But he won't just watch. He'll have something real to do, something that isn't in a book, isn't on a screen, isn't imaginary, and wasn't prescribed for him by some homework-manic teacher.
Oh, God, please let this boy learn from what he goes through. Don't let it hurt him, don't let it break his spirit, don't let him become hardened to suffering.
And while you're at it, keep us both alive, will you?
She wanted so badly to grab him and hug him and yell at him for getting them both into such a nightmare and then rock him to sleep in her arms. Always she could feel him in her arms, her firstborn, the one who taught her how to nurse a baby, the one who taught her how little she needed to teach, he just learned anything, everything, kept coming up with new achievements every day, and all she could do was hold out a hand when he needed one, comfort him when he needed comfort, feed him, clothe him, and then stand back and watch what he was becoming.
What am I doing, taking you to Africa, to Nigeria, to a land of plague and war? The Book of Revelation is all coming true in this place we're going to, and we have no weapon at all, nothing to protect us.
And then she thought: Cole is there. Cole and all of Reuben's boys. The finest soldiers in the world. They're there, too. She thanked God for them. And then, finally, as night rushed toward them across the Atlantic, she slept.
When she awoke, Mark was curled up against the window. Not so tall-looking now, his body so young and thin, his sweaty hair clinging to his forehead and cheek, his fist up under his cheek the way he always slept on car trips with the family.
Whatever sleep they had wasn't enough, but when the plane landed, there was nothing to do but get up and gather their belongings and shuffle toward the door and out into the bright sun of a Nigerian morning.
Theirs was the first plane of the relief mission to arrive—one of the perks of being a presidential adviser—but it was clear that the people awaiting them, Nigerian and American, weren't quite sure what this influx of untrained people would be good for.
By her nature, Cecily couldn't stand back and wait to be told what to do. She was obedient enough when they were shuffled from the plane to a trio of city buses and driven from the deserted airport to the abandoned university campus that was now a makeshift American military base. But when the whole planeload of volunteers were left sitting in a large lobby of the College of Medical Sciences building with only about half enough chairs and absolutely nothing to see or read or do, Cecily got up and began to make a pest of herself. She knew how to talk to military people, how to explain things without raising the stress level too high.
"If you don't have any place ready for us to sleep or eat, that's fine. But maybe if someone could brief us on what we should and shouldn't do for patients of the sneezing—the nictovirus—what their symptoms are, what might help them keep a fever down, what they can eat—"
"Ma'am," the lieutenant assigned to them finally said, "you don't get it. We don't do anything for them. They aren't
here. Mostly we just try to keep sick people off the base, keep our contact with the locals to a minimum."
Cecily was stunned. "Well, didn't anyone tell you we were coming?"
"Did anybody ask us if we wanted you?" asked the lieutenant. "No, sorry, ma'am, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. We've kept ourselves separated from the local population because our soldiers have to stay healthy to do their work. The few health workers who actually interface with the patients aren't allowed on the base. For fear of contagion."
"Then we need to get off the base as quickly as possible," said Cecily, "because we're here to interface with the patients."
"I know," said the lieutenant, "and if it was up to me I'd let you all march through the gates and go to it, whatever you think you're here to do. But our base commander has the crazy idea that he doesn't want you all to be sent home in body bags. Or buried here so that the virus doesn't enter American breathing space even in corpses. To put it bluntly, ma'am."
"Who is your commander?"
"General Coleman, ma'am."
Of course. She knew he was the head of American military operations on the ground in Africa, she just hadn't put it together that they would be brought straight to his base of operations. For all she knew he was out on a mission right now. Hadn't he just gotten through rescuing the U.S. embassy staff in Bangui? Cole wasn't the type to sit around and wait for a bunch of civilians to arrive.
Then again, Cole was also not the type to leave them with no support, no instructions, nobody to greet them.
Most of the people found some miserable spot on the floor to lie down and sleep, using wadded-up clothing from their suitcases as pillows. The second plane arrived only a couple of hours after theirs, and those people made it even hotter and more crowded.
But then food came, big serving bowls pushed in on carts, and metal dishes in stacks and utensils in bins. Some of the food was familiar—peanut butter sandwiches, ham and cheese sandwiches, turkey and cheese, roast beef—but there was also a gloppy mess of white-colored mashed yams that had little flavor, but whatever there was, she hated it and so did most of them.
"Get used to it," said one of the soldiers serving them. "Yams are the staple of the Nigerian diet. When in Calabar, do as the Nigerians do. Except for their spices. These people think jalapeno peppers are boring."
Cecily thought of how Chinma had said American food was bad. But as far as she could tell, these yams were as bland as plain macaroni. "These yams don't taste all that spicy," said Cecily.
"Yeah, well, that's because this is food for Americans. If we served you what the Nigerian cooking staff eat out in the kitchen, you'd cry like a baby."
It took more than an hour, and two loads of food, before everyone was fed. Then there was the bathroom problem. The base supposedly had all the comforts of home, and the military kept everything absolutely clean—no slacker when it came to discipline, was General Cole—but there were suddenly more than a hundred new people on pretty much the same toilet schedule, and there just weren't enough holes in the latrines for everybody, without leaving a lot of people to dance around or hold very still outside the doors, waiting their turn.
Finally a doctor—judging from the lab coat—came into the room and talked for a few minutes with the lieutenant in charge, a different one from the one she had talked to before. The lieutenant called out in a loud voice, "Please quiet down and pay attention, folks! This is Doctor Miller and he's about to give you your training."
"Such as it is," said Miller. And then he was off and running.
It was badly organized and sometimes incoherent. He talked about the course of the disease, but then kept interrupting himself with meaningless or depressing anecdotes that always seemed to end with him saying, "Of course, he died." Cecily wanted to say, Does anybody live through it?