Luke took the boy’s hand and placed the money into his palm.
Frankie waddled over to the nurse’s desk where Luke had laid the remnants of his shoeshine box. He carried the box back and set it down, then lifted one of Luke’s black leather Reebok shoes onto what remained of the top and started furiously brushing the shoe.
“I work for you,” he said. “Whatever you need me do.”
Luke shook his head. “Your mother needs you here.”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he spit on Luke’s shoe and brushed some more.
“Do you go to school?”
“Someday.” He glanced at his mother. “When she better.”
Luke thought about the Frankies of the world while the small boy fiddled with a can of wax. “You want to earn another five American dollars?”
Frankie looked up, his eyes brightened. “Five bucks a week, boss. I work for you in you home.”
“You have a job…here. Your mother needs you.”
Frankie looked at his mother. “She not know I am here anymore.”
39
Megan looked into the man’s gaunt face. His skin was white and blue-veined, his teeth crooked and yellow. Except for his full head of hair, he had a look common to many old men.
“His name is Petri Kaczynski,” she told the priest. “He was the head of Genetics at University Children’s Hospital. Among geneticists, he was known around the world.”
“Was?” Father Joe asked. His breathing sounded like hard labor, and he was beginning to speak in clipped phrases.
“The story was that he died during a trip to Guatemala,” she continued. “I’m not sure about the details. But I remember someone telling me that they never found his body. It happened a few years ago, before I came to the hospital.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Father Joe reached for his breast pocket, probably a reflexive grasp for the inhaler that wasn’t there.
“It’s him.” She stared at the geneticist’s oversized cranium — it was shaped like an inverted eggplant — and the peculiar cowlick at the front of his hairline. “There’s a portrait of Kaczynski in our hospital’s lobby.”
“Get to work, Doc,” their guard said in English. “My boss is gonna be back any minute, and I don’t wanna have to tell him that you’re ignoring your patient.”
Megan and the priest turned to the beefy man. He was sitting backward on a wooden chair, straddling the spine with his legs, his arms draped over the top. His right thumb was wrapped in gauze.
Megan thought back to the thumb she had bitten while escaping from her assailants at Ticar Norte. “I hope it hurts like hell.”
“Hey, bitch, I’d start paying attention to Dr. Kaczynski. He’s the only reason you’re still alive, in case you hadn’t figured that out.”
Megan felt light-headed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anything to eat or drink. “Are you going to tell us what this place is?”
“No. Any more questions?”
She had a hundred questions, but he wasn’t going to answer any of them, so she turned her attention back to her patient. The muscular Latino man — she had overheard someone call him Calderon — had allowed her to speak briefly with the white-coated lab tech who had previously cared for Kaczynski. Apparently, the woman was their closest facsimile of a medic.
The woman had explained that the geneticist’s illness started a week ago with high fevers, chills, profuse sweating, headaches, and back pain. At the time, Kaczynski had diagnosed himself as having malaria and instructed the nursing staff to treat him with IV fluids and the anti-malaria drug, chloroquine. On the fourth day of his illness, it looked as if he was improving.
But two days ago — day five of his illness — the fevers had returned with a fury and the geneticist developed several additional symptoms: a cough accompanied by blood-tinged sputum, delirium, jaundice, and a rash.
Megan realized that his turn for the worse had saved her life, if only for a time.
“Get Calderon in here,” she told the guard.
“I don’t take orders from you. And where’d you hear that name?”
She ignored the guard’s question. “If you want Dr. Kaczynski to live, get your boss in here.”
The man lifted himself from the chair and called out to somebody in the hallway.
While Megan waited for Calderon, she reexamined her patient. He looked to be in his mid-sixties, but his sallow skin added several years to his appearance. He was breathing rapidly, more rapidly than fever alone could explain. His yellowed eyes were suffused with swollen blood vessels. When she palpated the upper right quadrant of his abdomen, he groaned. His liver was inflamed.
His torso and extremities were speckled with red pinpoint lesions — petechiae. His capillaries, the smallest blood vessels, were beginning to rupture.
There were any number of tropical illnesses that could explain many of his symptoms and physical findings — malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, typhoid fever — but the man’s eyes pushed her toward another possibility. Leptospirosis.
Leptospirosis was an infection that occurred when humans come into contact with the body fluids of infected animals. She had seen only one patient with the disease during her residency, and it was a mild case. One of the few things that had stuck with her from that case was Elmer McKenna’s colorful description of Napoleon’s siege of Cairo in 1812, when an outbreak of leptospirosis crippled his forces. That and the fact it could be treated with penicillin.
The lab tech had not kept up with Kaczynski’s fluid losses, and Megan decided to increase the flow rate of his IVs. It was a calculated risk. If he had the severe form of leptospirosis, his kidneys would shut down and she could literally drown him in IV fluids. On the other hand, not keeping up with his fluid losses put him at risk of death from dehydration and vascular collapse.
Calderon walked into the room, followed by the Asian man.
Before Calderon could speak, she handed him a list. “Here’s a list of medicines and supplies that I need.”
Calderon smirked while scanning the list. “What makes you think I’m gonna get all of this for you?”
“If Kaczynski doesn’t survive, then you’ll probably kill me. If he does survive, you don’t need me anymore. Either way, it looks like I’m going to die, so do whatever you want.”
Calderon laughed. “Touché. Just for that, you get your supplies.”
A slender woman walked into the room just as Frankie was finishing with Luke’s shoes. Her deliberate gait and short gray hair reminded him of his third grade teacher. Everything else — her layered white blouse, her full-length skirt, the sash made of wooden beads with a cross hanging from it — made clear that he was looking at a nun.
She and Frankie exchanged a few words in Spanish, then the boy left the room.
The woman turned to Luke. “I’m Sister Marta Ann.” She had what sounded like a British or South African accent. “Frankie tells me you’re visiting from the United States.”
“Yes.” He held out his hand. “Ed Schweers.”
She stared at his left shoulder.
He looked down and saw the bloom of red coming through the clean shirt he had donned in the cab while searching for the boy.
“Caught myself on something sharp.” He wondered how many people begin their conversations with nuns by lying repeatedly.
“Are you here for work or pleasure?” she asked.
“Neither. I’m trying to find a friend who’s missing.”
“Oh?”
“A young woman, a doctor. She disappeared a few days ago. She was with a priest.”
“Padre Joseph.” It wasn’t a question.
“You know him?”
“No, but he’s in my prayers. And so is your friend.”
“You work for the same…?” Luke couldn’t come up with the right term.