by Melissa Yi
As we walked back to the bus stop, my phone rang and rang. I waited for the voice mail message. Instead, a little voice piped, "Dr. Sze! Oh, Dr. Sze!"
My mind spun to Dorothy calling Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz. "What happened, Amal?"
"It's my father."
"Yes, Amal. What happened? Where are you?"
"He—he gave away his kidney."
"What?" I yelled so loudly that a group of men abruptly detoured around me, but I didn't care.
"It's too late, Dr. Sze. We owe too much money. That's what my father said. So he went to these men, these men who have always been asking him, bothering him, they know a place where you can sell your kidneys to rich people. They know the right doctors, they promised him $2000 so he could pay the hospital bill, but they dumped him in the street afterward. He's so weak. He says he has to drink, but he's—how do I say—"
In the background, I heard her father retching.
I leaned against the wall. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God."
30
"He wants to go home," whispered Amal, watching her father, now loaded into one of Cairo International Hospital's ER hallway stretchers.
"I know," I whispered back, holding her small hand, but we didn't even have his creatinine and potassium results back yet. Her dad wasn't going anywhere.
Even though her dad was sick, he wasn't sick enough to warrant the resuscitation room, or any room at all. He lay in the hallway, calling out for his son. Occasionally, he touched his left side. I'd seen the fresh, stapled incision, 15 cm long, above his anterior superior iliac spine.
At least he'd stopped vomiting, thanks in part to the bag of intravenous Ringer's lactate that Tucker and I had bought at the pharmacy en route.
"How is Hadi?" I asked Amal.
She shook her head. "They think his brain is gone."
I exhaled between my teeth. Hadi had nearly suffocated in the tunnels because his family needed money. Now his father had sold his kidney to pay Hadi's hospital bill. Yet the little boy might never recover. The whole thing made me want to cry.
Canadians donate organs. I'd heard of selling organs too, but it had seemed more like a made-up conspiracy thriller/horror movie plot than something that actually happened to living, breathing people.
The grandmother stood vigil at the dad's beside, speechless.
"Doesn't look good," Tucker whispered to me at the nursing station, after talking to the dad's doctors. "Egypt is a hub for organ trafficking. Even though it's illegal, there are plenty of scammers drugging people or coercing them into 'donating.' But if you sign all the papers, you're able to donate freely. And I think he signed everything."
I squeezed my eyes shut. "Amal said he did."
"Yemen is just about the poorest country in the world. They've got civil war. Starvation. Flooding. Half its hospitals don't work. Almost a fifth of the country has no doctor at all."
I listened in silence. I knew nothing about it. I'd even wondered if Amal had told the truth. Meanwhile, her family was literally dying of poverty.
"They come here because Egypt is one of the only countries that lets them in. Cairo is relatively affordable. You don't even need a visa if you're under 16 or over 50."
I frowned. The parents didn't look over 50, especially the mom.
"A doctor's note can get you in if you're under 50. They can write that you're coming for medical treatment. But you can't legally work here and take away jobs from Egyptians, which means you're stuck doing illegal work, harassed by authorities and getting poorer and poorer."
Scrounging for artifacts while tunnels collapse on you. Begging foreign student doctors for money.
"Selling your kidney sounds like a way out, even if it's against your beliefs. But you either get paid bupkes or you don't get paid at all. The operation might give you hepatitis. You might go into renal failure or liver failure. You can't do the physical jobs you did before because you're in chronic pain. It's a death sentence."
I recoiled, surveying Amal's father's face from 20 feet away. He'd fallen asleep during Tucker's update, too exhausted to stay awake.
"You think my father's going to die?" Amal had snuck over to listen. Her high, clear voice rang in our ears.
Tucker wrenched his head down to meet her eyes. "Oh. Amal. No, I never said that. I didn't—I mean—"
"He might die. My brother might die too. And then who will protect us? My grandmother is too old, I am too young, and my mother is pregnant."
Of course she is. I held my head as a headache drilled its way back into my temples. "Amal, we're sorry you heard that. Dr. Tucker was talking in general. We're trying to make your father as strong as possible so he can help look after you."
She stared up at me, her little chin jutting in the air. "No one is going to save us. We're going to die here, just like we would back home."
"No!" said Tucker. "I've got that fundraiser going. We'll raise more money for your dad, too. It's no trouble!"
She patted his hand. "You are a very nice man, Dr. Tucker. We thank you for everything you're doing."
Her tiny, patient resignation undid me. I cleared my throat. I refused to cry over a seven-year-old. "Amal, now that we know your brother's hospital, and your grandmother has given me permission to access your father's account here, I'll see if anyone can help pay." I'd already fired the information off to Isabelle.
Amal turned her Bambi eyes on me. "I know you're doing everything you can, Dr. Hope. We appreciate it so much. My mother wanted to tell you that."
"Where is your mother?" I looked from Amal to her father in his stretcher, her grandmother at his side. "Is she with your brother?"
Amal studied her toes and wiggled them in her sandals. "She is trying to find more money to pay for the hospitals."
"Oh, Amal. What is she doing?"
The little girl shook her head without answering.
31
Monday
No matter how awful we felt, we still had to work. We dragged ourselves to the Cairo International Hospital the next morning as Tucker mainlined the last of his coffee.
I stepped into the hospital lobby, but two rectangular, fluorescent white lights, mounted on stands, dazzled my retinas. What the heck?
A very polished woman in a white pantsuit stood before me and Tucker.
It wasn't Isabelle. I'd never met her in person, but I remembered Isabelle Antoun's website photo, her glasses and apple cheeks, attractive in a middle-aged, well-fed corporate way. This woman emitted hard-edged glamour, with full makeup, extensions and a blowout.
With a cameraman and professional lights already set up.
The television reporter. Karima Mansour.
Her name was emblazoned on her equipment. Even the cameraman and lighting guy had KARIMA MANSOUR lettered in white over the chests of their black T-shirts, like she was their sports team.
Or their new goddess.
I blinked at her, her cameraman and lighting guy, and then Tucker took my arm to lead me around them. The last thing we needed from this week was a permanent record of our pain on film.
Karima sashayed to the left to block us. She applauded by clapping her left hand against her thigh before she spoke into the microphone in her right hand. "Bravo, Dr. Sze."
I hadn't spoken to her since she'd reported on the IED. Plus I hadn't done anything applause-worthy. Karima Mansour must be hallucinating. I continued to detour around her, heading for the X-ray machines.
"And Dr. John Tucker. So brave. So caring. Our audience is very impressed indeed."
Tucker touched my sleeve, silently asking me to be calm.
I took a deep breath and did a 180 to confront her, trying not to blink under the bright lights that followed me. "What are you talking about? What audience?"
"Well, you've provided quite the rollercoaster for our viewers, haven't you? You literally started off with a bomb. Then you broke our hearts with a child in peril from a possible scorpion sting. You raised our ire over the looting of national treasu
res. Now you've introduced us to a man willing to sacrifice his health, or even his life, for his son. What will you think of next?"
"No comment." With a quick step, Tucker shielded me from the camera's view and shadowed me from the light.
"But you have so many comments, Dr. Tucker. Really. You have quite the mouth on you." Karima Mansour batted her eyelashes, holding her microphone up to his mouth. She licked her own lips in such a sexual way, it couldn't have been clearer if she'd pretended to fellate the microphone.
Tucker bared his teeth at her.
"No," I told his back. We'd avoided major touching in public. "No one cares if we hold hands."
"You do know how to dance too," she crooned.
"Remember us waltzing in front of that cat? One-two-three, one-two-three," I whispered, but Karima Mansour's grin made my hair prickle.
What if the Egyptian Classic Continental had let Karima and her team inside our suite? They could easily drop a key card into her talons. Especially for the right price in a capitalistic society.
What if she'd spied on us from the peephole or, worse yet, from cameras planted inside our own gorgeous bedroom?
"You've made it popular again to walk like us Egyptians, don't you think?" She flexed her elbows and wrists and pointed her hands in opposite directions before she turned around to give a slight but unmistakable double-twerk under that white pantsuit.
I gasped.
Tucker gagged. I read the tension in his shoulders and the flush in the back of his neck. Meanwhile, the cameraman filmed him in technicolor, full-frontal detail.
My turn to touch Tucker's arm to calm him before I darted in front of him, screening him from view as best I could. "You're bluffing," I told Karima.
This was a conservative Muslim country. No one would spy on a couple of foreigners in the bedroom.
Well, maybe not no one. I could think of a perv or two.
"And if you're not bluffing, we'll sue that white pantsuit off of you," I said.
Karima Mansour unleashed her whiter-than-alabaster teeth on me. "Thank you, Dr. Sze. I'm glad you approve of my outfit. Speaking of legal cases, thank you for pointing us toward the scandal of two police officers breaking a doctor's nose. His family is so grateful."
I tried not to wince. I doubted that shy doctor relished the spotlight any more than I did. But I couldn't let her distract me. "Why did you spy on us?" I asked, straight out.
"Will you start your on-camera interview now?" She signalled her cameraman to approach. "Would you consider a little makeup? Eyebrows, mascara, eyeliner, blush, lipstick, a little evening-out of your complexion, and product in your hair. You're lucky you hardly need anything, darling."
I ignored the jab. "Darling" reminded me of Isabelle. "Why did you violate our privacy and spy on us without our permission?"
She batted her fake eyelashes at me. "I wouldn't call it spying. I'd call it fulfilling the purpose of your journey."
"You brought us here? Is your media outlet associated with Sarquet Industries? Or does Sarquet have a media arm?"
Karima Mansour touched her hair extensions to make sure they'd stayed in place. "Darling, please. You should see who owns Sarquet Industries."
"I looked it up. It's a privately-owned corporation."
She laughed. "And who owns the corporation?"
I glanced at Tucker, who shook his head, looking annoyed.
"It's not online," I said finally.
"Exactly. Sarquet's owner values privacy. However, I'll tell you this one for free, Dr. Sze." She beamed at her own rhyme. "Your escapades are followed all over the world. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, WeChat, Weibo, and it balloons from there. One of your fans in Saudi Arabia made this trip possible."
You've got hits as far away as the Middle East, my brother Kevin had said.
All this time, I was trying to figure out Isabelle and Sarquet Industries, but someone else lay behind the curtain controlling both them and Karima Mansour. Some stalker in Saudi Arabia.
"Sarudi," I said to myself, remembering the ER chief's instant animosity. The arachnid doctor's attitude. The male doctor's contempt when I'd introduced myself to Dr. Kyrollos. The way the staff had brushed me aside during the posterior nosebleed. Even Samira's stare in the cafeteria.
Somehow, they'd known who'd sponsored my trip, or at least that he came from Saudi Arabia. To them, I wasn't a real doctor, but some rich man's toy, while they hunkered down in a war zone.
Me: I thought you wanted us to start in the emergency room right away.
Isabelle: Darling. Why would you think that?
They didn't treat Tucker with the same animosity, but I was the primary plaything. And female doctors are always first in the firing line of public opinion.
"You can tell him this for free." Tucker crossed his arms and angled himself in front of me, forcing Karima and the camera guy to back up.
Some guys wouldn't survive the ego death blow she'd just delivered, that they'd been flown in as a sidekick and filmed twerking in the bedroom. Not Tucker. I felt a burst of love for him as he said, "Tell him we'll sue him for more than he's worth and shred his privacy after he pulverized ours."
Karima pretended to applaud once more before she held the microphone up to his face. "Dr. Tucker, we sincerely admire your passion and value your medical expertise. Both of you have inspired our viewers to no end."
"Really?" I snapped. "Because it sounds like your buddy flew us over like a pair of stuffed animals for Show and Tell. Then he filmed us in our bedroom. How can you live with violating our fundamental human rights to make your own twisted reality TV show. We're not your zoo animals!"
My mind spun back to our first afternoon in Egypt and the IED. We'd never made it to the Giza Zoo, or Reza's grandmother, the Pyramids, or even ta'ameya. Just bloodshed and tears and a child suffocating in the sand.
"Dr. Sze and Dr. Tucker, please don't misunderstand me. We're eternally grateful for all that you've already accomplished. We pray for your well-being. In fact, we brought you a gift as a token of our esteem." She held out a bracelet-sized white box, tied with a glittery gold ribbon.
I refused to take it, staying behind Tucker's shoulder. "I'm sure it's illegal to spy on us. Especially in a private space, like our hotel room, or this hospital right now. Your owner might have money, but the law trumps money."
"Please. Dr. Sze. Take your gift. You've earned it." She shook the box at me.
I whirled on the cameraman and stared straight into the lens. "I don't want your 'gift.' Was everything a Big Brother setup? Did you—or whoever funded this—bring us to Egypt and set off an IED?"
"Of course not!" She blinked at me like an offended doll. "He wouldn't want to risk hurting you after all the trouble to bring you here."
"He did hurt me. He's not allowed to film me. He's not allowed to televise this. I never gave permission!"
"Oh, but you did." She stared down her aquiline nose at me.
"What are you talking about? I never did. Even at the hospital, when they gave me a bunch of forms about our swipe cards on the first day, I read every word."
She clicked her tongue. "It wasn't at the hospital, Dr. Sze."
"At the hotel, too."
She held out the gold-ribboned box. "Take your present."
"I don't want any presents from the stalker. What's his name?"
She stared at me. "That's not for me to say. He'll reveal his identity when he's ready to do so."
I turned back to the camera. "No problem. I'll figure out his ID when I sue him for taping me illegally."
"Tchh." When I turned back, Karima Mansour gazed down at me from her stiletto height with a pitying expression. "I doubt you have sufficient legal resources, Dr. Sze, but I'll make you a deal. You open this present, and I'll explain to you why he hasn't taped you without your consent."
"That 'present' could be another IED."
She burst into full-throated laughter and cast a sidelong view at the cameraman
as he filmed every word. "First of all, I assure you that I wouldn't carry an IED with such carelessness. Secondly, I can open it for you, but we do want to capture the expression on your face."
That didn't sound promising. "Like I said, I could sue all of you."
"Dr. Sze, you have no mon-ey." She sing-songed the phrase, rhyming again. "Are you really digging yourself further into debt with a lawyer when I've promised you the answer within minutes? Your man has exquisite taste."
"Tucker does have excellent taste," I replied.
"Like Ryan Wu?"
I surged toward her before I reigned my body in.
Tucker didn't move or say a word, but his hands squeezed into fists.
Glee sparkled in her eyes as she slipped off the gold ribbon and popped open the white box's lid.
Tucker backed me away from her, protecting me with his body.
"Tucker, no!"
"You said it yourself, Hope. You don't know what's in there." He's bigger than me, and he threw out his arms when I tried to dart past him, so I peeped around his shoulder—
—and stared at a gleaming gold broach, at least an inch wide, in the shape of a fly, nested on what looked like white satin.
I hate insects. Mosquitoes dive bomb me and leave welts the size of my palm. Flies consider my food a second harvest. Ryan had cockroaches in his apartment in Ottawa when he was a poor student.
Who the fuck would want a fly as a present?
"Do you like it?" she purred.
I did my best to school my features. My Saudi stalker must have lost ten more screws if he thought this would make me like him.
"It's symbolic," she explained. "The Egyptian Pharaohs presented their best warriors with gold flies after a particularly hard-fought battle. Flies are a symbol of persistence, which is a trait he admires very much in you. Look at the detail, all rendered in 24 karat gold." Karima pointed at its outstretched wings and the individual hairs on its torso. Its spiky eyelashes reminded me of her own. "He thought you won this battle. Will you wear this for the camera?"
"No." The word jerked out of my mouth. I associated pure gold with my grandmother, who gave me a jade pendant on a 24K gold chain when I graduated from medical school.