Authors: Phoebe Conn
She slid her arm around his waist and unable to describe how frightened she was for him, she couldn’t put that level of terror into words. “I won’t ask you to stop, so please don’t ask me to go.”
She held her breath, praying he’d understand, but when he gave her a last hug and walked away, it was clear he didn’t. She wanted to call him back, but she couldn’t promise the only thing he’d ever asked of her. He wanted to show off for her. She understood his pride, but she couldn’t bear to watch him risk his life as afternoon entertainment for a bloodthirsty crowd. Tears rolled down her cheeks. If she lost him that afternoon, she’d never stop crying.
Chapter Fifteen
Carmen met Maggie as she returned to her room. Dressed in a black suit, she wore her usual stern, disapproving frown. “Even if you aren’t Catholic, you should come to church with us and pray for Santos.”
Her grandmother knew she cared for Rafael, but clearly wouldn’t include a Gypsy in her prayers. “Thank you, but I really don’t feel up to it, and my prayers will go just as far if spoken here.”
“If you know any,” her grandmother murmured and marched down the hall toward the stairs.
Maggie closed her door and leaned back against it. She only had today to survive, and tomorrow she’d make a reservation for the first flight out of Barcelona to the States. Maybe it was better this way. If Rafael wasn’t speaking to her, she didn’t have to worry about how she’d tell him good-bye without crying so hard she’d make a fool of herself. She’d just disappear from his life before he’d begun to miss her.
She topped her bikini with cropped jeans and her lavender shirt and took a fresh towel down to the beach. She carried the last of the books she’d brought along to read and intended to stay on the beach until late afternoon. There were shady places to sit so she wouldn’t be burned to a crisp, but what she really intended was to hide until a few minutes before five o’clock when the bullfights would begin. She wanted to see Rafael walk into the
Plaça de Toros
with the others and pretend he was waving to her. Spanish men were a handsome lot, but he would surely be the best looking, with Santos a close second. Her stomach was already clenched in a tight fist, and she still had hours to go.
She showered and changed into her colorful skirt with a low-necked black top and went to her father’s room at a quarter to five. He was awake, stretched out on his bed, leaning against a mountain of pillows and eager for the corrida to begin. He welcomed her with a wide smile.
“I thought you might have changed your mind and gone with my mother, Cirilda and Fox.”
“I’d rather watch as much as I can from here. You appear to be feeling well.”
“Yes, I am, but Antonio insisted upon having a private ambulance here. He’s afraid should Santos be hurt, I might risk driving myself to the hospital.”
“There’s an ambulance here?”
“Yes, parked in the driveway. The men with it will spend the evening watching the television in the lounge downstairs with Fernanda. At least, I think she’s here today. After a while, the nurses are difficult to tell apart.”
The television was set on the cable channel showing the bullfights, and Maggie silently counted down the minutes. “How many fights will there be?”
“Eight rather than the usual six, because Rafael has joined the other three matadors. Each man will fight two bulls.”
She had to swallow hard. “Two?”
“The fights are only fifteen minutes long, Magdalena. There are three five-minute parts, or
tercios
. In the first, the
tercio de varas
, you’ll see the matador mock the bull with his cape, and the
picadores
will weaken the bull’s shoulder muscles with their lances. During the
tercio de banderillas
, the
banderilleros
set their barbed darts, and in the final
tercio de muleta
, the matador returns to make the kill. It goes by very quickly. You’ll see.”
She’d eagerly studied the sequence as a child, which appalled her now. “All I want to see is Rafael and Santos enter the arena.”
“Take the chair close to me. It’s almost time.”
She recognized the trumpet fanfares, but the music was swiftly muted by the crowd’s frenzied roar. Filled with equal parts of excitement and dread, she couldn’t bear to watch more than the opening parade. The cameras were facing the matadors, banderilleros and picadores as they marched and rode in. Santos had worn red, and she recognized him instantly. He came in alongside the other two matadors who were in blue and purple, and Rafael, in his menacing black, strode in right behind them. The cheers grew louder as the crowd recognized him.
“He was very popular in Mexico,” her father murmured. “Let’s see if he can live up to it here.”
There were thousands there, so Rafael wouldn’t know if she were present or not, but she was truly torn to have disappointed him so badly. She left the easy chair meant for visitors and took a seat at the balcony table. “This is close enough for me.”
“If you insist.”
“Yes, I do.” She sat with her hands tightly clasped in her lap. The two matadors she didn’t recognize were first and second and while her father criticized their work with an occasional comment, they left the bullring without injury. Then Santos entered the ring, and the crowd went wild.
“How can you stand this?” she asked.
“It’s in our blood,
querida
. It’s a grand ritual, an elaborate sacrifice, perhaps our true religion.”
She could accept that Spain had a rich culture with a couple of centuries of the bloody spectacle now broadcast on cable for the world to see. However, history was a sorry justification in her view. She didn’t care if the bulls had enjoyed four placid years before their final tormented afternoon either. She still felt sorry for the lumbering beasts and sickened such huge crowds would gather to see men risk their lives for their amusement. She’d never share in their appalling thrill.
“Come watch a moment of Santos. He’s the best of the lot.”
She stood at the end of his bed and hugged the bedpost tightly. Santos had an agile step and moved so quickly the bull streaked by his cape again and again without coming near enough to do him any harm. She made her way back to her chair.
“Yes, he’s wonderful. I can see that.”
“Now you’ll have to watch Rafael so you can compare them.”
She was already so sick at heart, she doubted she could feel any worse, but after Santos made a quick and clean kill, she lacked the energy to stand and had to sit on the foot of her father’s bed to watch Rafael.
Santos had played to the crowd, but Rafael faced his bull as though they were the only two at the arena. She understood how well he’d absorbed Augustín’s lessons, but her father appeared perplexed.
“He’s showing us more than he did in the ranch video,” he said.
Rafael’s height and lean build gave his every pose an elegant line, but she’d quickly seen enough and retreated to the balcony. She checked her watch. His first tercio was nearly finished, but it lengthened endlessly in her mind. Her father dropped his water glass, and she hurried around the bed to pick it up. Empty, no water had been spilled.
“He’s surprised me,” Miguel whispered.
She filled the glass from the pitcher on the night table and handed it to him. “How?”
“I expected too little of him.” He took a sip of water and his hand shook as he handed her the glass. “Life is all a matter of luck.” He closed his eyes to rest a moment before looking up at her. “There is still time for mine to change.”
“What do you mean?”
He waved her off, and she sat down, confused by why he would refer to his own luck rather than Rafael’s. Then a truly horrible thought occurred to her. She immediately discounted it, but the pieces fit together too neatly to be ignored.
What he needed was a healthy heart.
Santos had said their father doubted he’d be the same man with another man’s heart, but what if he were given a matador’s heart?
What if he’d done all he could to increase his odds of securing a heart as brave as his own?
She circled his bed and spoke softly. “Was Rafael supposed to die this afternoon so you could take his heart?” When he stared up at her, the shock of her question shone in his dark eyes, as did the damning truth. She wondered when it had begun. Was his initial reluctance to endorse Rafael merely an act? Had he counted on Rafael to have more strut than skill? Had Ana worked with him to pit Rafael and Santos against each other in the hope Rafael would take careless risks to outshine her brother? It all made such logical and horrific sense, as did having an ambulance ready to rush Miguel to the hospital for a transplant if the right heart became available. She glanced at the television screen and saw Rafael’s bull dead in the sand.
“How lucky do you feel today?” she asked. “Would you be happy to take Santos’s heart if Rafael survives the afternoon but your son doesn’t?”
Miguel shook his head, opened his mouth to speak, then had trouble catching his breath. He gasped and clutched his chest, and she knew she’d gone too far. She’d wanted the truth, not to kill him, and she dashed out into the hall to call Fernanda. The nurse came flying up the stairs followed by the paramedics from the ambulance. There was oxygen in her father’s closet and a defibrillator. Tomas and the men from the kitchen heard the commotion and hurried upstairs as did Mrs. Lopez. They filled the hallway and peered around each other’s heads for the best view, while Maggie retreated to the balcony.
The paramedics worked on her father for several minutes, then one ran for a stretcher. When he returned, he shouted for the servants to clear the way, and he and his partner carried Miguel out to the ambulance.
Fernanda grabbed Maggie’s hand. “Come ride with us.” Maggie followed and sat with the driver while the nurse rode with the second paramedic in the back. It was a wild ride weaving through traffic, and frightened, she grabbed hold of the dashboard to remain steady in her seat. Once they’d reached the hospital’s emergency entrance, she was pushed aside and forgotten. Fear tightened her chest with a painful ache, and unable to sit, she paced by the waiting room windows. There were mothers with crying children waiting to be seen, and others with a variety of complaints who eyed her with curious glances. She owed no one an explanation, but her companions all sat forward to listen when Fernanda appeared, sobbing into her hands.
“He’s gone.” Despondent, the nurse threw herself into Maggie’s arms.
Maggie patted her back and helped her to a seat. Her father had been stricken and died in little more time than a bullfight tercio. Her question had killed him, surely it had. Stunned but unable to mourn, she sat with the distraught nurse, her eyes dry and her senses seared numb. She was the only one who knew the truth of what had happened, but she dared not tell a soul.
Dr. Moreno ushered Maggie and Fernanda into a private waiting room. “You mustn’t weep so, my dear. You were a fine nurse for Miguel. He knew how precarious his health was, but I’d hoped he’d have more time to tell everyone he loved good-bye.”
Maggie understood. Wasn’t that why she’d been summoned to Spain? Or had she been part of the plot to complicate Rafael’s life? That would mean they’d both been used in an attempt to extend her father’s life. The doctor regarded her with an odd gaze, perhaps because she showed no sign of loss. She couldn’t have conjured up a tear had she tried.
Half an hour passed before Carmen and Cirilda rushed into the room, with Fox trailing. They’d been called to the hospital as they’d left the corrida, but it wasn’t until Dr. Moreno began to offer his sympathy that they understood Miguel was dead.
Carmen would have struck Maggie a backhanded blow had the physician not moved quickly to block her way. “What did you do to him?” she cried. “We left him with you for an afternoon, and now he’s dead. What did you do?”
Fernanda wailed even louder. Maggie stood, but she had no real defense. She had killed him. She’d been terrified someone would die that afternoon, but she’d never expected it to be her father.
Fox waited in the background. He caught Maggie’s eye and nodded. When he could make his way past Carmen, he came to her side. “What does she think you did?” he whispered softly.
Maggie had no idea but guessed the truth probably wasn’t among her grandmother’s suspicions. Cirilda was weeping softly, and Dr. Moreno ushered her and her mother across the hallway into another private waiting room.
Fernanda wiped her eyes on a tissue and hiccupped. “You’ll tell her we did all we could, won’t you?” the nurse asked.
“Yes, I will. She’s mad at me,” Maggie replied. “She won’t blame you. Do you have a supervisor who should be informed?”
Fernanda nodded and dissolved in another bout of tears. Maggie sat down again to hug her. “It all happened so fast, and you came running when I called.”
“I should have been with him,” the nurse moaned. “But he was only watching the bullfights. He wasn’t doing aerobics.”
The three of them hadn’t moved before Santos came limping into the room. He was still wearing his red suit of lights. His right calf was bandaged, and his blood-stained pink sock drooped around his ankle.
“You were hurt?” Maggie asked, panicked anew.
“The bull’s horn scraped my leg as he went down. It’s nothing. I was told father had been brought here. Where is he?”