They just shook their heads and wouldn’t say a word.
He looked at Katie and shrugged. “Any ideas?”
She held out the phone, with Leia still on the call, speaking to one of the young women.
“Leia wants to ask some questions.”
The woman took the phone. “Leia?”
The conversation was one-sided, as they couldn’t hear the rest of it, but the woman fell silent after being animated, and then she gave a name.
When the phone was handed back to her, Katie asked, “What was that all about?”
“One of the old woman’s family did this,” she said.
Katie shook her head. “Ouch. Pretty harsh to do this to your own family. Especially to someone her age.”
“If she wouldn’t help him, I can see it,” Leia explained, her voice harsh. “He’s always been a problem. He always wants more than he has.”
“But I thought he was white.”
“Yes, and he only comes here when he wants something. His father was a white man. His mother was a native woman from the island. His mother went with his father to the mainland and then came back many years later with a son. It’s Pietro and his friend Ramon.”
Chapter 7
Katie could see the consternation among the faces in the group, when the locals realized they knew who had attacked the old woman, and that it was a black sheep of her own family. Katie looked down, as Dave gently made the older woman more comfortable, straightening up her body and placing a pillow ever-so-slightly under her neck to support it before covering her up. She checked for a temperature, as his gaze studied her skin.
“You have a lot of medical experience, don’t you?” Katie asked Dave.
“Bullard and I both do,” he said.
“Will she be okay?” one of the women asked anxiously. The woman was heavy with child, and it was obvious that she was close to her time and stressed out.
He turned toward her. “I can’t be sure. She’ll need to wake up for us to evaluate that.”
The woman nodded and gently rubbed her belly. “I need her to help with the baby,” she murmured.
“Does she look after everybody’s medical needs here?”
The group nodded.
He frowned at that. “Do you not go to the mainland at all?”
“Not if we can help it,” the woman said. “We have to pay them.”
“And here, she just looks after you?”
“We’ve come to her for decades, generations even,” the woman explained.
He nodded and assessed the look of his unconscious patient again.
“You’re not happy about how she looks, are you?” Katie asked.
“I’d feel a lot better if she were awake. Concussions are tricky things, and so are head wounds.”
Katie didn’t know the first thing about that kind of medicine. “Well, Leia’s coming. Maybe she’ll help.”
“She might, and she’ll certainly settle down these other people, I’ll bet, but there’s nothing much to be done for head injuries like this. It just takes time.”
“If the old woman were in a hospital, would she be okay?”
“Only if the brain isn’t swelling inside,” he noted. “They would just monitor her otherwise. And it’s like they say, medical care is out of reach for anybody here. There’s no free medical anywhere, and they don’t have a way to earn cash.”
“Right.” Katie sighed at that. “Life is just fine and dandy, until something traumatizing happens, and then you realize the safety net you thought you had isn’t quite a safety net anymore.”
He nodded and stepped up to some of the locals. “Where can we find this Pietro?”
One of the men shrugged. “He went back to the mainland.”
“To get his wrist fixed?”
One of the other men said, “To bring back friends.”
“Ah, so, he wants to continue the fight, huh?”
The other man nodded.
“We’ll see how he likes that,” Dave muttered. “And what about Ramon?”
“We haven’t seen him,” one of the women said nervously. “Not since yesterday.”
“Does he hang around with Pietro a lot?”
“Too much,” the man replied.
“And what about anybody else here? Do they hang out with that group?”
“No,” the pregnant woman replied. “Most of us just want to live our peaceful island life.”
“And Pietro and Ramon want something different?”
“They always want something different,” she said, stifling a heavy groan, as she tried to shift the large weight she was carrying.
Katie looked at her. “Is it just one baby or two?” she asked, with a smile.
“One. I think.” She gave her a bright smile. “But I’m overdue.”
“Ah, so that will be fun too,” Dave said, as he studied her. “You’re in labor, aren’t you?”
She looked at him fearfully. “How did you know?” she asked.
“I recognize the signs.”
“Are you a doctor?” she asked hopefully.
“Not like a midwife, no,” he said. “But I’ve done a lot of doctoring in my time.” He looked at his watch. “Leia should be here in about an hour and a half.” That brought a murmur of excitement from the others. “Does anybody resent Leia being here?” he asked.
Immediately everybody shook their heads. “No. She saved many of us,” the pregnant woman said. “She helped my sister deliver her baby, and we thought it was dead. But Leia saved it.”
“Well, let’s hope she arrives in time to help you with your birth,” Dave said quietly. He looked back at Katie. “We need to head back.”
She nodded. “I don’t feel very good about leaving the medicine woman.”
“We’ll stay with her,” the pregnant woman said. “Can we send you word if something changes?”
“Please do, and, as soon as we see Leia, we’ll bring her here.”
At that, everybody seemed to calm down slightly. Dave and Katie represented a new element here, but Leia’s good relationship with them was giving them access to the group of villagers. Although Pietro targeting Leia had brought the trouble here too.
With that, Dave smiled, turned, and reached out a hand for Katie, and they slowly walked back to their boat.
“Do you think it’s safe to leave?”
“We have to. And the villagers need to figure out what Pietro and Ramon are doing here as well.”
She grimaced. “I’m not sure they have a clue. Obviously some relatives in every family don’t like the scenario, and I think that’s what we’ve got going on here.”
“I wonder if it was Leia as a woman or Leia as a doctor who was valuable to them.”
“Kind of sucks if it’s either slash or. But considering how poor their medical service is, I’m guessing it may be the doctor part.”
“It’s not so much that it’s poor medical help just because their lives are simple. I’m sure the medicine woman has picked up many natural tricks over the years to heal people. Sometimes we just complicate things with our modern Western medicine,” he murmured.