I DIDN’T know how to tell Zach about hell on earth without feeling it all over again. But I had decided to try.
I dropped my hands into my lap and said, “Imagine a dirt-poor town of eighty thousand people who’ve been driven from their homes and are now living under tarps, Zach. A lot of these people have been brutalized, their families killed, and now they have no possessions, no work, just decimated lives and nothing to live for.
“The food is bare subsistence. The water is contaminated, and you can add to all of that drought and hundred-and-fifteen-degree heat and infectious disease and an armed militia looking for opportunities to murder anyone who steps outside the gates.”
Zach kept his eyes on me, encouraging me to go on.
“There were six doctors and a few volunteer nurses to care for every kind of medical condition you can imagine and about a thousand you can’t. We did surgeries with dull knives and drills and with watered-down anesthesia, if we happened to have anesthetics at all.
“A lot of people died, Zach. Every stinking day. They died when you slept or when you went outside to take a breath of air. You came back, and your patient was dead. For us, working in that hospital was like trying to carry water in a bucket full of holes.”
Zach said, “You should write about this, Brigid. People don’t know anything about the conditions in these settlements. They should know.”
I was lost in thoughts of Kind Hands. I heard Zach say, “Please. Go on.”
Amid music from car speakers and the put-put of scooters in the square, the clamor of customers and the clashing of silverware and dishes in the trattoria around us, I described the routine at the hospital to Zach.
I told him about Sabeena and the orphan girls whom I loved. I told him about my colleagues from all over, about Wuster and Bailey, Khalil and Vander; about our twenty-hour days operating by the light of flashlights in our mouths. The patients’ terrified families standing at our elbows.
“You said six doctors,” Zach said.
I hadn’t mentioned Colin. I couldn’t do it. I actually had a sense that Colin was sitting with us. That he was listening and about to make a rude comment. Or tell me that he loved me.
I said, “A lot of doctors were on the field the day I was shot. They’re scattered. Or buried.”
Zach put his hand on mine and said, “Your bravery.…It’s inspirational, Brigid.”
I shrugged and kept my eyes on his big hand, covering mine. It looked strange there, but it felt good.
Zach blurted, “I want to know everything about you.”
And right then, with the impeccable timing of waiters all around the world, Giovanni appeared between us to ask if we would like coffee and dessert.
“Brigid?” Zach asked me.
“No, thanks. Not for me.”
Zach removed his hand from mine, and as the waiter presented the bill, I was struck with a weird impulse I didn’t see coming. I tossed my napkin to the table, jumped to my feet, and said, “Time to go.”
Chapter 31
AT 9:27 the next morning, I was in a window seat on a plane flying out of Fiumicino to Charles de Gaulle in Paris.
I was wearing new jeans, a nubby cotton sweater, a lightweight denim jacket, Sabeena’s pink shoes, a crucifix on a heavy gold chain that Tori had fastened around my neck before we kissed good-bye on both cheeks, and I had the taxi driver’s rosary in my pocket.
I rolled up my jacket and wedged it between the armrest and the window and laid my head against the glass. I’d never been to Paris. It was as good a destination as any. I needed to get out of town, and there were flights to Paris nearly every hour.
I watched Rome recede until it looked like a sepia drawing in an old history book. Then a layer of clouds filled in between the plane and the noble city many thousands of feet below.
I missed Zach already and felt guilty for bolting without telling him that I was going and why. I couldn’t imagine explaining to him that I was still in love with Colin, a man I’d been inextricably bound to by tenuous life and violent death.
No holiday romance could compare, not when I was still suffering such a profound loss of love in my heart and soul.
And yet, I was vulnerable. I could still get hurt. I thought Zach could get hurt, too.
The flight attendant offered food and drink, but I shook my head no and watched sunlight limn the clouds as we sailed across the morning sky.
I closed my eyes, and as soon as I did, an image of our IDP settlement came to me in minute detail. I saw the hundreds of rows of tukuls, the individual faces of men and women and children whose names I hadn’t known—I knew those people now. Their eyes turned to me as I passed them on the dusty track.
How many of these innocent people had been slaughtered since I left Africa?
Two weeks ago, when I’d taken the train from Amsterdam to Rome, a warm feeling filled my chest, and I had a sense of something “not me.” I’d found myself asking why. And I was doing it now.