Kids and doctors slept in the clinic building. Everyone else used the row of tents, some old-fashioned canvas jobs, a few nylon domes, everything in between. Kath used one of the canvas ones, with the flaps tied up during the day to let in air, mosquito netting in place to try to keep out bugs.
Melanie was already inside, stripped to tank top and panties, sprawled face down on the sheet-covered mattress. If Kath was tired, Melanie was probably flattened after the night she had. But Kath paused a moment anyway, to see if she was really asleep. Admired the curve of her shoulder, the slope of her back where it arced to her hip. Melanie had the most amazing, artful shape to her.
Quietly, moving slowly, Kath pulled off her own dusty, rank clothes, then sat with her journal, squinting in the dark to write a handful of words about the image of those kids in the road, the nerve-wracking groans of the woman, the sticky-hot night air. These days, she mostly kept the diary out of habit, and her handwriting had turned tiny, scrunched—trying to conserve space, since she didn’t know when she’d ever find another blank book. She figured she’d keep writing until she ran out of space.
Kath tried to be quiet, but Melanie woke up anyway. “Hmm?”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” she said.
“Hm, s’okay, c’mere.”
Kath set aside the book, collapsed onto the mattress, and Melanie gathered her into her arms. They clung to each other, body to body, and Kath’s near-constant, watchful tension from the night melted a couple of degrees. The scent of Melanie, the soap-and-sweat of her, the warmth of her skin, made Kath feel a little drunk. Melanie shifted, brought her mouth to Kath’s, and they kissed, a little desperately. Melanie sighed, like her own tension was finally fading.
“You okay?” Kath asked.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “We’re going to be back there in two years helping that same woman deliver another baby, there’ll be twenty babies running around that camp and they’ll all be starving—”
Kath hugged her. Melanie shuddered a moment. Trying not to cry, unable not to cry. Kath didn’t know what to tell her.
“That’s optimistic,” she said finally.
“What?”
“That any of us are still going to be around in two years.”
Melanie pulled away and stared at her a moment, then busted out laughing. They fell together in another tight hug, conveying powerful comfort. Anchoring each other.
“Where would you be now?” Kath whispered.
“Med school. I wanted to go to med school.” She laughed, but the laughter turned to crying, like it often did. She didn’t try to hide it this time, and Kath held her till she fell back asleep.
Just a year or so into their time camping out at the clinic, a fire flattened the strip mall on the other side of the street. Could have been anything that started it, from a leaking gas line and static build up to lightning. Some traveler tossing a lit cigarette. With no one to fight the fire, it burned walls to the ground, collapsed roofs, and kept going. The few shade trees spaced out on the sidewalk went up like torches, and folk at the clinic stayed up all night stomping on ashes and dumping water on hot spots to keep the fire from jumping the road and claiming their home. The barricade of derelict cars, trucks, and trailers had already been put in place by then, but after the fire died down they hauled, towed, and wrangled the barricade another fifty feet out, and added on to it, to increase their buffer zone. To increase the perception of safety. They also spent six months demolishing buildings up and down their own street. Took a long time, clearing all that space with sledgehammers and controlled burns, but it gave them great line of sight after. And more space for gardening. After security, gardening was their biggest preoccupation.
It had only taken a few years for the entire character of that street, the neighborhood surrounding the clinic, to change. When they sat around at night, drinking whatever bottle of booze turned up, and asked how this could happen, they only had to look around.
The next day, after stopping by the kitchen tent for a cup of water and an apple, Kath went on her daily walk around the barricade. She usually did this in the morning, but after the long night she slept past noon. Melanie had already gotten up and was probably at the clinic helping with the work of the day. Kath would check in in a little while, see how the new arrivals were getting on.
The air was sticky, humid, and the sun was roasting. Calendar said it was April, but this felt like July. She was dripping sweat in moments. She wiped her face and pulled the brim of her baseball cap down to better block the glare.
The clinic housed thirty-two people these days. Thirty-five, she revised. Most of the clinic residents were up and about, working in garden patches, tinkering with the couple of cars they still had, cleaning and maintaining the camp. A half-dozen stood at the barricade with weapons, watching. Kath waved when people waved at her, said hello. The day felt ordinary.
On the west side of the compound, Dr. Dennis stood outside the barricade and hit golf balls with a driver. Flung them up the road, one after the other. When it was safe enough he’d go collect them, and for some of the kids it was a game, to see how many golf balls they could recover for him. A few always stayed lost, but Dennis kept hitting them anyway. Swing, a whoosh of air, thwack. He’d shade his eyes to follow the arc of the ball until it hit the ground a hundred yards or so on. Kath didn’t know enough about golf to tell if he was any good. Didn’t seem to bother him, that he might never play a real round of golf ever again. He just seemed to enjoy hitting balls to nowhere.
Kath sat on the edge of the barricade and watched for a little while.
“Morning,” Dennis said finally.
“What happens when you run out?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll start hitting rocks. But, maybe I won’t run out. Maybe I’ll get back to Palm Springs, when everything gets back to normal.”
This is normal, she thought. She was thinking that more and more, but never said it out loud.
“You want to try it?” Dennis asked.
“No thanks. I’m just taking a walk.”
“Enjoy.”
“You too.”
He took another ball from the nylon bag at his feet, set it on a bare patch of ground, and lined up for the next swing.
Kath finished her circle around the compound and headed to the squat, concrete building in the middle.
The front room was crowded. The compound’s handful of resident kids swarmed. They were supposed to be settling down for the impromptu class one of the nurses taught every other day or so, but something had set them off. A giant spider, Kath gathered from the shouting. The room was loud. Anita , one of the clinic nurses, was trying to settle them down, yelling in both English and Spanish, but nothing worked.
Kath’s three refugees cringed away from it all, huddled at the side of the room, watching cautiously. She grabbed a couple of picture books from the basket under one of the chairs and called to Chloë. “Let’s go get some air, okay?”
The girl considered a moment, lips pressed in a suspicious frown. She was looking marginally better today, Kath thought. Some color in her cheeks. But then, she couldn’t look much worse than she had last night, standing in the dark, bleakly washed out by headlights. The two little ones were hunched up next to her, staring at the proceedings with round, glazed eyes. Maybe trying to decide if this was dangerous. Chloë picked up their hands and tugged them toward the door.
Kath found a shady spot around the side of the building where the clinic’s pots of lettuce plants lived. Wasn’t exactly a garden, but it was kind of a nice place to spend a few quiet moments.
“Want to do the honors?” Kath asked, opening to the first page of one of the books. The little ones scooted closer, drawn by the colors and pictures of round friendly animals, putting their hands on the paper.