Mary-Margaret asked, “What are you saying, Austin? You want to have this disease?”
“No. Definitely not. But if these people started showing symptoms the day after we left for Mbale, they were exposed well before that, while me and Rashid were still here. We may have been infected then, and are just not symptomatic yet. Right?”
Mary-Margaret nodded. “Just go home.”
Austin looked back down the street to see the remains of the sunset colors in the western sky, realizing that he was buying time while he searched for a decision.
Full of idealism, he’d wrangled his way into a program that sent college kids to Africa to help. And the goal was that general, to help. When he volunteered he said he was open to anything. He wanted to do his small part to make the world a better place. So, in a country where parents are charged tuition to send their kids to any level of school, Austin was assigned to teach street kids—kids who otherwise had zero chance at an education—for free.
But now he was standing on the front porch of a dramatically understaffed hospital full of diseased patients who needed help if they were to have any chance at survival. Even his students were either inside or they had already fled. With quite possibly the same virus swimming in his veins, attacking and bursting his cells, Austin needed to decide if he was going to cower in his dying sponsor’s house, or put his life at real risk to help.
He needed to decide if his convictions ran deep or if he was just a tourist wearing a humanitarian disguise, looking for the most unique pictures to post on his Facebook page. In a shaky voice, Austin replied, “I’m volunteering to help in the hospital.”
Rashid said, “You’re taking away my options with your foolish bravery.”
Austin looked at Rashid. “You don’t have to. Go home. Be safe.”
“No.” Rashid hesitated an awkwardly long time, before he finally managed to say, “I want to help.”
“Rashid, you’re only here because your father wants you to learn about life in the real world.”
Rashid put on a brave face. “I’ve learned enough. I’ll help.”
Mary-Margaret shook her head. “You boys are fools.”
Austin looked at Rashid then back at the nurse. “What do you want us to do?”
“I want you to go home and sleep. Talk about what you think you’re doing, and keep reminding each other that you could be dead in two weeks if you do this. Come see me in the morning if you still want to help.”
Chapter 9
Austin woke when the nightmare of a pygmy pounding on his skull with a hammer became too painful to be just a dream. He sat up in his bed and every part of his body ached. The room was hot. The barest sliver of early morning light came in through the window.
He put his hands to his temples and groaned. Nearly stumbling as he got up, he knelt down beside the bed and pulled his bag out from underneath. He let his face fall on the mattress under the weight of a wave of pain behind his eyes, a throbbing strong enough to take his breath away.
“Jesus Christ, that hurts.”
He found a bottle, made out the aspirin label, and struggled with the childproof cap. Another hammer of pain interrupted the effort. He turned and sat on the cool floor, turned his attention back to the contrary little cap, and managed to remove it. He took out four aspirin and put them in his mouth, knowing he had no water. He and Rashid hadn’t boiled anything the night before and he couldn’t bring himself to drink anything still in the house.
He chewed and grimaced at the bitterness, telling himself over and over again that the taste wasn’t as bad as tequila. He was unable to swallow. His mouth was too dry.
He chewed and chewed, grinding the bitter pills to powder, then mud, as he slowly generated some saliva.
Up on his knees again, Austin propped himself on the bed and rested before standing. Moisture was working its way into his mouth. He chewed some more, managed to swallow the aspirin’s crumbs and decided that standing at just that moment was a bad idea. He eased himself down onto the hard floor, then laid his belly, his chest, and face on the cold tile, and closed his eyes.
After a while, his breathing stabilized, his head pounded less, and he tried to think of what he’d drunk to give himself such a monster hangover. The fragments of memory slowly fell into place in his mind. He was in Mbale. He’d ridden on the back of a boda for hours. The deserted town. The hospital.
“Crap.”
Austin reached up and put a hand on his forehead. He felt hot.
“Crap.”
He sat up and leaned back against his bed. Across the room, Rashid was sleeping on his narrow bed, on his belly with an arm dangling over the side. His hand lay on the floor by a puddle of his last meal, spilled from his stomach.
“Oh, no.”
Despite the headache, Austin sprang across the room and shook Rashid’s shoulder with one hand as he put the tips of his fingers on Rashid’s jugular, feeling for a pulse. Rashid was alive. At least he hadn’t choked to death in his sleep. But his skin was on fire. Austin rolled him onto his back. Reeking vomit was all over Rashid’s face, down his chest, and on the thin mattress.
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” He shook Rashid again. “Wake up. Wake up.”
Rashid didn’t respond.
Austin shook again. “Rashid!”
Nothing.
Austin heaved a few deep breaths. He had to get Rashid to the hospital. The specter of Ebola and bodily fluids screamed at him to step away, but in that moment it didn’t matter. Anyone too sick to wake up was too sick to be at home. He needed a doctor. Austin pushed his arms under Rashid and with all the effort he could muster, he hauled Rashid up.
Chapter 10
Kapchorwa. In the local language, it meant “friendly people.” And they were. Big-hearted, smiling people.
Were.
Thinking about that and starting to feel hopeless, Dr. Littlefield sat on the porch of the hospital and leaned against the wall, feeling stomped on by an extreme lack of sleep. During the night, Dr. Ruhindi fell out of the ranks of caregivers and into the ranks of the patients. The virus hit him hard and fast. Dr. Littlefield suspected that he’d been sick for at least a few days and was hiding the symptoms, just as he knew one of the African nurses was. Just like anyone else, Dr. Ruhindi could only push a sick body so far on willpower. He collapsed late in the night, and by the time the sun was rising, he was barely able to hold himself up on his hands and knees to puke into the bucket by his bed.
Dr. Littlefield looked up the road, hoping to see a medical convoy. It was a hope that was dashed each time he left the ward to take some time to breathe fresh air and rest his bones on the porch.
He wondered what happened to the blood samples he’d sent through Mbale and on to Kampala. The man charged with the task never returned. At the time Littlefield had sent the samples, he didn’t know if the nightmare that crawled up out of the jungle slime and attacked the poor, ignorant farmers of Kapchorwa was Ebola. He suspected it, but told himself for at least a few reasons that it couldn’t be that particular virus.
Ebola, that little bastard of a bug, had popped up earlier in the summer in Sierra Leone in the worst outbreak in history. Was it possible that global warming had changed something important about the ecological balance in Africa and turned it into an optimal, continent-sized petri dish for breeding that virus?
No.
As much as Dr. Littlefield liked to toy with that suspicion, he knew in his heart that a catastrophic Ebola epidemic in Africa was inevitable. With advances in medicine and farming, the population density in Africa had tripled in the past sixty years. Now there were three times as many poverty-stricken people in large swaths of the continent, with a culture and living conditions seemingly designed to increase the body count during disease outbreaks.