Cold Silence (6 page)

“I'm scared, sir. So yes. But is it related?”

“Maybe. Numbness?”

“In my feet.”

“Night sweats?”

“It's hot here. You always sweat.”

“What percentage of the people here are sick?”

“Some people have it bad and some a little. Maybe seventy percent caught it. Half of those got better. Half, worse.”

I heard two male voices coming from one of the other tents, high above the hubbub, singing. I couldn't make out the words.

I snapped a photo, but I had more questions than time to ask them. I said, “Last one for now. The healthy people. Is there
anything common about
them
that you're aware of? Maybe they came from the same place? Sleep in the same tent? Eat special foods? Anything?”

“I wish those guys in tent four would
just shut up!
”

I never forgot that Hassan was listening, so I kept my voice calm, which I wasn't, as I asked person after person the same questions, and got the same answers. Lionel limped up and down the line, and I heard him telling others in that strangled voice, “Dr. Rush saved my life once.”

Lionel saying, “He saved my buddies and he'll save us. You'll see.”

—

We snapped photos. We wrote down names and home addresses and next of kin information. We took temperatures and skin samples. We administered broad-spectrum antibiotics, after asking about allergies. The samples would be analyzed in our tent lab back at the base, but not for many hours.

If Hassan lets us go.

“Ma'am? Lay down,” I addressed a skinny, bespectacled black girl in a UPenn T-shirt and jeans who I guessed was about twenty-four years old, a grad student, she said. The disfigurement added years. The cauliflower ears ballooned out, making it hard for her glasses to stay on. Her arms were a mass of lesions. “How much time passed between the first sore appearing and now?” I asked
.

“Six days.”

“Did you notice anything wrong
before
the rash?”

“I spilled coffee on my hand. But I felt nothing.”

“Have you ever had a skin problem before?”

“No, Doctor.”

“Hassan? Are you listening to all this out there?”

“I am listening, Rush.”

“Dr. Nakamura and I can't handle this alone. We need help. Let me call the base and get another plane here. I don't understand why you're stopping us.”

“If you call, the drones will come.”

The clouds thickened and the sky darkened and a light rain began. Lionel and a couple of healthy people helped two more sick grad students into the tent and helped others back to their cots.
Wait there, out of the storm, and we'll visit you
, we said. In the mess tent, I used a picnic bench exam table. Rice sacks were chairs. The tent drummed with rain. Rivulets ran in through a hole up top to puddle on the ground. The man lying on the table smelled like decaying meat.

I glanced outside. The circle of militia had not moved. I was sure that the steady rain intensified their rage.

—

“Where are you from, Tom?”

The assistant professor's dark red British passport shot showed a handsome face, twenty-eight years old, a neat blond beard, vivid blue eyes, a shock of boyish hair, a cocky smile. But now the hair was the only recognizable part. The features had swollen; the beard was mange. He looked like a practical joker had stuck a million-dollar hairpiece on a chimpanzee.

“You're British, Tom?”

“John Bull, that's me.”

“Have you ever experienced anything like this before?”

“Never sick a day of my life till now.”

“Tilt your head back. Can you swallow?”

Some of his sores had opened, become runny and smelly. The brow had furrowed so much, it almost folded in on itself.

“I'm giving you aspirin,” I said.

The gargoyle face stared fixedly but that was because his muscles
were damaged, producing a single expression. He whispered, trying for humor, “That's the best you can do, Doc? Aspirin?”

“Are you allergic to any medicines?”

“I never needed any. Can I have some water? Most of it runs out this damn hole in my mouth. Better oxygen flow, though.”

“You have a good sense of humor, Tom. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“I'm a regular Jason Manford, Doc. That's what Mum used to say.”

—

“Hassan?”

No answer.

“Hassan?”

No answer.

“Hassan, I need to know if you can hear me. If you can hear me, answer!”

“What do you want?”

“Let me bring in copters. I'll get the sick out. Surely you want them gone.”

“We'll talk later.”

“In my experience,” Eddie said, not caring if Hassan heard or not, “later means never.”

Another hour went by.

We took more photos. We could not send them to anyone yet. The rain stopped and started again.

—

Two voices—two men—started singing religious songs again.
One by one six prophets, the sixth the last to come.
What the voices lacked in quality they made up in volume. The men in tent four were driving everyone crazy.

“They stay in their tent,” Lionel said.

“So! You two didn't get sick,” I said, pushing in the tent flap. I
saw the men sitting on two neatly made cots. A milk crate table. Field notebooks. Duffel bags. A once-happy group shot of grad students, khakis on, thumbs up, all smiles.
Here we are in Africa!

They both looked to be in their twenties, burned by the sun, a thin tall man and a pale chubby one. The blond tall one, clean shaven as a Mormon missionary, wore a short-sleeved cotton shirt fielding a SAVE THE PLANET motif, Merrill desert boots, and aviator-style silver-framed glasses. The second man was older, curly haired but balding, and dressed in ragged denim cutoffs, flip-flops, and a summerweight hoodie with a Breckinridge, Colorado, logo, a downhill skier etched in dark blue against white.

“I'd like to take blood samples from you, if that's okay.”

“Sure thing, Doc, if it helps the others.”

“You both seem unaffected physically.”

The older one, Ned Ludlum, rapped his knuckles on a wooden tent pole, superstitiously. “Knock wood. But every day we check each other over, inch by inch.”

“Any idea why you stayed healthy?”

“Luck,” said Ned.

“Prayer,” said Brad Colbert, the other guy.

“Have you eaten anything the others haven't . . . Got different vaccinations before you came to Africa? Different medicines you're taking? Maybe you're on antibiotics for something else?”

“I'm taking Cipro, sir, for a cold I caught in Nairobi,” Brad told me, holding up the pill vial.

“Nothing for me,” said Ned.

“How about before you came? Do you have your immunization form? Special shots? Preventative medicines?”

I checked the stamps and notations on their yellow immunization forms. They'd received standard prep for Americans visiting East Africa. Antimalarials. Yellow fever shots. Anticholera. Tetanus. Gamma globulin against hepatitis.

I noted that both their cots were protected by pink mosquito netting. But many of the sick people had netting over their cots as well. Neither man showed sores anywhere on their bodies. Temperatures normal. Mouths unremarkable. Movement natural. Sleep irregular, they said, but it was hard to sleep regularly when your friends and neighbors were sick all night.

Ned said somewhat apprehensively, “Are we going to be okay?”

“I hope so.”

“Can you cure our friends?”

“I'll do my best.”

I left them in their tent, and they started singing again. Hope worked for them as well as preventative medicines, I guess. I just wished they weren't so off-pitch. Those voices would drive anyone crazy after a while. They were grating on me, too.

—

I hoped nobody would say something over my radio to set off Hassan or his militia. If shooting started, we had no place to run.

“I started this
,
”
the girl sobbed
. “It's my fault! My God!
I started this and now I'm better and they're worse.”

Kate Detrich lay in tent seven, alone, because her tent mate had died. The face of the twenty-four-year-old grad student was slightly red and scaly, but the symptoms were fading, she said. Her speech was clear. If I hadn't seen the others, I'd think she had a bad skin condition. Her agitation was so extreme that she was shaking, from emotion, not disease.

“I caused this sickness! Me!”

She was someone who liked to fix up living quarters, no matter how temporary. The cot had a colorful woven blanket over it, and I saw watercolor sketches of African plants hung up: a fat baobab tree, a myrrh tree, a phoenix cactus, with purplish flowers. The milk crate night table had a Coleman lamp on it, and a photo of smiling parents
with a happier Kate. Strawberry blond in the shot. About five foot three. Pageboy-cut hair. Pretty green eyes in a plain, intelligent face. The photo had been taken at Sea World. Behind the vacationing family, a leaping killer whale.

I'd noted, into my neck mike, “Glazed eyes, stuffy nose, slight hoarseness.”

Now my heart began pounding at her confession. “You started it, Kate? What do you mean?”

“It was an accident!”

“What kind of accident, Kate?”

Wilderness Medicine 101. Always call a patient by their name. It helps keep them calm.

Fresh tears ran down her cheeks, soaked a stained pillow. I saw in her face what I saw in my mirror back home on sleepless nights—self blame.
This woman knows something
, I knew.

Kate blurted out, “I promised I wouldn't tell!”

Hassan is hearing this
, I thought.
He's looking for an excuse to blame someone. Hassan will unleash those militia if he thinks someone here is killing his brother on purpose.

But I gentled her. “Why don't you tell me what you think you did. You can help everyone else if you tell.”

“No! It's too late!”

I took her hand. It felt like a claw. In the glass covering her family photo was superimposed the reflected girl, head averted with shame.

“Kate? Breathe. Slowly. You know, good people always blame themselves for things they have no control over. Why, I bet that's the case here.”

“It's not fair.
They're
dying and I only got it a little bit! I want to be dead!”

“You don't mean that. Tell me what happened.”

Her voice fell to a whisper. But at least she kept speaking. “He was so attractive,” she said. “He made me feel wonderful.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tim's from Oregon. His family owns a farm there. They grow apples. Sweet gala apples, he said.”

Get to the point
, I thought.

“He said we'd live there when the project is up. He said I could probably get work at the university in Eugene. He said it's a good place to . . . oh God . . .
have a baby!
”

She broke out sobbing. The heat in my suit was rising. Sweat formed at my scalp and ran down my chin. It poured from my armpits. There was a sour smell in the suit. I cursed the designer of the thing.

Kate said, “I slept with him! Had sex with him! I know it's wrong! I promised the Lord not to have sex until I'm married but I thought . . . I mean . . . I
didn't
 . . . I mean . . .”

I did not understand where she was going with this so I asked, “You caught something from this boy, you mean?”

“No! It's punishment! Affliction! God struck me down because I broke my vow. Sex without marriage is abomination!” Her face spun to me, blazing. “I know what this sickness is.
It's leprosy, out of the Bible! Right out of the Old Testament! Like God gave Naaman!
”

She started hyperventilating, but not from illness. I told her she was wrong. I said that her sex habits had nothing to do with the outbreak, although, for all I knew, that was one way it could spread. I told her that leprosy took a long time to take effect, and didn't spread through groups. I did not tell her that I had no time for God, faith, or miracles. That to deny science is to deny truth. That faith is for fools.

I smoothed her brow. There was still a possibility that she'd given me a clue, though. “Kate? Are you telling me that God gave you this
disease and the others caught it from you? That you were the first to get it?”

“I was bad! Bad! Bad! But I wasn't the first, no. God struck down this whole camp because of me!”

I heard Hassan exhale loudly in my earpiece. His breathing joined mine for a moment. At least, for an instant, we were in sync in frustration.

“You people are all crazy,” Hassan said.

—

Person after person, and the answers were the same.

“Fifteen-centimeter lesions,” Eddie recited as we worked together in the mess tent on the last two victims, a Somali cook and a Somali guide.

“Erythematous plaque, with well-defined outer margins,” I said, scraping samples.

“The center's flat and clear, hairless. No pigment.”

“Get bits of normal areas, Eddie.”

“Look at the foot drop, One. The foot just dangles.”

“Check the corneas.”

Hassan's low voice broke into our earpieces.

“Are you finished? You have now worked for many hours. I think you have what you need.”

“What we
need
is more help.”

Eddie came close and nudged me. I looked through his face shield at his sweating countenance, and I knew he was telling me to open the tent flap. Something was wrong.

When I glanced outside, I sensed the change. The ring of vehicles had drawn in closer. The clan men still stood by trucks, but their attitude had stiffened, even from a distance. The gunners had lowered the muzzles of their .50 calibers while we worked, but now they were aimed again.