Chapter 2
27 May, 19:15, Central Africa Time Zone
Kibogora Hospital, Kirambo, Rwanda
John Watson stood up from the hospital bed he had been kneeling next to and stretched his back. It had been another long day and he was beginning to run on fumes. Massaging his temple, he turned to the young woman sitting on the opposite bedside.
"Please, tell your sister that she will be just fine," he said in French, giving the young woman a reassuring, if tired, smile. As the young woman translated to the little girl lying in bed, the girl gave John a weak smile.
"Thank you, doctor," she said in accented English.
"You're very welcome," he replied dropping his hand and giving her shoulder a soft rub. "I'll be back to check in on her in the morning. If you need anything during the night, the nurses will be here." He gave the elder sister another reassuring smile and made some notes for the overnight nurse in the chart hanging on the wall over the bed. Tucking his pen into the breast pocket of his blue scrubs, John made his way across the quiet ward, stopping at the nurse's station just outside the swinging doors.
"How is it looking for the rest of the night?" he asked Adelaide, the head nurse in charge for the night shift. John looked over her shoulder in the direction of the waiting room. There were a few people sitting on the metal folding chairs that sat under flickering fluorescent lights. A handful of patients lay on gurneys that lined the dimly lit hall beyond the waiting room.
"Should be quiet," Adelaide gestured at the large chalkboard to her left. The various patient wards in Kibogora Hospital were noted with the number of patients currently in residence. The other side of the board showed the list of hospital staff on duty. "Plus, Dr. Cameron just came on duty for the evening. Go on and get some rest, Dr. Watson," she handed John a small stack of charts. "But before you go, I need signatures and notes on these." John exhaled an exaggerated, put upon sigh and Adelaide smiled.
"Ta, Adelaide." John pulled his pen back out of his breast pocket and picked up the stack. He came around the desk, kicked out the empty chair next to the blonde nurse, and sat down heavily, rolling his shoulders as he opened the chart on top.
"Your nine month anniversary in Rwanda is next week, am I right?" she asked.
"That it is. Hard to believe it, eh?" John shook his head as he scrawled notes on the first patient's chart. John had been at Kibogora only seven weeks, but was serving his second round at the hospital in Rwanda's Western intara. The World Health Organization liked to keep their doctors rotating through hospitals on ten week schedule. It was grueling, but kept the staff from growing "too attached," something easily done in the remote and emotionally exhausting circumstances. "I've been in the country for nearly a year but it seems like I arrived just yesterday."
"We should celebrate! I have a bit of that whiskey left over from last time…" she gave John a warm, hopeful smile.
John liked Adelaide – her blonde hair and Australian accent made him think of sunshine and beaches. On the night two months ago that John and two other doctors had arrived for their second tour at Kibogora, there had been a low-key party. The evening had begun innocently enough with said bottle of whiskey and some dancing, but had ended with John and Adelaide back in his room on the hospital's compound. She had been, erm, obliging and the sex had been nice, but John wasn't angling for a repeat. Hookups were common among the World Health Organization staff on the compound, but with only a dozen or so WHO doctors and nurses at Kibogora Hospital at any one time, John always felt that things got a bit, well, incestuous. Flipping to the next chart, John kept his head down and avoided Adelaide's eye.
"John, we can be adults, I think," she said quietly, but with a hint of laughter in her voice. "You and I don't have any sort of agreement. If we did, I would be having a few words with you about the heady looks you keep giving Dr. Wexler."
John felt a hot flush creep above the neckline of his scrubs and snapped his head up from his charts to gape at the smiling nurse. Adelaide let out a chuckle at the look on his face.
"Don't worry, your secret crush is safe with me," she mimed locking her lips closed. "He is devilishly handsome with his dark hair and eyes. Though I don't typically go for the older man myself." She took the finished charts from John and sorted them into the piles already on her desk. "Just think about it, the party I mean. It's not every day that one of us lasts nine months in this country."
"You're right. It would be fun," John said as he stood, pushing in his chair and stretching. "I'm going to try and find something to eat in the canteen before I head back to my room. You want anything?"
"No, I'm good," she waived a half-eaten sleeve of biscuits at him in illustration. "You go on. I'll see you at rounds in the morning."
"Cheers. Come get me if you need anything tonight," he said and set off down the hall towards the hospital's small canteen. The place was quiet at this hour, a stark contrast of the chaos that typically descended each morning. The WHO had set up a command center in Rwanda four years ago after a particularly virulent strain of cholera blazed through the more rural parts of the country. After a near epidemic of the infectious disease broke out in the refugee camps following the conflict of the 1990s, the occasional outbreak was more rare, but not uncommon. However the numbers of cases of cholera had seen an uptick in the last few years prompting WHO and other health organizations to send doctors and nurses to assist local hospitals across the country. Cholera was nasty business: a messy and ravishing infection that left its victims weak and dehydrated in only a matter of hours after presentation. John and the rest of the WHO staff at Kibogora worked long hours in a sea of (controlled) chaos and noise. These evening hours where calm and quiet settled in the wards and halls of the small rural hospital were always a welcome reprieve.
John passed patient wards and heard the noises of both the ill and the recovering. Someone was singing in a low voice as John passed by one open door and across the hall he heard a stifled groan. Finally reaching the canteen, he saw a few hospital staff sitting at one of the otherwise abandoned tables. He raised his hand in greeting, but continued to the table in the back of the room that held tea, coffee, and hopefully, a small bite of something to eat. Armed with a cup of hot, milky tea and a handful of dried dates, John left the main hospital building and headed across the compound to the low cinderblock building that housed the hospital staff. Overhead, a long roll of thunder rumbled and the first fat drops of a rainstorm landed on the dusty dirt at John's feet. He hastily unlocked the door to his room, flicked on the overhead light and set his tea on the table at his bedside. Another roll of thunder, this time accompanied with a flash of lightning, and the solitary bulb affixed to the ceiling flickered briefly. Electricity wasn't always a given in these remote parts of the mountains. John just hoped that it lasted until morning - the generators wouldn't last the night if they had to be started up now.
His room wasn't much, but compared to the accommodations during his time in Afghanistan, it was downright palatial. A single metal framed bed stood in one corner of the smallish room. Sheets tucked in severe hospital corners were mostly hidden by a gigantic mosquito net that hung from the ceiling. A serviceable armoire stood in the opposite corner and a few open shelves by the door held the remainder of John's personal possessions. A couple photographs including one of John's sister, Harriet and her partner, as well as a group photo of some soldiers in desert fatigues, squinting against the sun, stood side by side on the shelf alongside a couple of medical texts, a well-thumbed copy of As I Lay Dying, and a handsome leather medical bag, embossed with the initials JHW. John set his stethoscope on the shelf and pulled his scrub top over his head, wiping some of the sweat off his face before tossing it in a basket by the armoire. A fresh t-shirt and flannel in hand, he set off down the hall to the communal bathroom to get ready for bed. Fifteen minutes later, the thunder had turned into nothing more than a passing rainstorm, and John was ensconced in his mosquito net, with his mobile and cooling tea. He glanced at his watch, surprised to see it was only 9:35 and pulled up his email, thinking of dashing a quick note off to Harry. The slow roll of thunder receding into the distance was strangely soothing and soon the day's exhaustion caught up to him. John felt his eyelids begin to droop, and before long, he was dead asleep.