Isaak flung his hand at the sky. “We’ve been riding these roads for weeks on motorcycles. Have you seen any phone lines out here?”
“Fine, they’ll use their mobile phones,” Alfonso grumbled.
Dree recognized a classic let-them-eat-cake line and flinched.
Maxence asked him, “Have you seen any mobile phones out here? Or cellular towers? I haven’t seen any cell-phone towers sticking up off the cliff faces of the Himalayan mountains.”
Alfonso said, “Then we’ll put satellite phones in the micro-clinics. When they have a premature baby being born, they can call down to the Chandannath city, and the medical clinic can helicopter a doctor up to them.”
Dree was getting tired of all the fruitless arguing, and she was looking at the mountains. “If you’re going to use a satellite phone to call for a helicopter, why doesn’t the helicopter just pick up the baby and take it back to the hospital at Chandannath, where they have neonatal incubators, modern medical equipment, and hot and cold running doctors?”
All the guys stared at her for a minute, and then the real arguing started.
Isaak yelled at Alfonso, “You just want free field-testing for your NICU micro-clinics so you can get a tax write off.”
“Calling for a helicopter would take too long,” Alfonso yelled over the din. “With a NICU incubator on-site, you could place an infant in the incubator within minutes. Arranging helicopter transport might take hours, if one is available at all. I don’t know that Chandannath hospital even has a medevac helicopter.”
Maxence argued, “One medevac helicopter and a few dozen satellite phones would be a hell of a lot cheaper and more effective than scattering NICU micro-clinics all over the mountains.”
Alfonso yelled, “If they don’t have the education to fix a broken neonatal incubator, they can’t maintain and fix a helicopter!”
Isaak pointed in the general direction of down the mountains and yelled, “There’s an airport and a heliport at Chandannath! We flew in there! They must have trained airplane and helicopter mechanics in that much larger city that is several hours away by car!”
Alfonso turned to Maxence. “Paying local people for construction work on these micro-clinics would infuse needed capital into these villages, too. There are multiple levels of benefit to these communities for this project.”
Maxence shook his head. “That’s one and done, Alfonso. Yes, they know how to construct buildings here, and your charity will pay them a pittance to build one more. But they still can’t maintain a NICU and a solar array.”
Dree piped up. “The most important thing is that these villages don’t need a NICU unit like they need a lot of other things. They probably have three pre-term infants born in a village this size per year. Maybe one of them would be so premature that their life would depend on an incubator.” Like that baby a week or so ago when they’d arrived a day too late that Dree still couldn’t get out of her mind. “But they have probably a dozen cases of cancer every year that, without detection and therapy, are invariably fatal. The people here have constant outbreaks of preventable, communicable diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella. Secondary pneumonia is one of the most common reasons people die in all of Nepal. If you want to save the most lives, instead of constructing a whole building for one premature infant, place a box of antibiotics in every village and send a nurse with a trunkful of vaccines to make a stop here twice a year. That would probably save fifty or more lives every year plus greatly reduce long-term disabilities like deafness from congenital rubella.”
“But, the babies,” Alfonso said.
Dree lost her cool. “Saving the babies doesn’t mean shit if you’re going to let them die of the measles when they’re two!”
Alfonso dismissed her concerns with a wave. “But by the time they’re two, it is their parents’ responsibility to get vaccines for them.”
She wanted to wring his rich, stupid neck. “Their parents can’t afford vaccines, and they don’t have access to them if they could! That’s why Sister Mariam and the Little Sisters of Charity raided their supplies and sent up boxes and boxes of vaccines with us because they knew it was their one shot to get vaccines up here!”
Alfonso’s eyes widened at her rant, but Dree was not stopping now.
She said, “Rich people like you keep talking about the importance of personal responsibility when there is no way these people can take personal responsibility. That’s like criticizing my parents for not having internet access for their kids’ educational enrichment when there were no cables anywhere near our sheep ranch, and we couldn’t afford satellite access or even computers, at all, ever. They struggled to keep food on the table, and we were all pretty skinny. These people are even skinnier! Half the kids I see have stunted growth, and half of those are wasted from malnutrition. How can you expect their parents to pay enormous amounts of money and travel for weeks to get somewhere there is a doctor and get a vaccine!”
Alfonso shrugged. “It’s not my fault they aren’t educated enough to understand the importance or make enough money to afford proper health care.”
Dree was the veteran of a thousand schoolyard scraps, and the rage in her body did not notify her brain before she leaped at Alfonso to knock his stupid head into the ground. She was just suddenly flying through the air, fists outstretched and teeth bared.
Maxence caught her around the waist, and they spun around like they were square-dancing the Virginia Reel.
She yelled at Max, “That asshole! How dare he blame these people who are just doing their best about things that they have no control over!”
Maxence pushed her behind himself and held his arms back to contain her.
Dree tried to get around him, swinging wildly, but he was a concrete wall of muscle in front of her.
Beyond Maxence’s waist, she saw Alfonso had stepped backward. Shock widened his eyes. From Alfonso’s vantage point, Maxence must look like an eight-legged, writhing monster as Dree kicked and punched and tried to fight her way through Max to knock some sense into Alfonso.
She yelled, “How dare you look down on these good country people who are making a living by growing food for their families and doing the best they can. It’s not their fault that they never had a chance. They never had a Sister Annunciata who told them they could go to college and be a nurse and helped them get financial aid so they could. They never had a Father Moses who gave them clothes so they wouldn’t freeze to death. They had to do it all on their own, and they’re doing the best they can. What’s the Church doing to help these people, huh? What’s your stupid charity and the Church and everybody else who should be responsible doing to help these people out?”
Batsa had walked over. “I admit, I have had concerns about the long-term commitment to these NICU micro-clinics. I have seen too many charity projects begun and abandoned. Would it not be better to run this project through the Nepali government rather than relying on the continued involvement of individual people and your small charitable organization, Alfonso?”
“That won’t work!” Alfonso yelled at him.
Batsa raised one eyebrow and planted his right foot behind himself. Yeah, he’d gone to junior high in the States.
Dree dodged to go knock the hell out of Alfonso, but Maxence caught her.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “You’ve made your point. Watch what happens.”
Father Booker had followed Batsa over. “Batsa was partly raised here and has visited relatives over the years in Nepal. He has strong cultural ties to the area and local knowledge that none of us have. Batsa, give us more of your thoughts on the ramifications of establishing these high-tech, single-use clinics in isolated, rural villages.”
Alfonso spun and glared at Father Booker. “Asking the question that way isn’t fair. Besides, the Nepali government and other governments have had their chance to lower the mortality rate of premature infants in Nepal. They didn’t do it.”
“They haven’t had the money,” Maxence sai
d, his voice low. “The Nepali government has very, very little money for these far-flung regions.”
“But the government has to have money,” Alfonso said, his anger giving way to dismay. “How else will they buy the supplies that the clinics will need every six months or so?”
“Whoa!” Dree said. “They have to buy the drugs? Who’s going to buy them?”
“The Nepali government will buy them, or the villages can,” Alfonso said.
“There’s no way these people can afford that!” she cried.
Isaak butted in, “Wait. I thought those were going to be donated.”
“Of course not,” Alfonso said. “Pharmaceuticals are routine expenses. The clinics will need to be resupplied when the drugs expire every six months or so.”
Father Booker stepped up. “Hang on, so the perishable drugs aren’t part of the charity deal?”
“Of course, they’ll have to buy supplies. Supplies aren’t free,” Alfonso said as if this were obvious.
Dree said, “You can’t expect these communities to cough up a couple of hundred dollars every six months. The combined wealth of these people is less than that!”
Alfonso shrugged. “It’s a minor expense compared to the cost of the construction of these clinics. Surely, they can kick in some money to supply the clinics. They need to have some ‘skin in the game.’ That’s what you call it, yes?”
“These people barely have clothes on their backs, and now you want their skin, too?” Dree demanded.
Maxence asked, his voice low and dangerous, “And where are they going to buy these perishable supplies from?”
Alfonso raised a shoulder. “They must buy the supplies from my company. It is part of the contract to build them a NICU micro-clinic.”
Dree stomped backward. “Seriously?”
Max asked, “And are you going to sell them the supplies at cost? Are you going to supplement the expense of these expensive pharmaceuticals and other supplies to far below cost?”
“Of course not. They can buy the supplies at the same rate as everybody else.”
Dree clenched her fists. “You shouldn’t be making a profit off these impoverished people by holding their premature babies hostage! You shouldn’t be making money by making people pay you so they won’t be sick or not die. Ever, at all!”
Alfonso sniffed. “That’s not the way the world works, Andrea.”
“But it should,” she said. “People used to come into my hospital with horrible complications of diabetes that had made them so sick they were disabled. If they’d had proper care, they could have been contributing, working citizens of society, but instead, some asshole decided to make money from the fact that they need insulin to stay alive. Rich assholes shouldn’t be making money off of medicine.”
Alfonso rolled his eyes. “We can’t do everything for the poor. If we just hand these communities money, they’ll waste it. They’ll just spend it on frivolous things like stereos and soda pop and diamond-encrusted phones.”
Isaak asked him, “Weren’t you just deriding these people for not having cell phones so they could call for helicopter rides?”
“Common people are stupid,” Alfonso said, scowling. “People like us have been bred to make decisions for them because they don’t have the education or sophistication to know what they need. Look at them. They’re idiots.”
That statement splashed into the conversation, and everyone stepped back and raised their hands to avoid the moral mud splatter.
“What the—!”
“Hold on there, Alfie.”
“That is not acceptable.”
Maxence growled at Alfonso. “You weren’t so smart and industrious that you built your corporation from nothing. Your father, the King of Spain, gave you two hundred million dollars to start your company.”
What?
Dree stared at Alfonso, who had not mentioned she should be calling him Your Highness or curtsying or anything, not that she would’ve. Heck, no.
Alfonso glared at Maxence. “How about you? How dare you berate me for being from a royal family, considering who you are?”
What the hell was that? Dree twisted her head to look at Max.
Maxence’s face was rigid with anger. “Me? I’m nobody. I am nothing but a man who wants to be a priest, and nothing more. I will be an anonymous priest in a black Jesuit cossack, and I will make it my personal mission to change the world for the better one shovel of dirt at a time. My place is to obey the Pope and the Catholic Church, not to lead anyone, not to be anyone, and that is all. When I take Holy Orders, I will disappear into the Church forever.”
His conviction shocked Dree. She’d thought he was conflicted about entering the priesthood, or he should be considering how he “slipped” every chance he got, but the adamance in his voice sounded like he had firmly decided to be a priest.
“We can’t all be so self-sacrificing, Maxence,” Alfonso said, his tone deeply sarcastic. “Some of us are not running away from what we were born to be.”
“We were told that’s what we were born to be, but we do not have to succumb to what others tell us is our fate,” Max answered.
“This is ridiculous,” Isaak said. “Why are we even continuing this charade of a charity mission? Alfie has practically admitted this whole project is a tax haven and a scheme to sell overpriced pharmaceuticals to impoverished villages.”
“I need to continue,” Dree said.
Max’s head whipped around to look at her, and the other guys stopped their argument to listen.
She said, “I am doing something important here. I mean, nursing in the inner city of Phoenix was important, but this feels like why I became a nurse. It’s grueling. It’s killing me. But I need to make it through the next few villages. We said it was a month, and we’ve only got a week left. I’m staying. I signed up for this.”
“But what are you going to do when this trip is over?” Alfonso asked her, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Are you going to continue to travel the world, eating a few lentils for supper and not bathing for weeks? Or maybe this is just a roughing-it vacation for you to see how the impoverished world lives.”
Maxence stepped forward, his fist beside his shoulder.
Dree grabbed him this time. She could probably bury a body out in the wilds of Nepal, but Isaak had said there was a layer of shale under the ground here, so it wouldn’t be easy.
Maxence said, “She’s a nurse, and she’s been working herself to death. This isn’t disaster tourism for her. She isn’t out here as a publicity stunt or financial strategy for a company. Dree is helping people, one person at a time. If she’s staying, I’m staying.”
Alfonso mocked, “Of course you are staying. You’re sleeping in her tent with her, and who knows what—”
Father Booker stepped closer. “Sister Andrea Catherine is an example of Christ in action to us all. I will not abandon her mission.”
Alfonso said to Father Booker, “You know she’s not a religious sister, right?”
“She is my sister in Christ, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for her.”
Dree was not going to cry. She was not.
Batsa stepped up to stand beside Father Booker. “I agreed to serve as a translator for a month. I will be staying to help Sister Andrea Catherine.”
Isaak told Alfonso, “If nothing else, I’m here as moral support. This mission may have begun as a strategic move for your company, but it’s her mission now.”
Dree hadn’t meant this to be a mutiny, but it had turned into one.
The mountains turned to water in the morning sunshine. The tear that dripped down her face was hot, then turned cold in the freezing winter air.
Alfonso’s expression hardened. “My company will design and donate incubators and NICU micro-clinics to the country of Nepal. I will continue to survey and analyze sites for the clinics. I will not abandon this project. It will save the lives of premature infants, and I will not abandon them.”
With that impa
sse, they left the site and went to their motorcycles to travel to the next town.
As Dree was ready to mount hers, Maxence squeezed her fingers before he settled onto the bike behind her. “You did well.”
That day’s clinic was moderately heartbreaking, not the worst Dree had seen, but certainly not the best.
The daytime and nighttime temperatures had continued to drop, and Dree worried that their precious vaccine stocks would freeze even inside the tent that night.
The house where they set up the clinic was frigid despite a fire burning in the fireplace and a wood stove glowing in the corner. As the afternoon progressed, her fingers became colder and began to lose sensation. Her nose ran constantly, and the tip was chilled.
The motorcycle ride back to the campsite was punishing. After she began shaking too badly, Maxence tapped her to pull over and insisted they trade places so that he would block the wind from hitting her. She had to admit that with his big body in front, she huddled down behind him, and the wind wasn’t quite as cruel.
Though the campfire was large and blazing and the food that Alfonso had cooked was just as warm and tasty as every other night, she continued to lose body heat. She was chattering within minutes. Maxence and Father Booker exchanged glances, and then Father Booker insisted that she sit in her tent to finish eating.
It didn’t help. The shaking got worse.
Dree didn’t take off her ski suit before she slipped into her sleeping bag, zipping all the way up to around her face.
The shaking of her muscles intensified.
Maxence crawled into the tent a few minutes later, saying, “What a day that was. Are you all right?”
“Y-Y-Y—”
“Mon Dieu, chérie. I can hear your teeth chattering. I thought Father Moses sent some of those hand-warmer packs with you.”
“I have one. It warmed my hands for a few minutes, but I would need, like, fifty of them to warm my whole body up. Aren’t you cold?”
Maxence said, “I am bigger than you are. Size matters.”
Dree snorted. “I wish I were bigger. I’m freezing.”
Her body seized with the cold, nearly flopping with trying to get warm.
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