Lie Down With Lions Read Online Free PDF

looked adoringly at him. You’d rather eat me than your lunch, wouldn’t you? he thought. She shifted slightly, and the neck of her sweater gaped open, showing the lacy trimming of her bra. Jean-Pierre was momentarily tempted. In the east wing of the hospital there was a linen closet that was never used after about nine thirty in the morning. Jean-Pierre had taken advantage of it more than once. You could lock the door from the inside and lie down on a soft pile of clean sheets. . . .
    The brunette sighed and forked a piece of steak into her mouth, and as she began to chew, Jean-Pierre lost interest. He hated to watch people eat. Anyway, he had only been flexing his muscles, to prove he could still do it: he did not really want to seduce her. She was very pretty, with curly hair and warm Mediterranean coloring, and she had a lovely body, but lately Jean-Pierre had no enthusiasm for casual conquests. The only girl who could fascinate him for more than a few minutes was Jane Lambert—and she would not even kiss him.
    He looked away from the brunette, and his gaze roamed restlessly around the hospital canteen. He saw no one he knew. The place was almost empty: he was having lunch early because he was working the early shift.
    It was six months now since he had first seen Jane’s stunningly pretty face across a crowded room at a cocktail party to launch a new book on feminist gynecology. He had suggested to her that there was no such thing as feminist medicine: there was just good medicine and bad medicine. She had replied that there was no such thing as Christian mathematics, but still it took a heretic such as Galileo to prove that the earth goes around the sun. Jean-Pierre had exclaimed: “You are right!” in his most disarming manner and they had become friends.
    Yet she was resistant to his charms, if not quite impervious. She liked him, but she seemed to be committed to the American, even though Ellis was a good deal older than she. Somehow that made her even more desirable to Jean-Pierre. If only Ellis would drop out of the picture—get run over by a bus, or something . . . Lately Jane’s resistance had seemed to be weakening—or was that wishful thinking?
    The brunette said: “Is it true you’re going to Afghanistan for two years?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I believe in freedom, I suppose. And because I didn’t go through all this training just to do coronary bypasses for fat businessmen.” The lies came automatically to his lips.
    “But why two years? People who do this usually go for three to six months, a year at the most. Two years seems like forever.”
    “Does it?” Jean-Pierre gave a wry smile. “It’s difficult, you see, to achieve anything of real value in a shorter period. The idea of sending doctors there for a brief visit is highly inefficient. What the rebels need is some kind of permanent medical setup, a hospital that stays in the same place and has at least some of the same staff from one year to the next. As things are, half the people don’t know where to take their sick and wounded, they don’t follow the doctor’s orders because they never get to know him well enough to trust him, and nobody has any time for health education. And the cost of transporting the volunteers to the country and bringing them back makes their ‘free’ services rather expensive.” Jean-Pierre put so much effort into this speech that he almost believed it himself, and he had to remind himself of his true motive for going to Afghanistan, and of the real reason he had to stay for two years.
    A voice behind him said: “Who’s going to give their services free?”
    He turned around to see another couple carrying trays of food: Valérie, who was an intern like him; and her boyfriend, a radiologist. They sat down with Jean-Pierre and the brunette.
    The brunette answered Valérie’s question. “Jean-Pierre is going to Afghanistan to work for the rebels.”
    “Really?” Valérie was