two nuns from Catholic Charities, who’d run a mission in the capital and had been like sand in Vasquez’s oyster, had washed up onto the beach below the Presidential Palace.
The drive to the jungle village where their clinic was located would take an hour; something neither woman enjoyed doing at night, yet one did not turn down an invitation from El Presidente. Not unless you wanted a visit by the La Guardia de Seguridad, the most feared organization in the country.
Everyone knew that the guard not only ran the death squads; they were responsible for thousands of citizens being dragged from their homes. Mostly in the middle of the night. Some of the missing later showed up as mutilated bodies; most simply vanished, never to be seen again.
Not having to worry about bad press—the government owned the newspapers and television stations—the president’s goons were experts at torture.
“How do you do it?” she asked. “Year after year. How can you stand seeing such misery?”
“I’ve honestly no idea.”
Although they’d left the bright lights of the city behind, Kirby could hear the shrug in the other woman’s voice. It had begun to rain, the fog surrounding them adding an intimacy inside the car that encouraged the type of personal conversation they normally didn’t have time to share.
“There are times I ask myself the same thing,” Rachel admitted, “but the answer is always the same . . . that it’s what I was born to do.”
“I can’t decide whether I’m envious or feel sorry for you.”
“Ah.” Rachel turned toward her, hazel eyes warm in the soft glow from the dashboard lights. “You sound as if you’re suffering compassion fatigue. I think I should write you a prescription for a vacation.”
“Yeah. Like I’m going to go off surfing while you stay here and handle a measles epidemic. So, how did you end up working for WMR in the first place?”
“It’s a long story,” Rachel said after they’d gone about three miles.
“It’s a long drive.”
“True.”
Another silence settled over them. The only sounds were the drumming of the rain on the roof, the swish, swish, swish of the windshield wipers, and the hissing of the wet pavement beneath the tires.
“I know this sounds very cliché, but it was more a feeling of duty. That because since I’d been born, well, not exactly rich, but very comfortably off, I was brought up to believe I should give something back.
“Since I was already an ER doctor, when things started building up for Desert Shield, enlisting to serve my country seemed a natural thing to do.”
“I can understand that.”
Kirby might have needed the Army to help pay her way through medical school, but she’d learned traveling the world how fortunate she’d been to have been born in a middle-class suburban San Diego home to a school-teacher father and librarian mother. Rather than in Iraq. Or the Sudan. Or the tragically beautiful Monteleón.
“Unfortunately, my husband—”
“You’re married?”
Rachel never really talked about her personal life, but not mentioning a husband out there somewhere was really holding her cards close to her chest.
“Was. Past tense. In another lifetime.
“We met in medical school. His plan was that I’d go into a plastic surgery practice with him.”
“Plastic surgery does a lot of good.”
In fact, WMR had a program that recruited surgeons to repair cleft palates and do skin grafts on bombing burn victims all over the world.
“True. But he’s definitely more into nips, tucks, and boobs, which personally didn’t interest me. I’d considered joining the regular military, but worried that a long-term deployment would put more of a strain on our marriage, so I opted for the Guard.”
“And got deployed, anyway.”
“Yes. But it wasn’t as dangerous as it is these days. First of all, we were safe in Saudi Arabia, and my rotation was only supposed to be ninety days.”
“But you got hit with a
The drive to the jungle village where their clinic was located would take an hour; something neither woman enjoyed doing at night, yet one did not turn down an invitation from El Presidente. Not unless you wanted a visit by the La Guardia de Seguridad, the most feared organization in the country.
Everyone knew that the guard not only ran the death squads; they were responsible for thousands of citizens being dragged from their homes. Mostly in the middle of the night. Some of the missing later showed up as mutilated bodies; most simply vanished, never to be seen again.
Not having to worry about bad press—the government owned the newspapers and television stations—the president’s goons were experts at torture.
“How do you do it?” she asked. “Year after year. How can you stand seeing such misery?”
“I’ve honestly no idea.”
Although they’d left the bright lights of the city behind, Kirby could hear the shrug in the other woman’s voice. It had begun to rain, the fog surrounding them adding an intimacy inside the car that encouraged the type of personal conversation they normally didn’t have time to share.
“There are times I ask myself the same thing,” Rachel admitted, “but the answer is always the same . . . that it’s what I was born to do.”
“I can’t decide whether I’m envious or feel sorry for you.”
“Ah.” Rachel turned toward her, hazel eyes warm in the soft glow from the dashboard lights. “You sound as if you’re suffering compassion fatigue. I think I should write you a prescription for a vacation.”
“Yeah. Like I’m going to go off surfing while you stay here and handle a measles epidemic. So, how did you end up working for WMR in the first place?”
“It’s a long story,” Rachel said after they’d gone about three miles.
“It’s a long drive.”
“True.”
Another silence settled over them. The only sounds were the drumming of the rain on the roof, the swish, swish, swish of the windshield wipers, and the hissing of the wet pavement beneath the tires.
“I know this sounds very cliché, but it was more a feeling of duty. That because since I’d been born, well, not exactly rich, but very comfortably off, I was brought up to believe I should give something back.
“Since I was already an ER doctor, when things started building up for Desert Shield, enlisting to serve my country seemed a natural thing to do.”
“I can understand that.”
Kirby might have needed the Army to help pay her way through medical school, but she’d learned traveling the world how fortunate she’d been to have been born in a middle-class suburban San Diego home to a school-teacher father and librarian mother. Rather than in Iraq. Or the Sudan. Or the tragically beautiful Monteleón.
“Unfortunately, my husband—”
“You’re married?”
Rachel never really talked about her personal life, but not mentioning a husband out there somewhere was really holding her cards close to her chest.
“Was. Past tense. In another lifetime.
“We met in medical school. His plan was that I’d go into a plastic surgery practice with him.”
“Plastic surgery does a lot of good.”
In fact, WMR had a program that recruited surgeons to repair cleft palates and do skin grafts on bombing burn victims all over the world.
“True. But he’s definitely more into nips, tucks, and boobs, which personally didn’t interest me. I’d considered joining the regular military, but worried that a long-term deployment would put more of a strain on our marriage, so I opted for the Guard.”
“And got deployed, anyway.”
“Yes. But it wasn’t as dangerous as it is these days. First of all, we were safe in Saudi Arabia, and my rotation was only supposed to be ninety days.”
“But you got hit with a
Similar Books
