Dree caught a glimpse of Maxence’s expression, which had become carefully neutral. He turned away, and Batsa also pivoted as the woman opened her clothes, giving her a little bit of privacy.
As her blouse opened, the woman’s left breast was entirely rotted away by cancer, and the ulcer had infiltrated her torso and ripped open her skin over her ribs.
Dree did not react.
After a quick examination to make sure that the gaping, oozing wound was indeed cancer and not something that Dree could cure or even treat, Dree sat on the table beside the woman.
The woman did not pull away, so Dree opened her hand next to her leg. The woman took her hand and held on.
Dree told Batsa to say, “I am sorry. I am so sorry. This is very bad, indeed. I am sorry there is nothing I can do to help this, and you should do whatever you need to before the end of your life.”
She wasn’t sure how to say that the woman should put her affairs in order, and that was the best she could come up with.
After digging through the bag, Dree found some strong painkillers, which she gave to the woman to take home with instructions through Batsa.
The rest of the clinic that day was subdued, even though Dree evaluated three perfectly healthy, chubby, and robust babies, whom she inoculated against several deadly childhood diseases that they would now never experience. Usually, even one well-baby patient was enough to make her day, but nothing seemed to lift the soggy weight around her head and heart.
She did manage to sleep after that day, and the next morning was the usual discussion of a possible construction site for a NICU micro-clinic that should never be built. Then, they headed out on another frigid motorcycle ride to yet another small community desperately in need of far more help than she could give them.
The dirt roads they traveled clung to the steep faces of the Himalayan mountains, a craggy rock wall on one side of the road, and a sheer cliff that dropped straight toward a dry riverbed on the other.
Rocks, gravel, and small boulders littered the road in shades of silver, pale umber, tawny yellow, and white.
The valleys were slashes between the towering mountains, knifed into the earth by water. No trees and few bushes grew on this moonscape that reminded her more of the white gypsum sand dunes in the northern Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico than any mountain range she’d ever seen.
One rockfall from the stony heights far above was still so loose that they dismounted and carefully walked their bikes over the least obstructed part. The fallen rocks were limestone, sandstone, and marble, which were more easily eroded than some of the slate and granite farther up the mountain.
Maybe the prevalence of fallen rocks should have warned them, but they rode on along the road that clung to the side of the cliff, hoping and praying that no large rocks would fall into their path or hit them, until their luck ran out.
Chapter Eleven
Crash and Burn
Maxence
Maxence didn’t see the jagged stone falling down the side of the mountain until it slammed into the front tire of his motorcycle.
As usual, he had crowded Dree up in front of him so that she was in the second position behind Batsa. It was just bad luck that Father Booker, Alfonso, and Isaak had also motored ahead of him, and Maxence was in the very last position when a rock bigger than his motorcycle helmet slipped off the cliff face and hit him.
Before he could swivel or dodge or even change the angle of impact, the black and ivory stone smashed the motorcycle’s front wheel out from under him.
He skidded sideways.
The hard fall onto his side slammed through him, and he skidded over the ground.
The padded black leather of his riding suit shredded on the limestone sand and gravel.
The bike tumbled behind him, breaking apart.
One tire went over the edge of the road.
The rest of the motorcycles disappeared around the next bend in a puff of gasoline-scented exhaust.
Maxence rolled, the sharp stones and dirt banging on his elbows and knees and hips.
He tumbled to the edge of the sharp precipice, the upper half of his body dangling precariously over the long drop down to the river at the bottom of the gorge.
Through the visor of his heavy helmet that pulled him down toward the yellow-gray, barren abyss, he watched his front tire spin, bounce, plummet, and plunge down-down-downthe cliff, until it rolled to a stop behind a large rock, still only a third of the way to the bottom far below.
