Eighteen months later
Bangui, Central African Republic
It was still dangerous to venture out on the streets of Bangui despite the peacekeepers’ presence, especially in the evening. That didn’t stop Anya and the other two aid workers from their organization when the young boy came for help. He was bleeding copiously from a gash on his face that he allowed Anya to tend to while telling them about his mother’s suffering in halting French interspersed with Sango.
She had been in the country for seven months, but still knew only a smattering of Sango. Thanks to nightly sessions with Rosetta Stone, at least her French was conversant-level now, so she was able to follow most of the boy’s plea for help.
His mother was in childbirth and had been struggling for two days. He had finally defied her edict not to venture onto the streets to find help at the aid station. Along the way, he had run into a group of Anti-Balaka. They had tried to detain him and ascertain whether he was Muslim or Christian. The boy had escaped, but not without the machete cut down his face.
When he was stitched up, he insisted they go to his mother right then. Anya ignored the protests of the other aid workers, knowing the mother was probably the only person left in the young boy’s life, and she couldn’t leave the woman and her baby to die in childbirth if they could be saved.
Tom and Etienne had shared her conviction, so the three of them headed out on foot. Vehicles might actually attract more attention as they ventured into a part of the city still strongly under the control of Anti-Balaka forces despite public claims by the peacekeepers to the contrary.
She was almost surprised to find their progress unimpeded. Perhaps the white uniforms they wore, all bearing the medical logo of their organization, bought them safe passage. The scrubs had gotten her out of trouble a few times before—as had the silver cross she wore prominently around her neck on the advice of Etienne, who had been in the country since almost the start of the fighting between Séléka and Anti-Balaka.
The boy led them to a modest house at the end of a street. Several of the surrounding homes had toppled over or bore signs of the heavy fighting that had taken place before French and Rwandan peacekeepers intervened, later followed by the current U.N. peacekeeping force.
She should be inured to such sights by now, since the country was nowhere close to recovering from the devastating civil war instigated by outside influences and fueled by religious differences. It still shook her to imagine the terrible life this child must endure, and she had to fight back a wave of pity for the baby soon to enter the world in such circumstances—if she could do anything to prevent its and its mother’s deaths.
The physician in their group had left Bangui weeks ago, declaring his presence no longer necessary despite the continuing glaring need for aid. Her organization had offered her a transfer, but she had chosen to stay, as had a small contingency of workers and volunteers.
The door creaked when the boy opened it, allowing them to slip inside first. As she passed him, the fear in his eyes transmitted to her, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and causing her to freeze. “Something isn’t right,” she whispered to Tom and Etienne.
Before either man could respond, a blinding spotlight stole their vision. She blinked, barely able to make out a gathering of forms at the periphery of the light. “Please let us pass. We’re here to help this boy’s mother.”
The spotlight dimmed and angled to the left, but it was still too bright, making it difficult to discern the features of the person who stepped into the circle of illumination. Anya’s eyes watered as she blinked fiercely to adjust, finally able to discern the tall, thin person was in fact a woman. She frowned, because this woman wasn’t pregnant.
The woman spoke sharply to the boy in Sango, and he darted forward through the light and past the perimeter to disappear into the shadows on the other side of the house. Her voice was cold and clipped when she spoke to them in French. “You are the doctor?”
She hesitated, licking her lips.
“Yes or no?” The woman angled a worn-looking rifle at them, focusing on Etienne. “You are doctor man?”
He shook his head slowly. “I specialize in procuring supplies, madam.”
Her gun angled to Tom next. “You a doctor man?”
Tom shook his head. “I’m a public health specialist, but not a medical doctor.”
Anya tried not to tremble when the barrel of the rifle faced her. It looked huge from her perspective, and she knew intimately what a bullet could do to a body after her months with the humanitarian organization, first in Darfur, and now C.A.R. When the other woman asked if she was a doctor, she put up her hands slowly. “We don’t have a physician any longer, but I’m a nurse.”
The woman said something that sounded ugly and angry. Perhaps a curse. The gun didn’t waver in its aim. “Come with me, nurse.” She spat the title as though it were distasteful to her.
She hurried to comply, darting a glance over her shoulder in time to see several young men converging on her colleagues. “Please don’t harm them.”
“We will see, nurse.” The woman gave her a grin that held no mirth while stretching her dark skin over her skeletal face.
“How long has the mother been in labor?”
The woman laughed. “There is no mother in labor, foolish nurse.” She shoved Anya into a room illuminated with a similar spotlight system, though the angle was pointed away from the figure on the bed. “There is our leader. You will save him, or…” With a large smile, the woman removed a wickedly sharp machete from her belt and mimicked drawing it across her own throat.
“What’s wrong with him?” She asked the question with trepidation, knowing if it was anything like cancer or something chronic and serious, she and her friends were already dead.
“He was shot by Séléka dogs.” She clutched her gris-gris and murmured a prayer that seemed to call for the eradication of all Muslims from the country, along with painful burning deaths for the peacekeepers.
Yeah, that wasn’t at all daunting. Anya gulped to clear the lump in her throat and approached the man lying on the bed. As she neared, the woman angled the light so she could see better, revealing the still form of a thin African man with a grayish tinge to his skin. Her hand trembled when she reached for his wrist to check his pulse, convinced she would discover him already dead.
Relief swamped her when she found a thready pulse. Medical training took over, and she began assessing her patient, knowing she wasn’t just saving this man’s life. Her life and the lives of her fellow aid workers depended on her performing emergency surgery under these conditions to dig out a bullet or two from a violent criminal.
No pressure.