Child of Her Dreams. Joan Kilby

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СКАЧАТЬ crack Geena glimpsed a rambling flower garden crisscrossed with swaths of lush green grass. In the fragrant center, a fountain burbled.

      “Mom, take me with you. Don’t leave me!” Geena sobbed, as desperate as a three-year-old watching a coffin being lowered into the ground. “Mommy!”

      Her mother returned to wrap her once more in her warm embrace. The light surrounded them both. Love, ineffable and infinite, poured through Geena as she clung to her mother.

      “Geena, sweetheart, be brave. We will be together again someday, but for now you must go back.” Sonja’s voice was gentle, but again firm. “A child needs you. You’re going to be a mother.”

      For the first time since Geena had arrived in this place, she felt utter disbelief. “I can’t have a baby. I haven’t had a period in over a year.”

      “Goodbye, darling,” Sonja said, slowly backing away. “Tell Gran that Gramps misses her. But he doesn’t mind the wait. He has all the time in the universe.” With that, she went through the door and disappeared around a cluster of flowering shrubs.

      Geena found herself moving through the tunnel at dizzying speed, away from the light. The light faded to a pinprick. Once again, everything went black.

      CHAPTER ONE

      IN A SMALL VILLAGE in the western highlands of Guatemala, Dr. Ben Matthews listened to the agitated outpouring of a Mayan Indian woman who clutched her ailing baby boy to her breast. Ben understood only a few words of her native language, but the source of her worry was unmistakable. “I’ll have a look at him.”

      He rolled up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt, gently took the child from the mother’s arms and laid him on the examining table. The baby’s hot, dry skin, sunken eyes and dry mouth all pointed to severe dehydration. Using a combination of sign language, formal Spanish and a smattering of the local dialect, Ben questioned the mother. She confirmed his suspicions; the child had vomiting and diarrhea.

      “Dysentery,” Ben explained. “He needs fluids.”

      The mother nodded mutely, then watched anxiously as Ben prepared an electrolytic solution and hooked up an IV to let it drip into the baby. The poor tyke was too sick to cry at the needle or to laugh when Ben tickled him under the chin. Ben’s heart clenched. Two years of treating people ravaged by disease, malnutrition and poverty had not inured him to the heartbreak of a high infant mortality rate. This little boy had a chance, at least.

      Ben gave the mother several packets of electrolytic solution. “Mix with boiled water,” he said, miming what she was meant to do with them. “Baby drink.”

      She nodded again, then wrapped her baby and placed him in a colorful woven sling across her back. With a grateful smile that needed no words to be understood, she took her leave. From the doorway Ben watched her bare feet squelch through mud till she got to the hard-packed dirt road on a journey of perhaps many miles to her village.

      Turning, he glanced at his watch, and his spirits lifted when he saw that the bus from Guatemala City would arrive soon. Eddie, his younger brother, had just finished his internship and at Ben’s urging was going to replace him here at the clinic funded by International Médicos.

      Ben strolled through the narrow streets lined with two-story adobe houses to meet the bus, greeting villagers with a smile and a wave, sometimes pausing to ask after a sick relative. Underlying his eagerness to return to the United States was a sense of loss at the prospect of leaving the town and its people behind.

      The gray clouds building overhead distracted him from the excitement of seeing Eddie. July was smack in the middle of the rainy season, and this year had been unusually wet. Ben’s main concern was the mosquitoes the river bred and the diseases they carried—malaria and dengue fever. But there were other dangers. The river was already high and threatening to flood its banks.

      The bus arrived in a festive blare of marimba music spilling through open windows and lurched to a halt outside the cantina. Passengers spilled out. Ben searched the assemblage—Mayan Indians, Ladinos, backpacking travelers—and the odd goat—for his brother.

      Eddie stepped off at last, dazed, his arms wrapped around a duffel bag and a backpack slung over his shoulders. His blond hair was mussed and his clothes wrinkled, as though he’d slept in them, which Ben knew he probably had.

      “Eddie, over here,” Ben called, striding toward him.

      Eddie saw him and dropped his duffel bag in the dirt so that Ben could embrace him in a fierce hug.

      “Great to see you, buddy,” Ben said, leaving one arm draped over his brother’s shoulder. “How was the trip?”

      “Interesting.” Eddie pulled a downy chicken feather from his hair. He looked at it, then at Ben, and grinned. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

      “Believe it, bro.” He ruffled his brother’s hair. “Better cut that mop or you’ll find worse than chicken feathers in there.”

      “Oh, yeah?” Eddie punched him in the ribs. “What’s with the face rug? Wait’ll Mom sees that.”

      Ben stroked his carefully clipped mustache-and-goatee combo, smiling through his fingers. “I kind of like it. Gives me a certain polish, don’t you think?”

      He picked up the duffel bag and started walking to the clinic, weaving through rusted-out cars, bicycles, mule-drawn carts and pedestrians. “How are Mom and Dad? Did you get to Austin to see them before you left?”

      “Yep. They send their love. They’re looking forward to having you Stateside again, but aren’t too happy with you for dragging me down to this mountain wilderness.”

      Ben gazed around him, at the Spanish colonial architecture, the Mayans in their colorful native dress, the pine-covered Sierra Madre. “I’ll never forget my stint here. It’s been a fantastic experience that I wanted to share with you.”

      “I’m not complaining,” Eddie said. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

      “Dr. Ben! Dr. Ben!” A ragged group of five or six children ran alongside the two men as they moved through the crowd.

      “Hey, kids.” Ben broke his stride and gestured to his brother. “Dr. Eddie,” he said, then added a few words in the local dialect.

      “Dr. Eddie!” The children crowded around him, touching his hand or his sleeve. Then they laughed wildly and ran away down the street, scrawny dogs chasing at their heels.

      “What did you tell them?” Eddie asked with a wary grin.

      “That you were my brother.”

      “That’s obviously a recommendation. I hope I can live up to your reputation.”

      Ben eyed him with affection. He almost wished he hadn’t urged Eddie to come here; he’d missed him, and now their separation would be prolonged further. “I’ve gotten attached to these people, especially the kids, but I feel better knowing they’ll be in good hands.”

      “Thanks.” Eddie looked beyond the rooftops into the distance, at the cone-shaped mountain rising above the plain. “That a volcano?”

      Ben nodded. “Volcán СКАЧАТЬ