Revealing the Real Dr. Robinson (7 page)

“In the two years I’ve been here, I’ve made sure as many people as were willing were vaccinated. So I’m not expecting an outbreak. Maybe some isolated cases, but nothing we can’t deal with.” He looked point blank at her. “Have you been vaccinated?” he asked.

Her reply, “It left a tiny pinprick scar. Want to see where?”

He didn’t answer, of course. Instead, he handed her the chart. “She’s yours. If you have any questions about what to do, ask.”

“And I’ll bet you’re off to do a midnight run of yellow fever vaccinations. Right?”

“Am I that transparent?”

“Of course you are,” she quipped, then headed off to the medicine room to see what kinds of antibiotics they had in large supply, just in case. The thing was, Ben wasn’t really transparent in any sense of the word. In fact, if ever she’d known anyone who’d be difficult to see through, it would be him. He held tight to every little nuance of himself, didn’t let anything go without a fight.

The reason she’d known he’d go back to the village to administer vaccinations was because that was the little piece of him he’d let her see. He was a humanitarian, so human-centered that the needs of the village came first. “And tomorrow you’ll sleep,” she murmured.

Ben was someone to admire in a world where people like him usually went unnoticed. In Ben’s case, unnoticed by choice. Another of his off-limits subjects, she guessed as she started counting the various vials and pill bottles of penicillin.

“So, why am I here?” she mused as she shifted her count to the doxycycline. “To be like Ben.” The thing was, she wasn’t seeing Ben in the same light she had when she’d come here. And that was where it got complicated, because what Ben displayed on the outside and who he was on the inside weren’t anywhere close to being the same.

And the more she watched him the more she wondered if she might not be patterning herself after the wrong perception of Ben Robinson. Because the man coming into view wasn’t the person she wanted to be but one she might want to...have. Yes, that was definitely complicated.

* * *

“Which is why you need to go south and stay there with Jack for a little while,” Ben argued with Amanda.

“I’ve been vaccinated, and I’m not going to catch anything.”

“And I found three more mild cases of yellow fever last night.” He pointed to her rounded belly. “Do I have to remind you...?”

“That I’m pregnant? No, Ben. You don’t. And I’m being cautious.”

“Not cautious enough. And Jack agrees with me on this. You shouldn’t be here until we know if these are just isolated cases or a full-blown outbreak. And he does miss you. So does your son.”

“If I leave, you’ll be short-handed,” she argued

He glanced at Shanna, hoping for some support. In these arguments with his sister he never won. Never had. Probably never would. And she was correct in that she wasn’t at risk of catching yellow fever. Still, there were always the oddball cases. “Just go. Make me feel better. For once, let me win an argument.”

“And I can cover for you,” Shanna volunteered. They were sitting in the cramped lounge. Ben was all rigid on the wooden chair in the corner, Amanda was sitting on the two-seat sofa, with her feet up, and Shanna was sitting cross-legged on top of the table, a pseudo-meditative position, not that she was meditating there, more that it was the only place to sit comfortably with the other spots occupied. And she was tired to the bone. Run ragged these past twenty-four hours. Hoping for an adrenalin push to get her through the next several.

“Starting now. Which means...” She swept her hands in a shooing motion. “Go. Get out of here. We’re fine.”

“That’s not the point,” Amanda said, looking first at Shanna then at Ben. “My brother overreacts.”

“And my brothers overachieve,” Shanna countered. “They’re not going to change. Doubt Ben will, either.”

“So you’re taking his side?”

“No sides to take. You’ve got a lovely husband and son out there who’d probably be overjoyed to have you spring an unexpected trip on them. Take it from someone whose ex-husband wasn’t so lovely—join them. Enjoy what you’ve got. Let Ben quit worrying about you.”

“You have an ex-husband?” Ben asked, totally flummoxed by her casual announcement. Somehow he’d never pictured her married. Or involved. Or anything. Stupid of him, really. Why wouldn’t she have an ex-husband/or a current one, for that matter? Even an involvement. Shanna was sensational. Could have her pick of men. “Would he be off limits?”

Shanna shook her head. “Not off limits. Just not worthy of wasting good breath on. He happened at a time when I wanted a pat on the head from my family. As it turned out, he wanted my family’s name. Daddy shoved him in my direction, not sure what came after that, but two months later we were married. I like to think of it as a marriage of inconvenience, because nothing worked out with it, except he got himself into my family, even took the family name. The only good thing that came of it was the divorce.”

“He actually took your name?” Ben asked.

“In a hyphenated version. Dr. William Henry Morrison
hyphen
Brooks. I wanted to add the initials BD after that, for Big Deal, because that’s what he thought he was. But he didn’t think that was funny.”

It was, though. And Ben laughed out loud at the mental image he was forming of Dr. William Henry Morrison
hyphen
Brooks, Big Deal. “So
you
divorced him, not the other way around?”

“I divorced him, and I would have done it twice if I could have. Although, as a parting gift, I let him keep my name, and my family let him keep his position at Brooks. In deference to my ex, he’s a good doctor, brilliant neurosurgeon, and he’s turned himself into the third son my father never had. No bitter feelings, though. William got what he wanted and I got my freedom back before we did anything like that.” She pointed to Amanda’s belly. “Speaking of which, do you need helping packing your bag, Amanda?”

“You’re not the most subtle person I’ve ever met,” Amanda replied, pushing herself up off the two-seat couch. “And while I appreciate the offer, I’m not going to take much with me. Just enough clothes for a few days. Oh, and, Ben...” she turned a pointed stare on her brother “...since you’re forcing this on me, I’m going to raid supplies so I can take some things down to the orphanage. If there’s anything you don’t want me taking, let me know.”

“I already have a couple of boxes packed for Richard out on the porch, ready to go.” He glanced at Shanna to explain. “An orphanage we help support. Richard Hathaway operates on meager supplies—more meager than we do—and we try to help him out where we can.”

“When you don’t have enough yourself?” Shanna asked.

“That’s why I named the hospital Caridad—charity. We do what we can when we’re able. Not everybody’s fortunate but everybody’s deserving.”

“What you’re deserving of, Ben,” she said, uncrossing her legs and scooting herself to the edge of the table, “is some sleep. We’ve got two other doctors up and working right now and we can handle anything that comes in. So don’t argue with me, okay? You look tired. Go take a nap, and I’ll come and get you if we need you. Maybe fix you some of that yerba maté tea after you get up, even though I didn’t lose the bet.”

“You know me. Yerba maté is hard to resist.” So was Shanna. And as much as he hated admitting it, he
was
feeling tired, more so than usual. Maybe a nice, cool shower then a couple hours’ sleep would do him some good. “Okay, I’m going. No argument,” he said, also standing. On his way out the door he gave his sister a squeeze on the arm. “Tell Jack to tie you up, if that’s what it takes.”

“I love you, too,” Amanda replied, laughing. She turned to Shanna. “And you get to tie him up, if that’s what you have to do.”

“I heard that,” Ben shouted from down the hall.

“I meant you to,” Amanda shouted back.

“My brothers and I were never like that,” Shanna said.

“You mean close?”

“Close, friendly. My whole family’s demeanor is...I guess the best way to describe it is that we keep ourselves emotionally separated. I mean, there’s love, don’t get me wrong, but we don’t show it. Don’t acknowledge it. Most of the time we just have our own agendas.”

“Even when you were children?”

“Especially when we were children. Because we were in training then.”

“Training for what?”

“To be who we were supposed to be—a Brooks,” Shanna said with a wistful smile. “You’re lucky to have a brother like Ben. Lucky to be so close.”

“I know,” Amanda said as she exited the room.

* * *

A cool shower and a nap—not quite as good as Tuscany, but he’d take it. At thirty-six, he wasn’t exactly old but the muscles were tightening up on him a little more often these days. The body wearing down a little faster. Oh, he could still keep up the pace. Keeping it with a nap thrown in made it easier, though. Especially on days like today where he just felt beat.

With a weary sigh Ben stripped himself bare in his room then trudged to the bath, taking care not to look in the floor-length mirror as he passed it by. Why torture himself? Truth was, he’d thought about having it removed and keeping only the shaving mirror in the bathroom. That would have been another cop-out, though, and in a life filled with too many cop-outs with bad results already, this one just didn’t measure up.

So he simply plodded on by, headed straight to the shower and stepped in, hoping the cold spray would chill some sense into him. Because, damn, he had Shanna on his mind. Couldn’t get her out of it. Couldn’t quit thinking about her married, or not married, or sitting across the table from him all bundled up until only her eyes were showing.

She’d hit him hard, which was why he turned on the water full spray and let its moderately cool pelting sting his skin. He didn’t need to be thinking about her, not in the way he was trying to avoid. Even now, in not thinking about her, he was thinking about her so intently he felt the ache start in his groin. Then the throb. Before it went further, he punched the water faucets off, grabbed a towel and slammed the shower door back so hard it broke off its hinges. Not that it mattered, because they were his hinges, weren’t they? So he could break them any damn way he wanted.

Although to break them because he was thinking of Shanna—that wasn’t acceptable. Nothing about the crazy way he felt when he was near her was acceptable. So, after a hasty hit with the razor to his stubble, and a comb through his hair, he threw on a pair of cotton boxers and a T-shirt and tumbled into bed, face first, already worrying that he wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the next couple of hours.

Too often he didn’t sleep even when he had the time off, like he did right now, because his head was filled with so many things—the hospital, his mother, who was fading away to old-age illnesses, his sister, a long life of emptiness ahead of him. Mind-sucks was what he called them. A litany of stresses meant to keep him awake.

Right now, though, it wasn’t a mind-suck that wouldn’t let him close his eyes. It was Shanna. And the instant she popped into his mind, that ache in his groin wasn’t far behind. “Damn,” he muttered, turning over and staring up at the ceiling, starting to count the revolutions of the overhead fan.

He was somewhere near a thousand revolutions when the ache subsided.

He was closer to two thousand when he finally dozed off.

* * *

Yerba maté tea. Herbal, grassy taste. Chock full of caffeine. And to her tongue peculiarly bitter. But Ben liked it. Lived on it, as she hardly ever saw him without a mug of it in his hand. It did smell lovely steeping, but sometimes the senses were deceptive. Her senses about Ben? Not deceptive as much as confused.

What she wanted to see in him was definitely there, but the whole picture was different. What she’d thought was a healthy wall of dispassion wasn’t dispassion at all. He drove himself harder to take care of his patients than anyone she’d ever known. Like spending an entire night knocking on doors to look for people who needed vaccinations. Or pacing the hospital’s halls hour upon hour, simply looking in on patients, attending to the little things like drinks of water and cool compresses.

Last night, or more precisely the small hours of the morning, she’d peeked into the children’s ward only to find him sitting in a rocking chair, rocking a toddler to sleep, needing sleep himself as much as the restless toddler did. There was no dispassion in that. Yet the message he flashed clearly when anybody looked was,
Keep away.

“So, who are you, Ben?” she asked as she placed the teapot on a tray and headed out the kitchen door with it.

A minute later, standing outside Ben’s door, she was trying to figure out the answer to her question and waiting for him to respond to her first knock. Neither thing happened, so she shoved the question aside and knocked again, only to be met with no response. “Ben,” she finally called through the door. “Your yerba maté tea awaits. Open up.”

Again, nothing. Her third attempt came with a twist of the knob, and she found the door unlocked. Shoving it open a crack, she didn’t enter, but called, “Ben, it’s time to wake up and smell the tea. You in there?”

Only silence greeted her. A good hip shove to the door opened it, and she stepped inside. Saw him stretched out in bed. Long, muscular. The sight of him nearly took her breath away, he was so gorgeous, just lying there in sleeping innocence. She couldn’t help staring for a moment. Admiring the physical aspect of him. Definitely a man who brought some kind of response to the surface, and it was a whole lot more than tingles and goose bumps. Clearing her throat, trying to avert her thoughts as well as her eyes, she began, “I brought you some—”

But Ben finished her sentence and ended her mood when he lurched up in the bed, and bellowed, “What the hell are you doing in here? Get out, Shanna!”

His voice and demeanor startled her so badly she stepped backward, tripped and dropped her tea on the floor, breaking the teapot and cup and splashing the yerba maté all over the wall and floor in the entryway. In her scurry to sidestep the mess, she didn’t see Ben jump from the bed and practically sprint across the room. But she heard the bathroom door slam, and the only thing she could think was that he must have been sleeping so soundly she’d startled him out of a dream.