perhaps the bigger contrast was that she hadn't put it on. Miguel had noticed it right away, when she had walked into the bathroom, still just clad in the camisole.

"You're going in without your talisman?" he had asked with a surprised smile, looking up from where he was shaving, his jaw covered in white foam.

"I think I don't really need it," Esther had replied easily while she was reaching for her toothbrush, even though the words had felt heavy on her tongue.

But perhaps it was time to let go of the dead, and this time for good. She had thought about wearing the pendant, but it had felt wrong somehow, even though now her neck seemed to be strangely bare. She couldn't have worn it, though. To her, the small leopard's head had always meant the promise of a future together, a future with Maca, and she couldn't make another promise while still somehow holding onto that one.

Esther remembered the quiet seriousness of Maca's expression when she had put the necklace on her, her tremulous smile, the scent of her skin close by and the feeling of Maca's fingers trembling against the back of her neck when she had tied the knot. And she recalled Maca's eyes when she had handed the lion statuette over to her in return, with her eyes large and shimmering with unshed tears. It had been a wordless pledge to a life that could have been theirs and now never would be. The ashes of the little wooden lion had long since been blown away across the planes of Kasaï-Oriental, perhaps together with Maca's, and the thought was bittersweet.

Shaking her head slightly, Esther reminded herself that she had vowed not to dwell on this today, not now, not after more than two years had passed already.

"This goes better with the outfit, yes," Miguel had teased her, smiling under the shaving foam as he pointed at the bracelet around her wrist. He had given it to her a few months earlier, knowing that she thought engagement rings were old-fashioned.

Esther had smiled back at him, thinking that he was right and that the bracelet of course was the better choice for the outfit. It was simple and elegant, and Esther found it nicely understated, even though her mother and cousin hadn't been able to hide their disappointment at the plainness of it. The jacket and skirt, she would at least be able to use further, on official dinners or job interviews, even though she had no intention of changing jobs at the moment. Despite the logical explanation, her mother had been crestfallen that her only child didn't want a proper dress for the occasion, but what she had been positively aghast about had been the fact that Esther didn't adhere to the custom of sleeping out of home this past night.

"It's my apartment, and my bed, and besides, we've been living together for the past two years," Esther had explained practically. "It's not like we're romanticist twenty-somethings who never shared a place before!"

But all her reasoning hadn't helped. "But it is bad luck," Encarna had insisted, although in vain. Her stubbornness was definitely a trait that she had passed onto her daughter.

Her mood seemed to have improved by now, though, and as Esther glanced to the side, she could see her smiling proudly, sitting in the first row, right at the aisle, and Esther almost cried at seeing the look of hopeful contentedness that had spread across her features. She knew that this made her mother happy after she had been worrying so much about her daughter, a worry that Esther was glad to lift off her shoulders. It made her mother happy, and it made Miguel happy, Miguel to whom she owed so much that Esther knew in good conscience that all that which she had left to give, she would gladly give to him.

She tried to focus on the stiffly dressed man in front of her, thinking that things might have been different if she were still fancying romantic notions about great and only loves, and in a way she was grateful that she had surpassed that phase, making her own demands towards happiness much more modest. Anything else had died with Maca, and Esther knew that she would never feel that way about anyone else again. She had had her bout of delirious happiness, her share of believing the impossible possible, for a few insanely beautiful short months, and now it was time to give something of that to someone else. Instead of waiting for the fairy tale to happen to her, she was now trying to give it to someone else, and she was amazed at the quiet happiness this offered. She didn't think she was made to be alone and Maca would have wanted her to live and always have a glass of wine more in her honor, sharing it in a way.

Without even knowing why she did it, Esther looked past her mother at the door and for one second, she had a crazy, ridiculous vision of Maca storming into the room now, breathlessly, staring at the scene in front of her, and Esther saw herself dropping everything, the bouquet and the heels, and running towards her…

Angry at herself, Esther looked down at her hands again. This was unfair against Miguel. And her mother had most likely been right about Maca, even though Esther had needed long months to accept the fact that her relationship with Maca might very well not have survived a return to Spain. Sure, Maca would have tried, Esther would never cast that into doubt, but after a while, months perhaps, or even a year or two, she would have missed people who could appreciate the fancy restaurants more, who knew the designers of the furniture she would put in her apartment – one that would most likely be bigger than anything that Esther could ever hope of owning, even if she won the lottery – and who were altogether more worldly and elegant and educated than Esther García.

With Miguel, she didn't have any of these doubts. She never had the feeling that she was whisked away off the ground, to someplace where she didn't know her footing. With Maca, she hadn't cared. She had simply assumed she would be able to fly. But now it was time to get real. Again, Esther glanced over at her mother who had tears in her eyes and saw that same happy, nervous smile echoed on Miguel's features.

He had waited so long for her, so patiently, never once pushing her, not in all those months where she had lived with him and hadn't even as much as kissed him. All that had come later, slowly and quietly, and he had never asked for more than she was able to give. Perhaps that was what made it so easy to return this favor, to give this feeling of acceptance and care back to him.

This was the right thing to do, she repeated in her mind, just because she needed to hear herself think it once more. Between Miguel's carelessly happy smile and her mother's grateful look, Esther took a deep breath and turned to answer the question that the registrar directed at her.

65

Standing motionlessly in the heat was something Maca had become good with out here; it was one of the most useful things she had picked up from the soldiers she treated. It was the typical heat, just short of mid-morning, dry in a way that didn't make people sweat, but just burned them away.

Maca stood easily in the small edge of shadow that the clinic fence offered, waiting for the mail transporter and only now and then casting a glance at Paula who, even after a few months out here, was moving impatiently despite the heat.

It was a quirk of Paula's, one of those that Maca had gotten used to over the past months. Between the melancholy Tatyana and Maca's own reserve, the hot-headed, practical Paula made a good addition to the team. She had done HIV prevention in India before and had worked in half a dozen other places and she generously shared both stories and the liquor and candy that her mother kept sending her.

A week after Paula had arrived at the clinic, Baptiste had begun to show up for his shifts clean-shaven. A few times, Maca had found herself thinking that Paula was someone she might have been attracted to, but somehow the idea of another involvement didn't appeal to her, not after Esther. She didn't even want to sleep with anyone to forget, or to feel or not feel anything. She simply didn't want to touch anyone else. Maca had realized that when Paula had hugged her on a few occasions – in comfort after a bad case, or in celebration after a successful operation – and Maca had been thinking how this body against her own simply hadn't felt right. The only body that fit against hers as if it had been made for it was Esther's.

Paula fidgeted again next to her and Maca suppressed a smile before she gazed back down the road, standing motionlessly in the narrow shade. The transporter should be here any minute now.

Maca simply enjoyed the feeling of having something to expect, even if it was just the supplies. Despite the changed climate at the clinic, she still preferred to accept and sign for everything personally, keeping the key to the medical cabinet on her. She didn't have any new cases of substance abuse at her clinic so far and she'd be damned if she gave any opportunity for that to change. Thus, Maca found herself standing out in the heat once a week, a time of quiet waiting that had almost become a meditative break to her.

Paula, on the other hand, was expecting a package from home, if it hadn't gotten lost between customs and the skirmishes around the border. Paula's mother had apparently made it a hobby to send packages after her daughter, even to the most remote postings – of which Paula had quite a few under her belt already – and so Paula was waiting with her these days, during the quiet minutes that were actually Maca's own.

Her toes stung uncomfortably and in looking down, Maca saw that the shallow ledge of shadow was shrinking already, leaving the tips of her feet exposed to the sun. The transporter had radioed in over an hour ago; she just hoped it hadn't broken down again out in the wilderness.

"You never get any personal mail," Paula observed with her trademark blunt curiosity. She glanced at Maca for a long moment. "…why are you always waiting for it?"

Maca shrugged, looking down the dusty road where the transporter would have to appear in the distance. "Habit," she stated curtly, wondering how pathetic her little fantasy of receiving a letter from Esther was. She knew it wouldn't happen and she knew that anything Esther would write now, this much later, would most likely be nothing she wanted to hear, but even though there was no more hope for that, it was still a nice daydream.

Paula was right, Maca could count the occasions she had gotten personal mail out here on one hand – once, a note from Adanna that Maca's little namesake was doing well, and a few times, a card from Azuka, first with the wildly colored drawings she remembered, Esther had always done them with him and he had loved it. The last one had been in scrawly capitals, reminding Maca that time had passed. Azuka was already attending school.

This time, it was the usual; some supplies and a few letters concerning the clinic, but Paula got her package, beaming happily as she carried the small treasure out of the sun and into the relative cool of the supply room. Maca followed her with the supplies, stacking the boxes on the uneven table with the too short fourth leg. It was a place where they spent a lot of their breaks, making use of the more bearable temperature.

"She sent my favorite shampoo!" Paula was excitedly unwrapping items, piling paper on the table around her.

"We always got coffee and chocolate," Maca murmured, remembering the packages Cruz had sent to Kasaï-Oriental after she had gone back to Spain, and how then Esther had arrived bringing them coffee as well, without even knowing any of them. She reached for the wrapping paper that Paula tossed to the side, smoothing out the crumpled newspaper pages. They were old, but still newer than anything she had read in Spanish in years.

"Peach liquor," Paula proclaimed happily, interrupting Maca's reading. She held up an elegantly curved bottle. "My favorite."

"I know," Maca stated warily. The last time Paula's mother had sent a package like this, she, Tatyana and Paula herself had ended up on a 'girls' night out,' thanks to a bottle of that same liquor, and between mocking Tatyana for her heels, playing cards and listening to the other two comparing their male colleagues, Maca had woken up with a giant headache the next morning.

"Oh great." Paula muttered under her breath, making Maca look up from where she was sorting through supplies. Paula had been pulling a card out of an envelope, but now let it fall onto the table and pointed at the liquor bottle. "I'll definitely have some of this tonight." She threw the card into corner with the trashed paper wrapping paper. "My ex got married and my mother sent me the thank you card from the wedding!"

Maca frowned. "Your mother went to the wedding of your ex-boyfriend?" Paula had never mentioned this boyfriend before, and that made Maca think that there was perhaps more to the story. In general, Paula didn't hold back about her affairs, much like she didn't hold back about everything else.

"You bet she did," Paula nodded with chagrin. "He's from my neighborhood and our mothers go way back – he and I already fought wars in the sandbox as kids."

"Romantic," Maca commented dryly, smoothing out another page of newspaper.

Paula just laughed. "Don't knock it," she advised. "We ended up dating in college. Grand love and all."

Maca gazed down at the splintered linoleum surface of the table. "And then what happened?"

"The usual." Paula shrugged. "Taking things for granted, thinking you have all the time in the world… and then there was somebody else already."

"Yeah…" Maca blinked, squinting at the table. She had never before realized how rundown it looked.

"There was a little more again, two years ago, when I got back from India, but he was still more or less involved with someone else," Paula's voice was a lot more quiet than usual. "In the end, it didn't go anywhere." She shrugged. "So, I went on a job in French Guinea," she added easily. "Perhaps we would have ended up at dead ends over my job anyway."

"Or perhaps he didn't know to appreciate a good nurse," Maca stated gallantly, making Paula raise an eyebrow at her.

"Yeah right," Paula snorted. "The other one, the one he married now, is a nurse as well – seems to be a pattern with him." She picked the discarded thank you card up again and took another look inside before she tossed it down onto the table with a twitch of her lips. "I don't even know why my mother is sending me this!"

"Beats me," Maca admitted. "But we can always have peach liquor over it tonight." She grimaced, and Paula laughed.

"Fernandez, you are such a lightweight," she said, pushing the card across the table towards Maca. "Although I don't think I should waste my liquor over a photo that corny, or should I?"

"It's probably sugary enough already," Maca muttered under her breath, picking up the card with indifference. Paula said something in protest, but Maca didn't hear it, her breath leaving her body in a helpless rush as she stared at the photo on the card, unable to move.

66

It was an ordinary 'thank you' photo the likes of which you sent around after weddings. A group of what had to be neighbors and friends were posed around the smiling couple that stood on the stairs to what had to be the civil registry office. One woman, it had to be the groom's mother, leaned a little closer to the broadly smiling man, her expression just as proud and happy as his.

But Maca didn't see any of this. Maca only had eyes for the bride.

"My girl…" she whispered soundlessly, not even conscious of the fact that she had moved her lips. Esther looked great – of course she did – in a formal, off-white skirt suit, her expression a little more serious than everyone else's. Maca drank in the sight hungrily, unprepared for the wild rush of yearning that pulled her under, leaving her breathless and weak. She blinked against the sudden wetness in her eyes, only to once more focus on the image of the woman who she had once hoped would share her life with her.

Only then did it sink in that, yes, Esther had married Miguel in the end. Maca recognized him, even though she had never looked at his photo much – when they had tumbled through the door of Esther's quarters in the evenings, lost in kisses, she hadn't had much interest in it, and then the picture had been gone when Esther had told her she would break up with him. He hadn't mattered anymore, or so she had thought.

Maca brushed a hand over her forehead, biting her lip to hold in more tears that were threatening to fall. That Esther was married, married to someone that was not Maca, was something her mind refused to understand, even though the fact was heavily sinking to the bottom of her heart already.

Paula's worried voice sounded from far away. "Hey, Fernandez… are you alright?"

"Can… can I keep this?" Maca didn't even look up from the photo, busy tracing her gaze over every tiny detail of Esther's face, the half smile, the line of her eyebrows, the way her hair was swept up, the curve of her nose, all those small lines and curves that she had kissed so many times.

"Sure…" Paula stated with some bemusement, still not really understanding what was going on. "It's not like I would want it around to dwell on it." She looked after Maca who stood up and left, still gazing at the photo in her hand that she held with infinite care, as if it was something delicate or sacred.

Even when Maca reached her quarters and closed the door behind her, carefully depositing the photo on top of her bedcovers, she still moved like in a daze. Slowly, she sat down next to the card, just trying to breathe while she kept looking at it and struggled to comprehend the whirlwind of emotions that raged through her. If she had thought that over the past two years, she had gotten over Esther or had at least accepted that Esther had moved on, a single glance at the wedding photo had easily proven that this was not the case. If Maca knew anything at this moment, it was that she still loved Esther, despite everything, and with a fierce intensity that hadn't lessened at all over the past two years. Pressing her fingers against her lips, Maca finally allowed the tears to fall.

It wasn't ten minutes later when a knock on her door sounded and the door swung open before Maca had even answered. Paula stood on the threshold of the modest habitation, her hands on her hips as she took in Maca's shaken expression and the way she looked at the photo of Esther. "Fernandez, you've got to be kidding me!" she stated without preamble.

"The situation doesn't lack a certain irony," Maca allowed, looking up from where she was sitting on her primly made bed covers, the card lying next to her. Discreetly, she tried to wipe at her eyes.

"I don't mean that you're in love with the woman Miguel chose over me." Listening after own words, Paula frowned, canting her head to the side for a moment. "Although that is wildly ironic in an entirely not funny way." She shut the door close behind her with more force than necessary, staring at Maca with incredulity. "Jesus! All these months I've been thinking the love of your life died in that attack at your old clinic, and that you're so traumatized you won't talk about it." She took a few steps into the room, looking at Maca and at the wedding card beside her. "But it's her, and she is alive?!" Paula's voice rose with disbelief. "I thought whoever it was must have died! Instead, she wasn't even married until…" She interrupted herself to reach for the card again, checking the date. "…six weeks ago?!" The card sailed back down onto the gray blanket while Paula raised an eyebrow at Maca. "She's alive! Why didn't you go after her?"

"She left me," Maca said slowly, startled to realize that this was the first time she had ever talked to anyone about it. Nobody at the clinic knew about Esther. The only one to whom she had talked in all this time had been Karim while she was recovering from her wounds, but that had been different. Back then, she had been so sure that Esther would come for her, that she would be waiting in Mbuji-Mayi, and Karim had been just as convinced. "We got separated during the attack," Maca explained briefly, not even trying to put the panic and the hurt into words, the long weeks of waiting at the rebel camp and the elation upon making it to Mbuji-Mayi, only to find herself on her own, lost and devastated. "I asked her to wait for me, but she got back together with him." She chuckled sadly. "Although that is not quite right – she never broke up with him in the first place."

"You mean she was cheating on him with you while he had a bad conscience about hooking up with me again?" Paula glared up at the low ceiling at the room as if to indicate to whatever deity that might be watching above that this was a very cruel kind of humor.

"It seems like they managed to work it out, doesn't it?" Maca remarked bitterly, pointing at the wedding picture again.

"Fuck your self-righteous pride!" Paula exclaimed. "Even now… go after her!"

"Now?" Maca repeated incredulously. "She just married him!"

"Yeah well, perhaps she wouldn't have if you had gone back and camped out on her doorstep," Paula pointed out mercilessly. "Okay, so she didn't break up with him when she got back, so what!" She wrung her hands in exasperation. "It wasn't like you were there to remind her of it, or were you?"

"I told her to wait… I wrote her letters…" Maca tried to explain helplessly. It felt so odd to finally talk about Esther again. The hurt had always been her own and she had kept it locked away. "She never replied… she just locked me out of her life."

"But you weren't there," Paula insisted, still without much sympathy. She sighed, sitting down on the small bed next to Maca. "It feels odd to hear myself say this, but give the woman a break, Fernandez. She's only human." When Maca looked at her without understanding, Paula let herself slump backwards against the wall with a groan. "Look, all I'm saying is that you fell in love out in the wilderness, right? Away from all the usual conventions… and you didn't think she would be scared upon getting back to Spain?" Paula barely suppressed rolling her eyes. "Your lofty ideals are one thing, Fernandez, but, hell, we all are entitled to getting cold feet in such cases! And who knows, if you had gone back, you might have changed her mind and convinced her to go with you all over again."

"…and you might have gotten back together with Miguel?" Maca added snidely, discomforted by Paula's blunt remarks. She didn't like to think that she might have let slide an opportunity to win Esther back. Part of her still insisted that she shouldn't have to win her back anyway, that if they belonged together, Esther would have come to find her a long time ago.

"Yes," Paula admitted without any qualms. "And it's not like he didn't want to, but in the end he felt obliged to her…" She shook her head, the puzzle pieces only slowly coming together in her mind. "I can't believe she was with you all that time," she stated with growing rage. "And I was feeling like the evil other woman who broke up this perfect couple and he was beating himself up about cheating on her!"

"I thought we were the perfect couple," Maca said quietly. "But I guess you just never know."

Although later, after Paula had left, muttering something about organizing something stronger than peach liquor for the evening from Baptiste, Maca had to admit that she had believed herself and Esther to be the perfect couple. She had known it on a level so deep that she hadn't even questioned it, feeling it with absolute certainty down into the marrow of her bones and she still didn't understand how things could have changed for Esther. Because they had been perfect together.

As if to reassure herself, Maca looked at the photo again, assaulted by a thousand memories just by the shadow of Esther's smile. It couldn't have been a lie. Esther wasn't like that. But then, Maca also would have sworn that Esther would wait for her or would at least explain to her why she had left her.

She had never even answered any of her letters. Paula had asked, with the practicality that was so typical for her, whether perhaps Esther simply hadn't received her letters, a hope that Maca herself had clung to for long months, despite the low probability. One letter might get lost, granted, but in the end, she had written five over the years, a last one from the borderland here when she had caved in one long, lonesome night, and she had mailed it off in the more reliable office in Kalemie, again specifically addressing the latter back to her in case the addressee was untraceable. Even Paula's shoulders had slumped at that.

Carefully, Maca pinned the photo to the thin wall, tracing the lines of Esther's figure with a fingertip, noting with some concern that Esther had lost weight, looking too thin. "My girl… what happened to you?" Esther looked so serious, there was nothing of the exuberance that Maca remembered so well. She also seemed older, Maca thought. It might be the hairdo, but there were lines in Esther's face that hadn't been there two years ago, sharper than they should be, as if more years had passed. And Esther's smile, framed by stark lines around her lips, was – despite being a smile – not the dazzling expression that had captivated Maca so, making her melt every time, even when it wasn't directed at her.

Still, it was a smile, and Miguel was smiling even more, Esther's arm linked through his and Maca just wanted to hit something and then curl up in a corner and not get up again. She still didn't understand it, and it still hurt, it hurt so much that she could barely breathe.

In a way, she had still held out hope, even though she had thought many times that Esther must have gotten married to Miguel by now. Still, seeing the photo and seeing that it actually had happened was devastating in a way she hadn't expected.

It wasn't like an old scar that was hurting, but more like a wound that would never scar, because it would never even fully close. Maca closed her eyes, thinking of the morning light in Kasaï-Oriental and waking up with Esther curled into her embrace.

Blindly, she slid down on the bed, her head buried in her hands. She didn't think she would ever stop crying.

67

"And then I told him if he…" Teresa interrupted herself in mid-sentence, looking at Esther beside her who didn't even seem to realize that she had stopped talking. "Esther?" The elderly receptionist queried, somewhat consternated by the lack of attention. "…Are you even listening to me?"

"Sure," Esther stated distractedly, looking up from the folder she was perusing. "So you told him what…?"

Teresa leaned with her elbows onto the reception desk and gave Esther a scrutinizing look. "Are you alright? You've been a little pale all afternoon…"

"With the shifts I'm pulling lately, that shouldn't be too surprising," Esther muttered, leafing through another folder without really seeing the content.

"Ah… don't try to pull that attitude on me." Teresa clicked her tongue in disapproval. "I know you, and I can see you're not feeling well." She brushed a hand along Esther's arm, the worry in the gesture evident. "I don't like seeing you like this… what happened? Did you have a fight with Miguel?"

"It's not that," Esther protested tiredly. They didn't fight. If anything, Miguel was perfect – the same considerate, playful and supportive man she had fallen in love with almost six years ago. And three months into their marriage, this hadn't changed a bit. Granted, sometimes he had this oddly hopeful look, as if wearing his ring on her hand was going to bring Esther even closer to him and as if the wedding might have magically transformed Esther back into a younger, more careless version of herself.

The one who had changed was Esther, though, and it had happened long before the wedding. She tried to repay Miguel for his kindness and it wasn't that she didn't love him, but she knew that there would always be something just slightly amiss. She noted it sometimes when she was spending an evening off with Cruz and her family, observing the oblivious, soft smile on her friend's face as she watched her husband play around with their two daughters on the living room carpet, in the happy answering glance of Vilches whose wineglass stood forgotten on the edge of the coffee table. The next sip of wine always tasted a little bitter for Esther then.

Absently, she took note of Teresa's hand on her arm, registering the warmth and the concern behind the simple touch. She smiled ruefully, wondering whether perhaps Maca had spoilt her for all men. It was something that was at the back of her mind, sometimes, when she was ashamed that she didn't feel more when Miguel was touching her. It wasn't that it was unpleasant, but the effortless ease that she thought she remembered was gone.

Last weekend, Miguel had whisked her away on a romantic weekend in the countryside – Teresa and Cruz had been grinning like Cheshire cats when he had shown up at the hospital to pick her up early: both of them had been in on his plan. And at seeing how hard he tried to make her happy, Esther's bad conscience had only increased. The weekend had been beautiful and Esther had valiantly fought not to think about Maca at all, almost succeeding, but there were little, unexpected moments when the memories were sudden and overwhelming – waking just at dawn, gazing out of the small cottage window and hearing birds outside. Catching herself drawing patterns with her spoon into her breakfast muesli. Trying to operate the thin, rusty shower, gasping at the chill of the water. She could almost hear Maca laugh in the background.

Miguel had asked her about having children that weekend and Esther had been caught out of her wits, staring at him for long moments before she fumbled for an explanation, that it was bad timing right now, with Cruz still half on maternity leave and him traveling so much because of the promotion he was working for. And then she had cried when he had smiled, saying that if she needed more time, he was just as happy and that there was no rush.

Esther had felt horribly guilty, but how could she tell him that her first, instinctive thought at the question had been a flash of sitting on the wall around the clinic village out in Kasaï-Oriental, with Maca next to her and Azuka fast asleep in her arms?

She had been thinking about Azuka on and off these past few days, wondering whether she would be able to make out the address of the orphanage. They had written to him from the clinic a few times, before everything wet downhill over the malaria epidemic, but Esther had never pinned down the address and then it had been too late to ask and Maca had died. It was something that Esther hoped Azuka would never learn about. Maca had been his hero, he had worshipped her, waiting all day for the moment where she would play soccer with him before dinner. Esther smiled tearily at the memory. At least Azuka had been spared the garish end; being safely away at the orphanage in Mbuji-Mayi while the rebels attacked the clinic. Esther didn't want to think about losing him to the explosion as well, another life to mourn for.

Only this morning, she had been forced to think about him again when she had assisted Cruz with a birth. The mother had already been in the middle of labor, breaking down in the entrance hall of the ER, and Esther had been the first one at her side. At least her experiences in the Congo had left her with ample knowledge of how exactly to deal with such a situation and Cruz had complimented her on her quick handling afterwards.

Esther hadn't really registered it, still thrown by the fact that the baby was dark-skinned, a clear contrast to the pale, blonde mother. The image of the exhausted woman holding her newborn baby boy reminded her so much of Maca and the way she had lifted up the little baby girl in that first birth Esther had assisted on in Kasaï-Oriental, with her eyes full of amazement and unshed tears. It was the very moment Esther – when Maca had looked over at her with an unearthly smile – had known that she had fallen in love.

And if she was honest with herself, she still was, despite the fact that Maca had died more than two years ago. When the father had arrived, called away from work hastily by Teresa, and gingerly picked up his son for the first time, Esther had to blink away a tear. With his warm smile and gentle hands, he reminded her of Mbele.

She had closed the door to the room behind her, as softly as possible, and alerted one of the other nurses on the newborn station before she had come back down here, unable to focus on the files she was supposed to organize and sign. For a moment, she tried to imagine Maca looking at her from the other side of that small dining table at the weekend cottage, asking her to start a family and, even though miserably and with guilt, Esther had to admit that she wouldn't have hesitated for a second, agreeing joyously in a heartbeat. She would probably have launched herself at Maca right across that table, feeling Maca's teary, happy smile against her neck where she would have buried her face…

Teresa's voice interrupted her idle fantasy. "You aren't pregnant, are you?"

Esther looked at Teresa askance for a moment, and then the receptionist was left staring at the retreating form of the head nurse, who had paled even more and rushed towards the bathrooms.

"I just asked…" Teresa stated, lifting her hands in defense when she caught Hector looking at her from the other edge of the counter. She raised an eyebrow at him and slid her glasses back up her nose before she reached for the stack of folders Esther had abandoned. If Esther didn't want to talk to her, she could at least help her a little by finishing to sort through that stack of files. The one Esther had been reading through right then was the admission file from the birth this morning, and Teresa smiled, nodding with satisfaction. "Pregnant," she murmured under her breath.

68

"All right… that's it." Maca leaned back, holding up her gloved hands while she nodded at the prone patient in front of her. "Close him up." She pressed her lips together underneath the mask, feeling uncomfortably warm in the confines of the operating theatre.

Tatyana nodded at her from the other side of the operating table, concern visible in her eyes above the mask. Paula had already prepped the surgical thread and was moving to sew the wound shut. At the head of the table, Diego was monitoring their patient's vitals.

Another young soldier, another torn leg. The stump ended now just underneath the knee, and if they were lucky and he didn't get any infection, he might make it, becoming another one of the frustrated and angry men who despite their youth didn't see many chances for them left.

Maca closed her eyes for a moment, thinking that she was tired of sewing angry young soldiers back together. She was a pediatrician, not a military hospital surgeon. Lately, she wasn't as enthusiastic about the work out here anymore, being annoyed by many little things that before, she had carried with indifference. She was short-tempered, snapping at patients more easily if another testosterone-laden youngster tried to play the big man to cover up his fear.

"Fixing a leg with your own leg out, that's not bad," Paula joked easily while she pulled the last two stitches tight, but Maca's look from across the table made clear that the clinic head wasn't in a mood to joke today. "I mean you wouldn't have needed to operate again already," Paula amended, her tone placating.

"I hurt my leg, not my arm," Maca pointed out curtly, shifting on the high footstool where she had sat down time and again throughout the operation. She couldn't see how Tatyana lightly shook her head at Paula as she bent down to cut the surgical thread.

That she had 'hurt her leg' was playing down the facts. Maca, as short-tempered as her patient had been boisterous, had gotten into a scuffle with an HIV-positive soldier who had lost his right arm up to his elbow and had refused to accept the seriousness of his condition, ignoring the advice Paula was giving him and muttering under his breath that he would get a cure. Out here, that meant the superstitious believe of sleeping with a virgin, which was supposed to ban the curse that was HIV, and it translated to raping a girl, mostly a very young one.

Just the other week, they had lost a girl who couldn't have been older than twelve like that, to inner bleedings, and faced with the bragging soldier, Maca had lost it, promising him that if he as much as thought of touching a young girl, she would take off his other arm, as well, and some other parts of his body in addition.

Scared and angry, the young man had tried to rise from his bed, and in the ensuing melee, had managed to drive the sharp edge of a surgical tray into Maca's shin. Luckily, it hadn't hit the bone, but it had taken both Diego and Baptiste to pull it out, leaving Maca with a limp and a thick bandage around her left leg that was even more uncomfortable in the heat. She had taken two days downtime, but had been going crazy doing nothing, so she had returned to work. Besides, her hands were needed and a hurt leg didn't keep her from treating patients.

Paula had wanted to kick the aggressor out into the street that very moment, as the clinic rules stated ever since Maca had taken over the place, but Maca had been hesitant, pointing out that as soon as they left him out in this state of rage, he would try to find the cure he had been speaking of. It had been a bleak day at the clinic.

"I'm just saying Baptiste could have done this one," Paula tried again, seeing how tiredly Maca sat on her footstool.

"Baptiste did most operations over the past two days already," Maca shook her head, waving the suggestion off with an impatient gesture. "He needs to rest as well." For a few more moments, they cleaned their patient up in silence until Maca looked over at Paula, smiling underneath her mask. "You're talking an awful lot about Baptiste these days," she observed with gentle teasing. "What ever happened to wanting Miguel back?"

"Oh please," Paula stated dismissively. "I didn't pin a wedding photo of him above my bed and pine away over it." That was hitting kind of close to Maca's Achilles heel – the wedding photo of Esther on the tiny window ledge in her quarters, and the tense mood she had been in these past few weeks – but Maca let it pass, accepting Paula's gruff worry for what it was.

"And Baptiste is kind of…" Paula shrugged, halting in her movements for a moment. "Well, I think he's cute." Tatyana, and even Diego, giggled at this, infecting Maca with their easy mood. "…in a gruff, daredevil sort of way," Paula hurried to tack on.

Tatyana smiled and reached to pull off her gloves while Diego wheeled the patient out of the operating theatre. "With how he got that metal tray out of your leg…" she stated, nodding slowly. Even the withdrawn Slavic nurse had warmed up to Baptiste over the past few weeks, especially since he made an effort to stop calling her 'doll'.

Maca smiled, and then suddenly felt lightheaded. The pastel green of their scrubs seemed to flow together, at a contrast to the pale flesh of their hands, and she swayed lightly on the stool she was sitting on.

"Dr. Fernandez? What is it?" Tatyana's slight lilt was more pronounced with worry and Maca noted with an absent smile how Tatyana still refused to call her anything else but 'Dr. Fernandez', reminding her of a time when nobody had paid her that respect except for the blonde nurse.

"It's nothing…" Maca warded off the concern, knowing she was just exhausted from the lengthy operation and the heat in the room. She made an effort to straighten in her seat, surprised to find that the dizziness didn't vanish.

"Don't shit me, no 'nothing'," Paula all but growled, peering closely at Maca now. She passed a hand over Maca's forehead, checking her temperature. "Fernandez…"

With a casual gesture, Maca tried dispel the sudden concern of her colleagues, but even the small movement made her feel nauseous, blackness licking at the edges of her vision. Helplessly, she felt herself slide off the footstool in slow motion.

"The cot, quickly!" That was Paula's voice, and it had to be Paula's solid form behind her that kept her propped up, Maca reasoned dazedly. It was so hard to think.

As if through a fog, she heard steps and voices, and then there were hands on her body, cooler air on her leg, and a string of curses in Spanish and despite her state, Maca felt a smile pull at her lips at Paula's outburst.

"Blood poisoning…" Maca heard Tatyana's worried voice from far away. It was the last thing she registered before she succumbed to unconsciousness.

PARTE TROIS

69

Maca tried to blink her eyes open, uncertain how much time had passed. She remembered hands and voices, the sensation of thirst and the scents of dust and heat. There had been an uneven rocking, like a thwarted lullaby, that had torn holes into the comforting black numbness around her, at counterpoint to the insistent, dull throb in her leg.

Listening into her own body, she felt too warm in her skin, her limbs heavier than they should be, but the uneven rocking was gone. Only slowly, she became aware of a sound in the background, and for a while she was certain to hear the rustle of leaves high above her. She had to be in the rebel camp, deep in the jungle. The moment the familiarity settled over her, there was also the alertness coming back. She couldn't be out here when the guerillas came back in, she couldn't move on her own and was easy prey. She had to find Karim, or Amobi and Sefu, to help her into one of the huts. The rustle of the leaves became louder and louder until it sounded like military convoy transporters instead.

Opening her eyes with a start, Maca was surprised to see no moving green above her, but dark gray instead, harshly thrown into relief by a source of stark, white light.

"What…?" She tried to sit up, but her head was so heavy, having her struggle to lift it. For a moment, she thought that the rebels had locked her away somewhere, or perhaps she was back at the clinic in Kasaï-Oriental and they had come to take Esther away again.

With her hands clawing at the thin cot underneath her, Maca tried to pull herself up, halting only when a shadow to her left jolted upwards and was immediately at her side. Maca blinked, looking up into Tatyana's familiar face that was gray with exhaustion, deep circles lining her eyes. "What… where…" Maca tried to ask again, but talking cost so much energy.

A pleasantly cool hand wrapped around her fingers, the touch calming her more than words. "Don't worry," Tatyana said softly, stroking her free hand across Maca's forehead and Maca reflexively closed her eyes at the gesture. "This is a military plane, the Red Cross in Kalemie managed to organize the trip – we're in the storage section, they aren't equipped for quarantine…"

"Quarantine… for blood poisoning… idiots…" Maca mumbled under her breath, the few words already wearing her out beyond belief.

Tatyana chuckled despite the somber mood. "With this attitude, I wonder how they ever let you graduate, Dr. Fernandez."

"Must have been…. my charms…" Maca ground out, too tired to open her eyes again, but gratified at hearing the other woman laugh softly at the joke.

"Rest now," Tatyana admonished her gently. "We're flying you home."

"Home…" Maca mumbled, sinking back into the flat pillow. Home was a few burnt down huts a day's trip from Mbuji-Mayi, home was Esther. Home was the stud next to the mansion in Jeréz, and being allowed to go riding with her dad, easily fitting onto the saddle in front of him. Home was her mother's garden, the flowers taller than she was herself, and her mother's gentle laugh when she tried to hug one of the fragrant shrubs to herself.

Tatyana's hand anchored her to consciousness, despite her exhaustion, and then it wasn't Tatyana anymore, but Esther, and she was holding Esther's hand. Maca smiled sleepily. Esther was fine. They had carried her away, but now she had come for her, and she was going home to her.

The murmur of different voices and the rattle of being taken off one plane and onto another didn't wake Maca up again. Only when the curtain of voices became louder and single words scratched at her consciousness, unbidden making sense to her, Maca struggled towards consciousness again.

Spanish. There was mild air around her, and the voices around her were Spanish, and there was Tatyana's heavily accented French, trying to explain something about blood poisoning. Maca tried to open her eyes, and then through the curtain of voices, one rang out clear and close by.

"Dr. Fernandez? Penélope Fernandez?"

That was her name, or wasn't it? It was so hard to think. Maca nodded, squinting at the figure in front of her. "…where am I?"

A dark-haired man looked down at her from likewise dark, friendly eyes that were visible above the quarantine mask he wore. Where the mask left his cheeks free, she could see that he was well-shaven and she noted the pristine white of his well-pressed doctor's coat.

"My name is Aimé, and we'll take care of you now," he promised with a reassuring professionalism that she easily recognized. "You made it through the trip, and you're in good hands now."

"…where…?" Maca managed to mumble and Aimé leaned in to be able to hear her. Tatyana was still walking beside her and Maca realized that she was being wheeled across a courtyard into an entrance lobby of sorts.

"This is the Central," Aimé replied, and then he called something ahead that Maca couldn't make out in the whirl of noises around her. She absently noted that she was being pushed through a wide, cool lobby. From the corner of her eye, Maca noted a reception counter, where an older woman let the phone slide from her ear while she was taking in the scene across the hall.

"We're in Madrid," Tatyana supplied, seeing her boss' lost expression. "You're back in Spain."

A insane feeling of gratefulness surged through Maca and for a moment she felt incredibly homesick even though she was closer to home than she had been in almost four years. Dizzily, she allowed herself to relax against the medical cot, mouthing a 'thank you' at Tatyana.

The last thing Maca saw before her eyes closed once more was a sign reading 'urgencias' and this time, slipping back into unconsciousness had nothing threatening, instead washing over her with a sense of peace that she hadn't known in long years.

70

"How are you feeling?" Tatyana's gentle voice rang through her still sleepy mind.

Maca turned her head towards the sound, relieved to find that the movement was already a lot easier to accomplish. Tatyana was sitting on a chair next to her bed, one leg slung across the other, a pair of heels on her feet and Maca had to smile for a moment, thinking that Tatyana had probably been properly dressed, including heels, ever since they left their clinic in the borderland.

Snaring and beeping in the background alerted her to the machines that had to be monitoring her and when she tried to move, a tug on the back of her hand made her take note of the clear drip that was placed next to the bed. She listened into her own body for a moment before she nodded slowly. "Better," she stated. Her body felt cooler, and the throbbing in her leg had quieted down. Allowing herself to relax against the thick mattress underneath her, she closed her eyes for another moment. "God, I had forgotten that beds could be this comfortable."

"With the drugs they put you on, you'd be happy lying on the floor," Tatyana pointed out with a smile, putting the yellow press magazine she had been leafing through aside.

"Perhaps," Maca conceded, slowly trailing her eyes across the room. Everything was so clean and spacious, the cool air nearly making her eyes tear. She blinked against the white light, frowning for a moment. "Tatyana… how much time has passed?"

"Since we got you here…" Tatyana paused, trying to count the hours and finally giving up. "Another day, give or take." She moved closer, lying her own hand atop Maca's. "You'll be fine. Your leg will take a while, though. And you'll have to be careful, if you don't want a permanent limp."

Maca nodded, trying to let it all sink in. She was in Spain. She would heal. Carefully, she took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. "Thanks for taking me here."

"It was a team effort," Tatyana corrected her with something close to a grin, as if she was recalling something funny that Maca wasn't privy to.

Maca blinked curiously. "What do you mean?"

"Well…" Tatyana shrugged nonchalantly. "Baptiste muscled our way into the garrison, Paula threw a fit in front of the Red Cross chief, and I put in a bit of extra heel for the pilot."

Maca grinned, broadly enough to make the cracked corners of her mouth hurt. "You're a great team."

Tatyana shook her head with a smile. "That is because you turned the place around."

That reminded Maca of something else. "What happens to the clinic now?" She asked worriedly. "Who is taking care of things?"

"I left Baptiste and Paula in charge," Tatyana said glancing at Maca a little uncertainly. "I thought that was what you would have done…"

"Yes. They're doing a good job," Maca agreed with a distracted nod. There was silence for a while and Maca stared up at the cleanly painted ceiling. "I don't think I'll go back," she finally stated, the inevitable truth of the statement only sinking in as she spoke. Casting a worried glance at Tatyana, she found that the nurse was smiling sadly.

"I know." Tatyana shook her head. "I knew it when we arranged the flight, and I think the others knew it, as well." She raised her shoulders in a little shrug as if to indicate that she didn't know what else to say. "You've done more than your share out there. You need to focus on getting well now. And these past two months…" For a moment, it seemed as if she wanted to add something and Maca knew that if it had been Paula with her right now, she wouldn't be so discreet but tell her to smarten the hell up about her private life, or else.

"We can take it from here, really," Tatyana assured her and Maca smiled.

"Thanks, Tatyana…" she murmured, sleepy once more. There had to be quite some dose in her drip, she thought, and that was the last thing meandering through her consciousness before she fell asleep again.

When she woke up, she couldn't tell how much time had passed, but the light outside was already tinged with dusk. She swallowed against her parched throat. Quiet steps sounded to her left and she turned her head. "Tatyana…"

But Tatyana was gone and instead, there was a friendly smiling medic checking on the chart at the end of her bed. "I'm Monica," she said by way of explanation. "Your friend went downstairs to the nurses' rooms to get some dinner and a shower."

When Monica straightened herself, somewhat gingerly, and walked up to the side of the bed, Maca could see that she was pregnant. "How far along are you – eight months?" she guessed, for a moment thrown by the fact of seeing a pregnant woman whose face wasn't gaunt with malnutrition and exhaustion.

"Yes," Monica replied with surprise.

"I'm a pediatrician," Maca explained with a smile. "In the Congo, that also extended to pregnancy consultations and playing midwife."

Monica stopped with her hands on the fixtures of the drip. "So… what were you doing in a military hospital the border?" she asked curiously.

"It was not a military hospital," Maca said with mild protest, wondering what Tatyana had told the doctors. "It just happened to be in a place where most patients were soldiers." She shook her head. "But to be honest, I've sewn enough legs back on to last me a lifetime."

"Still, it sounds fascinating," Monica said, keeping her eyes on Maca while she moved to fluff the bed covers. "I wish I had done something like that at some point… because now…" She gestured at her belly with a shrug.

Maca shook her head, remembering the young girl who had bled to death underneath her hands only weeks ago. "It's not all it's made out to be."

"Will you be going back?" Monica asked, moving to make another note on the chart.

Maca traced the fingers of her free hand over the structured surface of the sheets. "No, I don't think so…" Even though she had never wanted to go back to Spain that urgently, now that she was there, she didn't think she'd be able to just leave everything behind again. She didn't even know what she was coming home to now, or if there was even anything left, but she had seen enough to swallow her stubborn pride and admit that she missed her parents and her brothers. If her father still didn't want to see her, it would be his decision, not hers. And then perhaps, she could get a job somewhere, as a pediatrician again, and perhaps at some point, she would bring up the courage to look for Esther and try to talk to her.

"Do you need anything to be sent after you then?" Monica interrupted her musings. "Your things, from Africa? Tatyana said you left very abruptly…"

Maca snorted, wincing when the motion registered throughout her body. "It's not as if I owned anything," she explained at Monica's puzzled look.

"I'm sorry," Monica offered, clearly a little uncertain of what to say to that.

Maca gazed at her, noting the genuine friendliness behind the conversation, and how well she felt taken care of in this place. "You don't happen to be in need of a pediatrician around here, do you?"

The question had been a joke, but Monica canted her head to the side. "At the moment… no," she replied with a laugh. "But give it another three months and Salinas will be out on maternity leave as well…" She shrugged. "Just ask Aimé about it and hand in your papers. You never know!"

Maca looked at her for a moment, and then nodded. "Thanks, Monica. Perhaps I will." After her last try to move to Madrid, with Azucena then, had ended as a disaster, she thought she could try again. She couldn't possibly do worse. It would be as good a place as any to start working at a hospital again and to meet new people. If everyone around here was a nice as Monica, it couldn't be too bad.

If there was, in the back of her mind, the unbidden reminder that Esther's last known address had been in Madrid as well, Maca chose to ignore it. This was not about Esther, she reasoned. This was about herself.

But she knew that at some point, to lay things to rest, she would have to try and find Esther. But not today. And not tomorrow, either. Maca relaxed back against the mattress. "So… Monica… do you have a name for the baby already?"

Part 71

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