Heartbeat (Medical Romance) (11 page)

Jenni forgot all about her hairbrush. Swiftly she pulled on jeans and a light sweater and went back into the compound. Not another soul was in sight. It seemed as if she and Ross were the only ones who had noticed the drumbeats.

Following the string of naked lightbulbs, she came to the generator and turned left along the path along which early each morning young boys led the village's herd of cattle and goats to the higher pastures beyond the Mission. Now there was no illumination other than the stars, and the thorn bushes scratched her arms and legs if she veered from the track. 'Ross!' called Jenni. 'Ross, are you there? Ross, come back!' She plunged on, too anxious to be frightened for herself—then stopped abruptly at the sight of native huts silhouetted against the light of flickering wood fires not a couple of hundred yards distant.

'Ross!' she called again uncertainly, and this time there was an answering call from somewhere ahead. 'Who's that? Who is it?'

At that moment, just when her heart was gladdened by the sound, from behind a black thicket stepped the tallest, most terrifying figure Jenni had ever seen. Her arms were grabbed and a calloused hand smelling of earth and animals pressed cruelly over her open mouth ready to scream.

Too late. As if she were featherlight, Jenni was plucked from the path. And when the doctor himself came strolling out of the village, a puzzled frown on his face, throwing his searching torch-beam in all directions, there was no sign of anyone at all. Just a size four espadrille lying abandoned on the dusty track.

'D
AKTARI!' demanded the fearsome stranger, dropping Jenni right way up but still gripping her wrist as if he suspected she'd run for her life if he released her.

'Daktari? I'm not the doctor. Do I look like
daktari
?' In her indignation Jenni sounded a good deal braver than she was actually feeling. 'Ouch, let go of me! OK.' She repeated the one word that many Africans recognised, 'OK, I won't run. What's your problem? Why you need daktari?'

The flickering light of a makeshift campfire showed her captor to be a very tall, skeletally-thin man, the red
shuka
of the Masai wrapped around his bony haunches. In spite of his height and erect carriage the Masai's hair was grey, his features strained and hollow with fatigue.

Though her heart was thumping and her knees quaked, Jenni made an effort to keep her wits about her. The Masai, she knew, were a proud but reserved people. They roamed the bush, wearing these distinctive red robes and armed with spears, driving their herds of Boran cattle on long treks to the waterholes. One of the most difficult tasks was to get them to visit the hospital or the outreach clinics and accept medical care for themselves and their children. 'You are ill,
mzee
?' she questioned, addressing him politely and using the term of respect for an old man. 'You need medicine,
mzee
? Er—what's the word for it ...dawa?
Dawa
?' she urged, concern replacing the fear in her freckled face.

With a nod of his proud head the old man grunted and pushed her towards the fire. For a moment Jenni had a horrible feeling she was going to end up in a native cooking pot, the traditional fate of the missionary. She almost lost her balance when he gave her another little shove of encouragement and she suddenly realised that the bundle of red clothing near the fire, which she had taken to be bedding, was in fact a body.

She dropped to her knees on the bare soil and feeling her way cautiously discovered the warmth of bone and flesh under her hands.

'Yoh!' encouraged her kidnapper, folding up his stick-like legs and squatting on his haunches beside her. At such close quarters the smell of cattle was more pungent than ever.

Jenni helped him to part the folds of red cloth, but it was too dark to see properly.

The old man reached into the fire and picked out a stick which he held aloft like a burning brand. Now Jenni could see pain-glazed eyes and a fore-head dewy with chill perspiration: the smooth-skinned features of a handsome young Masai doing his level best not to groan out loud as he lapsed in and out of consciousness.

For a fleeting moment it occurred to her that this was the most bizarre situation she had ever found herself in! She tucked her hair behind her ears and bent low over her patient, testing his breathing against her cheek and feeling expertly for the carotid pulse.

'Respiration shallow ... heartbeat surprisingly strong,' she muttered aloud, noting the clammy skin and the dilated pupils. 'Seems to be in shock, but I don't think —'

At that moment a beam of torchlight illuminated the trio. Jenni flung up an arm to shield her eyes and the old man was on his feet in a flash, spear menacingly poised.

Out of the bushes, her left espadrille in his hand, guided by the light of the wood fire, stepped Ross McDonnell.

Jenni grabbed at the father's robe. 'Daktari! she said urgently. 'Here is
daktari
—' she was going to add 'Don't shoot!’ like in the movies, but Ross had taken in the situation at a glance and his command of Swahili, though limited, was enough to reassure the Masai, who now abandoned his threatening stance.

The doctor crouched down at her side. 'Are you all right?' was the first thing he wanted to know, his mouth close to her ear, his voice urgent with concern but betraying none of the fear that had shaken him when he found and identified Jenni’s shoe.

'Perfectly,' she breathed a sigh of pure relief. 'I am SO glad to see you! Shine your torch down here. I can't see what's wrong, but I think he's got a pain in his stomach.'

Ross squatted down and shone his torch beam on the exposed abdomen. 'Holy smoke!'

Jenni's jaw dropped: in all her nursing days she'd never come across anything like it.

'How did this happen,
mzee
?’ In his limited Swahili Ross began to question the dignified old Masai, translating as best he could for Jenni's benefit.

Two days ago while the two were hunting deep in the bush, the son had been gored by a rhino, his stomach ripped open so horrifically that the intestines had spilled out. The desperate father had carried out the most ingenious first aid. Fashioning a needle from a sliver of bone and drawing tough cotton threads from his red cloak, he had sewn the edges of the wound together with three crude red loops. Crude they might be, but they had kept the boy alive ... so far. Then across thirty kilometres of bush with his son's semi-conscious body tied to his back, he had struggled to the Mbusa Wa Bwini. Too proud and too shy to demand help at the hospital door, he had lain in wait until, driven by desperation, he had made his 'kidnap' attempt.

Ross rapped out instructions. 'Take my torch. Get Matt to back the Land Rover up as far as he can. Ask two of the orderlies to prepare theatre for immediate surgery. I'm going to need your help tonight.'

To pinpoint the exact location in her mind, Jenni looked back at the two men kneeling by the camp fire. She saw her arrogant, cold-hearted doctor warming the son's chilly hand between his own and reassuring that admirable father in halting Swahili, '
Mzee
, you have saved your son's life. You can entrust to him to our care now.'

As she ran through the dark night she could hear the native drums still throbbing, the stamp of dancing feet and voices chanting down in the village. They did not disturb her now.

Two hours later Matt wheeled their drowsy patient along to the men's ward. Paul and Father Thomas between them had had the devil of a job keeping the old Masai from bursting into the operating theatre to see what was going on. Now it was all over and Jenni was clearing up the aftermath of surgery.

She worked on like a zombie, collecting up empty saline bottles, stacking trays of dirty instruments ready for the autoclave, mopping down the theatre floor. Ross had saved yet another life, but to him that was a matter of routine and nothing out of the ordinary. He didn't appear to know about fatigue. His arteries—Jenni's twitch of a smile turned into a gigantic yawn—must pump neat adrenalin!

Matt, who was assisting, had whistled at the sight of the old Masai's ingenious repair of his son's dreadful wound. 'Remarkable piece of work,' agreed Ross, removing the red cotton loops and dropping them into a kidney dish. 'Obviously a budding Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons!' During the operation he had been specially considerate of his scrub nurse's tiredness and inexperience; encouraging and kind, not yelling when she handed the wrong instrument, patiently explaining his plan of campaign as he washed out the stomach and inspected the major organs one by one before tackling the ripped intestines, chatting affably to keep his hollow-eyed assistants wide awake.

'Did you know,' he remarked to Jenni, not looking at her but peering into the operation site as his gloved hands located and examined the liver, 'did you know that these Masai people live on a diet of milk and blood?' Jenni swallowed her disgust and said no, she didn't, but she supposed that since they were continually on the move, driving their herds of cattle to fresh watering-holes, they wouldn't go in for much cooking. 'Fresh blood?' questioned Matt, pushing his green-capped head close to Ross's to get a better view of the patient's spleen.

'No damage here, thank God for that... Yup, they trap blood from the jugular veins of their cattle in rotation, so I'm told. One might expect to find a high incidence of heart disease among the Masai, but all the exercise they take combats the effects of a high-cholesterol diet. As we can see here, all organs in the pink, and there's no free blood in the peritoneal space. Now, my intention is—scalpel, please, nurse—yes, I'll have a number two— to give the colon a rest by re-routing the faecal stream through the abdominal wall, thus creating a temporary diversion to allow the gastro-intestinal tract to heal.'

Matt didn't envy the surgeon the prospect of explaining sophisticated Western surgical techniques to a primitive bushman. 'How d’you plan to tell these guys?' he queried.

'With the aid of diagrams. And Father Thomas translating. It’s not going to be easy.’

'The old feller'll be camping out at the bottom of the bed for the next few weeks,' predicted Matt lugubriously, 'till you reverse that colostomy. Sister Bea'll go crazy. Say, Boss, maybe one of this guy's great-grandchildren will be a surgeon too. Could be in the family genes.'

Jenni had blinked and smiled beneath her mask. 'And today's bush children will grow up to be the doctors, priests, teachers and nurses of the future,' she observed with weary satisfaction.

Matt's next question had her wideawake, ears flapping.

'How's about sneakin' along to the Chief’s birthday party when we get outa here, Boss? Reckon things'll still be swingin'. Oh, man, the rhythm of those native drums really gets to me!'

'Dr Blarney, could you try and keep your head out of my field of vision?' complained the much taller surgeon. 'I looked in earlier and paid my respects. And a good job too, since it happened I was within earshot when this excellent theatre nurse decided to take a walk on the wild side… Nurse! have your fingers turned to butter all of a sudden? No, of course I don't want you to pick it up, just give me a replacement.'

Jenni was late for supper. She was waiting for Dr McDonnell, who always insisted on being called to see any child running a temperature.

When he came striding in he found her sitting beside the empty cot, cuddling the listless three-year old who had been admitted the previous afternoon for observation.

Ross rarely wore his white coat on the ward because he maintained it frightened the children unnecessarily. He looked at the charts and examined the girl's chest and ears and throat, humming tunelessly as he went down to the dispensary to locate the antibiotic he was prescribing. He patted the damp curls with a cheerful hand, promising, 'She'll be running around by tomorrow,' and requested Jenni's presence at the crack of dawn to accompany him on a long and uncomfortable trek into deep bush country. Because Sylvia, his usual nurse, was taking three days' leave, and dammit, she deserved the break. Jenni readily agreed, and endeavoured to conceal her pleasure at the prospect of a whole day with Ross beneath a mask of professional gravity.

They set off next morning after a very early breakfast.

When the Land Rover was loaded Jenni let Kefa get in first so that if he wished to take the seat next to the driver he could do so. But Kefa climbed into a rear seat and buried his nose in a pharmacology textbook, studying for his next lot of exams.

'What are you waiting for?' questioned Ross impatiently as Jenni hovered with one foot on the running board and an anxious eye scanning the compound.

'Merryjane is supposed to be coming with us today.' Merryjane, one of the African girls trained by the nuns to work in the hospital, had been told by Sister Bea that she must travel with Nurse Jenni and do the translating for her, and she must be sure not to keep Dr Ross waiting first thing in the morning. For some unfathomable reason Merryjane had responded with a fit of the sulks. Jenni had a nasty feeling she wasn't going to turn up.

Kefa looked up and said there was no point waiting for Merryjane. She wouldn't be coming. Evil spirits would get her if she went too far from her village. Anyway, he said, everyone knew she was a lazy good-for-nothing.

This was vexing, but clearly they must leave without the girl. Jenni hoisted herself in beside Ross, who rolled down his window, let out the clutch and reversed out of the shade of the baobab in a flurry of dust.

'I do love the early morning,' said Jenni to calm the atmosphere. 'The skies are such a glorious mix of colours - and it's so wonderfully cool.' She had a navy cardigan draped across her shoulders, and in her pocket an old cricket hat of Paul's, shrunken with laundering, to protect the back of her neck.

'Get out of it!' bawled Ross as one of the village dogs loped across their path. They were soon heading along flinty murram roads through a landscape of yawning distance, the Land Rover chugging along like a sturdy tug through the grey seas of bush.

In spite of the dust the air was pungent with the spicy smell of African sage. In the far distance hills rose like tombstones, and the sun climbing steadily into the sky glittered on a million cruel thorns. Jenni shivered with a strange excitement. She eyed Ross's hands on the wheel, well-shaped and strong, and yet so sensitive; hands that could work the most delicate miracles of micro-surgery upon damaged eyes.