Cry of the Firebird

by T. M. Clark

  ‘Dying is not the outcome I want for Moses. He is going to the radio station and recording all the stories of where he grew up; he is one who speaks two dialects of our languages. The people here, they need Moses to get better.’

  ‘Then I definitely need him in hospital. Now,’ Lily insisted. ‘I get that there is no ambulance service, but I want to take him in the Land Cruiser. Coti can come with. I can give him some pain medication for the trip, to calm him, make it easier, but he needs the hospital to heal fast, to beat this sickness.’

  Piet spoke to Coti and the clicks and the gestures from them both never altered in tone. No one seemed to be shouting or dominating the conversation, then Piet turned to Lily. ‘She said she has no money for hospital.’

  ‘It is covered under my research project; there is no payment.’

  Piet spoke again with Coti.

  ‘She said okay, if it is what will save him, then she will come with him, but you must promise that if he is going to die, you will take his bed out underneath the stars.’

  Lily nodded, having no idea how she would keep that promise, but that was a problem for another time. She opened her bag and removed a vial and syringe, before she spoke to the unconscious Moses and gave him some pethidine for the pain he was about to endure during the trip.

  Piet went outside, and within a few moments, there were four other men there, including Michael, who appeared with his weapon slung over his shoulder.

  ‘I can’t leave it alone, Doctor. If it gets stolen, I’ll have to pay for it, and I can help load Moses,’ Michael said.

  Lily nodded her understanding.

  They wrapped Moses in his sheet and carried him to the Land Cruiser. Lily ran ahead to open the back and get the seats laid down before they put him in. From the way they worked as a team, even with Michael’s help, she knew they’d had to do this before.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ Lily said, as Coti climbed onto the back and seated herself next to her husband, who lay still on the rubber matting.

  * * *

  Lily stopped in the doorway. Moses lay in the hospital bed, tilted up slightly. His light skin dark against the white of the sheets was a reminder to her that this was not where he wanted to be at all. She stepped into the room and stood by the side of the bed, across from where Coti was, and she watched the new set of antibiotics drip slowly into his vein.

  ‘I need some information from you both,’ Lily said. ‘I know that my Afrikaans isn’t good enough to understand you, so we’ll need to do this in English. We can go as slow as we need to, but I have to make sure we all understand everything.’

  ‘Ja, Dokter,’ Moses said, and she smiled.

  ‘I need an honest answer from you both. It’s important,’ she said. ‘I need to find out how you came in contact with this sickness. I know that you and Coti both tested positive for HIV and that you’re taking your inhibitors.’

  Moses nodded his head. ‘I take the medicine that Piet gives me every day, sometimes once, sometimes three times a day. He tells me I have to take it to stay well.’

  ‘Yes, that’s good,’ she said. ‘Now when the other people were sick, those who died, did you go to their house at all?’

  ‘Nee,’ Moses said, shaking his head.

  ‘Did you, Coti?’

  ‘Nee.’ She too was shaking her head.

  Moses coughed, wiped his nose on a tissue, and then continued. ‘When someone is sick it is not like the old days when everyone lived together. Since we moved into the tents, and now into the houses, we have private time. No one wants to know when you are sick except when we do a spirit-and-healing dance. People only want to know when you are better again, so you can help in the community. No one wants to dance anymore for those with the thinnings disease. It never helps, everyone still dies. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but they die.’

  Lily nodded and patted Moses’s hand to let him know she understood. She’d heard all about the breakdown of the San traditions. ‘Coti, I need to make sure that you’re still feeling okay. Perhaps while you are here at the hospital, we can run some bloods, see how your CD4 levels are doing. Can’t have you catching anything while you wait with Moses in the hospital.’

  Moses nodded. ‘Dokotela, if you can heal this, can you heal my HIV?’

  Lily shook her head sadly and patted his hand again. ‘Unfortunately, despite so many scientists around the world working on HIV, there’s still no cure for it, we can only help you live longer. You’re already on the antiretroviral drugs, so let’s concentrate on your meningitis for now. Lucky that the hospital had the right antibiotics for this strain in stock, too, and we didn’t have to order anything special in and waste more time waiting on transport getting it here.’

  ‘Dankie,’ Moses said.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet, we are not out of the woods, but we’re getting there.’

  CHAPTER

  12

  At lunchtime, Lily drove back to her office, her mind still on Moses. She needed more information now.

  Jacob knocked on her door, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  ‘Thank you, you’re a mind-reader, I really need that,’ Lily said as he came into her office.

  He smiled, deposited it on her desk and turned to walk away.

  ‘Jacob, wait. In Ian’s reports to Marion at Head Office, he mentioned these three names of patients.’ She wrote them on a piece of paper for him. ‘Please, can you bring me their files.’

  ‘No need for me to do that. We have most of the files all scanned and on the computer, and when you see a patient, you record directly into the system. I only gave you Piet’s file this morning because his is different; he looks after multiple people. I printed it out for you because you are new and I thought it would help you to understand the names in his file. Also, because you need the paper copy when you go out there. The wi-fi signal is bad at Platfontein, so you can’t work online. I scan any updates you do when you get back and input them for you into the system.’

  ‘That’s good news,’ Lily said. ‘Is it possible to search all the other files of the other patients that had died of meningitis who were seen by this practice?’

  ‘I can look that up on the system and send you the names, or do you want me to show you how to search yourself?’ Jacob offered.

  ‘I’d like to know how, thank you. Do you know if there are any files that Dr Hawthorne had, or was expecting from other hospitals or doctors’ rooms? For his research?’ She took a stab in the dark that Ian would have been in contact with other professionals in his study.

  Jacob began to shake his head then stopped. ‘Oh, hang on. Ja. A box arrived about two weeks after his funeral by courier. I had to sign for it even though he was dead, they insisted. Mrs Kilborne told me to call them to ask them to send it back because he’d crossed over, but they said there was no return address and it was paid for in cash, so I kept it. The lady at the courier company said I should look in the box; if I like what there was then I should take it because he was—well no one would miss it—but I respect the dead. I couldn’t open his box. I’m so sorry, I just forgot about it. I’ll bring it.’

  He disappeared, and she looked around Ian’s office that had so quickly become hers. A picture of Quintin and her stood on the desk. Quintin was laughing at something as he played his violin, his head against her chest, and she had her eyes closed. Below it, on the frame, he’d engraved: Two hearts beat as one. It had been her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary gift from him.

  She sent him a text. Thinking of you, hope your day is going well. xoxox

  Jacob came in with the box and put it on her desk.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Please close the door on the way out.’

  ‘Ja, Doctor.’

  Lily opened the box. Once she lifted the lid, she could see a note on the top:

  HIV+ patients in Galeshewe, 33 per cent of estimated population.

  Statistic already higher than national average.

  She lifted out a small pile of pape
rs. In the box was all the blood results of people who’d had HIV tests. There were names, addresses and various doctors’ or clinics’ details, and their results. Lily stared at them for a long time. She flipped through every page, sorting into piles those that were HIV positive and those that were negative.

  What were you doing with this information, Ian?

  Her phone buzzed: Are you going to be late for dinner? Q xoxo

  She looked at the clock on her computer. It was already five. She texted back: Leaving now. Hugs xoxo

  She opened the bottom drawer to put away the files, but she pulled it too hard, and it fell out of the desk.

  ‘Drat,’ she cursed. Getting out of her chair, she lifted it by the sides but couldn’t get the runners to line up. She put her hand underneath to level it.

  ‘Yikes!’ She dropped the drawer and jumped back. Something was under there. It felt too smooth to be the wood. She kicked at the drawer with her foot to turn it over, and saw that it was just a criss-cross of duct tape, with a lump of an object bound securely underneath.

  ‘What have you hidden here, Ian?’ she said as she peeled back the tape to expose a flash drive.

  ‘Interesting.’ She carefully aligned the drawer to the runners in the desk and glided it back into place, before dumping all the papers inside. She locked the drawers with the key, put that and the drive in her pocket, then switched off her computer.

  * * *

  After dinner, once Bessie had retired for the night, Lily sat at the bench in Quintin’s studio. Her laptop was open in front of her and in her hand was the flash drive she’d found.

  ‘Okay, let’s see what Ian was hiding,’ Quintin said.

  ‘I still feel like we should be telling Piet about this. He’s a policeman, and it was hidden.’

  ‘We can tell him if there is something worth it,’ Quintin said. ‘Just stick the drive in—my curiosity is getting the better of me.’

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ she said and she slid the flash drive into her computer. ‘That’s a surprise—no password,’ she said as she looked at the directories, clearly named—Medical Files, Book, Photographs. She clicked on Medical Files first, and a whole array of files and subfolders appeared on the screen. She looked through the codes of each file name but couldn’t see anything familiar. She opened one and had a quick read through.

  ‘And?’ Quintin asked.

  ‘It’s a normal medical file. Patient contracted pneumonia and died.’

  ‘Do you think this might be an electronic copy of the files that were stolen from his home office?’

  Lily nodded. ‘Most likely. I can make a comparison to those on our system at work.’

  ‘Still doesn’t explain why he was hiding it in his office. Do you think he knew he was in danger, or do you think he knew that something in these files was so important that he had to hide a copy?’

  ‘I don’t know. He could be conniving, just look at Zam Zam. On the one hand, he organised all those malaria drugs through a back door—right under the politicians’ noses. Then he deliberately told Marion that there was no truth in the reports that a rebel force had been spotted just north of us. Despite the fact that we had gone out to look at them gathering in number, waiting while still more reinforcements joined them, and had been discussing how to evacuate. I could never figure out why he stopped the extraction of everyone the day before, so that we were forced to flee in a hail of bullets. Now he hides files on a flash drive and stashes it in his office, hidden but findable. He was always full of secrets. It’s going to be hard unravelling them now that he’s dead.’

  Quintin squeezed her shoulder. ‘What’s in the Book folder?’

  Lily clicked there, and multiple files showed up. ‘Wow. Look at this. Piet’s going to be ecstatic. He didn’t lose his book on the San medicinal plants. I don’t know what version this is, but we won’t be starting again. And it’s going to be a great help with getting me up to speed, too.’

  ‘Maybe print him a copy,’ Quintin said. ‘This is quite an extensive collection. Plant, what it cures, where it’s found, and maps, pictures. No wonder Piet was sorry to lose it.’

  ‘I’ll print one for him now and text him.’ Lily clicked on ‘print’ and made her way through all the book files, copying them onto her laptop at the same time.

  They started browsing through the photos folder. Some just random, others seemed to be headshots. Many had names.

  ‘This is interesting,’ Lily said. ‘One or two of these doctors I know. But I don’t recognise any of these other names. You?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There is a file here called Xylophone. Rather out of place.’ She clicked on it. But it asked for a password. ‘Damn,’ she said. Password-protected files; this might be something.

  ‘You should copy all these files onto your laptop and your home computer and give this flash drive to Piet. See if he can recognise anyone. Can I have a crack at trying to get that password-protected file open?’

  ‘Sure, but first I want to copy across and go through those medical files. See what they are. I want to make sure I understand what’s in them before I pass them to anyone.’

  Quintin stood up and kissed the top of her head. ‘I’ll leave you to that fun part; I’m going back to my violin. I was so hoping that there’d be something on there that would just immediately pop and tell us what happened to Ian. I guess I was wishing too much that the danger to you would just be over and done with. Secret files, now there’s something I didn’t expect from Ian. Can’t wait to see what’s in them.’

  ‘There it might still be, we just need to find it. You said it yourself, why would he hide this flash drive like he did, unless something on here was worth hiding? Those protected files might be it; we just need to get into them.’

  ‘Once you are done, let me know so I can take a run at it,’ Quintin said as he walked to the other side of the studio. ‘Music on or silent?’

  ‘On. Unless you’re planning on using Shirabe, you know I’m not her biggest fan.’ The glass violin had been gifted to Quintin by the HARIO Company in Japan a few years ago when they’d first created them. The distinct sound from this violin was very different to the woody vibrations from La Angelique, his Stradivarius. The sound of the glass one was closer to a Chinese violin.

  ‘Okay,’ he said as he lifted La Angelique from her case. ‘But I think after you hear the new music I play on her, you might just change your mind. With an orchestra backing, the track will be amazing. Even you’ll fall in love with her.’

  ‘I wait to be wowed, then,’ she said.

  He stuck out his tongue at her, and she watched him for a moment as he got ready and began to do warm-up exercises.

  She never tired of watching him play his violins. It was as if he caressed the strings with Fred, and she could see that already he was lost in his musical world. She wasn’t even in the room with him when he played with his eyes closed. Just him and his music.

  Lily looked down at her computer and began opening the medical files she’d copied across, the music soothing her. Slowly, one at a time, she printed them all out. She silently thanked that she had a laser printer and reams of paper at hand because there were many pages churning through. Going upstairs, she fetched the printouts and, using Quintin’s big workbench, started to create new files for each case. Finally, she began collating her notes in Excel.

  Age of patient: 66.

  Type of influenza: Haemophilus influenzae.

  Died: 47th day multi-system failure.

  She put in all the main data that she could and repeated the process for each of the files before looking back to where Quintin was practising. Quintin’s fringe had fallen across his forehead as he played a more joyful part of his composition, making her smile as she settled down to start working through the data she’d spread out on the bench.

  Not long afterwards, one phrase popped out: P. carinii pneumonia in adults without known underlying immunosuppressive illness.

  Lily sat b
ack and looked at her spreadsheet. Two clusters.

  Pneumonia and meningitis.

  ‘Well, well, look at that. Ian, what were you up to and why were you hiding this information?’

  She still needed to analyse the drugs used. One or two were flagged as having been used multiple times, and not just one drug dispensed at any time. She had no idea if the original or the cheaper generic drugs had been administered in many of the cases—when she looked at the files, she could not see a pattern.

  Although it was past midnight, Quintin was switching violins and getting his headphones ready for his recording session. Lily smiled when she saw that he’d opted for an electric violin instead of Shirabe. As thoughtful as ever while she shared his studio.

  ‘Quintin, I love that you weren’t going to use Shirabe, but get her out. It’s late, and I need some sleep. I have a visit to a nursing home tomorrow; they always are so emotional for me, so I’ll head up to bed. You play your Shirabe; make the right sound first up.’

  He frowned. ‘Want me to come with you?’

  She smiled. ‘All the time, but no worries, I’ll be good. Don’t stop your composing for me. I know you always work well at this time of the night.’

  ‘Composing? Bugger that; I’m dying for you to move so that I get at that flash drive to see if I can find a macro to crack those locked files. Don’t you know you have just given me the keys to a treasure map?’

  * * *

  The last dosage of drugs administered should have helped. But Moses had stopped responding to the medication he’d been receiving for the past four days. He was sluggish, his CD4 was just too low, and his immune system too compromised by the disease.

  Lily frowned. Moses was calmer, sure, and awake now, no longer slipping in and out of consciousness, but she had expected a better response to the strong antibiotics, as she’d seen with previous patients. It was almost as if he was being given water in his drip bag instead of vital life-preserving drugs.

  ‘Hey, Moses.’ She reached for his hand. ‘Can you hear me?’

  He turned his face to her.