of her mobile clinic workers, nodded towards the simple clay-brick house to his left, where an eerily still figure was curled in a fetal position on the porch. Another body lay a few yards away on the ground. “They’ve been dead for a few days. Whatever it was, it hit fast. They didn’t even try to make it to a hospital.”
“They were probably too sick. Besides, the nearest hospital is twenty miles away.”
Piauí, one of the poorest of the Brazilian states, was more vulnerable to catastrophic infections than the wealthier regions, and many of these outlying townships relied on bicycles or their own two feet for transportation. It was hard enough to make a twenty-mile trek even when one was young and healthy, which these poor souls had not been. And cars were a luxury most couldn’t afford.
She wouldn’t know for sure what had caused the deaths until she examined the bodies and gathered some specimens. The nearest diagnostic hospital was a good hundred miles from here. In any case, she’d have to report the possibility of an epidemic to the proper authorities.
Which meant she’d have to deal with Ben.
Pedro shook his head. “Dengue, you think?”
“Not this time. There’s some blood on the front of the man’s shirt, but nothing else that I can see from this distance.” She stared at the crude corral where several pigs squealed out a protest at the lack of food. “I’m thinking lepto.”
Pedro frowned. “Leptospirosis? Rainy season’s already over.”
The area around the house consisted of a few desiccated twigs and hard-packed clay, confirming her colleague’s words. The sweltering heat sucked any remaining moisture from the air and squeezed around her, making her nausea that much worse. Situated close to the equator, the temperature of this part of Brazil rarely dipped below the hundred-degree mark during the dry season. The deadly heat would only grow worse, until the rains finally returned.
“They have pigs.” She used her forearm to push sticky tendrils of hair from her forehead.
“I saw that, but lepto doesn’t normally cause hemorrhaging.”
“It did in Bahia.”
Pedro’s brows went up. “You think it’s the pulmonary version?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Do you want to take samples? Or head for one of the other houses?”
Reaching into the back pocket of her jeans, she eased out her cellphone and glanced hopefully at the display. No bars. What worked in São Paulo obviously didn’t work here. “Is your phone working?”
“Nope.”
She sighed, trying to figure out what to do. “The tissue samples will have to wait until we come back, I don’t want to risk contaminating any live patients. And maybe we’ll come within range of a cellphone tower once we hit higher ground.”
Benjamin Almeida pressed his eye to the lens of the microscope and twisted the fine focus until the image sharpened, making the pink stain clearly visible. Gram negative bacteria. Removing the slide, he ran it through the digital microscope and recorded the results.
“Um, Ben?” His assistant’s hesitant voice came from the doorway.
He held up a finger as he waited for the computer to signal it had sent his report to the attending physician at the tropical disease institute of Piauí. The man’s office was fifteen steps away in the main hospital building, but Ben couldn’t take the time to walk over there right now. Dragging the latex gloves from his hands and flicking them into the garbage can to his right, he reached for the hand sanitizer and squirted a generous amount onto his palm.
“Yep, what is it?” He glanced up, his twelve-hour shift beginning to catch up with him. There were two more slides he needed to process before he could call it a day.
“Someone’s here to see you.” Mandy shifted out of the doorway, the apology in her cultured Portuguese tones unmistakable.
“If it’s Dr. Mendosa, tell him I just emailed the report. It’s a bacterial infection, not a parasite.”
A woman appeared next to Mandy, and Ben couldn’t stop his quick intake of breath. Shock wheeled through him, and he forced himself to remain seated on his stool, thankful his legs weren’t in charge of supporting his weight at that moment.
Inky-dark hair, pulled back in its usual clip, exposed high cheekbones and a long slender neck. Green eyes—right now filled with worry—met his without hesitation, her chin tilting slightly higher as they stared at each other.
What the hell was she doing here?
The newcomer adjusted the strap of a blue insulated bag on her shoulder and took a small step closer. “Ben, I need your help.”
His jaw tensed. Those were almost the exact words she’d used four years ago. Right before she’d walked out of his life. He gave a quick swallow, hoping his voice wouldn’t betray his thoughts. “With what?”
“Something’s happening in São João dos Rios.” She patted the bag at her side, words tumbling out at breakneck speed. “I brought samples I need you to analyze. The sooner the better, because I have to know why people are suddenly—”
“Slow down. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She bit her lip, and he watched her try to collect her thoughts. “There’s an outbreak in São João dos Rios. Six people are dead so far. The military police are already on their way to lock down the town.” She held her hand out. “I wouldn’t have come if this wasn’t important. Really important.”
That much he knew was true. The last time he’d seen her, she had been heading out the door of their house, never to return.
He shouldn’t be surprised she was still roving the country, stamping out infectious fires wherever she went. Nothing had been able to stop her. Not him. Not the thought of a home and family. Not the life she’d carried inside her.
Against his better judgement, he yanked on a fresh pair of gloves. “Do I need a respirator?”
“I don’t think so. We used surgical masks to collect the samples.”
He nodded, pulling one on and handing another to her, grateful that its presence would hide those soft pink lips he’d never tired of kissing. Ben’s attention swiveled back to her eyes, and he cursed the fact that the vivid green still had the power to make his pulse pound in his chest even after all this time.
He cleared his throat. “Symptoms?”
“The commonality seems to be pulmonary hemorrhage, maybe from some type of pneumonia.” She passed him the bag. “The bodies have already been cremated, unfortunately.”
“Without autopsies?” Something in his stomach twisted in warning.
“The military let me collect a few samples before they carted the bodies away, and the government took another set to do its own studies. I have to document that I’ve destroyed everything once you’re done.” She lowered her voice. “There’s a guard in your reception area whose job it is to make sure
