The Black Witch of Mexico (2 page)

“You can take her to the hospital!”

He put his head on his knees and sobbed. His passive acceptance was beyond Adam’s comprehension. Adam decided it must be his execrable Spanish; perhaps they did not understand what he was telling them. He would fetch Luis.

He went back to the clinic. Rosa had woken Luis, he was still stumbling about getting dressed. Adam told him what was wrong and searched the store room for what medicines they had that might help the little girl, then gathered the plastic tubing, a bag of saline, needle, tape, and connecting pieces. He would need to set up an intravenous line; she was already badly dehydrated.

As he worked he told Luis the problem. Luis did not seem particularly surprised, and he supposed he shouldn’t have been either--he had been in the village long enough.

They went back together and had Luis explain the diagnosis to the parents again, and about taking their daughter to the hospital, but he got the same answer: yes, they understood, but they did not have the money for doctors. They would pray for her.

* * *

He stayed there for two days, holding the mother’s hand, bathing the child, only going back to the clinic when there were other patients for him. He slept on the floor beside the girl’s cot as she shivered and moaned her way to a totally unnecessary death.

The father worked his cornfield. The children played outside. The mother cooked over the brick stove; the smell of death and the smell of baking created a unique miasma in the tiny room. The woman tried to get him to eat but he couldn’t stomach food.
It shouldn’t be like this
, he thought. Children should not have to die like this.

Bernard came by several times a day. Adam begged him to help him change the father’s mind.

“I’ll try,” he said. “But these people are very poor. They have other children to care for. A long stay in the hospital is beyond their means.”

“Then I’ll pay for it!”

“Then will you pay for everyone? How many children have died since you got here that you could have saved in Boston or New York or San Diego? Will they save her in San Cristobal, do you think?”

“She would have a chance.”

“What sort of chance? Ten to one?”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t know. A chance.”

“She would be in the hospital on her own. She would die alone. This man cannot leave his cornfield, and his wife cannot desert these other children. At least here she will die peacefully with her family around her and they won’t have to sell their little farm to pay the doctor at the hospital.”

“We have to try to save her!”

“Saving all of our children is a luxury for rich people like westerners, Adam. Just take care of her as best you can.”

“They think the Crow did this!”

“The witch?”

“They think she is dying because of him, because she has a frog in her stomach. That’s why they won’t do anything!”

“If that’s what they believe then they’ve already given her up for dead. You know that by now.” He put a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “You’re not God.”

But I should be
, Adam thought.

* * *

The little girl died on the evening of the second day after one long, final seizure that seemed to go on forever and wore even Adam’s nerves. Finally, when her heart gave out, he clamped off the intravenous unit and removed the needle from her arm. He stood up and nodded to the mother who was watching him, her face twisted into a monkey howl of grief.

She cradled the child’s head in her arms. Adam watched, feeling hopeless and angry. All this talk of witches and frogs! What she needed was drugs and an intensive care unit.

Bernard came in carrying a Bible, his stole around his neck. A beetle scurried across the girl’s forehead. He brushed it away and mumbled a prayer of blessing.

He waited outside until Bernard had finished. When he came out he put an arm around Adam’s shoulders. “Don’t take it to heart,” he said.

“What other way is there to take it?”

“You accept there are things you can do and there are things that you can’t. People have a right to make their own decisions, even about living and dying.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“If the world made any sense, you wouldn’t be living on the same planet as me. If you watch the world carefully, you’ll see that things never make sense.”

“She didn’t have to die.”

“It wasn’t your decision in the end. You’re a good man, Adam; you’re dedicated and passionate. But enough is enough. You must be hungry, you haven’t eaten in days.”

“I’m all right,” he said and walked away.

He didn’t want to be consoled. He went down to the river to wash away the sweat, the dust, the death. The river was green and sluggish warm. He stripped down to his shorts and waded into the shallows and ducked his head under the surface. Afterwards, he stood for a long time staring up at the sky, letting the water dry on his skin in the late afternoon sun.

When he turned around he saw someone up at the tree line, watching him. It was the Crow.

He shouted at him but he just smiled and walked away.

Chapter 3

When he got back to the
casa
, Rosa was waiting for him. “I will make you tortillas,” she said, but he shook his head. He was exhausted. He just wanted to sleep.

“You have ... this,” she said and she pointed to her neck.

He frowned and went into his bedroom and found his shaving mirror. There was a rash on his neck, probably from the green crap the
brujo
had spat at him. He had washed it off under the tap as best he could, but he felt like everyone could still smell it.

He was sure everyone knew what he had done, something in their eyes made him uneasy. He felt dirty.
They can smell the witch on me.

He collapsed onto the bed, felt like he could sleep for a hundred years. But an hour later, as the sun set over the pueblo, he was still awake. He tossed and turned on the narrow cot thinking about the little girl. He finally slipped into a fevered half-sleep, and her face changed to Elena’s and she moaned and reached out a hand.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he muttered.

He woke up suddenly, his heart racing. He pulled off all his clothes and threw himself back down on the bed. If he didn’t get some sleep he would go crazy. The rash on his neck was itching. He thought he heard a rustling in the corner. Jesus, a snake. He felt for the flashlight beside the bed. But there was nothing. Just his imagination, just way beyond tired.

He switched off the light and closed his eyes. But sleep would not come. He kept seeing the little girl, and the little girl was always Elena, and she was in pain.

Chapter 4 

Boston, the previous spring.

They were in an art gallery in Back Bay. The room was painted pure white with down-lights illuminating the sculptures and pieces of art on the walls. There were yellow flowers in a black onyx vase in the middle of the room. The ancient fireplace with its timber mantelpiece had also been painted white to blend with the walls.

Elena stood by this same mantel, staring at a three-dimensional piece above it: six skulls, carmine, white and emerald green. She was frowning, a finger to her lips, one arm supported by the other.

She had on a short, black dress for summer and wore her hair in a French braid. Adam could not care less about the art. He was staring at her.

Exquisite woman, still life, dress painted on, wearing salmon coloured scarf. Not for sale. Not for anything.

* * *

Afterwards they wandered hand in hand into the Public Gardens, watched the swan boats on the lake, a father tossing a football to his son near the George Washington statue.

“Do you ever think about having a family?” she asked.

“Last thing I want right now is kids,” he said, and there it was, out of his mouth before he could stop himself. “Well, you know, someday.”

It was like a cloud passing over the sun on a summer’s day. He saw the look on her face briefly, and then it was gone, replaced by her usual smile. “We all have to think about it sometime.”

This was getting serious. This conversation was his cue to stop answering phone calls and text messages, to miss dates because he was so busy at work, to open the exit gate for her to walk through. He felt panicked. He wasn’t ready to let her go just yet.

Later in bed she locked her legs around his hips, her eyes pinpoints, sweat beaded between her breasts. She had never made love to him so passionately before. She begged him to fuck her harder and then she rolled him on his back and rode him, held his face in her hands, fierce, intense.

Afterwards he went to the refrigerator to get them water. He watched her lying naked among the wreck of their bed and smiled. He smelled her on his skin, sweat and perfume. He felt replete. He had everything he needed.

He went up to the deck, the wind chill on his bare skin, stared at the lights on the John Hancock Building and the Prudential Tower.

He felt like he was master of everything.

He did not know she had just told him goodbye.

Chapter 5

Einstein’s theory of relativity; a quiet night on the graveyard shift, the time stretched on forever; if he had a cardiac patient in AF followed by multiple criticals from a road trauma, twelve hours could pass like twelve minutes.

You shocked someone’s heart back to life or pushed a tube into the trachea and forced air into the lungs. You could save a life in a few seconds. He used to count up the saves at the end of the week but he didn’t even do that anymore. Days and nights blended together.

Adam was back on the graveyard shift, ten through eight; he had taken care on an asthma emergency, started the workup of an elderly woman with abdominal pain, sutured a lacerated scalp. He went back to the nurse’s station to finish writing up his notes. One of the other physicians sat behind the desk, staring into a muddy cup of coffee. Frank was maybe ten or so years older, a nice enough guy, but he never went out for beers with him and Jay and the rest of the guys. Frank was a family man went straight home after every shift.

“Everything okay?” Adam said.

Frank didn’t look up. “Don’t get married,” he said.

“What’s up?”

“If you don’t get married then you won’t ever have to go through a divorce.”

Adam looked around hoping there might be someone to bail him out. There were a lot of things he could manage in the ER--every life-threatening emergency he could imagine--but one of his colleagues bleeding his heart out wasn’t one of them.

But it seemed everyone else was busy. He sat down.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s not the kind of thing you shout about.”

“When did it happen?”

“Been happening for months. But the moving company came today, and when I get home after my shift all her things will be gone. I let her have most of the furniture. I said we’d go halves on the kids, that I knew a good surgeon.”

It was a lame joke and instead of laughing he put a hand over his eyes and pretended he was tired.
Please God, don’t cry
, Adam thought.
We’ll never be able to work with each other again.

“You work so hard; you’re the top gun, the next big thing. Then one day you look around and you realize that everything you had in your future is all in your past. I thought I had everything worked out and then one day it hit me: I don’t know anything. What happens now?”

“I don’t know, I never thought about it.”

“Well, maybe you should.” He put his glasses back on. “While you’re still a top gun.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Bill suggested I take a sabbatical.”

Bill was the chairman of the department, a hard man to please, and Adam suspected he was some kind of religious nut. Adam kept his head down and tried to avoid him as much as he could.

“There’s a hospital down in the south of Mexico, charity thing, his church raises funds to help keep it going. They’re always looking for volunteers. It’s primitive but I don’t mind that. I need to get away for a while.”

“I guess you have to do what you have to do.”

Frank stood up. “You know, you work hard, you try and do your best, but ... what really gets me, I never even saw this coming.” He walked off, stopped and looked at him over the rim of his glasses. “Take my advice: don’t ever touch a gurney when a patient’s being defibrillated, and
never
get married.”