Thirty Girls (36 page)

Priscilla?

The person’s head turned slowly. No, came a soft voice. Priscilla is not he-ah tonight.

They both jumped, startled by another shot. It seemed to be farther off, down Ndege Road. Joe came tearing past her, jacket flaps open. Sheila! he screamed. Answer me!

Her voice screamed back. Get the car!

Joe spun back around and went through the garage side door. The pleated garage door went clattering up. A motor started and a big square car backed out, lurched forward in a tight turn and skidded off down the gravel. Jane followed it, jogging behind the red lights floating down the driveway. At the turn it became dark and she kept running blindly. Around the corner she came in sight of the end of the driveway and the brownish streetlight past it. On the ground the flashlight made a triangle of light, picking up pebbles in the dirt.

Beside the flashlight was Sheila’s seated silhouette. Across her lap was a body. The car pulled up and its headlights shone on Sheila bent over Harry. Her arms and shirt were stained dark with blood.

The car door flipped open and Joe was out. He crouched down in front of them, then ran back to the car and returned with a towel. He tucked it gently under Harry’s head. Jane got close enough to see half of Harry’s face covered with blood. Help us, Sheila said.

They lifted Harry and carried him to the car. Sheila, not letting go of his shoulder, backed awkwardly into the back seat while Joe and Jane held his legs. They placed him down carefully, stretched across the seat, resting on Sheila.

We are not waiting for the ambulance, Sheila said. Come on. The towel had fallen and Jane picked it up. It was dark and wet. Sheila took it and made a pillow for Harry in her lap.

Murray, unlock us. Murray grabbed a key hanging from the rearview mirror and unlocked the padlock at the gate, unwrapped the chain and swung back the gate.

Joe spoke to him in Swahili, telling him to go back to the house. Jane, he said, get in. Jane got in the front seat.

Come on, Sheila said. Hurry.

The car swung onto the Karen Road and met a pair of headlights coming toward them. It was a police car with an unlit light on the roof. Joe rolled down his window, not stopping, just slowing down. Our son is badly injured, we’re taking him to the hospital.

The policeman started to answer but whatever he said was lost as they drove past.

Another police car appeared behind the first. Jane watched the cars pull up to the gate where Murray was locking up, looking tentative.

One’s turning around, Jane said. The second car zoomed after them, catching up. The policeman called out the window, Follow us. The car sped ahead.

Sheila looked up for a moment, checking that Joe was going fast enough, then turned back down toward Harry. She muttered, You’re going to be okay, Harry. We’re getting you to the hospital. Just stay with us, my darling. We’re getting help. My darling, you’ve been shot. Then she added with disbelief, Someone shot you.

In a different voice she said, to the front seat, He has a pulse.

No one else was in that car. There was only Harry with his mother cradling his head and her low voice murmuring. You’re going to be all right. We’re going to get you fixed. Don’t worry. Listen. I’m right here. Dad’s taking us. It’s going to be fine. Just hang in there.

The ride was endless. Then when they arrived at the hospital, it seemed to have taken only a minute. The car swooped to the emergency entrance. Joe ran in and came out with two orderlies in white pushing a stretcher on clanging wheels. The unmoving body in a gray T-shirt was lifted by strangers out of the car and laid onto the stretcher. One of Harry’s sneakers was gone and his foot bare. In the yellow light Jane saw half his face smeared dark red and the other half the color of white stone
with an eye closed in it. Joe and Sheila stood with their hips close to the stretcher.

I’ll park the car, Jane said. Joe’s head nodded, without looking in her direction. The stretcher jangled inside.

Jane got behind the wheel of the big car. Her foot couldn’t reach the pedal. She groped under the seat for a latch to pull the seat forward and felt rusted rods and sharp seat supports. She found a lever, but nothing budged. She perched at the edge of the seat and gripped the steering wheel and started the motor. When she released the clutch, the car jumped forward, hit the curb and stalled. She started it again and backed up in a series of jerks, finally stuttering into a dark parking area with the sign
Staff Parking Only
. A road led her one way past the entrance and away from the hospital. It was quickly dark. At the first side road she did an inefficient three-point turn, hoping no cars would come, and drove back to a different hospital entrance where she found another parking area with few cars and no people in sight. She parked and turned off the motor. She got out. Her body felt stripped inside. Normally she would have been on guard in a deserted place like this at night, but normal fear was replaced by a larger terror.

She headed for the creamy light of the emergency entrance. Her thoughts seemed both shattered in pieces and finely focused. Please God, she thought. Please God, she said out loud. She did not believe in God, but if he did exist, this was how it would feel to have him nearby, as if everything were clear.

There was no one at the first counter behind a glass window. The interior of the hospital looked like the 1950s with wooden chairs cushioned in green leatherette and yellowed walls with brown trim and aluminum ashtray stands. A plastic clock said it was ten of twelve. At the next window without glass she found a person. The woman had light-colored cheekbones as if they’d been bleached. Jane asked her where she could find Harry O’Day. The woman glanced at the sheet beside her elbow. This patient has just now been taken to intensive care, she said. It is this way.

This patient. He was alive. He’s still here, she said to herself, and caught herself.
Still here
. It implied it wouldn’t last.

Jane sat in the waiting area of the ICU. An older man in a Hawaiian shirt arrived, apparently a doctor. He went into the nurses’ station and used the phone, then entered the double doors. A couple around Joe and Sheila’s age came into the waiting room. The woman had long white hair, belted trousers and silver bracelets on both forearms. She walked directly to Jane. You are here for Harry? How is he?

Alive, was all Jane could say. I’m Diana, she said. And this is Lorenzo. The man beside her had drooping eyelids, combed-back hair and wore red Moroccan slippers. He bowed and shook Jane’s hand. So we wait, Diana said.

The next time the automatic doors swung open, Joe stepped out with the man in the Hawaiian shirt, their friend Dr. Ross. Dr. Ross spoke. Harry was on life support. He’d been shot in the left side of his face and a bullet was lodged in his brain. There was no point trying to remove the bullet. He’s alive, Dr. Ross said. But the brain is no longer working.

Andy arrived, hurrying down the hall, long hair swinging and sneakers springy. Joe brought him through the automatic doors. Some time later, he came out.

His face told Jane it was unspeakable. Still, she asked him, How is it?

Bad, he said.

They sat together. Jane realized that this must have been the hospital where Harry had done Reiki with his girlfriend. He was in the same intensive care unit as the man who made him faint.

When the sky grew light in the upper windows of the room, Jane and Andy left the hospital. They drove back to Karen in the O’Days’ car with Andy at the wheel. He was not a talker and Jane was glad to be beside a silent person. She kept dropping into sleep, then jerking awake.

Hey, Andy said. Take some shut-eye. She was asleep when they arrived at the house. They collected the things Sheila and Joe had asked for—clothes, an address book, paper and pens. Jane called Lana, waking her, then Andy made a number of phone calls. Jane went to Harry’s room and stood in the doorway. She looked to see if there was anything she could bring him. She thought, Will he ever come back here? At the corner of a low bookshelf she saw a chess trophy. It had his name on it. She had no idea he played chess. When she went back to the kitchen Andy was gone. She sat at the butcher block where she’d sat the night
before with Harry. This can’t be happening, she said to herself. In times of trauma, one just thought clichés.

Andy walked in from outside. He’d been next door talking to Murray. On the drive back to the hospital he told her what Murray had said.

Something’s not right about the story, Andy said. But you never get the whole story here. Murray did recognize one of the guys last night. He said he knew his cousin, whatever that means.

The morning traffic into Nairobi was heavy and slow. They stopped and started. Off the side of the road stood half-built concrete structures in abandoned construction sites. A tissuey dust hung in the early sun, the air was loud with engines. The paths along the road were full of people, a woman balancing a plastic basin on her head, a man in a heavy overcoat, children in green uniforms with their white socks pulled up, all of them unaware of Harry.

This wasn’t supposed to happen here, Jane said. We just returned from a war zone.

This is a war zone, Andy said. Haven’t you noticed?

They passed a man walking quickly along the path, a soiled white T-shirt fluttering above his bare ass.

Yikes, Jane said. They both laughed shallowly. It was strange to laugh.

They drove through the timeless morning.

You know Harry sort of broke it off with me last night, she said. She thought she should report this to someone. She also thought, Could that have been only last night?

Yeah. Andy nodded. I know. His face had signs of fatigue, but he was nonetheless placid, one of those people mild and stalwart in a crisis.

He told you?

Yeah. When we were planning the trip.

She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to hear more or not, but didn’t stop to decide. What did he say?

He said you always had too many people around. You were never alone.

It was a shock to hear he thought that. It had not occurred to her he would care. As usual Harry had noticed an important thing. She didn’t know him as well as she thought. That’s true, she said. I had no idea.

He liked you, though, Andy said.

She caught the past tense and in a split second wondered if he was thinking of Harry that way or just the change with Jane.

Harry hadn’t exactly said it to her. Suddenly it was important that things be said out loud. He did?

Yes. He told me right off when he met you. When you went up to the Ngongs? He was trying to decide if he should go up north to work with the cows. Or I could stay, he said, and go back to Lana’s and kiss that girl Jane.

People kept arriving in the waiting room. It occurred to Jane how probably more bad things than good happened in waiting rooms.

Lana came sweeping down the hall in a linen duster and leather boots with Pierre beside her. The area around Pierre’s eyes looked scorched. Lana hugged Jane and her face cracked into unabashed tears. Later she sat uncharacteristically still with a brown scarf across her shoulders and an inward gaze, as if meditating with open eyes. Pierre kept leaving to smoke despite the ashtray stands everywhere. Two young men with tangled hair and both wearing torn shorts sat with Andy, other paragliders. One had a cast on his arm. Other people Harry’s age turned up: a blond girl with dreadlocks talking to everyone in a whisper, smiling and grasping their hands. Meeting Jane, she gave her a kiss. I’ve heard about you, she said and raised one eyebrow. A pair of dark-skinned women arrived. It was Priscilla with her sister Rose, the woman Jane had seen outside the staff house in the dark.

Everyone spoke in low voices. What was being done? They were seeing if … they were just … no, no decision had been made … wasn’t breathing on his own … brain activity … had Sheila slept?… Emma was flying in from Ireland … once Emma got here, well, then … the police had caught one of the guys, not the one who did the shooting … what had happened to the askari?… what Murray said was …

They sat in the waiting room, piecing together facts. The facts kept Harry close.

Murray was home with his aunt and younger cousins when he heard noise at the gate. He opened the door and listened and heard voices down at the road. His aunt told him to leave it alone. Stay: Kaa hapa. Waja.

But he wanted to see what was going on. In the trees he stopped when he heard banging on the fence. The askari was not there. The fence was high with barbed wire curling on top so he could not see who was behind it. Then a figure could be seen at the gate, banging on it with a club. He looked drunk. Murray ran back to the house and got Harry. When he and Harry returned, all was silent. The road was empty. Harry asked him how many had been there, maybe doubting him, and Murray said three. But they are now gone, Murray said.

Then they were not. A wide dark silhouette came forward out of the blackness across the street, three figures making one brown shadow on the road.

Harry held his hand up. Jambo, he said, but the hand was saying, Keep back. Hakuna shida hapa, he said: No trouble here. He was not shouting, Murray said. Not angry. Everyone could picture that with Harry. Leave us alone, eh? he said.

Murray said their eyes looked full of drugs. They were not so young, but they were not old. Open the gate, one said, swinging a stick. This one wore an army coat. Another in a cap was cradling his stomach. Murray saw why. He was holding a gun, it glinted in the streetlight. He thought Harry must have seen it also, but Harry kept speaking.

No, Bwana, we do not open. He held the lock as if to say, This stays so. Go on, Harry said. Nothing for you here. Murray tried to alert him to the gun, but Harry was not looking his way.

The one in the middle stepped forward and lifted the gun. The two on either side stepped away. The man’s face was very hard. Murray turned and ran. While running, he heard the shot and was too frightened to look back right away. He hid in the trees and watched the figures as they ran down the road, away from town. After they were gone he hurried back to Harry.