‘I know. Don’t you worry; the doctor put in a good word with us too, before she retired. Your father already suggested we keep our medical files with Ana, what with my hernia and his bad knee. It’s always been our clinic, but with our family’s history maybe now we’ll get extra-special attention, huh?’
Gabriel nodded as she spoke about the Romeros’ long running friendship with the Mendezes, unable to stop his mind casting back over this evening, working so closely with Ana in the medical tent. He could have sworn he’d felt her eyes on him a lot today, watching him closer than you’d usually watch a work colleague. But things had been pretty hectic, and he hadn’t seen her in so long; maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. He might have had a crush on her once, but they’d practically been kids. There was nothing there now, not on her side anyway. She’d been off experiencing the world and was now finally realising her dream of opening her own clinic. The last thing on her mind was hooking up with a childhood friend and single dad from the same barrio!
His mother was still going on about the time Ana had brought a pot of chicken soup to their door one time she’d been recovering from a cold, when Javi squealed in fresh delight and swung around with a turtle dangling from his fishing line. ‘Papa, I caught one!’
‘Well done, mijo! Now, bed time!’ He laughed as Javi skipped ahead with his agile grandfather. Luckily Gabriel’s dad was still young enough to keep up with his grandson’s enthusiastic endeavours. Javi clutched the panda in his arms tightly, as if it might fly away at any moment, and Gabriel looked on fondly, committing this moment of his young son to memory.
How quickly they grew up. Would Javi even remember the times he spent with him like this, or would he remember his home as being wherever his new family unit was—Ines, Pedro and him? Sometimes he wished he could have made things work with her for his son’s sake, but no... Ines and Pedro were perfect for each other. He and Ines had been a completely different story—they were different people.
Somehow, thoughts of Ana kept creeping back in as he took in the colours of the carnival all around them. Maybe it was the colourful way she still dressed... She was a moving rainbow, nothing like the way most other GPs looked, and he admired her for it, breaking the mould under her white coat, and out of it too. Why did healthcare always have to be so dull? She was who she was, at work and at home. Did she consider this her home, now that she was back? Would she stay? Did she want a family some day?
Why are you even thinking all this, Gabriel?
He couldn’t get her out of his head now—her colourful presence, her reassuring smile and her easy manner with Javi. Today it had hit home just how much he’d missed being around her all this time. And she really had seemed to hit it off with Javi.
As he tucked Javi up in bed, the little boy asked him about Ana.
‘She said she had a car accident and that’s why she’s on wheels,’ he said, frowning.
‘It’s a wheelchair, Javi,’ Gabriel corrected him, listening to his parents shuffling around downstairs, still wearing their bumble bee outfits and making each other laugh.
‘She said I must always wear a seatbelt.’
‘And she’s right,’ he said with a sigh, getting back to the book he was reading. How could he help the fact that his mind was only half on the book now? He was thinking about the accident, the car wreck that had torn Ana’s life to shreds when she’d been a kid and had damaged her spinal cord beyond repair. His parents had taken him to visit her in hospital, and he hadn’t been able to comprehend it at the time, the fact that his best friend might not be able to walk again. She’d always been a faster runner than him: racing ahead on the track during sports class; sprinting for the school bus at his side before hopping on first every time, always in a hurry to get somewhere—always in a hurry to get everywhere, with or without him.
Two months after the accident, when she’d finally come home from hospital for good, his whole family had gone to her house to welcome her back. The first time they’d seen her pale face and frail frame, being lifted from the ambulance and lowered into the wheelchair outside her house, his mother had started sniffing behind her bouquet of peonies, and it had only really hit him then exactly what had happened to Ana. He’d felt it like a switch. The gravity had been sucked out from all around him and, when he’d met her eyes, he’d seen only a shadow of his friend.
The younger him had never showed how shocked, sad and sorry for her he really was, though. He’d known enough then to know that wasn’t what she needed. Instead, from that very day, when he’d taken the flowers from his mother’s hands and marched ahead of them all up to the front door, he’d made it his job to make her life easier in any way he could.
Only, Ana had never really needed him to do that for her. She’d made it a point not to need anyone over the years, to do everything herself that any able-bodied person could do and more. She’d never stopped running, really. There was always some place she had to be, with him or without him—mostly without him. And he’d always let her go. More than that, he’d encouraged her!
In later years, he’d sometimes wondered if his one-man best-friend support system had been an act, a cover up, some kind of disguise he’d just kept putting on every day so she wouldn’t see the real him. The real him, who had sometimes looked at her as more than a friend—as his, somehow—but she would never have felt the same way about him.
Turning out the light on a sleepy Javi’s nightstand, he had a sudden flashback of doing the same thing to Ana’s light the night he’d taken her home blind drunk after she’d graduated medical school. She still didn’t know how long he’d stayed there, watching over her while she’d slept, wishing he could just curl up beside her and go to sleep instead of being the gentleman and making his way home.
Sometimes he’d been so confused about his feelings for Ana, and so certain she’d reject him if he tried anything at all, that he’d hooked up with other people right in front of her just to cover the tracks of his crush.
Maybe that was why he’d slept with Ines in the first place, he considered now. It was hard to remember, exactly—it had all been such a whirlwind—but, thinking back, the look on Ana’s face in the car the whole way to the Pinamar that day had not been one of excitement...and hadn’t that been the first time she’d met Ines? He could remember being acutely aware of Ana there, watching them. Could remember the way his heart had sped up at the notion that she might be...jealous. What could he have done by that point, though? Ines had already been pregnant and his hands were tied.
And on that same trip, Ana had announced she was leaving for Bariloche. It was funny—and kind of troubling at the same time—that even now, even after spending the last five years apart, Ana was having the same effect on his heart.
The sound of slow, romantic love songs crept up the stairs as he left Javi’s room. Deciding that his parents were probably doing something cute, such as dancing together in their bumble bee costumes, he called goodnight to them, went into his own room and lay down on the bed, picking up his book. They would let themselves out the way they always did—his family were used to coming and going as they pleased.
But Gabriel didn’t even get to finish one chapter before he was fast asleep and dreaming of being back in Ana’s bedroom. This time, however, he was very much in the bed with her. He was not just keeping an eye on his sleeping friend from the doorway. And Ana was very much awake and doing wicked things to him in return.
CHAPTER FOUR
GABRIEL WAS JOLTED awake by his phone trilling from the nightstand. He blinked, eyes adjusting to the darkness, and glanced at the clock: four-forty-five. ‘So early,’ he mumbled to himself, groping for the phone with one hand and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His dreams about Ana played on in his head as he said a sleepy hello. Blinking again, his heart jolted into his throat as an unmistakeable Ana replied.
‘Gabriel?’ She sounded frantic and spoke so fast he could barely keep up. ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s so early—I wouldn’t have called, except it’s an emergency. My healthcare assistant was knocked out by an octopus...’
‘An octopus?’ he blurted, trying not to laugh despite the hour and the unwelcome thoughts about this very woman that he still couldn’t shake, especially as she spoke to him while he was still in bed.
‘Someone dressed as an octopus, last night at Carnival,’ she explained. ‘Swept her off her feet in all the wrong ways—she’s dislocated her arm. We don’t know how long she’ll be out of action.’
He raked a hand through his dishevelled hair, catching sight of himself in the long mirror by the wardrobe. ‘And you need me to cover?’
‘We open tomorrow, Gabriel, and my appointment book is full. I can’t go cancelling on people in my first week, but I need a locum. It’ll take some time to find one, but in the meantime, didn’t you say something about having some time off while Bruno trains the new recruits?’
Gabriel paused and crossed to the window. He probably had; they’d spoken about all kinds of things in the medical tent between tending to all those minor casualties. Except what he’d wanted to say, of course: the fact that she was still one of the most bewitching people he’d ever had the fortune to stand beside. Oh, Lord, those dreams had got to him more than he’d thought!
‘That’s right.’
‘You know I wouldn’t ask unless I needed you.’
He bit back a smile, studying the street outside. It was empty, except for one solo dog-walker illuminated under a streetlamp. He didn’t know whether to be happy she’d thought of him first, or annoyed, because now, of course, he couldn’t say no. With no ambulance shifts for the week, he’d thought maybe he would take his camper van out to Playa Varese, one of the most well-known beaches along the Mar del Plata waterfront, and maybe do a little fishing. Or see if he couldn’t wrangle some more time with Javi, if Ines would allow it outside of his allocated weekends... But now Ana needed him.
‘Gabe?’
‘OK!’ A surge of adrenaline rocketed through him, waking him up properly as his brain attempted to process the enormity of the request, on top of the fact that he’d said OK on autopilot. What the...? ‘Yes,’ he said groggily. ‘Yes, of course I’ll help you, Ana.’
Ana breathed a sigh of relief that he felt though to his core, and immediately he knew he’d made the right choice. Ana had never found it easy asking for help. She always had to do everything by herself or she labelled herself a failure, somehow, she’d told him one night before he’d met Ines.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘I knew I could count on you. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
There was a pause. Gabriel shuffled barefoot as the details of his dream came flooding back. She’d already made it up to him in his subconscious and she didn’t even know—should he feel guilty for the fact that his dream self had just had sex with his friend?
‘I’ll text you the details later this morning,’ she said finally. ‘We’ll make it work.’
