CHAPTER ONE

      WHAT CAN GO wrong will go wrong.

      Annabelle Richards had no idea who’d said that first but, boy, they sure were right. What should have been a ten-hour flight from Chicago to Lima, Peru, then another hour and a half travel to the mission hospital, had turned into a forty-eight-hour delay. She was finally in the back of a taxi, dead tired from lack of sleep and running late for what should have been the second day of her posting at the hospital but was now day one because of her delays. She was scheduled to start at 8:00 a.m. Just seven minutes away.

      She leaned forward to ask the taxi driver the same question she’d already asked a dozen times. “Are we close?”

      “Sí. Soon, señorita. Short minutes more.”

      Annabelle tried to relax back into the vinyl seat of the dusty cab, but the tightness in her gut kept her sitting upright. The entire surgical team was likely already annoyed, her lateness interrupting their carefully designed schedule and putting everyone behind on attending to all the patients they’d hoped to see. She could only pray that the first surgery scheduled this morning wasn’t something life-threatening.

      What if someone died because she wasn’t there in time to get them anesthetized and intubated? What if one of their small patients had gotten sicker yesterday while they’d waited for her, making today’s surgeries even more serious?

      How had everything gone so wrong all at the same time?

      First, the transport monitor she’d worked months to have donated for this trip had gotten locked into a storage room that no one had seemed to have the key for. A frantic hour had gone by before she’d finally retrieved it, then torn to the airport, panicking that she’d miss her flight. Which, of course, she had. Then weather delays and missed connections added to the disaster.

      Looking back, it was all her own stupid fault for being so determined to bring the monitor, instead of having it shipped. Except the whole reason she’d waited around to get it was because the last time she was here, a tiny premature baby had almost died without a monitor to check his heart rate and other vital signs.

      She could only hope that missing a day of surgeries because of it hadn’t resulted in a child dying anyway.

      She scrubbed her hands down her cheeks, her nerves practically screaming with the need to finally get to the clinic. Being physically there and on time was more important than equipment any day.

      Hadn’t she been told more than once that her dog-with-a-bone determination got her into trouble sometimes? This sure was one of those times, and the trouble just kept coming. The huge delay had meant she’d also missed her meeting at the hospital in Lima. A beyond important meeting that might have saved her old school from being shut down in a matter of months. And now her dream to turn the school into a medical training facility for impoverished youths just might be doomed to failure.

      Annabelle stared out the window at the passing landscape, wanting to distract herself before she went further into a panic spiral. The gorgeous, deep blue ocean and white sand beaches on one side below the road were in starkly colorful contrast to the green and brown mountains on the other side. Beautiful cliff-side homes and rickety shanties made of whatever hodgepodge of materials folks could get their hands on dotted the lush landscape.

      The poverty in her old neighborhood was more than real. But in so many ways it couldn’t compare to the tiny, leaky places so many people here in Peru called home. Whenever families heard the medical mission crews were coming to an area, they’d trek for miles, hoping their child would be chosen to receive surgery and care. They’d sleep on the ground and patiently line up for their children to be seen, and if they were told that their child couldn’t be taken care of, that there was no more room in the schedule, they’d smile and thank the doctors and nurses, saying they’d be back to try again next time.

      Helping those children was beyond important. Somehow, she had to find a way to get the meeting in Lima rescheduled so she could get the partnership and funding to give underprivileged kids a dream and a goal, while still taking care of as many patients needing surgery here as possible.

      The taxi driver finally turned off the main road, and she sat up straight again, relief surging through her veins as she recognized the landscape. “Is this it? Are we about there?”

      “Sí. Just up the hill a couple of miles.”

       Thank God.

      The cab lurched to a stop where the road ended, which left another five hundred or so feet to the small hospital OR. On an uphill slope she knew wasn’t easy to navigate, especially when it rained. “Just put my suitcase and the rest of the stuff on that rock there, please,” she said, pointing. “I’ll get it later.”

      He nodded and did as she asked before she stuffed a wad of money in his hand. Being in a position to give a generous tip to someone she knew needed it always awed her and thrilled her, after so many years of having nothing herself. “Thanks so much. Can you hand me the monitor so I can carry it easier?”

      The sketchy Spanish she’d been painstakingly learning, along with a few gestures, seemed to get her message across and he deposited the equipment into her wide open arms with a grin and a nod. “Adios.”

      “Adios! Thanks again.”

      Annabel turned to trudge up the hill, slipping a little on small stones as she went. Had the path always been this long? Huffing and puffing and only about halfway there, it felt very possible that her arms might crack off from the heavy weight of the patient monitor before she even got to the operating room. If she’d had any brains, she should have paid the man extra money to carry it for her. But since she knew everyone was waiting for her to finally show up, pausing to put down the awkward thing and catch her breath wasn’t an option.

      Thrashing herself all over again for not thinking this through, Annabelle heaved the transport monitor higher against her chest, praying she didn’t drop it before it could even be used. Wouldn’t that just be the icing on the disaster cake?

      Sweat rolled down her back, morphing from a trickle to a waterfall despite it being only about seventy degrees on an early March morning, and every hurried step seemed to add another pound to the weight in her arms. A few more lurching steps, and she topped the rise. Seeing the cement block building that made do as an operating room in this part of Peru would have her whooping if she’d had any breath left, but instead she sagged in relief.

      She’d made it.

      Trying hard to ignore the way the monitor jabbed her breasts and the sharply painful muscle twisting in her shoulder, she bit her lip to keep from cursing. Finally, she got the doorknob turned and the door shoved open with her shoulder.

      “So sorry I’m late,” she said breathlessly to anyone listening as she stumbled into the sparse room. “And that I missed yesterday, too. I hope you were able to take care of nonsurgical stuff since I wasn’t here but, still, I know it wasn’t good that I missed my flight. Really sorry about that.”

      Quickly scanning the space to take in the small assembly of medical professionals near the surgical bed, she saw the familiar face of a Peruvian nurse named Karina whom she’d worked