“The first time is always the hardest,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “It’s the adrenaline. You are in shock. Put your head between your knees and rest a moment. It will pass.” Then she turns back to the next person waiting for help.
Chapter 44
Feeling guilty that I’ve become a burden and not a help, I stumble around the side of the tent and sink down with my back to the canvas, sipping water and putting my head between my knees as instructed. My whole body is trembling and I feel cold, even though the sun is hot on the crown of my head. A few minutes later I feel a touch on my shoulder and look up. Rosie is crouching next to me, her face pale, her usually effortless composure rattled.
“You okay?” she asks in a low whisper. There’s a streak of mud on her cheek, and her dress is soaked with water.
I shake my head. “I hate this,” I confess, my voice tremulous.
“Oh Mia, I know. That was absolutely terrifying.”
“It was,” I agree, then say in a small voice, “but Rosie, I mean I hate all of this—volunteering at the camp, helping in the medical tent. I hate what I’m doing every single day. I’ve hated it since the minute we got here.”
There, I’ve said it. The truth. “I don’t hate the people. I love the people, but I don’t think I’m cut out for this kind of work.” I stop, dismayed by my own admission. “Do you know what the highlight of my time here has been? Baking and then bribing a police officer with a carrot cake.”
Rosie raises her eyebrows in surprise. I didn’t tell anyone about exchanging the carrot cake for bus seats.
“There’s no shame in realizing you don’t like something,” she says, trying to comfort me. “You just find something else you like instead, something that helps people in a different way.”
I look at her doubtfully. But what about Saint Mia? I thought this work would bring me joy and meaning, but so far I just feel constantly sad and anxious and tired, so tired.
“Sugar, you’ll figure it out. I know you will.” Rosie squeezes my knee sympathetically. She’s still balancing on the balls of her feet in the dirt, wearing those ridiculous watermelon-colored Gucci flats. Her cell phone dings and she glances at it. “Lars wants to know if we’re all right. He’s seeing the news.” She types a response quickly, then gets to her feet. “Are you feeling okay?” she asks. “I’m going to call him and come right back.”
“I’m okay,” I assure her, although truthfully I am not okay in a whole host of ways. I am still stunned by what we’ve just experienced and by my own self-revelation. I get up and brush dry grass from my clothes. I don’t have time to consider all the implications of what I’ve just admitted to myself. Right now there are people who still need help.
Just as I turn to head back to my post, I notice Abel. He’s sitting across the lane near the clothing tent, his head in his hands. As I watch, Winnie approaches him and squats down, putting her arm around his shoulders and urging him to drink some water from a bottle. He shakes his head but she insists, staying with him until he finally looks up at her, his expression bleak. I wonder what this scene has resurrected for him. I imagine he has known trauma far worse than this, and I wonder if he’s reliving it all again.
In the next fifteen minutes tensions in the camp calm down significantly. Szilvia opens the food tent for an early lunch. People don’t queue in line but approach the tables in twos and threes, taking food back for families and groups huddled together. The mood in the camp is discouraged and sullen. Other than the ambulance, the police are not letting anyone in or out. We are on total lockdown.
Kai finds me gathering empty water bottles from the triage area, my arms full of them. “Hey, you okay?” he asks, touching my shoulder gently. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I hesitate, still stunned by the violence we just witnessed. “I think the riot just blew a hole right through my alternate life,” I admit.
Kai looks confused. “What do you mean?” His hand on my arm is warm, steadying me.
If I close my eyes all I can see and hear is what just happened. The slash of scarlet from a gaping forehead wound, blood dripping over a man’s eye. The screams and wails of terrified young children, a woman holding her infant to her chest and running from the tear gas, choking and crying, her face frozen in terror.
“Hey.” Kai’s voice brings me back to the present. “I came to find you. Lars just texted Rosie. The riot’s all over the news. The Humanitas Foundation is pulling us out. We’re leaving Hungary and heading back to Florida as soon as we can get out of here.”
I hear the words, but it takes a moment for them to sink in. We are leaving the camp? I feel a profound sense of relief, closely followed by a wave of guilt and sadness. The refugees are still coming, and their situation is more precarious than ever. Who will take our place? Yet I long to go home where life is safe and peaceful and predictable.
“When?” I clear my throat, trying to wrap my mind around such an abrupt departure.
“Laszlo’s on his way with the van. As soon as he can get into the camp, we’re going to the hostel to pack for the airport. Within the hour, I think. Maybe sooner. I told Rosie I’d let everybody know.”
Kai squeezes my shoulder and lopes away toward the clothing tent. I watch him go, thinking of our incendiary kiss in the tea aisle of Tesco just a short while ago. Have I lost everything now? Saying no to Ethan, no to Kai, embracing a life it seems I do not actually want. What is left for me? And what will happen to the people I am leaving behind?
I look around, unsure what to do in the few minutes we have left here. Do I try to be useful until the last possible second? Do I say goodbye?
In the end I head to the oak tree at the edge of the camp to find Maryam and Yousef. Their blankets are folded neatly at the foot of the tree, but they are gone. I ask a few others nearby, but no one has seen them. One man points toward the woods where the smugglers lurk, waiting for an offer from the desperate.
My heart sinks. Did they grow too weary of the waiting? At this very moment are they on their way to Sweden in the back of a refrigerated van? I close my eyes and say a brief prayer for them, asking for traveling mercies and for them to reach their sister and their new home safely.
Then I head back toward the center of camp to say my last farewell. Delphine is in the now empty medical tent, resting on the examination table with a wet washcloth over her eyes. There are no more patients for the present.
“Delphine,” I whisper, in case she’s asleep. She sits up and pulls the washcloth from her face. There are dark smudges under her eyes; she looks exhausted.
“Feeling better?” she asks. “It is a shock, no?” She swings her legs over the edge of the table and leans forward, giving me a once-over with a practiced eye.
I nod, looking down at the ground, feeling embarrassed. “We’re leaving,” I tell her. “The foundation that sent us is pulling us out. Laszlo’s on his way to come pick us up.” I wish I didn’t feel so relieved to think about quitting this place. “I’m sorry to leave you with all of this,” I say, gesturing to the camp.
She shrugs away my concern. “Eh, the work is never done. Don’t worry. Besides, this was never where you were meant to be. Your heart’s passion lies elsewhere.”
Her words sting a little, but I know they are true. I’m not cut out for the medical tents of refugee camps. “I’m sorry,” I say again.
“Don’t be. You were as helpful as you had the capacity to be, and now you are free to give the world what you were meant to.” Her smile is warm, softening the acerbic edge of her words. She hops off the table and gives me a quick peck on both cheeks, then pulls back and cups my face in her strong hand for one quick instant.
“Remember, Mia, your place in this world is the space where your greatest passion meets the world’s great pain,” she says firmly. “Go now and find that place.”
When we pull away from the camp some twenty minutes later, I turn and take one last look. I see that already Delphine is conscripting Freder
ik into service at the medical tent. I glance around the camp, cementing the picture in my mind, my heart filled with a potent cocktail of regret and relief. I have never been so sad to leave a place; I have never been so glad to drive away.
Part 5
Florida and Seattle
Chapter 45
Sunbeam Key
“Team Caritas, welcome home.” Lars opens the door to the mansion himself and ushers us inside, his expression solicitous. Seated in the opulent marble and white columned front room overlooking the pool, a sweating cold cocktail pressed into my hand, I look around me, exhausted and bewildered by the twenty hours of travel and searing Florida summer heat. I am supposed to be in Thailand making pancakes for school children and eating pad thai wrapped in an omelet thin as tissue paper. I am supposed to be at the Röszke refugee camp helping Delphine salve an infected wound on the leg of an Iraqi man who has walked all the way from Greece. Instead, I am sitting in Lars Lindquist’s lavish home, listening to a young Jamaican man play Chopin on the gleaming white grand piano and drinking a piña colada so strong it makes my head spin.
I glance around at my teammates. Abel sits on a white leather ottoman near a gigantic potted palm, his head in his hands. Ever since the riot he’s been distant and unresponsive. Winnie’s become his guard dog, sitting with him on the plane, shooing away the flight attendants with their offers of water, their cloying concern. She seems to have handled the riot unfazed. While we waited in the check-in line for our flight from Budapest, Rosie asked her how she was doing.
Winnie gave a small shrug. “I’m a punk rock musician. I’ve been touring with Dynamite Kitty since I was nineteen. My first tour, a guy got knifed in the front row right in front of me during my opening number. It was in Jacksonville. I got blood spatters on my T-shirt—that’s how close he was. Screaming crowds and violence are nothing new.”
I sip my drink slowly. Every time I close my eyes, I see it all again, the desperate shouts, the sting of the tear gas, like gunpowder, like vinegar and apple blossoms. I can’t shake the shock of those images, the blind panic I felt as I unscrewed caps on water bottles and frantically prayed that we would all survive.
Stella and Bryant arrive as Lars is finishing mixing the drinks.
“Team Caritas,” Bryant booms, clapping his hands as though we are heroes. “So glad you’re safely back with us.”
Stella nods. Her blonde bob never moves, or rather it moves only with the motion of her head, like a helmet. They take a seat on a long white lacquered bench, and Lars presses icy cocktails into their hands. The pianist stops playing at some unseen cue.
“We were relieved to hear that you were all uninjured,” Stella says, taking a token sip of her drink, “but we know that experiencing something like a riot can be traumatic.” She sets the drink aside and looks around the room at us. “Effective immediately, Team Caritas is no longer on field assignment. Tomorrow you will begin a week of debriefing here on the island before returning home. We have hired one of the best trauma specialists in America to guide you through this week.” For a moment her frosty demeanor softens. “We regret that you had these difficult experiences and hope this week will help you process whatever trauma has occurred.”
“Stella, may I?” It is Lars holding a lowball filled with ice. With a brief nod, Stella sits back and Lars stands in front of the piano. He gazes at each of us. His eyes, those soulful gray eyes, are tender and tired.
“I know that this is not how any of you would have chosen to end your time with Team Caritas,” he says soberly. “I want you to know that I am honored by your service to the Humanitas Foundation, and I sincerely hope that this week will mark not the end of the trip but another chapter in your experience of giving back to those in need.”
He pauses for a moment, clinking the ice in his glass. “The purpose of this trip was to help bring positive change to places of need. We have learned a great deal through the experiences of each of the four teams. Teams Veritas, Fortis, and Fidelis will be finishing their allotted time abroad while your time ends here. But rest assured, your team’s work will not be any less valuable for being cut short. We will be reassessing and seeking to improve our model of service for future teams, and your experience on the field will help us do that.”
He looks around the room. “Out of respect for the difficult circumstances that necessitated this week, Jake won’t be filming any part of this debrief. Please remember, this may be the end of our time together, but it doesn’t need to be the end of sowing goodness in the world. I wish you all the best as you begin your last week here on Sunbeam Key.”
I listen to Lars’ words with a mixture of astonishment and grief. This was not at all how I pictured this trip going. Indeed, I think I can say that it has gone about the opposite of all I hoped for it. I dart a swift look at Kai, who is gazing thoughtfully at Lars. I don’t know how to process it all. What in the world has happened to my alternate life?
* * *
“Good morning, Team Caritas. Let’s come to the circle and begin this morning’s session.”
After breakfast the next morning, esteemed trauma counselor Dr. Carolyn Danley begins guiding us through various exercises meant to help us process our experiences. We sit in the same extravagant front room from the night before. Everyone participates, even Winnie, although Abel seems withdrawn, silent and unengaged.
Dr. Danley has a thick strawberry-blonde braid, gentle blue eyes, and an empathetic way of speaking that makes me feel that somehow she is peering inside my soul.
“Write down everything you’re feeling right now in your emotions and your physical body. You can use words or draw a picture or express in any way that feels most helpful to you.” She hands us blank paper and pens. I write down the words that come instantly to mind—fear, anger, sadness, guilt, and then in letters bigger than all the rest, LOSS. It overlays all the other emotions—the remembered horror of the riot, the sadness of leaving before the work is done, the guilt of feeling that I have failed. I finally got what my heart longed for, this alternate life of my childhood dreams, only to find that it isn’t what I want after all. I do not have what it takes to be Saint Mia. I stare at my paper, unable to see a way forward. Everything tastes like defeat.
“Would anyone like to share their paper with the group?” Dr. Danley asks. “It’s all right if you prefer not to, but sometimes it is helpful to share with others, to have our voices heard. Often we find that others are experiencing similar things and that sharing what’s going on inside can help us not feel isolated.”
We look at one another, and for a long moment no one volunteers. Then Milo shuffles his feet. “I’ll go,” he says. He holds up his paper, a cartoon drawing of a man, arms akimbo, with a giant question mark above his head.
“What does that mean to you?” Dr. Danley asks.
“I feel confused,” Milo replies. “Everything happened so fast. Not just the camp, the whole trip. But definitely how things ended with the riot and all.” He shakes his head, looking bewildered. “It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, and I’m just confused about the entire trip, honestly.”
Rosie volunteers next.
“Selfish.” She holds up her paper. I recognize the drawing. It’s the pink Chanel purse from the refugee camp with a giant eye inside, complete with eyelashes and eye shadow. “I went on this trip for pretty selfish reasons. I didn’t really think about the people I’d meet or what I’d encounter.” She pauses, looking a little embarrassed. “But I realize now that my motives were self-centered. I went on this trip for my own gain, but at some point I started to see other people—their needs and hurts and pain. I think it was the woman with the Chanel purse, actually. I realized that it wasn’t just about me anymore. I have to think about others, too, about doing what I can to help them. It’s a responsibility I’ve been ignoring, but not anymore.”
Dr. Danley nods. “That can be a painful realization, can’t it? But also ultimately very good.”
Winnie’s
paper looks blank. “Pass,” she says, not making eye contact.
“Do you want to tell us a word about how you’re feeling, then?” Dr. Danley presses gently.
Winnie shrugs. “Nah.” She glances at Abel out of the corner of her eye.
“Are you sure?” Dr. Danley presses gently.
Winnie shakes her head as though she’s getting rid of a pesky fly. “Yeah.” She refuses to say more.
“Disappointed,” Kai states, not showing his paper when it’s his turn.
“Do you want to say more about that?” Dr. Danley asks.
Kai meets my eyes for an instant. “No.” His jaw flexes and he looks away. I glance down at my paper. How did everything turn out like this? Such potential in the beginning and then things went so horribly wrong.
“Abel.” Dr. Danley’s gentle voice breaks into my thoughts. I glance up. Abel is sitting across the circle from me, head in his hands, hunched and rocking back and forth. A low groan escapes him, a chilling sound that makes the hair on my arms stand up. Winnie vaults from her chair and crouches next to him.
“Abel, can you hear me? Can you tell me what is going on right now?” Dr. Danley asks, approaching his seat, but Abel is unresponsive. Winnie’s eyes are locked on him. I’ve never seen her look scared before. We are all silent, watching the drama unfold, unsure what to do. Suddenly he drops his hands and stands, bowing slightly to Dr. Danley but still looking away from all of us, focusing on a spot on the floor to his left.
“Forgive me, please,” he says, and then he bolts out of the room.
“Excuse me for one moment,” Dr. Danley says. She pulls out a cell phone and hurries through the french doors onto the veranda, holding a quick muted conversation. When she returns, she looks grave.
The Enlightenment of Bees Page 23
