Adrian

Janey dances in the surf.

Earth, Wind, and Fire plays on the transistor radio I’d rigged up, but she’s lost in her own rhythm. Her lithe body is covered only by a white bikini that makes me want to haul my tired bones off the lounger and race toward her. To touch her skin that is wet and salty with the water of Kompong Som Bay, and kiss her. Her hair is tied back while we work in the tents—me in the emergency medical unit of the refugee camp, her in the communications center. Only at night, it’s down for me to tangle my hands in as she comes undone beneath me. But we have two whole vacation days—mandatory, as Dr. Kouchner insisted we take time off—and now Janey lets it free. The long gold strands catch the sun that is intense in a way I haven’t quite gotten used to.

“Come join me,” she says, kicking at the blue-green water.

“I can’t,” I say. “I haven’t lain down during the day in six months, and now I can’t move.”

“You moved well enough last night,” Janey says with a sly grin.

I once told her she reminded me of white beaches, blue water and a hot sun. California, maybe. Or Tahiti.

I never imagined Cambodia.

I glance over the white sands of the beach. It’s crescent-shaped, with green grasses thickening into forest behind us. The last vestiges of an American military installation is a good kilometer and a half down; the dark green of their Jeeps haul supplies from a small port. Their ships—one warship and the other cargo, sit on the still water, like toys from this distance.

Janey and I are alone. Or as alone as we can be with MSF’s base two kilometers up the road. Other personnel, also on leave, cavort in the surf too, but there seems to be an unspoken agreement to pretend that the other doesn’t exist.

I watch Janey, and as I do, no one else does exist. The Cambodian refugee crisis we’ve been working to help feels far away in that moment. I see only Janey and the heat drugs my exhausted mind, and drags it back to how we got here.

My father’s painting “Khmer” sold for one million francs. I used the money to find a home for him that was clean, professional, where he could be given the proper care and supervision he needed. The hospital has an art therapy program, and I’m hopeful that he’ll find and put back together the pieces of himself the war shattered in him.

My mother visits my father now. Every week. She writes me that it’s hard, and her guilt for abandoning him when he came back broken haunts her. I imagine her sitting with him while he paints or talks or does nothing at all, and though it might not seem as if she’s getting through to him, I know it matters.

Sophie, after persuading our mother, attends the Sorbonne now, studying political science. She doesn’t yet know what she wants to do, but she knows she can and will do something important, and that’s good enough for her.

Back in ’70, Paris Central won that final match I’d been banned from, and tied for third place at 48 points. Turns out, my season goal average gave them the edge and they advanced to Ligue 2. They’ve maintained their position there for years, but Robert has written to they are in the promotion zone. On their way to the Ligue 1.

A part of me aches at the news, like touching an old bruise. I could be with them, on a pitch with thousands of spectators who watch with their hearts and souls on the edge of their seat as they cheer for their team. Instead, I finished med school and joined Médecins Sans Frontières with Janey before the ink was dry on my diploma.

We’d been stationed in Cambodia for six months, tending to the sick and wounded Cambodians as they flee the Khmer Rouge. Saigon has fallen and three million people have fled, seeking asylum in China or Thailand. We are stationed to aid them on their journey. To see that they make it somewhere safe. Many won’t, but we won’t abandon them as they try.

But this day, only one of two days we were willing to take away from our duties, there is just Janey and this beach and me.

She beckons again and this time I haul myself off the ‘lounge chair’ I’d made from a broken military stretcher. I step out from under the dried palm frond umbrella and the sun beats down on the bare skin of my back.

Janey laughs at my grimace. “The water isn’t any cooler.”

“That’s because you’re in it,” I say, wrapping my arms around her waist.

“Are you trying to lay a line on me?” she laughs, reaching up to ring her arms around my neck.

“I’m trying to say you’re hot,” I say.

“Yeah, I get that but if you have to explain it…”

I tickle her to make her laugh, then haul her close. “I’m tired.”

Her smile softens and she trails her fingers over my scruff of my beard. “I know you are. You work so hard.”

“So do you.”

Janey works tirelessly, writing articles and taking photos of the crisis, and seeing they get published in the New York Times, Time, and Newsweek; as well as French and British publications. In between, she translates bulletins and memos for MSF.

She’s had bylines and photographs in some of the most prestigious publications in the world but hasn’t eaten a meal in a restaurant in three months.

But today, she’s mine, and if she regrets any of the work we do, it doesn’t show on her beautiful face.

“I’m happy,” I say. “Are you happy? It seems impossible some days, but in the quiet times, like this, it comes to the surface, how happy I am. With you.”

Her smile is brilliant and soft. “I’m happy. I’ve never been more happy.”

I kiss her gently, then harder, and when we break apart, the words fall out. “Marry me. Marry me, Janey. I have nothing to give you. No ring, no fancy proposal…I have nothing. But…”

“I told you a long time ago,” she says, her lips trembling and her eyes shining. My girl was tough, but for me, she gave everything. “What I want from you can’t be bought.” She leans close to kiss me. “Just you, Adrian.”

“Just you, Janey,” I say. “Will you?”

“Oui,” she says in my language and again in hers. “Yes, Adrian. I’m yours. Always.”

I kiss her then, and her lips are salty with the sea, or her tears, or maybe my own, and it is the taste of perfect happiness.