The kit had the right medications for dysentery, as any field kit should have. Within an hour, he’d gotten the appropriate drugs into her. He debated hanging an IV but decided to wait.
Sophie drifted in and out, rousing only to use the bathroom or sip the rehydration solution Michael had prepared. After a couple of hours, she became too weak to walk, and he started carrying her. At that point, he insisted that he see what she was passing. Somehow, she found the strength to fly into a feeble rage, slamming the bathroom door in his face and locking it.
“You’ve never even seen me naked.” He could hear her panting through another wave of pain as she shouted. “And now you want to look at my…my…poop!”
“I am a doctor!” he thundered from the other side of the door. “Seven years of medical school! Right now, I am your doctor. You will tell me what is happening!”
“It’s quite clear what’s happening in here!” she shouted back. “I have dysentery!” She suddenly cried out in pain, and Michael slammed his palms against the door in frustration. “I know what you’re thinking. I don’t have cholera, for God’s sake! It’s fucking dysentery again; I get it all the time.”
Michael waited for a few minutes. Finally the lock clicked, and he pushed the door open. She lay on the floor with her arm over her face, humiliated. He sidled in and took a long, dispassionate look into the toilet.
“How long have you been passing blood?” His knees were weak with relief. None of the telltale signs of cholera was present. But the blood and mucus in the bowl concerned him.
“It started about half an hour ago. Happened the last time I had it too.”
He flushed the toilet and carried her back to bed. Her body shivered under his hands, burning with fever. A few minutes later, she threw up again, and he decided to get an IV into her before she became any more dehydrated. It took him three tries to get the needle in.
Michael didn’t know when the sun set and evening fell. Sophie lapsed into a state that was half sleep, half unconsciousness. He went upstairs to update his hosts, administering doses of the appropriate medications. The likelihood of transmission was low given their brief, casual exposure, but he couldn’t take any chances. He took the drugs as well, knowing he had a higher risk of exposure as Sophie’s primary caregiver and having just recovered from a serious disease himself.
When he ran out of things to do, panic came boiling up, so he called Anjali again as he sat by Sophie’s bedside.
“How is she?”
“Asleep, I think. Still febrile. Moderate internal bleeding. I have put an IV into her to keep her hydrated.”
“Sounds like you’re doing just fine,” Anjali said encouragingly. “Make sure you wear gloves and take the meds yourself. Does the kit have everything you need?”
“Yes, thank you.” Michael took a damp cloth and wiped Sophie’s forehead again, taking care not to catch the stitches on her forehead. It occurred to him that this could provide something else for him to do. “Anjali, do you want me to remove her stitches?”
“Sure, they’re due to come out.”
Michael disinfected the area, clipped the ends and removed the thread. The wound had healed well, but she’d have a scar running diagonally between her eyes now.
“One less thing to worry about,” he grunted. “Do you think this is where the infection entered the body?”
“Unlikely,” Anjali said. “It’s not like she split her forehead open in a latrine. It was a knife wound, and it was cleaned thoroughly before stitching. Mind you, she used her scarf to stop the initial bleeding in the Commandant’s office. Hardly a sterile item, it had been all over the camp. So it’s not out of the question.”
“Yes.” Michael mumbled a few more things without knowing what he was saying, then hung up.