Normally, to search for fifteen minutes would have been a great hardship for the Howells, but in this instance it was not; indeed, right now their sole concern was for Mary Ann's well-being.

"Professor!" Lovey called for the umpteenth time.

Her husband offered a bit more.

"Professor! Professor, if you perform this operation I'll pay you twice as much as the best paid surgeon in the world. Professor, please."

Thurston Howell wasn't used to begging. He'd never needed to. But now, at this moment, it seemed the best thing to do. So he continued on in this fashion, unaware that his bribes and pleas fell upon two sets of ears: deaf ones and those of the choir he was preaching to.

###

Four and a half minutes. Four and three quarters minutes…

Ginger pushed aside a large, waxy leaf, and, despite herself, smiled.

Pay dirt.

There he was, sitting on some natural stone ledge outside of a little cave. Cautiously she crept up and took a seat beside him.

"She's getting worse, Professor. She's started having chills."

"Chills?" he said mechanically, not quite paying attention to her. "A classic symptom of peritonitis…"

"Professor, please. You have to come back and help us."

"No…no!" He snapped back to his senses. "Ginger, you don't understand. I can't."

"What do you mean you can't? You said it yourself Professor. She could have hours left. The Skipper said if we didn't find you he'd do it, but don't you see? You're by far the one of us best qualified."

"Ginger, how many times do I have to say I can't do it?"

"Why?" she asked sharply.

He was silent for one minute, then two.

"Well?"

He sighed. "Did I ever tell you that I was in medical school?"

"No."

"I always wanted to be a doctor, ever since I was a child. So straight out of high school I began working to achieve that goal. I met a girl named Katie. She was a medical student too. She was smart as a whip, and pretty as the day is long."

Ginger's curiosity piqued at this tidbit and her ears almost perked up as he continued.

"We started going steady pretty quickly. We were young, but very much in love. We planned to get married once we were done with school. We had our whole future planned out. But one day everything ended. Just like that." He snapped his fingers.

The movie star tilted her head. "Why?"

Roy took a deep breath. "We went out mountain climbing one day in February. Katie felt nauseous and developed a severe pain in her side, but she didn't tell me until she could barely move. We both knew the symptoms. It was appendicitis."

The teacher paused for a moment here until he saw the redhead's eyes, imploring him to continue.

"I was able to maneuver her onto a ledge where she could lie down. But we were still out in the middle of nowhere, without even a remote possibility of help reaching us in time, even if we had a way to contact someone. She was in so much pain and begged me to try and operate…what could I do? I just had my Swiss Army knife, but I tried…and I killed her."

The scientist looked up from where his eyes were fixed on the ground, and Ginger looked into them, and, by extension, his soul. They were haunted, cloudy pools, resembling mud-filled puddles on a rainy day.

He glanced down. "No matter how many times I wash my hands, the blood won't come off. No one else can see it, but I can." He brushed at a tear that had escaped from the corner of his eye. "I left medical school after that. There was no way I could go back…too many memories. For a year I just…crumbled. Without her, I was alone in the world. I didn't eat, skipped class, became addicted to sleeping pills. I tried to kill myself so many times they almost had me committed. But one day my mentor—one of my professors—came to my apartment and shook some sense into me. He told me that I wasn't doing the world or myself any good holed up, wishing I was dead. With his help I got my life together and pursued other sciences. They helped block the pain, if not ease it. But what happened—it's still something I think about every day, and I wonder, why did Katie die? Why not me? Why wasn't she stranded with a veteran doctor of thirty years instead of a second year medical student? Why did I try to perform the operation when I knew I wasn't qualified?"

Ginger reached out a hand, cautiously balancing it before putting it on his shoulder.

"Professor, you can go through the whys and the what-ifs forever, but they don't change the past. Nor should they dictate the future. What's done is done. Katie's dead, and she's not coming back. But Mary Ann still has a chance. What would Katie have wanted? Would she want you to risk another life in memory of the loss of hers?"

The Professor blinked.

"She…she once told me she wanted to become a doctor so she could help people…save lives. She would have if I hadn't…"

Ginger looked at the man pointedly. "Professor, isn't it about time you stopped blaming yourself? For goodness sake. It was a combination of bad timing and bad location."

"And poor medical skills." He added, a quiet sigh tugging at his voice. "I never did begin attending Mass again. How could I? She was as faithful as they came, and then God turned around and betrayed her just like that. What sort of god would do that?"

The movie star sighed. "You're always so negative, Professor. Why couldn't you ever look at things in a positive light? If she was as faithful as you say she was, didn't it ever occur to you that she might be in Heaven? Free from pain and suffering?"

"That doesn't take away from what I did!" the teacher retorted sharply. "Don't you understand? I murdered her, and I'm not about to do the same to Mary Ann!"

Ginger was approaching her boiling point.

"Murder is intentional. What you did wasn't intentional."

"I knew I couldn't perform the operation properly, and yet I tried to. I intentionally made that choice, so, in effect, I did murder her."

The redhead rolled her eyes. "Don't even go into the 'in effect' stuff. I have to meet the others back at camp, so I'm just going to leave you with this thought: you're the most qualified one of us to perform the operation, and, by refusing to do it, you're condemning Mary Ann to an almost certain death sentence. Does she deserve that?" Without waiting for a response, she got up and stormed away, not noticing the dark clouds already beginning to scud across the sky.

###

The Skipper panted as he drew aside yet another curtain-like layer of foliage, which, as usual, was generously supplied with spiders. No sign of the Professor. Granted, they'd barely had time to even begin looking for him, but things were beginning to look so bad for Mary Ann, they couldn't delay it any further.

He sighed, nervousness beginning to cluster in his stomach. He'd have to live up to his word to perform the operation and yet…

No. He couldn't think about that now. When the time came, he could focus on it. Right now he just had to concentrate on getting through this rough patch of jungle, back to camp.

He'd just worked his way through a fairly large clump of vines and was headed for a clearer area consisting mostly of trees when he felt the rain. Not just a drop, but a light torrent. Casting a glance at the sky, he was shocked to see that deep, dark clouds had turned the sky almost black. This storm must have been brewing for weeks…could it even be in typhoon territory?

A stroke of lightening cracked, thunder on its heel. He stood stock still, too shocked to move a muscle. Another bolt struck. This time it was closer to home.

Much closer.

It happened before his eyes in slow motion, and yet too fast for him to run or do anything but watch as a tree was snapped by the lightening, leaving only half of it rooted to the ground.

The other half was on him.