Old Lovers Don't Die (23 page)

“I will look forward to your reply,” Bundarungu said, sitting down and blowing more smoke in the direction of the Rwandan businessman.

Lee then declared the meeting closed and four boys brought hot food from the kitchen for all the guests. The boys, Kim ensured, were checked as they entered the room, and again as they left. There was little discussion, and Kim could see that Bosco wasn’t happy with the outcome. As soon as he finished eating, he nodded to his bodyguards and they left without saying anything to Kim or Lee. Lee, she could see, was seething at the way Bosco had treated the delegation. He stormed out saying nothing to Kim as he left. It was a few hours later that she received a phone call from him.

“Did you check that all six iPads were placed back in the secure briefcase?” Lee screamed at her again.

Kim’s heart raced; she had left that to Cusang.

“No,” she replied, “that was Cusang’s responsibility, but I will now go and check to see if there is one remaining.”

“You stupid woman. Need I remind you the party does not tolerate mistakes, nor do I. There had better be one remaining in the meeting room. Otherwise you will go back to China tomorrow in disgrace.”

Kim went back to the meeting room, but the door was locked. She walked around the outside and then saw the open window. Below the open window were a series of small footprints. She went back and unlocked the door, and looked inside the room. There was no iPad to be seen, just a small slip of torn paper which suggested that not all the handwritten notes had been shredded. She had trusted Cusang to clean up and secure all the iPads. Perhaps Cusang had found the extra iPad, however the footprints outside the open window concerned her. She shouted for Cusang who came running from the main office.

“Did you find an extra iPad?” she asked barely containing her fury. Cusang shook her head. Kim turned and headed to the dormitory where the two boys who were trusted to serve would be getting ready to go to bed.

“Stand outside, everyone,” she shouted as she walked into the boy’s dormitory door, eyes blazing.

“Search the room,” she said over her shoulder to Cusang who had caught up with her. Together they turned the beds over and looked in all the drawers but found nothing.

“Go and tell them they will all stand outside in the cold until they tell us where the iPad is.”

For the next hour, the six boys stood outside on the stones, not saying a word. Kim watched from the office, increasingly annoyed by their resistance. Aware that Lee would soon be phoning, she marched out and picked up the youngest of the boys by the collar dragging him into the office. Once Inside the office, she closed the door and beat the young boy with her hands and fists until he cowered crying in the corner.

“Where is the iPad?” she screamed at him.

The knock at the door distracted her from continuing her beating.

“Who is it?” she shouted angrily.

“Cusang.”

Kim opened the door and as she did, the young boy ran crying from the room. She was about to grab him when Cusang held up the iPad.

“Which one had it?”

“I found it in one of the other dormitories in the bed of a friend of one of the boys outside, a boy called Michelangelo. When I took it from him, he was using it to play minesweeper with that new American volunteer, Cindy, who has befriended him.”

“The information on the iPad tells about the supply of arms by China to Bosco Bundarungu. If she read or understood any of that information, it could expose our operation and embarrass the Chinese/Rwandan governments. Not to mention what Lee would do to us.”

“Those six boys standing outside and Michelangelo can go to Bosco’s training camp tonight, in case they have learnt anything.”

“They might, with any luck, be killed in the fighting at the airport next week,” added Cusang with a wry smile

“From our perspective, that would be the best outcome. Any potential evidence would then be buried.”

“Cusang, what about that do gooder American teacher? If she saw anything on that iPad, that could be real trouble. Have her come to the office in the morning and I will interrogate her.”

“She has left this evening to visit a friend at the hospital at Garanyi near the border. She will be away, she said, for three days.”

“I will talk to her when she gets back and when Lee Kaiping calls in a few minutes, I am going to tell him that the iPad was found safe in the secure room. Do you understand that, Cusang?”

“I understand that,” Cusang said as she bowed and walked out of the office.

Christian was looking forward to the weekend and then the following week driving up to the orphanage to meet up with Cindy again. It had been a busy week. In his last case, he had had to drill a hole in the skull of a young woman who had fallen off the back of a motorbike. With no crash helmet, he had suspected that she might have fractured her skull. However, they had run out of chemicals in the X-Ray Department, so he could not be certain. When her coma scale started to decrease and she became less and less responsive, he knew intervention was the only way to save her. Fortunately, the drill hole had been right over her brain hematoma and he was able to release the pressure. He was sure she was going to recover. As he bandaged the wound, he started thinking about Isabella who was due to arrive on Sunday. Her phone call from Kigali the previous day had surprised him. Her voice was different from when he had first met her in Cape Town nine years ago. There was a sense of control and maturity in the way that she now talked. In many ways, he guessed she would now be like a stranger, despite their previous intimacy.

“Christian.”

He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the doorway, which led into theatre. Doctor Nikita stood in his civilian clothes with a concerned look on his face, peering across the top of his rimless glasses towards Christian.

“There has been a major trauma across the border at Goma airport. Bosco and Kariba’s gangs shooting at each other. A diesel fuel tanker has caught fire and exploded. There are approximately eighty dead and unknown number injured. Medicines sans Frontiers are flying in a team via Goma, and they have asked whether we can do the initial triage until they get there. We will send you now to help triage and see whether there are any patients we could possibly treat here.”

“Do you have intravenous fluids, analgesia, and bandages that I can take in a kit, and is Satilde available to come with me? If there are burn patients, we will need to do some surgical debridement and having someone to look after the anaesthetic would be helpful.”

“That’s already taken care of; Jean Miguel is going to be your driver. We have resurrected the old ambulance that can transport four patients if necessary. An emergency kit, which we have, has all of the requirements for trauma triage. The hospital will provide emergency documents to cross the border.”

“If it’s okay, I will also take some surgical scrubs from theatre. I’ll also pick up a few things from the Sudani’s on the way.”

“Good, Jean Miguel will have everything ready in thirty minutes.”

The resurrected ambulance looked like something straight out of a M.A.S.H. movie. The green camouflage cab had had a small, red cross painted on each door. The windscreen was completely missing. The rear of the ambulance, with its old green canvas covering torn in so many places, that ultraviolet radiation was a significant risk to any patient being transported. None of the tires appeared to have any tread, but it had been cleaned, and was ready to transport patients. Christian just hoped that it had avoided the terminal brake disease that most vehicles in Rwanda seem to be infected with. The consolation and contrast was Jean Miguel. Fit and athletic, sporting a broad smile, he was in his early twenties and literally bounced out of the truck when he saw Christian emerge from the front of the hospital.

“Dr. Chris, Dr. Chris, over this way.” He waved one hand, holding the cab door open.

Christian walked to the passenger door, Satilde, he noticed, was already there, and she moved across on the bench seat to make room for him. He could see through the torn canvas that there were two permanent stretchers and two collapsible stretchers loaded as well a very large wooden box, which he assumed was the emergency kit. As he climbed into the cab next to Satilde, he said,

“Thank you for coming. Have you checked everything in the back?”

“Yes, Dr. Chris. Dr. Nikita and I went through everything twice and Jean Miguel has all the papers.”

The border crossing was in two parts. For those on foot there was a separate queue, which on both sides of the border stretched for half a kilometre and was three persons wide. He could only imagine the uncontrolled chaos in 1994 when 10,000 to 14,000 tried to squeeze through following the eruption of the Nyirangongo volcano in the Congo. For those traveling by road, there was a queue of five vehicles waiting to be processed and passed through the checkpoint. Five military personnel with automatic weapons supervised the process on either side of the border. Jean Miguel handed the official papers out the window, said a few words, and they were quickly waved through. Jean Miguel explained that the hospital was about fifteen minutes from the border. Hawker’s stands dotted the roadside, selling everything from fruit to souvenirs, and clothing.

The hospital entrance was a large wrought iron gate that had been tied open. On either side, a white plastic fence extended for twenty metres. A small wire fence continued from the plastic fence around the perimeter interrupted every four or five metres by missing segments. Driving through the gates, Christian could see the sealed road stretched and curved eight hundred metres up a slight hill to the hospital entrance. Six large white marble-like pillars dominated the front of the hospital. Set back from the pillars was main section of the hospital. Unlike Garanyi hospital, it was constructed out of rendered plaster, and had been painted white. Difficult he imagined to keep clean but true to its historical 1950s development.

On the flat lawn in the front of the hospital, tents were being rapidly erected. Blue plastic sheets had been thrown on the ground as a makeshift floor. Jean Miguel drove past the tents and stopped on the roadway in front of the pillars. As Christian opened the cab door, he was greeted by multiple voices, speaking rapidly in French. Satilde slid along the seat and quickly joined him next to the truck. She addressed one of the men in a white coat who was closest to Christian and appeared to be in charge. After a few minutes, she explained to Christian that they wanted to take the ambulance out to the airport to retrieve more patients. They would unload the emergency kit and take it down to where the tents were being assembled. The wards were already overloaded and they would need to triage the new patients down in the tents.

Christian looked back down the hill and in the distance could see the first ambulance approaching. They would hardly have time to get the emergency kit unpacked. Under Jean Miguel’s direction, the hospital workers lifted the emergency kit off the back of the ambulance and Christian followed it down the hill to the first of the tents, which had now been fully erected. The side of the tent, closest to the main entrance, had been rolled up and the space within would allow thirty patients to be laid on the floor. Christian shouted to Jean Miguel to have the emergency box placed close to the entrance. He could hear the sound of the ambulance and knew that they must only be six or seven minutes away. Burn patients needed to have the intravenous fluids and pain relief ready as they arrived.

Five minutes later the first ambulance stopped in front of the tent. Six patients were brought in and placed on the clear plastic. Christian was shocked to see that they were all young boys ranging in age he thought from ten to sixteen years of age. Some were grimacing, others were crying out unable to bear the pain of the burns. He quickly scanned the young boys, looking for ongoing bleeding. Beneath two of them, he could see a red pool of blood starting to enlarge on the blue plastic floor.

“Satilde, these two are going to need IV lines and fluids.”

Christian moved to the first of the two young boys. His pulse was rapid, suggesting significant blood loss. The pair of scissors that he had taken from the emergency kit he used to cut off his bloodstained shorts and T-shirt. He had a bullet wound through the thigh, and the exit wound had destroyed a substantial amount of it, suggesting a high velocity bullet. Fortunately it was on the outer aspect of the thigh, and therefore away from the major artery. It would respond to a pressure dressing. He called Jean Miguel, demonstrating with his hands what he needed. The next boy had a gunshot to the upper arm, which was a flesh wound. That also would respond to dressing. He quickly moved to another young man with a pool of blood developing beneath him. As he approached the young boy, his breathing became rapid. Christian frantically looked for a bleeding site and then with a small sigh, the young boy stopped breathing and died in his arms. Christian closed his eyes and moved on.

By 9 PM he counted, they had twenty-three young men side-by-side in the tent. They had run out of intravenous fluid after the arrival of the twentieth patient. Satilde had called Dr. Nikita for more supplies; however, he could not supply them as the ambulance was already out on another emergency call. Christian realized that some of the boys would die, whom they could save, if they had intravenous fluids. He took his mobile phone out of the zip pocket on his pants. He dialled Mohammed; desperate times needed desperate actions. He quickly explained the situation to Mohammed. Four young men on motorcycles would be there within the hour Mohammed assured him, with as much as they could carry. Would Christian please alert Doctor Nikita? Christian said he would, hoping that Emmanuel would also understand.

Within the hour four motorcyclists arrived, baskets in the front and back bulging with bandages, intravenous fluids, and medications. Satilde and Jean Miguel, whom Christian had quickly taught to insert an intravenous line, moved amongst the remaining boys to give them fluids. Christian estimated that more than forty per cent of the boys whom he triaged had burns covering more than half of their bodies. The ones with the severe third-degree burns were ironically the lucky ones at this stage. Deep third-degree burns melted the two layers of the skin and destroyed the pain receptors. Their pain would come later with skin contraction. The others who had first and second degree burns needed pain relief. Christian decided to call a brief meeting and prioritise treatment. He indicated to everyone the boys who had first and second degree burns. They were to be administered ketamine and were to be regularly examined, to make sure that they were not overloaded with intravenous fluids.

“You need to sleep,” Satilde said as he finished his briefing. “We have done everything we can and we are going to need to do surgical debridement on some of these boys tomorrow.”

Christian could feel the adrenaline ebbing and with the creeping tiredness, he knew from experience, would come a blunting of his surgical sharpness.

“Where do we sleep?”

“The small tent, just behind this one. We are all sleeping there.”

There were still cries of pain as he did one final visual check. Four nurses had arrived from the main hospital and Satilde had given them instructions on dressings and looking after the intravenous fluids. He waited for her to finish giving instructions, and heard her say in French, as she joined him, where they would be if they were needed by any of the patients. The tent was the size of a small room, similar to the one his mother had once taken him camping in the Flinders ranges outside of Adelaide. In the moonlight, he could see four mattresses, each with a sheet and a pillow as well as the outline of a small primus stove with coffee and cups balanced on top. Next to the stove were four fresh bottles of water. He quickly handed one to Satilde before consuming three quarters of one of the other bottles. The constant activity and heat had left him dehydrated. He was also hungry but knew that there would be no food until later that day.

Satilde crawled under her sheet without removing her surgical scrubs. She turned on her side pulling the sheet up over her head and said good night. The sheet pulled up over her head, Christian realized, was going to be her mosquito net. He climbed under his sheet without taking off his surgical scrubs until he realized he was too hot to sleep. Peeling off his surgical top and trousers, he tucked them under his pillow before pulling the sheet over his head fractionally ahead of the first mosquito. Intent on a blood meal it settled on the sheet over his ear, amplifying the annoying buzzing sound. He could not stand it, and swatted at it with his right hand uncertain as to whether he had exterminated it. There was no tell-tale smudge of blood on the sheets and five minutes later, the dreaded sound returned. He wondered whether it was the same mosquito seeking revenge for the attempted assassination, but there was more than one buzzing sound and he knew it had probably passed its bloodsucking message to family and friends.

The next noise to wake him was the pan on the primus stove. He opened his eyes and noticed it was early morning. Exhaustion had overwhelmed the annoying sound of the mosquitoes, so that he had slept. In the corner of the tent was someone he did not recognize cooking tomatoes and eggs. He looked at Christian as he heard him stir and smiled.

“We have brought new supplies,” he said in perfect English. “Mohammed also thought that you would need something to eat which was fresh.”

Christian rubbed his eyes and noticed small red welts on his arm. In the night, his arms had come out from underneath the sheet and the mosquitos had had their revenge. Not everyone, he told himself, got malaria from being bitten; he had to hope that he was one of those. Just in case, he would ask one of Mohammed’s motorcycle couriers to pick up his doxycycline on the next trip back to Garanyi.

“Thank you and tell Mohammed we are extremely grateful.”

Christian pulled his surgical scrubs on and noticed that both Jean Miguel and Satilde had left the tent. As he looked out through the rolled-up front flap, he could see them in the distance already checking intravenous lines and patients. He hurried through the scrambled eggs and tomatoes, understanding the need to have some energy source for the difficult day which lay ahead. A half cup of unfinished coffee that sat next to the primus stove completed his breakfast.