To Play With Fire. Tina Beckett

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      CHAPTER THREE

      “DO THEY HAVE to shave all my hair off?”

      Teresa Allen’s big blue eyes looked up at her with a pleading expression. The seven-year-old had come in to have her ventriculoperitoneal shunt checked. She’d been having headaches for the last couple of days, and Marcos wanted her in his office right away to make sure the device was draining off the excess cerebrospinal fluid the way it should.

      It wasn’t. And now Maggie’s task was to keep their young American patient and her mother calm while Marcos prepared for the emergency surgery. Once Teresa was anesthetized, however, she’d be able to scrub up and join the surgical team.

      Maggie smiled. “No, they won’t shave all your hair, only this little spot right here.” She drew a U-shaped figure with her fingertip behind the little girl’s right ear. “You can comb the rest of your hair so that it covers it once you’re out of surgery. But it’ll all grow back before you know it.”

      Her mom, seated beside her daughter, smiled. “Thank you for speaking to us in English. I really need to learn Portuguese, but there are so many ex-pats here I haven’t needed to. Your English is excellent, by the way. Congratulations.”

      Maggie grinned back. “That’s because I’m an American, too. And believe me, once I open my mouth, no one would mistake me for a Brazilian, even when I’m speaking Portuguese.”

      It felt so good to speak her own language. It was also the reason Marcos had left her here with the mother and daughter. And although she knew she deserved to be in that operating room every bit as much as he did, she didn’t resent being here. She could remember the times her own mother had held her hand when she’d gone to the doctor to have her inoculations...or when she’d been sick. It was important to feel safe.

      And Maggie could remember, down to the minute, when she’d no longer felt that way. It had taken her a long, long time to recover. Even now she wondered if she was functioning one hundred percent normally.

      Her ex-boyfriend certainly hadn’t given her much reassurance on that front.

      But Marcos hadn’t seemed to sense anything weird during their brief interlude. Then again, she hadn’t been paying attention to much outside of how he was making her feel.

      One of the nurses came into the room with a pair of hair clippers. “Are we ready?”

      “I think so.” Maggie stroked Teresa’s head. “What do you think? Are you ready for those headaches to go away?”

      Teresa nodded. “I’m really scared, though.”

      Meeting her mother’s eyes, she could see it was taking every ounce of willpower for the woman not to burst into tears in front of her daughter.

      Maggie smiled. “I’m going to be with you the whole time. I promise.”

      “Even during the operation?”

      She nodded. “Even then.”

      Her mom’s chin wobbled even more as she mouthed, “Thank you.”

      Forty-five minutes later, Maggie stood beside Marcos as he carefully examined the shunt valve he’d removed from Teresa’s head. “The problem’s in here. We’ll need to replace it with a new one.” Setting the device aside, his fingers followed the path of the tubing down the child’s neck and chest, feeling it through her skin. “Everything else seems okay, and she’s got plenty of room left for growth. So let’s get in and get out.”

      Maggie busied herself with retrieving the replacement valve and carrying it over to the table.

      Marcos took a step back. “Why don’t you connect it?”

      Surprised, she glanced at him for a second, before moving closer. Taking hold of the lower section of the catheter tubing, she carefully worked it into the connecting port, and then did the same with the upper end. She checked the seals. Hooking it up took less than ten minutes, but it felt good to be doing actual surgery, instead of feeling like a useless hanger-on.

      She also realized that she hadn’t needed to translate Marcos’s words in her head when he’d spoken but had automatically processed and understood them. She gave him a huge smile, only realizing a second later that her mask kept him from seeing it. But evidently he’d seen something in her eyes because he said, “Good job.”

      It had taken almost seven months, but maybe she was finally getting the hang of this crazy language.