Cry of the Firebird

by T. M. Clark

  He nodded at her and went back to standing guard.

  She massaged her neck; the cat had moved up the bed and slept on her pillow and kept her awake half the night. She needed coffee. Desperately.

  She’d dropped in to meet everyone soon after they arrived, but now she was about to start, she had butterflies in her stomach, which was her usual reaction to any new situation. Settling into the house and getting over the jet lag period was over, and it was time to get to work.

  ‘Dr Winters, you’re nice and early for your first day.’

  ‘Thank you, Jacob,’ Lily said, shaking the hand of the male receptionist who had rushed to greet her. He was about six feet tall and smartly dressed in clothes that fit his athletic body. ‘It’s good to be here. Can you show me where the kitchen and the coffee machine are, please? I missed them on my initiation visit.’

  Jacob was shaking his head. ‘I’ll show you to your office and then fetch you a coffee,’ he said, leading her down a small passage. He opened a door and she walked in, but he remained outside. ‘Mrs Kilborne said to tell you that your passcode for the computer is on your desk in the envelope, with instructions on how to log in. I can help you with that if you need it when I bring your coffee.’

  ‘Thank you, but I can make my own beverages, just show me the kitchen,’ Lily said.

  Jacob shook his head again. ‘Mrs Kilborne will fire me if you make your own. That’s part of my job.’ He placed his hand on his chest dramatically.

  So, office manager June Kilborne was a force to be reckoned with, just as Lily had suspected after her conversation with Piet, particularly considering she had not allowed the policeman into the office to search the computers, but the fact that Jacob was willing to admit it was interesting. ‘I’ll try to remember that. Please, can you make me a coffee? Full cream milk, no sugar.’

  ‘Ja, Doctor, one coffee coming right up,’ he said as he headed off to the kitchen.

  Lily might live in a First World country now, but she had to remember that she worked in the Third World. Growing up, she’d thought nothing of the maid always waiting on her and her sister, Rose, but once she’d left South Africa, she’d become used to doing things for herself. She and Quintin guarded their privacy fiercely and didn’t employ even a cleaner when at home. The estate manager only entered their house in Brisbane when they weren’t there to ensure it was ready for their arrival.

  Being back in Africa was already changing the way they did that. In the weeks since they’d arrived, they seemed to have integrated into Ian’s space just fine. Bessie was a godsend, bringing the tea, making the lunches, and helping Lily with where to shop, and where it was safe to drive and where she must not go at night.

  Lincoln looking after the garden and the livestock was a necessity, not a luxury, and as for Piet, he’d drifted in and out, helping where he could with a strength and dogged determination that defied all expectations. The man was pure muscle, and not afraid of hard work.

  The new hothouse was up, and while Quintin had multiple bandaids on the various nicks on his skin, he’d managed to avoid more serious injury. She could see that he was enjoying the handyman experience. Building something worthwhile with his hands.

  Lily had wondered how Quintin’s hands would hold up. Even all these years later, she still worried about them. She’d been by his side when he’d gone through all the therapy to regain use of those precious fingers, and while Quintin now believed the ordeal had made him a stronger person, she still worried that as he got older, the injuries would give him problems and slow him down in his career.

  Lily shook her head as if the simple action could clear the cobwebs of yesteryear from her mind. Instead, she focused on her new office space.

  It was a typical doctor’s room with a large antique wooden desk that dominated one corner, a single patient’s chair next to it, and a bed opposite with a washable curtain. She frowned as she realised there was a bulky printer on her desk and a computer with a colossal cathode-ray monitor. Not everyone kept up with technology as much as she and Quintin did. She put down her laptop case and made a mental note to order herself a new flat-screen monitor and compact printer; she’d donate it to the clinic when they left.

  Sitting down she fired up her computer, using the codes in the envelope. She opened Ian’s diary while she waited. It was blank for the day, thoughtfully left open for her to settle in. The rest of the week, however, was back-to-back appointments, including blocks booked out for onsite visits to the nursing homes.

  She knew that Ian had spent every Monday out at Platfontein, but it wasn’t blocked out in her diary—she needed to speak to Jacob to make sure that continued.

  Seven o’clock on the dot, her buzzer rang.

  ‘Are you seeing patients yet, Doctor?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘Yes, send them in,’ she said. She opened her door to wait for her first patient.

  Jacob handed her a steaming mug of coffee and a file. ‘You’ll need these. And lots of luck.’ He turned and went to speak to her patient to presumably go inside her office—it was all clicks. She smiled as Piet was led towards her rooms.

  She walked to her desk and turned, motioning for him to take a seat.

  He smiled and said, ‘Doctor Lily. Goeie môre.’ He sat.

  ‘Goeie môre, Piet,’ she said in the worst Afrikaans he’d probably heard in years. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘As you know, Ian would usually come to Platfontein for his clinic on Mondays, but as you have only just started work today, I did not think that you would have a chance to be visiting. As a medicine man, I need some more antiretroviral drugs issued to the clinic there.’

  ‘You dispense the HIV drugs at the clinic?’

  Piet nodded. ‘One of the things I do, Ja. But the second reason is that I am worried. I have a patient who is beyond the help of my herbs and plants and needs your medicines. Ian used to give me the medications to give to the men who did not want to see a dokotela who is not one of the San community. Some of my people they are too stubborn to come and seek medical help, even when I told them that Dokotela Lily was as beautiful as her name.’

  Lily smiled.

  ‘Do not laugh. It is true that they are just simple men, but they still need help.’

  ‘I’m smiling because, as you know, I’ve been away a little while and it’s good to see in South Africa some men don’t change. Why don’t you tell me what is wrong with this one man you’re worried about?’

  ‘He has the thinnings disease. You know, AIDS,’ he said when she looked at him blankly.

  ‘HIV, or full-blown AIDS?’

  ‘HIV positive, not dying yet. I hope,’ Piet said. ‘That is why I give them the antiretroviral treatment. They are on tablets all the time, and I give them their drugs sometimes hidden inside one of my medicines for those who do not believe in them and will not take the pills. But now one man is really sick. He told me he had a headache. I gave him tea from the willow tree, but it got worse. I gave him the Panado, and that did not help either. This morning he is vomiting. He says his neck is sore, and he cannot move his head from side to side. But he still would not let me bring him in to see you.’

  She frowned. ‘If I go see him, will he allow me into his ikhaya?’

  This time it was Piet who smiled. ‘I will tell him that the gods told me that I needed to go find the new angel to come and heal him because Dokotela Meva has already become part of the earth.’

  ‘Calling me an angel is dangerous, what happens if he dies? Then I’ll be a tokoloshe just as fast.’

  His smile grew broader, his eyes crinkling up until they were almost invisible. ‘Then you will still be called Dokotela Lily. To my people, we do not believe in angels anyway; they were brought here by the white man’s preaching. To us, if his time on earth is done, then it is the time to be with !Xu, our sky god who looks after the dead souls. We will bury him, and he will become one with the earth once more.’

  She shook her head. ‘Lily is fine, Piet, bu
t I’m no angel. Give me the names of the men you medicate, and we can see if Jacob can find their files—if Ian had files for them at all.’ Taking the last gulp of her coffee, she walked to the door and called, ‘Jacob, can you come in here, please?’

  She spoke with him softly, then watched as he stood next to Piet and wrote the names on a sheet of paper. ‘I’ll need a few moments to find these files,’ he said, then walked out. Never once had she witnessed any body language from Jacob that suggested she might need to rethink her plans to visit Platfontein with Piet. She felt her bunched-up shoulders relax.

  Men in South Africa had always been overprotective of females. It didn’t matter who they were; they always took a protective stance. The fact that Jacob hadn’t objected while Piet was giving the names meant that she would hopefully be okay going into Platfontein. She knew from Ian’s notes that he’d routinely done it, and she was simply stepping into his shoes. The new doctor.

  It was a great place to start.

  * * *

  Lily should have known that it wasn’t going to be that easy. Platfontein was still considered a township. White women didn’t usually go into townships in South Africa.

  Mrs Kilborne had insisted that the security guard, Michael, accompany her in her Land Cruiser. While Lily appreciated that she didn’t know the situation on the ground, she knew that going into an area with her own militia in the front seat was going to cause more problems than she needed.

  Mrs Kilborne eventually gave in—but only because Piet would be in his vehicle and escorting her, too. They’d also compromised on Michael, who had changed out of his uniform into plain clothes. He was not to show he was armed unless Lily was threatened, and his rifle was to be covered at all times unless she was in real danger.

  An hour later they were finally on their way. With Michael sitting in her passenger seat, Lily followed Piet’s police bakkie into the township.

  ‘We are entering Platfontein,’ Michael said as they drove down what still looked to her to be a main road. ‘This land was given to the San by the government. It is theirs.’

  ‘So, anyone can live here now?’ Lily asked.

  ‘Only the San can live here,’ Michael said. ‘Before I worked for the clinic, I had never been in this place.’

  ‘You used to come here with Ian?’

  ‘Yes. To help bring the sick people to the hospital.’

  ‘The road to Platfontein has been deserted the whole way. Only one or two people walked along,’ Lily said, looking at the odometer. ‘And it’s roughly fifteen kilometres from Kimberley.’

  ‘Too far to travel daily for work by foot for most from the settlement to the city,’ Michael said.

  ‘But what about taxis? They go wherever?’

  ‘Taxis go where there’s business and money. The San community have neither. Before they came here, most people knew nothing of them except their old cave paintings. Until a few years ago, many of us living in this area had never seen a San. The situation is hard for everyone—we must learn new languages to communicate with them, and them us. We are one under our rainbow nation, but we are very different, too. The taxis don’t go where there is no work, and the people of Platfontein don’t go into Kimberley for work, so there is no need for the taxis to have a route. It wouldn’t be profitable enough for them, not enough traffic.’

  Lily nodded, Michael’s explanations slowly sinking into her mind.

  ‘This place is sad,’ he continued. ‘I have fetched more bodies here with Dr Ian than in any other township. They come to Platfontein. They drink. The younger ones, they do drugs. They come to this place, and they die here. They do not want to live full lives.’

  ‘But Piet’s a policeman, he has a job.’

  ‘Piet is the exception here, Dr Lily.’

  Lily frowned as they drove past the tiny Monopoly houses dotted along in straight lines. So different from the traditional way that she knew these people had once lived.

  She drove over corrugated roads to a few buildings that stood apart from the others at the end of the row, where Piet had stopped and was already waiting for her. She opened her door and got out to join him.

  ‘This is Moses’s home. He is the one who is too sick, and the ambulance will not come here.’

  ‘Why won’t they bring an ambulance?’ Lily asked.

  ‘They say that we do not pay their fees,’ Piet said.

  She nodded, understanding that many of the ambulance services were owned by private companies, and they would stop servicing a community who didn’t pay. There simply weren’t enough of the government ambulances to spread across the whole of the Kimberley area. ‘Logistics versus money making the world go around as normal.’

  Piet nodded.

  She was gathering her bag and noticed that while Michael wasn’t taking his weapon out of the Land Cruiser, he was having a good look around, still with his door open and in easy reach of firepower if needed.

  ‘It’s a few years since I was last in South Africa, and a lot has changed,’ Lily admitted.

  ‘You will not be harmed at this settlement. There are problems here at Platfontein,’ Piet said. ‘When people see you have come, they know that there is help. You bring hope just driving here. You will most likely have a few other sick people come line up at the main clinic building, too. It will not be an easy day for you.’

  ‘I’m not set up for a remote clinic today, I just came to see Moses. From the symptoms you described, I’m worried he might be another case of meningitis. I’ll need to focus on him for now, and we can do an outreach clinic another time.’

  ‘Come, we will think about other problems after we have seen Moses.’

  She nodded to Michael, who stood next to the Land Cruiser trying to hide the fact that he was security—a little unsuccessfully to her way of thinking. She walked next to Piet towards the little government-built house.

  While each home had power and running water, the buildings were small. As she looked around, she saw that many of the roofs had tarpaulins, with black tyres holding them down, where rain obviously had made its way into the houses. A legacy of the contractors who needed to take more care. There were many neat rows of houses with space in between. Moses’s home had a border of aloe plants around it, and the terracotta-hued ground was swept clean of litter and leaves. Half had recently been tilled, and Lily could see some sort of vegetable trying hard to grow through the earth. A group of 44-gallon drums sat at the far end, and a dog hid in the shade of them, too hot, or too scared to get up and bark at them. Its nose was covered by its paw, as if it could see Lily and by default she then couldn’t see it.

  She followed Piet inside the home. No curtains covered the windows, although blankets had been nailed into the walls to provide some protection from the elements where the glass was non-existent. The floor was concrete and had been polished until it shone in a deep burgundy. A bed on pallets was in the corner—upon it a man lay deathly still. A woman with a cheap Chinese paper fan tried to create a breeze to cool him and chase the flies away when they attempted to settle on his clammy skin or crawl over his gaunt face.

  Piet made many clicking sounds before he said, ‘We will speak mostly English because Dokotela Lily can’t speak Afrikaans very good and she can only understand English.’

  The woman nodded.

  Piet explained, ‘I told her hello and that I had brought some help with me today, but now we will talk with you, Dokotela Lily, too, and continued, ‘Coti, is Moses awake?’

  Coti shrugged and moved out of the way so that Piet and the doctor could stand closer.

  ‘Moses, can you hear me, are you still with us?’ Piet asked. There was no response.

  Lily snapped on her gloves, then taking her torch, she opened the patient’s eye and shone the bright light directly into it. The sensitivity to the light showed immediately.

  ‘How long has he been like this?’ Lily asked.

  Coti just stared at Lily.

  Piet repeated her question to Coti
in their native tongue and then continued to translate between Lily and Coti, giving up on speaking a language he thought they would all understand.

  ‘Since the sun came up. He had a good night, but then he was shaking and went quiet. I have tried to give him water, but he cannot swallow it,’ Coti said with Piet translating.

  Lily attempted to move Moses’s head, and he groaned, the stiffness clearly noticeable. ‘I suspect this is meningitis, and unless we get him to hospital, he’s going to die.’

  Piet nodded. ‘We have had too many people die of that sickness lately, but not before that … Ian, he said it was crypto-something or other before, so it probably is again.’

  ‘Cryptococcus, or cryptococcal meningitis,’ Lily said, automatically filling in the difficult medical word. ‘It’s a fungus that creates a swelling of the brain. I need to get Moses to a hospital and give him some antibiotics.’

  ‘Moses does not want to die in a hospital, he wants to die here,’ Coti said. ‘He said that he spent too many years in the white people’s buildings, and before he dies, I must take him out to see the stars as they light up in the sky or the sun as it is dancing across the hot sand of our home. He does not want to be inside.’

  ‘Can we give him the medicine here?’ Piet asked.

  Lily shook her head. ‘I need them to go intravenously. It’s safer in the hospital.’

  ‘Ian used one of the other houses that belonged to someone who passed as a clinic. It has two beds in it. I can organise to have someone watch over him while you cannot be here.’

  ‘It will need to be a nurse so they can change his drip bag.’

  ‘There is one here who was a nurse. She trained and worked in the hospitals, but she is sometimes not good.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean?’ Lily asked.

  ‘She is my sister. She was supposed to be the medicine woman for our tribe. But she received a severe head injury many years ago. Domestic abuse. Some days she can remember, some days she does not, but if I am with her, she mostly remembers.’

  ‘It’s too risky. I need him in hospital to stop him dying.’