Father Booker held the door for them and helped Maxence situate her on the back of the motorcycle.
As Father Booker removed the gray veil over her hair and pressed her helmet onto her head, Max heard him tell her, “‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ Your work is done here, Sister Andrea Catherine, and it is time for you to rest tonight. Hold on tight.”
Her arms cinched around Maxence’s waist, and she leaned against his back.
Maxence followed Batsa slowly back to the campsite, which was only a few minutes’ slow ride beyond the village.
When they arrived, supper was ready and waiting for them. Maxence led her over to the fire, and again made sure she sat in the warmest spot but where the wind would not blow smoke in her face. She perked up enough to eat a little food, and then she dejectedly murmured her good nights and staggered into the tent Isaak pointed to.
Maxence was going to stay behind to allow Dree her customary few minutes of privacy to wash up, but her flashlight clicked off moments after she had crawled inside her tent.
Father Booker exchanged a worried glance with him, and Max stood to follow her.
Just after he turned and walked away, Father Booker jogged after him and caught his arm. “Minister to her as a priest. Do not succumb to your temptations for this woman.”
Max’s longing for her must be as apparent to everyone else as it was to him. He said, “I do not have a sin against chastity on my conscience.”
Father Booker nodded gravely, but he didn’t look like he’d gotten the answer he wanted yet. “She is grieving, and she is wounded. Don’t take advantage of her.”
It was Maxence’s turn to nod solemnly. “I won’t.”
Father Booker whispered to him, “You have the soul of a priest, Deacon Father Maxence, but I do not know if you have the heart of one.”
Father Booker left him, and Maxence crawled into the tent after Dree. As he entered the tent, he whispered,“Chérie.”
“I’m awake. I feel like I won’t ever sleep again,” she said in the dark.
He zipped the tent flap behind himself and lay on his sleeping bag, facing her.
Dree had zipped herself up into her mummy bag, and just her face was visible as an oval in the crimson fabric in the lowest beam of his flashlight, hardly any more glow than a votive candle.
Her red-and-white ski suit was a crumpled lump near the rapidly dwindling boxes of vaccine at the back of the tent.
Maxence said, “On my first project for Catholic charities into South America, I felt like I didn’t sleep for weeks. Every time I was so exhausted that I passed out, the dreams of what had happened that day would wake me up again.”
She said, “All these people, and they’re all so sick. I can’t work fast enough. I can’t workhardenough. There’s always still more of them and they’re always still coming.”
“We’ll go back to Jumla city tomorrow. We’ll stay out for a few days. You can’t keep doing this.”
“But if Idon’t,no one elsewill.There’s no one elseouthere. No one will help them.”
She cried tiny hiccupping sobs like the saddest little hamster weeping.
Maxence flinched forward to take her into his arms, but he knew he shouldn’t.
She asked him, “How do you do it? Do you just harden your heart to it and not care anymore? How do yousurvivethis?”
“I don’t think I hardened my heart. It’s more like I surrendered. Even if I were the Prince of Monagasquay and had a billion dollars, although I think it’s a bit more than that now, I still couldn’t make a dent in this. I could help a few people here and there, but I couldn’t change it. The Prince’s power is mostly through influence anyway, making deals behind the scenes with meetings and conferences. No matter what we do, we can’t solve everything. We just do what we can. We can be kind when we can. But we can’t change every person’s life. We’re lucky if we can changeanyperson’s life. You vaccinated two babies today against common childhood diseases that might have killed or injured them for life. Ninety percent of people here have had rubella. Congenital rubella infections cause most cases of deafness here. Who knows how much suffering you prevented today? It’s just harder to see that. “
“That seems so little in the face of a woman who has a few weeks to live at the most, another woman who is going blind, and a teenage boy who is going to waste away and die.”
“You’re right.”
Her voice was a quiet wail. “Why does God allow this? Why would God allow any of this? If He is all-powerful—” She trailed off.
Maxence said, “I studied theodicy during my graduate work, the study of what and why evil is. It’s the old paradox. ‘If God can prevent such suffering and evil and does not, then He is not good. If He cannot prevent it, then He is not God.’”
“Yes,”Dree said. “If you could prevent this, wouldn’t you?”
