“What, Brigid? What do you need?”
“I would love a very milky coffee with sugar.”
“Sit down in the tub. Here.”
She unhooked the showerhead on its long, snaky cord and put it in my good hand. “Sit down. That’s right. I’ll be back to help you out of there. Coffee’s coming right up.”
Chapter 27
TORI AND Marty Hewitt were more of a family to me than my own.
Still, I felt alone.
I stayed in their apartment for a full week without going outside. I craved the quiet and the solitude and the security of the large, old rooms. Some days went by as if I were gently riffling through the pages of a book. But the nights were bad. I had violent dreams, physical pain, and regret that I had lost my way.
Tori and Marty worked long days at the Rome American Hospital, and while they worked, I made notes in a journal. I brushed up on my Italian, cleaned up around the house, and read. Falling asleep on a velvet-covered sofa with a peach in my hand and an open book across my chest was a delight beyond anything I could have imagined a few months ago.
On this particular day, I was having a nap on the sofa before dinner when I woke up to footsteps on the stairs and the sound of masculine laughter.
The front door opened, and Marty Hewitt came in carrying a case of wine. He was followed by a tall, dark-haired man, also in his twenties. I wasn’t so burned out that I didn’t notice how good looking he was.
Marty said, “Brigid, get over here and meet my friend Zachary Graham. Zach, this is Brigid Fitzgerald. I told him already that we’re all outta Johns Hopkins. Have a seat, you guys. Let’s sample this wine.”
I walked over to the big farm table and shook Zach’s hand. Glasses appeared, a bottle was opened, and wine was poured. Following Marty’s lead, we made an outrageous fuss over the vino da tavola, and when we were all comfortable, Zachary Graham said, “I was telling Marty about this story I’m writing for the Times.”
Zach had just come back to Rome from the French Open and told a few anecdotes about Djokovic and Serena, using terms like “wide-open slams” and “long rallies.” I know nothing about tennis, but I loved the animated way he told a story. It was great to hear these two big men laughing and to be able to join in without thinking about enemy artillery and dirt storms and an O.R. full of mortally wounded children.
Marty was refilling my glass when his phone rang. He spoke with Tori briefly, hung up, and said, “She’s on her way. We can meet her at Leonardo’s in half an hour. You guys up for dinner?”
I was already shaking my head no when Marty said, “Brigid? You’re in Rome. Time to see some of it. Doctor’s orders.”
“In that case, absolutely,” I said.
Tori had opened her closet to me. She’s a generous size twelve, and I’m an emaciated size six. Her black dress floated around me, but I belted and bloused it, and it looked as if it were made for me. I was ready to go to an actual restaurant.
By the time the sun had set, the four of us were seated under the big, yellow awning outside a trattoria on a busy street less than a block from the Hewitts’ apartment.
We were still drinking, eating bread dipped in olive oil, while our dinners were being prepared, when Marty’s phone rang. Seconds later, Tori’s phone vibrated on the tabletop.
“Sorry, everyone,” said Marty. “The emergency room just filled up. It’s the full freakin’ moon. We have to go in.”
“Always happens,” Tori said. “Just when you can smell the lasagna, but before you get a fork in.”
I jumped to my feet out of pure reflex.
Tori said softly, “Where ya going, Brigid? You’re off duty.”
Oh.
“We’ve got a running tab here,” said Marty. “So enjoy. By the way, Brigid, Zach here is an avid baseball fan.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yankees all the way,” said Zach.
“Red Sox,” I said, setting my jaw.
“Oh, man,” Marty said, grinning widely. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall.”
And then the Hewitts were gone, and Zach and I were looking at each other over a steaming-hot dinner for four.
Chapter 28
THE WAITER had put the four enormous platters of everything in tomato sauce on the table. Zach unfolded his napkin and said, “So, you’re a Sox fan, huh?”
The waiter snapped my napkin open and laid it across my lap as I said to Zach, “Since as long as I can remember.”
Zach grinned, said, “My condolences.” And stabbed one of his shrimp scampi.
I kept my hands folded.
I said, “For what? Two thousand four, 2007, and 2013?”
“No. For the almost one hundred years it took after Babe Ruth left to win those World Series.”
I shot back, “Which would be Yankees time, correct?”
He took a gulp of vino and said, “As they say, do the math. Twenty-seven wins for the Yankees, three for the Sox.”
“Yeah, well that’s the old math. This is the new math, and we’ve won three World Series to your two since Y2K.”
“Don’t worry, we’re just warming up.”
“Well, I wish you the best getting loose.”
And suddenly, we both cracked up. It really was too funny to be sitting outdoors on a balmy night in Rome, talking about American baseball.
Zach said, “You should try this, Red. It really is the specialty of the house.”
Without waiting for me to say okay, he swapped out my untouched rigatoni alfredo for Marty’s steak pizzaiola.
“I’ll try it on your recommendation, Yank. Tell me about yourself,” I said, sawing into the steak.
Zach said, “Reporters don’t really like to talk about themselves, you know. We like to ask the questions.”
“Oh, try something new,” I said.
Then I tried the steak. It was, as advertised, very good.
Zach said, “Okay. Here I go. Born in Minnesota, degree in journalism from where else, Northwestern. Live in New York, and, as a single guy with no baggage, I’ve been assigned to the international sports desk and odds and ends, which is a dream come true. Mind if I have a bite of that?” he said, eyeing the steak. “You want to try the eggplant?”
“I’m not so big on eggplant.”
I put the plate of steak in the middle of the table, and we worked on it together.
And then Zach said, “Your turn, Red.”
I just shook my head no and kept going with the steak. I didn’t want to talk about myself. Not now, and maybe not ever. But Zach was one of those reporters who wouldn’t be brushed off.
“I hope you don’t mind that I grilled Marty about you.”
I glanced at him through my lashes, then dropped my eyes back to the table.
“He told me about the settlement being knocked down. Your injuries.”
“I can’t talk about that,” I said.
“Okay. I’m sorry, though. That you had to go through that.”
I put down my fork and knife.
I said, “Zach, the war was awful. Indescribable. But my life in South Sudan was about the displaced people who had less than nothing, the mothers with babies had no milk to feed them.”
I don’t know what came over me, but I sang right there at the table overflowing with food.
Baby boy, baby boy
Hello, baby, please be quiet
When your hunger is very painful
Just lie down and sleep
Better to just lie down and sleep.
I said, “In South Sudan, that’s a lullaby.”
The sadness on Zach’s face showed me a lot about him. He stopped eating, and so did I. And then, without our realizing that the full moon had been eclipsed by clouds, the sky opened up, dropping heavy rain on the awning.
Waiters poured out of the restaurant and began moving the tables and customers away from the loud and slashing rain. Zach said, “What do you say we get outta here?”
I stood up, and we duc
ked into the trattoria. And I remembered when I was in the camp, the heat radiating in waves off everything, and there wasn’t enough clean water for drinking. And I had asked God to make it rain.
He does things in His own time.
Chapter 29
WE WERE on Zach’s shiny red Vespa, tearing up the ancient roads and boulevards of modern-day Rome. My arms were around his waist, I was pressing hard against his back, and the hot air was just about blowing my eyelashes off.
Zach turned his head to look at me, and I shouted at him, “Eyes on the road!”
I had been in Rome for two weeks, and after my self-enforced week of lockdown in the Hewitts’ apartment, I now had a very engaging play pal who had wheels and a lot of free time.
As it turned out, Zach knew Rome but didn’t speak much Italian. I knew Italian well but didn’t know Rome at all.
Perfect combo.
Every day at about ten, after Zach had checked in with the Times, he picked me up at the Hewitts’, and we went for a ride. Since our first self-guided tour, I’d seen a lot of Rome at sixty miles an hour: the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum and the remains of the Circus Maximus. But I’d avoided Vatican City. I just wasn’t ready to confront the hub of the Roman Catholic Church.
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Right now, we had the wind in our faces. The river rolled on to our left, and we were weaving through crazy traffic on Lungotevere Raffaello Sanzio. A couple of turns later, we were on Via del Moro, and we followed it along cute cobblestoned streets flanked by Italian-ice-colored buildings. We made our way to the center of Trastevere, the picture-perfect Piazza di Santa Maria.
Zach parked the scooter at the northwest side of the enclosed plaza, shut down the engine, and removed his helmet. He looked wild. His hair was matted down, his goggles had left white circles around his eyes, and his grin was almost maniacal.
Call me crazy, but he looked pretty hot.
I saw that he wanted to kiss me, but I smiled and handed him my helmet. Then I stretched out my hand, and he helped me off the Vespa.
The Caffè di Marzio was further perfection. We were shown seats at a small table under the awning with a full-on view of the fountain and the clock tower across the square. We ordered lunch from Giovanni, a young man with a mustache and Amo Angelina tattooed on his biceps, and he returned to our table with a bottle of Sangiovese.
We were sitting shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, and by the time the pasta arrived, we had each put down a glass of wine and were working on a second. Heat lightning flashed back and forth between us—which was both fun and unnerving.
He said, “You know you have a two-part laugh?”
“I have what?”
“Yeah. You start way up here with a giggle, and then it drops to a belly laugh. That just kills me, Red.”
I became self-conscious. I didn’t know what to say.
But Zach wasn’t going to let my silence drag on. He was a reporter, after all, and he could handle a little glitch in the repartee. He topped up my wineglass and said, “You know, you haven’t told me your plans. Like, where are you headed from here?”
I pictured the interior of the O.R. at Kind Hands. I knew every windowless inch of it. There was no view of the future.
Zach said into the lengthening silence, “Let me put that another way. Are you planning to stay in Rome?”
I said, “I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do next. I might take myself on a world tour.”
Why leave Rome? Why leave Zach?
He was smart and funny, and he was honestly trying to get to know me even as I pushed him away.
He said, “Oh. That sounds like fun.”
Clearly, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He leaned in and reached for his glass. His knee touched mine, and the electricity just shot through me.
I was this close to leaning against his shoulder and tucking my head under his chin. But I didn’t want to start what I knew damn well I couldn’t finish.
Zach said, “You’re a funny girl, Brigid. You won’t tell me where you’re going or where you’ve been.”
I wanted to give him something.
I said, “I really should tell you what it was like in South Sudan.”
Chapter 30
I DIDN’T know how to tell Zach about hell on earth without feeling it all over again. But I had decided to try.
I dropped my hands into my lap and said, “Imagine a dirt-poor town of eighty thousand people who’ve been driven from their homes and are now living under tarps, Zach. A lot of these people have been brutalized, their families killed, and now they have no possessions, no work, just decimated lives and nothing to live for.
“The food is bare subsistence. The water is contaminated, and you can add to all of that drought and hundred-and-fifteen-degree heat and infectious disease and an armed militia looking for opportunities to murder anyone who steps outside the gates.”
Zach kept his eyes on me, encouraging me to go on.
“There were six doctors and a few volunteer nurses to care for every kind of medical condition you can imagine and about a thousand you can’t. We did surgeries with dull knives and drills and with watered-down anesthesia, if we happened to have anesthetics at all.
“A lot of people died, Zach. Every stinking day. They died when you slept or when you went outside to take a breath of air. You came back, and your patient was dead. For us, working in that hospital was like trying to carry water in a bucket full of holes.”
Zach said, “You should write about this, Brigid. People don’t know anything about the conditions in these settlements. They should know.”
I was lost in thoughts of Kind Hands. I heard Zach say, “Please. Go on.”
Amid music from car speakers and the put-put of scooters in the square, the clamor of customers and the clashing of silverware and dishes in the trattoria around us, I described the routine at the hospital to Zach.
I told him about Sabeena and the orphan girls whom I loved. I told him about my colleagues from all over, about Wuster and Bailey, Khalil and Vander; about our twenty-hour days operating by the light of flashlights in our mouths. The patients’ terrified families standing at our elbows.
“You said six doctors,” Zach said.
I hadn’t mentioned Colin. I couldn’t do it. I actually had a sense that Colin was sitting with us. That he was listening and about to make a rude comment. Or tell me that he loved me.
I said, “A lot of doctors were on the field the day I was shot. They’re scattered. Or buried.”
Zach put his hand on mine and said, “Your bravery.…It’s inspirational, Brigid.”
I shrugged and kept my eyes on his big hand, covering mine. It looked strange there, but it felt good.
Zach blurted, “I want to know everything about you.”
And right then, with the impeccable timing of waiters all around the world, Giovanni appeared between us to ask if we would like coffee and dessert.
“Brigid?” Zach asked me.
“No, thanks. Not for me.”
Zach removed his hand from mine, and as the waiter presented the bill, I was struck with a weird impulse I didn’t see coming. I tossed my napkin to the table, jumped to my feet, and said, “Time to go.”
Chapter 31
AT 9:27 the next morning, I was in a window seat on a plane flying out of Fiumicino to Charles de Gaulle in Paris.
I was wearing new jeans, a nubby cotton sweater, a lightweight denim jacket, Sabeena’s pink shoes, a crucifix on a heavy gold chain that Tori had fastened around my neck before we kissed good-bye on both cheeks, and I had the taxi driver’s rosary in my pocket.
I rolled up my jacket and wedged it between the armrest and the window and laid my head against the glass. I’d never been to Paris. It was as good a destination as any. I needed to get out of town, and there were flights to Paris nearly every hour.
I watched Rome recede until it looked like a sepia drawing in an old history book. Then a laye
r of clouds filled in between the plane and the noble city many thousands of feet below.
I missed Zach already and felt guilty for bolting without telling him that I was going and why. I couldn’t imagine explaining to him that I was still in love with Colin, a man I’d been inextricably bound to by tenuous life and violent death.
No holiday romance could compare, not when I was still suffering such a profound loss of love in my heart and soul.
And yet, I was vulnerable. I could still get hurt. I thought Zach could get hurt, too.
The flight attendant offered food and drink, but I shook my head no and watched sunlight limn the clouds as we sailed across the morning sky.
I closed my eyes, and as soon as I did, an image of our IDP settlement came to me in minute detail. I saw the hundreds of rows of tukuls, the individual faces of men and women and children whose names I hadn’t known—I knew those people now. Their eyes turned to me as I passed them on the dusty track.
How many of these innocent people had been slaughtered since I left Africa?
Two weeks ago, when I’d taken the train from Amsterdam to Rome, a warm feeling filled my chest, and I had a sense of something “not me.” I’d found myself asking why. And I was doing it now.
Just as it had happened then, I heard or sensed something like a voice that I didn’t feel was coming from me.
Brigid. You want to know why.
I opened my eyes. I wasn’t asleep. The flight attendant was still walking up the aisle. A mother and two children were in the seat ahead of me, and the children were throwing candies at one another and laughing.
I had a shocking revelation.
I was on the plane, and at the same time, I was outside it. A pretty village came into focus just below me, as if I were flying over the treetops on my own power. I saw people tending a community garden, children playing in a park. I felt wind in my hair, the warmth of the sun on my back, and a sense of incredible peace.
The voice—if that was what it was—cut into my thoughts. This is happening.
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