Child of Her Dreams

Like death warmed over, Ben judged grimly, and felt a spark of compassion. As ill as she looked, her beauty shone through, ghostlike and fragile, and something about her face compelled his attention. The farseeing expression in her tilted blue eyes seemed to hint at some profound knowledge. Life, the universe and everything, to quote a favorite author from his med-school days.

Losing interest, Eddie went to sprawl on the couch. “What else can you tell me about the place?” he asked, sipping his beer.

Ben tossed the paper aside, dismissing his ruminations as fanciful. A woman like that probably didn’t have two ideas to rub together, let alone any magic answers.

“Let’s see…” He sat on a wooden chair and tilted back at a precarious angle, sipping his beer. “Quezaltenango is the nearest big town—most Anglos around here refer to it as Quez. There are quite a few ex-pats scattered over this general area, a French doctor a couple of villages away, some nurses, teachers, agricultural aid workers, missionaries. You won’t lack companionship.”

“Hey, you don’t need to sell it to me. If you like it so much, how come you’re leaving?” Eddie asked.

“For one thing, International Médicos stipulates a maximum two-year contract, which you should know having just signed on. For another thing…”

Ben pushed to his feet and stood before the window. “I had a thing going with this British nurse, Penny. She was only here for a year. We both knew from the beginning it wasn’t going to last.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Ben shrugged and faced Eddie. “I’m tired of moving around, tired of temporary liaisons. I’m thirty-five. I’m ready to settle down.”

“Will you go back to Texas?”

“No, I’ve arranged a temporary job through a guy I went to med school with. He’s at Seattle City Hospital now and knows a GP in a small town north of there who’s looking for someone to take over his practice while he goes on sabbatical. Hainesville. Ever heard of it?”

Eddie thought for a moment then shook his head. “It’s probably just a dot on the map.”

Ben laughed. “As opposed to this bustling metropolis. The first thing I’m going to do when I get back is buy myself a hamburger with everything on it and a great big chocolate milk shake.” He turned to the window, filled with yearning for the good ol’ U.S. of A. “I don’t know why, but I have a feeling Hainesville will suit me just fine.”

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you, happy birthday to you…”

Geena basked in the glow of the candlelit faces around Gran’s kitchen table as her sisters and their families helped her celebrate her twenty-ninth birthday. There were Kelly and Max and their four daughters, and Erin and Nick with Erin’s baby son and Nick’s teenage daughter. And of course Gran, looking smaller than Geena remembered, in her full gray wig and oversize blue plastic glasses but fighting fit despite her seventy-six years.

A month had passed since Geena’s collapse. She’d spent a week in the Milan hospital, followed by two weeks in a Swiss convalescent home, then a week in New York to pack her things and sublet her apartment. Finally, she was home, and it felt good.

Geena made a wish and blew out the candles. Everyone cheered. Kelly gave Geena an impromptu hug, her shiny brown hair swinging around her shoulders. “It’s good to have you with us, Gee, especially for your birthday.”

“What did you wish for, Auntie Geena?” asked Beth, Kelly’s eight-year-old daughter.

“Can’t tell, or it won’t come true,” Geena said, smiling as she cut the cake and passed it around. Gran opened the curtains, and afternoon sun poured in. Erin tucked her long blond hair behind her ears and attempted to dish out ice cream one handed while holding the baby.

“Let me take Erik,” Geena said, and reached for her nephew. She cuddled the baby in the crook of her arm and stroked the back of her finger down one soft cheek. “Hello, gorgeous.”

Magazine publishers paid thousands for Geena’s smile, but to her, Erik’s toothless grin was priceless. His innocent blue eyes, so trusting and sweet, stirred her maternal instincts. Would her wish—and her mother’s prediction—come true?

“Do you want chocolate or vanilla ice cream with your cake, Geena?” Erin asked, holding the scoop poised above the tubs of Sara Lee.

“Nothing for me, thanks.” She’d already pigged out on green salad and half a grilled chicken breast.

“What? Not even cake?”

“I’m going back to modeling once I’ve recovered completely. I can’t afford to gain weight.”

“But, Geena,” three-year-old Tammy said. “You’re skinnier than a Halloween skeleton.”

Kelly, who’d taken over serving the cake, frowned across the table at Tammy. “Shh, honey, that’s not polite.”

“It’s okay, Kel. She only wanted to make me feel better. Didn’t you, sweetie?” she said, stroking the girl’s long blond hair.

Geena saw her sisters exchange glances, and an awkward silence fell over the group. What the heck was bugging everyone?

Nick swallowed the last of his cake and pushed back from the table. “Hey, Max, want to go shoot a few hoops?”

“Sure thing.” Max, Kelly’s husband, set aside his empty plate. “It’s been a while since I whupped your ass.”

“Take your cake outside to the picnic table, girls,” Kelly said, shooing her brood through the back door.

Miranda, Erin’s stepdaughter, hovered in the doorway. At thirteen she often got lumped with the other kids when she wanted to be one of the women. She had auburn hair and a tiny stud in her nose.

“Come and sit down,” Geena said, patting the chair next to her.

Miranda, who was into clothes and adored her supermodel aunt, threw her a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

Erin set Erik in his car carrier seat and found a rattle to amuse him. Gran took up her knitting from the sideboard, and Kelly, never one to sit still for long, started to clear away dishes.

“Relax, Kelly,” Geena said. “I’ll do that later.”

“I don’t mind,” Kelly said, stacking plates in the dishwasher while the water ran in the sink for the pots from their barbecue lunch. Geena, realizing that Kelly wouldn’t sit down, got up to help.

“Have you seen the doctor yet, Geena?” Erin asked, spooning up the last blob of chocolate ice cream from her plate.

Geena searched the drawers for a tea towel. “No, I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Cameron tomorrow.”

“Dr. Cameron’s in Australia till Christmas,” Miranda informed her dolefully.

“Dr. Cameron’s son, Oliver, is a good friend of Miranda’s,” Erin explained to Geena. “She misses him.”

“Just don’t get too serious, too soon,” Kelly warned Miranda over her shoulder as she vigorously scrubbed the potato pot. “Or before you know it, you’ll have kids and you’ll wonder where your girlhood went.”

“We’re just friends,” Miranda protested. “Anyway, you and Uncle Max were childhood sweethearts.”

“Exactly.” Kelly rinsed the pot and handed it to Geena. “I hear the new doctor is quite a hunk. Indiana Jones with a stethoscope.”

Miranda snorted disparagingly. “Dr. Matthews is way better looking than Harrison Ford.”

“I’ve spent enough time around doctors lately, thanks very much,” Geena said. “Not that I’m not grateful to them for saving my life.”

“What actually happened to you in Italy, Gee?” Erin asked. “You’ve hardly told us anything. It was a heart attack, right?”

Geena wiped the pot dry, marveling that she could take pleasure in mundane chores. “My heart stopped. Apparently I was clinically dead for two minutes.” Laughing, she rapped her skull with her knuckles. “No brain damage—at least, not that I can tell.”

Kelly shivered. “It must have been awful.”

“Not entirely,” Geena said slowly, looking from Kelly to Erin to Gran. She hadn’t told them about her near-death experience. She wasn’t sure what their reactions would be. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. The experience had changed her in ways so subtle she hadn’t yet fully grasped their significance. Every morning she woke up with a great gladness to be alive. And sometimes she stopped in the middle of whatever she was doing and looked, really looked, at what was around her. As if the world was brand-new. Or she was.

But something in her voice had captured the others’ attention, and now all eyes were on her. Geena took a deep breath. She might as well tell them. “I had a near-death experience. I went to the other side and came back.”

“What!” Erin and Kelly exclaimed together.

At the abrupt sound, Erik awoke with a jerk, one hand flung quivering in the air. Miranda’s eyes went round. Gran’s eyebrows rose above the wide plastic frames of her glasses, and the click of needles fell silent as she paused, yarn looped around her index finger.

Erin picked up her baby. “Don’t cry, honey,” she cooed, then turned to Geena. “Do you mean, as in flying through a tunnel toward a bright light?”

“Yes! It was so amazing I can hardly describe it.” Words tumbled from her lips at the relief of finally sharing her experience. “I didn’t know what was happening at first, not until I saw my body lying below me. There was darkness and I was moving through a tunnel toward a light. Everything—past, present and future—was there in the tunnel. All around me was a noise, a kind of icy sizzle, like moonbeams hitting water, if you know what I mean.”

Their blank stares told her they didn’t. Geena frowned, frustrated at the effort of describing something that couldn’t be described in words. “The light was brighter than any sun,” she went on. “As I got closer to the light I experienced an intense feeling of peace and love, joy and rapture and gladness and…” Her arms were uplifted when she ran out of breath. “Bliss. Pure bliss.”

“Were you…on anything at the time?” Erin asked carefully.

Geena dropped her arms. “What do you mean?”

“Were you taking any…medication?”

“I’d been on diet pills,” Geena admitted. “I use sleeping pills occasionally. And sometimes pills to wake me up.”

“Pills to make you feel good?”

Geena crossed her arms over her chest. “No. I didn’t have this experience because I was drugged.”

Gran tugged some yarn loose from the ball on the floor, and her cat, Chloe, a blur of blue-gray fur, leaped from behind a chair to attack it. “I read an article once about a woman who had a near-death experience during heart surgery,” Gran said. “Sounded pretty similar.”

“Thank you, Gran.” Geena relaxed her fists.

“Geena, honey, we love you. We didn’t mean to imply anything,” Erin said. Kelly nodded in silent agreement.

But Geena could see they were still skeptical.

“Anyway, I’m off all those pills. I quit smoking, too. The doctors made me go cold turkey in the hospital.” She sighed as she looked at herself. “I’ve been gaining weight ever since.”

“It’s good you quit smoking.” Erin paused. “But as far as your size goes, Tammy was right, you’ve lost weight. You weren’t even this thin two months ago at my wedding.”

Geena did not want to get sidetracked into discussing her weight. She adored her sisters, but they didn’t understand the pressures a model was under. Besides, she still had the most important part of her story to tell.

“I saw Mom,” she said, almost defiantly. “She said to give her love to all of you.”

“Geena, when you say you saw Mom, you mean as in a dream, right?” Erin said. Erik stirred in her arms, and she reached under her blouse to unhook her nursing bra.

Geena watched her sister adjust Erik at her breast, and her heart clenched with longing. She wanted to tell them about the baby Mom promised she would have, but then Erin and Kelly would think she was completely nuts. Sometimes when she thought of the baby, even she wondered if she hadn’t imagined the whole experience.

“It was as real as being here with you today. She told me it wasn’t my time and that I had to go back. Well, she didn’t actually speak. It was more like telepathic communication.”

“Telepathic,” Kelly repeated skeptically.

“She also said Dad wasn’t drunk the night they died,” Geena said, ignoring her. “They swerved to avoid a dog.”

“That’s the first we’ve heard of a dog,” Erin said. “It’s plausible, but impossible to prove.”

Geena blinked. “Do I have to prove this happened?”

“Of course not. But you’ve got to admit, it’s a bit far-fetched. You’ve been under a lot of pressure. It would be natural for your mind to play tricks on you,” Erin said. “Maybe you should talk to the doctor, see what he says.”

“I might just do that.” A doctor was bound to have patients who had experienced near death and lived to tell about it. A doctor would reassure her she wasn’t imagining things.

“How long are you staying?” Erin asked, raising Erik to her shoulder to pat his back. “I hope you’re not going to flit off too quickly. We miss you.”

“I’ll be around for a few months. I told my agent not to accept any new jobs until I’ve fully recovered.” The truth was, she felt a little confused about her future direction, but the fashion industry was all she knew.

Kelly drained the sink and dried her hands on a towel as she glanced at the kitchen shelf clock Erin had left behind for Gran when she’d married Nick. “Gosh, look at the time. I’d better get my kids home. Geena, come over for dinner real soon. My lasagna will put some meat back on your bones.”

Geena hugged her sister, knowing she meant well. “Thanks, Kel.”

Erin carefully lifted her drowsy baby against her shoulder and gave Geena a one-armed hug. “I’d better go, too. Erik always sleeps better in his own crib. Take care of yourself, Gee. We’ve been so worried about you. We want you to get completely well.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

Geena walked them to the door and waited until Erin and Kelly had rounded up their families, bundled all the children into their respective cars and driven away. After they left, she sat on the painted wooden steps of Gran’s big old Victorian home, the home she and her sisters had grown up in after their parents had died.

Scents of late summer wafted on a warm breeze—roses; mown grass; a whiff of salt from the river telling her the tide was in. The heavy crimson head of a poppy drooped through the railing, and she stroked a silken petal with her fingertip, lost in admiration of its beauty.

Hearing a sound behind her, she glanced over her shoulder to see Gran coming through the open door.

Gran lowered herself to the top step, her knees creaking a little in her track pants. “Tell me more about your mom. Did she seem happy?”

Thank God for Gran. “She’s happy. So is Dad. Mom sent a message from Gramps that he’ll wait for you forever.”

Behind her glasses, Gran’s pale-blue eyes misted.

CHAPTER TWO

BEN GLANCED AROUND the Hainesville Medical Clinic with satisfaction. With two examining rooms, a small lab, office, reception area and waiting room, the clinic was positively luxurious compared with what he’d been used to in Guatemala.

The only glitch was that he hadn’t been in his new job a week before the nurse-receptionist who had worked for Dr. Cameron had been called to the sickbed of her elderly mother in Florida. Ben contacted an employment agency and was promised a temporary replacement in a couple of days.

Meantime, he took the loss in his stride; he’d coped with far more calamitous events in Guatemala. However, his patients were less sanguine than he about mixed-up appointments and general administrative confusion. Nor were they content to sit and wait for hours on a first-come, first-serve basis like his stoical villagers.

“You can’t run this clinic the way you ran that place in Central America,” a pinched-faced woman with tight gray curls told him after he’d inadvertently double booked her with the mayor. The mayor, Mr. Gribble, had won on the basis of having to attend an important meeting with the bank manager. Strangely enough, when Ben glanced out the window afterward, he’d seen Mr. Gribble heading for the river, with a fishing rod propped in the back of his Cadillac.

“Why not, Mrs. Vogler?” He began to scan the long medical history in her file to bring himself up to speed on her background.

“It’s Miss Vogler. We’re not a bunch of Mayan Indians, you know.”

More’s the pity.

“Dr. Cameron never did things this way. And where’s your white coat?” Greta Vogler added with an accusing glance at his Guatemalan shirtsleeves and clean khaki pants. “If it wasn’t for that stethoscope around your neck, no one would know you were a doctor.”

“Unless they happened to notice the diplomas hanging on the wall,” Ben said pleasantly, still reading. He came to an entry and paused. “It says here you had a hysterectomy in nineteen-seventy-six.” He gazed at her, mentally calculating. She would have been in her midtwenties at the time. “Could this date be a mistake?”

“There’s no mistake,” she said frostily, looking away. “But what that has to do with the migraines I came to see you about, I don’t know.”

“My apologies,” he murmured, and decided to skip the rest of the history. “Tell me about the headaches,” he said, and went on to deal with that.

That was yesterday. Today, he’d hit upon the idea of stacking patients’ files in the order in which they had phoned in for an appointment. When he got a call, he located the appropriate file from the filing cabinet and placed it at the bottom of the growing stack. He gave people a rough estimate of when they would see him, knowing no one ever expected to get in to see the doctor exactly on time. Simple yet effective.

Midmorning, Ben strode to the reception desk and leaned across it to pick off the top file so he could call in his next patient. But his eyes were on his watch instead of what he was doing, and he misjudged the distance. The entire stack of manila folders went slithering to the floor while the waiting patients watched in dismay.

Ben muttered a mild Mayan imprecation and crouched to pick up the files. A moment later a young woman with chin-length auburn hair left her seat to help him.

“You need an assistant,” she said, stacking manila folders randomly in the crook of her arm.

“I know I do. I registered with an employment agency, but so far they haven’t found anyone suitable.”

“Then maybe you should look for someone unsuitable.”

The smile in her voice made him glance up, into deep blue eyes that tilted, almond shaped, at the corners. Too slender for his taste, she was nevertheless undeniably attractive.

She was also vaguely familiar. “Have we met?”

She held his gaze with a bemused expression. “I would have remembered if I’d met you.”

“I never forget a face,” he persisted. “I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere.”

She shrugged, glanced at the files in her arm and rearranged them. Then she placed her files atop his. Ben rose and held his hand out to help her to her feet. Her height surprised him. She had to be five-ten in her stockings, and the heels she wore put them on eye level.

He looked around the room, reading the name off the top file. “Geena Hanson?”

“That would be me,” said the blue-eyed woman, smiling, and she sauntered gracefully ahead of him to the examining room.

“Used to getting our own way, are we?” he said as he shut the door. Her clothes, her perfume, her very demeanor, shrieked wealth and sophistication. For some reason he thought of Penny, his British nurse, caring for peasants in jeans and T-shirt.

Geena Hanson took a chair and crossed one very long leg over the other. “I was next.”

“I see.” He opened her file and began to read the contents. “So, what seems to be the trouble?”

“Nothing, as far as I’m concerned.”

Ben ignored her blasé answer and perused her recent medical history. His frown deepened as he read about her collapse in Italy and the two minutes during which her heart had stopped. A memory of newspaper headlines clicked in his brain. “You’re that supermodel. What are you doing in Hainesville?”

“This is my hometown. I’m recuperating. Is that a Texas accent?” she inquired.

“I’m from a small town outside Austin.” Ben went on reading, shaking his head at the recorded cocktail of pills she’d been taking and at her weight. His first impression was confirmed; she was unhealthily thin. And in denial about her problems.

Hands steepled over her file, he eyed her appraisingly. “If there’s nothing wrong, why are you here?”

She inspected her perfectly manicured nails. “My sisters and my grandmother insisted I get a follow-up examination.”

“Are you still taking these tablets?”

“No. I quit smoking, too.”

“Sleeping okay?”

“Could be better. But without five a.m. starts and late nights I’m getting by.”

“Any significant events following your collapse?” he asked, jotting notes with his fountain pen.

She didn’t answer right away, and he glanced up to see an odd light in her eyes. She leaned forward, clutching her Gucci handbag. “What exactly do you mean?”

Instinct told him something important was in the air, but he had no idea what. “Palpitations, dizziness, chest pain…”

“Oh.” She leaned back, seemingly disappointed. “I get a little dizzy sometimes first thing in the morning.”

Ben waited, giving her a chance to elaborate. When she didn’t add anything, he asked, “The dizziness—do you get it before breakfast or after?”

“I don’t eat breakfast.”

All the advantages of money and position and not a lick of sense. He sent her a stern cold look. “It’s time you started. You’re significantly underweight.” He rose and came around his desk. “Hop onto the examining table.”

He checked her blood pressure, pulse and reflexes. He peered into her ears, shone a light in her eyes and felt the glands below her jaw. As his examination progressed he became increasingly aware of her as a woman, something that was not supposed to happen. But his senses could no more exclude the elusive scent of expensive perfume and the porcelain texture of her skin than they could miss the beat of her pulse beneath his fingertips.

Perspiration dampened his armpits as he slipped his stethoscope beneath the scoop neck of her silk dress. What should have been routine had become mildly erotic. She went very still, as if she was aware of him, too.

“Your, uh, heart rate’s a little fast.” This was crazy; she was not his kind of woman.

“White-coat syndrome?” she suggested with a whimsical lift of her eyebrows. She’d brushed them upward, and their lushness emphasized the deep lapis blue of her eyes and the delicate bridge of her long straight nose.

“I’m ordering some follow-up blood work,” he said briskly, retreating to his desk to uncap his fountain pen and fill out the correct form. “I understand the hospital down the road in Simcoe handles that. While you’re there, you should make an appointment with the nutritionist.”

“Okay.”

He glanced up sharply. Her agreement was too casual, too ready to be true. He bet she had no intention of following a nutritionist’s regime, even supposing she kept the appointment. “I’m serious, Ms. Hanson,” he said, writing her referral. “Your job isn’t conducive to a healthy lifestyle, as amply shown by your collapse. From what I’ve heard, models play hard—”

“And work hard,” she protested.

He tried to keep the skepticism out of his expression. “The point is, you need to take care of yourself.”

“Doctor…” She hesitated before going on. “Have you ever had a patient who’s died and come back? Someone who had a near-death experience?”

“No, I haven’t.” He tore the referral note from the pad, folded it and put it in an envelope. “But I know that near-death experiences are hallucinations brought on by a lack of oxygen to the brain when the heart stops pumping blood.”

“You know that, do you?” she said, her face troubled.

“It’s the accepted medical explanation. Why? Do you think you had a near-death experience?”

“Yes, and it was no hallucination,” she said earnestly. “When I was in the hospital in Milan someone brought in an English newspaper. In it was an article about a Dutch study that monitored the vital signs of patients who reported near-death experiences. One man even described the doctors removing his dentures before putting a tube down his throat to revive him. All this while he had no pulse and no detectable brain activity. What do you think of that?”