“Yes, and of course, Father Thomas Aquinas sent you to Moses. They’re all connected. I think I met your Sister Annunciata in Rome a few years ago.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Nuns and religious sisters choose the best ecclesiastical names. Annunciata. Scholastica. Priests usually don’t choose such devotional names, and most keep their given names.”
“Anyway, Father Moses set me up with ski pants, a ski jacket, hockey gloves and liners, longies, thick socks, boots, everything. I was wearing half of it when I walked out of the airport in Kathmandu and about had heatstroke.”
Maxence chuckled and looked down, his thick eyelashes lying on his skin. “Southern parts of Nepal are covered by a subtropical rain forest. The climate here varies by region due to the altitude. Kathmandu is quite warm.”
“Yeah, it’s like winter in Phoenix.” She coughed because they were talking so much, and her throat felt a little abraded.
Maxence shot her a look. “Are you sick?”
“No, the air pollution is getting to me. It’s like Phoenix during a winter temperature inversion, when the air gets bad.”
He leaned over to a small dresser and opened a drawer. He removed some white half-domes and tossed them on the coffee table. “Those are N95 masks. Wear them around Kathmandu when you’re outside. Once we’re out of the city, the air becomes perfectly clean, so you won’t need them.”
Dree retrieved the masks and tucked them in her purse.
Max said, “Where we’re going will be colder, though. Much higher altitude. You’ll need your cold-weather gear.”
“He sent everything, even space blankets and thermal hand warmers.”
“At least you have gear. I’ll make inquiries,” Maxence sighed, “but I think if we want a medical professional on this trip, it will have to be you.”
“At least you know I really do want to be here.”
“There is that. I’ve headed a few projects where people were suckered or pressured into going. Most of them didn’t complain, but they weren’t happy they were there.”
Dree nodded. “So, we’re going to be together for a while.”
Maxence nodded, his eyebrows flicking up as if Dree had made the understatement of the year.
“I didn’t know that you were a deacon or a priest, or whatever you are, or that you wanted to be a priest when we were in Paris.”
Maxence’s shoulders lowered. “Yes, well, I didn’t tell you. That was my failing.”
“I’m not the kind of girl who sleeps with priests or even with guys who want to be priests.”
“I never thought you were.”
“So, that’s why you didn’t tell me?”
He shrugged, and he still didn’t look at her.
She said, “While we are on this mission, we need to keep it professional.”
He nodded. “I was just about to broach the same topic.”
“I mean, I’m a fun lay for a week or two, but I’m not the kind of girl you give up the priesthood for.”
Maxence looked at her first, and then he turned his whole body to face her directly. He leaned again with his elbows on his knees and didn’t look away from her eyes when he said, “Dree, chérie, I apologize for lying to you while we were in Paris. I should have told you that I aspire to the priesthood, and after I got you back to your hotel that first night, I shouldn’t have touched you. That was my weakness and my sin. I take full responsibility for everything that transpired. And even though I have every intention of becoming a priest, I want you to know that any man would be lucky to marry you. Francis Senft is a despicable human being for swindling you out of everything you owned, and he’s an idiot because he didn’t marry you and cherish you for the rest of his life. He didn’t know what he had. You are a beautiful, kind, wonderful woman, and if I didn’t feel that I have a real call and a vocation to become a Jesuit priest in the order of the Society of Jesus, I would’ve swept you up and never left Paris without you. You deserve a husband who will love you with his undivided heart, not a liar like me, and not an idiot like Francis Senft.”
Dree borrowed a phone and called Sister Mariam so she could spend the night at the convent instead of the rectory. Just because she and Augustine—no, Maxence—had come to some sort of détente didn’t mean that she wanted to be sleeping in close proximity to him before it became absolutely necessary.
At the convent, she and Sister Mariam sat on threadbare, goose-down cushions on living room couches in the convent and sipped cinnamon-scented milky tea.
Other sisters sat around them, chatting.
Sister Mariam asked, “Did he tell you more about the project?”
“I guess we will be spending most of our time in Jumla province, which he said is west of here?”
Sister Mariam’s eyes widened, but her eyebrows went down. “Jumla province?”
Other sisters around them, all of them wearing soft gray saris, turned and looked at Mariam and Dree.
“Yeah, that’s what he said. Is that a problem?”
Mariam addressed her sisters. “Andrea Catherine is a nurse practitioner. What can we give to her to take with them?”
With that, the nuns were up and moving. Several of them were dispatched to local hospitals and clinics to confer with other working sisters.
Dree was swept along in the crowd to several storage rooms in the back of the convent. After much discussion, several large cardboard boxes were stuffed full of medical supplies like sutures, courses of antibiotics, gauze and ointment, wound care supplies, a thermometer, stethoscope, ophthalmoscope, a sphygmomanometer for taking blood pressure, and vitamins, so many vitamins, single vitamins and multi-formulations, as powders, pills, tablets, and drops.
The other sisters returned, bearing more boxes. Some were taken to the kitchen to be refrigerated for the night.
Mother Superior Maria Devna told Dree, “Before you leave Sunday morning, you will wake us. We will pack the tetanus and other vaccines that have to be refrigerated. They should not freeze and should not get too warm, but you know this because you are a nurse.”
Dree pulled Sister Mariam aside and asked, “Am I going to need all these things? Are there hospitals where we’re going?”
Mariam shook her head sadly. “Jumla province is very poor. The cities are, of course, like cities everywhere, smaller versions of Kathmandu. There is an excellent training school for doctors and nurses near Chandannath, the Karnali Academy of Health Sciences. However, once you get out into the countryside, it is very bad. Some people do not see doctors for years, and many people die of things that they should not. You will take the supplies?”
“Of course, I will. I’m a nurse. I took an oath to treat people and save their lives.”
Mariam patted Dree’s hand. “It is much like the vows that we take. Indeed, a great number of nurses are also sisters because this desire to help someone is very close to God. I know you will be with Deacon Father Maxence, but he may not be with you every moment of the day.”
That was uncomfortably close to what Maxence had said. Dree suddenly had a little more trepidation about going out into the wilds of Nepal, even though she had grown up near the Mexican border in southwestern New Mexico.