Exiles (8 page)

“Where on earth did they get cat treats?” she asked.

“He works for an English lady, and she gave them to him as a tip,” Franz said. “They’ve probably been in circulation for years, like fruitcake.”

“I’ll take them,” said Mina.

“Cats,” Peter said. “It figures. You probably live with fifty cats.”

Mina turned to him, her gaze cool and level. “If
you
lived with fifty cats, they’d all be dead within a week.”

“I don’t pride myself on veterinary skills, like some people.”

“If you paid attention you’d see by now that I know what I’m doing.”

“Since half the time I don’t know what
I’m
doing, how the hell would I know about you?”

“Well,” she said, “at least you admit it.”

Franz cleared his throat. “Glad to see we’re getting somewhere,” he said. He finally looked up, just barely. “Now, what’s this about your daughter?”

“I just asked Mina how she’d feel about having Alex volunteer,” Peter said. “Instead of welcoming the opportunity, she seemed to take it as a threat.”

“As if I’d be threatened by some teenager,” Mina snapped. “You’re just more interested in building your daughter’s character than in treating patients.”

“There are ethical issues, Peter,” Franz pointed out. “What if she catches TB?”

“It’s a minimal risk, and she’s aware of it,” Peter said.

“But what if she does?” Mina asked. “Are you willing to take that responsibility?”

Peter stared at her. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might actually be concerned about Alex’s well-being.

“Of course I will,” he said, but he faltered. “I’d have to take her home, though, I guess.”

“I rest my case about tourist doctors,” Mina said.

Franz waved his hand like a white flag from a trench. “Mina, please,” he said. “I couldn’t keep this clinic open without you, you know that.”

She tossed her head triumphantly. “I know that very well,” she said.

“And I can’t keep it open without him, also,” Franz continued.

Encouraged by the praise, they both leaned slightly in toward the desk. Franz raised himself smoothly, the way a cobra does when its prey has finally stumbled into striking distance.

“If Alex wants to help us out, she will be at your disposal, Mina. If you want to get rid of her, you can. Peter will not be angry about it, will you, Peter?”

Peter shot Mina a look. “As long as you give her a fair chance,” he said. “If you ax her over some trumped-up BS, I’ll be in your face.”

“Just be sure she knows why she’s here,” said Mina.

“She’ll know,” Peter replied.

“Hallelujah!” said Franz, his hands upraised. “Everyone is happy now!”

|   |   |

Peter stalked through the door, took off his helmet and mask, and tossed them on the table. Alex and Devi were sprawled on the couch together as Devi quizzed Alex on vocabulary.

“
Ke cha
, Papaji?” asked his daughter.

“The good news is you’re in,” he said. “The bad news is you’ll be working with a psychopath.” He went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. “You might actually be right about going home.”

Alex glanced at Devi. “I’ve been rethinking that.”

Peter looked at his daughter. He fell into his chair by the couch and took a swig of beer. “Care to elaborate?”

“Well, the clinic might be a broadening-experience kind of thing,” she replied. “Plus, I have seventeen years of practice with a psychopath.”

“Bear in mind that broadening experiences are often unpleasant.”

“Would
you
care to elaborate?”

“On today’s menu we had multiple forms of respiratory distress due to lives spent breathing smoke from ox-dung fires,” he said. “Three cases of extensive scabies, given Kwell. A probable case of TB.”

“TB or not TB?”

“That is the question,” he said, and they briefly beamed at each other. “Let’s see … a kid with complications from measles who’s now in the hospital. TB, TB, and TB yet again. Assorted infections, many in the eyes. Two streps, one with a side of staph—patient may die depending on antibiotic-resistance profile. Oh, and I ran over a fresh pile of cow shit on the way home and sprayed it all over my scooter. We don’t have a hose, so now it’s covered with shit
and
flies.”

“Oh,” she said.

“And I know we’ve talked about this, but bear in mind that if you work there, you’ll be exposing yourself to some serious microbial risk.”

“You do it every day, right?”

“I have to. You don’t.”

“If you can do it, I can.”

He appreciated her grit, but it still worried him. “If I die, at least I won’t die young,” he said cautiously.

“No, you’ll just leave me orphaned at seventeen in a strange country.”

“Hmm, good point.”

“Whereas if
I
die, you’d ship me home in a box and get on with your life. You can have all the kids you want, but I only get one shot at having a dad.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “I expect I’d immediately forget all about you and just start happily procreating with the first woman I met.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you? I would if I were you.”

“You two are extremely, upsettingly bizarre,” said Devi.

“See?” said Alex. “The girl’s got vocabulary.”

Peter took a breath; all the cheery banter about mortality was making him uneasy, and he craved some sort of segue. “So
ke cha
with you two, anyway?” he asked.

Alex smirked at Devi. “Multiple forms of intellectual distress due to the nutty way these people speak.”

“Hey,” said Devi.

“Nepali actually turns out to be pretty straightforward, but Tibetan is unbelievably hard. They end their sentences with verbs, but that’s the least of my problems.”

“That’s for sure,” said Devi.

“Hey yourself,” said Alex.

Peter watched them and remembered Sangita’s remark. They did seem unusually comfortable together for such new friends.

“How do you like the international school, Devi?” he asked.

“It’s difficult,” she answered. “I like physics and philosophy, though.”

“Good combination,” said Peter. He sipped his beer. “This Gorkha’s pretty good. Have you tried it?”

Alex laughed. “You know we have. I’ve seen you count the bottles.”

“I only count the bottles to know when we need more.”

“I certainly believe that, Papaji.”

“Your daughter memorized forty more words today,” said Devi, in an apparent flanking maneuver. “She is a genius, I think.”

“Of course she’s a genius, but don’t
tell
her so.”

Alex air-kissed him.
“Ma teamelai maya garchu,”
she said.

“That better be as nice as it sounds.”

“Sure it is, if you allow for sarcasm.”

The two of them faced off like boxers sizing each other up in the ring. Alex was taller and still growing, but Mina, though thin, had the contained, intimidating bearing of a lioness poised to defend her territory.

Peter remembered Alex’s confrontations with Cheryl, how they’d become more volatile as Alex grew older. A few months previously, for the first time, the long war of nerves had erupted in a physical skirmish. Cheryl slapped Alex, who quickly grabbed both of her mother’s wrists, lifted them over her head, and pinned her against the wall. “Let me go!” Cheryl shrieked, and Alex said, “Fuck you,” and then Peter, who’d heard the fight start from the other room, broke it up.

After that, Cheryl fell back to ragging on Alex about her bookishness and her appearance, not to mention whatever personal slights from Alex she imagined herself suffering on a given day, but she shrank from open confrontation to a sniping insect whine. Alex just started ignoring her and grew more confident by the week.

Alex looked durable enough there in the clinic, and Peter was
proud of her. The kid was a survivor. It was she, in fact, who’d suggested they make a public display of acquiescence to Mina.

“You’re to do whatever Mina wants, no questions asked,” Peter said now, trying not to sound too theatrical. Mina stood by, her arms folded across her chest, eyeing the two of them skeptically.

“Sure,” said Alex.

“Listen and learn. Give selflessly.”

“You know me, Dad.”

“See, Mina? She’s ready.”

Mina regarded Alex calmly. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” she said.

|   |   |

What really got to her, it turned out, were the children. The fourth case of dysentery that afternoon was a baby with stick limbs and an abdomen like a soccer ball who had an abscessed fistula leading right into his small intestine. His fever was 105, he was leaking liquid shit from a dime-sized hole an inch above his navel, and his mother, of course, had no money for the hospital.

Peter was paying attention to the baby, but he was also keeping an eye on Alex. She had turned pale, and she hovered a few feet back from the table.

“Get me a bag of saline and a line, will you?” Peter said, wanting to keep her busy. She went to the cupboard, looking relieved to have a task that would allow her, even momentarily, to turn away. “While you’re there, bring a bag of Rocephin. We’ll hang them both.”

Mina came in and held the baby while Alex hung the two bags on the IV stand and connected the plastic line. Her hands were shaking. Mina watched her, then looked at Peter.

“Pull off the cap and attach the needle to the end of the line,” Peter said, and Alex did. Peter inserted the IV and taped it, then started the drip. They put the child and his mother in a room in the back. He told Mina to assure the woman that they would get the
boy to Kanti, the children’s hospital, and negotiate something. Mina spoke to her in Nepali and then left. When they were alone, Peter sat Alex down.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Is he going to be all right?”

“With stamina and surgery and luck, he might last the night. He also might not. If he makes it to tomorrow he’ll have a better chance.”

She looked like a damp sheet trembling on a clothesline. “How often do you see stuff like this?”

“Ten times a day, more or less.”

She began to cry. He had had a pretty good idea something like this was going to occur, knowing what he knew of his daughter’s sensitivities. Now that it
was
happening, though, he was nursing doubts, but he didn’t have time to coddle her.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, handing her some Kleenex. “Try to hang in. We’ll talk later.” He squeezed her shoulder and headed out to the next catastrophe.

Soon someone from Kanti came and took the child. Alex stayed in the room for a half hour or so, then finally emerged, still ashen, and tried to make herself useful again. When she saw Mina she dipped her head and sidestepped gawkily out of the way, her deference apparently genuine this time. Mina gave Peter a brief smile of understanding.

“She’s a good kid,” she said quietly, when Alex was out of earshot. “She’ll be all right.”

Before Peter could respond, she turned away and walked down the hall to her next patient. He watched her go, dumbfounded.

There were a couple of other bad cases that afternoon, and three hours later Alex was silent as they rode home together on the Hero. When Devi met them at the door, Alex took her in her arms and started weeping again. They went upstairs. Peter checked in with Sangita, who said she didn’t need any help and waved him away. He poured a glass of wine, went out to the back porch, and sat down in a lawn chair under the jacaranda.

Had he done the right thing? Maybe she had enough on her plate without this. He’d also begun to wonder what went on upstairs between those two, after school and in the evenings. Were these innocent teenage sleepovers or what, exactly? Alex had had two or three boyfriends in junior high and high school, but nothing had ever become serious. Peter had figured this was a result of her dedication to her studies and to basketball, not to mention her guarded and appropriately self-protective response to such matters in general, given that her experience consisted primarily of the wildly dysfunctional relationship between her parents. But now he wondered if he’d drawn the wrong conclusion. He’d had lesbian friends since college, and he knew plenty of mainly straight women who’d experimented when they were young. He wanted to think he could take something like this in stride. Besides, she was seventeen, and more of her affection would naturally be directed to friends than to him—and for that matter, he was glad she
had
a friend.