When Father Booker returned to report that the campsite had been assembled, Maxence sent him and the two other guys off to scout possible locations for the planned micro-NICU buildings.
He looked at the stone house they had commandeered, too, and considered the construction and space.
Maybe they didn’t need tobuildnew construction.
The house had no utilities, though. Sunlight streamed in the windows. The lady of the house was boiling water from a village well on a charcoal stove.
When the sun wilted behind the tall mountains at about three-thirty in the afternoon, shadows spread over the town, and Maxence declared an end to the clinic.
He told Dree, “You’re down to treating minor cuts and scrapes with antibiotic ointment and Band-Aids. They can do this. It’s twilight now, but the sun will be going down in about an hour and a half. We need to get to the campsite before it gets dark.”
Batsa led them to the tents and the other guys, where indeed, a pot of something that smelled delicious bubbled over a small campfire. Alfonso had procured more fresh bread from one of the women in the village.
Maxence fashioned a cushion for Dree out of a sleeping bag and made her sit down by the fire and eat.
She wolfed down the food. “This is so good.”
Alfonso beamed at her praise, smiling at Dree and flirting with her with his bright green eyes. He was solicitous, asking her if she wanted more and making sure she had it.
Maxence wanted to slug him, but the lentil stuff he’d made was good. It reminded Maxence ofmesir wat,an East African lentil stew, and he missed the injera flatbreads that Auntie Ndaya and Auntie Disanka cooked. He would be back home in The Congo in six or eight weeks or so. He didn’t need to become morose. He’d managed to video chat with the aunties, Majambu Milandu, and Mpata Majambu while he’d been at the Our Lady of the Assumption rectory, which had been a rare treat due to his hectic schedule, the difference in time zones, and the frequent power outages in Kathmandu.
Dree elbowed Maxence while she scooped the lentil stew with the naan and popped it into her mouth. Her luscious lips puckered as she chewed.
A memory of her red lips tight around his cock intruded on whatever he was going to say or had been anticipating she would say because, oh God,those lips of hers.
She elbowed him again.
“What, yes?” Max asked.
“So, this was just a small village that hadn’t seen a doctor in a while, right?” she asked him.
“That’s true.”
“And the villages where we’re going after this are larger than this one, right?”
“At least some of them,” he allowed.
“And they’ll have better access to medical care than this one,right?”she demanded.
This was the direction he’d suspected the conversation would be heading. He’d suspected Dree had a soft heart. “A few of them.”
“How few?”
“Very few. Most of them will have a significant number of people with medical issues that, in other locations, would be seen by a doctor.”
“In rural New Mexico where I come from, there are a lot of poor people. A lot of people live in shacks their granddaddies built that only recently got running water and utilities. I didn’t have internet until I lived in the dorms for college. In some of the far parts of the state and out on the reservation, things are a lot more dire. Many people out there still don’t have any utilities. But if somebody had that little girl with the ear abscess or the little boy with strep throat, I like to think that all of them would have ridden their horse or an ATV or a freakin’ tractor over to a neighbor’s who does have a truck to take them into town to see a doctor.”
Maxence sighed. “As you can see in this village, no one’s neighbor has a truck.”
“I guess what I’m asking is,whydon’t they? Or why didn’t their parents ride on one of the supply trucks to a larger place to get help or find some more of their people who do have a truck? There is a small store in the town. The trucks have to come here.”
“The supply trucks that make rounds to many of these smaller towns might only stop once a month, and they might not reach someplace larger for a week after that. The drivers wouldn’t let them on, anyway. They’d become a bus. The people in these villages have no options.”
Her voice cracked. “I can’t imagine watching my child suffer like that.”
Images of chubby cheeks, joyous gummy baby smiles, and hands like tiny starfish clutching his clothes rose in Maxence’s mind. “Me, either.”
“It’s not fair,” Dree said. “They should have a way to get into town. Someone should have helped those kids and those adults. That guy’s broken leg isn’t going to be okay. He needs surgery.”
