An Open Heart (44 page)

“You are a ghost,” Simeon said. “What do you want with me?”

“I’m no ghost.”

“I saw you die. It’s all over Kenyan news.”

“You saw me fall. You saw me being loaded into an ambulance. You did not see me die.”

“But—”

“This man, this doctor sent me a warning.” Okombo paused, stepping forward with the guards. “I owe him my life.”

But Simeon shook his head. “The spell is working. He feels the pain I inflict upon the proxy.”

“Stop.”

“It was you who paid me,” he sneered. “You had to please the Americans.”

“Stop.”

“The gods will not wait. I’ve promised them blood.” Simeon picked up a knife, still dripping with blood from the animal sacrifice. “I will finish him. He is nothing to you.”

“We will stop you,” Okombo said. He motioned to the officers, who lifted their weapons and trained them on the witch doctor.

Simeon knelt at the table, the fire flickering in front of him, dancing in the slick of sweat on his forehead. He lifted a small wooden cup above his head. Then, holding the knife high in the air, he aimed the tip of the dagger toward Jace’s chest.

“No!” Okombo shouted.

Simeon threw the contents of the cup into the fire. Immediately, a cloud of red smoke enveloped the witch doctor, so thick that Jace strained to see only a few inches in front of him.

Jace screamed.

He heard a shot, then footsteps running toward him.

“Fool!” cried the MP. “You’ve shot the daktari.”

“I was aiming at the witch doctor.”

Jace fought for breath and looked down at his chest where a ring of red was spreading.
Weird, I don’t even feel it.

John Okombo waved his arms through the smoke. “Where is Simeon?”

The officers coughed. “He’s gone. Disappeared.”

Jace felt faint. The room was darkening.

He looked at the floor in front of him, noting what appeared to be the seam of a trapdoor beside the goat.
What a charlatan—he only made it look like he disappeared.

Then, blackness.

Okombo pointed to the knife Simeon had apparently dropped as he made his exit. “Cut him down.”

The two officers cut the ropes binding the American surgeon’s wrists and lowered him to the floor.

John Okombo knelt over Jace Rawlings, placing his fingers on his neck. “He has a weak pulse.” He ripped away the shirt to expose a wound entering the chest a few inches below the clavicle. “It must have missed the heart or he would be dead by now.” He motioned with his head. “Call the pilot. Tell him to ready the plane. We need to take him to Bomet.”

“Why not the district hospital? It is closer.”

“There is a Christian mission hospital in Bomet, Tenwek. They will know how to treat him.”

“They can treat him at the district hospital.”

“They will not know how to deal with Okayo’s curse. At Tenwek, they can battle not only for his body, but for his soul.”

The officer nodded and made the call.

“Let’s get him outside. The car should be in the alley.”

John Okombo lifted Jace like a child in his arms, cradling him and carrying him down the wooden stairs.

Once outside, Jace started coughing, spraying blood onto Okombo’s shirt. “Open the back door,” he said. “And get a blanket. The night is cold.”

In Nairobi, at Kenyatta International Airport, Gabby took her seat on British Airways Flight 61 bound for Heathrow. She sat next to a white-haired woman, who smiled and extended her hand. “Tilly Brown,” she said.

“I’m Gabby. Looks like we’re going to be seatmates.”

The woman nodded. “I’ve been on safari. I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. I looked at my bucket list very seriously and decided it was time to visit all those places I’d never been.”

Gabby smiled.
Please don’t tell me about your chemo.

Too late.

“My surgeon said he could save my breast if I had chemo and radiation. It nearly killed me, but I made it. My husband wasn’t so lucky. He died of lung cancer last year and made me promise I’d take a safari to Kenya like we’d always talked.” She paused, fastening her seatbelt. “Were you on safari?”

“Not exactly.”

The woman didn’t take the hint that Gabby didn’t feel much like talking. “So why were you in Kenya? I’ll bet you have a boyfriend in the Peace Corps, don’t you?”

“I was helping in a mission hospital. I’m part of a cardiac surgery team.”

“Oh, my, that must be something! I’ve always thought medical mission work would be the most glamorous life imaginable.”

Gabby sighed.
Not exactly glamorous in the way you might expect.
She smiled at the old traveler and wondered what she would think if she told her the truth, that her friend may have been killed after they’d encountered a vicious spiritual war, that they’d been caught up in dirty Kenyan political games, and that she was on her way home to lick her wounds.

Instead, she just nodded. “Oh. Well. Yes. Glamorous.”

“I’ll bet. Did you see any breast cancer? I hear that women in Kenya have little access to mammograms. You know, if it wasn’t for mammography, I would still be walking around with cancer in my body and I probably still wouldn’t know it. Why, did you know that by the time a breast cancer is the size of a pea that it’s likely been in your body—”

Graciously, the woman hushed while the flight attendant explained emergency procedures in case of a water landing.

Gabby used the opportunity to slip on a sleeping mask to cover her eyes and pulled a blanket up under her chin.

Before she slept, she prayed for Jace Rawlings.

48

Jace fought for consciousness. He wanted to tell them he was alive, not to give up, but the nurse didn’t seem happy about his blood pressure. In fact, he’d heard her tell the doctor that she couldn’t find it.

He tried to breathe, but it felt as if some giant hand was squeezing his chest. The harder he fought to breathe, the more it felt as if movement of any kind was impossible.
Am I strapped down?

He moved his tongue against a hard object.
Am I entubated?

For a moment, he saw, first from below, and then
from above
that a young Kenyan doctor was pumping on his chest.

No wonder I can’t breathe.

“He’s been down for thirty minutes. How long was the flight from Kisii?”

The nurse didn’t know. No one seemed to know anything.

“How about drugs? When is the last time we gave epinephrine?”

Jace looked at the vials of drugs on the top of a rolling cart. A half-dozen little glass vials.

It comes down to this. I’m naked down there and I can’t even cover myself.

I wanted to tell Heather that I loved her.

“His trachea is shifted.” The doctor grabbed a stethoscope. “No breath sounds over here.”

I’ve got a pneumothorax from the bullet ripping through my lung.

A being of light appeared to Jace’s right. An angel?

They communicated without speaking.

Are you here for me?

No.

Then why—

You are Jacob.

Jace understood.
Chosen.

He watched as the Kenyan intern splashed Betadine across his chest.

Funny, I can’t feel you touching me.

“I need a knife.” He paused and then instructed a nurse. “You need to do chest compressions until I get this tube in. If that doesn’t work, I’m calling it.”

Jace watched as the intern made a cut on his left chest lateral to the nipple line. He pushed a clamp into the chest.

That sure looks like it should hurt.

The intern inserted a clear tube that flashed with blood. A lot of blood gushed from the end of the tube, spraying the stretcher, the floor, and the intern.
“Wow. Get me a collection chamber.”

“I’ve never seen so much blood.”

“Call the blood bank.”

“They only have two units of O negative. I just called them a few minutes ago for Dr. Samuels.”

“We need it.” He appeared to be sweating. “Now!”

The intern pushed a stitch through Jace’s skin next to the tube.

Hey! I felt that!

The young doctor secured the tube and felt for a pulse in Jace’s neck. “Weak,” he said, “but I think better.”

He reached up and squeezed an IV bag, quickening the transfer of its liquid contents into a vein in Jace’s arm. “Come on,” he said. “Come back, Dr. Rawlings.”

Another man arrived, this one Caucasian. He wore a white coat. Jace thought he looked like a missionary. “What’s up, Peter?”

“This guy was shot in the left chest. Came in a few minutes ago without a pulse. We coded him. It looks like he had a pneumothorax. Once I put in this tube, he started to respond.”

Immediately, Jace lost the experience of floating. Now, all he felt was the firmness of the stretcher and a sensation of being cold.

Hey, guys, I’m freezing!

Jace reached for the hand of a passing nurse and squeezed. “Hey,” she said, “he’s responding!”

The white doctor’s face appeared over his. “Get him a blanket. Poor guy’s blue.”

“What’s wrong with his feet? They’re blistered.”

“They look burned.” The male voice paused. “And just look at that arm. Looks like someone burned the flesh right down to the muscle.”

Jace listened as a new male voice entered the conversation, English, but with a distinct Kenyan accent. “Daktari, we rescued him from a traditional sacrifice ritual in Kisii. The witch doctor was boiling the organs of some sort of proxy animal.”

The Kenyan intern’s voice. “He may have internal damage.”

The missionary spoke again. “Go see if you can find our chaplain, Kiploni. Tell him to bring the anointing oil. I want him to do a prayer of deliverance.”

The following morning, Evan Martin awoke to the sound of someone pounding on his door.

His first thought was that the vegetable ladies were getting an early start.
Go away. I don’t want to buy any more mangos.

He cleared his throat and ran his fingers through his bed-head hair. “Coming!”

He stepped across the cool floor, still amazed that equatorial Africa could be this cold. He slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and plodded toward the sound of the knocking.

“Daktari Martin!”

“On my way,” he said.

At the door, he fumbled with the keys and unlocked it. He stared at John Otieno across the metal bars. “Morning, Chaplain.”

“Evan,” Otieno said. “They’ve found him.”

“Jace?”

The chaplain nodded. “Dr. Thomas over at Tenwek called. They have Jace in the hospital. He was shot, but he’s alive.”

Evan unlocked the bars.

The chaplain smiled. “Hallelujah!”

Evan returned a grin and allowed himself to be enfolded in the big man’s arms. “Yeah,” he said, finding himself buried in the chaplain’s chest. He managed a muffled “Hallelujah” of his own.

When the chaplain released him, he asked. “How can I get to Tenwek?”

“You can hire a driver. Elisha will take you.”