Doctored

by K'Anne Meinel

  “I wasn’t expecting someone of your expertise to…” he realized how insulting he had just been and shut his mouth. Grabbing her still-outstretched hand, he shook it warmly. “I am sorry for the mix-up,” he tried to apologize lamely.

  “Don’t think about it anymore,” she advised. “Come, sit, eat,” she invited, indicating a vacant seat at their table.

  “I have several things to do,” he hedged, still feeling foolish. “We will talk later?” he asked meaningfully. He meant to get to the bottom of things. This, this woman, this child was far too young to be a surgeon of some note. He had been promised a specialist. Doctor D. Cooper was an expert on tropical diseases and a surgeon to boot. He had expected the doctor to arrive by plane, but they had called and said the doctor had been delayed and would be arriving in Lamish. He had assumed that Lakesh would pick him up! Someone, somewhere, was pulling his leg and he intended to get to the truth!

  She nodded and smiled again as he left, his face flaming. She continued her conversation with the locals as though it had never happened. The noise level of the tent slowly resumed.

  Magda had whispered the translation from French to English so that the two nurses would be apprised of what had just happened. Maddie was grateful. Her student French wouldn’t hold and she only caught a word here and there, but she hoped to improve it with practice. She looked at the young woman across the tent thoughtfully. The blonde was leaning on a hand, her fingertips rubbing along her brow absentmindedly, occasionally tugging at the hairs. Maddie didn’t realize how long she stared and then blushed as the blonde suddenly looked up, directly at her. Flashing a friendly smile, she resumed her conversation.

  Bonnie and Leida, along with Magda and Lenny, took a tour of the camp. There were brush huts that housed some of the local relief workers. Their various nationalities were a dizzying array of tribes from the African countries. So many were now homeless due to the wars in this part of the world. Mamadu was in what was now a relatively safe area after years of conflict between the various nations.

  Some of the sturdier buildings housed the makeshift hospital, the school, and a meeting place of sorts. The village elders used it for meetings and in a pinch it could be used as an outreach of the hospital. They had been fortunate that only twice in the ten years since Mamadu came to be had they had to use it.

  “Don’t drink any water that has not been filtered,” Magda advised.

  “And don’t sit down without looking first,” Lenny added.

  “Why is that?” Maddie asked.

  It was Leida who answered instead of the other two who had been in country longer. “Snakes and bugs,” she answered the second statement first. “I assume the water has been tainted somehow?”

  “With all the mining and war, they have poisoned the water for human consumption. You’ll get a case of dysentery that could kill you if you aren’t careful,” Magda answered.

  Maddie had known that. The classes she had attended back in the States had prepared her for coming to Africa. She had been given shots, education, and a crash course in some medical training beyond her normal nursing duties. Being here, seeing it first-hand, was a lot different. She looked out at the countryside, seeing the beauty and wondering at the ugliness she had heard about including possible war, soldiers, and bandits. The locals she had met had all been pleasant and friendly and she felt comfortable around them.

  “How big a snake are we talking here?” she asked to make a joke.

  “They have all sorts here,” Lenny smiled, seeing this nurse was made of sterner stuff. She went on to describe a few, but basically most of it was common sense. Don’t sit under anything that had an overhanging branch. Don’t kick at a log and cause it to roll, you didn’t know what you might disturb. Don’t drink the water. “You also don’t want to go out unless you are in pairs,” she advised. “The natives are friendly,” she said smiling at some of the children who came to hang around them, “but you never know. Don’t go too far without telling someone.” She spoke rapidly to the children in a dialect that sounded pretty, but which the two newcomers had no hope of understanding. The children laughed and went running off.

  The woman showed them the entire camp. It wasn’t too large, but it wasn’t small either. The natives that lived there were all smiling and inviting. They looked so different; not only from each other, but from what Maddie had previously seen. The beads and jewelry they wore was quite exotic. Leida, who had worked with Aborigines back in Australia, would later confide how much more exotic these people were from her natives back home.

  As the sun set, they headed back to their tent together. The sixth bed was obviously to be occupied by this mysterious and young Doctor Cooper. Maddie wondered at who occupied the fifth until Magda mentioned it was for one of the locals who felt she should be with the doctors and nurses. She was a magician among the tribes and insisted on this courtesy. She embraced everything that was white and this included a cot, a mattress, sheets, and a pillow. “Her name is Hamishish,” she explained. The name sounded foreign and pretty to the American.

  “Where is she now?” Maddie asked. They were gathering their bathing suits to wash up in. Magda had promised to pour water for the newbies and both Maddie and Leida had embraced the idea after their long, hot trip and the work they had already done.

  “Oh, she comes and goes. If she doesn’t get ‘honored’ into sleeping with some young buck, she’ll be back,” Magda told them airily. They exchanged looks, wondering what she meant by that.

  She took them to the showers and dipped a bucket of water out of the large barrels. “Don’t drink the water,” she cautioned for the umpteenth time, “but you can bathe in this,” she explained as she climbed the steps behind the shower and poured the first bucket into the trough that would allow it to shower down.

  Maddie took the first ‘shower.’ She rinsed her body with the first bucketful. Quickly she lathered up with the soap she had been advised to bring. The next bucket allowed her to rinse that soap off.

  “If you want to wash your hair, it will take two more buckets,” Magda told her. The tone said she didn’t want to keep lugging up the heavy buckets and there was still Leida’s shower to arrange. Maddie took the hint and finished quickly, drying herself down briefly, but allowing the air to evaporate the moisture quickly. She wrapped the towel around her hips like a skirt.

  “You may want to buy one of those,” Magda told her as she indicated what the locals were wearing—colorful and beautiful clothing in this wilderness—the wrap around their bodies was like a sarong. The more colorful the better it seemed. It matched their jewelry and beads. The beads were carefully woven into their hair and in long necklaces around their necks as well as bracelets around their wrists, upper arms, and ankles.

  Leida took the hint and only allowed Magda to pour two bucketsful for her shower too. They quickly returned to their tent.

  Brushing out her hair, Maddie quickly felt the fatigue of the day, a full stomach, and the stress of travel envelop her. She finished brushing and put her things away in a footlocker next to her bed. She lay down for ‘just a minute’ and was soon asleep. Leida followed suit. They never heard the blonde known as Doctor Cooper come in. Later, much later, Hamishish returned and fell into her cot, snoring blissfully from her full day attending her people.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When Maddie woke the next day, she lay there a moment as she tried to orient herself. She listened to the unfamiliar sounds of the camp, to birds she had never heard before, and to the sounds of her tent mates. She heard the common, everyday sounds: a sigh, a snort, and even someone passing gas in their sleep. She smiled and laughed to herself. She was looking forward to this adventure. She’d signed up for six months and knew it would look good on her resume. She sat up and looked around, seeing that Leida was still asleep in the bunk next to hers and that Lenny was gone from her cot, as was Magda.

  She saw the mechanic-turned-doctor sit up at about the same time she did.

 
; “Good morning,” the woman called solo voce so that they wouldn’t wake the still-sleeping Leida.

  “Good morning,” Maddie returned with a smile. She wondered if the doctor had worked it all out with Doctor Burton. She had to agree, the woman looked entirely too young to be a doctor. Maddie reached down for her clothes at the end of her bed.

  “Shake them out,” the other woman hissed, still quietly so as not to awaken Leida.

  Startled, Maddie looked at the woman and saw her exuberantly shaking out her own clothes before she unselfconsciously whipped off her shirt and pulled a bra on. Maddie hastily turned away to give her some privacy as she shook out her own bra and put it on under her nightshirt before pulling the shirt off and putting another on. By the time she managed to get dressed under her nightclothes for modesty’s sake, the doctor was already pulling on her boots and tapping them on the floor to get her feet in them. As Maddie was reaching for her boots, she heard the doctor again.

  “Tap them out, upside down,” she called a little louder. Leida moved slightly as though she was beginning to awaken.

  Annoyed at the commands to do things she should have done on her own, but had forgotten, Maddie turned first one boot, and then the other upside down and smacked them against the frame of her cot. She was glad she did. Some sort of insect fell out of the second boot and scurried away before she could see what it was exactly. If she had put her stocking-clad foot into her boot without checking, she might have gotten stung or bitten. Not knowing what it was that had taken refuge in her boot, she shuddered at the thought. Quickly, she put her boots on as the doctor remade her bed, her back to Maddie.

  Maddie followed the doctor’s lead, making her own bed.

  “Would you like to go to breakfast together?” the perky voice was now at her side.

  Maddie jumped, not expecting someone who was wearing boots to be that quiet on their wooden floor.

  “Oh, gawd. I’m sorry,” she tried to hide her amusement at startling Maddie, and failed.

  “It’s okay, I’m just jumpy,” Maddie smiled in return as she finished making her bed. “And yes, I’d like to go to breakfast with you, but I have to stop at the….” She blushed at the need to use the facilities. Stupid, she knew, since she was in the medical field where being inconvenienced like that was part of the everyday scenario with patients.

  “Yeah, me too,” the doctor smiled in understanding.

  “Hey, wait for me,” a sleep-filled voice said from the bed next to Maddie’s.

  “You, sleepyhead,” Maddie teased.

  “It’ll just take me a minute to get ready,” Leida said and promptly got tangled in her bedclothes and fell to the floor.

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked, concerned, as she helped the Australian up from the floor.

  “Just tired,” she grouched as she thanked the woman and grabbed her clothes.

  “Shake them out,” the other two women said in unison and then, exchanging a look, laughed.

  “While she is getting ready, will you help me bring in a few boxes?” the doctor inquired of Maddie.

  “Sure,” she answered as she followed the blonde out of the tent, giving Leida some privacy while she got ready.

  The Rover the doctor had been fixing the previous day was parked not too far from their tent. The sides were all up now and it was also locked. “I don’t know why I bother,” the doctor muttered as she opened it and reached in the back.

  “Why do you say that?” Maddie asked as she was handed two fairly light boxes to carry.

  “Anyone with a knife can slit the sides,” she was told.

  Maddie had to agree, as the woman reached in the back for a couple more boxes of her own. Her shapely derriere looked nice in the khakis she had slid on. Her legs were very tanned from the edge of the shorts to the tops of the socks she was wearing above her boots that reached mid-calf. Maddie looked away and out at the camp, noticing the locals were very active.

  “I’ll help you with that,” another voice could be heard as they turned to take the boxes into their tent. They both turned to see Doctor Burton hurrying up, hands upstretched.

  “We got it,” Doctor Cooper answered with a smile.

  “Medical supplies are not to be stored in our tents,” he said disapprovingly.

  Maddie hesitated to go in, but Doctor Cooper bumped into her when she stopped. “Oh, these are my personal medical supplies,” she answered as she encouraged Maddie to continue into their tent.

  “Medical supplies are for the benefit of all,” he continued to argue, reaching for one of the boxes that Doctor Cooper was carrying.

  “Not these,” she said shortly, in a no-nonsense voice. She turned her body so he couldn’t get at the boxes she was carrying in, following the now-moving Maddie into their tent.

  Doctor Burton wasn’t about to let it go and followed them in.

  “Crikey!” the half-dressed Leida shrieked, not expecting a man to enter their tent.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” Doctor Burton turned around immediately. “Doctor Cooper, may I speak to you?” he asked in a stern voice, facing the entrance of the tent, his back to the room at large.

  Maddie knew the sound of a doctor out of sorts. He was angry and embarrassed, and she could see that Doctor Cooper couldn’t care a wit. She took her boxes to the doctor’s cot and stood there as the blonde put hers on the cot, then slid them, one at a time, under her bed. She took the boxes from Maddie’s arms with a smile and slid those under as well. “You certainly may,” the blonde answered the doctor’s demanding tone. With a wink, she hurried back to the entrance where he stood. Maddie went to help Leida make her bed, wanting to find something to do while the two doctors butted heads.

  “All medical supplies are to be shared among our people,” Doctor Burton began frostily as he indicated they should leave the tent with a nod of his head. It clearly stated, ‘outside’ without words.

  Doctor Cooper smiled, showing she wasn’t put off by his tone or demeanor. “I agree,” she told him in a perky tone that she knew would irritate him. “That’s why the rest of those boxes in the back of my Rover are for your clinic.”

  “But those,” he began, his thumb pointing back at the four boxes that she and Maddie had taken into her tent.

  “Are for me,” she told him dismissively. “Give me a hand with these?” she indicated the boxes in the back of the Rover, effectively changing the subject.

  Doctor Burton looked at the pile of boxes with the distinctive red cross on the side and read some of the labels. He practically salivated at some of what he read. If that was what was really in those boxes, they needed these things desperately here at the clinic. He called to a few people he recognized to help carry things over to the supply rooms, and the Rover was soon emptied. He had his concerns about this young doctor that looked like she should be in high school, but her folder showed her to be very competent. He wondered who she knew to get an assignment such as this. Her qualifications were even better than his and he resented that; he had so many more years of experience. This, this cheerleader wasn’t going to show him up!

  Doctor Cooper noticed that Doctor Burton had his dander up. She wasn’t surprised. Those in authority frequently did when they met her. She also noticed he never thanked her for the supplies she had hauled in here for his little clinic. She knew that clinics like this were always short on things and she had brought everything she could fit in the back of her Rover that she knew would be beneficial to the clinic. From medicines to surgical gloves, she had brought a good quantity. A simple thank you wouldn’t have hurt the man, but he was already angry about the mechanic mix-up. She had learned a long time ago that if she was going to work in the tropics, she needed to know how to be self-sufficient and fixing her own vehicle wasn’t too much to ask.

  “Hey, you two ready?” she asked the two nurses. She hadn’t learned either of their names and set about remedying that as she saw that the Australian’s bed was made and she was dressed. “Hi, I’m Doctor C
ooper,” she came forward with her hand out to be heartily shaken by the woman from down under. “It’s Deanna to my friends,” she promised with a smile, offering that friendship.

  “I’m Leida Hanson,” she smiled in return, appreciating the introduction.

  “We didn’t introduce ourselves earlier,” Deanna said, turning to the other woman with her hand out.

  “I’m Madison MacGregor, Maddie to my friends,” she smiled.

  “Maddie MacGregor, that has a ring to it,” the Bostonian accent was apparent, and there was perhaps a little bit of the Irish.

  “Yes, I’ve heard it all my life,” she said with a long-suffering sigh.

  “Oy, don’t let it get to you,” she said with a friendly pseudo-Irish brogue.

  They all shared a laugh.

  “Can we get this going? I’m floating,” Leida complained good-naturedly and rocked from foot to foot for emphasis.

  They all used the facilities, such as they were. A set of curtained-off areas with a hole in the ground, a bag of lime next to them, and a toilet seat on a frame, nothing special. At least it had a grass roof to ward off any rain, not that it would matter in the wet season.

  “How long are you here for?” Maddie asked the doctor as they made their way to the meal tent.

  “Not sure, depends a lot on how much I’m needed,” Deanna answered.

  “I’m sure as a doctor you are needed a lot,” Leida put in.

  “Yeah, unfortunately that is true,” Deanna said in a tone that sounded sad. “And fortunately, I love what I do.” Her tone had changed immediately to the chipper one that she had used earlier to annoy Doctor Burton.

  “How long have you been working in Africa?” Maddie asked as they entered the food tent to get in line and get a tray.

  “About a year with Doctors Without Borders. Before that I was in South America for a while.”