“Not tonight, kids, okay? I need the whole bed. I have to sleep. I’m on call, you know?”
Jemilla was persistent, and Aziza looked terrified, and I relented, of course. When Aziza was lying on my left side, tight up against the wall, and Jemilla, with her gun clutched in both hands, had pinned me in on my right side, Rafi came in and shut the door.
A great cloud of suffocating heat had collected under the tin roof and went all the way down to the dirt floor. We needed any small movement of air in this windowless room. Needed it. Rafi leaned hard against the door with his shoulder to make sure that the latch was closed, then he said, “I’ll be right here.”
I couldn’t see him in the dark, but I heard him settle down on the floor between the bed and the door. I had thought that the children wanted me to keep them company. Now I understood. They were there protecting me.
We sweated together in the dark, and I tried to think. After the bodies of the twelve soldiers had been buried, and while I was doing an appendectomy, there had been meetings. Senior staff, meaning not me, had gotten together in the dining hall. Then the staff had called the home office in Cleveland.
As Colin explained it to me, the two-thousand-person contingent of Black Like Me soldiers hadn’t planned to stay at Kind Hands. That had been a wishful interpretation of what was meant to be a stop on their way to help in a larger battle against the Grays in the ongoing, unofficial civil war.
Colin had told me, “They’re leaving within a few days. All we can do is wish them luck.”
Lying in this oven with the children, I began to shake. The attacks were increasing. We had limited means to hold off the militia, and now we were losing our last hope.
I had come here without a clue. Now I had one hell of a clue. We could all die. I could die.
Aziza squeezed my hand.
I knew a lot about Jemilla, but Aziza had kept the horrors she’d lived through to herself. She looked to be about thirteen, but even she didn’t know her age. I loved these orphans. I was pretty much an orphan myself.
Aziza asked now, “Do you believe in God, Dr. Brigid?”
“Yes. I do.”
“What is His idea for us? Why must we suffer so?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. But I know He has a reason.”
She sighed deeply, truly breaking my heart, and got a tighter grip on me. She held on, fiercely.
I didn’t want to cry, but the tears were coming anyway, and I couldn’t get my hands free to wipe them away. I wished I could answer Aziza’s question to my own satisfaction, but sometimes, while failing to save yet another wounded or starving or disease-ridden child, I had the same doubts.
Jemilla whispered, “Try to sleep, Dr. Brigid.”
“You too.”
“I love you, Doctor.”
“Shhhh. Shhhhh. I love you, too.”
What would happen to the people in this place if we were sent home? What would God do?
Chapter 9
THAT MORNING, patients lined the benches outside the operating room. Our beds, our operating tables, and the spaces between them were fully occupied.
The medical staff were working like machines—maximum efficiency, no time for rethinking or consulting—and none of us had been trained for this.
I was assisting Colin, whose patient, a twenty-three-year-old BLM soldier named Neil Farley, had refused anesthesia for the infected bullet wound in his thigh. He was gripping the table, thrashing his head from side to side, and groaning, trying not to move his leg but not really managing it.
Farley’s C.O., Captain Bernard Odom, stood at the table, his arms crossed behind his back, feet shoulders’ length apart, at ease as he watched Colin dig for the bullet that had made a roadway for the infection that had traveled far and deep.
“What are you trying to prove, Neil?” Colin asked his writhing patient.
“Just keeping you on your toes, sir,” said the young vet through clenched teeth. Clearly, this show of bravery was to impress his C.O. and was completely counterproductive.
“Neil, you’re wheezing,” I said. “I’m going to give you a shot of Benadryl. It won’t affect your reflexes or anything.”
“You’re sure?”
“Uh-huh. If I learned one thing in my six years in med school, this was it.”
The soldier laughed through his pain. I shot him up with Benadryl, which is not just an antihistamine but also a mild anesthetic. Colin poked around in the wound and finally extracted the bullet. I mopped up.
“When will Farley be good to walk with his backpack?” the captain asked.
“In a few days,” said Colin.
I injected Farley with antibiotics, then gripped his forearm and helped him up into a sitting position.
The captain asked Colin again, “He can walk tomorrow, right?”
“What’s the rush?” Colin asked, peering over his mask at the young officer.
“The rush is that we’re leaving tomorrow at oh six hundred. If he can’t carry his gear, he stays behind.”
“What do you mean, ‘leaving’?” Colin asked.