Candle in the Attic Window(70)
“Now?” she asked, setting her glass of nectar down. “You’ve just got –”
“Now,” I nodded. “Why didn’t you take him to the clinic? Pho’s still got his jeep; I saw it.”
“He wouldn’t listen,” she said and I realized with irritation her sorrow had more to do with my reaction than Grandfather’s death. I guiltily tried to rein in my frustration and, unlike the witch, she had the decency to continue without being pestered. “I’d taken him to that clinic a dozen times. When the last fever got him, he said, ‘No, take me to her.’ What could I do? He was dying, Malis.”
The heat and the sun streaming into the room sapped some of my melancholy and I simply felt exhausted. Grandfather had rolled cigarettes as fat as his thumb, worked shirtless in the jungle, drank mostly rainwater, and essentially lived a life as far removed as possible from what I would come to consider healthy. The only real surprise was that he had lived as long as he had, the weathered old veteran, and after what the Rouge had done to him, being slathered in chili oil probably seemed more an indignity than a torture.
“Who told you?” she asked, in her slightly nosey, high tone. “I didn’t hear anyone mention it at lunch.”
“You know how I walked in and had the driver drop off my stuff?” I nodded towards the small bags crowding a corner. “I saw the witch on the road and she told me. Probably couldn’t believe her luck to deliver some bad news.”
“That poor woman.” My grandmother suddenly looked her age, thin, silver hair clinging to her sweaty forehead like spider silk.
“She –” I began to say, when something the witch had said finally sank through my heat and emotion-clouded consciousness. “The witch said something to me about tonight, about a patient she had that wouldn’t last until dawn. And two men, city-men, shared the car in with me and didn’t say a word, and then I saw them waiting at her hut.”
Grandmother clicked her teeth and reached for my glass, but I snatched it up and drained the last of the bright-orange, fibrous juice. “You shouldn’t meddle in her business.”
“Who’s meddling? She invited me herself, to watch whatever mummery she’s got planned, and there’s no chance I’m going to sit here while she cooks another patient. I’ve got some aspirin in my bag and I’ll bet my magic little pills will do more than her exorcism, regardless of the malady.”
I offered her my empty glass and she snatched it; her eyes narrowed in the angry expression I had missed so much.
“You’re not going, and that is that. I saw those men who got out of the cab, and I saw them yesterday when they brought in their sick friend. They’re Rouge, girl, and you are minding your business under this roof tonight.”
“How do you know they’re Rouge?” I asked, knowing full well she would not have said as much if it were not true. You do not lose a daughter and son-in-law to monsters and then invoke their title flippantly. Grandmother turned away, rather than answering my question, and looked out the screened window into the dense greenery swelling up behind our house.
“Pho thinks it may storm later,” she said, eventually, and although the obedient part of me willed my churlish mouth to be silent, I would not let it rest.
“A sick man is a sick man,” I said evenly. “No matter who he is or what he’s done, it’s my duty to help. That witch said whoever it was wouldn’t live the night and, unless I examine him, I don’t doubt it. I didn’t spend all those years away from you to shirk the very responsibilities I have accepted.”
“Please,” she whispered, sitting back down across from me and taking my hands in her own gnarled fingers. I winced at the sight of the arthritis-swollen digits, realizing how much agony writing me all those letters had been. “You’re old enough I won’t try ordering you about, but listen to me – she will do everything in her power to save him and if she can’t, then I know what will come next. They brought a black cat, didn’t they?”
At this, my scorching skin went Pacific and my mouth became dry and clammy. One of the men had an occasionally purring pet carrier between his legs on the long drive, a detail I had found curious and then forgotten. I felt her sweaty palms shaking against the backs of my hands, and her tongue flicked nervously over her teeth. I had never seen her look so uncomfortable in all my life, and this unnerved me even more than her comment about the cat.
“I don’t know if it was black,” I said, suddenly curious as to the speed of my pulse. “But they brought one, yes ... is she going to sacrifice it or something?”
“Bah,” Grandmother released my hands with a smile. “The cat will be fine and they’ll get exactly what they deserve, Rouge bastards.”
“I’m going,” I said again, although my voice did not sound so steady, anymore. “I told you; it’s my responsibility. I can’t start my residency knowing I ignored an ailing person, even if he’s Pol Pot.”
She spit at the hated name and cursed quietly, immediately cleaning up the smear of spittle with the hem of her skirt. “I won’t tell you again, Malis; stay away from that hut. She’s half-ghost, herself, and those men are all-demon. What can a doctor do for devils and ghosts?”
“I’m going,” I whispered resolutely, growing ever more nervous at the superstitious turn the conversation had taken. This was the woman who had chastised me a thousand times for calling the witch a witch, after all. “I don’t have a choice, Grandmother. This is who I am.”