Chapter 16

Don Alejandro had gone home. Diego, as for him, was about to spend a second night without getting any sleep. So, since he wouldn't sleep at all, he may as well enable Victoria to do so. After all, this stranger was nothing to her, and Felipe was a young man of her acquaintance, but not a relative of hers! So yes, it was his duty, his responsibility to watch over Felipe's best interests, and therefore to see to this woman's recovery.

And here's why he found himself here, sitting at the patient's bedside in the middle of the night, or going back and forth from her bed to the window where he could see the stars and the crescent moon. The same stars and the same moon Felipe was probably seeing too at the same moment if, as Diego feared, he wasn't sleeping either...

He took out his pocket watch from his waistcoat and went back to the bedside table on which a tallow candle was lit. In the flickering light of the flame he could read the time: almost half past one. Not a sound outside. Neither inside. The tavern was plunged into quietness. Next room, right on the other side of the wall he was standing so close to, Victoria was probably peacefully sleeping.

Ahem... Diego cleared his throat. Better not think about Victoria in her bed just a few feet away from him... just behind that wall...

At this thought and while he was totally unaware of it, he had softly put his hand flat against the wall he was now facing, as if picturing in his mind's eye what there was to see through it... Realising this, he quickly withdrew his hand, as if the wall was burning hot. He turned back to the stranger's bed and his eyes settled on the armchair Victoria had brought for him, so that he'd be almost comfortable while he watched over the patient.

He had a grateful thought for her, especially as she had improved it with a few extra cushions and blankets to soften his posture, while herself had spent the previous night sitting on a mere wooden chair.

As he sat back down and resumed reading the book he had brought with him to kill time and prevent himself from sleeping, the stranger – this mysterious L.A. – began to grow restless. It started with a few low moans of discomfort that Diego tried to alleviate by dabbing her forehead with a cloth dipped in cool water.

After a quarter of an hour she seemed to calm down, but the respite was short-lived. After a few minutes of quiet, the moans resumed, a bit stronger, a bit more uncomfortable. Her features tensed and she began to toss and turn from side to side in her bed.

Diego shook her gently to try to wake her up, then a bit more vigorously, but to no avail: she got even more agitated, seemingly struggling both against what was currently occupying her unconscious mind, whatever it was, and now against Diego.

— Nnnn… Nnnnno! she let out weakly.

Pressing his hands against her shoulders Diego pinned her gently but firmly, but she kept unconsciously shaking her head on the pillow, keeping mumbling some faint 'no' to an invisible interlocutor against whom he could neither fight nor defend her, for the simple reason that this unknown enemy wasn't physically in the room but only in her unconscious mind.

"Señorita," Diego called trying to wake her, "Señorita!"

But she remained unconscious, merely calming down a bit. After all, perhaps the presence of someone at her side and a voice trying to break through the mists of her nightmare had some soothing effect on her?

Now that she was a little less restless, Diego could lay his hand flat on her forehead: it was still warm and sweaty, but the fever didn't seem to have worsened.

Diego then thought that, even if there was no reason she'd understand what people would be telling her right now, he had to try. After all, even if it didn't do any good in the end, it wouldn't hurt either! And all this silence was beginning to weigh down on him.

"Señorita, please, come back to us!" he tried. "A young man is in great need of your help. He's counting on you. I am counting on you."

She didn't react.

"And your kith and kin... Think of those who love you and whom you love... Hold onto this, I beg you!"

Still no reaction.

After a quarter of an hour and two chapters of his book, Diego's reading was disturbed by... he pricked up his ears... by... yes, that was really what it was! Very light snores!

He looked up from his book to settle his eyes on the woman: yes, the faint snoring sound was right in step with her breathing, with the rhythm at which the blankets were rising and falling over her chest. He could even see that her lips were slightly parted on the left. She seemed to be sound asleep, but peacefully so.

He arched his eyebrows: snores! Not very ladylike…

Stupidly enough, he then reflected, never before had he imagined that women too could snore sometimes… especially when sick.

Smiling at his own ingenuousness, he turned his attention back to his book.

One hour later, she started to grow restless and to mumble in her sleep again. Her current nightmare did not seem any more pleasant than the previous one, quite the contrary:

"Nnnn... Wha're you… Let g'of–"

While Diego was wringing out the wet cloth he was about to lay back on her forehead, she mumbled again:

"Nnnn… Don' shoot'..."

Shoot? Diego suspended his gesture. Or wasn't it rather shout? But what on earth was she dreaming about?

He mopped and dabbed her face once again to cool her down, after what, satisfied to see her calm down, he sat back in his chair. It seemed to him that her forehead was a little less hot, her cheeks a little less red. But wasn't it just because the water was cool and the candlelight was dimming through a weakening of the flame?

Ensconced in his armchair he resumed his reading, lulled and reassured by the rhythm of his patient's still heavy but more regular breathing.

z~z~z~z~z~z~z

Oww... Ouch... Gnnn ... What's that light?

Grrr... had someone opened the curtains? But who? Or had she forgotten to close them when she went to bed?

In any case, she felt the bright morning light assault her eyes through her closed eyelids. And just that little bit of brightness was apparently enough to give her a throbbing headache.

Oww... why was she having so much trouble opening her eyes?

And then there was her shoulder... her left shoulder felt very painful...

She tried to turn her head away from the source of this bothersome light to shield her eyes from it and sleep a little longer, but to no avail.

And... how strange! Wasn't usually her bedroom window on the other side of the bed? So where did this light come from?

Pfff, really, she wasn't very clear-minded this morning. Headache, confusion... and yet she had not overdone the bottle the night before... from what little she remembered, anyway.

By the way, what exactly did she remember?

Her last memory... She searched her mind, racked her brains, dug, insisted...

It was a blur. Anyway, she now had to get up, there was much to do today. And a trip... yes, that's right, a trip to prepare. Los Angeles. The mission priest's invitation. Things still seemed blurry, but a little less so.

Well, well, enough with idly lying in, she had to get up. If the daylight was that bright, then it was probably already quite late in the morning, and she was certainly late herself. If only her head could throb a little less!

Slowly, carefully, she opened her eyes. Gradually, she grew accustomed to the light suffusing the room.

She then turned her head to the left.

Goodness! There was a man in her bedroom. And in an armchair at that, not in her bed. But more importantly: an unknown man in her room! He was asleep, his mouth half-open…

She set her eyes on her surroundings. Oh... she then thought. Correction: not her bedroom.

Hence the window on the wrong side, at least some things were beginning to make sense.

She turned her attention back to the unknown Sleeping Beauty: slumped in an armchair next to her bed, with his head hanging to the right side – he would have a sore neck when he awakes, for sure! – and his legs uncomfortably half-stretched out as best as he could, the poor man seemed far too tall to be sleeping in a chair.

Anyway, the stranger was still asleep. And, she then noticed, he was even snoring! Not very loudly, she reckoned – otherwise she would have woken up much earlier, she had a very low tolerance to snores – but still! And to top it off, she noted not without some amusement that a slight trickle of drool was running from the corner of his mouth and was creating a damp patch on his blue jacket.

Well-made fine clothes, she noticed. He looked well-groomed and rather dapper. Mid-thirties, perhaps? Yes, probably.

But when it came down to it, who he was was for now just a detail. No, for now the real question was: where was she?

Oh, and also: how did she get there? Well, he would certainly have the answer to that question. Slowly, carefully, she got her right arm out from under her blankets and reached out to the man. Rather tentatively at first, she patted his knee in an attempt to rouse him from his slumber. Seeing that it proved ineffective, she made her tapping motion a bit more insistent.

Meanwhile, now that she was more awake the haze of sleepiness was lifting, and some things began to become clearer and to come back to her mind. Los Angeles, the trip... she wasn't home anymore, she had already left for her trip and had even travelled a good deal of the way.

Yet she did not remember arriving. Was she even in Los Angeles?

But what was this place? this bedroom?

How did she get there?

Who was this man beside her?

Oh, and... now that the headache was subsiding a bit... why was her left shoulder hurting that much? And her right thigh?

At this thought, snippets of memories came back to her mind. Pictures, mainly.

A young man... A knife... A scorpion... A fall from a horse... the knife in the young man's hand... his hands on her shoulder... sharp pain... venom... pain... oh Dios!

She shook the man's knee with renewed vigour. Who was he? Where was she? How did she get there? What was the extent of her injuries? She had questions, he would have answers.

Or so she hoped.