by Lisa Alther
When she turned the corner into the elevator landing, she almost ran into Rusty Kincaid. He blushed to the roots of his curly ginger hair.
“How’s it going, Rusty?”
“Fine, Doctor. I’m as good as new!”
“Glad to hear it. But I’m afraid I can’t linger. I’m on my way to watch a meteor shower. I’ll see you later.”
“I hope not!”
They both laughed.
As the elevator ascended, Jessie reflected that during the days since departing from Alexandria all three of these men had been in hot pursuit of Gail. When she was in her suite, they kept watch at her doorway, like the Pope’s Swiss Guard, casting evil glances at one another. And when she emerged, they circled her like sweat bees, vying with one another to carry the Balenciaga tote containing the cremation urn. Gail appeared deeply uninterested in all of them, but who knew what might be going on in her suite in the middle of the night? Something she was or wasn’t doing seemed to be keeping all three men as bewitched as Snow White’s dwarfs.
It had also become apparent to Jessie that Ben and Mona had consummated their flirtation. They huddled together, giggling, every chance they got, ramping up their displays of affection whenever Jessie appeared. But it was okay. She wasn’t much interested in either of them anymore.
When Jessie reached the top deck, she grabbed a cushion off a lounge chair and lay down on it on her back. The breeze off the water was stiff, and the swells were running high. But the pollution-free night sky was clear, and the stars sparkled like a rapper’s bling. Jessie recognized many of the constellations from Girl Scout camp on Lake Champlain. As she traced the familiar patterns and reviewed the associated legends composed eons ago by lonely shepherd boys in moonlit pastures, she felt her true insignificance. She was an amoeba poised on a tiny sphere that was afloat in this unimaginably vast sea of astral bodies. Nothing that she or anyone else said or did was of any significance whatsoever.
On clear summer nights, she and Kat used to drift around Lake Champlain on their pontoon boat, studying these same constellations. They had concluded that it was impossible that some of these trillions of stars didn’t host planets inhabited by other sentient creatures. Kat had suggested that Earth was a boot camp for such a planet. They sent their youth to Earth to experience violence and evil, thereby learning the value of peace and compassion. Only then were the children allowed to return home. If they misbehaved, they were threatened with being sent back to Earth, like a toddler’s time-out.
Kat had also speculated that these more evolved creatures were cultivating Earth, like some garbage-strewn, rat-infested junkyard. When dinosaurs became too repulsive, these superior beings directed an asteroid at Earth to destroy the giant reptiles, clearing the way for small mammals to emerge from the undergrowth and evolve into human beings. If humans didn’t shape up soon, Kat maintained that another asteroid would arrive to prepare Earth for the implantation of a less clueless species.
Suddenly the steady thrum of the ship’s engine accelerated, and the ship veered sharply to the right, causing Jessie to roll off her cushion. At the same time her beeper started pinging. She discovered a message from Ben, summoning her to the bridge. Shaking off her cosmic ruminations, she jumped up and ran for the door to the elevator.
Ben was already engrossed in an intense discussion with Captain Kilgore and several bridge officers when she arrived. Captain Kilgore was explaining that an inflatable rubber boat containing a dozen refugees had been spotted by a surveillance plane at dusk, drifting in high seas a few miles to starboard. They had frantically waved shirts and towels at the plane. The Italian coast guard was requesting that the Amphitrite take these people on board and provide food, water, and medical care. The cruise ship would then proceed to its planned stop at Gozo, in the Maltese Islands, where the coast guard would take charge of them the next day.
“We have no choice,” announced Captain Kilgore. “It’s our legal obligation under maritime law to aid any vessel in distress.”
“Also our moral obligation,” murmured Ben.
Jessie glanced at him, impressed.
Captain Kilgore issued instructions, and soon the “Man Overboard” siren was blaring. After it had finished, he switched on the PA system and explained to the guests what was happening.
Ben, Jessie, and Amy loaded the crash cart with supplies at the clinic and took it down to the bottom deck, where the other nurses were setting up cots in an empty storage room. After organizing their triage area, they walked to the open cargo door to see what was going on outside. Jessie spotted a couple of Zodiacs descending on cables along the flank of the ship. Spotlights suddenly illuminated the water off the starboard side. Nearby, the foundering boat was lurching back and forth in the swells, its panicked passengers clutching the side handles. The rubber pontoons looked soft, as though slowly deflating.
The Zodiacs motored close to the imploding vessel, and their crews began to hurl life vests and buoys into the boat. They called out to the passengers, trying to calm them and coax them into donning the life jackets. Meanwhile, the implacable swells kept lifting the capsizing boat high up into the air, like a carnival ride gone rogue.
Ben muttered to Jessie, “The water temperature must be about sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Let’s hope they can get those people off that boat before it sinks, or we’ll be dealing with hypothermia, along with everything else.”
Jessie nodded. Whatever personal issues they might have were now isolated behind a firewall of professional efficiency. All that mattered was getting those unfortunate people aboard and dealing with their health issues.
The crew in one Zodiac managed to toss a line to a man in the boat. The Zodiac slowly towed the boat over to the Amphitrite, where men on the cargo deck helped the refugees board. One middle-aged man with coils of sodden gray hair was holding a young girl in his arms. He refused to let go of her as he climbed up to the deck and passed through the door into the ship.
Ben and Jessie ushered the shivering people into the storage room, where the nurses helped them out of their soaked clothes and wrapped them in silver foil space blankets. Then Ben and Jessie took their vital signs and assessed the status of their hearts and lungs with stethoscopes. It seemed they were South Sudanese. Jessie spoke no Arabic, so she worked in silence, trying to make her smiles reassuring.
The man with the young girl in his arms still wouldn’t put her down. When Jessie walked over to him, she could smell the putrid odor of decomposition. The girl was dead. Her body was limp instead of rigid, so she must have died two or three days earlier. She looked to be about ten years old, the age of one of Jessie’s granddaughters.
“Please, sir, I need to examine you,” she said gently. “Can you give me your child?” She gestured to illustrate what she was saying.
The man shook his head. “You see, madam, she’s my daughter,” he said in British-inflected English. “We’re going to Italy so she can attend school.”
“You speak English?”
“I teach English at a Christian college in my country.”
As Jessie continued to question him, she learned that a government militia had attacked his school. Several soldiers had raped his daughter. His wife had tried to stop them. They had raped her, as well. She fought so fiercely that they finally killed her. The soldiers promised that if the college didn’t shut down, they would return. The surviving staff had pooled their money and traveled in a series of trucks and buses to a Libyan beach, where they were loaded onto this rubber boat. After several hours at sea, the engine conked out. The pilot placed a call on his satellite phone. A speedboat arrived to pick him up. When the teacher tried to prevent him from leaving, someone in the speedboat shot the teacher with a handgun.
The boat had drifted for a couple of days in the hot sun. Food and water ran out. People saved and drank their own urine. One man drank seawater and died. They hadn�
��t wanted to abandon him, so they kept his body in the boat. The teacher’s daughter developed a high fever and went into convulsions.
“Can you help her, Doctor? We have to get to Italy.”
For once in her life, Jessie was speechless.
“I’ll be right back,” she finally said. She went over to Ben and explained the situation.
Ben approached the man and said, “Sir, we need to examine you. Would it be all right if my colleague here holds your daughter for you?”
The man hesitated, then said, “I suppose so.”
He carefully handed the girl to Jessie. Jessie stood there with the limp little girl in her arms, noting how cold a body became once the life force had departed. At least her face appeared peaceful, in contrast to those of the refugees still alive.
The teacher seemed to be in pain, but Ben could locate no broken bones, no cuts, no blood. Then he discovered a hole the size of his baby fingertip in the man’s right thigh, and a similar hole through the muscle of his upper right arm, and a third in his right calf. Ben and Jessie agreed that the holes were bullet wounds, puckered by the salt water. They also agreed that since no vital organs or blood vessels appeared to have been impacted, the bullets were best left in place.
As Ben bandaged the wounds, he persuaded the man to let Jessie carry his daughter’s body into the next room, where the corpse of the man who had drunk the seawater was lying on a bed of ice bags. After agreeing, the father doubled over and began to weep. Ben stroked his back, looking as though he, too, might start crying.
Crew from the ship laundry began to gather the piles of wet clothing into their carts. Some kitchen staff served the survivors water, hot tea, and broth, cautioning them with hand signs to rehydrate slowly.
As Jessie and Ben walked back toward the clinic with their equipment, Jessie heard Captain Kilgore on the PA overhead, addressing the entire ship:
“Our staff and crew have just saved the lives of nearly a dozen of our fellow human beings, so we should all sleep well tonight, feeling proud that we rose to this occasion. Our new guests will be transferred to the Italian coast guard tomorrow morning for transport to a welcome center on Sicily, where their status will be assessed.”
“What will happen to that girl’s body?” Jessie asked Ben.
“I guess she’ll be off-loaded on Malta. When this exodus from Africa began, the local people buried drowned migrants with prayers and flowers. But there have been so many since then that I think they’re overwhelmed.”
“What will happen to the rest of these people?”
“As I understand it, any political refugees whose lives are in danger will be allowed to stay in Europe. Those just wanting a better life will probably be returned to South Sudan.”
“I’d say the lives of all these people are in danger, from what I’ve heard about those militias.”
“I know,” said Ben. “I wouldn’t want to be the one making those decisions.”
* * *
—
Back in her cabin, Jessie stepped out of her damp scrubs and stuffed them into her laundry bag. Then she stood in a hot shower until her arms, which had held the young girl’s violated body for such a long time, stopped trembling. She dried herself and pulled on some sweatpants and a T-shirt.
She switched on her computer to the Haydn quartet Mona had recommended. Lying down on her bed, she breathed deeply and allowed the stately music to soothe her. But as she struggled to put out of her head the image of that little girl being gang-raped, she began to cry. A tsunami of grief swept over her, and she sobbed, gasping for breath. How could she continue to live in a world like this?
She heard a tentative knock at her door. Thinking it might be Ben needing to discuss a patient, she wiped her face with her sheet and got up, clearing her throat and blowing her nose into a tissue. She fluffed up her still-damp hair with her fingertips.
Mona was standing there in a black satin robe decorated with scarlet Art Nouveau lilies. “I heard you crying through the wall. Is there anything I can do?”
Jessie hesitated. Then she stepped aside. “Come in.” She gestured to the bed, the only place to sit in the small cabin.
Mona sat down, swung her legs up onto the mattress, and leaned back against the pillows. Jessie plopped down across from her in the desk chair, noting with relief that the Haydn quartet had ended. She didn’t want Mona to think that she had paid any attention to her annoying come-on.
“Sorry to have disturbed you,” said Jessie. “I forget how thin these walls are.”
“Rough night?”
“You have no idea.” Struggling not to, Jessie started crying again.
Mona scooted over toward the wall and patted the mattress.
“I thought you saw me as Cruella de Vil now,” said Jessie.
“What happened tonight makes our little spats seem pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
Jessie stood up and walked over to the bed. Against her better judgment, she lay down beside Mona. Tentatively, they moved into each other’s arms. Jessie laid her head on Mona’s chest and began to sob again. Mona hesitantly patted her back and stroked her shoulders. Gradually, Jessie calmed down. She concentrated on timing her breathing to Mona’s. Beneath her ear she could hear the steady thump of Mona’s heart. Soon her own heart began to beat in tandem with Mona’s. It had been a long time since she had found solace in the healing warmth of a woman’s body. They just lay there, breathing in unison, hearts beating in sync, until both fell asleep.
* * *
—
The ship had already docked at Gozo when Jessie woke up. She watched sunbeams reflected off the harbor water as they danced on the cabin ceiling. Her grief over the young girl’s rape had transmuted overnight into anger, anger against all the bullies of this world. It was a familiar anger that she now realized had often percolated in her at the ER as she had repaired the results of their horrific brutalities. Her patients’ physical wounds could often be healed, but their psychic wounds suppurated for a lifetime. It was beginning to look as though her famous detachment was only skin-deep.
“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Mona sat up beside her, smiling.
“It was kind of you to comfort me last night, Mona. I don’t know when I’ve felt such despair.”
Mona crawled to the end of the bed and stood up, tightening the belt on her satin robe. Her auburn hair was disheveled. She studied Jessie. “Would you like more than comfort from me, Jessie?”
After a long pause, Jessie replied, “I love you, Mona, but not like that.”
Mona smiled faintly. “Okay. But just tap on my wall if you change your mind.”
“I wouldn’t want to disturb you and Ben.”
Mona blushed. “Ben is just a diversion.”
Jessie shrugged. Mona had behaved like a brat recently, and Jessie wasn’t ready to forgive her. It was concession enough that she had acknowledged the love that was apparently stirring between them.
Realizing Jessie wasn’t going to respond any further, Mona turned and left the cabin.
Jessie suddenly remembered that she had signed up to escort a bus trip to the cave where Calypso had imprisoned Odysseus as her love slave for seven years. She had read up on Homer on Wikipedia so she could answer guests’ questions. Calypso had enchanted Odysseus with her singing. Odysseus was supposed to be going back home to Ithaca, but his love for Calypso held him captive there in her labyrinthine cavern. Finally, Zeus commanded Calypso to set Odysseus free so he could complete his mission. Calypso was deeply annoyed that gods got to have endless love affairs with mortals but objected when goddesses did the same. Clearly, sexism was nothing new.
Jessie turned on her TV to check the tour schedule. She discovered that the trip had been canceled because the love cave had collapsed during a recent earthquake.
Chapter 12
Sl
ave to Love
The mood on the Amphitrite was glum. Many starboard-side passengers had watched from their balconies as the Sudanese refugees nearly sank into the sea. Several had come to the clinic in the days afterward requesting antidepressants. Those who were not complete sociopaths had realized that they had been born into Western democracies through no merit of their own. They had paid tens of thousands of dollars to ride this luxury liner, eating and drinking themselves into prediabetic stupors, while others rode capsizing ghost ships, drinking their own urine.
To cheer them up, Mitch, the cruise director, had announced a Texas barbecue on the roof deck that evening, during which the ship would transit the Strait of Gibraltar. Once into the Atlantic Ocean, there would be a special sunset surprise!
While the passengers worked on their cowboy outfits, Jessie remained in her cabin and continued her puzzled perusal of Kat’s journal, still bewildered by “Swan Song I.” Propped on her pillows, she read in Kat’s handwriting: “Cavafy’s fixation on beautiful young men isn’t one I’ve ever shared. I’ve got two sons, so I know what pathetic creatures handsome young men really are.”
Then came a clipping from a magazine review of Kat’s third novel, which she had pasted into the journal, highlighting with a yellow marker: “Ms. Justice has allowed her feminist agenda to hijack her comedic gift. Please return to satire, Ms. Justice, and lose the soapbox.”
Jessie recalled how annoyed Kat had been by this review. Her first novel had garnered lots of praise as a “madcap romp” set in commune days. Its more serious successors hadn’t been as enthusiastically received. Beneath this quote Kat had written, “When men write about what they think and feel, it’s called Truth. But when women do the same, it’s called an agenda. I don’t think I can write comedy anymore. This world no longer amuses me.”