I arrived in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, at sundown. The sky was heavy with clouds, and there was a line of red at the horizon. I walked a half mile past the far end of the airport, to the bus stop, and I waited inside the shelter for the coach to Magwi.
I was going there on faith, according to some kind of voice in my head that had suggested rather strongly that this was what I was meant to do.
And I had my own reasons.
I had to find out what had happened after I left the continent wrapped in bandages, going in and out of consciousness and having almost no awareness until I’d passed a month in a hospital in Amsterdam.
What news I had, had come to me from Kind Hands. A paycheck had been wired, my health insurance had paid the tab, and in a brief email from Human Resources, I learned that my former colleagues, Drs. Wuster, Bailey, and Khalil, had each returned home, but KH wasn’t permitted to give out contact information.
I was told that Jup Vander was missing and presumed dead. And there was no information on the whereabouts of a volunteer nurse by the name of Sabeena Gaol.
As the rim of the earth burned red, five people and I waited for a bus in a lean-to shelter alongside Route A43. There was a tree across the road, two hobbled goats standing beneath it. The bus shed with the corrugated tin roof, the bone-thin animals, the nearly bare trees, and the brown dirt beneath them were more familiar to me now than Fenway Park.
Out on the highway, two cones of light bore down on us. The man sitting next to me stood up and pointed down the road, saying, “Miss. The bus. She comes.”
Chapter 34
THE BUS that rumbled and creaked and squealed to a stop looked as though it had been a veteran of many crashes. The side panels and hood were different colors. Windows were broken. The grille was gone. The tailpipe dragged. But there was a sign in the windshield that read God Is Good.
Riding in one of these coaches was a test of faith all by itself. Juba Line was a serial killer. Buses collided with cars and carts, ran over pedestrians, lost control and flipped over in the rainy season, when the dirt roads turned into slippery clay and tires could no more get traction on mud than they could if the roads had been paved with ice.
It was raining as I boarded the bus with my bags and went to the long bench seat in the rear. I shared my sweets with everyone but the chickens. I thought of the experience that had brought me back to Africa: the warmth of a presence inside my chest, the reverberation that was something like a voice in my head, and the images I had seen that I knew I hadn’t created by myself.
I wondered again if I had slipped over the edge into psychosis, or if I was truly following a vision from God.
Meanwhile, the rain poured down, and the bus slid along the road. After three hours of nauseating twists and sloppy turns, it eventually stopped at the side of Magwi’s main drag.
As we passengers exited the bus, a hard, slanting rain beat on the rusted, multicolored chassis and the people who were running toward the bus shelter. The nearly toothless fellow in his twenties who had ridden next to me since the start approached me when I was out of the rain. He had told me that his name was Kwame, and now asked, “May I give you a ride, lady?”
I thanked him very much, and, even though he was a stranger, I liked him. I got into the passenger side of his 1970s Dodge Charger, parked just beyond the shed.
“Where are you going?” asked Kwame.
“Is there a clinic here?” I asked him.
“Yes, lady.”
He gave me a towel from the backseat, and I thanked him again and dried my face.
Kwame released the brake and revved his engine. We shot off the mark as the rain came down harder.
Chapter 35
THE RAIN sheeted down the wiperless car windows. I peered through the watery curtain and took in the shapes of the buildings along the darkened main street.
The strip of road, the spindly trees, the silhouettes of the squat buildings, and the tall spike of the radio tower all felt as familiar to me as if I’d lived in Magwi for years. That both creeped me out and made me feel that I was supposed to be here.
We cleared the small town and continued on down the road that was barely recognizable as a road. And I said to Kwame, “It’s right up there.”
Kwame gave me a sidelong glance, and I read his expression. He knew quite well where the clinic was, but how did I know? Then something like recognition lit up in his eyes.
That, I didn’t understand at all.
He turned the car off the main road, onto a ribbon of muddy track. A few minutes later, he braked his junker outside a long wooden building with a sign reading MAGWI CLINIC under the peak of the roof. Tents were set up under the red acacia trees-a small village, I thought, of patients under care.
A porch ran the length of the building and was furnished with white plastic chairs, some of them occupied by patients. Light glowed behind the glass, and I could hear the soft roar of a generator over the rain pattering on tarps, the car’s rusted body, and a peaked tin roof.
I thanked Kwame for the ride, and I paid him in dollars and a packet of M &M’s. He was happy.
“When are you going back to the airport?”
I told him that I didn’t know, but for sure it wouldn’t be tonight.
“I work at the post office, lady, if you need me.”
I wanted to hug him, but that wasn’t the right thing to do. So I shook his hand, gathered my bags, pulled up the hood of my raincoat, and got out of the car. I waved as the old Dodge went slip-sliding away down the track to the road that divided the town.
When the taillights were out of view, I felt a flash of panic. What the hell was I doing here when I could be in Paris, or Brugge, or Panama City, or Malibu-anywhere but this place? Oh, right. I’d had a vision of Magwi, and now I was here.
I reached inside my raincoat pocket and felt for the rosary the cabdriver in Rome had given to me. It wasn’t in any of my pockets, and after a hasty search of my leather bag, I found that it wasn’t there, either. I’d lost the rosary somewhere.
I turned back to face the clinic and saw that the people on the porch were staring at the dazed and dripping woman standing calf deep in the muddy water.
A moment passed. And then a young woman got up from her chair and leaned over the porch railing.
“Doctor?” she said.
“Yes. I’m a doctor.”
She clapped her hands together, smiled broadly, and said, “Welcome to this place. Come this way, Doctor.”
She ran down the steps to meet me, led me up to the porch, and opened the door for me.
I was in a corridor paneled with plywood and lined with people. A light flickered on the wall, and I saw a painted door at the far end. A teenage boy who was in the line pointed.
“Doctor is there.”
I said thank you and kept walking. If Sabeena had passed through Magwi, she might have stopped at this clinic. A doctor here might know where I could find her.
If Sabeena was still alive.
I knocked on the door, and the sound of my knuckles on wood suddenly brought reality home.
I had been rash and probably crazy to travel for a day and a half to get to Magwi without any contacts or confirmation that I was on the right track.
I had gone on faith, and I knew what would happen now.
The door would open, and a doctor would say that he had never heard of Sabeena Gaol. Right after that, he would close the door in my face.
I realized in that instant that I didn’t have a backup plan, and once that door opened, I had no plan at all.
The door swung open, and inside the wedge of light, I saw a scowling face, a face I loved.
She said to me, “Brigid? This can’t be you.”
I reached out to embrace Sabeena, the woman who had saved my life. But I didn’t make it.