Chapter 7
Despite Bruce's doubts, the old man got better. A few days later a young woman came into the store and, thanks to her Hindi lessons with Bruce, Alice was able to figure out that the old man's son had sent her there to ask for help. The woman's husband seemed to have cut himself and now had an infection. When Alice and Bruce arrived at their home that evening, Bruce was able to determine that the infection wasn't serious and patched the man up. The couple paid in homemade curry which Alice and Bruce enjoyed thoroughly around a small fire back at Bruce's little hut.
Bruce insisted that Alice speak Hindi at all times when she was with him, forcing her into conversations about her day. It was hard and Alice's dictionary got a lot of use, but Bruce was admirably patient with her, walking her through phrasing and pronunciation. He continued to tease her about her accent, but she knew that she was getting better, despite his jabs at her.
"I have something for you," he said.
He dug into his bag and tossed something small and shiny at her. She caught it easily in the palm of her hand. It was a little black cell phone, cheap and completely unremarkable. Bruce held a matching phone in his own hand.
"I thought we might need a better way to communicate," he said, "Just in case."
Alice didn't know what 'just in case' might entail, but it probably wasn't a bad idea. She flipped it open. It already had a number programmed in, labeled simply BRUCE.
"It's prepaid," Bruce continued, "Untraceable, of course. I got a few minutes programmed in already."
Alice nodded, turning the phone over and over in her hands. She felt oddly touched by the gesture. A lump was forming in her throat and she swallowed to try to get rid of it.
"Thank you," she said, her voice hoarse despite her best efforts.
There was a pause.
"You're welcome," Bruce replied, his voice soft and sounding slightly awkward.
Alice dropped the phone into her bag and picked up her curry again, not looking at Bruce, feeling a little embarrassed. It was just a stupid phone. After a moment of awkward silence, Alice pulled out her Hindi dictionary and began reciting phrases Bruce had asked her to practice. Smoothly, he transitioned into the roll of teacher and they carried on as if nothing had happened.
The next few weeks became increasingly busy. Word of her contact spread quickly and Alice soon had more people coming to the store looking for a doctor than to buy groceries. She found that they got more use out of their phones than she had expected. She texted him whenever a new "patient" arrived and gave him details and directions. Sometimes, if he wasn't working at the docks, he was able to go to their home right then, while Alice was still working at the store.
Sometimes Bruce would text her a list of supplies and she would make a run to the pharmacy on her way to meet him. The pharmacist started to recognize her as 'the American doctor's assistant' and gave her a generous discount. But even more importantly, he started putting sample packs of powerful drugs into her bags, mostly antibiotics. When Alice showed them to Bruce he didn't speak for a long time, just sat and stared at the boxes of pills. But the look on his face told Alice how very important and precious they were.
No matter what the condition, Alice never turned anyone away, and Bruce was always paid in one way or another. Sometimes it was in cash, but usually it was food. Sometimes it was other things like cloth, or hand made clothes. One man even gave Bruce an old boom box. Alice bought batteries and a few classical and opera CDs, and that night they ate curry and listened to Tosca under the stars.
Bruce leaned back on his elbows, closed his eyes, and mouthed the Italian libretto that Alice had never been able to understand. He looked happy, not snarky or amused, but content. Alice pulled her knees up to her chest and watched him in the dim glow of the dying fire. The music was powerful, even though she couldn't understand the words.
"It's not about the words, Alice."
Her mother's voice, spoken years ago when she was a child, echoed in her head.
"It's about how it makes you feel. You don't have to know the language to understand pain and longing and love. They're already inside you."
"Whose rings are those?"
Bruce's voice startled her so badly that she jumped and dropped the rings around her neck. She hadn't even realized she was holding them, twisting them absently. Bruce's stare was intense enough to make her drop her eyes. She tucked the chain back under her tank top. She didn't know the words in Hindi, so she answered him in English.
"My parents' wedding rings."
Her tone was unintentionally short. She didn't like that he had startled her, that she had let her guard down. She didn't like that he knew this about her. She didn't like that he knew anything about her.
For once, he ignored the fact that she had used English, and his voice remained calm and gentle despite her snippy answer.
"What happened to them?"
Alice wanted to be angry at him for asking her that, for prying into her life. But an image came unbidden to her mind, of Bruce sitting alone, sobbing with his head in his hands. Of a gun shot and a large green secret that she couldn't unsee. And she couldn't bring herself to be angry at him or even to lie. So she told him as much truth as she was able.
"They died."
Her voice was so soft that she wasn't even sure he had heard her. But when she finally looked up, his expression told her that he had heard and, more importantly, understood what she had said and needed nothing more. She was grateful for that. Because she wasn't sure there was anything else she could give him. There were some things that were a part of her, things that had shaped her, that she didn't want to share. They were hers, thoughts and beliefs that no one else would understand, and to explain them would take away their meaning. She needed to keep them to herself. But if Bruce asked, she wasn't sure if she could lie to him.
The next night, Bruce played the CD of some rock band neither of them had ever heard of and Alice kept the Tosca in her bag.
Alice learned much more from Bruce than just language. She watched him carefully when he worked and tried her best to anticipate what he would need, whether it be gauze, or water, or tools. Bruce noticed her efforts and did his best to explain things to her as they worked, encouraging her questions and never making it feel like an imposition. She wasn't squeamish (she had seen her fair share of blood in her life) and she didn't shy away from whatever he needed, though she visibly cringed at the wet crunch as Bruce set a man's broken leg.
It wasn't all bad, of course. The day they delivered the Singhs' baby, a healthy boy, was a very good day. And they were able to help more people than Alice could have possibly imagined. But the more people they helped, the more people talked. Every day the patient list seemed to grow exponentially, and Alice found that she got a lot less sleep and drank a lot more coffee. She gave the Takeris the number to her cell phone so they could call if someone came in looking for her. There were some days that they saw two or three patients, and Alice would stumble to bed in the wee hours of the morning, getting only a few hours sleep before she had to get up and open the store. It wasn't good for her, she knew, but then again she hadn't been terribly keen on taking care of herself for a long time now. And if she could do something good in this world before her body gave out, so much the better. And they were doing good, she could see it every day, and for the first time in a long time, Alice actually wanted to get out of bed in the morning.
But then, Alice had her first really bad day.
She had been dreading this day for weeks now. She always dreaded this day. But it was made even worse by the fact that, instead of sleeping in like she'd planned, she found herself slogging to the market through a steady drizzle of rain in search of a new necklace. The clasp on her old chain had snapped the day before and she'd only just caught it before the rings had slipped away. They jangled in her pocket now, but that was only a temporary solution.
She was about to start haggling over the price of a cheap, nickle-plated number when her phone rang. It was Ambi and as soon as Alice answered, she could tell that something was wrong. Ambi's voice was calm, but forced as she explained what had happened. There had been a shooting nearby. They weren't terribly uncommon and Bruce had been called in for gunshot wounds before. But this wasn't just a simple gunshot wound. It was a little boy. He had been caught in some kind of crossfire and he was bleeding, badly.
She hung up with Ambi and started to text Bruce, but her hands were shaking too badly. Why today? Why did it have to be today? She called him instead and he picked up on the first ring.
"Alice, what's wrong?"
"Please tell me you aren't working."
She hadn't meant for her voice to tremble, but her whole body was shaking. There was a pause on the other end.
"Alice, tell me what happened."
She tried to get a grip on herself as she told him exactly what Ambi had told her. But she couldn't seem to get the damn tremor out of her voice.
When she finished, Bruce's voice came over the line, very calm and very direct.
"Alice, listen to me. I need you to go to the house and try to stop the bleeding. You've seen me do it before, you know what to do."
"But I…"
"I'll be there as soon as I can, but you have to help them get the blood slowed. Understand?"
She nodded before she remembered that he couldn't actually see her.
"Okay. Okay, I'll try."
"I'm on my way."
The phone went dead and for a moment Alice just stood in the dripping rain, staring at the blank screen shaking in her hand. Then she flipped it closed, took a deep breath, and started to run. She knew the back alleys of the city pretty well now, and in no time she was taking a set of stairs two at a time and banging on the door of an upstairs room. A middle aged man let her in, but when he didn't see anyone with her, his face paled.
"He's on his way," Alice gasped, "The doctor's coming."
The boy was lying on a mattress in a corner of the room, a woman crying over him, probably his mother. The boy looked about five years old. The face of a different little boy, much more familiar, flashed in Alice's mind and her stomach lurched, but she pushed it away. The boy was unconscious, but breathing. Blood had soaked through a towel pressed over his abdomen and soaked bright red into the mattress underneath him. Alice pressed a hand on the towel and it made a thick squish under the pressure.
"Another?" she asked, looking up at the man who was standing over her in a daze.
She could feel panic starting to build in her chest and she couldn't think of the word for towel. She pointed frantically at it in her hand.
"Another?"
The man shook his head slowly. Alice tried to hold back her frustration.
"Cloth? Shirt? Anything?"
But she had lost the man to his daze again. It was the woman who answered.
"Yes, yes, I will get it."
As the woman scrambled away, Alice very carefully rolled the boy over on to his side. It looked as if the bullet had gone through cleanly. That was good, it would make it easier when Bruce got here.
The woman came back with a stack of neatly folded shirts. Alice grabbed about two or three and pressed them against the wound on the boy's back, laying him gently back on the mattress. He moaned softly and the woman cried out, rushing to cradle his head in her lap and speaking rapid broken phrases that Alice couldn't understand. She kept working, taking about three more of the shirts and pressing them down over the soaked towel, putting her weight on it. The boy cried out and the woman began to speak frantically, but Alice ignored her. She had to keep pressure on the wound. The boy cried out again and started to struggle feebly. The woman reached out and grabbed Alice's wrists, pulling on them frantically and speaking so rapidly that Alice could barely understand her. But she heard enough to know that she was upset and wanted Alice to stop.
"I can't, I have to stop his blood," she said, her Hindi breaking up as she tried to concentrate on what she was doing.
The woman started slapping angrily at Alice's wrists, trying to make her stop. Finally, Alice grabbed the woman's arm and glared at her.
"You're his mother?" she asked.
The woman nodded, glaring right back at her.
"We want the doctor," she said, her voice angry, "Where is he?"
"He's coming," Alice said, "But I'm here now and I need to stop his blood. Help me."
The mother glared at her for another moment, until her husband stepped up and put a hand on her shoulder. He knelt between her and Alice, and looked up with sorrowful eyes.
"What do we do?"
With the help of the boy's parents, Alice kept applying pressure to the wound, stacking shirts on top of each other as they soaked through. There was so much blood and she couldn't look at his little face, because every time she did, she saw another little boy soaked with blood, and she had to bite back a scream. She could hear the mother's voice, trying to be soothing, but tinged with panic as she spoke to the boy, trying to keep him still.
The minutes ticked by. Alice felt as if an eternity had passed. Where was Bruce? The question played over and over in her mind. Where was he? Her arms ached from pressing down for so long, but she didn't dare to pass the job over to the father. She couldn't. She just held on and waited.
She heard a clatter on the stairs and her heart leapt, just as the boy slowly went limp in his mother's arms. She felt her stomach drop, but she kept holding pressure. Maybe he had just passed out, unconscious. That would probably be for the best, after all, when Bruce stitched him up it was going to hurt like hell. She'd seen it. She heard the door behind her fly open and the running footsteps, but she didn't let go, didn't dare to turn away. She could still save him. She could still save Jacob.
Everything around her was muffled, sights, sounds. She heard Bruce's voice but couldn't understand what he said. She heard the mother's wail as if it was coming from another room. She felt two hands trying to pull her away, but she resisted.
"No," she said, "No, I can do this, I can save him…"
"Alice."
Bruce's soft voice cut sharply through the fog that had clouded her mind. Alice looked around her, dazed. The mother still wailed, her sobs piercing the air as she lay over the body of her son. The father sat very still beside her. Alice allowed Bruce to gently tug her hands away from the blood soaked pile of shirts and pull her to her feet She stared down at her red-stained hand clasped in his as he led her outside. His hands were so much bigger than hers and for some reason that comforted her.
Bruce stopped at the bottom of the stairs and sat. Alice sat beside him. For a moment they just sat together, Alice still staring at her hand now tucked into both of Bruce's larger ones. It was sticky with blood. But not Jacob's blood. Not this time.
Finally, Bruce spoke.
"I'm so sorry, Alice."
Alice looked up at him. He was staring at her in that intense way he had, which usually made her feel uncomfortable. But she didn't feel uncomfortable now. She didn't feel anything. She met his stare blankly. For the first time, Bruce was the one to drop his gaze.
"I tried to get here, I did everything I could."
His voice sounded desperate and Alice took pity on him. She squeezed his hand.
"I know," she whispered.
Bruce shook his head.
"I shouldn't have sent you here on your own. I'm sorry, Alice, I am so very sorry."
Alice glanced up the stairs, where the wails of the sobbing mother could just barely be heard over the noise of the busy street.
"Yeah. So am I."
They sat in silence for another moment. Then Alice spoke, almost without meaning to.
"It's my brother's birthday today."
She could sense Bruce staring at her, but she didn't meet his eyes. She just looked out into the street crowd, not really seeing them. She could still see his face, his smile, hear his childish giggle. She could also see his blank staring eyes, the odd angle of his tiny body. And the blood.
"How old is he?" Bruce asked.
Alice knew she should lie. It would be an easy lie, a lie of omission, not even really a lie at all. But her mouth was working without her brain's permission.
"He would have been fifteen," she said, "If he hadn't died ten years ago."
Bruce didn't say anything. He didn't say he was sorry, or that he knew how she felt, or any of the other bullshit that people say to make themselves feel better. What he did was grip her hand a little tighter in his own and pretend not to notice the tear that meandered down her cheek.
After several moments, Bruce spoke again.
"Come on."
He got to his feet, pulling Alice up with him. She stumbled a little and Bruce caught her arm to steady her. Her arms and her back ached, her legs trembled, and she was just so tired.
"Jesus," Bruce muttered, concern lining his face.
Alice waved away the look.
"I'm okay," she said, standing up straight though not without effort, "I think I'm just hungry. I haven't eaten since this morning."
He didn't look entirely convinced, but he didn't argue with her.
"Then let's get some food into you."
They made their way through the crowded streets, Bruce keeping a tight hold on Alice's hand. She followed him blindly, too tired to pay much attention to where they were going. She was too tired to do much of anything but put one foot in front of the other. They stopped at a street vendor, and Bruce got a couple boxes of something to eat. Alice wasn't sure what it was, but it smelled divine and she realized that she really was hungry.
The walk to Bruce's house was a blur that she barely remembered. She didn't even remember agreeing to go to Bruce's house, but it didn't really matter, she supposed. They stopped at the water pump at the end of the street and Alice washed her hands and splashed cold water on her face, which helped to wake her up a little. Bruce deposited her on his mattress, plopped a Styrofoam box in her lap and put a fork in her hand. He then sat cross-legged across from her with his own box of food, and watched her eat. She concentrated on bringing the food to her mouth for a while, but it felt like exhausting work. She ate about half the contents before she felt like she just couldn't lift one more mouthful.
She glanced outside. The sun was getting low in the sky already. How long had she been here? She had lost track of time. She closed the box and started to get up.
"I really should go," she said, "It's getting late."
Bruce was up much faster than Alice would have thought possible.
"I'd feel better if you waited for a while," he said, his voice low and soothing, "Just rest for a little bit. It's not that late yet."
Though she was tempted by his offer, Alice shook her head and forced herself to stay on her feet.
"No, I'm okay, I feel a lot better now. I really should go home and try to get some sleep, I have to work in the morning."
Bruce's eyes narrowed.
"At least let me make sure you get back alright."
Alice shook her head, smiling.
"Really, there's no need. I'm fine. I'll see you tomorrow."
Even though Bruce still looked like he might protest, Alice left. The air was hot and muggy, and wrapped around her like a felt blanket. It was hard to breathe it in, but she forced a deep breath anyway and headed in the general direction of her bed. It was a walk she'd made hundreds of times. She could probably do it in her sleep, something she had the feeling she was testing right now. She was just so tired.
The dusk slowly closed in around her as the walk dragged on, and street lights started to blink on erratically around her. Half asleep and running on autopilot, Alice didn't notice the man walk into her path until she actually bumped into him. She stumbled back and chuckled.
"Sorry, I'm sorry," she said, smiling and looking up.
The man was not smiling back. He just stared down at her with dark emotionless eyes. Alice had been so busy saving lives that she had almost forgotten what Death looked like. She had stared into the face of Death before and she recognized the feeling now, the certainty that the next breaths you took were going to be your last and then it would all be over. And now, just as she had so many other times, she let that feeling wash over her, relief rather than fear.
Someone cracked her over the back of the head. She hit the pavement and had time for one final thought.
Finally… I didn't even see it coming…
