Alegria scooted off to fetch the antacid while Damien approached his cantankerous patient.
“I hear you won’t take the medicine my nurse wanted to give you.”
“It’s no good,” Señor Segura said. “Won’t cure what’s wrong with me.”
“But a rice and barley drink will?”
“That’s what my Guadalupe always gives me when I don’t feel so well.”
“Well, Guadalupe is visiting her sister now, which means we’re the ones who are going to have to make you feel better.” Damien bent down and prodded the man’s belly, then had a listen to his belly sounds through a stethoscope. He checked the chart for the vital signs Alegria had already recorded, then took a look down Señor Segura’s throat. Nothing struck him as serious so he signaled Alegria to bring the antacid over to the bedside. “OK, you’re sick. But it’s only because you ate too much. My nurse is going to give you a couple of tablets to chew that will make you feel better.”
“The tablets are no good. I want resbaladera like my Guadalupe makes.”
Damien refused to let this man try his patience, which was going to happen very quickly if he didn’t get this situation resolved. It was a simple matter, though. Two antacid tablets would work wonders, if he could convince Señor Segura to give in. “I don’t have resbaladera here, and we’re not going to make it specifically for you.” They had neither the means nor the money to make special accommodations for one patient.
“Then I’ll stay sick until I get better, or die!”
“You’re not going to die from a stomachache,” Damien reassured him.
“And I’m not going to die because I wouldn’t take your pills.”
So there it was. The standoff. It happened sometimes, when the village folk here insisted on sticking to their traditional ways. He didn’t particularly like giving in, when he knew that what he was trying to prescribe would help. But in cases like Señor Segura’s, where the cure didn’t much matter one way or another, he found it easier to concede the battle and save his arguments for something more important.
“Well, if you’re refusing the tablets, that’s up to you. But just keep in mind that your stomachache could last through the night.”
“Then let it,” Señor Segura said belligerently. Then he looked over at Alegria. “And you can save those pills for somebody else.”
Alegria looked to Damien for instruction. “Put them back,” Damien told her.
“Yes, Doctor,” she said, frowning at Señor Segura. “As you wish.”
What he wished was that he had more space, better equipment, more trained staff and up-to-date medicines. In reality, though, he had a wood-frame, ten-bed hospital that afforded no luxuries whatsoever and a one-room, no-frills clinic just off the entrance to the ward. It was an austere setup, and he had to do the best with it that he could. But the facility’s lack was turning into his lack of proper service, as he didn’t have much to offer anyone. Basic needs were about all he could meet. Of course, it was his choice to trade in a lucrative general surgery practice in Seattle for all of this. So he wasn’t complaining. More like, he was wishing.
One day, he thought to himself as he took a quick look at the only other patient currently admitted to the hospital. She was a young girl with a broken leg whose parents couldn’t look after her properly and still tend to their other nine children. So he’d set her leg, then admitted her, and wasn’t exactly sure what to do with her other than let her occupy space until someone more critical needed the bed.
“She’s fine,” Alegria told him before he took his place at the bedside. “I checked her an hour ago and she’s sound asleep.”
Damien nodded and smiled. The only thing that would turn this worthless evening into something worthwhile would be to shut himself in his clinic and take a nap on the exam table. Sure, it was the lazy way out, since his real bed was only a few steps away. But his exam room was closer, and he was suddenly bone-tired. And his exam table came with a certain appeal he couldn’t, at this moment, deny. So Damien veered off to the clinic, shut the door behind him and was almost asleep before he stretched out on the exam room table.
* * *
“Like I’ve been telling you for the past several weeks, I don’t want a position in administration here at your hospital. I don’t want to be your sidekick. I don’t want to be put through the daily grind of budgets and salaries and supply orders!”
Juliette Allen took a seat across the massive mahogany desk from her father, Alexander, and leaned forward. “And, most of all, I don’t want to be involved in anything that smacks of nepotism.” Standing up to her dad was something she should have done years ago, but first her schooling, then her work had overtaken her, thrown her into a rut. Made her complacent. Then one day she woke up in the same bedroom she’d spent thirty-three years waking up in, had breakfast at the same table she’d always had breakfast at, and walked out the front door she’d always walked out of. Suddenly, she’d felt stifled. Felt the habits of her life closing in around her, choking her. And that’s what her life had turned into—one big habit.
“This isn’t nepotism, Juliette,” Alexander said patiently. “It’s about me promoting the most qualified person to the position.”
“But I didn’t apply for the position!” She was too young to be a director of medical operations in a large hospital. The person filling that spot needed years more experience than she had and she knew that. What she also knew was that this was her father’s way of keeping her under his thumb. “And I think it’s presumptuous of you to submit an application on my behalf.”
“You’re qualified, Juliette. And you have a very promising future.”
“I direct the family care clinic, another position you arranged for me.”
“And your clinic is one of the best operated in this hospital.” Dr. Alexander Allen was a large man, formidable in his appearance, very sharp, very direct. “This is a good opportunity for you, and I don’t understand why you’re resisting me.”
“Because I haven’t paid my dues, because I don’t have enough experience to direct the medical workings of an entire hospital.” The problem was, she’d always given in to her father. Juliette’s mother had died giving birth to her, and he’d never remarried, so it had always been just the two of them, which made it easy for him to control her with guilt over causing her mother’s death. Plus she was also consumed by the guilt of knowing that if she left him he wouldn’t fare so well on his own. For all his intelligence and power in the medical world, her father was insecure in his private world. Juliette’s mother had done everything for him, then it fell to Juliette to do the same.
Juliette adored her dad, despite the position he’d put her in. He’d been a very good father to her, always making sure she had everything she wanted and needed. More than she wanted and needed, actually. And she’d become accustomed to that opulent lifestyle, loved everything about it, which was why this was so difficult now. She was tied to the man in a way most thirty-three-year-old women were not tied to their fathers. Which was why her dad found it so easy to make his demands then sit back and watch her comply. “I just can’t do this, Dad,” she said, finally sitting back in her chair. “And I hope you can respect my position.”
“You’re seriously
