The bush pilot put her off the plane as if she were weapons-grade uranium along with the supplies that he had brought for the camp. Dr. Carter, an imposing woman in her early thirties, raised an eyebrow at his departure.
"Whatever you did to make that man shut the hell up, I'm impressed," she drawled.
Marnie could feel her natural shyness awaken in the presence of the camp director, but before she could stick both feet squarely in her mouth, a woman wearing the khaki-green Tanzanian nurses attire approached Dr. Carter. The woman said a few words in what Marnie recognized as Chaga, one of the several local languages spoken outside of the main cities, but she did not have enough of the vocabulary to understand it. She did not need to understand it, however, to read the fear and urgency in the woman's voice. She watched as Dr. Carter looked first upset, then wearily resigned.
"I'm afraid that we don't have any time for you to get settled in, Dr. Arbinger," she said. "You're needed right away."
Marnie was escorted to a series of large tents set up as operating chambers. They were sealed as thoroughly as they could be to better the chances of those being treated, but Marnie knew that they were a far cry from the pristine operating centers that she was accustomed to.
The moment she was within the confines of the operation tent, she noticed two things. The first was that the scent of blood soaked the space, and the second was that it was her friend Jessica who was trying to save the man's life.
Jessica barely looked up as Marnie came up next to her. Instead, Marnie observed in fascinated horror as her best friend slowly lost the patient that she was operating upon. The old man had once been very large, but some disease had wasted him away quickly. A stained cloth covered him to the waist, but Marnie saw that he had lost weight rapidly, and his skin was covered in thick boils, some pierced and deflated and others dark and round. The boils were clustered everywhere, but they were focused on his armpits and close to his throat, preventing him from breathing.
"No, no, keep breathing," Jessica murmured, her voice raw and ragged. "Please... keep breathing..."
Marnie assisted her friend for the next three hours, winning the man back to life time after time. Each breath grew shallower, however, and the space between them grew longer. Finally, even Jessica's talented hands had no more magic to impart, and the man took his last breath.
For a moment, Marnie was afraid that her friend would collapse, but there was something different about the Jessica that stood before her. Jessica had always been strong, but now there was something ferocious about her. She knew what her cause was, and she had found a strength deep inside herself.
"Welcome to hell," Jessica said bleakly. She drew her friend out of the tent, and stripping the contaminated gloves and dressing from her body, she gave Marnie a deep hug.
What the hell have I gotten into here? Marnie wondered, half-desperate. I left a safe life and job for...
Then Jessica smiled at her, a small thing, but there was hope in it that helped quell Marnie's doubt.
"You have no idea how much you're needed here," Jessica sighed. "This illness, whatever the hell it is, has already devastated two villages that I've seen. This man is the first one struck down from another village nearby."
"Good," Marnie said, and she ignored Jessica's startled look. "That means that there's a lot he can teach us. Is there a mobile lab set up for me?"
"There is," Jessica said, her words hesitant, and Marnie nodded. "Good. I've got a sample kit in my bag here, and I'll start by taking what I need from the poor man we just lost. Jessica, make sure that that lab is functional for what I need, I think you know what to look for."
If Jessica was shocked by her friend's authoritative reaction to the human tragedy, she recovered quickly. A brief smile crossed her face, and she nodded.
"Glad to have you on board, Dr. Arbinger," she said, and she left to do as Marnie requested.
Marnie took a deep breath, slid on a pair of gloves and a sterile apron for the operating room, and went back in. The man on the table was a human, one who had loved and hated, cried and laughed, but right now, Marnie couldn't allow herself to see that. Right now, he was possibly an essential piece of a puzzle that needed solving, a piece that might allow others to be spared the same fate that he had suffered.
Despite her resolve, Marnie looked down at the man with some compassion, her hands stilled on her needle.
"Sorry, sir. I hope to make sure that this never happens to anyone else."
She took her samples as quickly as she could while still being painstaking thorough. How long had it been since she had had to do this in the field? How long had it been since she had had to remember that the samples that she used came from real people, many of whom suffered dreadfully before they passed?
When she was done, Marnie covered the man with a white cloth, closing the operating room behind her. This was a medical camp, which meant that there were people here who would know what needed to be done with the man’s body. She had her own job to do.
Marnie found her laboratory trailer set up exactly as she hoped it would be. It was a small piece of the familiar in a world where the trees towered over the edge of the camp and where the plains seemed to go on forever. She found equipment that she was used to working with, and she set to it with an iron will.
The next few hours dissolved away as Marnie sunk herself into her work. There had been no work done on this disease before, not at the level where she was used to operating, so she started from the beginning. Her field was a tug of war between precise action and waiting, but Marnie didn't leave the samples alone while she waited. Instead, she wrote down everything she could think of that she had observed during surgery, everything that trickled through her mind. One never knew where a breakthrough was going to come from...
When she finally had samples that she could look at closely, Marnie scowled. It should have been impossible. The last time she had seen samples like this, it was from a historical textbook.
The blood samples were presenting like a course of illnesses that had last appeared almost a thousand years ago, perhaps even earlier. This had all the hallmarks of what her ancestors might have called a medieval plague, but why should such a thing appear again? How would it even have survived.
Marnie knew that her preliminary results were too simple to provide any real information yet. She set up a secondary round of tests, one that would need all evening to tabulate. She stretched, feeling her back crack a little, and left the laboratory tent.
The African twilight was a lilac gray, suffusing the air with a soft glow that Marnie had never seen anywhere else. The camp, spread out over perhaps a Chicago city block, hummed with quieting activity, and Marnie found the quartermaster, who showed her where to get her rations and the small tent where she would be sleeping.
Once her hunger was sated, she asked around for Jessica, only to receive a shrug.
"She's where she always is. Waiting."
Puzzled, Marnie pressed for more information. She was finally directed to a large flat rock on the eastern edge of camp, the side that faced the harsh grasslands. She was warned, not so jokingly, to watch out for lions and hyenas. For some reason, that more than anything told her brain that she was not simply on a very rough camping trip in the United States, and she resolved to remember that.
The rock that had been pointed out to her was tall, sticking up from the ground like some sort of ancient sentinel. Against the fading light, Marnie could see Jessica's slight form seated on top. Jessica's back was perfectly straight, and she stared off over the grassland as if she were waiting for something. It wasn't an easy climb to the top of the rock to join Jessica, and by the time Marnie got to the top, she had scraped up her palms and was breathing hard.
"You could have lent a hand," Marnie said, sitting next to her friend, trying to catch her breath."
"Honestly, it was too much fun watching you climb up here," Jessica said with a grin. "Really cute."
Marnie glared at her, and then gave it up. No one could ever be mad at Jessica for too long. Her friend had a kind of mischievous joy to her that made it feel like you were all part of the fun.
Jessica slung an arm over Marnie's shoulder, pulling her close.
"God, I'm glad you're here."
"Me too," Marnie said. "You've needed a proper hematologist out here for..."
"Well, for that, but for more than that. I've missed you a ton. It's... it's so easy to get turned around out here..."
Marnie cocked an eyebrow at her friend.
"I could see that already, but is there something else? You seem different, and as difficult as clearly is, and as heartbreaking, I don't think that that this is all.."
Jessica drew her breath slightly roughly, and for a moment, Marnie thought she would clam up. Jessica did that sometimes, when she didn't want to share what was inside her, even if you could tell that it was eating her up.
"It's not. Marnie. Marnie, you are definitely going to laugh, but I met someone."
The confession felt almost painful, and for a moment, Marnie was frozen. Jessica had always been among the most fiercely ambitious of their class, the one who had charged ahead and never thought about anything as simple or plebeian as companionship or marriage. In many ways, Marnie, who had always felt the wistful affection for home and hearth, had envied that resolve.
Now even in the dim twilight, she could tell that Jessica was blushing, and to her surprise, her friend looked miserable.
"Oh honey," she said, hugging Jessica tightly. "You don't look as happy as you should be with that."
"I wish it were as uncomplicated as him being married or something like that," Jessica confessed. "It's... god, I don't even know where to start."
"Start at the beginning, go on through the middle, and then be assured that I will still be your friend at the end. How does that sound? Also, there's nothing uncomplicated about dating a married man. I did that once by accident and... yeah, never again. If I can't run a background check on a guy, I'm not even meeting him for coffee."
Jessica laughed a little at Marnie's words. Where Jessica had always been fiercely independent, some of Marnie's own dating exploits had been the subject of teasing and fun back in the day. Marnie was a little stung by some of the comments of her fellow students at the time, but these days, she thought that they been more on target than not. Romance had very little place when you were trying to save lives.
"All right, all right. So, to start at the beginning... I guess it all started when I was trying to even get myself to this camp. I think you remember when I fell out of communication..."
Marnie did, and Jessica was poised to continue when suddenly she stiffened.
"There!" she said, pointing across the plain, and Marnie followed her pointing finger to see two figures on horseback materializing out of the gloom.
That's a little strange, it's almost like she sensed them before she saw them... Marnie thought, but she didn't have much time to ponder the thought. Jessica was scrambling down from the rock. Her friend was in such a hurry that Marnie was certain she had scraped her hands and knees on her way down, but Jessica didn't seem to care. Jessica, usually so very calm and collected, was now sprinting across the open grass towards the two men on horseback, and Marnie was following along wondering what in the world came next.
I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek.
You can download the rest of this book on Amazon in June 2017!