I thought about what I had written, and then I went to my email in-box and I typed:
Dear Zach, You did nothing wrong. I’m a coward, and I’m sorry to have left without saying good-bye. I was afraid that if I saw you, I wouldn’t be able to go, and I must.
I care about you very much, but I am a broken woman.
All I can do is run.
I won’t ever forget the wonderful times we spent together.
Yours, with a sad heart,
Brigid
When the plane landed, I reread my email to Zach, and then I launched it.
I got off the airplane with purpose. I stood in front of the arrivals-and-departures board and got my bearings. Then I crossed the airport and booked a flight to Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
God called. I answered.
Chapter 33
BUT I couldn’t leave France just yet.
There would be a two-hour wait in Charles de Gaulle Airport before my plane departed for Juba. And then there would be a change of planes and the next leg of my journey, for a total of twenty-six hours en route.
I ate a croque monsieur at a fast-food brasserie. I had a beer. Then I had another one.
I bought three new T-shirts in an airport shop, along with a pair of socks and a green rubber slicker. I washed much of my body in the sink in the ladies’ room and put on a new shirt, a pink one with the Eiffel Tower outlined in sequins. I purchased bags and bags of hard candies and some American newsmagazines. I found a seat at the gate and read for hours.
The big stories were startling. There was a severe drought in California that threatened wildlife and agriculture. Sea level and pollution were up. Ice was cracking off the poles. Planes had crashed. There were terrorist attacks in several countries and a plague in Saudi Arabia. Nine people had been shot to death during Bible study in a church in South Carolina. There was another mass killing in South Sudan that tested my belief, not in God but in the human race.
At two in the afternoon, I boarded the plane, and this flight was full. Again I had a window seat, and I didn’t wait for takeoff to fall asleep.
I awoke to change planes in Dubai, and once we were aloft, I took a pill and slept again. I wasn’t in communication with God or anyone else, but while I slept, I was making plans.
I arrived in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, at sundown. The sky was heavy with clouds, and there was a line of red at the horizon. I walked a half mile past the far end of the airport, to the bus stop, and I waited inside the shelter for the coach to Magwi.
I was going there on faith, according to some kind of voice in my head that had suggested rather strongly that this was what I was meant to do.
And I had my own reasons.
I had to find out what had happened after I left the continent wrapped in bandages, going in and out of consciousness and having almost no awareness until I’d passed a month in a hospital in Amsterdam.
What news I had, had come to me from Kind Hands. A paycheck had been wired, my health insurance had paid the tab, and in a brief email from Human Resources, I learned that my former colleagues, Drs. Wuster, Bailey, and Khalil, had each returned home, but KH wasn’t permitted to give out contact information.
I was told that Jup Vander was missing and presumed dead. And there was no information on the whereabouts of a volunteer nurse by the name of Sabeena Gaol.
As the rim of the earth burned red, five people and I waited for a bus in a lean-to shelter alongside Route A43. There was a tree across the road, two hobbled goats standing beneath it. The bus shed with the corrugated tin roof, the bone-thin animals, the nearly bare trees, and the brown dirt beneath them were more familiar to me now than Fenway Park.
Out on the highway, two cones of light bore down on us. The man sitting next to me stood up and pointed down the road, saying, “Miss. The bus. She comes.”
Chapter 34
THE BUS that rumbled and creaked and squealed to a stop looked as though it had been a veteran of many crashes. The side panels and hood were different colors. Windows were broken. The grille was gone. The tailpipe dragged. But there was a sign in the windshield that read God Is Good.
Riding in one of these coaches was a test of faith all by itself. Juba Line was a serial killer. Buses collided with cars and carts, ran over pedestrians, lost control and flipped over in the rainy season, when the dirt roads turned into slippery clay and tires could no more get traction on mud than they could if the roads had been paved with ice.
It was raining as I boarded the bus with my bags and went to the long bench seat in the rear. I shared my sweets with everyone but the chickens. I thought of the experience that had brought me back to Africa: the warmth of a presence inside my chest, the reverberation that was something like a voice in my head, and the images I had seen that I knew I hadn’t created by myself.