“You should get to bed.”
Cole gave her shoulder a squeeze. There it was again. How could he not realize what his touch did to her?
“I know, I’m exhausted,” she whispered. “You too?”
“Yeah, long day. I’m feeling okay, though, and need to go finish this second round of tests. I’ll walk you back first.”
Marna started down the hard dirt path toward the apartments on the other side of the complex. They walked in silence. She listened to the repetitive call of a lonely tree frog.
You’re not the only one, little guy.
A dog barked in the distance.
She finally spoke again when they reached her door. “So remind me why these tests can’t wait until morning?”
Yikes, she didn’t intend for it to come out quite so boldly. But he was either denser or more skilled at hiding his true understanding than she expected.
“I need to at least confirm the results of the assays I’ve already done before getting the word out more widely tomorrow. If it’s really monkeypox that’s killing those gorillas, then this is a much more virulent strain than anyone’s ever seen before.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Then we’re in even more trouble,” Cole answered. “And I’m on my way to infectious disease fame, or at least my first paper in one of the major journals.”
Marna usually loved that playful grin, but his eyes betrayed the hungry ambition behind his humor.
“So that’s what this is all about, then? Getting your name in the papers and moving on up in the world?”
He looked hurt. “Marna, I’m just kidding around. Sure, I want to be successful in my work, but I hope you know how much I care, too. If I only wanted to be rich and famous I definitely shouldn’t have spent most of my life in school becoming a research veterinarian.”
“I know, sorry.” And she was. His unconscious rejection stung a little, but that was no reason to respond in kind. “I guess I’m just tired, that’s all.”
She unlocked the door. Better not to go down that road tonight, anyway.
“Hey.” Cole reached out and grasped her hand, gently pulling her whole body into his. “You’re beautiful when you’re tired, then, you know that?”
Marna let herself fold into his steady arms as she felt three months’ worth of unfulfilled tension lift off into the dark Rwandan night.
A blissful minute passed before they were discovered. The pesky whine at Marna’s ear stopped abruptly to reveal itself as a hungry mosquito on the side of Cole’s neck. She jumped out of his embrace and smacked him with a practiced hand.
“You still haven’t gotten your malaria meds refilled, have you?” she asked, laughing and opening her fingers to show an incredulous Cole the culprit smeared across her palm.
“Well, no, but I would have happily accepted the risk for another few minutes like that!” He pulled her back in.
But now the tides were turned, and Marna knew she had broken his resolve. She looked up at him happily and then moved her hands up along his body and against his chest to push him away.
“I hate to do this to you now, but you really do need to get back to that lab.”
“Woah, woah, just when you finally convinced me it could wait?”
“I know, but I guess that mosquito brought me back to reality. I will remain ready to hear about how beautiful I am any time you please.”
The look of resigned angst on Cole’s face was irresistible, and she couldn’t stop herself from reaching up to plant a light kiss on his scruffy cheek.
“Now take that with you back to the lab and be ready to tell me everything over breakfast.”
“Ugh. You’re a cruel woman, you know that?”
He took her head in both hands, leaned in, and gently rubbed his nose against her own. She felt his lips brush hers for the briefest second, and then he was gone.
Lars Olsson nodded to the two guards as he stepped between them and pushed through the heavy white canvas flap into the tiny space that served as office, bank, and bedroom. Lowering himself onto the cot, he took a deep breath of the cool clean air. It was a welcome respite from the oppressive heat outside, even worse than usual due to the stench of burning tires wafting over the entire city.
The portable air conditioning unit and accompanying HEPA filter were unnecessary luxuries in a place like this. He knew that, of course. But after thirty years of moving from one hot and smelly location to the next, he was ready for a taste of luxury.
Had it really been thirty years since he hopped on that flight to Addis, a starry-eyed volunteer full of plans to save the starving children of Ethiopia? It was the day after his graduation from the University of Copenhagen as a newly minted physician. Thirty years. His tall wiry frame and full head of sandy blond hair might keep people guessing about his age, but he knew the deepening creases in his tanned face would give him away soon enough.
Olsson leaned into the tent’s solid corner post and opened up his laptop. It always took several minutes for the mobile data link to find a connection, but he had to resist the urge to tap aggressively on the touchpad while he waited. Even the satellites did their best to avoid this god-forsaken rubbish heap.
Thirty years was a long time. A long time to devote to a cause that never seemed to get any better. The faces changed, the skin color changed, and the diseases changed. But everything else was constant, disaster after disaster, year after year. He loved it, this never-ending challenge of broken people needing his healing touch and organizational expertise. But he was tired.
A chime let him know the connection was live, and he watched his inbox fill with news from the outside world. His boss in Nairobi wanted an update. A nurse needed confirmation that they could still use her before starting the long journey from the States. Some freelance journalist requesting an interview. You’d think they would realize their readers didn’t want to hear about it every time Africans start killing each other again.
And then the ProMED e-mails, this steady stream of reports detailing all the different ways people and animals got sick and died. Lars skimmed the subject lines with a passing interest. Another outbreak of cholera in Haiti, that came as no surprise. He spent two years running a post-earthquake field hospital in Port-au-Prince and saw enough watery diarrhea to last a lifetime. Wild ducks dying in Mongolia from the latest strain of influenza. Worrisome, but probably just another false alarm. He was tired of the media’s feeding frenzy every time
the next big flu pandemic
loomed on the horizon.
“Dr. Lars, you have a visitor outside.” The booming voice of one of the guards interrupted his reading.
“Right, who is it?”
“She says she is from the magazine, that she sent you a message this morning.”
Well that was a bit presumptuous. The lines around his mouth deepened in an angry grimace, but the bolded subject line of one more e-mail caught his eye as he reached to close the laptop:
ProMED > Monkeypox, gorilla - Virunga, DRC; Unconfirmed Report
The grimace changed to an open-mouthed gape as he opened the message.
“How the hell did someone manage to get into Virunga?” he said out loud.
“That’s what I’m here to find out, too.”
Olsson looked up toward the crisp British voice and saw a slender white hand pushing through the tent flaps.
“Excuse me, Miss—” The guard’s voice was firm.
“Get your filthy hands off me!” The woman’s hand drew back through the flaps. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
Olsson stood up.
“No, he doesn’t. And neither do I, for that matter.” He glanced one more time at the open message on his computer screen before walking to the front of the tent. “It’s okay, Pierre, you can let her in.”
Just what he needed, some distant cousin of the royal family who fancied herself a writer. Couldn’t she have gone chasing rhinos in South Africa instead? God knows they needed all the help they could get. But no, this second-tier future duchess would take nothing less than the deepest heart of darkness for her big breakthrough story as a serious journalist.
Claire Clifford, only child and heir apparent of the Earl of St. Andrews. Did she really think he would be impressed? Ha. But if she wanted a story, it was hard to go wrong with the mountain gorillas. They had been tugging at the heartstrings and pocketbooks of the adoring Western world for a hundred years.
She wasn’t bad to look at, though. Olsson fixed his eyes on the back end of the woman’s skinny jeans as she turned to leave his tent. Yes, he would be quite happy to spend a few days showing her around. In three months he’d already slept his way through what was left of Goma’s female expats, but he wasn’t quite ready to start breaking the official prohibition on romantic interludes with his colleagues at the field hospital. This feisty royal visitor could not have come at a better time.
“So you really thought you would be able to get up into the park to see the gorillas?”
She might be pretty, but she clearly didn’t understand the realities of war in central Africa. Olsson nodded to the guards as he left the tent.
“I may be new to this journalism game, Dr. Olsson, but I’m not ignorant of the advantages that come along with my family’s connections.”
“Call me Lars, please.” He could play nice, when he wanted to. The doctor slowed his pace slightly so her Ladyship would not have to jog quite so obviously beside him. “And yet, you do seem to be ignorant of the fact that we are in the Belgian Congo. This is not Kenya, or Uganda, or another one of your cousin’s former colonies.”
He glanced at his guest to appreciate the effect of his words, then continued on. “I can guarantee you that your family’s name and history are meaningless to the average rebel commander staking his claim here in North Kivu province.”
They stopped outside the main entrance to the large hospital tent.
“Lars, darling, if that’s what you prefer.” Her facial muscles relaxed into a practiced smile as she stepped forward to place a hand on his arm. “Thank you for the history lesson. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that there are in fact no former Danish colonies here in Africa, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter.”
“If you say so,” he replied with a smile. He couldn’t care less about the relative lack of empire-building ambition among his forebears, and he would wait for another day to remind her of Greenland and the Faroes.
“I’m also aware of certain other advantages I have that often help to open closed doors in a world so unapologetically run by men.”
Olsson felt her hand tighten in a gentle squeeze. She released slightly and let her fingers slip down over his tanned arm.
“And a week of closed doors here in Goma has left you ready to start playing with these advantages?”
She brushed a strand of strawberry blond hair behind an ear and crossed her arms over her chest. “You only wish it were so easy, don’t you, doctor?”
“Oh, I’m not worried about myself, Claire.” This was a lie, of course, but he wasn’t going to crawl into her lap so easily. “You should be careful with those tender touches, though. Some of the locals might not like it when they realize you’re not really inviting them in for more.”
“And what makes you think I won’t be?”
Olsson looked into her eyes, waiting for the smile to break. But it never did.
“Just be careful. We’re a long way from Scotland Yard, you know.” He ducked in through the tent’s entrance. “Enough of that. Didn’t you want to see some of our patients?”
Claire followed the doctor through the canvas flaps and welcomed the wave of cool air that rushed over her glistening face. The window unit in her room at the lakeside Ihusi Hotel had coughed up a blast of musty warm air when she first checked in a week ago, and—despite several visits from an overly confident in-house electrician—it was still losing the battle against the pervasive tropical heat.
“Welcome to Goma General Hospital, your highness,” Olsson swung out an arm in an exaggerated flourish. “Proudly representing the finest medical care in the eastern Congo.”
Claire raised her eyebrows. Was he being serious? She knew Doctors Without Borders was the real deal, but this seemed like a very basic operation.
“Yes ma’am, ever since the last of Goma’s local doctors fled to Kinshasa last month, we’re the only shop in town.”
“Well, can’t say I’d like to find myself in need of your services.”
Claire felt her eyes adjusting to the dim filtered light glowing through the white canvas tent. Everything was white, she noticed. White folding cots arranged in long rows, made up with white cotton sheets. White doctors and nurses dressed in white scrubs and lab coats. A glaring white surgical light at the far corner of the tent. Everything except the patients, that is, who were
black black black
. Claire wasn’t a racist, she was sure of that. But it was harder than she expected to be in the minority all the time.
“If anything happens to you, we might be willing to do some initial stabilization before putting you on a chartered flight back to London.” He lingered on the
might
a little longer than Claire would have liked. “If you play nice, that is.”
“I don’t plan on getting myself shot or blown up, but thank you for that assurance. I’ll be sure to behave myself.”
She followed as he stepped towards the nearest cot and knelt down beside a sleeping child. “Most of our patients don’t have that option, to simply fly on out of here. We’re their only hope, and unfortunately we can’t save everyone.”
He pulled the sheet back to reveal a bandaged stump just below the girl’s left knee. Claire exhaled slowly.
“What happened?”
“Wrong place at the wrong time, just like most of the civilians we’re taking care of.” He adjusted the flow of intravenous fluids running into the girl’s arm. “The hardest thing is that we often don’t know who’s innocent and who’s not. A little girl like this, that’s easy. But almost anyone else could have blood on their hands.”
“And so you would turn them away, let them die on the street, if you just knew their crimes?”
“There are only a hundred beds in this little inflatable hospital of ours, Claire. We try to focus resources on those who are not instigators in the conflict, but in reality it’s almost impossible to discriminate.” He stood up again and started walking down the central aisle. “As long as they don’t come in with a rifle strapped to their backs, we’ll do what we can to provide a healing touch.”