POCKET CHANGE 2: A GAME OF CARDS
by Sharon R.
A/N: As per new regulations by site administrators, I have removed sparse lyrics that I had always properly attributed. However, having reviewed copyright law as it pertains to lyrics, a few remain in this chapter as they constitute less than 10 percent of the song and the characters written are actually quoting them in context. Removing them altogether would alter the story.
Chapter Nine
In the predawn hours of the morning, Carter, Luka and Maggie were awakened by the sudden roar of the wind and a shuffling of feet outside their bedroom doors. Although they took turns being on call for emergencies, they had become light sleepers with their rooms being right off of the clinic at the end of the hangar. They almost ran into each other as they exited their rooms into the darkened hallway. Following their eyes to the back door which had just latched closed, they stepped outside and focused their eyes and ears on an eerie sight.
Figures dressed all in black moved rapidly away from them without looking back at the doctors who yelled out to them. They were swift, they were quiet, they were large and fit men - and they were all very well armed. Disappearing behind the tree line near the main road outside of the camp, the last man turned and pointed his weapon in the camp's direction, covering his men. Within seconds a black helicopter rose into the sky, two more following flanking it on each side. They weren't like regular helicopters. The near full moon cast enough illumination on the choppers for the three to easily see that there were no numbers on them - in fact no identifying marks. No lights either, and the sound with three of them even, was almost a muffled drone. As quickly as the doctors scurried outside, the three mysterious airships and their occupants were gone.
"What the hell was that?" Maggie wondered as she shivered from the sudden wind pushed at them from the departing chopper blades. "And what were they doing in here?"
"Check the inventory." Luka spun around and hurried back to the clinic worried that the inconsistencies in the supplies lately were due to raids by rebels more sophisticated than he ever imagined.
The door slammed behind them as the three scurried past their bedrooms and into the storage area next to the office. Nothing was out of place - the more valuable supplies right where they had been stored earlier in the day after a delivery. Out of the corner of his eye, Carter spied one last figure coming out of his office carefully closing the door.
Dressed all in black, the same as the fleeing men, Bob walked nonchalantly out of the clinic, tossing a set of small keys to Carter as he also exited the building.
"Good morning doctors." Bob greeted them with his calm, everyday demeanor without so much as a pause for thought. "Feels like a good day today."
Bob tended to appear and disappear quietly - something they had taken for granted. They never gave much weight to Bob's boasting, balancing their toleration for him with the occasional company he provided - and beer. But even in those minutes before the sun started to rise behind the African horizon, his presence sent a chill through them. With a sense of urgency they walked to the office, stepped inside and turned the lights on.
A brand new air conditioner was on the floor under the window waiting to be installed. And on Carter's desk was a large box the size of a mid sized television. Using Norman's letter opener, Luka broke the seals and lifted the flaps.
"Merry Christmas, or happy birthday to us," Luka grinned as he carefully lifted out a beautiful, new, pristine, blood chemistry machine in plastic and bubble wrap.
"Is that the VetScan?" Maggie asked.
Carter looked at the main unit and the other smaller pieces that came with it. "No." The units had that new smell to them as he took the different parts out of the plastic. "Actually it's the human version the military uses in the field hospitals, I believe. The U.S. military." The keys Bob gave him opened the small main frame no larger than a home computer's CPU. Looking inside, then turning the pieces over in his hands, he didn't find what he was looking for. "But there are no serial numbers." Carter sat on the corner of the desk playing with the keys as he looked at Maggie and Luka, puzzled, yet as giddy as a school boy having pulled off a successful prank. "They seem to have been removed."
The three of them stood looking at each other as they put the analyzer together not wanting to jinx their good fortune by questioning the ethics by which it made its way there. Having followed the directions for calibration, Carter rolled up his sleeve as Maggie drew a blood sample for the machine's initiation. Carefully placing the drops in each of the thirteen slots of the rotor that resembled a round package of birth control pills, Luka started the process. Within eight minutes the values were printed on a small sticker to be put in the patient's record.
"Mr. Carter, I'm happy to tell you that you'll live."
All three whooped it up drawing Norman out of his room, striped worn bathrobe in tow. Pushing his glasses up on his nose as he barged into the office, he surveyed the mess of plastic wrappings, Styrofoam and cardboard. The newness of the state-of-the-art computerized chemistry machine was hard to miss as it took up most of the space on the desk he had previously claimed, his anal retentively placed ledgers and office supplies pushed aside or relegated to a chair.
"What is this?" he squinted his eyes, then took off his glasses to once again clean the lenses with his white hankie. "What is this?"
Carter stepped forward to explain their good fortune to Norman. "Mr. Tyson, somehow we were…"
"It's bad enough you make rash decisions about how to frivolously spend the Foundation's money…"
"It's not like that…"
"…but now you completely circumvent procedure and go behind my back?"
"We didn't buy this."
Norman had no intention of listening to explanation as he pushed through Luka and Carter to get to the window. "And an air conditioner. I can't have this in my office. I can't have a chill while I work. This is just not acceptable."
"Sit down," Luka asked politely, his own patience quickly vanishing as he began to understand what Carter had been dealing with these past weeks. "Please."
"I shall not." Norman stood in front of the Croatian doctor who was at least a head taller than him.
"Mr. Tyson," Carter quietly and with great calm spoke as he stood to the side, "I think you need to hear us out."
"This is preposterous and juvenile. You clowns run this place like a three ring circus and treat me like a child."
"Sit down, Norman." Shoving a chair in back of Norman's knees, Maggie put her hand on the accountant's shoulder. At the sound of her voice, Norman's knees buckled, causing him to draw in an unnerved breath. Seated - he was.
"Now listen carefully," Luka said as he sat opposite Norman and pulled his chair so close their knees touched. It made Norman even more uncomfortable but Luka used that against him to keep his attention. "This blood chemistry machine was free. FREE. You spent nothing. The Alliance spent nothing. You need not concern yourself with how we came to get it, except that it was all perfectly… fair." Well, that was a stretch. "The only thing you need to concern yourself with is the condition of the rotors used to hold and analyze the samples. Because if they are subjected to heat and humidity they won't be usable. And when you get sick and we clowns need to treat you to save your life, we don't want to have to play a few rounds of poker to see who the loser is. You see, that person will have to take your sorry ass on a dangerous ride to the Gulu hospital for blood work because somebody who didn't want to get a chill turned the air conditioner off ruining all of the rotors."
Outside of the glassed in office, somebody turned on the lights in the hangar. The front doors began swinging open and shut as staff members started the day checking on patients and setting up for the day long lines of sick and needy refugees.
Carter and Maggie set up the air conditioner in the window, plugging it in and turning it to the lowest setting. Norman didn't so much as flinch as the three doctors cleaned up the mess and headed to the door.
"Well, I think I'll… ah…." Carter scratched his head as he pointed at the door.
"Yeah, breakfast, I guess. So…" Luka was the first out the door.
"…. get cleaned up and…. Okay then." Carter second.
Last out was Maggie who gave Norman one last glare before closing the door behind her.
"Now that was smooth Kovac," Maggie smiled.
"Where did that come from?" Carter asked Luka.
"A little something I picked up from Jules."
"Who's Jules?" Maggie asked, though by that time Luka and Carter had slipped into their rooms to change for the day.
It was a hectic day as the staff of the clinic worked non-stop to treat patients and clear new refugees for the camp. The heat was at its worst as everyone worked in permanently sweat drenched clothes. It had been like that for a few days - long lines of refugees, eighteen hour workdays, heat, sweat, bugs and with the water tankers held up due to mechanical problems, no showers or shaving. The workers felt grimy, they dug at bug bites, were over tired, underfed and ill tempered. Carter was fielding questions from all directions while dealing with jostled delicate feelings between workers whose tempers flared easily at each other, all while trying to be one of the three doctors.
With three women laboring at the same time, Maggie's attention was focused away from the treatment and in-patient areas leaving Luka and Carter to bounce from one nurse to the next approving treatments normally left to med students and residents back home. Although the hospital in Gulu accepted the most serious patients, they generally weren't appreciative of having the non-paying, non-Ugandan patients dumped on them. Carter and Kovac were now elevated to surgeons making do with what they had. Antiquated anesthesia procedures started each surgery off with the doctors on pins and needles hoping for few side effects. The arrival of the blood chemistry machine that day was tempered by the sheer amount of pressure the doctors felt to keep a promise - that little something they remembered that said, first, do no harm.
One appendectomy.
Seven lacerations, two of them deep through tendons.
Two burn patients, one sent to Gulu.
Two fractures.
One case of internal bleeding from unknown causes led the doctors to do an ex-lap only to find cancer that had ruptured near the spleen and spread throughout the abdomen.
"He's right." Carter was splayed out on the hard cement floor of the storage room trying to give his sore back a rest.
Rifling through the inventory, trying to make sense of it with a new master list he had devised, Luka was only half listening. "Who?"
"Norman. This place is a circus, and not a very happy one today."
"Can't we all just get along?" Luka's accent didn't do the oft used line justice, not that he'd intended to. "Our post-op patients will probably use up the few pain meds we have left tonight. There is no way we should be this low. And I hope we don't need any more conscious sedation meds for a few days. Karanje, I know we haven't used this much." Luka let out a deep sigh, turned his list back to the beginning and started again. "I can't make heads or tale out of this. I mean, there's a sign out list here, but half the time we're too short handed and too rushed to take the time to log supplies out."
"And I dare say, that was just one of the many complaints I got today." Carter covered his face with both hands and tried to rub the grit from his eyes, nose and pores. "Need to get that little clown car in here," he mumbled. He was so punchy he could barely finish a thought.
"A package for Dr. Luka and Dr. Carter," Sean announced as he barged in. "Who do you know named S. Lewis? And if he's a doctor, how can I recruit him?"
Carter bolted upright, rubbing his red and fatigued eyes. "She - Susan Lewis. And yes, she's a doctor back in Chicago. But somehow I don't think I could convince her to board a plane for a twenty-five hour flight." With renewed energy, Carter ripped open one of the two large boxes, sneaking a peak before hastily closing the flap on Sean's curious eyes.
"Is it what we were waiting for?" Luka asked with a big grin.
"Uh-huh." Carter looked right at him as they quickly forgot their woes and rubbed their hands together with evil excitement.
"What is it?" Sean asked, eager to get in on the secret. "Come on, what kind of malarkey are you two blackguards gettin' into?"
Carter and Luka haphazardly gathered the boxes and scooted out of the storage room, across the hall to Carter's bedroom nearly tripping over each other in their giddiness.
"Um, Sean, I need you to tell the whole staff that there will be a mandatory meeting tonight at 9 o'clock in the Midway. Can you do that?" Without waiting for an answer, Carter closed the door behind him. "Thanks," he shouted through the door.
Sean heard a few laughs, then a commotion before Luka opened the door once again, sticking just his head out. "And Sean, find Bob and tell him, the chicken crows at midnight." He shut the door but before it could latch, opened it again with Carter chuckling in the background, "No. Rooster. It's very important…" He repeated it again, with Sean mindlessly mouthing along with him, "… rooster crows at midnight. Good. Yeah. Okay." Once again the door closed on Sean's baffled face.
"Am I the only one without a bloody secret?" Sean spoke to dead air as he walked out of the building.
The sun had just set on the PCRC as the staff gathered outside of the Midway. The doors were guarded by Othiamba out front and Joseph and Mbuto to the side. Nobody was to enter until the two doctors in charge gave the okay. There were murmurings among them about possible reasons for the meeting. The past week's heat and work load had built the volunteers' ire to the boiling point at times and tempers were fragile. Dr. Luka was complaining about the unaccounted clinic supplies and Dr. Carter was always on the go giving orders while trailed by the annoying businessman from the states. The camp had been operational for only a month and already they were drained, frustrated and some were questioning their own motives for coming to the miserable continent. As the wind picked up it whipped the unsettled dirt into the faces of the workers who began to fidget. Finally, the doors opened and the doctors stepped onto the porch.
"Ah, thank you for coming." Carter didn't get applause for his entrance. "It has been a difficult few weeks and I know that I haven't thanked you all enough for the work you do and for the sacrifices you've made. So we thought that this would be a good time to spend some quality time together." A moan came from the crowd as the thought of being forced to spend even more time together became something of a workplace mandate. "Dr. Luka?"
"Our friends in Chicago put together a little something for everyone and Dr. Carter and myself have been inside getting it ready for you." Luka paused as he saw the curiosity finally peek. "Tonight we are going to take you on a vacation to the Caribbean. Paulette?" From inside the building the music of Harry Belafonte blared, the doors opened and as the workers filed into the balloon laden mess hall singing along with the party music, the two doctors put Hawaiian leis around their necks.
"Shake, shake, shake, senora, shake your body line
Shake, shake, shake, senora, shake it all the time"
The folks finally cheered as Toomay greeted them with Kool-Aid and treats. Tables were pushed to the sides to allow for congo lines and the students immediately filled the floor doing the Limbo.
Standing on a chair Carter pointed directly behind him to where Othiamba and another student were hauling large metal tubs inside. "A certain person who likes to hang around this pest whole, went out of his way -I think - to complete the celebration. For those of you who are inclined, for those of you of age," Carter looked playfully at the giggling students, "there's beer to go around." Now that got him the applause he had been waiting for.
"My girl's name is Senora
I tell you friends, I adore her
And when she dances, oh brother
She's a hurry-cane in all kinds of weather"
Luka and Carter stood back and enjoyed watching the tired faces come alive as they forgot their little pet peeves with each other and the suffering that was in their life and now their dreams every day and night.
(Lyrics removed)
Sitting at a table to the side, they took it all in with Sean, Maggie and Colleen. Toomay even served them some snacks as Othiamba popped the tops on bottles of beer he placed in front of them. A sign made with markers graced the wall opposite them, obviously penned by two men whose artistic talents did not rise much above that of classic twenty-first century prescriptions.
PCRC - A COMMUNITY OF HEART AND SPIRIT.
"You guys are quite domestic, if I do say so myself," Colleen quipped between swallows.
"See, now, you just had to give us a chance," Luka gave back with a wink, nudging her with his shoulder. "We can do all sorts of things."
Two students came to the table and tried in earnest to get the senior staffers to join their Limbo line, the men waving them off.
"Come on Dr. Luka," Colleen playfully whined, "you can call me senora." Luka relented and joined her with the kids on the dance floor getting all kinds of laughs as he failed miserably getting under the pole.
(Lyrics removed)
"Bet Luka will be holding onto her bridle by night's end." Maggie belched as she tossed her first bottle and grabbed another. Carter just looked at her and rolled his eyes, although he enjoyed the humor in it. "You don't want to cha-cha with the worker bees?" she asked him.
"No, that's okay. Me and Limbo just don't… ah…. bad back."
"No dancing, no beer - shit Carter, don't you ever let yourself have fun?"
"I am having fun. Really," he told her quite unconvincingly as he laughed at Luka being dragged around the floor by the tall red head.
Maggie looked sideways at him questioning his typical, or was it atypical, secrecy.
Luka came back to the table to get his beer and spied Bob in the doorway. "Now," he whispered to Carter. The two went to the front of the mess hall, donned straw hats and, replacing the CD, motioned for everyone's attention.
"This morning the clinic was blessed with a new blood chemistry machine. The person who is responsible for that happening - as well as the beer delivery," the crowd cheered again, "is standing in the doorway. We know him as Bob, and Dr. Luka and I would like to say thank you to him in our own special way." Luka pressed the play button on the CD player and the two rapped along to a young Steve Martin.
"Now when he was a young man he never thought he'd see (King Tut)
People stand in line to see the boy king (King Tut)
How'd you get so funky (funky Tut)
Then you'd do the monkey"
It was humiliating and the staff knew it as they roared with laughter. Even Bob broke a smile as he got the humor going back to their first day in camp. Luka and Carter had worked out a little choreography as well, dancing back and forth attempting Egyptian arm motions, eventually bumping into each other.
(Lyrics removed)
Bob finally sat at the table as Carter and Luka finished their tribute and returned to their seats, refusing a standing ovation. The staff had certainly appreciated the candid performance of their 'leaders' and occasionally patted them on the back as they walked by - a sarcastic compliment thrown in for good measure. They were even hotter now having exerted themselves with the bravado of a bad off-off Broadway dancer. Sweating and thirsty, Carter grabbed a bottle and chugged it half down, abruptly stopping as he realized he had taken a beer instead of water in the commotion of the party. Not wanting to bring attention to his slip, he wiped his mouth and put the bottle back where he found it, pushing it away. No one had noticed.
Colleen was snapping pictures of the party - Luka's eyes followed her as she skillfully worked the room, her natural energy adding to the festivities.
"She's very good at what she does. She somehow always gets the photo ops that others can't," Bob remarked sitting between Luka and Carter. "She knows what she wants and she gets it."
"Get a lot of stuff published?" Carter asked as he looked for the nearest bottle of water.
"Oh yeah, but she has stiff competition. A woman in this field has to be twice as good as the best man, and Reilly is keen on that." Bob drew another beer out of the tub, skillfully removing the cap with his hand. "Almost too much so," he mumbled to himself.
"So, what is it?" Carter asked Bob as he leaned back on the table watching the action on the dance floor.
"What?"
"You know." Carter slowly steered his eyes across at Luka, wanting him to get in on ribbing Bob. "Your real first name?"
Bob wagged his finger at the men while choosing to maintain his normal state of no-comment.
Sean took a seat at the table again with a bag of beer nuts - another treat from the ER crew. "John, these came for you today too." Sean pulled out two envelopes from his shirt pocket and pushed them across the table to Carter.
Having been disconnected from his life back in Chicago for so long, and comfortable with it and himself, Carter considered whether or not he even wanted to open the letters. He turned them over in his hand and gently stroked his finger over the return address on the smaller letter - a card, actually, from Abby. He opened the business letter from the Carter Foundation instead. He could not believe what he was reading and half way through stuffed it back in the envelope. Abby's had to be a far cry better that that, he thought. It wasn't and not wanting to hang his head in misery in the middle of all of the fun he'd helped created for the few short hours of the evening, he chose to walk out.
"You okay?" Luka sat down on the steps next to Carter who still held onto the letters.
Carter nodded his head, folding the letters as he shoved them into his back pocket.
"Bad news?"
"Let's just say non-productive."
"Distance has a way of making people feel safe enough to put their most hateful words of blame on paper. Most of the time once the letter has been mailed, they have a change of heart - and regret."
"How did you know it was from Abby?"
Luka shrugged his shoulders. "Educated guess."
"And how do you know what she had to say?"
"On the job training."
Heat lightening that had dabbled in the distance recently, sporadically lit up the dark sky - flashes of white teasing of the so far non existent rain. Luka and Carter sat side by side admiring the light show behind the clouds while listening to the buoyant voices behind them.
"They're having a good time, aren't they?" asked Carter.
"Yeah, I think we made some brownie points."
The squeal of the screen door suddenly stopped their conversation as the rest of the regular occupants of the 'family table' streamed out onto the porch, stepping away from the loud rock music that now occupied the CD player.
Bob, Colleen, Maggie, Othiamba, Toomay and Sean all found spots to park themselves, Sean conveniently sidling up to Colleen.
"So tell us about your heritage, Colleen," Sean asked enthusiastically moving closer to her hoping to make points with the striking redhead.
"I wouldn't go there if I were you," Bob mumbled atonally as he walked in back of Sean to take his usual place against the post.
Colleen swung her nearly empty beer bottle between her knees as she sat on the edge of the porch. "You want to know? You really want to know about how my noble Irish father waltzed into South Boston with this story of having made a fortune back in the motherland, then fucked the first red headed woman he saw?"
"Oh Christ, here we go," Bob sighed. Colleen was in her own world now.
"Of course the only job he could get was tending bar. It's the only thing the brainless drunk knew anything about. I remember fondly the smell of stale cigarettes and beer as he came home every night to beat the living shit out of my mother."
"And she was named after…" Bob continued in the background.
"I was named after my father's favorite whore, at least his favorite whore on West Broadway. Proud of that, he was. Told everyone." She lifted her beer bottle and slugged the last of it back. "I was smart enough to get the hell out of there when I turned eighteen. Eventually got into journalism and went to Ireland to find this great rich family of ours only to find that he was full of shit." Colleen honored Sean's previous wishes and scooted closer to him, parking her chin on his shoulder so as to make sure he got the whole story. "You see…,"
"Let's not forget about the IRA…" Bob hit his head against the beam as though to speed up the show.
"… he had pined after, and poked into, a wife of one of the big IRA thugs and got his arse chased out of your precious Ireland," she screamed mocking Sean's Irish brogue.
Uncomfortable, his ear ringing from the verbal assault, Sean stood and straightened up as he walked by Bob to the other side of the porch, dejected by a dream.
"I told you not to go there," Bob spoke under his breath as Sean squeezed between him and Luka who stood to offer a slightly drunk Colleen an arm to lean on.
"You - fuck face," she spouted close up to Bob, Luka holding her back, "Keep your comments to yourself." Bob raised a hand accepting his defeat while also warding off her breath.
"His name- his real first name folks, is Vivian," she slurred as she turned around in a circle repeating herself, louder this time. "Vivian. Vivian."
Carter stood to allow Luka a chance to settle Colleen down next to him on the steps, and he gladly accepted putting an arm around her.
"Nice music," Colleen remarked as the loud rock had been replaced by a slow moving, soft Norah Jones. "I don't get a chance to party like this often."
"Obviously," Maggie snorted, noticing Carter standing at the door, peeking in at the stragglers left at the party who had now coupled up on the dance floor. Lightening inched closer to them and thunder now accompanied it. He was smiling as the song painted a pretty picture of thunder and lightening, rain and darkness.
(Lyrics to a few lines of The Prettiest Thingsung by Norah Jones previously properly attributed, deleted as per new regulations by site administrators 5/3/05. The complete original text of Pocket Change can be found at LUKAFIC)
Maggie put an arm around Carter's waist and allowed him to give her an affectionate squeeze. "What haven't you told me?" she whispered.
(Lyrics deleted)
At first, Carter contemplated lying to her, but instead shook his head as he spoke. "A lot has happened since you left Chicago. I suppose…,"
At that moment a huge clap of thunder shook the compound, flickering the lights. When the skies opened and rain poured down, the Midway emptied out and hoots and hollers could be heard far and wide. The first rain in weeks and no one was going to miss it.
In the center of the roadway between the hanger and Midway, Luka and Colleen stood with their arms out taking in the free flowing rain as it pounded down on them. Colleen's t-shirt was soaked through revealing her generously proportioned breasts. As Luka moved to take her hand and inch closer to her, he looked at Carter, his eyes almost asking permission. Carter gave him a smile and half a nod. He enjoyed seeing Luka happy.
"She's quite the trollip, isn't she?" Sean's sudden change in opinion of Colleen wouldn't be kept to himself.
Bob, Carter, Maggie and Sean had remained on the porch opting instead to be entertained by the revelers dancing about in the rain and marveling at what they had so often taken for granted.
"So what do you think? Those puppies real?" They all knew what Maggie was referring to. Carter was speechless and looked to Bob to pick up the conversation.
"You're the doctors," he answered, "can't you tell?"
"Well, I wouldn't mind copping a feel to find out," Maggie gave with a sly raise of her eyebrows, "but I don't think Miss Prissy Britches would let me."
With Bob and Sean silenced, yet their attention still focused on Maggie's outing of herself, Carter jumped in with his bit of wisdom. "Maybe we should ask Norman. He seems all knowing and I'm sure he is a walking book on boobage."
Once Maggie was off the porch and into the rain herself, Sean made his assumptions aloud. "Would it be that she's a carpet muncher?" Bob looked perplexingly at him. "You know, a bean flicker?"
This time Bob was the one who was speechless.
"I believe he means lesbian," Carter added as he gave Bob a big pat on the back.
As they laughed, Carter spied a drunk Todd in the rain and stepped down to pour him into bed.
"Todd, have you ever been drunk before?" he asked as Maggie came over to help him.
"No, I don't drink, and I happen do know da I not d… d… dr…. drunk now."
"Uh-huh. Come on Todd." A doctor on each side and he was off to the dorms. "We'll take you home and tuck you in."
"You my…" Todd paused to let out a horrifically loud and odiferous belch, "…friends?"
Maggie let him rest his head on her shoulder. Hell, he wouldn't remember it. "Yeah, we're your friends."
"Now if we could only get Norman liquored up," Carter mumbled.
Bob walked by them on his way to his SUV. Very swiftly as he passed Maggie he gave her one parting thought. "By the way, they're real."
Luka lifted Colleen's chin and looked deeply into her eyes, her wet hair falling limply to her shoulders. The rain was coming down in sheets now and dripped over the contours of their faces. For the first time since meeting her, Luka saw her vulnerability. Maybe her sharp personality had been tempered by the alcohol, maybe it was a cover up for a weakness, but it didn't matter to Luka. For at that very moment when he took her face and cradled it in his hands, he saw only softness. He wanted to kiss her but hesitated, enjoying the feel of her cheeks in his palms and the stray locks of wet hair that fell over his fingers. If he was waiting for permission he got it when she placed her hands on his own rain soaked t-shirt and stroked the back of her fingers over his cold and nearly exposed nipple. The kiss was simple and sweet. He met her moist plump lips with his own and pressed into her, the warmth searing through each of them as they pulled away briefly before meeting eyes and tasting each other once again.
The relief from the rain was short lived as the harsh sun and smothering heat returned the next day. After lunch the children rallied the grown ups in the Midway to come to the soccer fields to act as fans for a game they had arranged between two teams. By that time Todd's hangover was resolving, though he stuck close to the sidelines choosing to be an observer instead of a participant that day. It was obvious to the doctors that Todd had begun to emerge from his shell as the kids frequently turned to him for encouragement and support.
"The kids really like him, huh." Carter showed up just as the game was finishing, having covered the clinic all day.
Luka still donned his straw hat from the night before. Wearing sunglasses and sipping a beer he leaned back in his rickety office chair he had dragged out to the fields. "He sure seems to fit."
"Beer again? Not enough last night?" Carter chided him.
"Never enough," he winked. "But the bottled water is gone. Don't much feel like hiking back to the Midway." Although he had been watching the kids congratulate each other on the field, he was really eyeing Colleen who was circling the action getting pictures.
"Have a good night?" Carter asked as he followed the path of Luka's eyes propped over the top of his shades at Colleen's backside in the middle of the field.
Luka pushed up his sunglasses and gave Carter a self conscious little laugh. "Yes, I did. And thank you, by the way, for the CD player in my room, but it wasn't necessary."
"Ah, well, Maggie put it there. I think she's hoping that molding the two irritants in her life here together will eliminate her stress by a factor of one." Carter fished for more information, not taking his eyes off Luka. "So?"
"So," he chuckled, "so… nothing. Nothing happened. I was a gentleman."
Carter had two kites with him that Susan had included in the boxes and with the post storm wind, the conditions were perfect. What they hadn't thought about was that most of the children had never seen a kite before, and certainly not the fancy ones with bright colors that day. Luka and Carter had a ball getting them into the air as the children ran after them shrieking in delight. Carter finally got his to hang up high, straight up, and he passed the spool of string to one of the older kids. Sitting in Luka's vacant chair, out of breath, he reached down and grabbed one of the remaining beers chugging that one, then downing another. He was so thirsty. Just a couple beers, it wouldn't hurt. He'd had a beer here and there in the past four years. He wasn't even terribly fond of beer anymore. He thought that maybe he had lost the taste for it. But it did quench his thirst. As it so often happened in northwestern Uganda, the wind suddenly shifted direction, crashing both kites to the ground. Carter watched as Luka's kite took a nose dive right into a tree at the edge of the airfield, then returned his partially imbibed third beer to the ground before running out to rejoin the crowd at the far side of the field in the tree line.
Both doctors boasted about being able to retrieve the kite, and without warning took off in a race to the tree delighting the children and other volunteers who cheered them on taking equal sides. If childhood tendencies ever resurfaced in grown ups, they did that day with Carter and Luka as they mocked each other while seeing who could get to the top of the tree first. The race was dead even, but in the end Luka's long arms won out as his fingertips just reached the leopard designed kite knocking it to the ground. It was good fun and the two cajoled with each other as they shifted in the branches to make the descent.
"Show off," Carter teased. "Couldn't grab the brass ring last night, so you try to impress the chick with tree climbing?"
"Hey, at least I'm reaching for it."
Both broke out in uncontrollable laughter as they sat midway up the tree, far enough to be out of ear shot. Reaching to grab a limb, Carter missed completely and as if in slow motion, fell straight down. Luka watched horrified not able to do anything.
"Carter!"
Lyrics for: Jump In the Line
Harry Belafonte
Words and Music by Stephen Somvel
King Tut
Words and Music by Steve Martin