A Vision of Fire (19 page)

CHAPTER 26

A
couple hours later Qanooni called back from the Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo. He was working through lunch at his desk. Caitlin told him there was a medical emergency in Iran and she needed to get there ASAP.

“The Country Office in the Islamic Republic of Iran has—how shall I put it? Insubstantial influence over the Ministry of Health.”

“I am aware of that, Mr. Director, but the condition of a patient there may have a great impact on patients here and in Haiti.”

“This must be serious,” he said thoughtfully. “You called me ‘Mr. Director.' ”

“Sir—”

“And now ‘sir,' ” he said.

“—this
is
urgent,” she pleaded. “I don't have time to file a formal request. Is there any way you can get me in?”

“Based on something so vague? No. If you can write something that can, perhaps, expand upon what little you've told me?”

Expand?
she thought.
The minds of young people are being assaulted by a force that only animals and I can detect. Why don't I just say
that
? Or hell, why not just stick out my right hand and
think
it at him?

Then a text from Ben arrived. It was just one word:
Done
.

Caitlin quickly talked her way off the call and phoned him.

“Ben—are you serious?”

“Very.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

“You can thank Mohammed Larijani, a translator at the Permanent Mission. He's the one who's making it happen. He's telling the Iranian ambassador that an American doctor needs to consult with Iranian doctors. Very good propaganda for them. You don't mind being used that way, do you?”

“Not at all.” She didn't have time to work through the double meaning his tone implied.

“I hope it's worth it,” he added.

“It will be,” she said as she went to her bedroom and began packing. “Ben, are you okay?”

“I'm fine. My friend in Jammu is alive, his girlfriend's in the hospital.”

“That's good. But I mean—”

“I know what you mean. Have a safe trip.”

“I will. Hey, Ben?”

“What?”

“A psychiatrist walks into an Iranian bar. She orders scotch with crow.”

Ben was silent.

“Not even a chuckle?” she asked.

“Not now. Not today.”

“I'm sorry you feel like that,” she said sincerely. “We'll talk when I get back.”

“I'll text the details of your trip. Mohammed thinks you can get on the two o'clock Aeroflot flight. I have to go now.”

She said thanks again and good-bye, ended the call, and did what she always did when there was a challenge: looked ahead. She called her father and asked if he could please come back to the city. He agreed, of course. He always did.

Caitlin felt terrible all over. It was partly the ever-ready generosity of her father, partly the aftershock of what Ben had said to her, but she couldn't stop feelings of guilt from clouding her mind. Still, she had a job to do.

Jacob didn't help her self-regard. She had never taken two trips so closely together. She kept him home from school so they could have a half day together but he was furious throughout, making a point of ignoring her with abrupt turns of his back at first and then acting as if she were invisible. Finally, as her time to leave approached, Jacob simply removed himself. He sat in his room with his eyes closed and without hearing aids. If he sensed her coming into his room to say good-bye—and she suspected he did—he did not acknowledge it.

Caitlin had learned years ago that during these rare angry moments, any touch—tapping his hand or hugging his shoulders—would be akin to slapping him. It didn't leave her with many choices. But she could, and did, sit across his desk from him for several minutes so that he knew she was present. She kept her hands placed near him, not touching, so he could smell her hand lotion. And she noticed that his ankle was in contact with the leg of the desk, which had a slight wobble, so she knew he felt it as she wrote a note on his Museum of Natural History dinosaur notepad, which would be waiting in his line of sight when he opened his eyes.

I love you, Jacob
, it said.
I'll Skype you as soon as I get a connection and I'll be right back. XOXO

Her father gave her a big hug before she headed out to the waiting car.

“Don't worry about Jacob,” he said.

“Of course I'm going to worry about him,” she said, sighing.

“I mean it, Miss Caitlin O'Hara,” he said as if he were reprimanding her thirty years ago. “You have to save all your worrying for yourself on this trip. I want extra caution from you, hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Zero risks. I don't care who needs help, you find someone else to help them.”

“It's just one boy in a hospital bed. No natural disasters to run from.” She tried to smile.

He kissed her forehead. “God, I hope so.”

Just before Caitlin sat in the waiting sedan, Ben called with good news: she would not have to swing by the United Nations to pick up her papers. Not only would the Iranian ambassador's wife meet her at the airport, Caitlin was invited to ride with them and their staff on the state jet.

A smile spread across Caitlin's face. She thanked him again. He told her not to mention it. And meant just that.

She reached JFK and was met by a member of the mission staff, who advised her to put her head scarf on before they boarded. Caitlin reached into her carry-on and tied on her scarf—a present from Ben on one of their trips. He'd grabbed it from a nearby bazaar after she'd forgotten hers at the hotel, and the laughter they shared over its cheesy print had always trumped her vanity. She was then taken to the gate and across the tarmac to the waiting aircraft. The wife of the permanent representative of Iran welcomed Caitlin to join her fortuitously timed trip home to greet a new baby niece. After a period of courteous chitchat Caitlin curled into a plush fold-down seat with an eye mask and instantly slept. Exhaustion had finally caught up with her, and the thirteen hours felt like a gift.

She slept through the flight, a continuous rest for the first time in weeks, until the same staff member who had met her at the airport woke her.

“We will be landing within the hour,” the young man told her.

With the hum of the jet engines sounding especially loud in ears still full of cottony sleep, and the kick of guilt already starting again in her gut, Caitlin navigated to the restroom with her carry-on bag. She changed into clothes she hadn't worn in years: tight jeans; a crisp, white Pink-brand shirt; and a bright red Yves Saint Laurent knee-
length coat with long sleeves. She chose black eyeliner and mascara and a heightened but natural shade of lipstick, then applied them all a bit more strongly than she ordinarily would have. Finally she added short black suede boots with high heels and tied a red-and-blue Hermès Liberty scarf over her hair, carefully winding the ends around her neck. Ben's cheesy scarf would not be appropriate in Tehran. It did not escape her sense of irony that she was preening for a theocracy in a way she never had for any man.

When she reentered the cabin, the representative's wife, chatting on her phone, smiled and nodded approvingly. It was a small thing, but it felt good to have done something right.

Tehran's time was eleven thirty in the morning. Caitlin's concern about getting to Atash as soon as possible had made its way from Ben to Mohammed to the representative. The ambassador's wife informed Caitlin that her guide would meet them at Imam Khomeini International Airport and take her directly to the hospital. At their private gate she was introduced to a woman in a severe black and gold head scarf and designer sunglasses pushed back on her head. She introduced herself as Maryam, no last name, and spent little time coordinating with the representative's wife before ushering Caitlin through customs to a black sedan.

The windows of the car were smoked to near-opacity and Caitlin wondered during their half-hour ride whether she was supposed to pretend she was not really there, or that the city was not there around her. Maryam, sharing the backseat with her, only gave Caitlin's form a once-over before spending the rest of the ride on her phone in Farsi.

Caitlin glimpsed what she could through the windows and briefly mourned what she would not be able to do on this trip. Under any other circumstance she would have treasured the opportunity to see Tehran, a city she'd long hoped to explore. As it was, the driver used only expressways and the city didn't seem that different from any other. There were wider avenues than in New York, shorter buildings but with more massive proportions, something broader about the
windows, fewer glass fronts. But she didn't have the time to move closer and really look.

The expressway passed near a boulevard that was crammed sidewalk to sidewalk with people. The color green was prominent in banners and she could hear the chanting roar from the gathering.

“A protest?” she asked, though Maryam was still on the phone.

“Yes,” Maryam said. “Economic. The women bus drivers have not been paid in a month.”

But to Caitlin's ears, the protest had sounded much more aggressive than that. She wondered whether here, too, people were feeling the tensions of a world on edge.

They merged onto a slightly smaller highway and greenery increased between the buildings. A handful of men and women stood together in a small park, moving slowly through a Tai Chi sequence. Caitlin was mildly shocked to see this Chinese practice in Iran, and the sliding and angular arm motions instantly reminded her of Maanik and Gaelle's movements.

A possible Mongolian connection right there
, she thought as the sedan pulled in at the hospital. Connecting Mongolian to Chinese would certainly be a smaller step than tying Mongolian to Viking.

At the hospital, Maryam sat with her in reception while Caitlin quickly Skyped Jacob. Dressed in his pajamas and eating a Popsicle, the boy barely signed to her with one hand.

Finally she said, “Jacob, I want you to understand something. It's very important. The young man I'm visiting—he might die. That's why I had to come.”

Jacob didn't say much, but he seemed to snap back to his usual, empathetic self and he blew her two kisses before ending the chat.

When the tablet closed, Maryam escorted Caitlin to Atash's floor. Their entrance to Atash's room was barred by a doctor who was not impressed with two female visitors—until Maryam held up a card that looked like an ID. The doctor did not miraculously develop a sense of courtesy, but he did walk away.

“I will also interpret for you,” Maryam said as they entered the hospital room.

Caitlin had not expected the sight that greeted them. She knew the young man had suffered third-degree burns over three-quarters of his body and would be fully swathed in bandages. She knew he was being kept alive by an array of vascular tubes and catheters. None of that surprised her. But Caitlin had not anticipated his trying to turn toward her, from the shoulders, when she entered the room.

“Does he know you?” Maryam asked.

“No . . . ,” Caitlin replied, a trace of hesitation in her voice, though she did not know why.

Caitlin did not approach the bed from the side but circled it, seeing if his movements would follow her. They did. Her heart ached for the boy and for his circumstances. She recognized the flowerless, impersonal feel of an unvisited room, an unloved person, an abandonment far worse than the burns that had immobilized him.

He was not only awake, he was murmuring. Maryam leaned over his head to listen.

After a moment she said, “This is not Farsi.”

“Do you recognize it?”

The young woman shook her head once, sharply.

A wave of fierce energy rushed through Caitlin—she knew what was coming next, why she had hesitated when asked if the boy knew her. She had been here before. Not in this room, not with him, but with Maanik and Gaelle.

Atash's hands moved as much as the bolsters allowed him. His left arm trembled to the shoulder as the hand fought to point away from his body. His right hand moved up diagonally, just inches but enough for Caitlin to recognize one of Maanik's superlatives.

She pulled out her cell phone and held it up to record the gestures.

“No!” Maryam snapped.

“Please, this may help him! Someone else has to see—”

“No, absolutely.” She was not demonstrative about her insistence,
simply firm in a way that told Caitlin there was no point in arguing. She suspected this was a rule meant to benefit not the patient but the paranoia of a totalitarian regime.

She stowed her cell phone, leaned over Atash, and listened. There were the guttural consonants, the whirring of Asiatic “r”s.

“Ask him to speak in Farsi, please,” she said.

Maryam leaned forward but before she finished the question Atash changed. His hands fixed rigidly and his utterances shifted in tone. The higher language disappeared, replaced by prolonged and very quiet grunts.

Caitlin felt her hands tighten helplessly. She knew the young man was in agony. She could only think of one way to communicate that might work, but both his hands were bandaged. She reached out with her left hand—the madame in Haiti had directed her to use her left hand with the snake; Jacob had sensed the ocean with his left—and lightly touched one of the only bare areas of Atash's skin, his throat.

Something exploded inside Caitlin's head. It was fast and heavy and pressed the sides of her skull outward, like the throb of a headache frozen painfully in place. Then it pushed through and was outside her body—pressure rolling around her, forcing her eyelids shut. She could not open her mouth to scream but she felt the cry in her throat.

She forced herself to open her eyes. The white of the walls, of the bandages, had been transformed into dark rock and ice—jagged towers of it coming into focus far behind the dark, rectangular columns that were in front of her. And a man, a pale young man, was communicating with hands and arms and strange but familiar words—leaning forward with urgency, begging, almost bowing with his pleading.