Night Must Wait (21 page)

He had a strong face, features slightly blunted, jaw rough with several days' worth of beard. The eye sockets looked hollowed. Should she have put him on the drip for dehydration? She gently pinched the skin on his forearm, but the skin reshaped immediately, so he wasn't seriously in need of a bag. She liked the eyebrows, with a natural quirk that spelled mockery and he had a nice wide mouth. A long guy—she'd been right to wonder about him fitting the cot. He breathed deeply now, as if something had disrupted his earlier shallow breaths. Suddenly embarrassed, she turned away and picked up her lantern.

A rustle behind her, and she whirled to face the cot. Jantor sat up, propped on one elbow, staring at her in the dim room.

"Who's there?"

She could hear disorientation in his voice, aggression.

"Your doctor. The lady with the lamp," she said, quelling her fear. Oh yes, he was still armed. She'd known better than to take his weapons. He'd overreact if he found himself without protection.

"No need to jump," she said. "I'm not here to assassinate you. Hippocratic oath, you know."

He stayed half upright, peering. She didn't move, hoping that he'd recognize her. At last he sighed and let his weight slump back on the cot.

"How long have I been here?"

"Something over five hours."

Gilman perched on the edge of her desk. His eyes caught the light, stared in her direction.

"Go back to sleep," she said. "It'll be a while before you feel quite the thing."

"Doc knows best, is that it?"

She smiled. He'd managed a note of teasing. Must be feeling a lot better. Outside the tent the night hum of insects rose and fell. Gilman listened to Jantor's low breathing. She told herself she should go, let him find his cure in rest and the medicine now working in his veins. But a selfish part of her insisted that such an opportunity would not come again, so she asked a question.

"Why a mercenary?"

"What?" he asked. "Well, why are
you
here?"

After a moment's astonishment she said, "It's my job."

"Hell," he said. "I guess that's my answer as much as yours. Now it's my turn again, Doc. How come you couldn't get a decent job in a good hospital in the States?"

"I could. Anytime."

"Then why didn't you? Maybe," he said, without waiting for her reasons, "we're more alike than you want to think."

She shook her head, but could no longer ignore the profound exhaustion in his face. She slid off the edge of her desk, professionalism taking over. "Goodnight."

He mumbled something. Gilman picked up her lantern and went out the door.

The next morning, no Jantor. He'd left a note on Gilman's desk, torn from an old envelope, the heavy black lines somehow characteristic of the man. "Jimmied your lock and stole some more chloroquine. Thanks, Doc."

Chapter 39: Gilman

April 1968

Uli Area, Biafra

Gilman locked the supply room door. She left the clinic and crossed the yard of red earth beaten by the passage of hundreds of feet into brick-like hardness. She could feel it through the papery worn soles of her sandals. Soon those would give up too. Gilman banged the screen door of the mess tent. Still pondering one of her last and most unpleasant cases, she went to the sink to scrub her hands, her anger rising, as it did so easily these days.

War injuries—shrapnel and gunshot, bayonet stabs. Civilians turning up with pieces of buildings and the very earth itself driven into their limbs and bellies. Infections raging in every type of wound and abrasion. Parasites having picnics. Fevers raging. Before the war she'd thought the old Dane guns blowing up in the villages a tragic problem. What a delusion that had been. The maggots and flies she'd once endured now obsessed her. Allingham drove her crazy with bickering. Sister Catherine's patience tried hers. She wished the nun would snap at her one of these days, come down to being human.

"If I have to fish out one more of those squirming obscene what-ya-call-'em worms from someone's leg, I'm going to scream," she said, this more to the sink than to the staff at the mess table the other side of the screen. "You should've been there today when I reamed out Sampson's leg. If it's not one kind of worm, it's another. Sampson's leg was all eaten out by those damn white fuckers. Allingham, I know you say that they only eat tissue that's already dead, but by God I still hate those things and I don't believe you about their diets. They're not so refined. Parasites don't have the decency to wait for a corpse."

"Gilman," Sister Catherine said, "people are trying to eat."

Gilman flinched. Sister, a model of deportment. Not here, not now.

"Well, I'm sorry," Gilman said over a violent splashing of water. "I handled three cases in a row. One had this delicious fungal creep moving up his groin, one had liver fluke—terminal stages, and hey, I've just about gotten used to the flies, but I refuse, I absolutely
refuse
to get used to the worms. They make me sick."

She shook some of the water from her hands and dried them, tossing the towel into a crate and starting around the screen toward the table where the others sat. She saw outsiders and stopped.

"Doctor," Sister Catherine said, peaceful and blinking behind her wire-rimmed spectacles, "if you've quite finished, we have company to dinner. An old friend of mine from the Congo."

Gilman felt her face go hot. In one confused glance she took in the brown hair and keen face of her former patient, Major Jantor. She glanced down at her dirty feet, suddenly aware of ragged shorts and baggy yellow T-shirt, bare dirty knees and unkempt hair.

"Sorry," she said.

Though disguised by the protective veil of her order, Sister Catherine appeared to struggle not to laugh.

"Doctor Gilman, this is Major Thomas Jantor, a friend of mine from Rwanda. And Tom, this is Katherine Gilman, one of our finest surgeons."

"Pleased to meet you," Gilman said, daring him to mention any of their previous meetings. God, how many introductions to him had she suffered now? She gathered he must have preferred not to share with Sister Catherine the raid on the clinic, or the bit of surgery on the floor of the airport shack. Or the malaria bout.

Of course, Allingham hadn't mentioned the raid. Allingham hadn't any credit to his name from that episode. She sat down to gaze into a bowl of lukewarm soup. Gray, half-congealed, with the characteristic sour smell of garri.

"Can't you get those men of yours to wear real shoes?" Allingham asked with even more than his usual belligerence.

Jantor laughed. Gilman glanced up, noticing Jantor's clean uniform, the skull and crossbones on his brown armband and the friendly eyes. But they weren't friends. He looked past her at Allingham's disapproving face. Jantor barely resembled the man she'd blanketed on her rickety cot. She saw no trace of the bully in the shape of his mouth or the expression of his eyes. Only amusement.

"Shoes?" there was a note of incredulity in his voice. "Oh no, not really. If we can get any, the men will eat them before they try to wear them. Besides, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference. If they wore shoes, they'd stomp around like elephants, go crashing right into ambushes and get blisters that would turn into jungle rot to feed Doctor Gilman's worms."

Gilman felt suddenly overwhelmed by the inescapable ugliness. Miracle worker. She was supposed to lay on hands and perform wonders. She poked at the viscous mess in her bowl, not listening to the conversation. She wondered what Major Jantor thought of their miserable fare. His Excellency Ojukwu, leader of Biafra, certainly didn't eat like this. His favorite soldiers surely didn't either. She poked again at the heavy soup. Maybe His Excellency had goat to eat every day. She remembered the rank stringy taste with longing. Protein. Real animal protein.

"I think it's already dead, Gilman," Allingham said.

Startled from her greedy reverie, Gilman picked up her bowl and pushed back her chair.

"Excuse me," she said. "I think I'll go find someone desperate enough to suck up this garbage."

"Not so loud, Doctor," Sister Catherine said, "our new cook might hear you."

"Sit down and eat it." Allingham spoke as if Gilman were a child. "You need your food."

"This isn't food. And I hope the cook does hear. He's even worse than the one before. Ought to fire him before he poisons us." She got up and let the screen door bang behind her.

Gilman spent about ten minutes feeding her dinner to some of the older kids in the ward. They seemed willing enough to swallow spoonfuls, even though their suppers had been served not long before. But all suppers were scant. She scraped out a final thick smear and tucked it into an open mouth.

She put the bowl down and covered the last child. Evening fell quickly in the wards, the orange light dying everything with intense color. When she got to her feet again, Jantor was leaning on the door frame, watching. The sun slipped down and she felt alone with him despite all the quiet children in their beds.

"So," Jantor said at last, his deep voice carrying, "you did find someone to eat your dinner."

"Yes." Gilman tried to conceal her nervousness. She went toward the door.

He straightened in the doorway, smiling, the hardness of his face blurred in the fading light.

"Good evening, Doctor."

Nodding once, he turned and walked away across the yard. Gilman stood inside the doorway and watched him.

That night she dreamed of him, his face morphing from gangster to companion. They paddled a small boat on an endless brown river and she told him about the piranhas, which seethed in the water. The boat jerked and she woke in panic.

Gilman opened her eyes in the morning light knowing that something felt wrong. She sat up. On her knee lay Jantor's bush hat, and at the foot of her cot stood Jantor.

"So sorry to wake you up," he said, grinning. "There's fresh goat for your dinners, delivered to the mess tent."

She realized she was giving him a great view of her tits with the unbuttoned cotton shirt she'd slept in, ducked down, pulling up the sheet as he laughed. He leaned in toward her, scooped up his hat and turned away as if how she looked near nude was nothing special.

The first night of goat stew, Major Jantor invited himself to dinner, though he ate little. After, it seemed natural for Gilman to accompany him part of the way from the mess hall, and when he stopped under a jacaranda, she stayed and accepted a cigarette. His were way better than those she could buy.

"You said you loved the army?" she said.

"I started in Korea." Jantor looked down at his hands. Long fingers, wide palm, with reflexed thumbs like a carpenter's. "With the Rangers. Had bad luck, got shot up. When I came out, one leg was shorter than the other. That's what they said, anyway—but damned if I think it makes much difference."

He glanced at Gilman. She listened, leaning against the trunk of the tree, enjoying how slowly and smoothly she could release the smoke from her lips. Tasted better than food.

"Got an honorable discharge out of it anyway."

"Would you have stayed in the service if you could?"

"Yeah, sure. I was good at it," he said. "Back stateside I tried college and slept through it. Tried working. Truck driving, Detroit assembly lines. Classes in accounting. Couldn't hack it."

"So you quit."

Gilman tugged the hat from his head. She patted it, surprised by how warm and soft it felt. She tossed it back. Mistake. She should have held it hostage for a pack of his cigarettes.

"You bet. Went freelancing after that. Poor pickings."

"You were in the Congo," Gilman said. "Sister Catherine said she met you there."

"I hated that goddamned pit." Jantor seemed diverted by her curiosity. "Couldn't stand most of the mercs, nor the Congolese neither. Your Sister Catherine has more piss in her than any of them. Biafra is a different thing, a different people. They have what it takes to make soldiers. G'night, Doc."

Chapter 40: Gilman

May 1968

Uli, Biafra

Wilton's blue Citroën bumped into the driveway and stopped by the back door of the clinic. Gilman could see the mud-spattered side of the car through her window in the office. A long pause before the doors swung open, but Gilman had already stripped off her gloves, choking on hope and excitement. Or was it fear?

Yes, she could see the other figures in the car. Wilton had done it. She'd managed to get Lindsey into Biafra. Out stepped Lindsey and a man who must be her bodyguard. Familiar, but she couldn't place him until he took out a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. The man she'd met in Wilton's house years ago. A man with no facial scars, no diagnostic features of tribal affinity. Excellent. She wouldn't have to protect him from Biafrans if no one could tell what he was. Wilton slid out from the driver's seat.

Two Federals smuggled across the lines by God and Wilton. Gilman could only guess how Wilton had done it. Bribes and friends? Gilman stopped on the porch looking down at the tall white woman walking toward the steps, mounting them with her slight swagger. Lindsey seemed to breathe fast. She met Gilman's eyes, but there was only that quickening in her breathing to show any emotion. Was it possible that Lindsey felt glad to see her?

"Dr. Gilman, I presume." Lindsey offered her hand.

"You came, Lindsey, you came." Gilman felt that she should hug her, but some doubt passed between them. She held Lindsey's hand between her own instead, a Nigerian greeting. "I see you, my friend."

Sunlight broke between them and the patter of rain swept through like an afterthought from the scurrying clouds overhead. Had Lindsey's face changed, shifted in expression? How calm and distant, how simply dressed in her lavender shirtwaist, a few darker spots on it from the rain, her hair in a neat chignon.

"You're looking pretty good," Lindsey said. Maybe Lindsey had always thought Gilman should lose weight. Gilman stamped on the thought.