She flushed again, readjusting her yellow headscarf. ‘By who, your mother? How is she?’
Gabriel laughed softly. ‘She’s well.’
Ana looked away for a moment, suddenly not sure what to say all over again. ‘It must have been different in Bariloche,’ he continued into the awkward silence that had just descended. ‘Wasn’t it cold in the foothills of the Andes?’
‘Sometimes, but I loved my work, and that’s where I spent most of my time. It was a pretty small clinic, not unlike the one I’m opening.’
Gabriel eyes narrowed indecipherably as he studied her, and he sat back in his seat. ‘But you took yourself somewhere different; you embraced the challenge. I’m proud of you, Ana.’
Ana bit her lip, wishing the stupid butterflies would calm down—this was Gabriel, her friend! ‘You helped give me the courage, remember? You cheered me on.’
‘Maybe so, but you still would have done it without me. You always just did everything you set your mind to. You’ve seen so much more than I ever will. You’ve travelled...’
‘You can still travel,’ she told him, noticing the flecks of gold around his pupils that she’d always thought made his eyes look like marigolds shimmering in deep, dark pools. For so long, she’d been living life on her own—away from family and old friends—so it was kind of hard to fathom how anyone wouldn’t want that experience, even if it wasn’t for long. A few years, or even months away, doing things by oneself, and for oneself, could do wonders for the self-esteem.
‘I can’t go far, can I? I have my family, Javi and his dog...’
‘Oh, I know!’ She nodded, realising how naive and idealistic she must sound. Fathers of five-year-old kids didn’t just uproot themselves and go work on the other side of the country.
‘How is Javi liking school?’ she asked now. ‘I assume you share custody with Ines?’
In that moment, something seemed to shift between them. Gabriel pressed his palms together.
‘Things are a little different now, yes,’ he said quietly. The tension was rising by the second. He hunched his shoulders suddenly, gripping his coffee cup so hard it looked about ready to break. Surely he wasn’t still upset about the separation with Ines? Ana knew they’d tried hard to make it work for the sake of the baby, but the baby had been the result of a quick fling over five years ago!
Ana was just about to ask what was wrong when someone called his name. They turned to see a heavily pregnant medic hurrying over to them as best she could, scraping back chairs to fit herself and her belly through, muttering apologies to people as she moved.
‘There you are.’ Ana studied her name badge: Dr Isabella Lopez. Isabella blew a long, shiny black curl from her face as she stopped in front of them, squinting her dark eyes a moment. Gabriel shot up and helped her into a chair, and she pressed two hands to her belly. ‘Sorry guys; hi.’ She huffed, introducing herself quickly to Ana. ‘I’m glad I caught you, Gabe, I have a huge favour to ask you.’
Gabriel nodded in understanding as Isabella explained how she wasn’t feeling very well, how her pregnancy was doing a number on her sleep patterns and that she didn’t think she could handle the medical post at Carnival tonight. She was expecting triplets!
‘I’m so sorry to ask at such short notice,’ she said now, her tired brown eyes pleading. Isabella pressed a hand over his and rubbed another over her sweating forehead in a way that made Ana wonder what on earth it must feel like, having a tiny human inhabiting you, let alone three of them throwing your internal systems all out of whack. She had parts that didn’t work as they should herself, namely her legs, but being pregnant must be something else entirely.
‘No need to apologise, Bella. Of course I’ll cover for you; you go home and rest,’ Gabriel said kindly. Ana realised she was staring at him over the table now, and that her heart was melting at his kindness. And Isabella was looking between them with some interest.
‘My parents are taking Javi tonight anyway; they’ll probably take his dog too, seeing as they adore him,’ Gabriel added, glancing at Ana, as if knowing full well she’d ask, what dog? ‘Actually, they might leave the dog behind. Carnival is no place for canines. He’s a rescue dog called Savio, a terrier mix—super-smart. He lives with Ines and Pedro but we’re teaching him tricks when he visits. Pedro—that’s Ines’s new husband—picked him up from a farm. Savio killed a chicken, so they were about to put him to sleep for it, but the poor thing was starving. They hadn’t fed him in a week, can you believe that?’
Ana’s mouth had fallen open, but not just because of the chicken-killing dog and his troubled life on the farm. Ines had remarried; when on earth had that happened? Usually she got all the gossip from her mother. Maybe she should have returned more of Mama’s calls.
OK, so there was a lot she didn’t know about Gabriel’s life these days, she mused despondently. Before she had even thought about what the heck she was doing, she turned to Isabella.
‘I can help him this evening.’ She smiled broadly. ‘If that’s OK?’
‘Really?’ Gabriel looked surprised and the fluttering started back up in Ana’s stomach lining. ‘You have so much to do before the clinic’s opening; you should take tonight to relax!’
Isabella reached out and took Ana’s hand in her own slightly clammy one, squeezing it gently before letting go. ‘You’re opening a clinic?’
Ana answered all of the sweet Isabella’s questions, feeling Gabriel’s eyes on her face the whole time. She wasn’t quite sure, as later she made her way back out to her car, whether it was the clinic’s impending opening that kept the butterflies soaring around her internal pathways or the thought of having Gabriel back in her world after all this time.
CHAPTER TWO
THE CROWDS THRONGED and bulged in the boulevards beyond their makeshift medical tent, and the music threatened to deafen Ana as she welcomed in a teenage boy.
‘I think I sprained my wrist.’ He winced at them as Gabriel pulled out a chair, his name tag swinging from his uniform top. The boy’s face was ghostly white against his neon-yellow headdress as Gabriel ushered him into the chair and dropped to his haunches in front of him.
Meanwhile, someone else stuck in their head. Ana kindly asked the woman, who looked to be in her late thirties, to take another seat, reminding her to bend down first, so her peacock hat with all its turquoise feathers wouldn’t break against the canvas ceiling. ‘I’ll be with you soon,’ she said, noting her grazed knees. Maybe she’d fallen off her stilts.
‘It’s getting crazier by the minute,’ Gabriel whispered as he hurried past Ana’s wheelchair for more gauze. In the three hours since they’d set up in the medical tent, they’d already tended to three cases of fainting, thanks to the suffocating crowds; one food poisoning, thanks to endless empanadas and other fried snacks that had been left out in the sun all day; and even an elderly lady in her eighties who’d tripped on some steps in her high heels.
Still, Ana thought, glancing at Gabriel with the teenage boy, she probably wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else. If she hadn’t been working here, she’d have been hiding out at home, prepping for the clinic’s opening on Monday, as if she wasn’t ready by now—the last time she’d been in, it had been to tend to her snake plant, for goodness’ sake. Although, it was lucky she had, otherwise what would have happened to poor Mr Acosta?
She wouldn’t have been reunited with Gabriel, and she wouldn’t be here now, checking out his cute butt in his uniform trousers every chance she got. It wasn’t as if the carnival got her pumped as it did most people in Buenos Aires, even though she’d missed a few while working away from big cities. Her wheelchair wasn’t best suited for squeezing through crowds.
‘Remember that time you got stuck out there on Pinamar beach?’ Gabriel said later when they finally found themselves with a moment to themselves. They were standing in the doorway to the tent, watching a kaleidoscope of colourful crimson tailored suits shimmy past, the men’s fedoras tilted at rakish angles under the twilight sky.
‘How could I forget?’ Ana grimaced as a marching band of women followed, shimmering in sequinned dresses like gems. In fact, she was blushing now, just thinking about how she’d called everyone in their friendship group for help, and only Gabriel had been paying enough attention in the height of Carnival’s chaos to realise she was missing and to answer. They’d gone as a group to the balneários and rented a wheelchair-friendly apartment, at Gabriel’s insistence.
‘You came to get me.’ She smiled to herself, and he grinned, nodding slowly.
‘I got you out of that sand pile and away from those drunks pretty fast. They were determined to dress you and your chair up in the Brazilian flag.’
Ana bit back a smile. ‘My hero,’ she said, remembering how she’d been on the verge of a panic attack when he’d raced across the sand and rescued her. He’d given the guys a massive telling off, then had forced them to apologise, which they had done sheepishly.
‘Ines wasn’t impressed. We were gone for hours, remember?’ he said. Ana’s stomach dropped like a sack of lead. Of course, he’d been trying to get back to Ines. She’d been pregnant then, and Ana had been trying her best to keep him to herself whilst simultaneously trying to get over her crush on him. It hadn’t helped either cause to have him rushing off the minute Ines had called with another demand.
Just then, they were forced apart in the doorway by the arrival of a young man in a green hat covered in purple balloons. He limped towards them and proceeded to drop to his haunches at Gabriel’s feet.
‘I ran out of water; can you help me?’ he slurred at them, and a balloon popped on his chest as he made to grab for Ana’s knees. Gabriel held him back as she steered herself away quickly for the oxygen and some water.
