Gwen said, “His cough worsened overnight.”
Sara bit her tongue so she would not lash out at Gwen again. She had a hard time believing a woman who had gone to nursing school would risk her children’s lives over repeatedly disproven pseudoscience and the word of a former Playboy model. If anyone wanted a real-life documentation of the vital necessity of vaccines, they should look to the life of Helen Keller.
Sara slipped her hands into a pair of gloves. “Benjamin, I’m going to examine you now. I’ll be as fast as I can. Will you open your mouth for me?”
He struggled to keep his mouth open as he coughed.
Sara used the light from the otoscope to see inside. The Koplik’s spots were on the soft palate and oropharynx. The light reflected off the pearly centers. She told Gwen, “We need to get his fever down.”
“I can have them bring in ice.”
“Get as much as you can,” Sara told her. “Acute encephalitis has a fatality rate of fifteen percent. Lasting neurologic damage occurs in twenty-five percent of cases.”
Gwen nodded, but she was a nurse. She knew this already. “Our two angels were taken by seizures.”
Sara did not know whether to rage or cry.
“Gwen?” one of the women called. She was standing over another cot, another deathly ill child.
Sara brought the chair so she could sit by the girl’s bed. Three, maybe four years old, blonde hair fanned out on a thin pillow. Skin as pale as the moon. The sheet was soaked through with sweat. Her breathing was labored, punctuated by an unproductive cough. The child’s rash had taken on a coppery hue, so she was well into a week of the disease. Sara changed into a fresh pair of gloves. She pressed open the girl’s eyelids. Gwen passed her the ophthalmoscope. Sara’s chest filled with dread. The conjunctiva was red and swollen. The edge of the cornea had become infected. She listened to the girl’s lungs. Both had an achingly familiar crackle.
If the double pneumonia didn’t kill her, then she would probably be blind for the rest of her life.
Gwen said, “This is my Adriel.”
Sara struggled against an overwhelming helplessness. “We need lab tests to see if the pneumonia is bacterial or viral.”
“We have Zithromax.”
Sara took off one of her gloves. She pressed her hand to Adriel’s head. She was roasting with fever. The antibiotic could wreck the girl’s intestinal tract, but they had to take the chance. “Give it to her.”
Gwen started to speak, then stopped. She changed her mind again. “If you give me a list, I can try to get whatever you think would help.”
What would help was an air ambulance to take these children to civilization.
Gwen found a notepad and pencil beside one of the beds. “We can get bulk from the pharmacy. Tell me what you need. We can dose it ourselves.”
Sara looked at the sharp pencil end resting on the first line of the page. She tried to gather her thoughts. “Ten tubes of Tobrex ointment, ten of the drops. Ten of Vigamox. We don’t know if these eye infections and earaches are going to spread.” Sara changed her gloves. She watched Gwen’s pencil move down the page, the quantity, a dash, then the name of the medication. “Five Digoxin, five Seroquel, twenty or more tubes of hydrocortisone cream for the rashes. Ten erythromycin, five Lamisil cream for the fungal infections . . . are you getting this?”
Gwen nodded. “Ten erythromycin, five Lamisil.”
Sara kept dictating until the page was filled. They weren’t going to the local pharmacy for these supplies, which meant that they needed someone on the outside to bring them in. “I’m assuming you don’t want my license or DEA number?”
“No.” Gwen checked the list, tapping each word with her pencil. “I don’t—I’m not sure. This is a lot.”
“There are a lot of sick children,” Sara said. “Whoever’s going to the pharmacy, tell them it’s listed in order of importance. Anything is better than nothing.”
Gwen tore the page from the pad. She passed the list to one of the women, who silently left the bunkhouse.
Sara hooked the stethoscope into her ears. She turned to the girl in the next cot, whose name was Martha. The rash in the corners of her mouth was cracked with candida. The child beside her, Jenny, had pneumonia. Sara moved to the next patient, then the next. Their ages ranged from four to twelve. All but Benjamin were girls. Six had pneumonia. Adriel’s conjunctivitis had spread to another child. Two were showing ear infections that could be cultured and diagnosed in any pediatrician’s office. Sara could only advise warm compresses in the slim hope that they would keep their hearing.
There was no telling how much time had passed when she finished with the last little girl, a dark-haired, blue-eyed four-year-old named Sally who’d coughed so hard that she’d developed a bleed in her right eye. Sara made a second round with the sickest children. All she could do was hold their hands, stroke their hair, give them the impression that as a doctor, she could magically restore their health. They would be playing soon, drawing with their crayons, running around in the fields, spinning like tops until they were so dizzy that they fell down.
The weight of her lies felt like a rock pressing the breath out of Sara’s chest.
She peeled off her gloves as she walked down the steps to the bunkhouse. The heat sweltered around her. She washed her hands at the sink. The water was so hot she could feel the skin burning. Sara was numb to the pain. There was a tremble she could not get out of her body. One, maybe two more of those children were going to die. They needed to be in a hospital right now. They needed nurses and doctors and lab results and machinery and modern life to pull them back into the living.
Gwen walked down the steps, her hands wringing in her apron again. “Dash sent the list to our supplier. We should have it this afternoon around—”
Sara walked away. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she could not go far. The armed men tightened the periphery as she walked across the clearing. Two jumped down from their deer stands. Two more appeared out of the trees. They had knives on their belts, guns in their holsters, rifles gripped between their meaty hands. Without exception, they were young, some of them no more than teenagers. All of them were white.
Sara ignored them. She pretended that they were nothing in her life because at this moment, they did not matter. She listened for the burbling sound of water that told her the stream was nearby. She followed one of the meandering paths. The burbling turned into a rush. The stream was actually a river. Sara fell to her knees at the water’s edge. Rocks had created a waterfall. She put her hands into the rush of ice-cold water. She dunked her head underneath. She needed something to shock herself out of this nightmare.
There was no shock that was strong enough. She sat on her knees, hands in her lap, hair hanging down in thick, wet strands. Sara felt useless. There was nothing she was going to be able to do for these children. Had Michelle felt the same way? She had been here for a month. She had watched two children die, tracked the infection spreading around the Camp. She had known what was coming and been unable to stop it.
Sara couldn’t stop it, either.
Her hands went to her face. Tears streamed from her eyes. She could not stop crying. Her body shook from grief. She was doubled over by it, unable to stop. Sara gave in to every emotion—not just her fears for these children, but for her own loss. Years ago, she had come to terms with her inability to have a child, but she found herself hating Gwen, hating every woman in this Camp who had left their child, their gift, so vulnerable.
A twig snapped behind her.
Sara jumped up, fists raised.
Dash said, “Thank you for your help, Doctor. I know it’s difficult.”
She wanted to spit in his face. “Who are you people? What are you doing up here?”
“We are families who’ve decided to live off the land.”
“Those children are sick. Some of them—”
“That’s why you’re here, Doctor. The Lord was kind enough to send us a pediatrician.”
“He should’ve sent you oxygen tents, IV antibiotics, respirators—”
“We’ll get you everything you put on the list,” Dash said. “Gwen has told me she is confident in your abilities.”
“I’m not!” Sara realized she was shouting. She didn’t care. “If you believe in miracles, then pray for one. Your daughter is gravely ill. All of those children are in critical danger. I understand having a religious objection to vaccines, but you don’t. You clearly don’t object to modern medicine. You took Michelle to the hospital. You could help your children, but instead you’re letting them suffer for—for what?”
Dash steepled together his hands, but not in prayer. He was giving her time to collect herself. As if it was possible to recover from the tragedy she had been dragged into.
Finally, he said, “You seem to have some questions for me.”