“It is, but it’s also where Leia needs to come back and say goodbye.”
“Right.” Katie could understand that. She herself had spent a lot of years working at this crazy job, traveling all over the world, and hadn’t put roots down anywhere. She had always been totally open to just going wherever she needed to be. “I guess I can understand that,” she said. “I don’t really have much in the way of a home base anywhere to say goodbye to.”
“And are you okay with that?” Dave asked. “You always are there and available for work, so I never stopped to think if you had a permanent home somewhere.”
“Right.” She laughed. “I am a workaholic. Don’t worry. I feel at home when I’m with you.”
He grinned at that. “Did you ever want to get married again?” he asked her. “Or were you planning on being a jet-setting career woman all your life?”
“At one point in time, I was hoping for a family. But I’m not sure that’ll happen now.”
“Why is that?”
“I never met anybody up to it, until now,” she said, “and I’m not sure what your thoughts are.”
He looked at her in surprise and then down at his hands. “I would like to have a family at some point,” he murmured. “It would really help fill that lingering need inside.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to yours.”
“So am I, but it was a long time ago, and I’m as over it as I’m likely to get, I think. I will never forget either of them, of course, but I would never advocate for someone in that situation to stop living.”
“Good. So, two or three?” He looked at her blankly, and quickly she grinned, realizing again that she needed to be more specific. “Two kids or three?”
He burst out laughing. “How about we start with one?”
*
“Good.” Katie grinned. “Because … you remember last night?”
He looked at her quizzically. “Definitely. How could I forget?”
“I wasn’t prepared for that to happen, and I didn’t use any birth control.”
He could feel something inside his heart stop, then stared at her in shock. “Wow. Way to hit me where it counts.”
“Just a warning. After all that happened yesterday, it’s not like we were thinking all that clearly, right?”
“No, that’s for sure,” he said. “But, if it happens, I can’t say I’d be at all upset.”
“Neither would I.”
With that, he helped her back into the skiff, and they headed around the point toward the village again. This time they drew less attention, but they were standing closer together this visit, and, instead of just holding hands, she had her arm looped through his elbow.
“So we don’t appear to be quite the oddity today that we were yesterday,” she noted quietly.
“No, I noticed that. I’ll take that as a good thing.”
“I’d say so,” she murmured. “It’s interesting how quickly we get used to a different norm.”
“Looks like Leia led the way for a lot of them.”
“True enough.”
As they walked up to the old medicine woman’s home, a line was waiting to see her. Dave stepped forward and asked, “Is there a problem here? What’s going on?”
“She was attacked,” said one of the men, his voice harsh.
Dave stared at him in shock. “When?” he asked urgently.
“Yesterday.”
At that, Dave stepped around the line to try to see the woman herself. And, indeed, she was unconscious and sported a head wound. He bent down to look at it from a Western medicine point of view. “It doesn’t look very good,” he muttered. “That is pretty serious, as far as head trauma goes.”
“Where’s Leia?” one of the men asked. “She would fix this.”
“I don’t know if she can fix this. It probably needs time as much as anything.” Dave gently checked the bloody area covering the old woman’s hair. He found an open wound that needed stitching. “We need to close this wound.” He pulled out his phone and sent Bullard a message, asking for a time frame for his arrival.
Instead of getting a text response, his phone rang. Bullard.
“We’re on our way. Maybe two hours.”
“Is Leia there?”
“Yes, why?”
“Let me talk to her.”
Bullard immediately handed over the phone.
“Leia, the old medicine woman has been attacked.”
“Oh my God. “How badly?”
“She’s got an open head wound. The wound itself isn’t that bad,” he noted. “The trauma will be the problem. I can certainly stitch it up, though it’s a day late.”
“That would have been better of course. But still, it will heal faster with less chance of infection if you can clean it up now and close the wound.”
“Did you leave any medical supplies here?” he asked.
“Yes, she has some there,” Leia said quietly. “Send me a photo of the injuries.”
He quickly disconnected and sent photos, then spoke to one of the women nearby. “Leia left some medical supplies. Do you know where they are?”
She looked at him blankly. One of the other men translated, and she immediately got up, walked over, and pulled out a large basket, carrying it to him.
He riffled through it to find disinfectant, antibiotic lotion, some sutures, and even casting material to set broken bones. He smiled at that and immediately cleaned the woman’s head, while she lay here unconscious, then quickly sutured up the wound on the one side. He was checking over the rest of her, when his phone rang.
Katie answered it for him. “Leia wants to know if there are any other injuries?”
He shook his head. “Not that I can see. It looks like she was attacked from behind.”
After she relayed that, Katie turned back to Dave. “Leia said there’s no violence on the island.”
“She doesn’t know about the potshot somebody took at us or the guy on the boat that we’ve got tied up.” He turned to look at the others. “Did anybody see anything?” Dave counted several headshakes, but one man stood there, staring at him. “What did you see?” Dave asked.
The man shrugged. “One of you.”
“One of us? A white man?”
“Yes. He came here for help.”
“Did he have an injured wrist?” He pointed above his hand.
The man nodded. “It was bandaged. He asked her for help.”
“And she wouldn’t give it?”
He shook his head. “She said she couldn’t help him. He got really angry and hit her.”
“Nice,” he muttered. “I wonder why she wouldn’t help him?”
“It was ugly,” said one of the women. “The hand, it was an ugly wound.”
Dave nodded. It should have been because he’s the one who created it. He looked around. “Does anybody here know who he was?”
They looked at each other, but nobody said a word.
He sighed. “Come on, guys. I know he’s been around here. But we need to help her, and I need to know who did this.”