Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

And suddenly Chinma was overwhelmed by the memory and sank to the floor.

"Oh my Lord," said Aunt Margaret, getting up from her chair.

Chinma lay back on the floor and breathed deeply. He could feel his head trying to make him faint, and so he lay very still and breathed slowly and deeply to make the fainting go away.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," said Chinma. Please stop trying to make me talk until I can breathe again.

"Are you sick? Is this something left over from the sneezing flu?"

He shook his head a little. Why was she asking? Didn't Americans get light-headed and faint when they were overcome with grief?

"What can I do?" she insisted.

"Wait," he said.

She didn't understand him, or didn't believe that he had said "wait."

"Wait," he said again, and then closed his eyes and spread out his arms and breathed and finally the light-as-air feeling went away from his head. Carefully he rolled over and stood up.

"Are you prone to fainting fits?" asked Aunt Margaret. "I mean, does this happen often?"

Chinma shook his head. "What else does Mrs. Malich want to know?"

"Just—I think … how long till you get your strength back?"

He thought about it. "I don't know how long it was. After you're getting better, you sleep a lot. I remember when I first got hungry again. That's when I knew I wasn't going to die. Then it was only a couple of days before I could climb trees again. That's why the soldiers didn't kill me. I climbed a tree to get away from the stink. But I climbed it very slowly and I didn't go as high as usual because I wasn't sure I could hold on."

Aunt Margaret kept typing for a while, and then, once again, the words of the email disappeared.

"There, I hope that helps her. You were very good to be willing to talk about this all again."

/> "I told the doctors."

"Did you almost faint when you told them?" asked Aunt Margaret.

"No," he said. That was because he hadn't thought about his baby sister covered with blood and dying in his arms and then Mother screaming at him when he crawled into her room dragging the baby on a mat behind him.

"If you already told the scientists this, I can't understand why in the world this information hasn't been released and these volunteer health workers weren't briefed."

Chinma wanted to get back to the math book. Well, no, he didn't, but the math book was what he had been working on, and he wanted to get out of Mrs. Malich's office. It was a room that the children were never supposed to go into. Mark had impressed that on him very firmly.

But instead of leaving the room, he said, "If I give all my money to the police, will that be enough for them to let me go?"

Aunt Margaret turned slowly and looked at him with an odd expression. "You're not under arrest, you know."

"But Mrs. Malich said I can't go back to Nigeria because of the officials." Or had she actually said that? "Because there's a law against it."

"You're here under political asylum laws," said Aunt Margaret. "If you return to your home country, it means you must not be in danger after all and so your visa is revoked."

"So if I give the man my hundred and eighty dollars, will he let me go?"

"Why do you want to go there? Are you unhappy here?"

"I should go there to help," said Chinma. "I can't catch the monkey sickness anymore, and I know what happens. I can tell them. I've seen many people live and die. I know which ones. And I speak Yoruba and a little Hausa and I understand some Ibo."

Aunt Margaret's eyes narrowed. "Actually, you really might be helpful. It's just a stupid rule that keeps you from going. There can be exceptions to the rule. Or at least there should be." She turned around and started lifting papers on the desk. "Oh, what am I thinking, she won't leave it lying around." She started using the mouse to bring up different things on the computer screen. "Well, she won't put it on the computer, either. Probably memorized it and ate the note on which it was written down."