Chapter 13
IN THE morning, Jemilla was standing by the door frame, and Sabeena was shaking me awake. There was an expression on her face that I’d never seen before.
It was horror.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“They killed him,” she said. “They shot Nadir and hung him over the barbed wire.”
“No,” I said.
Sabeena handed me a bit of paper, telling me that it was in the chain-link fence under Nadir’s body. On the paper was the zigzag mark of the devil himself, Colonel Zuberi.
What was it that we were supposed to do?
How could eighty thousand people move out of what Zuberi considered his territory? There was no place to run or hide. Would he really shoot us all?
I told Jemilla, “Stay here.”
“I’ve seen this before,” she told me. “I’ve seen worse.”
Sabeena, Jemilla, and I walked to the gates, and there, horribly, the boy who had been so happy last night had been thrown across the top of the wall. His eyes were open, but he was gone.
“Please,” I said to a few of the taller boys. “Get him down. Right now.”
Nadir had no family, and so Sabeena, Berna, and I washed and wrapped his body for burial in the spot we used as a rough cemetery, not far from the hospital.
I was raging at the brutal death of this sweet, funny boy. I silently raged at God as I handled Nadir’s body with my shaking hands. I think a kind God, a loving God, would forgive me for being furious. Why had this boy been killed? Had Nadir been too brave? Taken too much of a risk? Or was his death as senseless as it would have been if he had died of starvation or disease?
Later, as we were dressing in our surgical gowns, I spoke to Berna, a clever and kind and tremendously competent nurse who was twenty years older than me.
“My God, Berna. How can you endure this day after day?”
“What choice do I have, Brigid? You will leave, and I will stay. These are my people. This is my home.”
Inside the dining hall, outside of my hearing, calls went back and forth to Cleveland, and discussions were held. I did my job, but I was jumpy. I pulled a chest line out of a young man without inverting his bed. Sabeena heard the air sucking and, thank God, sealed the wound with Vaseline before harm was done.
Colin was back in the O.R. by then. He saw what I had done. I expected him to shout at me, to call me an imbecile.
He said, “Get some water, Brigid. Take a little break and come back.”
I walked toward the dining hall, passing so many starving people, now under threat of being murdered for no reason by a primitive despot with nothing but time, money, and raging young men to do his dirty work.
It was a sin. It was all sinful.
And there was no end to it.
Chapter 14
THROUGHOUT THE day of Nadir’s death, thousands of displaced people arrived at the gates to the settlement. I could see them coming to us by way of the long road, with bundles on their heads, children in their arms. When they reached the gate, they spread out along the base of the wall where a strip of shade provided some relief from the hundred-and-fifteen-degree heat.
These people had walked for weeks, even months, to get to us, and, tragically, we had no room. The tukuls were crammed. Tarps had been strung between them as tents, and the refugees who lived there camped and slept outdoors.
We had no room, we didn’t have enough food, and we had to turn people away.
At day’s end, Colin, Jimmy, Jup, Victoria, Sabeena, and I walked the line outside the gates. We looked at the kids in particular, trying to pick out the ones who had any chance of survival at all.
Mothers quickly saw what we were doing and pushed their children toward us. Dear God, could anything be sadder than this?
I said to one of them, “Mother, please, I can take the little boy. Keep your baby with you.”
I put a dot of clay on the back of the little boy’s hand and led him through the gates and lifted him into the donkey cart. Half his face was swollen and inflamed. If he had an abscessed tooth, I could pull it. And that was all I could offer, some relief from some pain.
But there was no relief from the hunger and thirst and hopelessness.
When the cart was full, we drove our patients to the compound. But we couldn’t keep them longer than overnight.
I remember this day in particular because when it couldn’t have been bleaker, a caravan of military personnel arrived in open trucks. We could see their shiny, blue helmets from far away. Cheers went up and flowed through the camp like a wave.
For as long as the UN soldiers stayed, Kind Hands and the settlement would have protection.
“Thanks,” I whispered to God. “Thanks very much. And now, if you don’t mind, could you make it rain?”
Chapter 15
WHEN SABEENA and I went out of the gates the next morning, I was surprised to see a portly white man among the hundreds of starving African people massed around the foot of the wall.
He was wearing black pants, a short-sleeved black shirt with a white collar, and a panama hat.
“You’re one of the doctors?” he asked me.
“Yes. I’m Brigid Fitzgerald. You’re joining us?”
“I hope to. I’m Father Delahanty. William. Nice to meet you, Brigid.”
I asked Father Delahanty to wait for me as Sabeena and I selected a handful of people we might be able to help. Once the donkey cart was fully loaded and Father Delahanty was on board, we trotted back to the hospital.
“I heard what you folks are doing, and I hitched a ride with the UN,” Delahanty said. “Do you have a chapel here?”
“Actually, that’s just one of a thousand things we don’t have. You could do outdoor services, maybe.”
“That would do quite well, Brigid.”
“I speak to God whenever I get a chance,” I said. “But it’s been a long time since my last confession.”
“We can address that.”
We had just pulled up to the hospital when Colin walked over to the cart with Rafi and Ahmed and began to help people down.
Colin said to Father Delahanty, “You must be the priest from Chicago. Here to save some souls, perhaps?”
“I may try.”
“Father, we need less talking to God and more helping the sick and dying. Do you have the stomach for that?”
Colin lifted out the boy with the bad tooth and headed with him toward the operating room.
I said to the priest, “Sorry, Father. Dr. Whitehead is very angry about how little we have to work with and how many people we lose. But he is a good doctor. A good man.”
“I’m sure he is. I can understand why he might lash out. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.”
“Come with me to the operating room.”
Father Delahanty was willing to do everything, and that included changing beds, sweeping floors, and boiling sheets. He worked alongside our volunteer aides, doing laundry, rolling bandages, scouring the sink, and doing it all over again.
At the end of the day, I found Father Delahanty sitting on the floor in a corner of the maternity ward, consoling a woman whose baby had just died. He was telling her, “We don’t know why God does what He does. But we have faith that He loves us. Right now, your child is with Him.”
I slipped out before he saw me, and a few minutes later, Colin and I were taking turns washing up at the scrub sink.
“I’m inviting him to join us at dinner, Colin. Please find him a bunk in the men’s quarters.”
“He should go back to Chicago before he gets hurt.”
I scowled. “Stop it. Be nice. You might like it.”
Colin handed me a towel. And he smiled.
It was out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying.
“I can’t imagine what will happen to us after we leave Africa.”