Doctor in the Andes

by Dana James

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

When Dr Kara Noreno's husband dies, she is left on her own to run the clinic they have established in the foothills of the Andes. But pressure from her late husband's family and antagonism from local trouble-makers are undermining her efforts.  Assistance arrives in the form of Dr Ross Hallam, who soon proves indispensible, both to the clinic and to Kara's lonely heart. But how can she tell him she loves him when she knows that Ross, like everyone else, will leave?

Release date: July 15, 2013

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 160

Sample

Chapter One

Kara Noreno patted the mule’s shoulder with a gloved hand. ‘Not far now, Jose,’ she murmured in Quechua, the only language the mule understood. The animal stumbled, recovered quickly, and continued to skid and slither down the steep, rocky path.

Kara loosened the reins, giving Jose his head, and snuggled deeper into her heavy woollen poncho. Beneath her wide-brimmed hat she wore a close-fitting woollen cap with earflaps. With her long hair pushed up inside it, the cap made her head itch. But the combination of fine wool and thick felt was unrivalled protection against the biting winds and sudden rainstorms of the bleak, craggy slopes of the Andean highlands.

Wisps of cloud like grey ghosts touched her face with clammy fingers before drifting down the mountainside to veil the valley, hundreds of feet below.

Kara patted the mule again, the corners of her mouth lifting in a fond, sad smile as she recalled Luis’s bemusement at her choice of name for the animal. He had bought it for her after their visit to the famous market at Otavalo, centre of northern Ecuador’s wool district. They had also bought each other ponchos with the traditional red and blue design, and thick mantas: blankets worn by the women of the local population, the pueblos Quichuas, in which they wrapped themselves to sleep.

‘Now you are accustomed to the altitude you will come with me when I go to the hamlets and villages in the highlands,’ Luis had told her. Kara had been lucky. The saroche, or altitude sickness, that affected all newcomers to the country’s capital, Quito, one of the highest cities in the world, had only made her breathless.

Luis had told her of others prostrated by nausea, or by raging toothache caused by changes in pressure to air trapped inside cavities, which put an agonising “squeeze” on dental nerves.

‘Perhaps because you are a woman as well as a doctor,’ he had explained, ‘you will win the confidence of the local communities where I cannot.’

Kara had stroked the mule’s soft muzzle. It had a Roman curve which gave the animal a lugubrious expression, reminding her of a well-known actor. ‘I think I’ll call him Jose,’ she told Luis.

‘Why do you need to give it a name?’ Luis was puzzled.

‘Well, I can’t just call him “mule”,’ Kara protested.

‘Why not?’ He raised his eyebrows, turning his hands palm-up. ‘That is what it is.’

‘Well … because –’ she began, unable to provide a rational explanation ‘– because I’m English, and –’

‘That’s the way we do things in England,’ Luis had mimicked, a gentle smile on his aristocratic face.

Jose’s ears pricked and he picked up speed, sensing he was almost home. Kara arched her aching back and settled herself more comfortably in the saddle. She was so very tired. How much longer could she go on like this? It wasn’t just the problems with the Quichuas. Though heaven knew they were difficult enough to cope with. This trouble with Luis’s family – her mind shied away. It was too much to bear. She had lost Luis, and now she faced losing the clinic they had both worked so hard to establish.

Kara shivered and raised her eyes from the narrow, broken path. The light was beginning to fade. Deepening shadow imbued the mountains with brooding menace. Suddenly she felt small and inadequate and terribly alone.

Then in the distance the setting sun tipped a snow-capped peak with gold. Transfixed by its awesome beauty, Kara recalled that Ecuador had once been part of the vast empire of the Incas. They had revered gold as tears wept by the sun, their god. For the few minutes it took for the sun to set, that distant peak became a colossal monument to a long-dead civilisation.

Jose stumbled again, jerking Kara out of her reverie. Rounding a rocky promontory she saw, far below her in the gathering dusk, the clinic. She gave a wan smile. Clinic indeed! There was precious little difference between it and the huddle of thatched, stone houses belonging to the indigenous community on the other side of the fast-flowing stream.

As she drew nearer Kara could hear the pigs grunting and squealing in their pen. The half-dozen goats and sheep bleated and the stream splashed and gurgled over rocks, worn smooth by centuries of rushing water. The tang of woodsmoke was sharp on the cold, damp air, blending with the mouth-watering aroma of roasting meat and baked potatoes.

Passing between the low walls that separated the animal pens from the vegetable plot, the mule headed towards some rough stone outbuildings. With thatched roofs and wooden doors, they were smaller versions of the local houses.

Jose ignored the first door but stopped at the second, standing patiently while Kara slid stiffly from the saddle. She opened the door and led him into the crude stable. Luis’s mule, which she rode alternately with her own and which she had privately christened “No-Name”, whickered softly and nudged her.

Kara patted his flank as she turned from unfastening girth and chin strap. Hanging the bridle on a nail and the saddle on a wooden trestle, she looked in the trough to make sure the water was clean then went next door to fetch Jose his feed of crushed maize and horse beans.

Kara’s worried frown deepened as she saw how low stores of both were getting. She would have to turn the mules out to forage for whatever pasture they could find on the rocky slopes in the hope of conserving what was left in the sacks until the new crops were ready for harvesting.

Scooping up the saddlebags that contained her medical equipment, Kara crossed the rough path to the place she called home. As she lifted the latch she could hear Almeida scolding her long-suffering husband. Kara sighed. She could have done without that tonight.

For the past three days she had been out since dawn. Each day she had taken a different path, and each day she had visited all too few of the tiny holdings which clung precariously to the barren slopes. The people who lived in those bare stone houses, with their carefully constructed terraces and postage-stamp sized fields, could stand in their doorways and see Peru.

As always they had been sullen and suspicious, but they had not threatened her. By offering home-made fudge and biscuits as a reward, she had been allowed to examine the children. She was making progress. But it was slow.

Kara pushed open the door. ‘Almeida, Vicente.’ She nodded a greeting as she pulled off her two hats and shrugged out of her poncho, hanging all three on the back of the door. ‘Vicente, give the mules an hour then turn them out will you?’

Though all three spoke Quechua, the local language common in the highlands, Kara had quickly realised that those of mixed blood, like the couple who looked after her house and animals, were not proud of that part of their heritage and preferred to use Spanish, the official language of Ecuador.

‘Si, señora,’ Vicente grunted and went on rubbing yellow grease into one of the several leather thongs laid out on the wooden table in front of him.

‘Ah, señora.’ Almeida straightened up from the oven. This was an iron box set in the hearth beside the burning fire. Her plump, swarthy face assumed an expression of tragedy. ‘The pump is not working. That stupid man of mine –’ she spoke of her husband as though he were not there ‘– he forgot to fill the tank. Now when I pump, no water comes. I need wool to exchange for apples, oranges and sugar down in the valley so the sheep must be clipped soon. But Vicente says we need new potato seed to plant this year. What we saved from last year is no good.’

‘Oh no,’ Kara groaned. ‘Can’t we offer some of this year’s crop to one of the merchants in town against new seed?’

Almeida pursed her lips and frowned. ‘Not a good idea, señora. We’d lose face. If those lazy peons –’ her mouth curled contemptuously as she referred to the villagers who worked the land belonging to the clinic for a share of the harvest ‘– see you have no money, they won’t work at all.’

‘All right,’ Kara agreed wearily. She had come to trust Almeida’s keen business sense.

‘So what do you want Vicente to do first? Also the yoghurt is too sharp –’

‘We’ve been expecting that.’ Kara sat down on a wooden chair and began to unlace her fleece-lined boots. ‘We need a fresh yoghurt culture to start a new batch. Vicente had better take the goats to Rubio in the morning. Buitron can send one of his cargadores to help Vicente carry the new seed. We’ll feed the old stuff to the animals.’ Kara sighed. ‘At least nothing is wasted. As for the pump –’ she tugged one boot off and dropped it on the rush-matted floor ‘– the foot valve must be leaking. The water is running back into the stream so there’s air in the pipe.’ She dropped the second boot and stood up, pressing her hands against the small of her back.

‘Vicente, there’s a plug in the small pipe that sticks out near the handle of the pump in the wash-house. Take the plug out and pour in a jugful of water from the stream. That will prime the pump and get it going again.’

She picked up the saddlebags and, sliding her feet into sheepskin slippers, moved towards the door into the living room. ‘By the way, did you mend the wall round the pool at the bottom of the waterfall? We can’t afford to let the animals get in there. They’d contaminate the water and I can’t possibly replace any that drown.’

‘Si, señora, it’s mended.’

Kara paused with her hand on the latch. ‘Will supper be long, Almeida?’

‘About half an hour, señora.’ Suddenly she clapped both hands to her cheeks. ‘Oh, señora, I nearly forgot –’

‘Not now, Almeida, just bring me some coffee will you? I’ve notes to write up and I must get some more letters done. If we don’t get a grant or something soon –’

‘Si, señora, but –’

‘No more problems now, Almeida,’ Kara repeated, weariness making her voice sharper than she intended. ‘Tell me after supper, when I feel a bit stronger.’

‘Señora, wait, I must –’

But Kara had opened the door and entered the living room before Almeida could finish. She closed it behind her, leaning for a moment against the wood. As she looked up, her breath caught in her throat in an audible gasp, and she froze.

The dark-haired stranger dropped the papers he was studying. These had obviously come from the battered rucksack lying open beside him on the worn leather sofa. He rose to his feet with the fluid ease of a jungle cat.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, with the flat stomach and lean hips of an athlete. Like her he wore a thick sweater over a woollen shirt and cord trousers, but his were tucked into calf-length leather boots which were scuffed and smeared with mud.

That much Kara took in before reaction to the shock of his presence in her home caused her to blurt, ‘What are you doing in my house?’ Unthinkingly, she spoke in English. Not waiting for an answer she whirled round, pulling the door open so abruptly that Almeida, who had followed her, fell into the room, almost knocking Kara over.

‘I tried to tell you this, señora. You have a guest.’

‘A visitor is not necessarily a guest,’ Kara replied pointedly in Spanish, her heart still thudding unevenly. ‘Please fetch me that coffee now.’ Kara put the saddlebags down by the bookcase.

Almeida frowned, darting a glance at the stranger, who stood unmoving, seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents that filled the small room with tension. She clearly expected Kara to amend her request for coffee to include him.

‘Now, Almeida,’ Kara repeated firmly. Muttering under her breath, Almeida shuffled out.

The room was lit by oil lamps and their gentle radiance, coupled with the flames dancing on the logs, cast shadows across the stranger’s face as Kara turned to look at him.

His dark, tousled hair partly concealed a deep forehead. His cheekbones were high, his nose slightly hooked and a muscle jumped in the hard square line of a clean-shaven jaw. His mouth was not the thin gash she somehow expected. But the well-defined and surprisingly sensual lips held an unmistakable hint of harshness.

She could not see the colour of his eyes. Set deep beneath heavy dark brows, Kara was aware only of the force directing their gaze, a mesmeric power that dried her mouth and made her unaccountably nervous.

No doubt that was his intention. But if the family thought to use him to persuade her to go, they had underestimated her, and it was going to give her a great deal of satisfaction to tell him so.

‘I don’t know why you have wasted your time and mine by coming here,’ she said in Spanish, with a calmness she was far from feeling. ‘I made it quite plain to Mr Medina that I intend to stay.’

‘Mr Medina?’ The stranger spoke for the first time, his voice deep and measured. But she was not deceived by his coolly polite manner, nor by the note of query. Did they really think that sending along a good-looking man with a pleasant voice would change her mind? Was he a messenger? Bait? Or had they decided to press a little harder?

Kara had to admit she felt oddly threatened by his steady gaze, and the aura of male strength, almost an animal magnetism, that emanated from him.

‘Is this your idea of a game?’ she demanded, anger overcoming her defensiveness. ‘You know perfectly well that Mr Medina is one of the solicitors dealing with my husband’s family’s business affairs.’ Kara was unconsciously twisting the fine gold band on her wedding finger as she spoke.

The stranger’s eyes followed the movement, making her aware of what she was doing. She immediately dropped her hands to her side, pulled her sweater down, then pushed one hand into the pocket of her green cords, while with the other she swept several tendrils of corn-coloured hair off her face. Her fingers strayed diffidently to the rough knot at the back of her head from which they had escaped.

‘You are alone here?’

The question, uttered in the same deep, distant tone brought Kara’s head up sharply, the colour draining from her face. ‘Are you trying to frighten me?’ Her chin tilted. ‘Do you imagine that will drive me away? Do you think that making me an outcast will get rid of me? You cannot know how wrong you are. The indigenous people of this area have been outcasts in their own country for 400 years. They have survived, and so will I.’

Anger warmed Kara’s cheeks as she glared defiantly at the stranger towering over her. ‘My husband is dead.’ She spaced each word carefully, deliberately. It did not hurt to say it anymore. She was numb. And tired. Terribly tired. But she would not give up, no matter what they tried.

‘He is dead and I intend to carry on the work he began here.’ Calm determination replaced the anger in her voice. ‘I am a doctor, just as my husband was. The people in the highland hamlets desperately need medical help. You can tell whichever of the family sent you that if they don’t comply with Luis’s will and release the money so that I can carry on, I will get it from elsewhere. The World Health Organisation, the Public Health Department, the United States Aid Program …’ Kara racked her brain for the names of other agencies to whom she had written. ‘The United Nations, Catholic Missions – there are lots of places I can get funds. So you had better understand, and make it clear to them, the clinic will not close.’

The door opened making Kara jump. Almeida shuffled in carrying a tray with two mugs of black coffee on it.

Kara turned, glad to look away from the implacable face of the stranger. Apart from asking two questions he had not spoken. Why was he so silent? His quietness unnerved her despite her bravado. The coffee would help calm the fluttering in her stomach. She had to appear strong and in control of the situation.

‘No sugar. . .