The deafening noise of an air raid attack woke me screaming to the girls to come inside, to stay close, to get under the beds, as I crawled across the dirt floor to grope in their beds in the semi-darkness. My screaming turned mute when I realized that they weren’t there but before I could raise the alarm, Mama Akanit loomed in the doorway, soaking up the faint light from the hall.
“What a lot of racket. Isn’t there enough already outside?” she asked scoldingly and pointed to the window. Through the huge cloud of red dust, I could see a helicopter settling in front of the hospital.
“Who is it?’ I asked, vaguely reassured by Mama Akanit’s calm demeanor.
She strode in, brusquely rolling my mosquito net into a ball and placing it on the end of the bed.
“It is the doctors. They have come to help with the wounded ones.”
Her face clouded with sadness and I caught a glimpse of the heartbreak she hid so well.
“Many arrived in the night. Some are very bad and we cannot help them without the doctors.”
She shook her head to chase the darkness and smirked at me, a twinkle lighting up the gold in her generous brown eyes.
“We call them our witch doctors, because they always seem to know when there is a good reason to be here. Today there is a better reason than most!” She smirked at me.
Before I could ask her what she meant, she strode out the door, already issuing orders as she went.
I made my way to the primitive bathroom outside the back door and quickly rinsed the night and the previous day’s voyage off me as best I could. There was no point in putting on face cream – no amount of cosmetic was going to remove seventeen hours of traveling and a rough night from my face, and anyway, the day was warming up to its promise and I knew that in half an hour I’d be sweating like a pig.
Once I’d finished my ablutions, I followed the sound of voices out to the front of the hospital. Standing in front of the helicopter, now miraculously quiet, was Mama Akanit, facing a man who was hidden by her bulk so that only a tumble of black curls showed. Mama Akanit was grinning broadly and poking the man in the chest while he shook his head sheepishly. She turned and beckoned to me to come over, and as she moved, I stopped dead in my tracks when I realized that the man standing behind her was my very own angel, this time minus his guitar.
Seeing my shocked face, Mama Akanit burst into a great rumble of belly laughter.
“I told you that there was a reason to come and here it is. You should see your faces.”
I hastily sneaked a look at Chris Gabriel and saw that he looked as pole-axed as me. Mama Akanit doubled up with laughter again and then straightened up and poked Chris in the chest again.
“You, boy, I don’t know why you look so surprised. Didn’t the chicken bones tell you this would happen?”
He nodded, obviously too stunned to speak, as Mama Akanit shook a rather large finger in his face.
“When the bones say your soul mate is where the big bird takes you, I tell you it is the girl who will come here, to you. Now let’s see how smart you are, my friend. What will you do with this great love that has been dropped on your head?”
She turned to me. With an appraising glance, she took in my absolute and utter amazement, and before I could ask her how she could possibly have known, how this could have happened, she took me by the shoulders and looked me firmly in the eye.
“You know that he is one of the big reasons you are here, yes? You will not be so stupid as mess this up.”
It was a statement and not a question, and I nodded, trying not to look like someone dumb enough to insult the gods and their representative on earth, who kept her hands heavy on my shoulders until she was certain of my response.
Chuckling wisely, she picked up the bags and boxes and began to head into the hospital.
I tried a tentative smile on my angel and nodded towards Mama Akanit’s retreating form.
“Did the chicken bones really tell you that I would be here?”
Chris Gabriel smiled right at me, a smile that was so friendly and familiar that I felt again as if I’d known him since the dawn of time.
“Funnily enough, yes. And I’ve been looking for you ever since.”
“In chicken bones?”
I smiled, trying to lighten the ambience, for suddenly I was finding it difficult to breathe.
“In all the wrong places, apparently.”
He took a step closer and my heart rate went up a notch. At least if I had a heart attack, there was a hospital nearby.
“You wouldn’t believe how many times I went back to that bar. Why didn’t you call me?”
“But you didn’t give me your number,” I protested. “Just a song. A lovely song, but no telephone number.”
Chris shook his head impatiently.
“No, I wrote my number on a piece of paper. I didn’t give you a song.”
He stopped talked and a look of comprehension passed across his face.
“The song. You have the song?”
I nodded.
“Yes. I thought it was for me. It’s such a lovely song.”
Chris smiled and took my hands in his, gently rubbing the tops of my hands with his long fingers.
“It was for you. I wrote it five minutes before I went on stage. I’d never sung it before. And I never sang it again. I couldn’t find the music for it, and for some reason, I couldn’t remember it at all.”
He gently pulled me into his arms.
“I have a feeling that we have a lot to talk about, but for now, I have to go and see what’s going on inside. We got a call that we were needed. Come with me?”
He took me by the hand and led me to the front door leading to the ward and stopped right in front of the door.
“Before we go in, I just want to say that from this instant on, you belong to me. I don’t know how or why and I don’t care about the details. I’ve never felt anything like this in my life and I don’t expect to ever again. I know this, I feel like I know you, and I know with every fiber of my being that we are going to spend the rest of our lives together. Nothing matters as long as we are together.”
He took a shuddering breath and looked at me a moment before continuing.
“I know I sound like a crazy person but I have never been more serious in my life. It’s a lot to ask, I know, but is that OK? Is it OK that I love you?”
I looked deeply into his eyes and what I saw overrode any apprehension I might have had. In another time and space, I would have told him he was nuts, to give it some time, that I knew nothing of him other than the obvious, but each and every cell in my body was screaming “say yes”. I tried to focus, to find exactly the right words, knowing that what I said next would define the rest of my life, the rest of his life, and the lives of my daughters.
“Yes. Yes, it’s OK. I love you too.”
He squeezed my hand in relief and I squeezed back, reveling in the warmth of his palm against mine, our lifelines aligned as if they too were finally home.
“I don’t understand how you came to be here or even how I got here, all I know is that from the moment I saw you, I knew it was you. The one. I’ve been waiting for all my life.”
He pulled me close to him and kissed me tenderly on the lips, a promise written in flesh and blood, and then opened the door to the ward.
This time, it was me who stopped. Above the stomach-wrenching scent of blood and putrefying flesh was the vision of what seemed like hundreds of tiny faces, all showing the wounds of war in their most brutal form. As I followed Chris down the hall, I tried not to stare at the children as they lay listless or agonizing on their dirty beds. Even I could see that they had received only the most rudimentary medical care and I did not know how the doctors knew where to start. I realized that the noises I’d heard in the early dawn were in fact the bush ambulances arriving, bearing the morbid fruit of yet another tribal battle. I shrank into myself, feeling guilty for not having helped in some way, and for loving life, my life, when these tortured
children’s lives were line drawings in blood and hate.
Chris took a quick glance at the roster and then started examining the child in the bed closest to the door, a little boy of no more than eight or nine. From the state of his wounds, it looked like he’d been hit in the head with a machete and then left to die. Flies buzzed around the gaping wound at the top of his forehead, and dark, dried blood congealed in the corner of his eyes. He didn’t flinch when Chris gently probed the slash with a giant cotton swab drenched in antiseptic.
“We’ll do this one first. Get me fifteen milliliters of Demerol and we’ll knock him out here before we move him.”
The nurse stepped up and frowned.
“No more Demerol, I’m afraid. Only half a bottle of ether until the next shipment arrives.”
Chris scowled at her and then turned to me, his face serious but calm.
“You’re going to have to help hold him. The ether will help with the pain but it’s imperative that he doesn’t move at all.”
He indicated the washing up area next to the wall.
“Go wash up. Sandy will show you how to do it. See you in there.”
My knees were shaking as I made my way to the room that sufficed as an operating theatre. It wasn’t so much the operation that worried me, although I was already sick to my stomach at the idea of watching anyone poke around in this poor child’s head, as the responsibility – what if I moved and caused some irreversible injury? What if I fainted or blacked out or moved at the wrong time? Chris caught my eye and smiled encouragingly.
“Just your being here gives him a chance to live. You’ll be fine.”
After the operation, I went outside and retched behind the compound wall, throwing up until there was nothing left in my stomach. It was only when Chris had started operating that I realized the extent of the child’s injury, and what a good job he had done in trying to save the boy. But how did he manage to do this every day, in such dreadful conditions? How did he stand seeing such misery and knowing that his contributions were only a drop in an endless sea?
I straightened up hurriedly as I heard Mama Akanit’s steps coming towards me.
“Ah, here you are!”
Her glance took in my pallor and the remains of last night’s dinner at my feet.
“Do not fear, it is a common reaction the first time. You will be stronger now that the bad feeling is out.”
Clutching my arm, she drew me to her.
“You are a strong woman. The gods have plans for you. Big plans. And good plans, too.”
She nudged me, as was her habit, gently butting at me with her shoulder.
“Now you have a man to stand by you, so you can concentrate on your other destiny.”
I made to protest weakly but she wasn’t having any of it.
“Enough. Tonight you can make big eyes at Doctor Angel but now we must be like Jesus and feed the hungry people with not enough food.”
She pulled me by the arm.
“Food first, then you can think of all of the lying down fun you will be having with your doctor.”
My face betrayed my shock, and she laughed, throwing her head back so that the sunlight shone on the magnificent planes of her face.
“You think I don’t know about the lying down business?”
She puffed up her enormous chest and bumped me two steps sideways.
“I am the queen of the lying down business!”
Again she laughed and somewhere in the night a hyena answered.
The kitchen was thick with women chattering away as they plucked chickens and chopped leafy green vegetables I did not recognize. Mama Akanit clapped her hands and the chatter died away to a murmur as the women took stock of their newest recruit. A tall, thin woman as black as ebony stepped forward and handed me a knife.
“Come, I will show you,” she said kindly, in heavily accented English.
After lunch, I spent the rest of the afternoon taking stock in the infirmary storeroom, counting mosquito nets and medical supplies in the cool half-light, stopping only when I heard the voices of my daughters, laughing out in the central yard. I made my way out to find them giggling as they twirled a skipping rope around, shouting out an African rhyme that kept rhythm with the little girl jumping rope. I smiled to see that witness to children being children, the same the world over, and waved to the girls as they leapt over the rope.
As usual, the silent boy stood on the outskirts of the group, his eyes blank before the merriment of his colleagues. He looked over and caught me staring at him and I risked a brief smile, but he only looked away quickly, as if afraid to make contact.
After the game had calmed down, I beckoned to Lillia and Grace, anxious to hear how they had spent the time since I had glimpsed them at breakfast. That morning, they had assisted in the school, helping the thirty or so members of the mixed age class as they learned their sums and numbers.
“We helped clean out the chicken shed, Mummy,” laughed Grace, clearly enchanted to be covered head to toe in feathers, chicken poop and dust.
“And I took care of little Paul while his mum worked in the office with Mama Akanit.”
Lillia smiled down at her charge, sleeping blissfully in the swaddling that bound him to her.
Some of the other children called out to the girls and I let them go, promising to catch up at dinner. I watched them as they rushed off, wondering if I ought to have told them about Chris. Not that there was a lot to tell. For the moment, I didn’t know anything, other than that I’d meant what I said when I told him I loved him.
I shook my head at the madness of it all. From the day I’d stepped out to get a tattoo, I had embarked on a crazy ride that had brought me to Africa, where I’d met the man of my dreams, even though I didn’t really know what those dreams were. A second, admittedly remarkable chance meeting that, without rhyme or even a smidge of reason, had me convinced that I had a future with the man. I shook my head. A man I knew absolutely nothing about. Really, there was nothing I could say to the girls until I knew what to say to myself.
Resolving to put it out of my mind, I set off to be useful. There were so many troubling things about the orphanage but the lack of resources was the worst. In addition to lacking the most basic items of care, the requirement for a full-time doctor was overwhelmingly evident. Even if there was work to do to get the buildings and the school up to par, nothing would change unless there was a doctor there all the time, to deal with the frequent incoming war-inflicted wounds as well as all of the people who came from miles for a wide variety of illnesses and accidents.
I thought about how Mama Akanit was convinced that we were all here for specific reasons, and how adamant she was that I had a special role to play. Maybe I wasn’t much help as a nursing assistant and I certainly wasn’t a competent cook, but the one thing I was good at was communicating. All I had to do was get the word out about this place, raise enough money to pay for a doctor for a year and some of the more urgent renovations, and then maybe the NGOs would take over a permanent salary. So caught up was I in my reverie of saving the world that I walked straight into the little silent boy, who was crouched down, huddled against the door frame as if hiding.
“Hello.”
I held out my hand and he looked up at me, trembling with fear, and shrunk further back into his corner. I stepped back, unwilling to frighten him any further and unsure how to proceed. He continued to huddle in his corner, so I sank down into the opposite corner and sat quietly on the floor. He gazed at me and I was sure I saw a flash of curiosity in his eyes before he made his regard go blank again. We sat this way for more than an hour before I saw his body relax ever so slightly. He sank onto his heels, still perched against the wooden doorframe, and started drawing stick figures in the dirt floor. I inched closer, tentative at first but when I saw that he was studiously ignoring me, I moved close enough to see what he was drawing.
The stick figures were laboriously rendered and each character showed clearly: man, woman, two
girls and one boy, all standing together in a ring with their hands in the air, in supplication. Off to the right, some very large men carrying huge knives pointed to the huddle of people. Only when I looked closely did I see a tiny stick figure – a little boy – at the centre of the giant people. He was holding a gun and when I stared at the drawing, I realized that one of the big stick figures was holding a machete over the boy’s head.
The next frame showed all the people from the huddle lying down on the ground, surrounded by puddles of what I took to be blood, for I quickly realized that the boy was drawing his story. The little boy stood all alone, off to the side in his drawing. He was in a large container of what seemed to be his tears, with the water rising above his head.
He continued scratching away at the ground while I followed his tale. The following drawings told the story of a little boy forced to follow his captors, being fed like a wild dog on occasion. Only that piles of bodies painstakingly etched along a winding route and the clouds floating around the boy’s head after each heroin fix showed any of the whimsy usually associated with children’s drawings; for the rest, his sketches illustrated the ignominy of his situation better than a thousand photos.
After a while, he left off drawing and sank back into his semi-catatonic state by the doorframe. I sat with him, not attempting contact and trying to make sense of what he had told me, and why. Finally, when I heard the dinner bell ring, I shakily rose from my crouch in the corner and moved towards the door, beckoning to the boy. He shrank back in terror as I tried to tempt him to come and join us for the meal, but he was impervious to my efforts and so I left him to go and join the others.
13
Taking a chance on love