voice on the other end of the line. It was Dr. Dominguez, the family physician in Mendoza.
“Where have you been?” Static on the line made the doctor’s voice sound unnaturally faint.
Lucio reached for the light switch on the wall. “I’ve been in meetings.”
“I’ve been calling you, leaving messages—” the connection broke up, and then the doctor’s voice came through again, “danger’s past—” and faded out only to fade in again, “an immediate return.”
Danger? Where was the danger?
It was a terrible connection. Lucio couldn’t make out more than a couple words the doctor was saying. He closed the hotel door and headed across the room to see if he couldn’t get better reception there. “Stephen, I missed most of what you just said. Can you repeat that, please?”
Dr. Dominguez replied but again it was static once more and Lucio drew back the drapes at the window to let in the light. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” Lucio fought to hang on to his temper. “Tell me again. What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Anabella.”
“What’s happened to Anabella?” Dread seeped through his gut as he pushed open the glass door to the balcony.
But he didn’t get an answer. The line went dead.
What the hell? What had happened to Anabella? Lucio swore, gripped his phone and started to punch in Dominguez’s number but his phone rang, interrupting him.
In that brief twenty-some seconds of silence his mind had spun a dozen different tragic scenarios.
“What’s wrong with Anabella?” Lucio demanded the moment he answered the phone.
The doctor didn’t waste time. “We think now it’s encephalitis.”
“Encephalitis,” Lucio repeated, wondering if he’d misheard the doctor. The connection still wasn’t the best. What the hell was encephalitis?
“It’s a viral infection. It’s very rare, almost never heard of in Argentina, which is why we had difficulty with diagnosing the illness. Your wife has been pretty sick, but we think she’s out of the woods now—”
“Out of the woods? How sick was she?”
The doctor hesitated, and then cleared his throat. “Encephalitis can be fatal.”
“How sick was she?” Lucio repeated with quiet menace.
The doctor didn’t reply. Lucio closed his eyes, shook his head, his heart and mind dark.
No one had told him. No one had called him. And it hit him all over again, how he’d always been the outsider. He might have married Anabella, but her family didn’t accept him. They’d barely tolerated him and once they knew Ana wanted out of the marriage they did everything in their power to expedite the divorce itself.
No wonder he and Anabella hadn’t lasted. They were up against too much. Up against virtually everything.
The doctor cleared his throat again. “As I said, it’s not an easy disease to diagnose. It starts out like the flu and quickly progresses. We had to do a lumbar puncture test. A CT brain scan. An MRI scan—”
“Goddamn,” Lucio swore, interrupting. A lumbar puncture test? CT scan? MRI scan? They ran all those tests on Anabella without ever calling him…telling him? “When were you going to tell me that my wife might die? After she’s already in a coma? When it’s time to make the funeral arrangements?”
“She’s out of the coma.”
Lucio’s hand felt nerveless. She’d been in a coma?
“I induced the coma.” The doctor’s voice was calm, reasonable, sounding as if inducing comas were child’s play. “But she came out of it fine, and the coma did exactly what we hoped. The inflammation is gone. We eventually expect a full recovery.”
“You induced a coma.” Lucio felt a wave of emotion. They’d put her in a coma; placed her in a deep sleep she might never have emerged from and no one—not one person—had given him the chance to say goodbye.
How dare they? How dare the doctors and her family exclude him?
His emotion was nothing short of rage, and hate and a gnawing helplessness. He didn’t like being helpless. He didn’t accept helpless. Helpless was for those too afraid to act.
He wasn’t afraid to act.
But he wasn’t free to act.
“Inducing a coma was the best way to limit the seizures. The seizures could have pushed her over the edge.”
Lucio closed his eyes, unable to even bear the vision of Anabella so close to death. She’d been the most important person in his life. He’d loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone and to think he’d almost lost her. Permanently. “But you’ve saved her.”
“Yes.” There was relief in the doctor’s voice. “We have. She’s awake, fairly alert.”
“So why are you calling?” Lucio couldn’t hide his bitterness, or the depth of his pain. Once an outsider, always an outsider. To Ana’s family he’d always be the gaucho. The peasant. The Indian native. “Am I to send flowers? Pick up the hospital tab? What’s my job now?”
“Help her regain her memory.”
Lucio tensed. It took him a moment to process this. “You said she’s recovered.”
“Recovering,” the doctor corrected. “Her body is stronger, but her mind—” he hesitated, picking his words with care, “—her consciousness is altered, has been altered for quite a while—”
“How long?”
“Three weeks.”
Jesus! Lucio rubbed at his temple, his head pounding. He needed sleep. He needed to feel like himself again. “She’s been seriously ill for three weeks?”
“Four, actually. Ever since her return from China. But the first week everyone thought it was just the flu. There were headaches, vomiting, the usual.”
And then seizures, altered consciousness, coma and loss of memory. Lucio grimly clamped his teeth together to keep from saying something he’d regret.
“She is better now,” the doctor reassured. “But she’s confused. I think…we all think…she needs you.”
She needed him?
Lucio nearly laughed out loud. The good doctor didn’t know what he was saying. Anabella most certainly did not need him. She’d made that perfectly clear over and over in the past year.
Lucio reached up to pull the black leather tie from his hair. His heavy black hair fell to his shoulders and with a weary hand he rubbed his temple and his scalp. He was tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally.
He couldn’t continue like
