Page 10 of Soul on Fire
“I can bag it.” Peter pulled clear plastic bags from his pockets, carefully folded with an airtight seal. “I can suck all the air out. You can sterilize the bags when we come out of the tents.”
“You want to be the first Westerner to have photos of the poor Africans suffering from Ebola, is that it? How much will you make selling these photos if I let you in?”
Peter didn’t flinch. He held Ikolo’s stare and didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. “I want to talk to the villagers. The ones who were first attacked.”
“Most of them are dead already.”
“Then the next ones. I want to talk to them and find out what happened.”
Ikolo sighed, pacing away from themzunguphotographer and his demands. Always the same, always, with Americans. They demanded, they acted like it was their right to have what they wanted, just because they wanted it—
“I’ll pay you double.”
Ikolo closed his eyes. He could rebuild the entire hospital, buy more medicines, more supplies. The Ebola tents needed so much, more IVs, more plastic sheeting, more chlorine, more body bags—
“Follow me,” he said.
* * *
He madePeter bag his camera far away from the Ebola tents, and then had one of his workers dress Peter, not trusting him to do it correctly on his own. It took time to learn, and letting amzunguget infected in his hospital was not the global legacy he wanted behind his name. He watched Peter get wrapped in layers, mummified in plastic and rubber and tape, Peter’s eyes getting wider and wider, until, when the goggles descended, Ikolo could see a ring of white all around his blue eyes.
“Now you see,” Ikolo said, his voice muffled, “how much work this is.”
Peter fumbled with his camera. The rubber gloves made it hard for him to work the buttons. He struggled as he lifted the camera and snapped a picture of Ikolo. His eyes crinkled at the corners behind the goggles as he looked at the digital screen. “You looked pissed, even covered head to toe.”
“Because I am.”
Ikolo led Peter through the four tents, briefly stopping at the suspected cases and the probable cases. Peter wasn’t interested in those. They moved on to tent three, but stopped Peter before going in. “Have you ever seen Ebola before? Face to face?”
“In pictures and in videos.”
“That is not the same. Prepare yourself for what you’re about to see. And no matter what, donottake any of your gear off.”
Peter nodded, and Ikolo pulled the plastic tent flap back.
Even through the masks and the hood, they could smell everything. Like a hot slaughterhouse, death and rivers of virus-soaked blood baking in the African heat. He’d tucked the tents in as much shade as he could under a tree canopy, but still, each tent was sweltering.
Fevered bodies had a way of raising the temperature, as did a hundred people’s raw, primal fear.
Peter stopped short just inside the tent. Ikolo heard him mutter curses, saw him swing his head from side to side. His camera hung useless around his neck.
“Wasn’t this what you wanted to see?” Ikolo murmured, sliding past. “Their suffering?”
He left Peter, making his rounds and checking with his nurses on shift for that hour. They only worked in one-hour shifts, trading out with each other to rest and drink water and recover from the heat, the oppression, and the despair.
Three more deaths. Three more bodies to be wrapped in their plastic sheets, lakes of bloody diarrhea, vomit, and exsanguination surrounding their limp corpses. Ikolo spotted sloughed intestines, black and rotten, between one man’s legs. The death slough.
Ekumanyi had been moved to the observation tent and out of the death zone. His fever had broken, and he seemed to be one of the lucky ten percent who fought Ebola and survived.
There were new patients, too. Ikolo started with a young man, feverish and chilled, his eyes red, clutching his stomach as he writhed. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Peter approach a young woman, another new patient, down the line.
* * *
“Mzungu,”she whispered, holding out her hand. “Mzungu, where are you from?”
Peter dropped to a crouch, his rubber boots crinkling the edge of plastic sheeting she lay on. “America,” he said softly. He switched to Swahili for her. “Where are you from, Miss?”
“Oliokwo,” she whispered. “A village north of here.”
