by Justin D'Ath
‘You’ll need to sterilise it first.’
‘How do you do that?’ I asked.
‘How you do it,’ my bossy girlfriend said, ‘is dip the end of the needle in that bottle of antiseptic.’
‘Like this?’
‘That’s good. Now kneel here beside me. I’ll support his head. Are you okay with this, Three?’
She should have asked me if I was okay with this.
My answer would have been no.
‘Will hurt?’ asked the brid.
‘Maybe a little,’ said Holly. She looked at me. ‘I wish we had some painkillers.’
‘I saw some Teledol in the first-aid kit.’
‘Okay. That might work.’
We discussed how many capsules to use. The directions on the box said two capsules for adults and one capsule for children under twelve years.
‘How old are you, Three?’ asked Holly.
‘Doan know,’ it said.
Holly spoke to me. ‘I think one will be enough, don’t you? He’s only the size of a three-year-old.’
‘Mustafa give four.’
We both looked at the brid.
‘What was wrong with you?’ I asked.
‘Three have ache-tooth.’
‘Poor baby!’ said Holly.
‘Three not baby,’ it said.
‘Of course you aren’t.’ She patted its hand. ‘You’re a big, strong guy.’
‘Three brid, not guy.’
‘Yes. Sorry. You’re a big, strong brid.’
‘Not strong anymore,’ it said.
Holly looked at me and raised her eyebrows. She was beginning to understand that talking animals made life complicated.
‘You will be strong,’ she said to Three. ‘Sunday and I are going to make you good as new, aren’t we Sunny?’
‘I hope so,’ I said, still holding the needle and cotton. Having stitches put in was a different pain from toothache. ‘I think we should give it six.’
‘Six stitches?’ said Holly.
‘Six Teledols,’ I said.
‘That’s a lot.’
‘Stitches hurt a lot.’
‘Give six,’ said Three.
Breaking the capsules from their silver foil, we fed them to Three one at a time, giving it little sips of water in between to wash each one down. I hoped six Teledols were not too many. Holly was right – the brid was only the size of a three-year-old. But what was the worst thing that could happen? Mightbe it would fall asleep. It would not be so bad to stitch up someone who was asleep.
Some-thing that was asleep.
‘We should wait awhile for them to start working,’ Holly said.
‘Okay,’ Three and I said, at the same time.
None of us was in a hurry to get started.
So we waited. Holly yawned, then Three yawned, then I did. She checked the time on her phone. I asked her and she said, ‘3:00 a.m.’ Three yawned again, showing its huge fangs, as big as a leopard’s. How could anyone think it was like a human?
Finally, after waiting mightbe ten minutes, it was time to start.
‘Be gentle,’ Holly said, watching me bring the pointy end of the needle down, close to the loose skin on one side of the big wound on Three’s scalp.
The needle was shaking. I had not been lying – only girls and women knew how to sew in my country. My feet might be called magic, but not my hands. I took a deep breath and jabbed the point in.
Three yelped in pain.
‘Sorry!’ I said, pulling the needle back out.
I caught Holly’s eye. ‘Mightbe we should wait a bit longer.’
She shook her head. ‘Pinch the skin up on both sides and hold the needle at a lower angle . . . No! Not like that!’
Three yelped again, even louder.
‘Sorry!’ I said again.
Holly placed a white hand on my wrist. ‘You really can’t sew, can you?’
‘I told you I have not learned.’
She sighed, tiredly and loudly. ‘Swap places, then. I’ll do it.’
17
Handsome Nurse
My thoughts had been wrong. Holly knew how to sew. Watching her at work with the needle and thread, I felt proud of my clever girlfriend. And proud, also, to be her boyfriend. But part of me was puzzled.
Why had she been angry?
The minutes passed. Stitch by stitch, Holly was slowly putting Three’s scalp back together. It looked truly horrible – like a patchwork quilt made of hair and meat – and I tried not to watch too closely. But I could not fully look away because it was my job to mop up the blood around the area where Holly was working. I used balls of cotton wool dipped in water and antiseptic. It was hard to concentrate. Hard, also, to keep my eyes open. How long was it since I had last slept? I thought about it. Apart from the few moments when I dozed off in the service alley, it must have been nearly twenty-four hours.
They were the worst nearly twenty-four hours in my life (except for the birthday kiss).
At last Holly snipped the thread and tied the final knot. ‘How are you going there, baby?’ she asked.
‘I am okay,’ I said, yawning again.
‘I wasn’t asking you.’
Who was she asking then? My sleepy brain had forgotten that there were two of us called baby.
‘Three okay,’ said the other one.
‘Get him some more water, Sunday,’ Holly said.
Now she was talking to me and I was no longer baby.
While I helped the brid take another few sips from the mug, Holly sterilised the needle again, then bit off another length of cotton.
‘Aren’t you finished?’ I asked.
‘Finished up top,’ she said. ‘The neck now.’
There was a wound that I had not noticed, a deep bite hidden in the thick fur below Three’s left ear. The edges gaped open like lips. Holly trimmed the fur around the wound with scissors, then she re-threaded the needle and got to work. But after making only one stitch, she stopped. Holding the needle to one side, she bent down for a closer look.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘There’s something in there. Can you get the tweezers from the first-aid kit, baby?’
Pleased to be baby once more, I watched as Holly used the tweezers to remove a tiny, silver thing from inside the wound. She jiggled it in the water bowl to wash the blood off, then she held it up for me to see.
‘Any idea what it is, Sunny?’
It was a small metal bead, about twice the size of a grain of rice, with a short length of plastic-coated wire dangling from one end.
‘It looks like something from inside a TV set or a phone,’ I said. ‘Can I have a closer look?’
She dropped it into my palm. ‘So what was it doing in Three’s neck?’
The brid’s head was still resting in Holly’s lap. Its good eye had been darting between us as we talked. Now it said, ‘Might belong Mustafa.’
Holly looked down at it. ‘But how would it have gotten inside your neck?’
‘Mustafa give needle one time – not needle for stitch, needle to make Three sleep. Neck sore after.’
‘Sweet Paradise!’ I gasped.
Suddenly I was on my feet. Ignoring the hot pain in my ankle, I raced fast-fast to the other end of the warehouse. Earlier, when Holly had sent me looking for a needle and thread, I had seen a small shifting spanner on the table next to the sewing machine. Now I grabbed it and put the silver bead on the concrete floor. Bang, bang, bang, bang! I pounded the bead until nothing of it remained but a smear of ground-up metal on the concrete.
‘What was that all about?’ Holly asked when I returned to her and Three.
‘I think it was a miniature transmitter,’ I said, my heart going thump-thump-thump, like an echo of the shifting spanner pounding the silver bead to dust. ‘Mustafa must have put it in Three’s neck before he sent it looking for me.’
‘Why? What was it for?’
‘So he could find Three again if its mission failed. It was how h
e kept finding us last night. I thought the transmitter was in Three’s backpack, but all along it was in its neck!’
Holly’s eyes went big again. I had told her about Mustafa’s tracking device and his companion with the AK-47. ‘Do you think they might have followed you here?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Go and switch the lights off,’ she said, suddenly whispering.
‘Why?’
‘So it looks like no one’s in here.’
‘But there are no windows,’ I said.
Holly pointed up at the join where the top of the warehouse’s corrugated iron walls met the downward slope of the roof. She did not have to explain. There was a gap of about five centimetres. If someone were outside, they would be able to see a strip of light.
I limped over to the door from the front office and switched off the lights. Then I shuffled back through the cave-like dark to Holly and Three.
‘Where is your phone?’ I asked.
‘Here. What do you need it for?’
I held the phone so the light from its screen shone on Three’s partly stitched neck. ‘Now you can see what you are doing.’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Holly said. ‘I should have thought of it before. Pick him up and bring him to the kitchen.’
The kitchen had no windows and there were no gaps around its ceiling. With the door closed, it was safe to switch on the light. Holly moved a chair out of the way so I could lay Three gently across the little green Formica table. Its feet and the end of its tail hung over the edge.
‘Go get the blanket,’ Holly said.
I did, and she said, ‘Fold it and put it under Three’s head like a pillow.’
‘Whatever you say, doctor.’
Holly gave me a funny look. ‘Would you like to be the doctor, Sunday?’
‘No thanks,’ I said quickly.
‘Okay.’ She watched me fold the blanket and slip it gently under Three’s head. ‘I think I prefer you as my handsome nurse, anyway,’ she said.
‘Can’t I just be your handsome boyfriend?’
Her eyebrows did a wiggly thing. ‘What’s wrong with being a nurse?’
‘I’m a boy.’
‘So? Boys can be nurses.’
‘Mightbe where you come from.’
‘What? Are you saying there aren’t male nurses in Zantuga?’
I frowned. Having an American girlfriend was difficult. Everything I said was wrong. ‘When Ama was in hospital for her woman troubles, there were only lady nurses.’
‘And all the doctors were men, I suppose?’
‘I did not see Ama’s doctor.’ I shrugged. ‘There mightbe lady doctors that only girls and ladies go to.’
Holly offered me the threaded needle. There was blood on the cotton. ‘Here. You’d better be Three’s doctor then, because he’s a boy, after all.’
I would not take the needle. ‘Three is an animal – animals are not boys or girls.’
‘Three brid,’ the creature growled. ‘Not animal.’
Sweet Paradise! Now both of them were angry with me!
‘So I’m good enough to be a vet,’ Holly said, in a voice that was no more friendly than Three’s, ‘but not good enough to be a doctor?’
It was hard to think fast when I felt so tired, but suddenly I knew what to say. ‘You are good enough to be anything, Holly. You are the smartest, bravest, kindest, most loveliest person in the whole, wide world! And I am totally proud to be your nurse.’
Holly leaned over and kissed me on the squashy part of my nose.
‘My handsome nurse,’ she said.
18
Locked In
There were thirty-four stitches altogether – twenty-eight in Three’s scalp, two in its neck and four more closing a deep gash in its right shoulder. The rest of its wounds did not need sewing. (Apart from the bullet hole, which was too difficult even for Holly to stitch up.) I helped her cover them with dressings and bandages from the first-aid kit. We even taped a gauze pad over its closed-up eye.
‘How are you feeling, baby?’ Holly asked. ‘Sleepy,’ it said.
Her other baby did not say anything.
Using the light from her phone, we brought more blankets from the warehouse and made a nest for Three on the floor next to the little refrigerator. The brid closed its good eye and seemed to fall asleep straightaway. Holly and I stood looking down at it. I did not know what she was thinking, but in my head was a picture of another brid, mightbe this one’s brother or sister, peering down through an open skylight at a man and woman drinking their morning coffee.
‘Shoot!’ Holly exclaimed suddenly. She was looking at a clock on the wall above the refrigerator. Its hands showed five minutes past four. ‘I’d better motor.’
I did not fully understand that sentence – motor? – but I guessed it meant she was planning to go home.
‘Mightbe you should stay here till curfew is over,’ I said.
‘Uh-uh. My parents are super strict. If they catch me sneaking back in, they’ll kill me.’
Three’s eye popped open. It had not been asleep at all. ‘Parent kill Holly!?’
‘I was exaggerating,’ she said, with a little laugh.
‘What mean eggs-rate?’
‘Go back to sleep, Three!’ I growled.
Taking Holly by the hand, I led her out into the warehouse, clicking the door softly closed behind us. It was totally black out there, totally private.
‘I wish you did not have to go,’ I murmured. ‘Me, too,’ she murmured back.
Then neither of us said anything for a while. But not for as long as I would have liked. Much too soon, my lovely, sweet-smelling and sweet-tasting American girlfriend freed herself from my arms.
‘Sorry, babe,’ she whispered, ‘but your clothes are a bit skunky.’
Skunky was another word that I had not heard before, but once again I could make a good guess. ‘I do not have anything else to wear.’
‘This place is full of clothes.’
‘But I thought they were for the poor people.’
‘They’re for people who need them,’ Holly said.
What she meant was: you are one of those people now. I felt deeply shamed.
‘Take a look around in the morning, Sunny,’ she said, in a voice that was kind and gentle. ‘There’s loads of good gear here – clothes, food, toys. Hey, you might even find a soccer ball.’
I knew she was trying to cheer me up, but I did not want to be cheered up. ‘We call it football.’
‘Sorry. I’ve only been here a few months.’ She squeezed my arm. ‘I haven’t even seen you play yet, Mr Magic Feet.’
At any other time, that would have made me smile. But not this time. ‘What will you say to your parents?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. They won’t hear me sneak in.’
‘I mean, about me?’
Her voice changed. ‘I’m hoping they won’t find out that you’re here.’
‘But your mother works here!’
‘It’s the weekend. She won’t be in till Monday.’
‘And then what will happen?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Holly said. ‘We’ll work something out. But right now, I’ve got to get home.’
I tried to close my mind to the dangers of breaking curfew. And to the dangers of being a girl out there in the dark. ‘When will you come back?’
‘This afternoon,’ she said. ‘Or tonight. It depends on what my parents are doing. I’ll call and let you know.’
‘Is there a landline phone here?’ I asked.
‘No. I’ll call your new cell phone.’
‘The battery is flat.’
‘Let me see.’ Holly used the light from her phone to examine Sergeant Aguda’s little Samsung. ‘Whoa – ancient! But I think we’ve got an adapter at home that will fit this.’
‘Will you bring it tonight?’ I asked.
‘Tell you what,’ said Holly, ‘you can borrow my cell – it has loads of battery left – and
I’ll take yours home and bring it back charged tomorrow.’
‘You said you will come back today.’
She yawned. ‘Sorry, I meant today. Woo, I’m so tired!’
‘Are you sure you are okay to walk home?’ I asked.
‘It’s the only way to get there,’ Holly said.
I wished she would not make jokes about everything. ‘It might not be safe.’
‘Safer than if my parents find out I’m gone, believe me!’
‘They cannot be that bad.’
‘You haven’t met my parents,’ Holly said.
I had hoped that one day I would meet them, but now that seemed unlikely. I had a bad feeling about Mbuti’s ties to America. And a bad feeling about something else, also.
Why had Holly’s parents stopped her from attending school yesterday? Had they known that a bad thing was going to happen?
I followed her through to the office and made a slit in the venetian blinds to see what was outside.
‘All clear?’ Holly asked.
‘I think so.’
She showed me how to activate the burglar alarm after she had gone. There was a code of six numbers, like a PIN. She stored this code in the memory of her phone so I would remember it. Then we swapped phones.
‘I’d better lock those padlocks outside when I go,’ Holly said. ‘Otherwise it might look suspicious. Are you okay about being locked in?’
‘As long as you do not forget to come back,’ I said, making a joke that was not really a joke.
But Holly thought it was a joke and laughed. ‘Like I’d forget my handsome boyfriend!’
I could not really see her in the dark office, just the faint shape of her white-white hair. And then that was gone also when she pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt. I tried to kiss her again, but we could not see each other and our noses bumped.
‘Sorry!’ we said together and both of us giggled.
We were still not used to kissing. But we organised our noses and got the next one right.
Again it was Holly who pulled away first. Skunky, I thought and felt my face grow hot.
‘I’ll call if I can’t come back today,’ she whispered. ‘Lock the inside door after me, okay?’
