Angel of Mercy

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “Two babies were placed in our hospital ward. Dysentery has left them barely alive.”

  How could that be? Heather had seen each child with her own eyes. How could she have not been sensitive to the few who were so critically ill they had to be hospitalized? “Will they be all right?”

  “Hard to say, luv. You know, the baby gets sick in the village, the mother walks for days to get here, they wait outside for a turn . . . by then the child is pretty far gone. We put them on IVs to replace the fluid, but it’s often too late.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry. Poor little babies.”

  Josie patted her hand. “Brace up, dearie. We can’t save them all.”

  Josie came across as almost flippant, and Heather hoped she herself would never grow indifferent to the suffering.

  “Run along, now,” Josie said. “You should be having your dinner, then to bed. Lots more to do on the morrow.”

  Outside, night was falling and the temperature had dipped. Heather glanced toward the mess hall, lit by electricity, fueled by gas generators. The smell of charcoal fires from the encampment filled the air, and stars were winking on. That night she would fulfill a childhood dream—she would sleep beneath the skies of Africa.

  From somewhere in the outer darkness, a baby cried. Heather shivered, then hurried toward the lighted building, toward a warm meal, toward the company of friends.

  8

  Heather woke in the middle of the night, and in spite of her bone-deep exhaustion, she couldn’t go back to sleep. Gone were the familiar drone of the ship’s engines and the squeak of metal plates and bolts. In their place, she heard the faraway howls and yips of night-hunting wild animals, which sent shivers up her spine. And she heard the forlorn crying of babies from the camp outside. She kept thinking about them, the babies and children too little and too sick to fend for themselves.

  She thought about their sweet, round, dark faces when they’d come for treatment. Some had clung to their mothers. Others had simply stared out with blank expressions, seemingly resigned to whatever was going to happen. She realized that her house in Miami would seem palatial to most people. Her allowance alone could probably feed a family for weeks. Guilt stole over her. Guilt because she had so much, while these people had so little. But that was why she’d come, she reminded herself. To make a difference in other’s lives. After all, wasn’t she supposed to be God’s hands on Earth?

  She lifted the flap of her tent and stared out into the compound. The silhouettes of other tents hunkered down in the darkness. Overhead, a million stars glowed. The sight took her breath and lifted her spirits. Surely God was in his heaven and knew the suffering of the people. How could he turn an indifferent ear to them?

  She remembered that she had packed hard candies in her bags. Tomorrow she would stuff handfuls in her pockets and give a piece to every child who passed through the clinic doors. She vowed to work twice as hard, twice as long. After all, she would be returning to Nairobi with her group in a few days. She’d have time to rest on the trip to Nairobi and on the plane ride to Uganda. Now it was time for work.

  Out of the darkness, she heard the plaintive notes of Miguel’s guitar. She followed the sound. Behind one of the buildings, she found Miguel, Boyce, and Ian sitting on the ground together. “Is this a private party?” she asked.

  “We’re praying,” Ian explained. “Come join us.”

  She sat cross-legged on the ground beside him. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “No problem,” Boyce said. “Can’t have enough prayers, can we?”

  “Is there something you want to ask God for?” Ian wanted to know.

  “Success,” she said. “I guess that’s what we all want, isn’t it? I want the people who come here to get well.”

  Ian asked God to be merciful to those who were sick, and the rich sound of his voice comforted Heather. She’d never heard anybody pray with such devotion.

  After the group broke up, Ian walked her back to the tent area. “That’s me,” she said, pointing. “Fifth row, fourth tent.”

  “I should have known. It’s the prettiest tent of the lot.”

  She giggled. “It’s dark and they all look alike.”

  “No, yours is different. Just because it’s yours.”

  She felt a warmth spread through her. She looked at him, and by the light from the sliver of moon in the sky, she saw that he was watching her intently. For a moment she thought he might kiss her, and her heart pounded in anticipation. But he squeezed her hand and stepped away. “You should be in bed. Tomorrow will come quickly.”

  Disappointed, she nodded. “Thanks for letting me join you tonight. It was good to have all of us together again.”

  “You can join us anytime. We will meet to pray every night when things quiet down.” He turned, then paused. “Are you making a difference, Heather? I know how much you wanted that for yourself.”

  “Not yet. But I’ve only just begun.”

  He smiled. “Yes. You’ve only just begun.”

  She watched him walk away, wondering what was going on in his mind. Wondering if he ever thought about her as anything other than just some idealistic high-school girl. Wondering if she could ever find a place in his heart.

  By midday, she had almost lost her resolve of the night before to work twice as hard. Heat seeped like steam from a hot faucet through the metal walls of the hut used for a treatment room. Heather mopped her forehead and tried to tune out the sounds of people in pain. Today she was doing more than taking histories. She was assisting two nurses as they dressed a young woman’s wounds. The woman had fallen off a truck, had gotten her foot caught, and had been dragged over hardened, rutted ground. Her ankle was badly sprained, and all the skin had been scraped off her back. Heather’s stomach had lurched when she saw the pulverized flesh, but she’d fought off the nausea and quickly gathered the items the nurses needed.

  “Sterile water,” one nurse ordered.

  “We’re out,” Heather answered.

  “Go to the supply room and get two bags. And do hurry.”

  Grateful to get away from the pain-racked woman, Heather jogged to the next building, where supplies were kept in a locked room. Martha, an older woman who’d been with Heather on the ship, was responsible for the key. Heather told her what she needed, and Martha entered the room, emerging minutes later with two clear, plump fluid-filled bags. “Supplies are dwindling.”

  “Already?”

  “They go fast when there are so many to use them.”

  Heather was dismayed. The ship had spent weeks taking on donated supplies in London. “When I get home, I’m going to do a fund-raiser for the ship,” she announced firmly. “My parents’ friends have wads of money. They can donate some of it to help buy medical supplies. I’ll make sure they do.”

  Martha grinned. “That’s the spirit. I can’t imagine any of them refusing you.”

  “They better not.” Heather knew she could persuade these wealthy people to give money to the cause. She’d work on a community fund-raiser too. Maybe she could get coverage in the newspaper and on TV.

  Excited by her idea, she rushed back to the treatment room. But when she arrived, the atmosphere had grown chaotic. A child, badly burned from a fall into an open cooking fire, had been brought in. “Best to take a break,” one of the nurses told Heather, taking the water from her as she stepped inside the door.

  The child was screaming, and two other nurses were busy helping one of the doctors hold him down. His anxious mother hovered nearby.

  Heather stepped back without argument. The child’s cries were almost unbearable. She went to the mess hall, where she grabbed a bottle of drinking water. From there, she retreated to the back of the compound, near the tents. Shaking, she leaned against a scrub tree and forced herself to breathe deeply. The doctor would help the child, she told herself. The child would be all right. She slid to the ground, bracing her spine against the tree.

  Back home, a child with such burns would go
into a special burn unit. Out here, there was no such thing. If he was in bad enough shape, they might take him into Nairobi to be hospitalized, but she could hardly imagine such a trip for a child already in agony from bad burns. She wished there were something she could do to help.

  Someone shouted, “Rafiki, rafiki!”

  Heather looked up to see a group of women and children gathered outside the fence not too far from where she was sitting. She acknowledged them with a wave.

  “Rafiki,” they called out again. “Njoo!” They beckoned to her.

  Did they want her to come over to the fence? Heather glanced around, but there was no one else. “Me?” she asked.

  “Njoo. Tafadhali.”

  She recognized the Swahili word for “please.” Dr. Henry had taught the word to her group. Slowly she stood, and with her pulse racing, she edged to the wire fence. The women all talked at once. “I—I can’t understand you,” she said. “English?”

  The women kept talking in Swahili.

  “I—I’ll go get someone—” Heather turned, but the group let out such cries that she turned back.

  She heard a wail from the back of the group and saw an object wrapped in a piece of dirty cloth being lifted. It was passed quickly overhead, from woman to woman. Mesmerized, Heather watched, and as the bundle came steadily toward her, she caught a glimpse of a face. Suddenly she realized that the object was a baby, and that the women meant to pass it to her over the top of the fence. Except that the fence was eight feet high.

  “No! No!” she cried, stepping away. “I’ll get some help.”

  But the crowd ignored her. The baby, bundled in rags, continued to be passed. At the barrier, the last woman to take the baby hoisted it over the top. Heather ran back to the fence, frantically begging her not to drop the baby over. But there was no stopping the woman’s momentum. Heather positioned herself to catch the baby.

  Please, God, don’t let me drop it, she pleaded silently.

  Time passed in slow motion. The bundled baby balanced on the woman’s fingertips, teetered, then tipped. Heather stood on tiptoe, reached up, and felt the infant slide into her outstretched hands. “Got it!” she cried. She eased it down, clutching it to her breast.

  Her heart hammered and her arms and legs trembled, but she felt jubilant. The baby was safe in her arms. She felt it wriggle and heard it let out a weak cry.

  She flashed a relieved smile at the women, but they had stepped back and were dispersing. “Wait!” Heather called. “Don’t go! I need the mother. Who’s the mother?” She racked her brain for the Swahili word for “mother” but couldn’t remember it.

  The women continued to melt away. Heather watched until only one very young woman was left standing far back from the fence. She stood tall and wore an expression of hopeless-ness. Then she, too, began to walk away.

  “Wait!” Heather shouted. She watched as the woman picked up her pace and headed quickly away from the camp, off into the tall grass. Heather glanced down at the baby in her arms and pulled aside the tattered material covering the tiny face. The baby lay quite still. Its eyes were wide open, and its skin was the color of ash from a burned-out fire.

  A cry rose in Heather’s throat, strangled, and died on her lips.

  The baby was dead.

  9

  In Heather’s eighteen years of living, nothing had prepared her to look into the face of death. Not her education, not her upbringing, not her experiences, not any of her training for the Mercy Ship program. Nothing.

  Death was final. Death was irrevocable. Life was flutterings and tremblings. It was warm breath and soft sighs. It was flesh that felt warm and didn’t look waxy. In her arms, the dead baby felt almost weightless, as if its bones were hollow, like a bird’s bones. Just minutes before, its lungs had filled with air and it had looked up into her face. Now those same eyes stared fixedly, their pupils dilated. They would never see again.

  Heather began to shake, and despite the intensity of the noonday sun, she felt icy cold. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t abandon the baby. She couldn’t dig a hole, put the baby in it, and cover it over as she and Amber had done for their goldfish when they’d been kids. She couldn’t go too far away, either. What if the mother returned? What if she wanted her child back?

  Somehow Heather made it to the tree. She slid down the trunk and sat on the hard ground, carefully balancing the dead infant on her lap. And slowly she unwrapped the soiled cloth. The baby, a girl, lay naked within. Her belly looked distended, and her ribs bulged through her thin, dark skin. Heather counted each rib, running her finger along the ridges that no longer heaved with breath.

  The tiny girl’s forehead was wide and smooth as glass, and she had only the barest beginning of black fuzz covering her head. Her arms and legs were no bigger around than sticks— skin wrapped around hollow bones, Heather thought. The baby’s face looked skeletal, like an old person’s. She had no fat, round cheeks like those of other babies Heather had seen.

  As she held the small body, Heather felt the infant’s limbs growing rigid—rigor mortis was setting in. A fly buzzed past Heather’s hand and settled on the baby’s cheek. “No!” Heather cried. “No. No. No.” She quickly flipped the cloth over the little body and sent the fly whizzing away. Vermin would not take this child. No way. She’d see to that. Heather felt her shoulders heave. Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes, and she wept as if her heart were breaking.

  Heather didn’t know how long she sat crying. She had no sense of time passing. But it must have passed, because the shadow of the tree grew longer over her, and her back and legs grew numb from not moving. She sensed someone coming up to her and crouching down. She didn’t look, couldn’t bear to look, because life had no rapport with death. And inside, Heather felt as dead as the child in her lap.

  “Are you all right, lass?”

  Ian. She didn’t look at him, but she shook her head.

  “People are asking for you. No one’s seen you for hours. They’re worried.”

  She couldn’t find her voice.

  “What have you there in your lap? Will you show me?”

  She wanted to, but her fingers wouldn’t move.

  “Let me have a look-see.” His fingers moved deftly to the edge of the cloth and gently pulled it aside.

  She heard his breath catch. He was looking at the baby, at death, just as she had. Now he knew. He had seen. Finally she could answer him. “I don’t know who she is. I never heard her name.” Her voice sounded thick and foreign to her own ears.

  “Can you tell me how you came by her?”

  “They gave her to me. The women at the fence. They passed her over the top this noon-time, and I caught her.”

  “And you’ve been sitting here alone with her all this time?”

  “I couldn’t let the flies land on her,” Heather said matter-of-factly. “You understand, don’t you?”

  “We should be taking her to Dr. Henry. She should have a Christian burial.”

  “And flowers. She should have flowers, too.”

  “Come, Heather.” Ian slid his arm around her waist and urged her to stand.

  Her legs wouldn’t work at first. He massaged her calves until a prickly sensation began to radiate through them. Then, with Heather pressed against his side and his hand cupping hers beneath the bundled baby, they walked slowly to the main building, while the long shadows of afternoon made dark, joyless smudges on the parched African earth.

  “Whooping cough and dysentery would be my guess,” Dr. Henry told Heather after he had examined the infant. “She didn’t have much of a chance. Both are preventable, but her case was too far advanced. It’s doubtful we could have saved her.”

  If his words were supposed to comfort Heather, they didn’t. “Her mother left her. She left her with me, a stranger.”

  “She probably knew she was dying,” the doctor said kindly. “You were her last hope.”

  “How could she do that? Just hand her over and walk away?�
��

  “It was an act of desperation.”

  It was dark now, and the clinic had closed down for the night. The baby had been cleaned up and wrapped in plain white cloth, a shroud for burial. Ian had not left Heather’s side since he’d found her.

  Dr. Henry put his hand on Heather’s shoulder. “Don’t judge her harshly, Heather. People see death differently in other cultures. In America when a mother loses a child, we prescribe medications, she sees a grief counselor, maybe even a psychiatrist. There’s a complete social service system to help her over her loss. But over here, these mothers can’t afford to fall apart. They must get on with life quickly. Too many things are depending on them—food, care of other children, survival.

  “Does that mean they don’t grieve? Of course not. But in a country where the infant mortality rate is almost fifty percent, mothers have a different perspective on a baby’s death. Some see it almost as a form of rescue from a harsh life.”

  “She shouldn’t have left her,” Heather murmured. “She shouldn’t have.”

  Dr. Henry sighed. “You can’t change what’s happened. Please tell me, will you be able to continue with the work you came here to do? Because if you can’t . . .”

  Could she? Her lip trembled, but she said, “I can.”

  “Get some rest, then,” Dr. Henry said. “Tomorrow the fight begins all over again. And, Heather, stay away from the fence. We have a system for patients to get into the facility for a reason.”

  Chastised, she nodded. She’d brought this on herself. “Will we have a funeral for her?”

  “In the morning,” Dr. Henry said. “Early.”

  Outside, Ian took her hand. “You haven’t eaten all day. Let’s get you some food.”

  “I can’t eat.”

  “You can’t let yourself get sick over this. It won’t help.”

  “I’ll be all right tomorrow,” Heather said, without meaning it.