But that didn’t explain why a kid in a rural village was open carrying… unless the intel was seriously wrong.
I stayed extra close to Carter once we entered the small home. My eyes were constantly on the move, and I immediately looked for alternate exits and sketched out escape plans. I was almost positive it was an overreaction, but my gut didn’t usually ping unless there was trouble.
It was a low-key ping, but it was there.
I pulled out my cell phone and wasn’t surprised to find no service. The satellite phone was in my emergency kit. I rummaged through the bag until I found it and slid it into a pocket in my pants just in case. I also checked the knife I always had strapped to my calf as well as the Glock 19 I’d smuggled into the country and carried at my lower back. I went ahead and slipped an extra mag of ammunition in another pants pocket while Carter was busy making nice with the old lady on a bed in the corner of the one-room house.
After bringing the medical supplies closer to Carter, I took another peek outside from one of the front windows. Marisol watched me pace between windows. When I turned to ask her to make sure her friend wasn’t leaving with the truck, I noticed her biting her lip nervously.
“¿Que pasando?” I asked in a low voice.
“You’re making me nervous,” she said. “You’re a soldier?”
I shook my head. “No. Only the doctor’s helper.”
She didn’t believe me, but she nodded anyway before wandering back over to help translate for Carter and the abuela. It was obvious the older woman was very sick. Carter gave her some oxygen from the small portable bottle we’d brought and connected the EKG leads while reassuring her in a measured voice with simple words like “Está bien” and “Càlmate.”
I couldn’t deny the man had a stellar bedside manner. He was kind and gentle, patient and considerate. I could see why he’d become a doctor and why he’d done so well at Vanderbilt in Nashville. It was less obvious to me why he’d moved to Great Nuthatch in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee. I couldn’t imagine what about the place appealed to a blue-blooded guy like him. But listening to his stories about his friends—and their pig—and seeing how hard he worked to make a difference… maybe it wasn’t such a stretch to see why he fit there.
After a few minutes, I heard Carter laugh. I turned away from the window and watched his face flush with mirth. “No,” he said. “No…” He looked up at Marisol as if searching for the right word. The young woman rolled her eyes and blushed.
“No casado,” she said, looking away.
Not married.
I glanced back out the window and noticed everyone had gone back to not paying us much attention. Yul, the guy who’d driven us up the mountain from Gelada, had come into the house and helped himself to a pitcher of chicha, a sweet, refreshing rice drink. I heaved a sigh of relief knowing our ride hadn’t taken off without us.
Carter spoke to Marisol. “Tell her she’s not my mother so she doesn’t get to tease me about getting married.”
I watched him continue to work. He was paying closer attention to the old woman on the bed than he appeared to be. Tiny wrinkles of concern bracketed his mouth the way they’d done when he’d diagnosed a small child with pneumonia a few days ago.
After he consulted the portable EKG, he met my eyes across the tiny room. I knew without him needing to say it the news wasn’t good.
I stood and walked over to him. “What do you need?” I asked softly.
The sadness in his eyes was a punch to the gut. “She needs a cath lab, but…”
I already knew what he was going to say. Even in the large city of Caracas, the wait list for a procedure like that was incredibly long, and the patients often had to source their own supplies and medicine. There was no way this woman, who probably hadn’t ever been further than twenty kilometers from home, was going to make it hundreds of kilometers to a city big enough to have a cardiac facility.
I squeezed his shoulder. “Baby aspirin?” I murmured. We’d brought a large supply since it was a simple and cheap method to help prevent stroke and heart attack. It certainly wouldn’t cure her heart disease, but it might give her a little more time.
Carter nodded. I turned toward the trauma backpack and pulled out one of the large bottles of generic low-dose aspirin while Carter explained the treatment. We had labeled the bottles with preprinted stickers in Spanish, but Carter liked to make sure patients understood the danger of the medicine to children especially.