by Amanda Heger
The woman shrugged, almost imperceptibly, and put the mango to her lips.
“What’s she saying?” Annie whispered, inching closer.
It tore at him, having to tell her this. “She does not want treatment.”
Her face fell. “What will happen if you leave it?”
He shook his head.
“Oh.” She sat on the floor in front of them, her long legs tucked under her.
Felipe started peeling the mango again. It gave his hands something to do, and his eyes something to focus on besides Annie’s mournful expression or the old woman’s defiant one. “I can leave her some antibiotics, but I do not think that will be enough.” He offered Doña Godoy another slice of mango. “If she will even take them.”
They sat together in silence, listening to the rain and sharing slices of mango. Every so often, he would ask the old woman if she was sure. If this was really want she wanted. If she really understood what it meant. With every shake of her head, he became more and more convinced the woman knew what she was choosing. And every time she chose to die, he hated himself and his job a little more.
Day Seventeen
Annie had been awake since the sun cracked the horizon, hiking next to Felipe as the world woke up, then motoring along the rushing river to get to the next village. Neither of them had said another word about the woman they’d left alone in that cabin to die. But Annie felt it hanging around her neck, slowing her steps.
She pushed the woman’s face from her mind, forcing her attention to the jagged handwriting in front of her. Around her, the clinic carried on in its usual state of controlled chaos. Children took nets from her table, and Annie ran through the sex ed lecture, trying to smooth out the bumps. She could hear the words in near-perfect Spanish, but when it came to forcing them from her throat, they became an epic Spanglish catastrophe.
A teenager with long limbs and a buzz cut tugged at her elbow.
“Hola.” Annie smiled and handed him one of the nets.
He grasped the blue mesh, but it slid from his fingers a second later. “Enfermo.” He clutched his sides, and his mouth twisted into a grimace. His chipped front tooth tickled the recesses of her brain.
“Um, hurt? Duele?”
He nodded and staggered.
“Okay.” Annie wrapped an arm around his thin waist, and his ribcage pushed against her fingertips. His skin was feverish, and she led the boy through the crowd waiting to see Felipe. “Hey,” she said, interrupting his note-taking.
He straightened and smiled at her. “¿Qué pasa?”
“This kid doesn’t look so hot.” She pushed the boy forward, and Felipe’s eyes widened then narrowed.
“Juan. Juan!” He grabbed the boy by the elbow, jerking him away from Annie and pinning both bony arms behind the kid’s back.
“Wait. What?” Annie shoved through the crowd, a dozen sweaty bodies closing in around her as she tried to keep up with Felipe’s heavy footsteps. He shoved the boy outside, both of them ducking under the low doorway. Annie followed. Juan was at her heels. And so was every other person at the clinic. They congregated at the doorway, whispering behind cupped fingers, staring and pointing at Felipe and the teenager.
“What are you doing?” she asked, forcing her way through and squinting into the broiling afternoon sun.
Juan’s feet appeared next to her, and the rest of the group backed away.
Annie craned her neck to look at him. He held a machete pointed at the ground, but this close, Annie saw the way the muscles in his forearm tensed, ready to swing it at any moment.
“What are you doing?”
Marisol appeared at her side. “You do not recognize him?”
“What?” Annie stared at the boy. His arms stayed twisted behind his back, while Felipe spoke over the kid’s shoulder in hard, flinty Spanish. That chipped front tooth. Those sharp features. All he was missing was a rifle and two teenage cronies. The realization sent her staggering backward. “Oh my God.” She turned to Marisol. “Do you think he was trying to rob us again?”
Her friend squinted, turning her ear toward Felipe and the kid. “Probably no. He says he ate something bad. Diarrhea, vomiting. Come, we need to get everyone inside.” She turned and ushered the crowd into the clinic without waiting for Annie to respond.
When only a few gawkers loitered outside, Juan shoved the boy forward, following as he hobbled away from the clinic. Every few steps the kid doubled over, groaning and pressing his hands to his stomach. Three burly men stepped out of a nearby house and fell into step next to Juan.
Annie’s insides twisted, and her heart beat too fast. She took a shaking step forward. Then another, evening herself with Felipe’s angry, rigid form. “What’s happening? Where are they taking him? Don’t we have to treat him?” The questions poured out of her.
“No. We must return to the clinic. Juan and the other men will make sure he leaves.”
She shook her head but couldn’t chase away her memory of the boy’s expression. The way his lips turned up in agony. His skin, feverish and clammy. They hadn’t been able to help the old woman the day before. But she didn’t want help. This boy wanted help. He needed it. “But—”
Felipe turned toward the tiny building where the crowd waited. “It will be fine.”
• • •
Felipe sent away his last patient and tugged at the striped bed sheet separating his exam room from the rest of the church. His eyelids felt like they were made of lead—ten tons of it—pressing toward sleep. He had been up all night as he thought of Doña Godoy, alone in that tiny house, letting the bacteria slowly carry her away. And now he had one more thing to sit on his conscience, to gnaw away at him as he lay in the hammock staring at the ceiling of whatever hut they would sleep in tonight. That stupid boy and his stupid illness. Assuming it was an illness. More likely, it was another ploy to steal drugs.
“Hey,” Phillip interrupted Felipe’s thoughts. “I’m glad you guys took care of that guy. Got him out of here, I mean.”
“Sí. Me too.”
“This is a great thing you’ve got going on here. At first, I was a little dubious—” He pushed the corn-yellow hair from his face.
“I do not understand.”
“Your clinics. Top notch, man.” He clapped Felipe on the back, hard.
Felipe stumbled forward, thrown off balance by the American’s touch and his unexpected compliment. “Gracias.”
At this point on the last brigade, the three American men spent most of their time complaining about the bugs and judging the women in the villages for having more children than they could feed. They stopped interacting with Felipe and Juan for all but the most basic of necessities. Of course, they’d kept chit-chatting with Marisol. They always stayed friendly with Marisol.
But this time, Felipe was the one on good terms with the Americans. It was a disconcerting sort of relief. Like he’d been asked to carry a backpack full of rocks through the rainforest, only to misplace it halfway through the trip.
Something was different. Something big.
The realization hit him hard in the chest, like someone found that backpack full of rocks and smacked him with it. What if he stopped presuming the foreigners would fail? Quit expecting them to complain and push and moan their way through the trip? Abandoned the idea that they could never understand? How many brigades could have been better? For him and for all their patients? Not all, but some.
“Have you seen Annie?” he asked Phillip.
“Outside.”
Felipe followed him out onto the church lawn, the overgrown green grass scratching at his ankles. The air was charged, and above them the thick clouds of another storm rolled by. A huddle of children stood outside the church. Two adult figures poked out among them. Annie’s crazy hair was easy to spot, and next to her, Juan stood with his arms crossed over his chest.
“What is going on?” Felipe called over the mass of little people.
Annie flipped around to face him. In on
e hand, she held her purple notebook. She tugged at her shirt sleeve with the other. “Hey, I was coming get you.”
Juan turned too, and the light reflecting off his machete blinded Felipe.
“Don’t be mad, but after yesterday, I couldn’t—” Annie started.
Felipe took another step forward, and the children parted. The teenage thief sat on the ground, the same grimace on his face. Sweat beaded the boy’s forehead and upper lip.
“I thought they were going to send him away.” Felipe rubbed his temple and drew in a slow, steady breath. He raised an eyebrow at Juan. The old man shrugged and resumed watching the crowd.
“I know,” Annie said, “but I asked them to stop. Look,” she held open her notebook, “I went over these notes from last week. Remember the lady you thought might have appendicitis? Well, she didn’t, but I think he does.”
Felipe clenched his jaw and pushed down the frustration building in his chest. “You are not a doctor, Annie. This muchacho is dangerous.”
“I know I’m not a doctor, okay? But look at him. Please. You can’t turn sick people away. In America—”
“Annie,” he closed his eyes, “we are not in America.”
“Most of his pain is on the right side. And he has rebounding.” The pages of her notebook flapped as she moved to stand in front of him. Her hair was wild in the breeze. “Remember when you told me about rebounding?”
“Sí, sí.” He took a deep breath, his resolve cracking. “I will examine him. You will take all those children inside and away from him, yes?”
“Thank you.” She squeezed his hand as she walked by, ushering the niños ahead of her.
Juan kept his wide stance as Felipe squatted next to the teenager. A few questions and a couple of taps to the belly convinced him Annie was right. He pressed a fist against his thigh and let out a ragged breath.
“Vamos,” he said.
• • •
Disaster.
It was the only way Annie could describe her class. Five students and Annie had gathered in the back of the empty church, waiting for Felipe to join them. But after ten minutes of waiting in silence, the awkwardness grew too massive for her to ignore. She’d jumped in, reading the lecture in a sharp-voweled American accent, and prayed Felipe would show up soon.
Two people left in the first five minutes, sending snarls over their shoulders as they walked away. She wasn’t sure if she’d inadvertently said something offensive, but she trudged through anyway, ignoring the churning in the pit of her stomach. Another person left as Annie picked up the decrepit package of birth control pills. And by the time she was ready for the condom on the plantain trick, every person in the class had bolted.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. She inhaled through her teeth. I’m screwing this up royally.
“Annie?” Phillip stuck his head inside the church, his smile too bright in the dim light.
“Hey.”
“We’re going back for the night.”
She picked up her box and followed him outside. Marisol stood alone in the yard, holding three duffle bags on one arm and two on the other. The combined weight of them was probably more than Marisol’s total poundage.
Annie rushed over and took two from her, one for each arm. Phillip took two more. “Where did everyone go?” Annie asked.
“Juan and ’Lipe took that boy in the boat,” Marisol said.
Annie’s steps faltered, and she bumped into Phillip. “They did? Where were they taking him?”
“Rosita. To the hospital there.”
“So did he have appendicitis? Was I right?”
“Sí.” Marisol smiled and nodded as they walked between tiny houses made of warped logs and thatched roofs. “Mi Anita is becoming a doctora right before my eyes.”
“Yeah, good catch,” Phillip added.
Annie stood taller, and some of the heaviness of her failed class lifted as they walked away from the clinic. “Thanks.”
Their host greeted them with a small smile and a plate of rice and beans. Annie dropped the bags near the front door and sat. The lumps and ruts in the floor dug into her backside, and she shifted as she forced down the plate of bland mush.
“What’s the first thing you want to eat when you get home?” Phillip asked, pushing around the rice on his plate.
“I think I want ice cream,” Annie said. “Cookies and cream. Or a hot fudge sundae.” She closed her eyes, biting back a whimper as she imagined the warm, sweet chocolate and cool, creamy vanilla mixing together on her tongue.
“I want a steak. No, bacon.” He closed his eyes as he chewed. “A whole package of bacon.”
Her mind flashed to the pigs swarming that poor diaperless little girl. “Even after—”
“Don’t say it.” He laughed.
Marisol pulled the fork from her mouth and pointed it at Phillip. “Have you told Annie about your girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend?” Annie wrestled the shock and judgment from her features. “Um…no?”
Phillip shook his head. “She wasn’t my girlfriend. Well, she was when we were twelve.” He put down his empty plate. “Lya was my neighbor, and her family was from Nicaragua. I was so in love with her. Or, I thought I was. We were kids. But we had some good times in college too. My twenty-first birthday, she bought me so many shots…”
Annie’s stomach sank at his use of past tense. “What happened?”
“Car accident. Last summer. That’s how I ended up here. Had some free time before classes restarted and…” He shrugged.
The light filtering in from the windows waned. The darker it grew inside the little hut, the sadder Annie became. I was so in love with her. His words wormed their way into her subconscious, playing again and again as she finished her meal. She shuffled into the other room to change and brush her teeth, again feeling sheepish and small for the way she had judged him.
She returned to the main room. Marisol and Phillip were tangled in the same hammock. Even in the falling darkness, Annie saw it rocking.
She cleared her throat. “Mari?”
“¿Sí?”
“How far is it to Rosita?” She tugged her shirt sleeves. So many days in and out of the boat had left her with little sense of where they were in relation to the cities. Not that she could have found Rosita on a map anyway. “They’ll be okay, right?”
There was a pause and Marisol’s flashlight clicked on. “Four hours. Maybe five, depende on the roads. It did not rain as much today, so probably four.”
“So, it’s been almost four hours. They should be back soon, right?”
“Four hours there. Four hours back.”
“Oh.” Annie bit her lower lip and sat in the hammock. “But they’ll be okay. I mean, it’s safe, right?”
“We will see them in the morning.”
The flashlight clicked off, and a breeze rushed in through the cracks in the walls. Goosebumps rose on Annie’s arms, and she pulled one of Felipe’s scrub shirts from the top of his bag. It smelled like him, like comfort and medicine and earth. She snuggled into it, wondering how she would sleep two weeks from now, alone in her cold, air-conditioned bedroom, thousands of miles away.
Day Eighteen
The sound was so heinous, Felipe sat straight up, certain the world was ending. He threw his hands to his ears. But Juan increased the volume, singing loudly enough to wake everyone in Nicaragua. Maybe everyone in Honduras too.
“Okay. Okay.” Felipe pulled his hands away from his ears long enough to smack the dentist in the leg. “I am awake.”
Juan cackled and shuffled away, his song fading mercifully as he went. Felipe lay down, his eyes sliding closed before his head hit the yoga mat. After so few hours of sleep, the thin foam felt like a feather bed to his exhausted body.
He and Juan had returned to the village as the sun broke through the horizon. By the time they shuffled into the house, Felipe’s eyes burned. But Annie was stretched out in the hammock, her mouth wide open with one arm dangling off the side.
He couldn’t bring himself to wake her and collapsed onto her purple mat, tumbling into sleep.
“Hey.”
He pried open an eye as the sweet, yeasty smell of fresh bread pulled him further from unconsciousness.
Annie crouched next to him on the floor, her backpack hung over one shoulder and a lumpy roll of bread in one hand. “You awake?” she whispered. “I think we’re getting ready to go.”
“Sí.” The delicate skin on the inside of her elbow somehow made Felipe both sleepier and more awake. He pulled lightly, hoping she would curl up beside him. “Tired.”
She hovered next to him for half a second, but she eased back on her heels and smoothed his hair with her free hand. Felipe’s eyes fell closed.
“You’ll be able to sleep on the boat.” She nudged his hand with the bread. “This is yours.”
“Annie?”
“Yeah?”
He pushed back his guilt and ran his hand down her arm. It was all he’d thought about on the way to the nearest hospital, as he and Juan sat in silence listening to the moans of the teenage robber—who they learned had a name, Marco, and a family, two sisters and a brother. As Marco eked out his answers to their questions, Felipe became more and more ashamed of the way he’d acted. And more grateful for Annie’s unrelenting insistence. “I am sorry about yesterday.” He took the bread.
Annie shook her head. A grin spread across her face, lit by the sun streaming through the open door. “It’s like I was a real doctor. I mean, when you got there, did they confirm it? His appendicitis?”
Her giddiness was contagious. Felipe sat up and pulled her against him. Her lips were soft, and his fatigue faded, pushed out by the fervor of their kiss. “I did not wait to find out.”
“Oh.” She pulled away an inch, her shoulders sinking.
“Because you are here.” He tilted her chin to look into her eyes. “I was not going to wait for three hours with a skinny teenager when I knew there was a beautiful woman waiting for me.”
