by Mandy Hager
“Oh, thank the Lord!” Maryam started to cry again, all her accumulated tension and worry purging with the hiccuping sobs.
At last she composed herself. “You'll never guess what I've found.” She slipped her hand into the sling and withdrew the box of pills with a grand flourish. “I have the cure.”
“You're joking me?” Ruth's face was lit by a wobbly smile. “How on earth did you manage that? I tried last night to get him help, but all they gave me were these things called paracetamol. They helped him for a little while, but by the middle of the night he was worse than ever.”
“Paracetamol's for pain,” Maryam said. “It's not a cure.”
“And this remedy you've brought back really can cure him? That's unbelievable.” She prodded Maryam's chest. “I could kill you, you know. You've no idea what you put me through—you had me scared half to death.”
“I'm sorry! All right? And I promise I'll tell you everything. But first let's show Lazarus these pills.”
“In a minute. First tell me if you're all right. Why are your legs so scratched? And where's the plaster on your arm gone? Did they hurt you?”
“There's plenty of time for that later, Ruthie. Let's attend to Lazarus first.”
She opened the box and pulled out a small silver sheet of foil encasing several rows of pills. How was she supposed to get them out? She pushed and prodded, eventually managing to pop one through the silver foil.
“What do they do?” asked Ruth.
“You have to swallow them, like the paracetamol.”
“All at once?”
“I'm not sure.” She felt stupid now. There were no instructions inside the box that she could see, and guessing might be as dangerous as no medicine at all. Why hadn't she thought of this? She was an impulsive fool. “Maybe Aanjay will know,” she said.
“Do you think she can be trusted?”
“Absolutely.” She thought of the Buddha in Aanjay's room, and how she'd spoken of compassion and love. She'd understand.
“Then shall I go find her?” Ruth offered. “I need the air.”
“Yes please. You go, and I'll tell Lazarus I'm here.”
The smell of sweat and stale breath hit her as soon as she entered the hut. She understood now why Ruth was eager to take a break: the air was so steeped with the stench of plague she felt it settle in her pores.
She leaned over Lazarus and watched his pulse fluttering fast and pronounced beneath the inflamed rash that ringed his neck. There was still so much bruising on his face from the beating it was hard to tell if the rash had spread, but so little of his own white skin was visible she knew it could not be good. The plague was like a jungle creeper, slowly strangling and consuming him, just as it had poor Joseph. A day or so longer at most, she figured, and she really would have been too late.
She knelt down beside him now, noting the full cup of water and the empty soup bowl on the floor beside his mat. Bless Ruth for looking after him so well. She gently shook him by the shoulder, shocked by how thin he was: his bones were clearly defined beneath his discoloured skin. He reminded her so much of Joseph that she had to glance away before she looked again.
“Lazarus,” she called, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I'm back.” She watched his eyeballs slide beneath their fragile lids, but he didn't rouse. “Lazarus,” she tried again, louder this time. “Wake up! I have the cure!”
His eyes fluttered open but it seemed an age before they focused on her own. He tried to smile but his lips were so cracked and dry he had to moisten them before they'd move. “You came.”
She was taken aback by how much his smile pleased her, and covered her awkwardness by rattling the box before his face. “I told you I would find the cure.” She couldn't help grinning, the enormity of what she'd risked only now really starting to sink in. “You need to get started on these right away.”
He rolled over, painfully slowly, and reached for the cup. His hand was shaking as he picked it up, and she wrapped her own over the top of his to steady it so he could drink. “Ah, that's good.” He sank back onto the mat, not for a moment taking his eyes off her face. “Tell me what happened.” He paused to regain his breath. “How you are.”
She laughed. “Ruth will not forgive me if I tell you first! I'll reveal everything once she returns and you've taken these.”
His eyes flicked to her arm. “The cast?” It was obvious that speaking took a heavy toll. Between each short sentence he had to gasp for air.
“It's fine,” she said. She was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps thundering down the walkway, and hadn't even time to get up from where she knelt when Charlie, the guard, burst in.
“What the hell is going on? They're looking for you over at the hospital!” His gaze picked up Lazarus beyond. “And what the crap's he doing here?”
Maryam slipped the box of pills under Lazarus's blanket and sprang to her feet. “He's dying,” she said bluntly, hating to say it in front of Lazarus but needing Charlie to understand that hers was no ordinary transgression.
“How'd you get back in?” His eyes burned with fury.
“He needed my help,” Maryam said, and she raised her chin defiantly. “How did you know that I'd be here?”
He snorted. “I didn't. I was coming to ask your friend Ruth what was going on. My wife, Veramina, works down at the hospital. She's says you did a runner when you heard they were going to operate on your arm.”
“She's your wife?” Something in her brain went click. No wonder Charlie was so different from the rest of the guards. He loved someone with brown skin.
“Yeah.” His face softened for a moment. “But why on earth risk an amputation and hightail it back to this shit hole? If you were going to run, you should've had the op, then run the hell away from here.”
“An amputation?” Lazarus broke in.
“Nothing,” she hissed back over her shoulder. She met Charlie's uncomprehending gaze. “Don't you see? I couldn't leave him here to die.”
“When Vera told me about your breakdown yesterday, I didn't believe it, but now you're starting to convince me…No one breaks back into here, you crazy kid—except the odd crusading reporter from time to time. You're bloody lucky I'm the only one, so far, who's figured out the girl who had the meltdown yesterday was you.” He sighed, looking more tired than angry now. He jerked his head at Lazarus. “What the hell did you think you could do for him? Lay on your hands?” He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Listen, missy, I know you think you're helping, but if someone in my position can't convince the boss to get proper treatment for you lot, what makes you think you can somehow save his life?”
Maryam folded her arms across her chest, feeling like a chastised child. If only she could make him understand…She sized him up, from his weary face down to his scuffed black boots. If she took him into her confidence—somehow managed to move his heart—then maybe he could find out how to use the pills. But if he chose instead to uphold the law of the camp, he'd confiscate the pills, punish her for stealing and leave Lazarus to die. Was it worth this risk?
Now Ruth appeared in the doorway. “It's all right,” Maryam reassured her. But she caught Ruth's gaze and slid her eyes to Charlie to warn her to be guarded. “Did you have any luck?”
Ruth shook her head. “No help.”
Aanjay refused? Why would she do that? Had she been brainwashed by the white men too? Behind her, Lazarus succumbed to a fit of coughing, a terrible barking sound that resounded off the metal walls. Maryam shook aside her disappointment and knelt beside him. There was little she could do but offer him another sip of water once the final spasm had passed. When she'd helped Lazarus to settle comfortably again, she looked up at Charlie, whose brow was creased with concern. With Aanjay refusing to help, she'd have to make use of his good heart and take the risk of trusting him. “Can we speak outside?” she said.
Charlie nodded, glancing back at Lazarus as he left. “Take it easy, matey. I never saw you here, you unde
rstand?”
“Thanks,” Lazarus rasped.
Outside the hut, Maryam shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot, trying to decide how best to confess. “Lazarus has Te Matee Iai,” she started. “Aanjay says you know it as Sumber Kem—” She racked her brain, trying to recall the word.
“Sumber Kemusnahan,” Charlie prompted. He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, that makes sense.”
She blurted out her story now: how Joseph had already died, how Lazarus had tried to end his life when he learnt the plague had struck him too. Charlie didn't interrupt, merely raised an eyebrow when she told him how she'd concocted her desperate plan. “I can't let him die, not now I know there's a cure.” She told him of the hospital, of Veramina's kindness, and how she stole the pills.
“You're gutsy and inventive, I'll give you that…But do you understand the consequences if they find out you stole the drugs?”
She didn't want to think of this right now, it scared her so. “Wouldn't you have done the same?”
Charlie gazed off into the distance for a moment, as though he searched for the answer to her question there. “What if I was to assure you that I'll get him help, if you agree to go back to the hospital and let them fix your arm?”
She shook her head reluctantly. “No,” she said. “I need to stay with him until I know for sure that he's cured. I gave my word to him—I can't let him down.” Her pulse was crashing round inside her head like footsteps in an empty room.
Charlie slipped his hands into his pockets and whistled tunelessly under his breath as he considered her words. Then the whistling stopped. “Okay, here's what we'll do. I'll get Vera to tell me how to administer the pills and to explain away your absence from the hospital before it reaches my boss's ears. But, once your friend is well, you have to promise me you'll return for the operation and make no more fuss.”
“All right,” she agreed, too in need of Veramina's expertise to argue the point. “Thank you. But please don't put yourself at risk.” She thought of Brother Mark back in the Holy City, and how he'd died trying to aid her.
Charlie waved her worry away. “Let me tell you something so you'll understand. When Vera and me first met, we had a child—a girl.” His eyes grew distant for a moment and a soft smile lit his face. “We called her Sarwendah. It means wholly beautiful, and she was…She'd be about your age now if she'd lived.”
“What happened?” Maryam prompted. She didn't want to rush him but she could hear Lazarus coughing again inside the hut.
“We lived on a small island some way from here—my parents went bush to escape the madness of the mainland and the endless wars—but the downside was we had no access to medical supplies. Sarwendah was two when she slipped one day on toxic coral down at the wharf. The wound on her leg got horribly infected and, no matter what we did, it wouldn't heal. We were advised to amputate, and in the end we had no choice but to agree. It made no difference. Without antibiotics she still died.” He blinked his eyes as though damming back his tears. “When we found Vera was expecting our second child, our son Lemah, we decided to shift somewhere with doctors and drugs on hand. Vera got a job at the hospital when the kids were older, but the only work I could find was here.”
“I'm so sorry,” Maryam said.
He shrugged. “I try to do what I can here in my own small way. But you, Maryam, must not throw your life away. It's hard in here, I know, but you must keep faith that things will change.”
Maryam smiled, thinking that faith was the very thing she'd lost. But she knew that wasn't the kind of faith he meant, and she appreciated his kindness. “I'll try,” she said. “But now I have to get back to Lazarus. That coughing is only going to get worse. How long will it take for you to find out about the pills?”
“I'll go and call Vera now and come back right away.” He charged off down the walkway, leaving Maryam to wonder how he could speak to his wife without having to leave the camp. There was still so much she didn't know about this complex new world.
Ruth, meantime, was hovering in the shadows of the hut. “It's all right,” Maryam reassured her. “He's going to find out how to use the pills.”
“Thank the Lord,” Ruth burst out. “Aanjay simply doesn't know.”
As Maryam took up her place at Lazarus's side, Ruth told of her conversation with Aanjay. “She said the locals cure the plague by boiling up the leaves and flowers of a special tree—it's that essence the Territorials use to make their drugs—but she doesn't know anything about the right dose of pills and says it's far too dangerous for her to guess.”
Maryam could tell that Lazarus was listening by the way his eyes clouded as this news hit him hard.
“It's all right,” she reassured him, “Charlie's wife works at the hospital and will tell us how to use the pills.” Now she told them about Veramina and how she stumbled on the cure, downplaying the part about her arm. Now is not the time.
There was nothing to do at her tale's end but wait for Charlie to return. Each minute felt like an hour as the girls tried to lower Lazarus's temperature by sponging down his feverish face and neck. At last they heard Charlie's heavy tread on the walkway outside.
“Mission accomplished,” he announced as he entered the hut. “Give him six immediately and then two every four hours until all the symptoms pass. She says the one box should be enough, but that if you need more she'll see what she can do.”
Maryam couldn't help herself: she leapt up and hugged him. “Thank you,” she said. To think this white man had risked his job for her—for Lazarus. This was a rare and wondrous gift.
Charlie patted her awkwardly, then backed away. “Don't forget our deal. I'll come and check up on you before I end my shift.”
As soon as he was gone Maryam counted out the first six pills and coaxed Lazarus to swallow them, taking a sip of water after each to wash it down. Still, he gagged on every pill, but when the last of them was taken relief flooded over her like summer rain. For the first time in so long she felt light, tentative flutters of hope.
All through the afternoon she kept watch on the position of the sun, trying to gauge the passing of each four hours so she could give Lazarus his next dose of pills. He dozed fitfully, his fever ravaging his strength, and she tried in vain to convince him to eat. In the end she gave up. She was giddy with tiredness herself. The pain-dulling effects of the paracetamol she'd taken that morning had worn off, too, and the burning in her infected arm was so unrelenting she had to grit her teeth to hold back tears. But when Ruth suggested she seek out more paracetamol, Maryam brushed the offer away. They daren't draw any attention to themselves while Lazarus still lay hidden in their hut.
Later, as evening fell, Lazarus grew agitated and bad-tempered, his fever rising so sharply he began to rave. To make it worse, he stubbornly refused to take the pills, spitting them out and rolling away to face the wall so that no one could coax him further. When Charlie called by to say that he was going home, he found Maryam pacing the hut in exasperation.
“You're sure I'm giving him the proper dose?” she asked, so tired and sore herself she could hardly speak.
Charlie gave her and Ruth an assessing look. “You've both done all you can. Now it's up to him. For goodness sake, get some rest.”
“But he's worse!”
Charlie sighed. “You have to prepare yourself—even if he takes all the pills, they can't work miracles. Vera says that if the Sumber Kemusnahan is too far down the track, then not even the pills can bring him back.”
“But they're supposed to be a cure.”
“Bodies can only take so much strain. Now you have to leave it in the hands of God. I'll be back in the morning to see how you are. Get some rest in the meantime, for pity's sake.”
Neither Maryam nor Ruth could speak as they watched Charlie leave. Maryam was the first to find words, though they were hardly coherent. “But Aanjay said…and Jo…”
Ruth took comfort in what she knew best. “If he's right,” she said, “why don't we pray? The Lord wil
l help.”
“No!” Maryam couldn't take this now. She ran outside and leaned against the outer wall, watching as a cloud of moths beat themselves to death on the bare walkway lights. It occurred to her that this was how she felt: every time she moved towards the light, it turned out to be an illusion, a cruel trick of fate. Let Ruth pray to the Lord if it helped her, but Maryam would never again seek His help. The only person she could totally rely on was herself. And she would not let Lazarus die. Somehow she had to find the will, the strength inside, to take her life in hand and stop merely reacting to every new problem as it struck her down. If this was her only life, then she determined now to make it count. Or if, as Aanjay believed, it was only one step upon the road to something better—the thing Aanjay called enlightenment—then she must learn the lessons that might reward her with a better lifetime in the next. Whichever way, she was certain now her fate rested solely in her own hands.
She let out a long slow breath and felt a kind of peace descend on her. She could hear Ruth inside the hut, praying above Lazarus's reedy feverish ravings, and as she listened to their desperate duet she suddenly knew what to do.
She stormed back inside, apologised to Ruth for her rudeness, then popped two more pills from the foil. Too quickly for Lazarus to fight her off, she pushed them into the corner of his mouth and used her index finger to force them down his throat. He gagged but automatically swallowed before flailing her with a torrent of feverish abuse.
“You bitch. You total lying whore…” On and on he shouted, but whether he flung the words at her, or at someone in his past—perhaps his mother—Maryam didn't care. It was poisonous Te Matee Iai that spoke, not the boy.
She grabbed his arm, jerked him up until he was high enough off the mat to slip his arm over her good shoulder, and lugged him to his feet. She was so determined now, her own pain merely fuelled her strength as she forcibly began to march him out the door.
“What are you doing?” Ruth cried, buzzing around them like a worried bee. “You can't take him outside. The women will see…”
“I need to cool him down.” She didn't wait to argue the point, just dragged him, struggling and cursing, over to the showers.
