Beautiful(61)

They interviewed Dick Dennis extensively, and Véronique briefly, since she played the smallest role there and she was newly arrived. She said how much it meant to her to be there, and how it had changed her life, after the attack in Brussels. She said it was the first thing that had given new meaning to her life.

And knowing what they had done before, Véronique was sure that they would make a beautiful show out of it, and it would help everyone at Saint Matthew’s.

She and Dick talked about it before he left, after the TV people had gone back to Paris. He thanked her for making it happen. He was leaving in two days, and hated to go home. His heart was in Africa, with the children who needed his help.

“How long do you think you’ll stay?” he asked her. It touched him that her time there meant so much to her. It had done for her what he hoped it would and brought her back to life. An even more purposeful life than she’d had before, with deeper meaning.

“I’ll stay until I’m ready to go back to Paris,” she said quietly. “I’m not yet. I have no purpose there anymore, no reason to go back for now.” He nodded. He had understood that. She was healing here in Angola, and he was glad he had suggested she come.

The next doctor in the rotation had already arrived that day. Dick was handing over the relay to him, and filling him in on all their patients. He was another plastic surgeon, from London.

“I won’t be back here again till January,” he said to Véronique before he left. “Maybe you’ll still be here then.”

“Maybe,” she said vaguely. “I have to go back sometime. I can’t decide when yet.” She hadn’t told him that she wanted to make a large donation to the hospital, and she was going to. She had already sent Chip an email about it. He asked her how she was doing, and she said she was fine.

“You did more to heal me than anyone so far,” she said to Dick, “by bringing me here.”

“That’s what I was hoping when I suggested it.” He smiled at her. “Your face is looking good too. I’ll tell Phillip.” Most of all she had learned to live with it. She hadn’t even covered it with much makeup when she was on TV. What Doug had said for months had finally sunk in, and what Patrick had said when she talked to him about it. He had sent Dick an email telling him that his article had sold to the London Sunday Times Magazine and would be out in a few weeks.

“Well, don’t stay in Africa forever,” Dick told her when he left. “Come to New York to visit.” But she had even less there than in Paris. She had a place to live there.

“Maybe I’ll stay another month or two. I’m not ready to go back. I’d like to do what you do, and come here a few months a year. I’d like to come on your rotation.”

“That’s usually January through March, give or take a month.”

“I might spend Christmas here. I have nowhere to be for the holiday now. This would be a good way to spend it.” He nodded.

“You’ll find your way again, Véronique,” he assured her. “You already are. When everything falls apart like that and ends, you have to find a reason for living again. I think maybe you just did.”

“I’m not so sure how great my reasons were before. It’s kind of empty living off your beauty as the mainstay of your existence. I couldn’t have done it forever. You don’t think about things like that at eighteen or nineteen or even at twenty-three, unless something big happens to make you reevaluate your life.”

“You can get involved in a project like this one, and really make a difference. Everyone loves having you here. And you helped us enormously with the television show. It will give us credibility when we ask for donations. That’s all thanks to you.”

She was sad to see him go the next day, and so were the others. But the doctor who took his place was young and dynamic. He’d been spending a month at Saint Matthew’s for the past two years, and Véronique liked him.

She thought of going back to Paris in July, but decided to wait until the end of the summer. She had nowhere to go on vacation and no one to go with. She and her mother always went to the South of France every year, and she didn’t want to go alone, or to the same place without her mother. The year before she’d still been in the hospital in Brussels. The time she had spent there had begun to seem surreal to her now, as though it had happened to someone else, a person she didn’t even know anymore. She had changed so much in the last sixteen months. It took the time it took, and you couldn’t control it. Angola was so beautiful. She loved it more every day. It had a kind of savage beauty, and the conditions there were hard. But the people had a gentleness and innocence that she loved. She tried to describe it to Doug in emails, but she couldn’t. It spoke to her in ways that nothing ever had before.

She had found herself there after being lost for a year. She felt as though she had returned from the grave, and she didn’t want to lose that again when she went back to Paris. Her life had too little meaning there, too little substance. Her mother was the glue that had held her life together and gave it depth and meaning. And now she was gone and there was nothing to replace it.

Chip had emailed her and told her he was coming to Paris in September, and she wanted to be there to see him and show him around. So she thought she’d leave at the end of August. She would have been there for four months by then. She thought maybe it was long enough for now.