City of Saints & Thieves(58)

“No, it’s fine, dear. Do you have a relative here?” Moths bang themselves against the lightbulb over her head like a frantic halo.

“I’m staying at the guesthouse.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh? We don’t get many visitors anymore. You look very young to be traveling. You’re not alone, are you?”

I shake my head.

“Good. Girls shouldn’t walk around the town alone.”

“I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.”

She blinks, but doesn’t comment on how small and puny looking I am, like most people. Instead she says, “You are not from here, are you?”

“I am, actually, but I’ve been gone for a long time.”

“Karibu. Welcome home.” She smiles and the wrinkles in her face remind me of wood grain. I decide that I like her face. “I’m Sister Dorothy,” she says. “Since you’re here, maybe you can help me do something?”

“Oh, uh . . .” I look toward the patients, wondering what exactly I would be able to help with.

She smiles. “Come—they won’t bite. I need a strong pair of arms. What’s your name, dear?” She reaches back into the office and pulls out a tall stack of itchy-looking polyester blankets.

“Christina.” My name is out of my mouth before I can think to give her a fake one.

“Very pretty,” she says briskly. “It gets chilly in here at night, and we have new patients who’ll need these.”

I take the blankets, wondering if I should steal a couple for us just in case. I follow her, after a glance over my shoulder back toward the guesthouse.

Sister Dorothy leans down to a young woman in a bed just inside the doorway. Both of the woman’s hands are bandaged, and she holds them to her chest as the sister talks softly with her. Sister Dorothy takes a blanket from the top of my stack and spreads it over the young woman. The sister smoothes the wrinkles and the woman closes her eyes, never once looking at me.

We move to the next bed, an old woman with gray hair who is so withered and frail she practically disappears into the bedclothes. She’s asleep, but a small child with big eyes is sitting up in bed beside her, sucking his finger. He stares at me. He looks healthy, but I wonder where his mother is. Another blanket is delivered; I suddenly feel very guilty for thinking about stealing them. We move to the bed of the next woman, who is sitting up and has been watching us approach.

“A novice?” the woman asks Sister Dorothy, nodding at me.

“No, a guest,” the sister answers.

The woman’s nostrils flare. She says something in rapid French that I don’t understand. But the meaning is clear enough in the way she points at my face and makes a shooing motion with her hands.

“What did she say?” I ask.

Sister Dorothy takes a blanket from me. In Swahili, she says, “That you are very pretty. She gets nervous about militia breaking in, thinks pretty girls will attract them. Now, Georgette, we’ve talked about this. You have to relax or you won’t get better. Don’t worry about this girl. She’s welcome just as you are.”

Sister Dorothy goes on to ask Georgette in low tones how she’s feeling, while I shift awkwardly and try not to listen. Georgette shifts laboriously in the bed and speaks in French. Her pain “down there” will not go away, I gather.

Sister Dorothy nods and feels Georgette’s forehead with the back of her hand. “I’ll bring you some aspirin,” she says, and we move on.

“It’s only women here?” I ask.

“No, there are boys and men also. In the other wing, unless they are small like that one back there.”

The woman in the next bed is sleeping too, and so we pull the blanket over her. There is an odd, coppery smell over her body, and something worse that reminds me of a butchery. I have to force myself not to step back from her. She has a bandage covering most of her face, and what peeks out from under it looks mangled and swollen. The sister frowns and checks the woman’s pulse in her wrist. “She was just brought in today. Three of them, actually,” she says, nodding down the rest of the beds against this wall.

All the women are asleep, their faces slack. White bandages on arms and faces are jarring against their dark skin. The one on the end looks barely older than me, though it’s hard to tell with her bruised face.

“And one who didn’t make it through surgery,” Sister Dorothy adds. She tucks the woman’s arm under the blanket. “They were found out at the edge of the fields, left for dead. They’re medicated now, but we don’t have enough to get them past the first day. Tomorrow will be hard.”

“What happened to them?”

Sister Dorothy looks at me, and for a second I don’t think she’s going to answer. But then her eyes travel around the room, at the still bodies and blank expressions. Some of the women are looking at us, but most stare at the ceiling or the wall or they’re curled into themselves like fists. Sister Dorothy says quietly, so only I can hear her, “Same thing as everyone else. The war.”

? ? ?

My head is still full of images of broken bodies when we sit down to dinner with the nuns, after they’ve finished their evening prayers. I’m glad when Michael and Boyboy don’t involve me in the heated argument they’re having about whether the animal they saw run across their path on the way to the dining room was a stray cat or a civet. One is lucky and one is not, apparently. I don’t bother to ask what a civet is, though I probably should. This place could use some good luck.