Cris went inside with Johnny following Jennifer, leaving Karen with the kids.
“Your welcoming committee’s ready to show you the sights,” she said to Jay, gathering her sandy hair into a ponytail and popping on a Scrunchie.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t have anything else to do.”
She shook her head. His interest was about as remote as the place itself. When the medical aid group had its first pre-trip meeting, Karen perked up when Jayden Bonner walked in. Blond, tanned, green eyes, a cleft chin. There were only two other teen guys in the group and Jayden appeared the most…interesting. He looked like Justin Kimberly, the keyboard guy in Shattered Mirrors, only with a bleaker expression.
Karen looked forward to Jayden’s introduction; until he got past “I’m Jayden Bonner. My bros call me Jay.” It was downhill from there. “I live in Rock Creek Estates and I’m a junior in Wayfern Preparatory Academy. I’m getting extra credit in Human Geography and World Diversity Studies for doing this and I want to check out the Nicaragua party scene.” He had pumped his fist.
Several of the group’s adults had shaken their heads.
A global dweeb, Karen thought. And I was worried about being accepted with my lame, “Huh, I want to help others, gain more medical experience, learn more Spanish…and, um, make myself a better person.”
The kids led them around their little world, not caring if Karen’s Spanish was simple and different than Nicañol—the Nicaraguan brand of Spanish. Karen’s Spanish was as spoken in Mexico. They met all the goats and pigs, the four donkeys, and a little pack of excited dogs. Karen drew in the scent of the place, the damp smells of wood and thatch, of the animals, of wood smoke, and spicy foods. Jay hung back and wouldn’t touch a thing. If he did, he’d pull out his bottle of hand sanitizer. The kids tried to talk to him, but he shrugged his shoulders and laughed with a, “No habla.”
“Ultimate random,” Karen muttered.
Johnny came out of the little home. “The guy has a fractured wrist. I helped Jen set it. She’s casting now.”
“Is it serious?” Karen asked.
“Nah, an incomplete transverse fracture. Jen may be a, well…”
Karen completed it in her mind…may be a beyotch. She appreciated Johnny using medical terms. He treated her like one of the real medical people on the team.
“Cris is going with me to check on the sick kids. Then he…and Jay can help you with the census thing.” Johnny looked down at her. “You wanta go with me, see what’s up with the kids?”
“Sure. Come on, Hulk.” She motioned to Jay.
Jennifer had previously made it clear she didn’t want Karen in her way while treating patients. One of the reasons Karen was here was for hands on medical experience. She wanted to go into medicine. But, even an “almost a doctor” like Jennifer seemed out of reach because of math grades. Her parents expected her to follow in their footsteps. Her grandfather had been a doctor, a heart surgeon at the prestigious Houston Medical Center, and her older sister was in pre-med. She could imagine what they’d say if she announced she wanted to be a nurse, for example. “Fine, so long as you’re satisfied with emptying bedpans for the rest of your life.” She thought, There’s a lot more to nursing that I really want to know about.
Cris came down the stairs chatting with a couple of farmers and then led Johnny and Karen to the next patient’s home. The kids and Jay followed, but remained outside with the bolder ones peeking through the door. Jay worked on his iPhone Mangle Obsession gaming skills.
She introduced herself as Karena, a name she liked better than her real name. The Spanish version of Karen seemed to fit where she was and what she was about and left that Karen person, the failure, behind in Cypress. The wind picked up and raindrops pattered on the thatched roof.
Johnny said, “We need some light and air in here.” Cris asked the anxious parents to open the window shutters.
The light revealed a small boy covered by a thin blanket in a hammock. Sweat beaded his forehead. Karen dabbed off the sweat as Johnny spoke to the parents through Cris.
He went wide-eyed as Johnny pulled the armband and tubes of the blood pressure device out of his bag.
“Mi nombre es Karena. ¿Como te llamas?”
“Mi nombre es Carlos.” He tried to smile.
“¿Cuantos años tienes, Carlos?” Karen asked.
“Tengo diez años.”
“¡Diez, ya eres todo un hombre!” she said enthusiastically.
The boy smiled broadly at being told that at ten years, he was a big man.
She inserted the ear thermometer and it beeped after a few seconds.
“¿Tienes calentura?” —Are you hot?
“Tengo un resfriado.”
“He has chills,” she relayed to Johnny. “One-hundred and three point two,” she added, checking the thermometer’s readout.
“Nosotros te ayudaremos, Carlos.” —We will help you, Carlos.
The boy didn’t let go of her hand the entire time Johnny examined him.
“You certainly have a good bedside manner…and a way with the boys,” Johnny said with a chuckle.
At least I have that, Karen thought. She could show some empathy, so long as she didn’t have to be responsible for them. Her parents always said they were responsible for their patients’ well-being. That bugged Karen. She didn’t want to be responsible for anyone, didn’t want them dependent on her.
Carlos needed a saline solution IV bolus—a large fast dose. That took a little convincing and was beyond Karen’s language skills. Cris helped out.
“Simple fever,” said Johnny. “Dehydrated.” Cris told the parents they needed to give him all the liquids they could. Johnny also gave them antibiotic tablets.
The other ill child was an eight-year old girl, Yuli, in the last house on the left. She had diarrhea and also needed re-hydration. Jay stayed outside here too.
“I hope you don’t get sick touching him,” said Jay, his eyes aghast when they came out.
“Yeah, I might get boy cooties,” she shot back with a piercing glare.
Regardless of Jennifer’s insistent urgings to return to Concepción and the rest of the team, it was obvious Johnny felt for the kids and their parents struggling out there. He gave each and every person a simple physical and passed out over-the-counter medications. Jennifer had to help him of course and she didn’t like it. Maybe she “out-ranked” him being a PA, but he had ten years’ experience and she, barely two. Johnny was a take-charge kind of guy, had been an Army medic in Afghanistan, and that’s what they were here for in the first place, to help people out who were living a tough life.
Karen sat at a bamboo table near Johnny and Jennifer’s examination station. She filled out a census form for each adult and child. Cris was busy helping out both her and the examiners, laughing when he had to switch back and forth, asking entirely different kinds of questions. She had Jay organize the forms alphabetically.
“I’m so grateful you came all this way to do that,” she said with more than a hint of sarcasm.
When trained for census-taking, Karen learned some forty percent of children in Nicaragua weren’t legally registered nor counted in demographic statistics. That was one reason there were no schools or government clinics anywhere nearby. Without volunteer medical groups like theirs, these folks would be totally on their own.
Lunch was peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and a shared liter of orange soda. One of the farmers shyly asked for the empty plastic bottle. Such things were valuable out here.
The wind was picking up and bands of rain swept through. It was late afternoon and now the rain was coming down hard, no breaks. The irregular wind gusts steadily increased.
Jennifer reminded them, “We need to be on our way before the hurricane hits…we arrived later than expected.”
The radio told them about the hurricane roaring in from the Caribbean, but it was forecast to pass to the north, into Honduras. They would be opposite of the storm’s norther
n “dirty side,” pushing out high winds and heavy rains beyond the main storm. They’d only receive moderate wind and rains on the southern “clean side.”
Reports said people were being evacuated from towns in low-lying areas as a precaution. They were over fifty miles from the coast and on high ground. Wind and rains would diminish this far inland. Nobody was too concerned, except Jennifer.
The rain was now a steady torrent. Rivulets coursed down the ridge side under the stilted houses. Soaked men and boys tied down poles across the roofs to hold the thatch in-place.
Johnny, standing in a dripping rain-slicker under a porch said, “We should have left earlier.”
“No kidding, Sherlock,” Jennifer groused. She prudently didn’t say anything more, but she sure looked angry, thought Karen.
“We’re spending the night here,” Johnny said.
“Dyaicachimba. That means way cool,” she said to Jay. Jay groaned, loudly. Jennifer groaned even louder.
There was no way to let the rest of the group at Concepción know, the nearest cell phone tower being in the next time zone. But they planned for this and had brought hammocks and food.
“Stay the night if the storm worsens,” her dad told Johnny. They’d been afraid if they didn’t visit the secluded farmers this day they wouldn’t make it out there after the storm.
Dinner was more peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and mangos plus piping hot beans shared by their hosts.
The downside of staying overnight was that Karen had to hole up in a home with Jennifer and to listen to her relentless complaining. Jay had laid dibs on the van’s back seat, the only one long enough the stretch out on.
“There’s room for two in here,” Jay smugly offered.
He’s such a…guy, thought Karen. Way too much swag.
“Only in my nightmares,” said Jennifer and then whispered to Karen, “Self-absorbed dweeb.”
Most of the kids ran through the rain to the home Karen was crashing in. Using the string loops she’d brought, they crowded around and she taught them how to make a cat’s cradle, an Apache door, cup and saucer, and other string figures. They were enjoying the rare entertainment she provided. They sucked up anything new like sponges.
Cocooned in her hammock, it was a long night. The fragile house shook, the roof sprung leaks, and the pigs and goats herded under the house made noisy neighbors. There was a scary moment when one house lost part of its roof forcing the soaked occupants to flee to others. Johnny, Karen, and Cris ventured out to carry little kids to other houses. Jennifer and Jay opted to stay dry.
It rained harder and the wind banshee-howled.
So here she was, helping out people who needed and appreciated her help, crashing in a farmer’s home in the middle of the Nicaraguan rainforest surrounded by kids who liked her as a storm bore down on them. Awesome! Alice, Cheyenne, and Socorro, her forever friends, had warned her to expect disappointment…it might not be the big adventure she expected, they’d warned.
Chapter Three
Karen hung in her hammock listening to the attacking rain and wind over the erythematic beat thumping from her iPhone. She could feel it too. The house kind of gave with the wind blasts blowing through the cracks. A candle flickered in the next room.
Four kids slept in their hammocks in the cramped room and Jennifer was suspended in the far corner. The PA got up, frequently pacing into the living/dining room where more kids from the roofless house were trying to sleep.
Karen lost track of the number of times she awoke and dozed off only to be jolted awake by a harder blast. It was scary at times. Cataracts gurgled beneath the shaky house. This was not the “clean side” another house-shaking wind blast emphasized. It wouldn’t be the first time a hurricane swerved in the hours before making landfall.
As Karen swung in her hammock, she had too much time to think about that “B” in Algebra. Mom and Dad had gotten her a tutor. She hated math, even knowing it was critical in any medical field. She was consistently an “A” student. But when it came to math, a “B” was commonplace for her. Math grades were particularly important now that she was in high school and she’d be a sophomore next month. She lacked the necessary persistence a counselor told her. One wasn’t immediately rewarded, but had to doggedly stay on a problem. She was more physical, inclined to push it to the max to achieve an immediate goal.
She’d been talked into trying out for cheerleader. She attended a camp and did one of the preliminary tryouts. She simply could not get into it and dropped out. Then there was swim team. She hadn’t made the cut. That was an even a bigger blow. She considered herself athletic, ran to improve her stamina, ate right, and lifted weights. In the end, one lousy second cost her a place on the team.
For medical school applicants, schools looked at the extent of one’s extracurricular activities. Flubbing out of some didn’t look good. She was in the Spanish Club. Speaking Spanish was a good thing in any medical field her dad told her. Too, she was in the Cycle Club, for her legs and stamina, for the swim team…
There was also the Venturing Scouts. That was something she loved. Her crew did backpacking trips, rock climbing, canoeing, and survival exercises. Their year’s climax backpacking trip was over Thanksgiving week in far West Texas’ Big Bend National Park. During spring break they took a canoe trip in the Texas Hill Country.
She’d gone to Outward Bound School in Colorado the summer before. Three weeks of backpacking and wilderness skills while learning self-confidence and tenacity. It wasn’t at all like those silly “reality TV” group survival shows. Those encouraged self-serving cliques, power struggles, and booting out the “losers,” who were sometimes the best people they had. That was stupid, getting rid of your most able because of others’ egos. Outward Bound did the opposite—developing unity, teamwork, and leadership.
Her favorite TV shows were the survival guys on their own in the wilderness. And yeah, she liked fantasy and paranormal shows, like Vampire Alley and The Blood Red Kiss.
Her more urbane parents were perplexed at her infatuation with the depravity of existing in remote places—that was how her dad described it—calling her “Wild Girl.” Sometimes her dad, however, said it might help develop the persistence she’d need for medical school. She understood how grueling pre-med, medical school, internship, and residency were—at least a twelve-year process to finally say you’re a doctor.
Overriding it all was the fact that she didn’t cut it as a leader, and it would take a leader, a self-starter, to make it through med school. Could she do that? Outward Bound had been awesome, but her leadership evaluation was a bitter pill.
Lying in her hammock, Karen watched a vein of water course down the bamboo wall. It glistened in the reflected candlelight, blurred, and she lost focus, drifting off into a dark dream world.
She stumbled down a creepy wet jungle trail smothered in darkness. An extraordinarily heavy backpack dragged her down. Mud and snaky roots grabbed at her boots and the humidity was suffocating. When she turned to check on the people following her, she was alone.
Chapter Four
Karen awakened staring into the darkest eyes she’d ever seen. The little girl giggled and darted off. Karen had glimpsed eyes so large and wondrous, they looked like those of an anime character.
It was quiet. She listened. The wind was there, but only a soft steady breeze. Water dripped and made sloshing sounds as it ran beneath the house. She heard a lamb softly bleat from below. People were talking in whispers. Children giggled.
She could smell coffee and it smelled real good. All those camping trips; it was a habit easily picked up on so many damp, chilly dawns as those remembered skies showed color.
Jennifer was gone, as was her hammock. Karen rolled hers up and stuffed it into her copper-brown backpack.
“Buenos días. ¿Café, señorita?”
“Buenos días. Muchas gracias, señora,” she gratefully thanked her hostess, taking the steaming cup. Sugar and goat’s milk had already been add
ed.
Johnny was outside with Cris and two farmers. They waved good morning as she stepped out. Streaks of high ragged clouds hung in the raw blue sky. It was muggy and warm. The tempest had dissolved into the elements comprising it.
“That was short and sweet,” said Karen sipping from her tin cup.
“I guess we only caught the southern edge,” Johnny said.
“S’bout time Sleeping Beauty got up,” Jennifer grated from the van’s front seat—obviously ready to leave this place.
“Buenos días to you too,” Karen said coolly as she set her pack in the van.
Jay was still prone in the backseat, all red-eyed.
Clarified air, hot coffee, and a clear head gave her a conciliatory feeling. “You don’t look like you slept well.”
“The rain beat on the van like a machine gun,” he said gloomily. “You could have kept me company.” He gave her a sly grin.
“Only in my nightmares,” was all she could think of to say.
A couple of men and older boys were already working on the storm-damaged roof.
Her running shoes sank into the saturated ground with every step. Tree limbs, twigs, and clumps of leaves were thickly scattered everywhere. Kids were cleaning them up. To one side of the last house on the left she noticed a stand of trees growing at an angle, not straight up—odd.
A mud-splattered boy trotting up the road reported, “El puente es seguro.” —The bridge is good. It was obvious Johnny wanted to be on their way, but first he and Jennifer checked their patients. All were on the mend. Jennifer left instructions on further care of the broken wrist and when and how to remove the cast.
They said their goodbyes. Kids ran shouting after the van until mud and water flowing over the road slowed them. Karen watched the waving kids until the road curved around the ridge.
“Maybe we can make a run back up here before we leave,” Karen said.
Jennifer groaned.
Jay said, “I’ve got better things to do.”
Tears of the River Page 2