The Valeditztorian (13 page)

“Emma
! Hey, Emma, get in here. There’s something wrong with Paula.”

I jump out of bed and race into the living room, where Paula still
lies on the couch. Now wide awake, the woman is covered in sweat, shaking from head to toe with violent rigors. Although her fingertips are bluish in color, I realize she’s burning up with fever when I lay the back of my hand against her forehead.

“What should we do?” Grace asks
. “Should we call an ambulance?”

“Do they even have ambulance
s here?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” says Grace
. “Do you think we should run to the lab and get Luciano?”

“
No way. I don’t trust him, and I don’t want him anywhere near Paula. Luciano is definitely plan B. Let’s try plan A first.”

“Plan A had better be good,” she says
. “What’s plan A?”

“Plan A is…well…just trust me
.”

But there’s no reason she should
. This is the first time I’ve treated a septic patient by myself. Sepsis. Hmm. At least I think that’s what the problem is.

At my direction, we give P
aula another big dose of acetaminophen to bring down the fever. Then we sort through the antibiotics in my drug box, dividing them into two groups, based on whether they’re primarily used to treat “gram negative” or “gram positive” bacterial infections.

“Okay
. Bactrim is definitely gram negative,” I say.

“What about the C
ipro?” Grace asks.

“
I’m not sure, but I took it for my last urinary tract infection.”

“Gram negative
in practice, then,” says Grace.

“Sounds good,” I say.

“Penicillin and clindamycin are both gram positive.”

“And the Z
-pack?” I ask.

“Gram positive also,” says Grace
. “How about the Augmentin?”

“
I think it treats both. Will you look it up in your
Sanford Guide
?”

“
Okay.”

Consulting
her pocket-sized
Sanford Guide
, Grace confirms that all our categories are correct, more or less.

“Which
type of infection do you think Paula has?” Grace asks.

“I’
ve got absolutely no idea.”

Grace raises her eyebrows
.

“
Really, Emma, no idea? You’re kidding, right?”

“
Nope. I’m not kidding.”

“
So which antibiotic were you planning on giving her?”

“I figured we’d use one from each category—one gram positive, and one gram negative
. That way we’ll cover both possibilities.”

“
Okay, I guess,” says Grace, sounding extremely doubtful.

After
treating Paula with penicillin and Bactrim, we wait.

One hour goes by
. Then two. Grace and I sit on the floor in the living room, watching Paula, intermittently spooning Rehydralyte into her mouth. Now and then I toss a roach into a Tupperware just for fun, and Grace doesn’t even react. Eventually Paula’s fever and rigors start to subside. The midday sun rises higher in the sky. Ever so slowly, color begins returning to Paula’s cheeks. Another dose of penicillin. By late afternoon Paula is sitting up on the couch, drinking Rehydralyte directly from the bottle. When she gives me a weak smile, I nearly collapse with relief.

“Obrigada,” says Paula
.

“De nada,” Grace and I shout together
.

The two of us hug one another, and I start crying.

Soon I pull myself together, and Paula launches into the tale of her recent experiences. With Grace translating, Paula explains that she was indeed pregnant. Although she would’ve been happy to keep the baby and marry Luciano, he rejected that idea.

Paula
clutches her chest, saying something angrily, as tears begin flowing down her cheeks.

“What did she say?” I ask.

“I’m not totally sure,” says Grace, “but it sounded like, ‘Luciano turned my heart to ice, and then he shattered it with a sledge hammer.’”

"Can
you say something to calm her down?” I ask.

“Like what?”

“Anything you can think of that’s soothing.”

I hand
Paula a tissue, which she uses to dab her eyes.

“I just want her to stop crying,” I say
. “At this point, it’s probably not a good idea for her to lose more fluid.”

Fortunately the tears
quickly subside, and Paula continues her story. Apparently Luciano brought her to a back-alley abortion clinic, which turned out to be an awful place. Some of the girls in the waiting room looked young enough to be children. Periodically, she heard them screaming in the procedure room. When it was her turn, Paula almost backed out, but Luciano urged her to continue. Since the doctor’s instruments had just been used on the previous patient, Paula was relieved that Luciano had brought the sterilizing solution. After she laid down on the table, the doctor injected a pain killer into her cervix, but the anesthesia wasn’t enough to fully deaden the pain. When Paula saw her own blood on the instruments, her anxiety escalated, and she started to panic. Eventually Luciano gave her some medicine to calm her down. Next thing she knew, she was throwing up in our apartment.

“How are you feeling
now?” I ask, and Grace translates.

Paula says something softly.

“She says she feels tired, but much better. She wants to know if she can stay the night,” says Grace.

“Of course,” I reply
. “She can stay as long as she wants to, right?”

“Right,” says Grace.

Almost immediately, Paula falls asleep again on the couch, and Grace and I continue talking quietly in the kitchen.

“Thank God she’s okay
,” says Grace.

“I know
. Can you imagine what might’ve happened to her? Luciano put us in a really bad position….This is all so surreal.”

“Which part?” asks Grace.

“Everything. That it’s 1999. That this is happening here, in Brazil. I mean, we’re not in the jungles of Africa. Brazil is supposed to be a modern country—part of the Western world, right?”

Grace looks at me doubtfully.

“Well, it’s sort of modern,” I continue. “I can’t believe that a woman still can’t legally get an abortion here.”

“We’re lucky to live in the States,” says Grace.

“You’re right.”

And for the first time since I got here, perhaps for the first time in
a decade, I feel a pang of homesickness, a longing to be in my mother’s kitchen, getting a hug and a bowl of chicken soup. Thinking of my mother this way, a terrible sadness creeps into my heart. Though it’s painful to face it, the truth is that the two of us used to be very close…and I miss her. As a kid, whenever I got into trouble—which was frequently—she was there for me. When I was three, for example, a neighborhood bully threw my favorite stuffed animal (a bedraggled baby leopard named “Tiger”) into a backyard swamp. If the president had been watching what followed, he probably would’ve made my mother an international diplomat. Minutes after my mom discussed the situation with the bully’s mother, the brat was knee deep in pungent pond water, retrieving Tiger from the algae-covered muck.

Over the years, my mom
helped me cope with everything a growing girl has to deal with—spiteful peers, demanding teachers, broken bones (I had a lot of those), puberty, acne, my first romantic heartbreak. Everything.

T
hat includes the one and only time I got pregnant, when I was a senior in high school. Without asking how or why it happened (I suppose that part was obvious), my mother calmly offered a solution.

“Don’t worry.” she said
. “Your life’s not over. I’ll make an appointment for an abortion.”

Her words came as such a relief
.

On the day of the procedure, my mother
drove the car with her left hand, holding mine with her right. When we got to the clinic, the exam room was clean, and the medical staff were competent. No fear. No screaming. Just a routine medical procedure. The whole time I was in there, my mother stood by me.

Poor Paula
. If only she’d had someone like my mom watching over her, instead of Luciano. If only she hadn’t gotten pregnant in this God-forsaken place, where abortion is still illegal. If only she’d paid more attention to the dancing condom.

Grace and I continue talking as the sky turns orange, pink,
and dusky purple. When the stars begin to appear, the two of us collapse into our beds, physically and emotionally exhausted. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, just before sunrise, I open my eyes to find Paula standing over me. From a physical standpoint, she appears to be quite healthy.

“Obrigada, Emma,” she says, and I just smile
.

Looking at her rosy checks, I can’t help thinking that maybe I’m not going to be a complete failure as a doctor, after all.

When she turns to leave the room, perhaps to go home, I jump out of bed, shouting, “Wait!” 

Since
Grace is still comatose, I use a little Portuguese and my best body language to give Paula her instructions for taking the remaining antibiotics.

Drugs in hand, Paula says “tchauzinho” before walking out
the door. For a change, I understand this word, which means “little goodbye.” Ironically, I can already sense that this is the last time I’ll ever see Paula’s unforgettable face.

Chapter Seven

Turnabout

Following Paula’s departure
I’m unable to sleep. Itching with restlessness, I climb out of bed and start pacing around the living room. Memories of my accidental pregnancy, and the support I received from my mom, are racing through my mind. After perseverating for what seems like hours, I come to a realization: I want to go home, and not just to New York. For the first time in nearly 10 years, I’m desperate to reconnect with my family in Connecticut. But how to reconcile with my mother, who’s been angry with me for so long? Retracing my steps between the kitchen and the living room over and over again, no obvious solution comes to mind. Even the shadow of a viable plan eludes me. Thus abandoned by the creativity muse, the path to reconciliation remains unclear.

Yet I am sure about one thing
. It’s time to get the hell out of this country. So help me, I refuse to stay another day in a place that horribly mistreats women. And if things don’t work out with my mom in the aftermath, so be it. A friend to miscreants of all kinds, open-minded New York City surely won’t reject me.

As soon as Grace awakens, I reveal my new plan.

“Oh, no,” she says. “You’re not leaving me here, now…with Alvin?”

“I’d be leaving in another
month anyway. Why don’t you go home early, too?”

“
No,” she shakes her head, “it’s much too soon for me to leave. I need to finish my project. You could stay and help me.”

“You
know how I feel about the mice,” I say.

“What
about the leptospirosis project?”

“My portion
is completely finished. There’s nothing left for me to do. Plus I don’t want to deal with Luciano. If I never saw that man again it would be too soon.”

“So, that
’s it?” she says. “You’re just going to hop on a plane and fly home?”

“Yup,” I smile
. “I cleared it with Walter a couple hours ago, while you were sleeping.”

T
hinking about returning to New York, the center of my universe, fills me with energy and fortifies my resolve. For the rest of the morning, I dance around the apartment, shoving my belongings into my suitcase, while Grace watches me despondently.

Once I’m packed, Grace and I he
ad to the lab, where I exchange farewells with Peter and Soelia, a duo whom I will sorely miss. While I’m tempted to speak to Luciano, who’s currently hiding out in his office, I’m afraid that any attempt at dialogue will quickly degenerate into a one-way tirade, consisting mainly of four-letter words that I’ll later regret. Instead of confronting him, I decide to stick with the silent treatment. Perhaps later, from a transcontinental distance, I’ll express my feelings via e-mail. Ah, yes…e-mail. You gotta love this form of communication—quick, easy, and editable—at least until you hit “send.”

Next we find Alvin, who’s busy packing
up a bunch of Fed-Ex boxes in his office.

“You’re going back to New York
…right now?” Alvin asks. “Isn’t it too early?”

“Yes, but my travel plans have changed
. Walter OK’d it.”

While
he initially looks surprised, Alvin soon recovers.

“T
his is a bit unexpected, Emma, though perhaps fortuitous. Could you do me a favor?”

“What is it?”

“I’m currently in the process of mailing Joan Riley duplicates of all the materials we used in Grace’s project.”

“Everything?”
I ask.

“
Everything except the mice,” says Alvin.

Tha
t’s because you killed them all, you jerk, I think to myself.

Alvin continues, “Just now, when I was organizing the fungal samples, I started worrying they’d dry out in transit
.”

He looks at me hopefully
.

“But i
f you could deliver them to Dr. Riley by hand, periodically watering them….”

I recognize Joan Riley’s name
. An acclaimed oncologist and researcher at Memorial Sloane-Kettering, she’s someone I’d love to meet in person.

“I’d
be happy to,” I say, and Alvin hands me a parcel containing the samples.

“Thank you
,” says Alvin. “Hopefully we’ll get the ball rolling on the next phase of the project ASAP.”

“No problem,” I say, and then my big mouth leaps ahead of my brain
. “Alvin, can I ask you a favor?”

“Go ahead.
”

Ignoring
the fact that Grace is standing right next to me, I blurt out, “When I’m gone, can you keep an eye Grace? I think she’s homesick.”

Alvin appears
taken aback by my comment and unsure of what to say next. Plunging ahead, I repeat myself like a fool.

“Yeah, she’s definitely
homesick. Lately, she’s been acting really depressed.”

Before Alvin recovers the power of speech
, I’m out the door. When I peek at Grace, who’s taking great strides to keep up with me, she’s clearly mortified.

“My goodness, Emma
. Why on earth did you say that?”

“I’m sorry, Grace, but to tell you the truth, I couldn’t think
of a more diplomatic way of asking him to be nice to you.”

Unlike my mother, I
’ve never been a competent diplomat, especially not when it comes to dealing with complex social situations.

When we get back to the apartment, Grace i
s still acting disgruntled, but I don’t try to placate her. Instead, I call a taxi service and arrange transportation to the airport.

“Grace,” I say after hanging up
the phone, “before I leave, would you take one last walk with me through the neighborhood? I’d like to make a couple of stops, and I’m sure I could use your help.”

“
Will you be discussing my mental health problems with anyone else?” she asks.

“What mental health problems?
” I say.

Fortunately she cracks a smile, and the two of us share a brief laugh
.

When we exit the
building, I’m delighted to find Lucineige stationed at her cart across the street. As the elderly Baiana prepares my last serving of abara, I say goodbye and attempt to explain that she saved me from starvation. Though it’s unclear whether she fully understands me, Lucineige blushes and refuses to accept any money for the food.

“Next stop…
ice cream shop,” I say.

Upon
entering the most important store in Brotas, I order five cups of dulce de leche.

“Hungry?” asks Grace
.

“Just a l
ittle. Here, help me hold some of them,” I say, passing two cups to Grace.

“Wh
at do you intend to do with all of these?” she asks.

“
You’ll see. Follow me.”

One block away, Grace and I find ou
r three favorite street urchins, looking more ragged than ever, hanging out in their usual spot with the sugar cane man. Though initially hesitant to accept my gift, the boys soon realize that this is a sweet deal: free ice cream with no strings attached. In record time, they devour their portions.

“Wow,” says Grace
. “That’s unexpected.”

“What is?” I ask.

“For a change, Emma, you weren’t the first one to finish eating.”

“It was close, though,” I say, scooping
up my last, delicious spoonful of heaven in a Dixie cup.

Giving me a sheepish smile, the littlest boy reaches into his pocket and pulls out Grace’s flashlight
.

“What have we h
ere?” I ask, as he hands it over.

Bending
down to the boy’s level, I attempt, unsuccessfully, to turn on the light.

“Dead
batteries, ay?”

I stand upright
.

“
Grace, it looks like we’ll need to make one more stop.”

Then I take off like a shot
toward the hardware store.

“Hey, wait up,” she calls after me
.

As quickly as possible, we purchase several new battery packs, plus a
couple of extra flashlights. Tearing open the packages, we install the batteries and jog back to the boys.

“Here
you go,” I say, catching my breath while handing out the goods. “I’m sure you guys need this stuff more than we do.”

When
Grace translates, we’re rewarded with enormous, toothy smiles all around.

Checking my watch, I shout, “Oh, my goodness
. I really need to get moving.”

Sprinting
back toward our building, I shout over my shoulder at Grace, who’s doing her best to keep pace with me, “I wish there was more that we could do for them.”

“Me, too
. But would you slow down, Emma? I can barely breathe.”

“Sorry
. I don’t want to miss my flight. Look! The taxi’s already here!” 

“I’ll hold off the driver
while you get your stuff,” says Grace.

Less than five minutes later I’m bounding off the elevator with
my suitcase, headed for the street. Racing toward the curb, my sneaker catches on a crack in the sidewalk. As I pitch forward, my suitcase flies skyward, like a high, pop fly into midfield. The driver, who’s been patiently waiting behind the cab, rushes backward into the road, raising his arms toward the heavens. A second later, as the suitcase plummets to earth, he makes the catch! Lucineige and Grace cheer like the home team has just won the World Series. Though he hasn’t yet started the car, the driver has already earned himself a very nice tip.

“Hooray
! Grande captura!” shouts Grace.

“Ouch!” I say from pavement.

“Are you okay, Emma?” asks Grace, rushing to my side.

“Yeah, I’m fine
. Just a scraped knee. No biggee.”

After pulling me off the ground, Grace says, “I’m going to miss you, Emma.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Really.”

“I’m going to miss you, too,” I say.

For a moment the two of us embrace
.

“I’m sorry for being
such a pain in the neck,” I say.

“
When were you a pain?” she asks.

“
Um, ever since I got here.”

Grace looks at me questioningly.

“Like in the beginning, when I wouldn’t kill the cockroaches.”

She shrugs.

“And then, when you had to extricate me from the lab late at night, and the kids mugged us. Not to mention when I spilled the beans about BJ. Plus today, when I embarrassed you in front of Alvin.”

“Oh, yeah,” Grace laughs
. “You were a pain in the neck. I’d almost forgotten, but I’m going to miss you anyway. Now get into the cab before you miss your flight! And don’t forget my can opener, okay?”

“Okay, I won’t
.”

T
hen it’s time to go home.