At the taxi stand, a wiry woman waited. She was about Dree’s age, middle-twenties, and wearing a dove gray sari and a light jacket, gold-rimmed glasses, and a wooden cross hanging from a yellow-dyed string. She held a sign that readAndrea Catherine Clark.
As Dree was walking over to the woman, she began to overheat.
Inside the down coat, woolen pants, thick socks, and boots that Father Moses had found for her in Paris, her body began toboil.
In another moment, she broke out in a sweat, but the sweat had nowhere to go because she was so overdressed.
When she got to the woman holding the sign, Dree dropped her roller bag and started stripping off her coat and rolling up her sleeves to get some air on her skin before she died of heat prostration. “Oh, wow. It’s so warm here. It feels like Phoenix. It must be seventy degrees, and it’s December!”
“I am Sister Mariam Karia. Oh, yes, you’re coming from Paris. Paris was so very cold when I was there. I did not like it.”
“I didn’t think Nepal would be so warm.”
“I still think it is very cool because I am from Kerala, India, but it is much more temperate than Paris. I wore thick coats all the time when I was in Paris in the winter, and their summers are too warm, too. I like the weather in Nepal much better. Come with me to the car. I will drive you to the rectory for the night, where you will meet the people on the team for your assignment tomorrow.”
She’d finally gotten enough of the coats and mufflers and gloves off that she wasn’t going to get heatstroke.
“Very pleased to meet you,” Dree said. They shook hands. The nun’s hands were soft in Dree’s fingers.
Dree followed the nun toward the parking lot, which was filled with cars from various parts of the world. She’d never seen a Tata Motors car before, but there were also Volvos, BMWs, and a lone Maserati in the back corner. She was tired from flying for over sixteen hours, and somehow she couldn’t take her eyes off the Maserati.
She stepped off the curb.
Sister Mariam yanked Dree backward, and a pickup truck roared by on what her brain registered as the wrong side of the road.
“Oh, my!” She turned to the nun. “Thank you. I’ll try to be better.”
“You have had a very long trip. You’ll want to sleep once you get to the rectory. I dare say that there has been a miscalculation, so if you would rather stay at the convent, you should tell the deacon father who will be there. I can come and get you and take you to the convent.”
“I really appreciate everything that you and Father Moses and Sister Annunciata have done for me. I don’t want to be a bother. I can bed down in practically any corner. I have slept in the hay with sheep more often than I can tell you.”
Sister Mariam laughed. “I’m not sure where your assignment will take you in Nepal—maybe there will be sheep, maybe not—but I can tell you what you are going to be studying.”
They reached the car, a new-looking Tata Motors sedan painted black. Sister Mariam said, “Get in. I’ll tell you the rest on the way.”
Dree got in the side of the car that the nun gestured to, even though it looked like she was getting in the driver’s side. It wasn’t, of course. She sat in the passenger seat on the left side of the car, which was weird.
Sister Mariam drove the car through Kathmandu at an efficient pace, though not enough to make Dree climb up the side of the car and cling to the ceiling. Apartment buildings five or more stories high filled blocks on the rolling land, boxing in lovely little pagodas and conical temples so intricately crafted that they looked like they were constructed out of wooden lace.
Dree was so busy gawking that she jumped when Sister Mariam said, “You have a three-month assignment here in Nepal, and we were very glad to have a nurse practitioner on the team. Do you have any experience with pediatric patients?”
“Oh, yes,” Dree told her. “The emergency room where I worked in Phoenix was primarily a pediatric ER. I’ve also done rotations in a neonatal intensive care unit.”
Sister Mariam grinned. “Excellent. The project is to reduce the mortality rate among premature babies in rural areas of Nepal. There are dozens of hospitals in Kathmandu, of course.”
Large buildings that could have been hospitals or government buildings lined the freeway as they drove through Kathmandu.
“It’s good that you have neonatal and pediatric experience,” Sister Mariam continued. “Nepal has an infant mortality rate of 62 per 1000 live births, about ten times that of the US and thirty times the mortality rate of Germany. Many of the babies at risk will end up in Kathmandu, eventually. However, if a baby is born prematurely in the more rural areas, the parents must travel for days to get the baby to the nearest emergency room if there are no cars. Most perish. The project team you are assigned to will scout rural sites for small clinics that can house two to four neonatal incubators per clinic.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Dree said. Having a part in something important like that was making her a little weepy.
“I’m telling you right now that I have grave concerns about this project,” Sister Mariam said. “Many of these rural villages do not have electricity or wells, so the small clinics will need to have electricity, plumbing, and other utilities that there is no infrastructure for. Most of the other team members are engineers, architects, or other technical professionals.”
“I’m not an engineer. I don’t know how to install an incubator. I just know how to use one.”
“That is exactly the expertise we will need. The team needs someone to tell them whether medical personnel would find such an installation feasible to treat a new premature baby.”
Dree nodded. “I suppose I can do that.”
