Doctor In the Andes (ebook)

Argumento de Doctor In the Andes (ebook)

Kara Noreno patted the mule’s shoulder with a gloved hand. ‘Not far now, Jose,’ she murmured in Quechua, the only language the mule understood. The animal stumbled, recovered quickly, and continued to skid and slither down the steep, rocky path.

Kara loosened the reins, giving Jose his head, and snuggled deeper into her heavy woollen poncho. Beneath her wide-brimmed hat she wore a close-fitting woollen cap with earflaps. With her long hair pushed up inside it, the cap made her head itch. But the combination of fine wool and thick felt was unrivalled protection against the biting winds and sudden rainstorms of the bleak, craggy slopes of the Andean highlands.

Wisps of cloud like grey ghosts touched her face with clammy fingers before drifting down the mountainside to veil the valley, hundreds of feet below.

Kara patted the mule again, the corners of her mouth lifting in a fond, sad smile as she recalled Luis’s bemusement at her choice of name for the animal. He had bought it for her after their visit to the famous market at Otavalo, centre of northern Ecuador’s wool district. They had also bought each other ponchos with the traditional red and blue design, and thick mantas: blankets worn by the women of the local population, the pueblos Quichuas , in which they wrapped themselves to sleep.

‘Now you are accustomed to the altitude you will come with me when I go to the hamlets and villages in the highlands,’ Luis had told her. Kara had been lucky. The saroche , or altitude sickness, that affected all newcomers to the country’s capital, Quito, one of the highest cities in the world, had only made her breathless.

Luis had told her of others prostrated by nausea, or by raging toothache caused by changes in pressure to air trapped inside cavities, which put an agonising “squeeze” on dental nerves.

‘Perhaps because you are a woman as well as a doctor,’ he had explained, ‘you will win the confidence of the local communities where I cannot.’

Kara had stroked the mule’s soft muzzle. It had a Roman curve which gave the animal a lugubrious expression, reminding her of a well-known actor. ‘I think I’ll call him Jose,’ she told Luis.

‘Why do you need to give it a name?’ Luis was puzzled.

‘Well, I can’t just call him “mule”,’ Kara protested.

‘Why not?’ He raised his eyebrows, turning his hands palm-up. ‘That is what it is.’

‘Well … because –’ she began, unable to provide a rational explanation ‘– because I’m English, and –’

‘That’s the way we do things in England,’ Luis had mimicked, a gentle smile on his aristocratic face.

Jose’s ears pricked and he picked up speed, sensing he was almost home. Kara arched her aching back and settled herself more comfortably in the saddle. She was so very tired. How much longer could she go on like this? It wasn’t just the problems with the Quichuas. Though heaven knew they were difficult enough to cope with. This trouble with Luis’s family – her mind shied away. It was too much to bear. She had lost Luis, and now she faced losing the clinic they had both worked so hard to establish.

Kara shivered and raised her eyes from the narrow, broken path. The light was beginning to fade. Deepening shadow imbued the mountains with brooding menace. Suddenly she felt small and inadequate and terribly alone.

Then in the distance the setting sun tipped a snow-capped peak with gold. Transfixed by its awesome beauty, Kara recalled that Ecuador had once been part of the vast empire of the Incas. They had revered gold as tears wept by the sun, their god. For the few minutes it took for the sun to set, that distant peak became a colossal monument to a long-dead civilisation.

Jose stumbled again, jerking Kara out of her reverie. Rounding a rocky promontory she saw, far below her in the gathering dusk, the clinic. She gave a wan smile. Clinic indeed! There was precious little difference between it and the huddle of thatched, stone houses belonging to the indigenous community on the other side of the fast-flowing stream.

As she drew nearer Kara could hear the pigs grunting and squealing in their pen. The half-dozen goats and sheep bleated and the stream splashed and gurgled over rocks, worn smooth by centuries of rushing water. The tang of woodsmoke was sharp on the cold, damp air, blending with the mouth-watering aroma of roasting meat and baked potatoes.

Passing between the low walls that separated the animal pens from the vegetable plot, the mule headed towards some rough stone outbuildings. With thatched roofs and wooden doors, they were smaller versions of the local houses.

Jose ignored the first door but stopped at the second, standing patiently while Kara slid stiffly from the saddle. She opened the door and led him into the crude stable. Luis’s mule, which she rode alternately with her own and which she had privately christened “No-Name”, whickered softly and nudged her.

Kara patted his flank as she turned from unfastening girth and chin strap. Hanging the bridle on a nail and the saddle on a wooden trestle, she looked in the trough to make sure the water was clean then went next door to fetch Jose his feed of crushed maize and horse beans.

Kara’s worried frown deepened as she saw how low stores of both were getting. She would have to turn the mules out to forage for whatever pasture they could find on the rocky slopes in the hope of conserving what was left in the sacks until the new crops were ready for harvesting.

Scooping up the saddlebags that contained her medical equipment, Kara crossed the rough path to the place she called home. As she lifted the latch she could hear Almeida scolding her long-suffering husband. Kara sighed. She could have done without that tonight.

For the past three days she had been out since dawn. Each day she had taken a different path, and each day she had visited all too few of the tiny holdings which clung precariously to the barren slopes. The people who lived in those bare stone houses, with their carefully constructed terraces and postage-stamp sized fields, could stand in their doorways and see Peru.

As always they had been sullen and suspicious, but they had not threatened her. By offering home-made fudge and biscuits as a reward, she had been allowed to examine the children. She was making progress. But it was slow.0