“Rounds?” she asked.
Idris picked up his notepad, and together they got ready to do their morning rounds.
“Docteur!”
Isobel turned toward the voice, her face breaking into a smile as she crouched down. She held out her arms. “Marius!”
She had looked for him every day, asked the staff and Idris about him. Finally. She embraced him, held him tight, noticing how thin he felt, his slight boy’s body, all bones and no subcutaneous fat. She blinked away the tears that burned at her eyes, allowed herself to be filled with relief and thanks.
I was afraid you had died.
She hugged the boy longer than she should, tried to transfer some of her energy.
She held him at arm’s length, her eyes moving over him, and noted the healthy whites of his eyes and his clear skin. He was undernourished and had that same haunted expression she’d almost only ever seen on orphaned and homeless children, but otherwise he looked healthy.
“Are you well?” she asked, knowing that Idris was impatient to get started. There were over one hundred patients admitted, and he needed her. To an outsider, it might seem heartless to have no time for a hug, but she knew better. Idris always weighed things up, and one hundred sick kids were simply weightier than one lonely boy.
Marius held up a hand and showed her a tiny scrape.
She looked at it. “Can you wait for me? Stay here and I’ll put a Band-Aid on that. Plus, I have a gift for you.” It was against all rules, of course, against all principles. Growing close to the local population, giving gifts. Everyone knew it led to complications. “Wait for me,” she said, and stroked his cheek, knowing that she was the only one Marius had. She got up and hurried away after Idris.
* * *
Their rounds took several hours, and it was only long after lunch that Isobel had time to sneak back to the office again. Marius was underneath a table, playing with some stones. He stood when she came in and flashed her a cautious look, as though he needed to make sure she wasn’t a threat, before his shoulders relaxed and he gave her a lopsided smile. She gave him yet another hug.
“Did you eat?” she asked, studying his too-short trousers and threadbare tank. Marius nodded, but she knew he probably did it only to reassure her. His trust in other people was virtually nonexistent. That was just how things were when you lived without any kind of security whatsoever. She had met many street kids in her time, seen small children starve to death, four- and five-year-olds forced to make it on their own in the world, seen undernourished nine- and ten-year-olds sell their feeble bodies for food and drugs. It was a reality that, as a field-worker, you just had to accept if you wanted to make it through your work. But to her, Marius was different. She didn’t know why she was so attached to him. It was just something that happened with some people.
She took out the plastic bag she kept in a locked cupboard in the office. Each morning she had brought it with her, and every night it had followed her back to the compound; she’d guarded the bag as though it were full of gold. She handed Marius the cheese puffs. It was such an impractical gift—they took up room in her luggage and weren’t nutritious at all—but Marius’s happiness was worth it. She gave him a small chocolate bar, too. At least that contained some fat and a few minerals, she thought, hoping he would manage to keep hold of it. She had brought ten, and planned to hand them out over the course of her stay.
“Where do you live now?” she asked as she quickly cleaned his scrape and put a Band-Aid on it.
He just shrugged in reply. He started to eat the cheese puffs one by one, chewing slowly with his eyes blissfully closed. I have to go back to the ward soon, she thought, as she swallowed the lump in her throat. How could life be so unfair? She really didn’t understand.
“Marius?”
“Oui?” He looked at her with those intelligent eyes of his, always like a knife straight through the heart. He was so kind and considerate, one of those boys who would rather play and daydream than kick and fight. A child who, if there was any justice in the world, should have the chance to develop and go as far as he wanted. Instead, he lived on the street, and she could see the fear and forlornness deep in his eyes, and it broke her heart every time.
“I’ll be here at the hospital for a while—don’t go disappearing, okay?”
“Oui,” he repeated, and she hoped he would come back to the hospital, that she would be able to feed and keep an eye on him for the few weeks she was here.
A stressed voice called out for her. “Docteur?”
She knew she needed to rush off, that this was a luxury she couldn’t afford. The last thing she heard was the rustle of the bag of cheese puffs and Marius’s quiet munching.
* * *
After a long afternoon in the hospital, a shaky car journey back to the village lay ahead of her, followed by the usual stew.
Isobel washed quickly. The inhabitants of Massakory were almost exclusively Muslim, and they were so clean that she always felt a little like a filthy Westerner, so she made sure to scrub her hands, feet, and face as often as she could. She took out a clean T-shirt, ran a brush through her hair, and brushed her teeth before sitting down at the laptop again.
Her bedroom was little more than a hard bed, a footstool, and a mosquito net, so she preferred to sit in the lounge. The cook was outside the house, smoking. Smoke flowed in through the mosquito net. She could hear voices outside, the occasional shout, but otherwise silence.
When Alexander called, she answered immediately.
“Hi,” she said.
He looked shamelessly fresh, as though he’d just showered. She could see expensive furniture and huge windows behind him, bright and clean and Western.
“How are you?” he asked. She was drawn into his smile.
“Good,” she replied honestly. It had been an intense day, both physically and emotionally, but they always were.
“No one died today either. It’s a huge relief.”
She had been there almost a week now. In three more, she would be replaced by a Belgian field doctor. If all her days were like this, it would be one of the best trips she’d ever made.
“But we lost one of our oxygen machines,” she added.
“Are they important?”
“Yeah, they’re absolutely vital. You can treat so many problems with oxygen; the equipment is easy to use, doesn’t require any training. They’re our best friends. Children will die if we can’t replace it.”
“Jesus.”
“I know. It’s frustrating.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“You don’t have a spare oxygen machine lying around?”
“I’ll check, but I don’t think so.”
She laughed, leaned in toward the screen, and rested her chin in her hand. She could see shining stainless steel worktops and a bowl of brilliant green apples. He was in the kitchen.
“Tell me what you ate today.”
“You want to talk about food?” he asked, sounding incredulous.
She nodded. “I can honestly say that about ninety percent of my free time here is spent fantasizing about food.”
“Pancakes with strawberries and maple syrup.”
“American pancakes? God, that sounds good. More.”
“I had pizza yesterday. A slice from my favorite place, a little hole in the wall. I sat in the park with my friend Romeo and ate it. Big, long strings of mozzarella.”
Isobel groaned. “Know what I miss most?”
“I’d like it to be me, but I guess it’s something edible. Tell me.”
“Coffee. Hot, black, freshly brewed coffee. With white bread. There’s no bread down here.”
Alexander laughed. His eyes glittered, and she knew he was thinking about the time he’d made food for her. When they’d laughed in his kitchen in Stockholm. When they’d made love.
“What did you do yesterday?” she asked, and studied his face. “Did you go out?” She had no right to ask, but she did it anyway.
<
br /> He shook his head. “No. I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on. I’ve actually decided to take a break from the partying.”
“You have? Why?”
She twisted a lock of hair around her finger, told herself that the tingling feeling that pulsed through her body was tiredness, stress, or something like that, not a glimmer of hope, a feeling that things hadn’t ended but started over. He had sounded honest yesterday, and she had decided to believe he was telling the truth, that he hadn’t slept with the bimbo.
“Because I think it’s time.”
Alexander watched Isobel smile and knew that he’d passed a fork in the road when he’d decided to dramatically reduce his drinking. The thought had come to him as he jogged in Central Park that morning. Just like that. And he had made up his mind. For his own good. He had been living in some kind of limbo since last summer. He hadn’t thought about it before, but once he did, it was clear.
Last summer when he learned Natalia wasn’t his father’s child, he had gotten definitive evidence that his mother had been unfaithful. Long before, he had suspected. That was why he’d hated infidelity his whole life. It was one thing to sleep with married women, but something completely different to be the one who was unfaithful, and he had never cheated on anyone. Still, he was petrified of being like Ebba, with her constant need for affirmation; terrified of having inherited the worst traits of his beautiful, superficial mother. After it came out that Nat was the result of her infidelity, the dramatic revelations had kept on coming, and he had started to lose the footing he thought he had created for himself.
That was the superficial reason he would be ready to give to the few people he cared about. Natalia. Romeo. Maybe Åsa. Maybe Isobel, if she ever wondered why he’d acted the way he had, with women and alcohol. But then there was the other thing. His childhood. He had never really believed in being able to repress things. But he had done and experienced things he had buried so deeply, he’d thought they were gone. Now something had happened. The fact was, he was an adult. He could choose to move on. He wanted to, for his own good, and when he saw Isobel’s cautious smile at his words, saw that he hadn’t lost her trust, it felt even more worthwhile. It felt fantastic.
“I have to go,” she said from her side of the screen.
The picture had started to lag again.
“I’ll call tomorrow,” he said, and knew that he’d already started counting down the hours until they would talk again.
Once he hung up, he picked up an apple and grabbed his sunglasses from the kitchen counter. He shoved his credit card into a pocket, took the elevator down, said hello to the doorman, and pulled out his cell. He called Romeo.
“What are you doing?”
“Fighting with one of my chefs. Fucking divas.”
“You’re a diva. Want to go shopping?”
“What’re you buying?”
Alexander thought about the gifts he’d bought for women over the years. Flowers, of course. Necklaces and jewels. Clothes, holidays. He had probably used his credit card for almost anything there was. But there was one thing he had never bought for a woman before.
“I’m going to buy an oxygen machine.”
“It’s Sunday. Aren’t the oxygen machine shops closed?”
“That’s why I have the big credit card with me. You coming?”
“You sound different.”
“Yeah. Well, I am different.”
Chapter 36
The next day, the shit hit the fan.
“The twins died last night,” Idris said when Isobel arrived at the hospital. He was on the stairs, smoking, looking tired.
“Merde.” They had delivered them the day before, by C-section, and they had been horribly small. “How’s the mother?” she asked.
“Her family came to get her.” He let out smoke, stared into the distance. “Do you feel it?” he asked after a while.
Isobel nodded. It was there, an unease, palpable in the air. A new silence, a low pressure, an absence of sound. A foreboding that something was about to happen.
“Some of the staff have disappeared,” he said, taking another drag.
That was often how it started. The locals were the first to know. A rumor, spreading quickly during morning prayers. Men, secretly arming themselves. Women, seeking shelter for themselves and their children.
She followed Idris into the hospital, wondering where Marius could be. It was warmer than before, and she slapped her neck. Was it her imagination, or were the insects biting even harder today?
“We have a lot of patients,” Idris said as he washed his hands. He clutched his notepad. “I need to go back to ICU. Can you look into this?”
He gave her a handwritten note.
“What is it?”
“They came in this morning. Boy. Two years old. Trouble breathing. They’ve walked for days.”
“So far? Where from?”
“The desert. His blood count isn’t good.” Idris shook his head. “They should’ve brought him much earlier.”
“I’ll take it.”
Idris disappeared, and Isobel left to find the family. She quickly greeted the father, Muhammed, a tall, serious man with a tattoo of a bird’s footprint on the entire left side of his face. The mother, Halima, who didn’t look a day older than fifteen, sat with the boy in her arms.
“What’s his name?” Isobel asked softly as she glanced at her patient.
“Ahmed,” Halima whispered. She was dressed in a piece of colorful fabric, dusty with sand. She had a tattoo similar to her husband’s on her cheek.
As Isobel examined the boy, he was silent. That was never a good sign. A child who cried, protested, or screamed was a child who still wanted to live. When Isobel tried to give him an injection, he was so dehydrated she couldn’t get the needle in.
“Medicine,” the father snapped. “My son needs medicine.”
Yes, Ahmed needed medicine. And nourishment. If only they had been able to get him here earlier.
She filled a pipette with a nutrient solution and gave the parents what she hoped was a reassuring and confident smile.
“Give him this. A drop at a time until it’s finished,” she told them, hoping it would be enough.
“Where are you going?” the father asked, blocking her way. “You’re the doctor—you have to stay. Help my son.”
“I will come back. Give him the drops. I need to see my other patients. I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.”
Muhammed stared at her, but then moved out of the way. Isobel smiled encouragingly at Halima, who had already started to give Ahmed the solution. She moved on to her next patient. And then the next. She met with mothers and grandmothers, fathers and siblings, and of course with sick children. Listened to their hearts and lungs. Prescribed medicine, injections, and oxygen. Gave instructions to nurses and tried to have a smile for every tiny child she met, an encouraging word for every parent. Coming to a hospital run by Westerners took a great deal of courage, and she acknowledged that fact. Being a young mother, daring to seek Western medicine for your child instead of going to the local medicine man was an act of bravery.
“Hello, Fatime,” she said to a young mother in her twenties. Fatime had clever eyes, looked tired but resolute, and had her own mother in tow. Fatime had a two-year-old in her lap.
“My daughter, Zara,” she said.
Isobel examined the petite Zara. She was two years old but weighed less than a one year old. Her complexion was pale and she was coughing, but she gave Isobel an angry stare when Isobel measured her upper arm. Isobel smiled. An angry child meant there still was hope.
“Your daughter is strong,” she said.
Fatime nodded and smiled faintly. “Very,” she agreed.
“How many children do you have?”
“Four.”
Isobel didn’t ask, knowing that if Fatime had four living children she’d probably buried as many. She listened to Zara’s lungs. Prescribed medicine for her. “She has a fever, an
d she is underweight. We need to keep her here, for observation.”
Fatime nodded in agreement, and relief rushed through Isobel. Sometimes it was difficult to get them to stay. But Fatime seemed intelligent and strong-willed. Maybe this little girl would survive.
“I will come back. Please, eat something. You have to be strong. For your daughter.”
Fatime nodded regally. “Thank you, Doctor, I will.” Their eyes met in one of those wordless connections. Two women, born in different parts of the world but with the same determination to keep this little girl alive, to make a change.
Isobel left the family and continued on with her work as the scorching Chadian sun climbed the sky.
When Isobel came back to baby Ahmed and his family, the little boy did actually seem slightly more lively. This time she managed to get the needle into a vein, and she set up a drip. Maybe little Ahmed would make it after all. She stroked his head, nodded to his parents, trying to instill some hope, and then left again. This was a frustrating aspect of her work, that she never had time to stay, that the overwhelming stream of patients forced her to be hard, made her seem uncaring, when in reality it was all about trying to be there for as many patients as possible. She worked without break all day; the hospital was completely full, and there were two small patients in almost every bed.
Next time she came back to Ahmed and the family, it was already afternoon. She had seen over a hundred patients, hadn’t had time to eat, barely had time to drink, and was covered with dust and sand. Ahmed was wrapped up in a foil blanket.
“How is he?” she asked the nurse, who slowly shook her head.
His breathing was hoarse, and she prescribed oxygen for him, profoundly thankful that the last of their machines still worked properly. She checked the small boy’s pulse and temperature. Listened to his faintly beating heart. Shone a light in his eyes, finding no reaction. There was nothing more she could do, not here in Chad anyway. Had she been at home, she knew she could have saved this child. But now, despite the drip, despite the blanket, even though she’d done all she could, the baby had started to disappear. Slowly and silently he was slipping away, dying before their eyes. His tiny head fell to his chest, which was no longer moving. She listened with her stethoscope, though she already knew it was over.
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