The Lies We Told by Diane Chamberlain

Author:Diane Chamberlain
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: contemporary women, Medical, Family Life, north carolina, Fiction, Literary, Women Physicians, Sisters - Crimes Against, Murder Victims' Families, Sisters, Rescue Work, General, Domestic Fiction, Sisters - North Carolina
ISBN: 9780778304425
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2010-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

27

Rebecca

“DO YOU MEAN THE TANGO?”

Rebecca was cleaning one of the gurneys with an antiseptic wipe, but she looked up at the sound of Adam’s voice. He was sitting on the other side of the classroom-turned-clinic with his patient, a woman well into her eighties, and he suddenly rose to his feet, holding his arms out to her.

“I’ve never done it,” he said. “Can you teach me?”

With a chuckle, the woman stood up and stepped into his arms. She began humming a tune, leading Adam as best she could around the cramped quarters of the room, dodging chairs and tables, the crash cart, a gurney, a wheelchair. Dressed in a purple jersey and beige pants, she took long, sultry steps, her slender, graceful body pressed close to Adam’s. Adam was awkward but game, and their smiles quickly spread throughout the room to the nurses, the volunteers, the patients. The man with the sprained ankle started to clap. The three-year-old girl with the black eye jumped up and down. Watching Adam, Rebecca felt close to smiling herself. He makes people feel good about themselves, Maya had once told her.

Yes, Rebecca thought. He does.

“Good God.”

Rebecca turned to see Dorothea standing behind her, an amused expression on her face.

“He is so outrageously inappropriate,” Dorothea said. “I love it.”

“I know.” Rebecca held her breath as Adam lowered his partner in a careful dip. “Me, too.”

Adam and the woman took their bows, and everyone applauded. The dance had lasted all of twenty seconds, and each second had taken a year off the old woman’s face. Rebecca didn’t know what had brought her to the clinic in the first place, but she was going to leave cured.

“So, aside from ‘dancing with the docs,’ how are things going in here?” Dorothea looked around the room. It was divided roughly into six examining areas staffed with physicians, physician assistants and nurses, with a couple of nurses doing triage near the doorway. “Looks like controlled chaos,” she said.

“Exactly.” Rebecca organized her tray of equipment as she spoke. “We’re waiting for some partition walls. Then we’re golden.”

It amazed her how much they’d accomplished in two days’ time. Practically overnight, the school had been transformed into a sort of refugee camp. Only part of the building was being utilized, because the generators couldn’t provide enough power for the entire school, but the environment was far more civilized than it had been in the airport. More generators were expected, and in a few days, the kitchen would be able to produce at least one meal a day.

Three of the classrooms had been transformed into clinics, one of them staffed entirely with volunteer mental health workers who were at least as busy as the medical staff. A smaller classroom housed a makeshift pharmacy, and a few more rooms were devoted to helping people find housing and cope with insurance headaches. It was hardly a happy atmosphere. Many of the evacuees had lost all they owned, and many others lived with the uncertainty of still not knowing what they’d lost.

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