James Patterson: Woman of God

“Yes. I do.”

“What is His idea for us? Why must we suffer so?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. But I know He has a reason.”

She sighed deeply, truly breaking my heart, and got a tighter grip on me. She held on, fiercely.

I didn’t want to cry, but the tears were coming anyway, and I couldn’t get my hands free to wipe them away. I wished I could answer Aziza’s question to my own satisfaction, but sometimes, while failing to save yet another wounded or starving or disease-ridden child, I had the same doubts.

Jemilla whispered, “Try to sleep, Dr. Brigid.”

“You too.”

“I love you, Doctor.”

“Shhhh. Shhhhh. I love you, too.”

What would happen to the people in this place if we were sent home? What would God do?

THAT MORNING, patients lined the benches outside the operating room. Our beds, our operating tables, and the spaces between them were fully occupied.

The medical staff were working like machines-maximum efficiency, no time for rethinking or consulting-and none of us had been trained for this.

I was assisting Colin, whose patient, a twenty-three-year-old BLM soldier named Neil Farley, had refused anesthesia for the infected bullet wound in his thigh. He was gripping the table, thrashing his head from side to side, and groaning, trying not to move his leg but not really managing it.

Farley’s C.O., Captain Bernard Odom, stood at the table, his arms crossed behind his back, feet shoulders’ length apart, at ease as he watched Colin dig for the bullet that had made a roadway for the infection that had traveled far and deep.

“What are you trying to prove, Neil?” Colin asked his writhing patient.

“Just keeping you on your toes, sir,” said the young vet through clenched teeth. Clearly, this show of bravery was to impress his C.O. and was completely counterproductive.

“Neil, you’re wheezing,” I said. “I’m going to give you a shot of Benadryl. It won’t affect your reflexes or anything.”

“You’re sure?”

“Uh-huh. If I learned one thing in my six years in med school, this was it.”

The soldier laughed through his pain. I shot him up with Benadryl, which is not just an antihistamine but also a mild anesthetic. Colin poked around in the wound and finally extracted the bullet. I mopped up.

“When will Farley be good to walk with his backpack?” the captain asked.

“In a few days,” said Colin.

I injected Farley with antibiotics, then gripped his forearm and helped him up into a sitting position.

The captain asked Colin again, “He can walk tomorrow, right?”

“What’s the rush?” Colin asked, peering over his mask at the young officer.

“The rush is that we’re leaving tomorrow at oh six hundred. If he can’t carry his gear, he stays behind.”

“What do you mean, ‘leaving’?” Colin asked.

“Leaving, like, we’re pulling out.”

For the past week, the Black Like Me volunteers had camped inside the settlement walls and patrolled the perimeter in shifts. Now, four days after the massacre of twelve of their troops, their plans to withdraw had firmed up.

Odom had Colin’s full, highly disturbed attention.

“You can’t leave us here,” Colin said stiffly. “Do you know what that would mean? You’re leaving us to die. ”

Odom replied, just as stiffly, “I have my orders, Doctor.”

Farley eased his legs off the table and said to Odom, “I’ll be ready, Captain, just need a good sleep tonight-”

Colin ripped off his mask and said, “Captain. You didn’t hear me. You can’t leave us right now. Zuberi’s goons will come in and kill everyone. We’re relying on you. ”

“You didn’t hear me, Doctor. It’s not my call-”

Colin went around the table and grabbed Odom, pulled him up to his toes, then violently shoved him backward. Odom fell against Berna, who stepped away, and a very surprised-looking Odom went down. Colin leapt at the opportunity to straddle Odom and press a length of PVC pipe across his throat. He then shouted into his face, “ Get your orders changed. Buy us some time. ”

By then, Jimmy Wuster was yelling at Colin, “Hey, hey, Colin, disengage, buddy!” and he tried to pull him off Odom’s body. Farley had also joined the fray, and I screamed, “ Stop, everyone, just stop! ”

Colin got up with a disgusted look on his face and threw the pipe down hard. Farley helped his captain to his feet, limped over to Colin, and extended a hand. As Colin was about to extend his arm, Odom punched Colin in the face.

Colin staggered back, sputtering “Bloody hell,” and clapped a hand over his eye. He was gathering himself to get in a good return punch when Rafi and Ahmed got between Odom and Colin with a stretcher, then swung a new patient onto the table. The patient was old, barely clinging to consciousness.

I bent over him and ripped open his bloody shirt, and Berna tried to take his blood pressure.

I said, “Mister, I’m Dr. Fitzgerald. What’s your name? Tell me what happened.”

The patient couldn’t speak. While I assessed his injuries, Colin paced and vented behind me. He cursed about our situation: the fighting a quarter mile from this room, the lack of even basic supplies, the inability to fix what could be fixed easily anywhere but here.

He was in a crazed state, but he wasn’t crazy.

We were treading water in the center of a full-blown tsunami. I admired Colin for taking a stand, for speaking up, and because he was right.

If BLM left, we were all doomed.

HELL ON earth continued to dominate the O.R. all day, as the sick and injured flew from vicious attacks on their villages and found their way to Kind Hands.

I was verging on heat exhaustion and physical collapse when Dr. Victoria Khalil took the scalpel out of my shaking hand, put her hand on my back, and just kept it there until I looked into her eyes.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “Get out of here.”

I went outside with a bottle of water and a chocolate bar and sat down with my back against a tree.

I was blinking into the setting sun when Colin came outside and sat down with me.

“I would buy you a steak if I could.”

“With fries?”

“Fries and bourbon.”

“Sounds good.” I looked at him. “I should buy you a steak for your eye.”

“That guy,” he said, not laughing. “He sucker punched me.”

“You got your licks in, in your way,” I said.

Colin patted the puffiness around his eye, then said, “Let’s take a walk.”

“Where to?” I asked him.

“Big city. Dancing. Pretty people in nice clothes. All kinds of excitement.”

I laughed, gave him my hand, and he helped me up.

Surprise.

We strolled past our prepubescent guards, holding long guns, and stepped through the gates and outside, into the flat, monochromatic landscape.

To the right of the gates was a thin copse of dead trees that had been stripped of bark, which had been used as firewood. Beyond the trees was the sluggish tributary with steep banks during the drought, a trap for the women and girls who went for water and were cornered there, raped, and sometimes killed, more often than we could track or remember.

Colin and I turned left and walked parallel to the bullet-pocked concrete wall. There was a road out there, which flooded during the rainy season. Now it was a dusty, rutted track that connected the next-closest village, a hundred miles away, with the gates to our settlement.

Colin put his hand lightly to the small of my back. He said, “I must apologize, Brigid.”