“Please.” He said the word calmly, but I could see the panic in his eyes. He was afraid. Afraid that he’d lose the hand, or die. And I was the only one around to help.
In the end it came down to one very important fact: Henry was bitten by a poisonous snake to save me from getting bit by a poisonous snake. The very least I could do was stick him with a needle.
I closed my eyes, which was dumb. I could hardly give someone a shot if I couldn’t see them. So I opened one eye, just enough to see what I was doing, and jabbed the needle in above the puncture wounds. I held my breath and pressed the plunger.
I pulled the needle and the now-empty syringe out and carefully placed it in a bright red “sharps” bag located with the syringes. I stood and walked ever so slowly to the other side of the Range Rover. Then I proceeded to hurl.
Chapter 6
“HEY, ISAIAH, are you okay?”
“Shut up,” I called, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “You’re the one who got bit by a snake.”
“Yeah, but you’re the one who just puked his guts up.”
“Whatever.” As soon as I was sure I wouldn’t vomit any more of my breakfast, I walked back to Henry. “How do we know if it works?”
He looked at his swollen arm. “We wait. Hopefully the swelling will stop and my arm won’t turn a nasty black color.”
My stomach churned again. “That’s it? We wait?”
“Pretty much. It’ll need bandaging, and I’ll need to keep it wrapped for the rest of the day, but other than that, it’s just got to heal.” His face was still pale, his eyes still wide.
“You’re not going to be able to drive,” I said.
He looked at the Range Rover. “Probably not for a while, no. Can you drive?”
“Of course,” I snapped. I sat down next to him and dug through the kit again, looking for, what, a Band-Aid, a plaster cast? I had no idea.
“Cover the punctures with some gauze and tape. Then wrap the rest of the arm with a pressure bandage.”
“How do you know so much about this?” I asked as I secured the beige elastic bandage with extra medical tape. I knew from experience the Velcro edge was all but worthless.
“I work in a refugee clinic in Africa. There are some things you pick up. Snakebites are one of them.”
“I see. Is that what you want to do for the rest of your life? Work in a clinic in Africa?” I helped him stand, and it was clear he wouldn’t be able to make it to the Range Rover on his own. His knees shook visibly, and he almost dropped back down to the road.
I wrapped my arm around his waist and took as much of his weight as I could. We stumbled to the Range Rover, and I half hauled, half pushed him into the passenger seat. Once his seat belt was fastened, I stepped back. “I’ve got to grab the first aid kit, and then we’ll get out of here.”
“Don’t forget your insulin thing,” he said.
I cringed. On the one hand, I was glad he reminded me. On the other I had no interest whatsoever in groping around in the bushes again. I had an emergency replacement pump, and I really, really wanted to say screw it and set it up. But what if I ran into a real emergency and didn’t have the backup?
“Fine.” I took a deep breath, steeling my nerves for the task ahead. I walked around the logs and peered at the parts of the road’s edge that weren’t covered in thick brush.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for a big stick!” I glanced over my shoulder and saw Henry had rolled down his window.
He leaned back in the passenger seat with a smile, shaking his head.
I didn’t find a stick. At least, not one that wouldn’t require hiking ten feet into the bushes, which would have defeated the whole purpose.
The first-aid kit was essentially a big duffel bag filled with lots of smaller boxes and packages. It had an adjustable-length strap. I zipped everything back up, tucked the red sharps bag into a side pocket, and resized the strap until it was as long as I could get it. When I stood a good arm’s length away from where I’d lost my pump, I swung the kit in long sweeps around and into the bushes. No way was I reaching into the bushes until I had scared away any creature that might have been lurking. I may have continued to rustle the leaves and branches much longer than necessary. Maybe. When I knew I couldn’t delay it any longer, I squatted low, lasered in on the pump, and snatched it up, even as I sprung back.
My heart beat like I’d just run a mile and my hands shook, but it was done.
“Not a word,” I ordered Henry as I shoved the first-aid kit back into its spot behind the seat.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” A small, tired smile bowed his lips. His face was still pale, still drawn, but he looked more relaxed than I would have been if our situations were reversed.
I closed my eyes and tried to even out my breathing. When I thought I’d accomplished my goal, I opened them, only to lock my gaze on his bandaged arm, and my temper spiked.
“You stupid son of a bitch! What the hell did you think you were doing?”
He sat up straight, clutching his wrapped arm to his chest. “What?”
“You’re out of your mind. That’s what it is, right? What were you thinking?”
“Hey, I kept you from getting bitten!”
“At the expense of yourself! Who does that? You could have died. Hell, you don’t even know if the antivenin will work. You could still lose your hand. Did you think about that?”
“What’s your deal? You should be grateful.”
“Grateful? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of nowhere. What was I supposed to do if it killed you? If you hadn’t been able to speak to let me know what to do? I’d be screwed out here. You know things. You know our location. You know the animals. Hell, you know the appropriate first aid for when an ugly-ass snake bites a guy.”
“I knew the risks. I knew the odds. What I didn’t know is how your body, with the diabetes, would react to the snake venom or the antivenin.” He shouted now too. “I knew what to do for me if I was bit. I wouldn’t have had the least idea what to do for a diabetic in the same circumstance. For all I knew, you’d go into some kind of toxic shock. Besides, Dr. Martin would never have forgiven me if I let anything happen to you.”
“I don’t need a babysitter!” I smacked the steering wheel. Then I sighed as my anger drained away. I knew I wasn’t being reasonable. I rested my head against the steering wheel. He started to say something, but I held up a hand to stop him. “Never again,” I said without lifting my head. “I don’t need—or want—you to step between me and danger.”
“Fine.” He sounded so weary that I looked up. He leaned back against the seat, his eyes closed, and I immediately felt guilty. Then he spoke again. “Don’t forget your insulin pump.”
“I’m not a baby,” I growled, even though I knew he was right. And because he was right, I looked at the pump and cleared away the dirt and debris. The monitor was fine, but the tubing would definitely need to be replaced. Normally I’d prefer a counter in an area with plenty of light, but what I had was the cab of a Range Rover.
I reached past Henry’s legs to grab my bag by his feet. It only took a few minutes to replace the necessary pieces, fill the vial’s pump, and insert the pump’s tubing into my side. The whole time Henry watched like it was some kind of fascinating science experiment.
The monitor’s screen updated, and I grimaced. No wonder I’d been so cranky. Stress could cause a person’s blood sugar to go wacky, and wacky blood sugar often made a diabetic irritable. I adjusted the dose and pushed the button, sending a bolus of insulin into my veins.
“Everything okay?”
“It’s fine.” I hooked the monitor to my belt. “Now, where am I going?”
“Just keep on going that way. We’ve got hours left before we change roads.”
I put the big vehicle into Drive and carefully maneuvered through the path we’d cleared.
Henry fell asleep sometime later. Every now and then he’d fl
inch, and guilt would roil in my belly. Stupid, self-sacrificing son of a bitch.
A COUPLE hours later, the surrounding terrain started to change. The densely packed forest gave way to smaller trees growing farther apart, and the ground became rockier. In the distance I could see where a river ran—the trees made a thick, dark line surrounded by browner, grayer earth. I tried to keep my eye out for the elusive pygmy hippo, but I was pretty sure the window of opportunity for that had passed by.
“Question,” Henry said.
I looked over. His face was relaxed and flushed from sleep. “Shoot,” I said.
“Do you think the end ever justifies the means? Can a person ever make up for past mistakes? How many good deeds outweigh bad decisions?”
Whoa. Apparently snake venom and a nap made Henry philosophical. “Dude, that’s pretty deep.”
“I’m serious. Say a person makes a decision that makes total sense at the time, at least he thinks so, but ultimately it’s the wrong decision. How long should he have to pay for it?”
“Well, in my case, it’s going to take three months, two weeks, and four days to make up for my stupid decision.”
“Yeah, but what if it was worse than that?”
“Worse how? Did anyone end up hurt or dead? Were any laws broken?”
“Let’s say no one was hurt but laws were broken.”
“Then I guess you, I mean, a person, would have to decide for himself the extent of the debt.”
He grew silent and stared out the window.
“Is that your story?”
“Huh?”
“Your story. Is that why you’re here in Cameroon doing missionary work? Running away from your past?”
It wasn’t any of my business, but he’d piqued my curiosity. And my sympathy. Whatever it was that put that bleak expression on his face had to be pretty awful. But what could he have possibly done that was so bad?
“Not running away,” he said. “Fulfilling a debt.”
“A debt? To whom?”
He still didn’t look at me, just kept his gaze fixed firmly on the horizon. “When I was fifteen, I left home.”
“Left home? Why?” Okay, now I was starting to sound like a parrot. I couldn’t keep repeating him.
His voice changed when he answered. It was a little edgier, a little cooler. “Pretty typical, really. Mom got remarried. The guy she picked was a dick. He didn’t care to have her brat around. I got mouthy, he got pushy, and when he found out I was gay, that was all he needed to kick me out. Mom tried to step in, and they went at it. I could tell she was torn about whether to stick up for me or support him. In the end she picked him.” He rubbed at his heart like it ached. “Mom’s not very strong. She needed someone to take care of her. I didn’t, so I left.” It sounded like an excuse he’d made to make himself feel better. I suddenly understood his interaction with Mrs. Okono a little better—she was like the mom his should have been.
“Jesus.” I was suddenly very grateful for the strong, assertive, supportive mother I had. She’d have never let someone treat me like that, and she sure as hell wouldn’t let me leave home at fifteen. “What did you do? Where did you go?”
He sighed, a sad exhalation. “That’s a story for another time. But after I’d been on the streets a couple of years, I met a man.”
My eyes widened, and my foot eased on the accelerator. I pictured Fagin in Oliver, then some kind of sugar daddy, then some screwed-up combination of the two.
“Not like that,” he said, noticing my expression. “He was a minister who ran one of the homeless shelters. I’d been beat up pretty badly—another time,” he interjected before I could ask, “—and he found me. He said there were places a person could go, things he could do, that could give life more meaning, and he’d help me do that if it was something I wanted. At first I blew him off, thinking he was some kind of do-gooder who got off on trying to redeem the damned.”
I cringed. I knew the do-gooder dig was meant for me.
“A few weeks later, a friend of mine died. Drug overdose. I looked at him, at me, and decided that I didn’t want to be that person anymore. So I found the minister, and he took care of it. He got me the passport and the airfare, and connected me with your father. It’s been the best thing to ever happen to me.”
I had so many questions I wanted to ask, but I wouldn’t ask them. It didn’t seem right.
He’d shared something big with me, something important. I didn’t know why, but that made me feel like I owed him something. Respect maybe? A truth? There was more to it, I was sure, but still. Mom had always been there for me. She’d stand toe-to-toe with Satan himself if he threatened me in any way. Even if she weren’t there, I knew, somewhere deep inside I knew, if it came down to it, I could count on my father to support me, in whatever way became necessary. I didn’t have to fear I’d end up on the street. I didn’t have to make adult decisions, adult sacrifices. Henry had. At fifteen, he’d been more of an adult than his bitch of a mother or dick of a stepfather. I kind of wanted to find my mom and give her a great big hug.
Silence filled the Range Rover. I didn’t know what to say, and I figured Henry must have fallen back asleep.
“In about a half hour,” he said, proving me wrong, “we’ll have to take a right onto P4.”
Henry picked up the discarded field guide that lay on the dash. He flipped through the pages fast enough that I doubted he read any of the descriptions or even glanced at the pictures. It looked like something he did to keep his fingers moving.
“So, what’s the deal with the books?”
Henry’s page turning paused. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I can kind of see the animal books. You clearly have an interest in the subject. But Perks?”
“Have you read it?”
“I saw the movie. Does that count?”
“Hardly. But you know the story, right?”
I nodded.
“My freshman year of high school, before my mom and the stepmonster kicked me out, I had to do a book report for English class on a banned book. Something about the story—this out-of-place kid looking for his place to fit in—stuck with me. It reminded me of me a bit. Not for the same reasons. But I didn’t have a lot of friends. The summer before I started high school the city redrew the school district maps, and I ended up the only one of my friends at my high school. The rest had been assigned to a school on the other side of town. A fluke of geography. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and I didn’t know anyone at all. Of course, I had also figured out about that time that I was gay, which just added to that outsider attitude. Anyway, I loved the book.”
While he talked he kept his eyes glued to our surroundings. I had noticed that the scrub desert we’d been passing through was changing—more trees, more bushes. Cameroon really was a cool place. In one day we went from hilly grasslands to hardwood forests to scrub desert to rain forest. Crazy.
“You should read it,” Henry said, glancing at me from the corner of his eyes. “It’s pretty freaking cool. Anyway,” he continued, turning back to the scenery, “there’s this line. I don’t remember it exactly, but it has something to do with people accepting what they think they deserve. Like, if we hang out with people who hurt us, it’s probably because, on some level, we believe that we deserve to be hurt. I don’t know how true that is, but for me, well, let’s just say when my mom and the stepmonster kicked me out, it helped to remember that. I deserved more than they were willing to give. Then later, when I realized that if I didn’t do something to change my life, I’d end up dead, it helped again. I deserved more than that life. I wasn’t going to accept it anymore. I had a chance to do something different, something better.”
I swallowed. The decisions, the choices he’d had to make. I couldn’t even imagine them. I hoped to God I never had to find that kind of strength.
TWENTY MINUTES later movement on the road ahead caught my attention. A huge procession of people trudged in our direction, many carrying bund
les of belongings. Those without the cargo had a child, or sometimes two, strapped to backs or settled on hips. I pulled the Range Rover as far over on the road as I could. The bright colors they wore contrasted sharply with the somber expressions on their faces. Some of the people were shoeless. I didn’t know why that stood out so much, but it did. Maybe because I wore shoes that cost more than a hundred bucks, and they had nothing, not even cheap sandals. I tried to count them, but when I reached 120 and hadn’t even made it to the halfway point, I gave up.
“Who are they?” I asked in a hushed voice. “Where are they going?”
No one looked at us as they walked past. Faces blank, eyes emotionless. Even the children, solemn enough to be part of a funeral procession, stared ahead as though neither their origin nor their destination made a difference.
“Refugees from the CAR. We’re not too far from the border right now, and the conflict there is getting worse.”
“Can you imagine,” I asked, licking my lips, “how bad things must be there to make this the preferable option?”
“War is never pretty.”
“I was born there, you know.” I watched a boy of about twelve walking next to his mother. He had a pack almost as big as he was strapped to his bony shoulders and held the hand of a girl half his age. His other hand was missing.
I had to swallow several times to keep my gorge down. I wanted to cry or hit something. I wanted to pack them all into the Range Rover with us and take them somewhere safe. These people, they were so absolutely defeated. I started to see why Chuck chose to stay and help. At least a little.
“In the CAR?” Henry kept his voice as quiet as mine. Somehow it didn’t seem right not to whisper in the face of this kind of devastation. Destroying a place is bad enough, but to destroy the human spirit this way was somehow much, much worse.
“Kind of a family joke. The only red-haired, blue-eyed baby to be born in the province since the French left.” An old man with several teeth missing shuffled past my window. “I loved it there. I loved the people, all of them. The staff. Even the refugees. I was just a kid, so the enormity of it, of this”—I gestured around us—“never sunk in. They were Sudanese refugees then. When I was seven, we left, Mom and I.”
Do-Gooder Page 5
