Peter Cawdron - Xenophobia

“But what about you?” Bower asked.

“This is my country. If I leave then I am giving up on her. I cannot do that. If all the good people leave there will be no one left but the evil, and I cannot stand that thought.”

Bower was silent.

Kowalski went to say something, but Alile cut him off with one, sharp word.

“Go.”

It wasn’t a request, neither was it an order. It was a plea.

Kowalski stood up, rubbing his hands over his face, rubbing his fingers in his eyes as though he were clearing out grit.

“Promise me,” Bower said, talking to Alile. “Promise me you will leave before it’s too late. Promise me you’ll make a run for the border when the time comes.”

“I promise.”

Kowalski hugged Alile, which took the young lady by surprise. She held her hands away from his body so her bloodied gloves didn’t mar his clothing. Kowalski didn’t seem to care. His face was set like stone. Bower hugged the two of them, tears running down her cheeks.

After a couple of seconds, Kowalski pulled back. Bower stepped away as Kowalski took Alile by the shoulders saying, “With people like you, there is hope for Malawi.”

Alile nodded.

Bower felt her lower lip wavering as she went to say goodbye. The words never came. She leaned in and kissed Alile on each cheek.

“It is OK,” Alile said. “You have done more than could have been asked of you. Thank you. One day, Malawi will be free, and we will meet again.”

Bower acknowledged her without saying anything. Words felt cheap.

She and Kowalski stepped out into the twilight as the Hummer pulled up, parking in front of the truck. Walking down the stairs leading out of the station, Bower felt as though she was sinking deeper in despair with each downward step. She’d done all she could for Alile and the other staff and patients, and yet guilt gnawing at her heart condemned her for leaving them.

“This is shit,” Kowalski said, turning to Bower as they walked toward the waiting soldiers. “Some bloody world we live in. Someone comes from another world to visit, and we abandon each other, we panic and abandon our sense of humanity. What did these aliens come to see? Mindless animals? Because that’s all there is here, that’s all they’ll find.”

Bower swallowed the lump in her throat.

The roar of the diesel engine sprung to life, breaking the moment. Bower climbed up in the cab of the truck trying not to cry. Kowalski got in the Hummer. It was only when Bower got seated she realized he’d not followed her. She could see him sitting in the rear of the Hummer with his back to her. It was nothing personal, she understood that, and yet it hurt just the same. Kowalski was probably as disgusted at himself as she was at herself for taking the easy way out. By separating from her, though, she couldn’t help but feel condemned for abandoning the hospital. In reality, she told herself, his decision was probably unthinking and practical, as there wasn’t a lot of room in the cab of the truck, but it hurt her nonetheless. For her, the tension between them felt unresolved.

As they pulled out of the courtyard, Bower saw Alile standing there, her arms limp by her side. A pang of guilt struck at Bower’s heart. She wanted to wave to her, but she couldn’t. There was no joy in this parting, none for either of them.

The hotel was less than four miles away but the journey took several hours. As they drove through the darkened streets, sporadic gunfire broke out, echoing off the buildings. In the distance, up on the hinterland, Bower could see flashes of light, explosions rocking the jungle road they’d traveled during the day.

The staff at the hotel were pleased to see them pull up, making a fuss of the soldiers, telling them they could stay for free. Jameson commented quietly to Bower that he hadn’t even thought about money until they’d pulled up out front of the aging building, and he’d wondered if they’d take an IOU from the US Army.

From the hotel’s perspective, having US soldiers on the premises provided a degree of security in a city slowly sliding toward anarchy. The hotel gave them five rooms at one end of the third floor. Jameson arranged for his soldiers to pull sentry duty and set Bower and Kowalski up in the middle room, with strict instructions to stay clear of the windows.

Bower had the first shower. In the sweltering heat of the early evening, a cool shower felt refreshing while the soap seemed to clean more than just the pores in her skin. After getting dressed, Bower stepped out of the bathroom, determined to talk further with Kowalski.

Kowalski was sitting on the bed. He handed her a can of Coca-Cola, saying, “It’s a little hot.”

“Isn’t everything in Malawi?” Bower asked, popping the ring on top of the can. “Mitch, about what happened back there. I—”

“I know what you’re going to say,” Kowalski said. “It’s a triage decision, isn’t it? You can’t save everyone, so you choose those you can save. And you choose them based on those with the best chance of surviving. You’ve got to be cold, you’ve got to be clinical, you’ve got to be realistic.”

Bower sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. Actually, she wasn’t going to say that at all. She wasn’t too sure what she was going to say, only that she was struggling to separate selfishness from self-preservation. She felt conflicted. For years, she and her right-leaning brother back in England had argued about the role of altruism. He’d taken the position that self-preservation trumped all other notions, that when it came down to it, people would do whatever they had to in order to save their own hides. She’d disagreed, saying she was giving her life in medical service to others less fortunate, but when the crunch came all her idealistic platitudes had proven worthless. Did that make her weak? Did that make her bad? Flawed? Or just human?

She was silent.

Kowalski breathed deeply. “It just sucks, you know?”

Bower nodded and sipped at the warm Coca-Cola. It tasted disgusting, but she was past caring. Kowalski was staring at her, but his mind was elsewhere. His voice was soft, considerate. A glazed look sat behind his thin-rimmed glasses.

“While I was an intern in Poland, so very many years ago, we had a football stadium collapse. High winds brought down part of the roof, trapping several of the spectators, but that wasn’t the worst of the incident. People panicked. They must have thought the whole place was going to cave-in. They ran for their lives. They pushed, they shoved, they fought to get out of the stadium. Eighty-four people died, crushed to death in the stampede.”

Bower swallowed.

“I was supposed to be working the graveyard shift in the emergency department but they called me in when the casualties started piling up in the ambulance bay. My mentor was an old German doctor by the name of Hans Grosen. I turned up and he gave me a whiteboard marker. He told me to start numbering the patients outside, grading them from one to five based on the severity of their injuries, writing my medical opinion on their foreheads in the form of a single number. What he didn’t tell me was why.”

Kowalski took his glasses off, wiping a tear from his eye.

“I assumed he’d give the fives priority, but he only ever called for the threes and fours. The ones and twos survived with pain management administered by the paramedics.

“Not one of the fives survived beyond midnight, and he knew that would happen, the bastard. I hated him for that. God, how I hated him, and yet he was right. We treated almost two hundred people that night, and we only lost eleven souls. All but one of them carried a five on their forehead.”

Kowalski breathed deeply, composing himself.

“To this day, I can’t pick up a blue whiteboard marker without my hands shaking uncontrollably. I’m fine with black, green or red, but just looking at a blue marker brings me out in a cold sweat.”