Page 18 of Prognosis So Done

The two women couldn’t possibly understand each other but there was something universal about babies that crossed language barriers and cultures. Harriet looked radiant and for the first time ever he imagined how it would be to have her holding their baby on her lap. His baby. Watching her belly blossom and her nurturing their baby at her breast.

A small noise in front of him brought him back to the task at hand. A little boy was looking at him apprehensively with big round eyes. He looked from Gill to the needle he’d been holding poised in the air for too long now and then back at Gill again.

‘It’s OK, little mate,’ he said, and ruffled the boy’s hair, giving him a reassuring smile. The boy looked dubious but he took his vaccination without a whimper.

Gill made a concerted effort to control his scattered thoughts. It was hot and his grandfather was critically ill. And it was his last day here. He was always a little stir-crazy after being away from home for two months.

So, Harriet was nursing a cute baby. Babies were cute - that’s how they sucked you in. It wasn’t until 2 a.m. feeds, no sex for six months and eating cornflakes for dinner that you realised you’d been conned.

He liked his life. So had she. He liked dining out most nights, going to the movies, the ballet and the theatre. And making love till the sun rose. And he most definitely liked his cornflakes for breakfast.

Actually, not even then. Eggs Benedict was a much better breakfast at a dinky little sidewalk café.

Damn it all — they’d talked about this. She had agreed. After one scare and years of dating women who sooner or later had wanted his babies, Gill had been ecstatic to find one who didn’t. To find a woman who was as concerned as him about the number of neglected children already in the world and the issues with population control. How many times had they discussed all this and decided they didn’t want to contribute to the problem?

She’dchanged the rules, damn it. Not him. Why, Harry? Why? He would have given her anything she’d wanted, anything. But this? Why did she want the one thing he did not?

He noticed a big purulent sore on the arm of the next child that the flies were enjoying immensely, and it finally made him put a lid on his rising frustration. He jabbed the boy in the opposite arm and with Theire’s help explained to the mother to go up to the medical facility and get it looked at.

These clinics were a good opportunity to treat any and all ailments and he’d already sent several patients over to the medical building, suffering from various superficial skin and eye conditions rampant in such a tropical environment. He’d even sent a man across who, he suspected, might have tuberculosis.

The crowd was at last thinning when he heard a most awful noise. It drove a fist right into his intestines and squeezed hard. It was a sound of deep distress and it was coming from Harriet. He turned to her quickly.

‘Gill!’

She was holding an infant who looked very close to death, flies buzzing around the child’s face like vultures. Her eyes were large with appeal and said it all - help.

Do something.

‘Theire,’ he yelled, keeping his eyes on the child, gently examining the scrap of skin and bones in Harriet’s arms. He glanced at the mother and her look of utter misery and despair was gut-wrenching. He’d seen that look so often in this war, and other wars all round the world, but it never got any easier to witness.

She was trembling all over and had her hands clasped together as if in prayer. A low keening noise was coming from the back of her throat as if that’s all she was capable of, as if grief had stricken her mute.

She knew. She knew her child – her son - was dying.

‘Gill...’ Harriet said, her voice etched with anguish. ‘I think it’s too late.’

He knew she was right. The child’s skin had a yellowy-green tinge and the whites of his big brown eyes were also yellowed. Jaundice. The symptom that gave yellow fever its name.

The child was in liver failure.

He watched as Harriet flapped a hand back in forth in front of the baby’s face, swatting away the stubborn little black flies that had zeroed in on the exudate from his eyes and the dried blood at the corners of his mouth. She was making growling noises at them, frustrated at their persistence.

He glanced back at the mother, who was looking down at her

child, her face cloaked in grief. She looked utterly destroyed, and Gill tried to imagine how he would feel in her position. Not just that his baby was dying but that he hadn’t been able to protect and keep his family safe.

He never wanted to be in her position.

‘Ask her how long her child has been like this,’ said Gill to Theire as she arrived on the scene.

There was an exchange during which Gill continued to examine the child.

‘She says he had a fever and vomiting about a week ago and then got better. He’s been yellow for a couple of days. She has walked for two days to bring him here. He won’t eat or drink.’

The child could barely hold his head up and keep his eyes open. He was practically unconscious. His fontanelle was very sunken, as were his eyes, and his lips and the mucous membranes of his mouth were cracked and bleeding.

‘When did he last pass urine?’ asked Gill.

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