Page 42 of Beneath Her Hands
“I love you, too,” Jane murmured and allowed sleep to claim her.
When she opened her eyes again, Rosalind was rummaging around in the kitchen. Jane slowly climbed off the bed and pulled a robe over her shoulders before heading into the adjoining living room.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Rosalind joked. Jane checked the time; it was four in the afternoon.
“Good morning,” she answered anyway.
“I have news,” Rosalind said and waved an envelope in the air as she stepped around the counter and closed the distance between them. She wrapped Jane up into a hug and kissed her gently but with excitement.
Jane lifted her eyebrows at Rosalind’s unusually cheery disposition.
“We’ve been accepted,” her grin was infectious, and Jane’s chest filled with excitement.
EPILOGUE
2 YEARS LATER
High in Ecuador’s Andean highlands, where mist clings to the jagged ridges like a shawl of silver and the thin air carries the scent of eucalyptus and damp earth, stands Hospital San Miguel, a lifeline for the forgotten. Perched at the edge of the small city of Santa Esperanza, the hospital is a testament to resilience, ingenuity, and the relentless compassion of Doctors Without Borders. It is not the sleek glass-and-steel monolith of a capital city but a patchwork miracle—part modern medicine, part makeshift necessity—built to serve those whom geography and circumstance often abandon. A place Rosalind understood better than most.
Rosalind and Jane had both fallen in love with Santa Esperanza. The city itself a place of contrasts. The city lies in a lush valley flanked by volcanoes whose snow-capped peaks pierce the blue like ancient gods. Cobblestone streets wind between pastel-colored houses with red clay roofs, their balconies overflowing with geraniums and orchids. Farmers from nearby villages arrive every morning with donkeys laden with potatoes, quinoa, and herbs, their weathered faces lined by sun and wind. Children chase stray dogs across the plazawhile vendors call out the price of freshly baked empanadas. To the east, the dense Amazon Rainforest begins its descent, a green sea stretching toward infinity; to the west, the road snakes upward to dizzying altitudes, eventually spilling down toward Quito.
Though this was not the first visit in the last two years by them, Jane was always amazed by the beauty of it all. The mountains at home were amazing, and she had originally worried that Ecuador would just be more of the same, but she could not have been more wrong. It was beautiful and colorful and so completely different from everything she had ever known. She was glad for Rosalind’s partnership as she learned how to traverse these new places and communities. She had also been surprised to learn that Rosalind was fluent in several languages, including Spanish, which was very helpful.
Rosalind, on the other hand, was shocked at how quickly Jane had learned to handle herself in new and different places. Though this was one they returned to often. The hospital sat on the city’s northern edge, where the valley narrows into a canyon carved by the Río Blanco. Its location was chosen deliberately: close enough to the main highway for ambulances to arrive from remote mountain hamlets, yet far enough from the bustling plaza to allow helicopters to land when emergencies demand rapid evacuation. From the air, Hospital San Miguel resembled a small fortress of compassion—low, whitewashed buildings with corrugated metal roofs and solar panels glinting under the equatorial sun.
Rosalind and Jane worked in the Emergency and Triage Pavilion, a long, airy hall with high windows to allow natural light. Patients arrived here first, carried on stretchers from ambulances or trudging in on foot. The space smelled of antiseptic, sweat, and occasionally the acrid tang of helicopter fuel when critical patients were airlifted. Color-coded curtainsdivide the bays: red for critical, yellow for urgent, green for non-life-threatening cases. A battered but reliable X-ray machine hummed in a corner, often running on borrowed power. A stark contrast to the hospital in Phoenix Ridge with separate floors for each of these and top-of-the-line machinery to assist the doctors with whatever they needed.
When necessary, which was a lot more often than they would have liked, they honed their skills in the Operating Theater and Sterile Wing, just beyond double steel doors. They were the only two operating rooms with stainless steel tables, portable anesthesia machines, and overhead LED lights. Though modest by urban standards, under their care, the theaters were impeccably clean. Walls were lined with labeled drawers containing scalpels, sutures, and carefully rationed antibiotics. A small sterilization unit, manned by local technicians, ran nearly nonstop.
Jane and Rosalind had spent nearly six months there during the current rotation, assisting the locals and bringing so much richness to their own lives. However, their time there was almost at an end, and though they would miss the Andean Mountains, a small part of Rosalind was ready to go home. She never thought she would feel that way, but suddenly the trip back to Phoenix Ridge was no longer frightening, it was no longer something she dreaded.
She and Jane had made the decision to join Doctors Without Borders, and to just see where they landed. They would spend six months abroad, then go back to the hospital in Phoenix Ridge for six months. Naturally, Dr. Mars had been hesitant, but the ingenuity that they were able to bring to the hospital from working abroad had only served the hospital well over time. They were able to find new ways of performing some of the most basic surgeries that saved time and made the patients lives easier.
They were leaving the day after tomorrow, but the locals of Santa Esperanza had decided to honor them. They were getting married. The village church, a modest stone chapel built centuries ago by local hands, stood at the edge of the plaza. Afternoon light poured through the window across the rough-hewn wooden pews, and wildflowers filled clay vases along the altar, their fragrance mingling with the beeswax candles flickering in the thin air.
Jane was dressed in the traditional skirts of the Ecuadoran village, ananocodyed dark blue with intricate beadwork. Rosalind wore her scrubs, but they were both beaming with pride. Father Ignacio, a village priest, welcomed the couple in both Spanish and English, honoring the mixed heritage of the community and the guests at the hospital. His words blended Catholic tradition with indigenous blessings, invoking Pachamama, Mother Earth, alongside the Holy Trinity. He spoke of marriage as a partnership of equals, a weaving of two lives like the warp and weft of the Andean textiles that clothed them.
When Jane and Rosalind exchanged vows, their voices were steady but full of emotion. Instead of rings alone, they also exchangedmaki watana—small woven cords tied around each other’s wrists—symbolizing an unbreakable bond. A cheer erupted as Father Ignacio declared them spouses for life, and the women shared a passionate kiss.