An Open Heart (3 page)

His sister’s sickening cry.

Sleep came in fits and starts, much like their family’s old Toyota pickup. Full speed for five minutes. Then flooded and stalled.

He spent the remainder of the morning squeaking on the old bed until an incessant pounding in his head became recognizable as someone at the door.

He pulled on a shirt and a pair of jeans, glancing at himself in the bathroom mirror before trudging toward the front door. Bed head. Three-days worth of chin stubble. Face shiny with sweat.
Welcome to Kijabe, Dr. Rawlings.

He fumbled with the locks on the doors. Outside were three Kikuyu mamas bearing large baskets of vegetables. He smiled in spite of the interruption. The vegetable ladies. Women selling vegetables door-to-door had been part of the local culture since missionaries had first come to Kijabe in the early 1900s.

A woman in an orange-and-red-striped sweater broke into a grin that would make any dentist cringe. “Remember me? I sold mangos to your father.”

He hadn’t been in Kijabe for a day, and already he was seeing the shadow of his father. Jace shook his head.

“And how is Dr. Rawlings?”

“I’m—” He halted, realizing they were speaking of his father. “He’s retired now. Lives with Mom in Florida.”

The women began unloading their baskets, displaying fruits and vegetables on the concrete stoop.

Jace shook his head. “I don’t have any local money now. Someone stole my shillings.”

“Take what you need. We will come next week for payment.”

He selected three mangos, a pineapple, two tomatoes, lettuce, a half-dozen potatoes, an onion, zucchini squash, and a few fat stalks of broccoli. When he was done with his selections, his counter was covered with food.

The vegetable ladies loaded their baskets and trudged slowly down the path leading from Jace’s stone-block house. With bulging baskets on their backs and long straps adjusted to lie across their foreheads, the women leaned into their loads. Jace could only imagine the strain they were putting on their cervical spines.

He had just shut the door on the vegetable peddlers when another knock sounded.

This time, an older gentleman with a generous waist and a larger smile held out his hand. “Karibu, Daktari,” he said. Welcome, Doctor.

Jace shook the man’s hand. It was meaty and calloused. “Jace Rawlings.”

“I’m John Otieno.” His dark complexion and wide nose revealed his Luo tribal affiliation. “I’m a hospital chaplain. We’d heard rumors that you would be here today.”

“Pardon my appearance. It was a long journey.”

“Of course.” Jace had heard of Otieno’s reputation. His love of the patients, including the often-harder-to-love Somali tribe, was unparalleled. He was known to spend hours holding hands with family members in the small surgery waiting area or serving tea to the mother of a sick child. On the pediatric ward, Chaplain John was known to carry a puppet to coax a child into conversation. He prayed with the dying and wept with the survivors, raised shillings to pay a poor patient’s bill, and had a laugh as deep as the color of his skin. He had no agenda to convert the lost. His only mission was to love. And because of that, conversions followed as naturally as smoke follows fire.

The chaplain seemed to hesitate.

Jace sighed. “Would you like to come in? I think I saw some tea in a welcome basket around here somewhere.”

“That would be kind.”

Jace poured water in a saucepan and flipped on the gas burner. He added an equal volume of milk and sprinkled in a few tea leaves.

“It’s been a long time since I made Kenyan chai.”

The chaplain laughed. “It will be fine.”

They made pleasant conversation as the tea began to steep. Chaplain Otieno asked about Jace’s family, a cultural prerequisite to any real conversation.

Jace filled two mugs with the steaming tea and added three heaping teaspoons of sugar to each. Jace had learned early in life to drink tea like a true Kenyan. Light with milk, sweeter than sweet with granular sugar. Like drinking the milk left in the bowl after Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.

“I remember you as a child,” the chaplain began. “I wondered if you would ever return after…” His voice caught. He looked away and cleared his throat.

Jace nodded. “Yeah, well, I’m back.”

“You want to do heart surgery in Kijabe, is that it?”

The question came out as a tentative exploration. A doubt of Jace’s intentions, perhaps?

“That’s the plan.” Jace sighed. “If I can ever get my equipment through customs. My heart-lung machine is being held at the airport.” He shook his head. “The customs guy had no idea what it was worth, didn’t even know what it was. All he saw was a chance to make a few shillings.”

“With the money it will cost to start up your program, I could feed an entire orphanage for a year, pay the staff, and dig a new well.”

Jace nodded and forced a weak smile. He had expected resistance, but not from the head chaplain. And not in the first conversation. He should have known. Rationing of care in a poor environment was a way of life. He proceeded forward, keeping his voice gentle but steady. “But it wouldn’t save the life of a child with a heart valve destroyed by a strep infection.”

“No. It would save fifty children.”

Jace pushed back from the table. “You came to welcome me?”

“Yes.” He paused. “And to know you, young Rawlings.” His eyes rested on Jace’s.

Jace felt exposed. Vulnerable. As if the old man saw into his soul. He shifted in his seat and sipped his chai. Memories of chai time at RVA came to him. Every day at ten. Chai and mandazi, the donut-like fried bread they dunked in the tea.

The chaplain also sipped. “Will your wife be joining you?”

“She’s not much for air travel.” Jace didn’t want to explain. “Perhaps in time.”

“Why have you come back here?” Otieno paused, waving toward their meager surroundings. “I’ve heard that you were quite wealthy. Why would you give it all up to come here?”

Jace regurgitated the automatic response. “To explore starting a heart program for—” He looked up at the chaplain. His face reflected compassion. Perfect peace. And disbelief in Jace’s story. Perhaps he knew better.

“You are running.”

Jace set down his mug. Too hard, spilling precious tea onto the table. “You’ve been talking to my father.”

“He is my friend.”

Jace held up his hands. “Look, I’m not my father. Sure, I’m a surgeon. I want to help the Kenyan people, but I’m no missionary.”

“Your father seems to think—”

“I’m sure he has his opinion of why I returned to Africa.”

The old chaplain nodded slowly, wrinkling his forehead and blowing out a noisy breath through large lips. He stayed quiet for a moment longer. “Perhaps you wanted to set things right with your sister.”

“Some things can’t be made right.”

“Your father believed in God’s forgiveness, Jace.”

“My father isn’t standing in my shoes.” Jace walked to the sink, gazing out through the barred windows toward the Great Rift Valley. This was incredible. In one short visit this chaplain had managed to pick the scab of Jace’s deepest pain. This was a test. They’d sent Otieno to sound out his resolve. And Jace had failed the test. He’d come out looking like anything but the altruistic surgeon he wanted them to see.

Before the chaplain could answer, Jace turned. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m tired from a long trip. Perhaps another time.”

The chaplain nodded. He dropped a heavy hand on Jace’s shoulder as he stood to leave.

For a long time after the chaplain left, Jace felt the weight of his hand. It was a familiar feeling. One he’d run from before.

Guilt.

3

With a second shower, Jace began feeling almost normal. At two in the afternoon, he ventured out for a walk around Kijabe, hoping to see a colobus monkey or two. Colobuses were shy, traveled in families, and were characterized by contrasting white and black color. They had shorter black hair on their backs, long white beards, and tufts of long white hair on the tips of their tails.

Kijabe. For him, the place had been a boyhood paradise. Camping out in the forest, sleeping under the dusting of the Milky Way, chasing zebras on his motorcycle, watching his father operate, playing rugby, hiking to the hot springs, climbing the loquat trees, and sucking sweet fruit. But mostly, it brought
her
back to him. Everywhere he looked his sister peered back, teasing him with memories of fun, sibling mischief, and her crazy laugh. Part of him liked thinking of her. Maybe the chaplain was right. Maybe it was time to make peace.

But some things could never be made right. So he walked around the dusty paths crisscrossing the little town, thinking of Janice, but avoiding the dark edges of that memory.

By four o’clock, he had exchanged money at the hospital business office and become acutely aware that he was ravenous. It had been days since he’d had a decent meal. When had he last eaten? Breakfast on his British Airways flight from Heathrow had been something approximating a ham-and-cheese quiche, a small muffin in cellophane, and a fruit cup.

He left the hospital on foot and headed to the nearby stretch of small shops, or dukas, butcher shops, and local hotels. These weren’t hotels in the American sense. What they were, and what Jace needed, was a place to sit and enjoy Kenyan cuisine.

He found what he wanted at Mama Chiku’s. He entered the small restaurant through a tangle of beaded strings hanging over the doorway. There were six tables, four of them full. The decor was clean but far from uniform. Plastic tables and chairs, colorful nonmatching tablecloths, vases of gaudy artificial flowers and framed pictures from nature magazines provided the ambiance. This was authentic Kenyan. Local produce served hot with a smile. Just be sure the water comes from a sealed bottle. Or safer yet, drink the unique-tasting Coke from a Nairobi bottling company.

The stew Jace ordered was filled with cabbage, potatoes, and fresh carrots. Jace had sukuma on the side, a spinach-like vegetable prepared with onion and finely chopped tomato. Jace dragged ugali, the white starch similar to thick hominy grits, through the stew with a folded chapati. After two plates, he polished off three samosas, the triangular fried dough filled with spicy meat, before pushing away from the little table. For Jace, this was comfort food at its finest, the food of his childhood. Every taste evoked memories of family meals, with his father sharing story after gruesome story of surgical triumphs over illnesses long ignored. To Jace, these stories were normal. Only when they had dinner guests and his mother shushed his father did Jace realize his family was unique.

When Jace had finished his meal and paid the equivalent of two dollars (which included a nice tip), he noticed a finely dressed Kenyan elder sitting at a corner table sipping chai. When he caught Jace’s eye, the man stood and made his way slowly to Jace’s table.

“Hello, Dr. Rawlings. Welcome to Kenya.”

Jace studied the man for a moment. Tall, wiry, closely cropped white afro, dark blue business suit, and a face so wrinkled it looked like it had experienced two lifetimes of trouble. But for two large loopy earlobes stretched with traditional piercing, he could have been a distinguished African-American businessman.

“Hello,” Jace responded, taking the man’s hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I know—”

“Dr. Simeon Okayo,” he said. He looked at the dishes on the table. “You enjoy our food.”

“I grew up eating this,” he said, leaning back into his chair. “It’s been a long time.”

“We have business. May I sit?”

What business? Was he a new doctor at Kijabe Hospital? Jace nodded. “Sure.” He pointed to an empty plastic chair.

The man retrieved a small bottle from his pocket. He held it up, gently shook the white powdery contents, and offered it to Jace. “Take it. Dissolve it in a cup of water. Soak a cloth in the water, and place it against your eye. It will draw out the color.”

Jace touched his left eye. The good food had distracted him from his pain. He took the small container and held it up to the light. “What is it?”

“An herb. Your Western instructors would not have taught you about this.”

Jace eyed the man with suspicion. “You came here to see me? How did you know where I’d be?”

“It is not hard to track a new mzungu. All the villagers know who you are. The children will come asking for help with their school fees soon enough.”

Jace smiled. Some things never changed.

“You will be meeting with the minister of health tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“The minister is the one who paved the way for you. Your state government contacted the minister about your interest in assisting us.”

Jace swallowed uncomfortably at the mention of his own government. He didn’t want the Kenyans to be biased against him from the start.

The old man smiled. “You cannot hide in Kenya, Dr. Rawlings. You’ve been in our news. I’ve known for months you were coming.”

Jace chuckled at the man’s exaggeration. “I’ve barely known it for that long myself. You couldn’t have—”

“I understand your twin sister asked you to come.”

Jace felt blood drain from his face. He hadn’t told anyone in Kijabe about his sister contacting him. He shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

“Relax,” the old man said, chuckling as if he were talking about something mundane. The weather. Sports. “Your sister told me to expect you.”

“No!”

The African gentleman looked around to the other customers as if to say,
Don’t mind the crazy American.

“Look, I’m not sure what you want with me, but you’ve got some crazy ideas. What you’re suggesting is impossible.”

“You are reluctant to admit she contacted you.” Okayo shook his head. “I wouldn’t expect any less from an American doctor. Miracles can be explained by science, reality is only what you can see and touch, and the dead don’t speak from beyond the grave.”

Jace shook his head and whispered, “It’s impossible.” He looked up at the man. “My returning has nothing to do with her.”

“Yes, yes,” he said with a flip of his bony hand. “You also have a rational reason, don’t you? The heart program.”