Maybe because Kayla’s orphans couldn’t talk, I paid more attention to the way Kayla moved, how she anticipated their needs, and how she made continual eye contact with them. Not just looking at them, but waiting—even when it was a fraction of a moment—for them to look back at her, to meet her gaze for gaze, imparting comfort, assurance and love with every connection. And importantly, making those connections often.
Even Gus, drowsing on a cushion by the kitchen door, opened his eyes periodically to follow her around, waiting for that acknowledging stare, often accompanied by a flash of smile, before shuttering his eyes again until the next time he needed a Kayla fix.
I could have sat all night at that table watching the interplay between Kayla, Gus and the gorilla, but with two sandwiches down, I realized how awkward my sitting and staring might be. “So, what do you do for entertainment?”
“Surf the Internet. Read—”
“Dammit!”
“You have something against reading?”
I scowled. “My tablet. It was in the medical bag I left behind. And my laptop’s at the clinic.”
Before I could think to ask, Kayla’s laptop appeared on the table in place of the plate in front of me in a handswept, crumb-free clearing, booted up and waiting for input.
“Change all your passwords. Put a hold on your credit cards. Ask your Doctors MD sponsor to get you out of here ASAP. Who knows what will happen if there’s any kind of clash in Hasa. It’s not a big airport there, but I can see it being shut down at the first hint of unrest.”
I logged in while she scrolled through her phone reading messages and news. “Mainly just stuff about the elections,” she reported, “but there were a couple of demonstrations earlier. Broken bottles and rocks…no other weapons used.” She looked up from the screen. “It’s kind of surreal, reading about streets you know suddenly being the sites of demonstrations. Like a whole other world of people living in one of those parallel universes, all of them accessing information about where and when to meet up, all of them armed with secret hashtags and meeting in secret Facebook groups.”
“An underground. But yeah, you do wonder how anything major can remain secret for long.”
From his cushion by the door, Gus’s ears pricked up and he gave an anxious yip. Jengo stared doorward, banging both arms on the table. I froze at the sharp rap that reverberated through the kitchen, my first thought that the militia had found me. Who else would be demanding entrance in the middle of the night?
“It’s Nuru, Kayla,” came the muffled identification from the other side of the door. “And Mosi.”
Gus’s tail wagged stiffly as he stood at the door, eyes staring intently down his muzzle to where his nose pressed into the crack beside the handle.
“Friends,” Kayla assured me, as she stood to let them in. They carried flashlights, and the tall black man had a pistol holstered on his long, lean hip. The shorter woman beside him appeared to be carrying a covered dish. Both sets of eyes glared my way. Well, maybe not so much glared as studied me with deep concern. A quick glance at the taskbar on the laptop assured me it was only 8:24, not quite the middle of the night after all. I found my manners and stood.
“Dr. Mark LeSabre,” Kayla introduced me.” Nuru and Mosi—they live in the cooperative just down the hill. They’ve been helping out on Zahur for…what? Twelve years now?”
“Thirteen,” Mosi corrected with a grin.
“They’ve come by under the pretext of bringing some leftover—”
“—curry.” The woman lifted a corner of the bright purple cloth that covered the iron skillet beneath. Gus’s nostrils flared.
“In reality, they came to make sure you aren’t holding me hostage and making me text that everything’s okay here while you’re doing unspeakable things to me.”
“Does boring you count?” Although it took only the mention of unspeakable things to elicit a slew of them in my head. A sudden, sharp desire to carry out a few of them cut through me. I was willing to bet, however, that Kayla’s definition of unspeakable revolved around pain and torture while mine…assuredly did not. I wasn’t surprised that the thought of being physical with Kayla had eventually caught up with me, but I was surprised at the intensity now that it had.
Jengo scampered down from his chair and over to Nuru to inspect the pan of curry. She took his hand companionably and murmured something in Swahili to him. He bared his teeth in a smile. Was it just her tone of voice he responded to, or was the little gorilla growing up bilingual?
Another unexpected emotion very akin to jealousy panged through me. Would Jengo ever offer me his hand and a smile like that?
A question quickly followed by how long ever might be and exactly how long I was intending to hide out here.
Which was followed by yet another rush of desire around getting physical with Kayla.
Damn Percocet.
The grin on Mosi’s face faded. “It was the Red Party who shot you?” he asked, turning to the second reason they’d come once they were satisfied I wasn’t some criminally insane psychopath.
“I can’t say for certain who shot me,” I corrected, “but the men who brought me to their camp wore red armbands. They were going to take me to Hasa so they’d have a medic on hand for whatever they were planning.”
Mosi nodded, solemnly and sorrowfully, and held up his iPhone. “The news from Hasa is disturbing. My wife’s parents tell us they are afraid to stay. But they have no money and no way to go.”
“Once the elections are over—”
Mosi cut his wife off. “And if there are no elections? If the Yellow Republic refuses to give up power by stopping the vote? What then?”
“Bring Nuru’s parents here,” Kayla said.
“And what of her brothers and sisters and their families? And their cousins and aunts and uncles and the friends who are as family who live by them? Zahur is not big enough to house a village. Not even for a little while, until we know what the Reds and Yellows will do.”
“Does it matter which party is in power?” I ventured. “I mean to your life here?”
“To the outside world it matters,” Kayla said. “It matters who will do business with us, how much money from world governments flows our way. Whether we get the UN to support or sanction Ushindi depends on the makeup of our parliament and whether our civil right to vote is upheld without impediment or ballot-fixing. Other nations’ attitudes toward Ushindi will have a direct impact on our economy and who we can export to. So, yeah, it does matter.”
“Maybe even to whether Ushindi stays Ushindi,” Mosi added. “The Congo wants us back.”
“Which means—?” I asked.
Kayla turned her dark brown eyes full on mine. “If Ushindi destabilizes because of political infighting, that gives the Congo an opportunity to take back the land and people it ceded over a decade ago. Ushindi’s fate will be tied to theirs. And so long as the DRC keeps bouncing back and forth politically, we will be no better off than we were a dozen years back when we broke off from them.”
“So, basically, if the elections don’t happen, you’re screwed. And if the elections are fixed, you’re screwed.” I should have paid more attention to Ushindi’s politics before I came, but I was only going to be here a month. Besides, elections meant political rallies in convention halls, heated debates behind podiums and family arguments over holiday dinners. Elections didn’t mean guns and helicopters and hostile takeovers by nations as equally unstable as yours. Not in my world, at least.
“We may go to Hasa,” Nuru told Kayla in a quiet voice, letting go of the little gorilla’s hand.
“No!” It wasn’t an order, of course, but Kayla’s no was emphatic.
“Just until we see which way things go. Our home is here, always, with you, but our family is there. Our children’s blood is there. Our future is there.”
Kayla shook her head.
“We’ll bring Jamal’s children with us,” Mosi said. “That way, they can be with their mama wh
en she…”
Why did people everywhere have such a hard time voicing the words for death? So many euphemisms, so many trailed sentences and implication by avoidance.
“Wait here a minute,” Kayla asked them before disappearing into the cluster of rooms at the other end of the house and leaving me alone with Mosi and Nuru in awkward silence.
Nuru broke it. “Lisha’s children are very frightened.”
“Losing a mother, yes, I can only imagine,” I agreed. “From what Kayla’s told me.”
“The loss does not frighten. They are frightened they too will get the Subs sickness and die, and that their baba will die too. Like Ebola.”
“That isn’t how it spreads!” I knew that, of course, but how would children know? How would Mosi and Nuru know for that matter if the only information they were getting on it was from friends and the Internet, both of which were as likely to be filled with misinformation and scaremongering?
“Will you educate me, so I can educate them?” Nuru’s soft plea should have been filled with rebuke. I shouldn’t have needed her to point out the obvious. Like Kayla anticipating the needs of her orphans, I should have had enough connection to the people I’d come here to treat to empathize fully with them and to anticipate their fears.
Disease vectors and transmission was rarely simple. I caught Kayla’s eye as she came back into the kitchen with a small, brightly patterned cloth bag in hand. She nodded at me. Encouragement, maybe. It was also possible she wanted to dispel rumors and better understand the disease herself.
Hell, I better wanted to understand it now, just like every doctor in Africa wanted to know more. And like every disease control center around the world was sitting up and taking notice as infected travelers slipped into uninfected nations.
“It’s blood-borne. Very rarely a mother might be able to give it to an unborn baby in the very early stages of pregnancy. Otherwise, the only way a child can catch it from her is if the child has an open wound and she bleeds all over him. It’s not like AIDS where it’s also transmissible by saliva or mucus or other fluids.” Keep it simple, I reminded myself. “It isn’t impossible, but it’s really hard to catch Subs from another person. Directly.”
I took a deep breath, because this is where things got scary. Where children had every right to be frightened. “It’s only carried by a few types of closely related mosquitoes.” Common species that were found the world over. “If one of those mosquitoes bites an infected person, it can incubate the Subs virus, then carry it to another person it bites.” It would only take the right kind of mosquito biting a newly infected person, either still symptomless or with only the first mild symptoms, flying back from Africa to trigger a plague elsewhere. Not a likely scenario, but not that far-fetched a one either.
“So if one of the children was bitten by a mosquito that bit their mama, they would be infected?” The dread gathering in Nuru and Mosi’s eyes was as alarming as the typical numbers of swarming mosquitoes in the rainforest.
“It’s not that easy,” I added hurriedly. “First, only certain mosquitoes can incubate the virus. Second, the virus has to be picked up at the right point in its lifecycle to be incubated. And third, the virus has to go through that incubation period. A mosquito that bites the mother then turns right around and bites the child won’t transmit the disease.”
“But if it waits to bite the child…?” Nuru was following along perfectly well.
I nodded. “But all the conditions have to be exactly right.” And the odds of exact conditions increased dramatically with either more infected people or more of the right species of mosquitoes added into the equation.
“And if the conditions are right,” Mosi said quietly, “and that mosquito flies from their house to ours, it could infect us too.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “That’s how it’s made its way from North Africa down through the Sudans to here. Some people seem to be naturally immune. It could have to do with basal temperature or numbers of protein receptors—” I cut myself off. Throwing doctor-speak at folk whose first language was Swahili would only confuse and frustrate them. My job was to help enlighten, not contribute to the misunderstandings. “Unless there’s been some breakthrough in the past couple of weeks, we don’t know why some people don’t get sick from Subs.”
“Is it only people that get it?” Kayla asked.
“The last I read, its behavior is a lot like West Nile virus, which mainly affects people and horses and birds. Other animals can get West Nile too, they just aren’t as susceptible. And only something like 20% of humans who get West Nile ever show any symptoms. I haven’t heard of any animals being carriers of Subs much less being infected. Still, it’s a fairly new disease, and for all we know, it could still be mutating. And if it is affecting wild species, like maybe chimps and gorillas”—I cast a glance Jengo’s way—“it may have not been noticed yet. Or it may present with entirely different symptoms in non-humans from what people do. We just don’t know yet.”
“So what do we tell the children?” Nuru asked.
“What we should always tell the children,” Kayla said. “The truth.”
I had to admit, I envied Kayla’s future kids for having a mom like her.
CHAPTER 9
KAYLA
Nuru and Mosi had gone home and Mark was in the bathroom cleaning up when I pulled a lamp close and examined my hands.
I didn’t want to be the person who did that. I didn’t want to be someone fearful of touching another human being. But Mark had reminded us all that the Subs virus could be transmitted through the blood—and only a few hours earlier I’d been cleaning his wound.
Not that Mark was likely to have Subs, and he certainly wasn’t showing any symptoms, but the foreman’s wife, Lisha, hadn’t seemed sick either only a day or two ago and now here she was in her early 30’s about to leave behind family and friends who loved and needed her.
If I were to die, what would happen to my strays? Or to the plantation my family had put their sweat and blood and love into for a century-and-a-half? They needed me—alive.
It was also just as possible the mosquito that would kill me had already bitten me or was taking aim even now. I couldn’t lay my mortality in the spatters of a stranger’s blood. Life was far more complicated than that. And far more indiscriminate.
By the time that stranger emerged from the bathroom, trailing hints of coconut-perfumed soap and wearing only his elastic-waisted scrub pants and a bandage, I had made the firm decision I wasn’t going to be taken out by Subs.
Confronted by the half-naked man in my hall, I was jolted by the strong memory of hard muscles and the tight ripple of flesh beneath my fingers. Quick inspection had proven my hands whole and unblemished—no cuts to let any virus in. Now I wanted nothing more than to touch the broad expanse of his chest, lay my palm over his ribs to catch the steady beat of his heart, and to knead away whatever tension those sturdy shoulders carried.
“Something I can do?” he asked. My mind tumbled over a dozen things I would very much like for him to do before I realized he meant helping with any final household tasks before retiring.
From behind, Jengo took my hand. Then, in a surprise gesture of trust, he slipped his other hand into Mark’s. Mark inhaled sharply. Delight colored his eyes as he smiled down at my little gorilla. Jengo smiled back, baring teeth and gums as he rocked his body between us and grunted his contentment.
I shook my head in delayed answer to Mark’s question. “I just have to put Jengo to bed—he’s got the room next to yours.” That at least gave me an excuse to be here in the cramped hall with him. “I was also thinking of guinea eggs and wild boar ham for breakfast. Do you prefer fried or scrambled?”
“I’m betting I prefer chicken eggs. So, surprise me?”
“You’re not much of one for taking chances, are you, Dr. LeSabre?”
His liquid gaze swept over me like a tender wave, leaving me half-panting in its wake and fighting to keep m
y composure. “I think I’m taking one right now.”
My breath escaped in a rush, and I tried to recover it without letting on just how breathless he had left me.
“Besides,” he leaned close, “you haven’t disappointed me yet.”
Pulling on our hands, Jengo squealed and jumped up and down between us.
“An omelette, then,” I whispered. “Mild or spicy?”
“Who doesn’t like a little spice in their eggs?”
“I can do…spice.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m looking forward to trying it.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
His invitation was clear. My feelings about it weren’t, even if muscles deep in my core were lobbying hard for me to say yes. My practical side won out. “Let’s see how things go…tomorrow.”
The bright anticipation in his eyes shifted into disappointment but not defeat. “Maybe I could get a little taste tonight?”
A kiss? How much harm could there be in that? I’d left my share of first dates with a peck at the dorm door—and none of them had come close to sharing as much as Mark and I already had.
Besides, a kiss would be an uncomplicated barometer to determine if there really was any real chemistry there, or if what felt like chemistry was nothing more than easy opportunity and availability tickling our pheromones.
I leaned in, at once hating and delighting in that awkward moment before a first kiss. I was hyper-aware of that face that loomed in as the light in the hallway emphasized each whisker of the five-o’clock shadow fringing his chin and darkening the skin above his lips. Lips that were the color of a rouged tan, parting slightly at their advance.
Noble Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 3) Page 5