I laughed, gave him my hand, and he helped me up.
Surprise.
We strolled past our prepubescent guards, holding long guns, and stepped through the gates and outside, into the flat, monochromatic landscape.
To the right of the gates was a thin copse of dead trees that had been stripped of bark, which had been used as firewood. Beyond the trees was the sluggish tributary with steep banks during the drought, a trap for the women and girls who went for water and were cornered there, raped, and sometimes killed, more often than we could track or remember.
Colin and I turned left and walked parallel to the bullet-pocked concrete wall. There was a road out there, which flooded during the rainy season. Now it was a dusty, rutted track that connected the next-closest village, a hundred miles away, with the gates to our settlement.
Colin put his hand lightly to the small of my back. He said, “I must apologize, Brigid.”
I turned to look at him. He looked beat-up and out of gas. Still, I loved looking at his handsome face. I loved the way he was looking at me.
“Apologize for what?”
“For being such a rude bastard. For losing my temper today. For being inconsiderate to you.”
“Colin, you’re not that bad.”
“Nice of you to say, but I’m trying to apologize, for Christ’s sake. I need to.”
“Well, all right, then. I accept. You bastard.”
He laughed. I did, too. I forgot how achy and hungry and fatigued I was. Laughing with Colin was a new experience, and I liked it. A lot. I stepped in a little closer, and Colin put his arm around me, rested his hand at my waist. My arm went around him too.
And Colin kept talking.
“I want you to know something about me, Brigid. About ten years ago, when my daughter, Rebecca, was nine, something went wrong. We took her to our family doctor and then to the best neurologist around. And then to another neurologist in London. That was where we got an explanation for her headaches and seizures.
“Rebecca had a brain tumor in a very bad place. We were told it was inoperable, but I didn’t accept that. Well, why would I? I loved her, dearly. And I had this genius brain and my very talented hands.”
I nodded, and we kept walking north, our own path between the wall and the road. The streaked sky was like sundown over an ocean, or so I imagined it. The waning sun mirrored the sadness in Colin’s voice.
“I looked at her films,” he said. “I consulted with the cowards who refused to do the operation, then I signed the disclaimers and did the operation myself.”
He said, “Rebecca died on the table. It was horrible. I couldn’t bring her back, and, trust me, I did everything imaginable. After that, my wife divorced me. And from that point on, I divorced myself—from feeling anything.”
And then he stepped away from me, shook his head, wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands.
“No excuse for bad manners, Brigid. But there’s the backstory,” he said.
I was looking for the right words to thank him for trusting me, to tell him that I was sorry for what he’d been through. I was forming some questions, too, but I never got the chance to ask them.
Chapter 11
ONE MINUTE, Colin and I were walking along the wall, toward the village. A moment later, trouble sped out of the dark. Tires squealed, and high beams bounced and flashed over the ground. The sound of whooping male voices and bursts of gunfire got louder as the all-terrain vehicle headed directly toward the gate to our settlement.
Which meant that it would drive right past us.
My feet wouldn’t move. I was utterly frozen in the headlights, but Colin, thank God, had wits enough for us both. He pushed me down and fell on top of me so that we were against the wall, faces to the ground. The deadly chattering of gunfire, the war whoops, and the roar of the motor were too close, and too real.
I didn’t think to pray. I was remembering the stacked bodies outside our gates, and then, while bullets pinged into the wall right above my head, my mind was flooded with vivid images of people I would never see again.
The gunfire amped up and seemed to come from all directions. Shouts turned into screams, and then the racing motor struggled, as though the vehicle was trying to get traction in the dirt. Wheels spun furiously, and then, finally, the wheels grabbed the ground, and the vehicle sped back the way it had come.
There was total silence. My eyes were still covered. I was still pinned by Colin’s body, and now I was aware of his breath on my cheek, his elbows in my back, the whole weight of him.
And then he rolled off me.
“Brigid. Say something. Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
He helped me up, and boys from our camp flowed around us, all of them bright eyed and exhilarated.
The one grabbing at my arms was Andrew.
“Did you see? We stopped them. I shot one of them. I shot out the tires, too.”
“Thank you, young men,” Colin said. “You saved us. You saved our arses.”
I was still panting from adrenaline overload, and blood was hammering against my eardrums. Colin was talking to me, but I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.
I looked into his eyes, and he said it again.
“I’m sorry, Brigid. I’m a damned fool for taking you out here. You should get the hell away from me.”
And then he put his arms around me and held me against him from hip to toe and back up to where my cheek rested against his collarbone.
He said, “I’ve wanted to do this from the moment I first saw you.”
I didn’t say it, but I’d had the same thought since the moment I first saw him.
Chapter 12
THE YOUNG men and boys circled back, jumped up and down around us, laughing, one of them, Nadir, shouting out, “Ba-bam. Ba-bam-bam. I got you. I killed you, dead.”
Nadir was about fourteen, spunky and irrepressible, even in a place as hopeless as this. He had befriended the doctors and often went on supply runs to the village with Colin and Jimmy. Now he volunteered to escort us back to the gates.
“Doctors. Stay close to me. Please pick up your feet and keep up.”
“Right behind you, Nadir,” Colin said. “Lead the way.”
Nadir said, “Dr. Whitehead. Next time we go for a run, I sit in the front seat. Shotgun, right?”
“Okay.”
“You fixed my arm. You remember?”
“I’ve fixed a lot of broken arms,” said Colin.
“Look at it again.”
Nadir pulled up his sleeve to show off a shiny scar. Then he made the scar jump when he flexed his muscle.
“Nice,” said Colin. “I did a pretty good job.”
By the time we had walked through the gates, my heart rate had slowed. Nadir waved good-bye and drifted into a pack of other young men. Colin took my hand, which caused my heart to pick up speed again.
We walked the dirt track toward our compound, acknowledging the waves and hellos from people crouched outside the tukuls at the edge of the track. But I couldn’t think of anything to say to Colin that wouldn’t sound forced or lame.
When we got to the women’s dorm, Colin took both my hands and looked at me as though he was looking into me. I thought maybe he would kiss me again. Maybe he’d come up with an awkward excuse to come inside my toaster oven of a room.
But, no.
He released my hands and said, “See you in the morning, Brigid. Sleep well.”
“You too, Colin.”
I watched the target on his back recede, and when Colin had rounded the corner of the building, I went inside. I washed and prepared for sleep, and I pushed thoughts of Colin Whitehead out of my mind. I prayed.
Thank you, Lord, for giving me another day, for saving Colin and me and all of those brave little boys. Please bless this camp and give us the strength to care for these good people. And please speak a little more plainly. I’m not sure what I’m meant to do.
I had just said amen w
hen there was an urgent knock on my door.
Was it Colin?
I cracked the door. It was a little girl in a thin dress, her hair in braids, a very worried look on her face. Jemilla.
“Honey, I’ve told you. I need to sleep, and I really can’t rest when you are in bed with me.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “The BLM soldiers have pulled up their tents and left, Dr. Brigid. I found this stuck between the links in the fence. I don’t know who to give it to.”
On a sheet of plain paper was written the letter Z. This was the signature of Colonel Dage Zuberi, the leader of the Grays, the man who had directed massacres across sub-Saharan Africa and the one who was behind the recent slaughter of our BLM soldiers.
The note was stark and unambiguous. We were marked for death. I opened the door wider, grabbed Jemilla by the arm, pulled her into my room, and shut the door.
Chapter 13
IN THE morning, Jemilla was standing by the door frame, and Sabeena was shaking me awake. There was an expression on her face that I’d never seen before.
It was horror.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“They killed him,” she said. “They shot Nadir and hung him over the barbed wire.”
“No,” I said.
Sabeena handed me a bit of paper, telling me that it was in the chain-link fence under Nadir’s body. On the paper was the zigzag mark of the devil himself, Colonel Zuberi.
What was it that we were supposed to do?
How could eighty thousand people move out of what Zuberi considered his territory? There was no place to run or hide. Would he really shoot us all?
I told Jemilla, “Stay here.”
“I’ve seen this before,” she told me. “I’ve seen worse.”
Sabeena, Jemilla, and I walked to the gates, and there, horribly, the boy who had been so happy last night had been thrown across the top of the wall. His eyes were open, but he was gone.
“Please,” I said to a few of the taller boys. “Get him down. Right now.”
Nadir had no family, and so Sabeena, Berna, and I washed and wrapped his body for burial in the spot we used as a rough cemetery, not far from the hospital.
I was raging at the brutal death of this sweet, funny boy. I silently raged at God as I handled Nadir’s body with my shaking hands. I think a kind God, a loving God, would forgive me for being furious. Why had this boy been killed? Had Nadir been too brave? Taken too much of a risk? Or was his death as senseless as it would have been if he had died of starvation or disease?
Later, as we were dressing in our surgical gowns, I spoke to Berna, a clever and kind and tremendously competent nurse who was twenty years older than me.
“My God, Berna. How can you endure this day after day?”
“What choice do I have, Brigid? You will leave, and I will stay. These are my people. This is my home.”
Inside the dining hall, outside of my hearing, calls went back and forth to Cleveland, and discussions were held. I did my job, but I was jumpy. I pulled a chest line out of a young man without inverting his bed. Sabeena heard the air sucking and, thank God, sealed the wound with Vaseline before harm was done.
Colin was back in the O.R. by then. He saw what I had done. I expected him to shout at me, to call me an imbecile.
He said, “Get some water, Brigid. Take a little break and come back.”
I walked toward the dining hall, passing so many starving people, now under threat of being murdered for no reason by a primitive despot with nothing but time, money, and raging young men to do his dirty work.
It was a sin. It was all sinful.
And there was no end to it.
Chapter 14
THROUGHOUT THE day of Nadir’s death, thousands of displaced people arrived at the gates to the settlement. I could see them coming to us by way of the long road, with bundles on their heads, children in their arms. When they reached the gate, they spread out along the base of the wall where a strip of shade provided some relief from the hundred-and-fifteen-degree heat.
These people had walked for weeks, even months, to get to us, and, tragically, we had no room. The tukuls were crammed. Tarps had been strung between them as tents, and the refugees who lived there camped and slept outdoors.
We had no room, we didn’t have enough food, and we had to turn people away.
At day’s end, Colin, Jimmy, Jup, Victoria, Sabeena, and I walked the line outside the gates. We looked at the kids in particular, trying to pick out the ones who had any chance of survival at all.
Mothers quickly saw what we were doing and pushed their children toward us. Dear God, could anything be sadder than this?
I said to one of them, “Mother, please, I can take the little boy. Keep your baby with you.”
I put a dot of clay on the back of the little boy’s hand and led him through the gates and lifted him into the donkey cart. Half his face was swollen and inflamed. If he had an abscessed tooth, I could pull it. And that was all I could offer, some relief from some pain.
But there was no relief from the hunger and thirst and hopelessness.
When the cart was full, we drove our patients to the compound. But we couldn’t keep them longer than overnight.
I remember this day in particular because when it couldn’t have been bleaker, a caravan of military personnel arrived in open trucks. We could see their shiny, blue helmets from far away. Cheers went up and flowed through the camp like a wave.
For as long as the UN soldiers stayed, Kind Hands and the settlement would have protection.
“Thanks,” I whispered to God. “Thanks very much. And now, if you don’t mind, could you make it rain?”
Chapter 15
WHEN SABEENA and I went out of the gates the next morning, I was surprised to see a portly white man among the hundreds of starving African people massed around the foot of the wall.
He was wearing black pants, a short-sleeved black shirt with a white collar, and a panama hat.
“You’re one of the doctors?” he asked me.
“Yes. I’m Brigid Fitzgerald. You’re joining us?”
“I hope to. I’m Father Delahanty. William. Nice to meet you, Brigid.”
I asked Father Delahanty to wait for me as Sabeena and I selected a handful of people we might be able to help. Once the donkey cart was fully loaded and Father Delahanty was on board, we trotted back to the hospital.
“I heard what you folks are doing, and I hitched a ride with the UN,” Delahanty said. “Do you have a chapel here?”
“Actually, that’s just one of a thousand things we don’t have. You could do outdoor services, maybe.”
“That would do quite well, Brigid.”
“I speak to God whenever I get a chance,” I said. “But it’s been a long time since my last confession.”
“We can address that.”
We had just pulled up to the hospital when Colin walked over to the cart with Rafi and Ahmed and began to help people down.
Colin said to Father Delahanty, “You must be the priest from Chicago. Here to save some souls, perhaps?”
“I may try.”
“Father, we need less talking to God and more helping the sick and dying. Do you have the stomach for that?”
Colin lifted out the boy with the bad tooth and headed with him toward the operating room.
I said to the priest, “Sorry, Father. Dr. Whitehead is very angry about how little we have to work with and how many people we lose. But he is a good doctor. A good man.”
“I’m sure he is. I can understand why he might lash out. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.”
“Come with me to the operating room.”
Father Delahanty was willing to do everything, and that included changing beds, sweeping floors, and boiling sheets. He worked alongside our volunteer aides, doing laundry, rolling bandages, scouring the sink, and doing it all over again.
At the end of the day, I found Father Delahanty sitting on the flo
or in a corner of the maternity ward, consoling a woman whose baby had just died. He was telling her, “We don’t know why God does what He does. But we have faith that He loves us. Right now, your child is with Him.”
I slipped out before he saw me, and a few minutes later, Colin and I were taking turns washing up at the scrub sink.
“I’m inviting him to join us at dinner, Colin. Please find him a bunk in the men’s quarters.”
“He should go back to Chicago before he gets hurt.”
I scowled. “Stop it. Be nice. You might like it.”
Colin handed me a towel. And he smiled.
It was out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying.
“I can’t imagine what will happen to us after we leave Africa.”
“I can,” Colin said. “You’ll have an extraordinary, exemplary life, and I’ll drink myself to death.”
“You’re not going to do that.”
He gave me a dazzling smile.
No doubt about it. As bad as Colin Whitehead was or tried to be, I was falling for him.
Chapter 16
A DRIVER from the village stopped in the dining hall to drop off mail and medical supplies. I was worried about the BLM forces and asked Mosi if he’d heard any news of them since they left Kind Hands.
Mosi shrugged and said, “I haven’t heard anything. I think you should say to yourself that they went back to America.”
After a guilty breakfast of cereal and fruit, Jemilla, Aziza, Sabeena, and I took the donkey cart to the gates. Another large group of refugees had arrived at the settlement, and soon, Sabeena and I would pick through them, looking for people we could save for a day before turning them out to be slaughtered.
Father Delahanty had gotten a head start on us this morning, and I saw him at the gates, praying quietly, looking about as sad as anyone could be.
When he opened his eyes, I said, “How can God allow this?”
He said, “We do what we can and leave the big picture to Him.”
That afternoon, I had a young girl on the table. She had a bacterial infection that had run through her body like wildfire and had begun to shut her organs down. In order to save her, limbs would have to be amputated. Several limbs. And then what would happen to her?
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