Chapter 16

Jean didn’t know where she was going. She just knew that she should keep moving. She’d have to pray that she didn’t step on a land mine, pray that the mosquitoes droning around her sweaty body weren’t carrying malaria, pray that the leopard who attacked Victor and now had the taste of blood in his mouth, didn’t come after her. It seemed that’s all she was doing. Praying. Well, she was still alive and still free, wasn’t she?

She just kept walking, dragging her foot behind her, wishing that she had something to eat, wishing she could go back to the stream and get some more water. But she knew that such thoughts were futile. If that woman was so stupid that she really believed that Jean had turned into a wild animal and had harmed Victor, then she might persuade others that such a thing happened.

If they were using child witches as soldiers now, instead of trying to exorcise them, then Jean would be on the top of the list.

At any rate, she was on the top of Matthew’s list. Even if Victor was hurt or dead, Matthew would continue to hunt her. He wanted that coltan.

Or maybe by now, Matthew had figured out that Ruth found the stones and he’d leave her alone.

Maybe Jean would be just one less brat to worry about, not to chase around.

So she kept trudging, feeling dizzy, feeling sick. Maybe she was already dying and all of this was for nothing.

Never give up, her mother had told her, do something that matters.

Jean would like to do something that mattered. She wished that there was a way she could save Natalie and Jimmy and Matilda. She had promised them that she would return, so she wanted with all of her heart to rescue them. Although she was foolish to think that might be possible. She couldn’t save herself. How could she possibly save someone else? Even if she could find them.

Jean didn’t know how long she walked. It was so quiet in the woods she was alert to every sound, every sign, every branch that moved, every bird who chirped. A couple of hours must have gone by before Jean heard the sound of women talking.

She hid behind a tree and watched a group of ladies standing by small rowing boats. They were watching a barge in the distance. Jean had heard about the barge. It carried food such as manioc, corn, fish and even caterpillars. The women would take the barge by storm, bargaining with the market traders. They would then sell the food for exorbitant prices on land. What Jean wouldn’t give for just one taste!

She’d have to settle for water. So instead, Jean stepped up to the stream. Her heart sank when she saw how dirty the water was. She wouldn’t be able quench her thirst here.

The women stopped and stared at her.

She stared back.

The silence was broken by an older woman with unkempt, straggly hair and very thin lips. She was holding a banana. She handed it to Jean and said, “You look hungry.”

Jean almost grabbed it from her, before she remembered to say thank you.

“Where are you coming from?” the woman asked her.

“What’s your name?” a woman with no teeth spit at her.

Jean peeled the banana and wolfed it down, afraid to answer.

The older woman bent down and examined Jean’s leg. The deep concern on her face terrified Jean.

“What happened to your foot?” she asked as she gently touched Jean’s swollen ankle.

Jean drew back in pain. “I stepped on some glass.”

“Is the glass still in your foot?”

“I don’t think so,” Jean said, wishing that she had eaten the banana slowly, wishing she had savored it.

“Your foot is infected,” the woman said and then the rest of the ladies gathered around Jean as though she were a specimen of some sort. They pointed, they shook their heads, they mumbled in grave voices.

Jean wondered how long it would be before they decided that her wound was a signal from the devil.

“What can you do for her, Sabrina?” a woman with heavily lidded eyes asked.

“Can you give her pills?” someone else inquired.

“Maybe you can put some clay or palm oil on it,” someone else suggested.

“Maybe some ashes,” someone else piped in.

Sabrina shook her head and asked Jean to sit down. Jean was more than happy to comply and she sank into the mud. Gently, Sabrina removed Jean’s sneaker and put a slight amount of pressure on Jean’s foot. Now that Jean had a good look at her foot, even she began to feel sick. It was yellow and blue and the wound was crusted over with pus.

And then there was that strange line, leading from the cut up her leg. Except the last time she looked it stopped around her mid-calf. Now the line went right to the kneecap, as though it were crawling up little by little, spreading the infection. When would it reach her heart?

“She needs medical attention,” Sabrina said. “There’s a hospital a few kilometers away. We can get you a ride there.”

“Thank you,” Jean said, “Thank you. Thank you.”

And all Jean was thinking was that maybe, just maybe, her luck was about to change.

The hospital was like home to Jean, a good place to be, even if it wasn’t very clean. She rested on a little cot with a metal bowl of water beside her. The water, sooty and murky, still quenched her thirst. And someone was finally taking care of her.

Jean was sharing the tiny cubicle with another woman, who looked very ill. The woman, who appeared to be sleeping, would mumble. Jean paid her no mind.

The nurse dressed in an oversized white uniform, which had turned gray over time, gave Jean some kind of fish for dinner and a little rice (some of the fish was rotten but Jean just cut around the bad spots). She wanted to be sick forever—she wanted to stay here—to be safe.

She was going to ignore the flies which busily circled around the bare bulb, hanging from the ceiling and the bed bugs who were chewing on her wound.

Then the doctor barged in. Jean wasn’t sure exactly why but her first instinct was not to trust this man. His eyes were cold and he looked overworked and rather irritable. He sank down on the chair beside her, pushed up her dress and grabbed at her foot.

She howled in pain.

“What happened?” He dropped her foot as though it was contagious. And then in a bored manner he scrawled something on his clipboard.

“I stepped on some glass.”

“Is the glass still in the wound?”

“I don’t think so.”

He eyed her as though she had a reason for lying. He drew a deep breath. “What’s your name?” he asked.

She paused, wondering if she should tell him the truth. But it turned out that she didn’t have to, because he kept talking. “By the looks of things, you got a really bad infection here. Bad infections can spread, especially if it’s a staph infection, and I suspect that it is. If you had only gotten medical attention sooner—”

Jean couldn’t even argue but she was marveling at how little this doctor understood. Did he really believe that she didn’t walk into a hospital because she was unconcerned or too busy with schoolwork?

She was too busy trying to escape with her life.

And then the doctor uttered words which brought a cold terror to Jean’s heart. “I’m afraid that it’s too late.”

“Too late?” Jean repeated breathlessly.

“I would say that there is a good chance you’re going to lose your foot.”

At first Jean thought that she didn’t hear the words correctly. They whirled at her, like a sandstorm in her face, so for a moment she didn’t understand.

“The foot looks like it’s gangrene. That means that it’s bad, like a rotten apple. Did you ever eat an apple?” Jean couldn’t remember the last time she had tasted an apple, but it was okay because, again, the doctor didn’t seem to expect an answer. He waved his stubby hands in the air and spoke to her as though he was addressing someone in a foreign language. “If you leave a rotten apple in a barrel, all the other apples will go bad. If I leave this foot on you, the infection will spread. You see, it’s already spreading up your leg.” He tugged at Jean’s leg. When she cried out in pain, he frowned, as though he had been inconvenienced. “The infection will spread to your groin, and from there to all your major organs and eventually to your heart and brain. You’ll be dead in a matter of weeks. You don’t want to die, do you?”

Like Jean really wanted to die. Like she hadn’t spent the last week of her life, trying to survive any way she could. And in the end, had it all come down to this?

“Tomorrow, I’ll cut it off,” the doctor said in an indifferent tone. Then he rose, stretched and without another word, walked away.

Jean was so stunned that she was unable to move, the feeling of horror so immense it rose like bile in the back of her throat She was going to lose her foot. She would never be able to walk normally again, let alone run. She would be a cripple. All because she stepped on a piece of glass, which had gone through the hole in her sneaker.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been infected if she hadn’t kept running on it. But what could she have done? If she had slowed down, she would have died. Maybe she shouldn’t have used the dirty t-shirt to stop the bleeding. But if she hadn’t stopped the bleeding, she would have died.

Jean wished that she had died.

Dying was preferable than living her entire life as a cripple. It was hard enough to survive, if you were a healthy, strong girl. If you were deformed, there was no hope at all.

She wasn’t aware that she had started to cry, until she felt the tears of fury streaming down her face. She didn’t even notice the woman beside her, who had awoken and was now staring at Jean, her eyes full of compassion.

“What’s the matter, honey?”

Jean turned towards her roommate. The woman looked really sick, with yellow eyes and a gray pallor to her skin. Her white hair was thin and clinging to her scalp. Jean guessed that she had malaria. A flash of envy ripped through Jean as she glanced at the woman’s long brown legs, ending with perfectly arched feet. Under her bed was a pair of dirty shoes, caked in mud. Jean wondered if they were her size. And then with her heart breaking, she realized that it didn’t matter.

“Don’t cry.” The woman lay her head on the pillow. “It will be all right.”

“It won’t be all right!” Jean argued. “I have an infection.” She was speaking through her sobs, taking in great bursts of air. “They want to cut off my foot.”

The woman looked down at Jean’s foot and then looked away, as though it was too hideous for her to see. “That’s real bad, but at least you got another one.”

Jean wished she could get up and slap the woman.

“Who’s the doctor?”

Jean shrugged. The doctor hadn’t bothered to introduce himself.

“Is he a big fat man who’s balding and has a dirty beard?”

Jean nodded. She couldn’t have described the doctor better herself.

“I don’t know his name,” the woman said, “but I know what they call him. They call him Doctor Butcher.”

“Why?”

“Because he loves to cut. You know, you come in here with a headache and he wants to remove your brain. If I were you, I’d get a second opinion.”

Is this woman crazy? Jean thought. Jean was lucky that she got one opinion. Who was going to give her a second opinion?

“That might be hard, though, because there’s only two doctors in this place. Still no way would I let—” And then the woman stopped, breathless. She bent over the cot and started to vomit, right in Jean’s direction. Jean turned her face away, wishing that she could cover her ears, so she wouldn’t have to listen to the woman heaving. She wished she could cover her nose so she wouldn’t have to smell the vomit and then she wished there was a place she could escape to, especially when the vomit hit her on her leg.

Her bad leg.

“Sorry about that,” the woman shrugged. “I don’t feel so good. I met this lady from the SOS—”

In spite of the stench and the vomit on her bed, Jean turned her head towards the woman. “The SOS?”

“Yeah, some kind of children’s village—”

“Where is it?” Jean asked. A small flicker of hope jolted through her.

“I don’t know. A couple of kilometers away, somewhere near on the border. They directed me here because I’m no kid. And it’s really not a bad place. They say you get what you pay for and let’s face it, we aren’t paying for anything. They didn’t even ask us to bring our own sheets. I’d rather die in a nice clean place than somewhere on the side of the road like a dog.”

Die in a nice clean place, Jean thought. Was the woman kidding? Her bed was full of vomit and the white sheets were so dark they almost looked brown. Even Jean could see the tiny bedbugs crawling up her legs.

Jean wondered if anyone would come and change the sheets. Or would they just chop off Jean’s foot and then put her back in a filthy bed, complaining that if only she had kept herself clean, she wouldn’t be a cripple.

But it didn’t matter.

Because Jean wasn’t staying.