An Open Heart (26 page)

“Unlikely,” Jace said. “You saw that place. It was a crazy place to put a police checkpoint. They were endangering their own lives, setting up just beyond a blind corner.”

“This is Africa,” Gabby said.

Jace squinted toward the sun. “Still, I don’t think we can afford to go to the police. They may be in on this.”

Gabby touched his shoulder. “This is crazy, Jace. Who would want you dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“So what’s our next move?” Evan asked. “Should we call our MP friend and give our regrets for lunch?”

“I’m sure he has already heard,” Jace said. “The driver would have phoned him.” He looked at Evan and Gabby, making eye contact with them both. “Besides, I’m a little concerned that he may have been in on all of this. He insisted we come on a certain day. He arranges for his driver to pick us up. We just happen to flatten a tire on a police spike strip …”

“Does seem like a lot of coincidences.”

Gabby scratched another blob of dried mud from her dress. “Okay, if the MP set this up, why?”

“Who would benefit from you being gone?” Evan asked.

“Someone afraid I might take their business?”

“And the minister of health would be in on it?”

“If someone paid him enough.” Jace paused, rubbing his bloodstained shoe against the curb. “I’m just guessing. I really have no idea.”

Evan looked over his shoulder at the Karen Hospital looming over them. “If there were surgeons behind such an attack, I’d suspect they’d be at a place like this, somewhere you could attract private patients and charge them Western prices.”

“It really makes no sense. I’m only taking care of the poor patients these doctors wouldn’t want anyway.”

“Then who wants you dead?” Gabby asked.

“I have no idea. Really. No idea.”

“Here comes a matatu,” Evan said. “Let’s catch a ride back toward Kijabe.”

One day, a month before Jace’s graduation from Rift Valley Academy, he had walked into the kitchen and startled his father and sister, who spilled a glass of tea onto the table.

As she scrambled to clean up the spill, Jace studied them for a moment. “What’s up? You guys look like you were solving the world’s problems.”

He watched as Janice and his father exchanged looks.

His father took a deep breath. “We should tell him.”

Jace squinted at them, feeling a knot tighten in his throat. “What?”

His father gestured toward a chair. “Sit down, Jace.”

He obeyed.

“This may be nothing, Jace.”

Jace stared at them. Janice had her hand over her mouth.

“But it may be a legitimate warning.”

“A warning?” he asked.

Janice spoke. “I’ve had two very vivid dreams, Jace.” She halted a moment. “About you. It’s one of those weird dreams where you wake up and you’ve been crying.”

He wasn’t sure what to say. “Okay.”

“Both times, I was talking to Pastor Wally.”

RVA’s minister for the student body.

“Both times it seemed so real.”

“What did he say? Something about me?” Jace shifted in his seat, wondering just what sin he’d committed that was about to be publicly discussed.

“Yes, something about you,” she said. “He told me to invite you to follow Christ. He told me I wouldn’t have many more chances.”

“What?” he said. “What are you saying? I’m going to die or something?”

“I—I don’t know. I just know it seemed so real. I had the distinct feeling that I wouldn’t have many opportunities to talk with you again.”

Jace stood, squeaking the feet of his chair across the floor. “That’s crazy.”

His father nodded. “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” He stood to face his son. “But what if Janice has been warned for a reason?”

“It was a dream, Dad. Nothing else. Janice has dreams like this because this is what she thinks about during the day. We just had spiritual-emphasis week. We’ve been talking about this stuff, so she dreams about it, okay? It’s nothing.”

Jace went to the refrigerator and poured a glass of mango juice.

His father spoke again. “Maybe it
is
nothing, Jace, but there is little of greater importance for you to think about than the eternal destiny of your soul.”

The phrase ticked him off. “What is that?” he mocked, raising his hands to make air quotes: “‘The eternal destiny of my soul.’” He set down his glass on the counter. “That sounds like flaky stuff to me.”

“You know what it means, son. You’ve been around this kind of talk all your life.”

“And all my life I wished we could just talk like normal people.”

“How can I say it so you will hear what I’m saying?”

Jace shook his head. “I don’t know.” He turned and faced away. “It’s not that I don’t want to believe,” he said. “But it just seems like a fairy tale.”

“Too good to be true?”

Jace felt the knot in his throat begin to melt. “Kind of, yes.”

“It’s the gospel, Jace—it
is
too good to be true,” his father said. “But that doesn’t make it any less true.”

Jace looked at them. They stared back with pity on their faces. And at that moment, he pulled away. He didn’t want their sympathy. “I’m Esau, don’t you get it?” he shouted. “I hear the stories, but they don’t matter to me. They are just stories.”

He took a step toward the door, but Janice moved into his path. “You need to hear it again. Maybe you’ll believe.

He shook his head. “I’ve heard it a thousand times,” he said, pushing past. “Lay off!”

That evening, Jace sat across the table from Evan, eating stew and chapatis at Mama Chiku’s.

Jace pulled a generous portion of white ugali through his stew and kept his voice low. “When I went to see Joseph Ole Kosoi this morning, he told me a patient of mine was going to die.”

Evan huffed, “Again?”

Jace nodded. “He gave me a name. I blew it off because it wasn’t the name of any patient I recognized.”

“So, he was wrong. It’s postpump paranoia. Maybe it’s the drugs we’re using here.”

“No,” Jace said, shaking his head. “The name of the patient was Anthony Kimathi.”

Evan’s jaw slackened as he stared at Jace. “Good one. You almost had me on that one.”

Jace leaned forward. “I’m serious, Evan. I didn’t say anything back in Karen because I didn’t want to get Gabby started. You know how she is on all those spooky spiritual things.”

“Joseph Ole told you that Anthony Kimathi was going to die?”

Jace nodded. “I need to know what you’re doing. None of my patients back in America experienced this stuff.”

“I’m doing exactly what I do in America.” His voice trailed off and he shifted in his seat.

“What?”

“We’ve been a bit short on the inhalant anesthetics during the first two cases, but I gave Versed hoping to wipe out their memory.”

Jace sighed. “It didn’t work.”

Evan folded a chapati into a triangle. “You’ve got to admit, this is pretty spooky. How do you explain Beatrice predicting that Michael Kagai was going to die? Or that her mother had HIV? Or now, this?” He cleared his throat. “Maybe God is trying to get your attention.”

Jace shook his head. “What? Are you going to get all spiritual on me too?”

“I’m just saying it all seems pretty weird.” Evan held up his hands. “Maybe there’s something to this.”

Jace stayed quiet and looked away.

“Jace, how long have we known each other?”

He looked back. “Eight, maybe nine years.”

“And I’m out here supporting you, right?”

Jace nodded.

“I’ve never been one to talk about my faith. But this—this is hard to explain.”

Jace pushed his plate away.

“Listen, Jace. Someone apparently wants you dead. And for some reason, you’re getting these weird messages. I’d start paying attention if I were you.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Things happen for a reason, Jace.”

“So what am I to make of this, Evan?”

“Pay attention. Pray.” He shrugged. “If your life is in danger and you’ve got faith issues to work out, I wouldn’t waste a lot of time.”

Jace stood up and tossed shillings on the table to pay the bill.
I’ve heard these warnings before.

And that didn’t work out so well, did it?

28

As Jace walked up the path toward home, he heard his name and looked back to see his intern. “Hey, Paul, what’s up? How are the heart patients?”

“They are doing fine. But I need help in casualty.”

“I’m not on call, Paul.”

“Dr. Fitzgerald is already in surgery with a head-trauma patient.”

Jace sighed. It wasn’t like he had a wife to go home to. “Okay, what is it?” He reversed direction and started down the path toward the casualty department.

“Ten-year-old boy fell from a tree. He had rib fractures and a pneumothorax. I put in a chest tube and got out a little blood, but the patient is still hypotensive.”

Jace quickened his pace. “Which side?”

“Left.”

“Left-sided rib fractures are associated with what abdominal injury?”

“Ruptured spleen.”

“That’s right. Have you assessed the abdomen?”

“He is tender.”

They pushed through the casualty door. The scene was all too familiar. A crowd of relatives surrounded a bed where a young boy lay beneath a red wool blanket. Other patients filled the stretchers, while still more sat in chairs waiting to be seen. Saturday night in Kijabe.

Jace nodded to the family. Paul said something to them in Kiswahili. They parted to let Jace approach the bedside.

Jace spoke to the patient, rehearsing Kiswahili words he had spoken as a child. “Jina lako ni nani?” What is your name?

“Boniface,” he said. “I’m cold.”

Jace looked at his intern. “A sign of shock.”

Pleased that the patient spoke English, Jace continued. “What happened?”

“I was climbing a eucalyptus tree and put my hand right on a green boomslang.”

A tree snake. Jace nodded.

“He struck at me, but I ducked. Then I lost my balance.”

“Where do you hurt?”

“Here,” he said, placing his hand over his swollen abdomen.

Jace looked at Paul. “Can you bring me the ultrasound machine?”

Paul nodded and disappeared. Jace looked around for a nurse. There were two on duty, but both were talking to other patients. Jace pumped up the blood-pressure cuff and listened just above the patient’s elbow. He ran the cuff up and down three times before laying aside the stethoscope and using his fingers to palpate the pulse.

Too low to hear. Must be sixty or lower.

He opened up the little roller on the IV tubing to increase the drip rate and began to squeeze the plastic fluid bag to speed the fluid administration.

When Paul returned, rolling the ultrasound machine, Jace frowned. “His pressure is down. He needs blood.”

“I didn’t get that much out of the chest.”

Jace squirted ultrasound jelly onto the patient’s abdomen and stroked the probe across the skin beneath his ribs. “Here’s the problem. See that?” He pointed to an image at the bottom of the screen. “That’s the spleen, what’s left of it.” He moved his index finger on the screen. “All of that is fluid.”

Paul nodded. “Blood?”

“Blood.”

Jace looked at the family. “We are going to need to operate to stop the bleeding.”

Paul spoke in rapid Kiswahili.

“This is his mother. She does not wish an operation. She is afraid he will die.”

“Tell her if we do nothing, he very well may die. He is bleeding inside.”

Paul spoke again to the mother, a Kikuyu dressed in a red-patterned dress, orange headscarf, and purple-dotted sweater.

The woman answered softly.

Paul translated. “She says you are the doctor. She will trust you.” He looked at his watch. “I need to arrange for a second team in theater. The first team is already working with Dr. Fitzgerald.”

“Okay, tell them to hurry. We’ve got a real emergency on our hands.”

Twenty minutes later, Jace helped transfer the boy onto the operating table.

The nurse anesthetist, a young woman named Grace, pulled down on the patient’s lower eyelid to examine the sclera behind the lid. “His hemoglobin is under seven,” she said.