AMOK: A Dox Thriller, page 16
“Wait,” Dox said. “I’m sorry, it’s just, I’m new to these parts, and I’m a little, uh, germophobic. I’d really be more comfortable being attended to by an actual medical doctor rather than just a nurse.” He glanced at Rosa. “No disrespect, of course.”
The woman looked at him, and he could tell she was getting irritated. “We have over fifty people waiting, and every one of them would like to see a doctor. We don’t have enough to go around.”
“I could help with that,” Dox said before he had a chance to even think. “I mean, my employer could make a contribution to your clinic. If you treat me.”
The woman stared at him for a moment as though she couldn’t believe his presumption. “Your employer?”
“Yes.”
“And who is your employer?”
“Rare Earth Engineering and Surveying Enterprises. They sent me out here to do site surveys. Airfields and such.”
The woman kept staring. He had the sense that as irritated as he’d made her, she was trying to decide whether his offer was real.
“How much?” she said.
Dox had no idea how much. He glanced around and said, “Five hundred dollars.”
“Five thousand.”
“What? Six hundred.”
“Six thousand.”
“Hey, it doesn’t work like that. You’re going in the wrong direction.”
“Seven thousand.”
“A second ago you said five!”
“Then make it five. Or again, you can have the exceptionally competent Rosa take care of you.”
“I don’t know if I can—”
“You work for a rich Western corporation?”
“Well, I’m outsourced, but—”
“They don’t need the five thousand dollars. Look around you. We do.”
Dox glanced around, then back to her. “I see your point. All right, it’s a deal.”
“You have the money with you?”
“No. I mean, not all of it. But I’ll get the rest.”
“When?”
“Don’t you care that I’m standing here bleeding?”
“Yes, that’s why I offered to have Rosa take care of your injury.”
“It’s not an injury, it’s a wound. Look, I have a few hundred US with me. I’ll get the rest.”
The woman said a few words in Tetum to the nurse, then looked at Dox. “Give what you have to Rosa.”
“You mind giving it to her yourself? My wallet’s in my left front pants pocket. I’d get it, but if I let go of my shoulder, I’m concerned I might bleed out right in front of you and thereby cause you to violate your Hippocratic oath.”
The corner of the woman’s mouth twitched. Was she trying to keep a straight face? He had a feeling she would have a beautiful smile. He realized he wanted to see it.
She took out his wallet, extracted all the bills, gave them to Rosa, and said a few more words in Tetum. Rosa nodded and walked away. The woman returned the wallet to Dox’s pocket. He was very aware of how close she was standing, and that she was touching him, albeit briefly.
“My name’s Dox,” he said.
“Yes, you said. It’s a strange name.”
“Well, it’s my last name.”
She took a step back. “It’s still strange.”
“I suppose so. What’s your name?”
“I told you. Dr. Amaral.”
“Come on. I mean your first name.”
There was a pause, and maybe the woman was thinking she shouldn’t tell him. Then she said, “Isobel.”
He smiled without even meaning to. “Isobel. That’s a pretty name.”
She shook her head as though he’d served up a line, even though he really hadn’t meant it that way. “All right, Mr. Dox, come with me and we’ll have a look at your wound.”
“Thank you for appreciating its wound status. It makes me feel more important. But would you mind calling me just Dox? My first name’s Bill, but my friends call me Dox.”
She looked at him. “That’s your friends. I’m your doctor.”
“Well, what if we were friends?”
She shook her head as though incredulous. “Oh, meu Deus.”
“Hey,” he said. “Are you trying not to smile?”
“No.”
“Because you can if you like. I wouldn’t object.”
She sighed. “Do you want me to stitch up your shoulder? Or would you rather just stand there bleeding?”
“I actually forgot I was bleeding. Maybe that’s why I feel light-headed. What’s your medical opinion?”
“My medical opinion is that you should stop talking—if you can—and follow me to a treatment room so I can examine your shoulder.”
She turned and walked briskly away. He hustled after her, and a moment later he was sitting in a small room while she cut away what was left of his bloody shirtsleeve. The room, already cramped, was divided by curtains into three sections. Under the curtains, he could see the feet of people waiting to be looked at. Wound or no wound, it made Dox feel guilty for what he’d done to jump the line.
“This is a deep cut,” Isobel said. “And clean. It must have been a very sharp blade.”
“I have no doubt of it,” Dox said.
She swabbed the site with alcohol, then pulled a syringe from a plastic package. “Lidocaine,” she said. “It’ll sting for a second.”
“That’s fine. I’ve been stung worse.” He looked away, though. He never did like to watch a needle go in.
“What happened?” she said, and he felt the promised sting.
He told her about the encounter at the hotel, of course leaving out the parts about the guy actually being his Agency contact.
“It happens sometimes,” she said. “If they weren’t bastards before they came here, they become bastards after. How did you get into Timor, anyway? The Indonesians allow very few Westerners.”
“You ever get any here at your clinic?”
She glanced at him suspiciously. “Not often. Why?”
Yeah, he’d been right. These folks had dealt with Felix’s people. And didn’t like them.
“Just wondering if I’m the first Westerner you’ve treated.”
She held his eyes for a moment, then went back to his shoulder. “You’re not.”
He could feel a little pressure from the sutures she was putting in, but that was all. “Anyway,” he said. “As to how I got in, REESE is a big corporation. And I don’t have to tell you, money talks.”
“It didn’t talk you out of getting cut.”
“No, I don’t think the fellow who did it was much interested in money. He struck me as the type who’s in his line of work more out of love.”
A moment later, she affixed a big bandage to his shoulder. “Thirty stitches. You’ll have a scar, but it’ll be straight at least. Change the bandage if it gets wet. You can buy some extras at the window by the exit. And some antibiotic cream.”
He flexed his arm. “You’ve got a nice touch. I didn’t feel a thing.”
She gave him a long-suffering look. “Yes, lidocaine can do that.”
“Oh, now you’re making fun of me, I can tell.”
She pulled off the nitrile gloves she was wearing and tossed them in a metal basket. “I have to go. You’ve put me behind schedule.”
“Well, maybe we could get together on another occasion? When you’re not as busy, I mean.”
This time, she didn’t look like she was trying to suppress a smile. She looked pissed.
“Do you think you’re entitled?” she said. “Because you’re American and I’m Timorese? Because you’re white and I’m brown? You think because your money can buy medical services, you can buy anything?”
It all caught him totally off guard. “No,” he said. “I don’t think any of that. At least . . . I don’t think I do.”
He felt suddenly confused. He’d set aside the knowledge of what he was really doing here, and why he was supposed to get close to her. It hadn’t been hard—he was drawn to her, more than drawn, and he’d just been going with that. He didn’t think he’d been doing anything different with her than he’d done with anyone, anywhere else he’d ever been.
On the other hand, some of those other places, like Olongapo . . . it was true American dollars could buy almost anything there. He remembered seeing Marines throwing coins into Shit River and laughing as desperate kids dove in to retrieve them. Dox had never even been tempted to do something like that, but did he feel entitled there in other ways? It would be hard to argue that he didn’t.
“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” he said. “But . . . what you said about the Indonesian soldiers. That if they weren’t bastards before they came here, they become bastards after. I can see where that would apply to a lot of things. But . . . anyway, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. I’m sorry.”
Her expression softened. “I didn’t mean to compare you to them. I don’t think you’re like that.”
He was supposed to be a spy, so her confidence should have pleased him. Instead, it made him feel guilty.
“I really didn’t mean to be rude. I appreciate what you did for me here. I was bleeding a lot, but I shouldn’t have jumped the line. How do I get the clinic the rest of what I owe you?”
She shook her head. “You seem like a nice guy, Dox. But we both know the minute you walk out of here, you’ll forget all about the rest of what you promised.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s all right. The money I took from your wallet is a lot for a clinic like this one. It was a good bargain.”
They were quiet for a moment. Then he said, “We don’t know each other, Isobel, but when I make a bargain, I hold up my end. So though it pains me to say it, now you’re the one insulting me.”
She looked at him as though trying to gauge whether he was serious. “You’re really going to give us the rest of that money?”
“Of course I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I told you I would. Now, I expect I’ll get it from my company. But if I can’t, it’ll come out of my own pocket.”
She looked at him, the anger he’d sensed a moment ago gone. “I feel like I should say no. That was a deep cut. Maybe it’s true I had you under a little duress. But . . .”
She looked down for a moment, then back to him. When she spoke, her voice was low, almost as though she was sharing a secret, or admitting something shameful. “We really need it.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you’re letting me help.”
She nodded.
“Even though it was of course wrong of you as a physician and healer to take advantage of my circumstances.”
Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened in indignation. He smiled to let her know he was just giving her a hard time.
She smiled back. “Very funny.”
He might have made another crack, but he couldn’t think of one. And had no desire to, either. Her smile, even in exasperation, was even more lovely than he’d imagined. For a moment, all he wanted was just to look at her.
He realized his mission here was going to be more complicated than he’d been expecting.
“I’ll be back with what I promised,” he said. “It might take me a day or two, but you can count on it.”
She nodded, then smiled again. Smaller than the last time, but there was no exasperation in it.
“We’ll see,” she said.
Chapter 21
It was evening, and Isobel was sitting in the nurses’ lounge, enjoying an egg sandwich and a short break. It was a small room, devoid of creature comforts save for a plastic table and chairs and a worn upholstered couch. But its single window faced west, and Isobel always enjoyed the way the room felt late in the day, the fluorescent overheads turned off, the setting sun spotlighting one corner, the diffused illumination giving the room a comforting, golden glow.
Mostly it had been a straightforward day. A variety of childhood fevers. Some bad cases of diarrhea. A lot of advice to give on sanitation and hygiene, because being a doctor in Timor was as much about teaching self-care as it was about administering medical care. So much of what was killing the country’s children wasn’t even disease. It was the vulnerability to disease—the poor nutrition and resulting reduced resistance, compounded by poor hygiene and lack of cleanliness, leading to more disease and more disease vectors. The magnitude of it all . . . Sometimes it overwhelmed her.
The trick was not to look at the big picture, but instead to focus on the individual cases—each person, each child, she was able to help. She knew other doctors who were able to maintain that focus. They did no less good than she did, and they seemed happy, too. Or at least happy enough. And what was wrong with that? Nothing.
But no matter how hard she tried, sometimes she couldn’t help feeling like all she was doing was bailing out a sinking boat with a tiny tin cup. A cup with holes in it. It was exhausting her, and the boat was sinking anyway.
She ate the sandwich slowly to make it last, chewing carefully, washing down each small bite with a big swallow of water. She knew from her studies that food rituals were associated with disorders like anorexia and bulimia, and with ordinary chronic hunger, as well. And while here at the clinic they weren’t going hungry, it was also true that no one ever had enough to quite get full.
The little victories were what kept her going. The young mothers who listened when she told them that by far the best food for their babies was breast milk, not anything imported from the West in a can. Or that lots of water could be better than cough medicine for even a nasty cough. That for the most part, their money was better spent on food than on medicine.
But so often, people didn’t listen. They believed that if something came from the West, if it was expensive, if it was scarce . . . it was what they needed. That if only they could obtain such treasures, it would make their children healthy and happy and strong, like the Australian children they had seen on television.
The sandwich was disappearing too fast. She nibbled around the crust and chewed more slowly.
It was always hard. But as overwhelmed as Isobel felt in the face of all the ordinary health problems that had grown rampant everywhere after the Indonesians had invaded, it was the rapes, and the terrible aftereffects of the rapes, that haunted her most. Those sobbing girls, some so ashamed they couldn’t even tell their families, and the trauma they recounted . . . It was almost unbearable. She would tell them it wasn’t their fault, that they had nothing to be ashamed of, that the shame belonged only to the men who did such things . . . but the words were barely a balm.
At first, when some of the girls reported that their attackers had been Americans, Isobel thought they must have been mistaken. The Indonesians were restricting foreign access, the better to conceal the brutality of their occupation. How could these girls have been attacked by Americans? Where would they even have come from?
And then Isobel started to see them herself. Sometimes, not often, they would ride through town in their jeeps, stopping only to buy food or medicine or other supplies. They were dressed like civilians. But their hair was short. They were young and looked fit. And they wore the same kinds of watches and sunglasses the Indonesian soldiers wore. Probably the Indonesian soldiers were imitating them.
Isobel had collaborated with many aid workers. These men were nothing like them. They didn’t engage with the people. Instead, they kept apart from them, saying little, buying what they needed, disappearing back to wherever they had come from.
Once, two of them had come to the clinic carrying a third between them, the middle one with his arms around the necks of the other two and their arms around his back. The middle one had suffered a crush injury across his legs, which were covered in blood and dragging behind him. An accident, one of the men had curtly explained. He was scary-looking, big and with a nasty scar running vertically above and below his left eye. Even in response to her questions, he would offer no further details. Only, Fix him. And you better do it right.
Isobel tried. But the man had developed rhabdomyolysis—crush syndrome—from his injuries, and resultant hypovolemic shock. It didn’t help that his comrades had mistreated his case, tying off his legs with tourniquets and opening one of them with a prophylactic fasciotomy. Isobel had staff hydrate the man, but they got no further than that. Within minutes, he had an arrythmia. They attempted defibrillation, but the clinic’s unit was ten years out of date, and anyway it was too late. The man proceeded to cardiac arrest, and died on the table.
The men who brought him had been furious, accusing Isobel and her staff of inadequate treatment. Isobel had gotten angry in turn, pointing out the refusal of the men to share potentially important diagnostic information and their contraindicated field treatment. The man with the scar had become so angry that he reached for something under his shirt, and Isobel had caught a glimpse of a gun. But the other man had stopped him. They said nothing more, simply loading their dead comrade into a jeep and vanishing like ghosts.
But they weren’t ghosts. Sometimes people saw them at the edges of the forest, and what they were doing there no one could say. Sometimes they would drive by a farm, watching the workers like owls staring at mice. And sometimes they would catch a girl, when she was alone in a field or at her chores, and drag her off, like monsters from a fairy tale.
Isobel felt as helpless about their presence as everyone else. But one day, she realized there was something she could do. Or at least, try to do.
Some of the girls could barely speak of what had been done to them. But others refused to let the soldiers silence them with shame. They wanted to fight, and their voices were their weapons. All they needed was someone to hear them.
Isobel had bought an old VHS video camera and some cassette tapes from a store selling scavenged electronic equipment. She started to tape the girls who were willing.
The stories were horrifyingly similar. The earlier rapes had been carried out by Indonesian soldiers. There were whole villages where the women had been separated from the men and then systematically raped, sometimes for days on end. These were not isolated incidents or the actions of rogue soldiers. The methodology was always the same, the soldiers clearly implementing a central policy.
