Well, my name is Liam Brown and I was that jerk.
After finishing med school and my residence, I got tired of my boring, cozy life and volunteered to join my old professor on a trip to the latest war-torn country that the news decided to focus on.
Believing myself to be on a path to become the kind of doctor who’s ready to sacrifice his life for his patients, I got onto a plane. Eight hours later, I landed on the beautiful, tropical, but very chaotic, Republic of Guavina.
At first, finding a patient’s vein in the dark after another power outage, or venturing into a shantytown while accompanied by armed soldiers to take a bullet out of a man’s shoulder, was very exciting.
I was finally doing work that mattered. And life was good.
That was two months ago. Between now and then, my professor died of cholera, along with most of the volunteers he brought with him. Those who survived followed me to a hellhole where we’re surrounded not only by a disease without a cure, but also by people who are willing to kill for morphine.
I miss boredom.
“Hold his leg. Firmly,” I tell Melinda as she looks at me for guidance. “I can’t have him struggle. If I mend this wrong, he could lose his leg.”
“What? Lose? My leg?” The patient’s voice is raspy with pain, a sweaty grimace on his face.
Oops, I forgot to speak English instead of Spanish.
“No… No, don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay. Just keep still.”
Melinda rolls her eyes at my weak attempt at bedside manners.
“Doctor Liam, wait—”
Crack. The bone is back into the leg. The wail echoes around the warehouse, turning a few heads, but not that many. We’re all pretty used to the lack of local anesthetics by now. The next supply drop will be in two weeks, but demand keeps growing.
The patient loses consciousness. Not surprising, considering the level of pain the poor man just experienced. Yet, I kind of envy him—I can’t seem to fall asleep properly anymore, not after hours of tossing, turning, and worrying. Lots of worrying.
Melinda finishes up a makeshift splint while I do a quick check of his vitals. We don’t have enough heart monitors for every patient, only those in critical condition. We also don’t have enough nurses to check on everyone at regular intervals.
The marvels of practicing medicine on a tiny prison island. Oh, wait, sorry—a tiny, shithole of an island that is controlled by a dictator.
No. No. Wait, sorry… I meant a medical facility to help the poor donated by a benevolent general.
What a joke.
I navigate around the dozens of cots to find my next patient. I can’t feel my legs anymore, but they somehow work enough to avoid tripping on a bucket full of urine.
Now sheltering about a hundred sick beds, this warehouse used to hold coal and mining machines. The smell of oil and grease has never quite left the place, although blood, human waste, and sweat do a marvelous job of masking it most of the time. We try to keep things as clean as possible, but there aren’t enough hours in the day to get rid of it all.
My next patient, Mr. Fuentes, is sitting on the hard mattress, his hand shielding a nasty purple shoulder. This is the second time just this month he has shown up for treatment for the dislocated limb, and the fourth in the last three. I sigh.
“Why, hello, Mr. Fuentes. Didn’t I tell you to give me a break and not show up here for at least a month?”
Obviously in pain, the man—not much older than my father—barely acknowledges me, weakly shaking his head.
I lean forward for a better view of the problematic area. He dislocated the shoulder again. No doubt by losing his footing while climbing or jumping. Every few days, the Army drops supplies from helicopters. Sometimes, these crates fall onto roofs or hard-to-reach places, giving people like Fuentes a shot at a month’s supply of food and water—as long as they are willing to risk their lives. He’s lucky he didn’t break his neck.
In Bonita, there’s no shortage of ways to get hurt. You can fall to your death while trying to grab food, find yourself in the middle of a fight over that very same food, or get injured after an encounter with an infected. Their numbers have been dwindling since Ezequiel and his gang started a kill-on-sight policy for the sick, but plenty of dark corners and infested floors of apartment buildings still remain.
With that in mind, I check Mr. Fuentes for bites and fever. Other common signs of the disease are erratic behavior, pearl-white bulging eyes, and a slight yellowish hue to the skin, especially on the joints. Fortunately, he has none of that.
As I put his shoulder back in place, he yells right in my ear, and then lets out pained sobs. I place Fuentes’ arm in a sling so he doesn’t put a strain on it for now. I wish I could give him painkillers, but our stocks are too low, so I dismiss the poor man without any.
Between rounds, I step out of the warehouse to catch my breath. I’ve been at this for eighteen hours—mending limbs, cleaning wounds, changing bandages, and taking pulses. Every muscle in my body screams for a nice, comfy bed with soft pillows and a fluffy quilt. My stomach, meanwhile, longs for a steak or even a piece of cheese with a cup of wine.
Coffee would be nice too. Or maple syrup. Oh, how I miss thee, sweet nectar of the gods.
Exhausted, I rest against the warehouse wall. The lights inside the clinic flicker with the wind, the candles fighting to stay lit. I let my eyes wander, staring into the darkness ahead. The usual drizzle cools down the evening, clouds and mist hiding the moon.
The rest of the world seems so far away now; I wonder if we’re the last human beings left. We keep hearing rumors of the disease spreading all over the continent, of blockades and radio silence, but I’ve been ignoring them to keep hope alive.
Hope that good things still exist out there.
For example, the sea. I miss the sea. Ortiz’s walls don’t allow even a glimpse of it. If I try really hard to shut out the wailing of the sick, it’s sometimes possible to hear the distant waves breaking against the rocky shore.
Not today. Instead, I hear groans and a thud nearby.
There’re two kinds of instincts—survival and medical. The survivor in me wants to go back inside, afraid of an infected stumbling too close without anyone noticing.
The medical instinct demands I run into the dark and help whoever is in need.
In light of where I am and where I could’ve been instead—guess which always wins in my case?
With hesitant steps—and a rush of adrenaline to give my body a little push—I go toward the source of the noise, finding a figure on the ground, bathed in darkness.
It’s a woman. I move closer.
“Hey, are you hurt?”
No response. I take her pulse—faint, but there.
I rush back into the warehouse to find help. Isidor, a tall German doctor considerably stronger than I am, lifts her, and we place her on one of the free beds.
No fever, but that’s the only good news. Surface examination reveals multiple injuries. There are lacerations on both her arms. I pull back the dark curls covering her face, exposing a nasty cut on her lip and a swollen left eye. Her neck has finger marks, and her chest is covered in purple bruises. She probably has a broken rib or two.
“A fight,” Isidor comments.
I shake my head. “No. Look at her hands. No broken skin or damaged knuckles. She didn’t fight back. This … This was torture.”
We clean her cuts, and then bandage them the best we can. All the while, I feel anger rise from the pit of my stomach. There’s so much pain already on this damn island, I don’t understand why people need to be horrible to each other on top of that. What does anyone gain by torturing someone like this?
It’s barbaric.
I continue my rounds for the rest of the night, but I make sure to check her vitals between consultations. Once most of the clinic is asleep, I find myself sitting on the corner of her bed, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath.
I’m not bein
g creepy, I swear. I just don’t want her to wake up in a strange place without anyone around. She’s been traumatized enough.
But sometime during my vigil, I fall asleep. My neck snaps straight at a nearby noise. When I turn, my patient is already gone from the bed, sheets tossed away.
Injured as she is, she doesn’t go far. I spot her moving between the other cots, a hand on her stomach. Not wanting to wake up everyone else, I follow her quietly, catching up a few seconds later when she’s almost out of the warehouse.
“Miss … Wait.”
Once I place a hand on her shoulder, things happen so fast I don’t even know how I end up on the floor with her foot against my chest.
“Don’t touch me, gringo.”
The fire in her eyes and the anger in her tone leave absolutely no doubt that if I do touch her, there will be hell to pay.
So I raise my arms in surrender. “Look, I’m a doctor. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m here to help. I was the one who took care of your wounds.”
She blinks, then quickly gazes down, perhaps noticing for the first time my work—the bandages under her shirt and around her arms. After a second, she lifts her foot off me, and I can finally breathe properly.
While she looks toward the exit door, I get up.
“I found you outside the clinic, took you in. But you shouldn’t leave just yet. You need rest.”
“I can’t. I have to go.” She flinches just as she says this, clutching her stomach.
“Look, you clearly came here for help. And I’m not done helping you. Stay. At least until morning. These ribs won’t mend if you move around this fast.”
She bites her lip but finally nods. I smile, chest swelling with relief.
We walk back to her bed. I offer my shoulder for support, but she refuses the help despite being in obvious pain.
“I wish I could give you painkillers, but there aren’t enough for everyone. We’re only giving them to very critical cases,” I comment as she winces her way back under the sheets.
“It’s okay. I’m used to pain.”
That response fills me with sadness. “What happened to you?”
Her dark eyes glare at me as if the mere question was offensive. Like I just crossed a line.
“None of your business.”
I sit on the end of the bed, careful to avoid her feet. “As your physician, I disagree. It’s very much my business to keep my patients healthy.”
She frowns at me, and then shakes her head. “You’re crazy. Do you even know where you are?”
“Yes, I do. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m a doctor, and my job is to help people.”
“Crazy gringos,” she mutters while rolling her eyes.
The world could be ending, chaos reigning everywhere, but one thing will always remain the same—my gringo status. No matter what, I’ll always be the outsider, the gringo. That’s all I’ve heard ever since I set foot in this country. I guess my sandy, shaggy hair, blue eyes, and pasty skin are a dead giveaway of my outsider status. Well, that and the heavy accent and general ignorance of obvious things, like rice and beans being the most balanced and perfect food combination since the dawn of civilization or how El Chavo is the best TV comedy ever produced.
It’s as if I’m wearing a bell that immediately rings once the locals set their eyes on me. A gringo alert, almost.
“Hey, it’s not just us gringos. There are Guavinian doctors around too. They want to help just as much as I do.”
“You chose to come here, to our country.” She winces after taking a deep breath. “They didn’t.”
She speaks the truth, but I can’t back away now. “I refuse to believe that trying to help others is crazy. I don’t care what other tough guys say; it’s the people who help each other that’ll survive in the end. And I also refuse to let you change the subject again. What happened to you?”
Her gaze skitters away from mine. “I was in a fight. It’s over.”
“That’s a lie. You can’t lie to a doctor about that kind of injury. Those aren’t defensive wounds. Who did this to you?”
She sighs, looking at the ceiling. “What difference does it make? You can’t do anything about it.”
“I can listen. Not all healing is mending broken ribs and prescribing medicine. Talking about it, opening up, also helps your recovery.”
Even in the dark, I can see that my suggestion surprised her. Her eyes are wide, full of confusion, as she adjusts herself to sit straight, her back to the column behind the bed.
Sensing an opportunity to reach her, I add, “You’re safe now.”
“Not for long. Not if Zeke finds me.”
I tense at the nickname. She means Ezequiel, the leader of the gang who basically runs Bonita. Since the Army doesn’t care enough to climb down their wall and protect the people they keep as prisoners, horrible men like Ezequiel are free to oppress and beat anyone they want to. A few deals with corrupt soldiers and now he carries the only guns around. His word is law. So far, he has left us in peace—one of the few advantages of being a doctor here is that people aren’t inclined to kill the rare few capable of patching them up.
But I have felt the consequences of Ezequiel’s cruelty plenty of times. Although she is the worst case so far, many of our patients came here because of his actions.
“Is he after you?”
She nods.
I swallow, trying not to show my worry over this piece of news. “He already tortured you—what else would he want from you?”
She looks at her hands. “I used to work for him.”
“Oh.” Immediately, a very strong, very horrifying picture enters my mind to illustrate what kind of work she would do for someone like Ezequiel. My blood runs cold.
Perhaps noticing my reaction, she raises a hand. “It’s not what you’re thinking… I’m good at scavenging for supplies. I can climb buildings and reach crates the Army throws from helicopters. I … I did that for him in exchange for protection. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“Then don’t. You can stay here for as long as you want. We don’t have much, but we all help each other here. You don’t have to ever see that bastard again. I promise you. So, don’t worry about anything and sleep.”
She shakes her head. “You’re a weird one, aren’t you?”
Embarrassed, I chuckle. “I guess I am. What’s your name?”
“Isabel.”
“Well, Isabel. I’m Liam.”
I flash a smile, but I doubt she can see it in the dark. And maybe that’s for the best. It’s not an impressive one anyway.
Surprisingly enough, Isabel is still there in the morning. I ask Melinda to check on her while I finish my work. Between seeing new patients and taking care of old ones, I catch myself searching for Isabel between the sea of beds in the warehouse.
She seems tough, even tougher than the average Bonita-survivor, but every bone in my body wants to keep her safe anyway. I can’t let her go back to Ezequiel.
“We need to talk, Liam,” Melinda says, forcing my mind to go back to more present problems, instead of imaginary ones. “It’s about the special cases.”
I nod, already dreading what she has to say. ‘Special Cases’ is the code we use for our infected patients. We keep them—the two of them—in a separated warehouse.
During the early days of our stay in Bonita, we would go after infected patients, trying to capture them, but during one fatal excursion, two people in our group were bitten. After that, we decided we couldn’t risk our limited staff anymore. And no one volunteered to continue the missions.
But we did find a safe way to keep the two victims contained—it involves leather straps and someone always watching, but more importantly—sleeping pills and sedatives when we have them.
I hate going inside our ‘special-case unit’ as Isidor nicknamed it because there’s nothing I can do for these people. I feel powerless. We can only observe, try to keep them from hurting each other, and wait until a miracle happens.
Although we did try to set up a lab to study the infection, the tools we managed to scrape together were no match for the unusual disease we’re facing. In fact, we still don’t know if it’s a bacteria or a virus doing all this destruction—just that antibiotics have no effect. We had no microscope, no glass slabs, or even refrigerators to keep samples. Nothing.
So unless we leave Bonita with tissue samples and find a proper laboratory, there’s no chance of developing a cure. And that isn’t happening any time soon.
One would think that our presence in Bonita would be reason for gratitude… But that’s not how the Guavinian Army works. General Ortiz didn’t want a bunch of gringos poking their noses in the Army’s business, but since we sneaked in anyway, he’s determined to stop us from ever leaving. We are a national security risk. I’m sure he proclaimed our group dead, just to make sure nobody comes looking for us.
Sometimes, I imagine myself climbing into one of the Army’s supply helicopters and flying away from all this misery, but then coming back as a hero with the cure.
I doubt I can do that in real life without getting shot in the back. So I do my best with what I have.
After a hesitant pause, I ask Melinda, “What happened?”
“The woman you picked up yesterday? She asked me about them.”
“What? How does she—”
“I don’t know, but she does. I pretended I didn’t understand what she meant, but you have to deal with this. If word goes out …”
Just the mention of an infected is cause for panic, so we keep their existence a secret. Only the gringo doctors know, which means Melinda, Isidor, and me. Unlike the rest of our volunteer staff, we were part of the original international team and came to Bonita of our own free will. The rest were brought here by force after facing the outbreak in Rio Alto. They see the infected as too dangerous to deserve proper care. I can’t blame them for it, despite our oath to help those in need. I heard the horror stories.
Deadly Hearts: A Post Apocalyptic Romance Novel Page 9
