“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.”
“I can,” Colin said. “You’ll have an extraordinary, exemplary life, and I’ll drink myself to death.”
“You’re not going to do that.”
He gave me a dazzling smile.
No doubt about it. As bad as Colin Whitehead was or tried to be, I was falling for him.
Chapter 16
A DRIVER from the village stopped in the dining hall to drop off mail and medical supplies. I was worried about the BLM forces and asked Mosi if he’d heard any news of them since they left Kind Hands.
Mosi shrugged and said, “I haven’t heard anything. I think you should say to yourself that they went back to America.”
After a guilty breakfast of cereal and fruit, Jemilla, Aziza, Sabeena, and I took the donkey cart to the gates. Another large group of refugees had arrived at the settlement, and soon, Sabeena and I would pick through them, looking for people we could save for a day before turning them out to be slaughtered.
Father Delahanty had gotten a head start on us this morning, and I saw him at the gates, praying quietly, looking about as sad as anyone could be.
When he opened his eyes, I said, “How can God allow this?”
He said, “We do what we can and leave the big picture to Him.”
That afternoon, I had a young girl on the table. She had a bacterial infection that had run through her body like wildfire and had begun to shut her organs down. In order to save her, limbs would have to be amputated. Several limbs. And then what would happen to her?
Colin said, “Brigid, you’re wanted in Recovery.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your patient with the head wound. If I were you, I’d go take a look.”
I went. The boy with the wound was alive. I knew that when I went back to the O.R., the girl who was dying on the table would be lying in a bed, intact and dead.
I dropped to my knees outside the hospital, and once again, I prayed. “Please, help me understand. Am I helping? Is this good for anyone? Are you testing me? And if so, why, dear God, why?”
I finished by asking Him to bless everyone, and then I went back to work. I spoke to all my patients. I held their hands, told them that they would be okay, and I closed the eyes of the ones that died.
That afternoon, I walked over to the radio and shut off the Red Sox game. I had no idea if my team was winning or losing, and for the first time in my memory, I didn’t care.
Chapter 17
THE LOUDSPEAKER crackled and squealed, and then Jup’s amplified voice boomed, “Wounded at the gates. We’ve got incoming wounded.”
Sabeena and I had been making beds, but we dropped everything and ran for the donkey cart where Jemilla and Aziza had already grabbed places in the back.
I knew this donkey. Colin had named him Bollocks, and he was wicked stubborn. Sabeena took the reins, clucked her tongue, slapped the reins against his back, saying, “Come on, Bollocks, you old goat. Let’s go.”
But, while he brayed, twitched his tail, and stomped his feet, he wouldn’t move forward, not an inch. And we didn’t have time to waste.
I got out of the cart and went around to his head, where I scratched his forehead, wiped some dirt out of his eyes, palmed his muzzle. And I said, “Bollocks, please, no funny business. Be good. I’ll make it up to you. Do we have a deal?”
When I got back to the cart, I saw that Father Delahanty was sitting in back with the girls. Colin started up his Land Rover, and Victoria and two boys got in.
We followed Colin, choking on his dust, and when we reached the gates, they were wide open.
Gunshot victims had been dropped right there, where they waited for help outside our gates. Some were alive; all of them were a warning. The moans and cries of the wounded were horrific and almost unbelievable. It was as if a Breughel painting, The Triumph of Death, had come to life between the gateposts of our settlement.
I scrambled out of the cart and ran with my bag, passing wounded UN workers as well as our own downed people. Father Delahanty was right behind me, and Sabeena was bringing up the rear. My eyes were on the wounded, lying in the dust, many of them writhing in agony. I never noticed the Grays, boiling up over the riverbank on foot, until they were spraying bullets at us with their AKs.