ON THE DAY everything changed, Sally Walsh finished what was to be her last shift at the Kallani medical centre – though she didn’t know that at the time – and stepped out of the makeshift surgery into the furnace heat of the early afternoon Ugandan sun.
The packed-earth compound greeted her with its depressing familiarity. A dozen crude buildings, looking more like a shanty town than a hospital, huddled in the centre of the sere compound, surrounded by a tall adobe wall. Beside the metal gate rose a watchtower, manned in shifts by a dozen government soldiers. When she began work at Kallani five years ago, it struck her as odd that a hospital had to be so protected, but after a few months in the job she had seen why: as fortification against rebel insurgents bent on kidnapping Westerners to hold hostage, to deter local gangs from raiding the hospital for drugs, and to stop the flood of refugees from over-running the centre in times of drought.
Last winter Sally had attempted to grow an olive tree in the shade of the storeroom; but the drought had killed it within weeks. How could she lavish water on the tree when her patients were so needful? Now the dead twigs poked from the ground, blackened and twisted.
Ben Odinga stepped from the storeroom, saw her and raised his eyebrows.
She shook her head.
“Have you finished?” he asked.
“I’m well and truly finished, Ben.”
He looked at her seriously. “Come to my room, Sally. I have some good whisky. South African. You look like you need a drink.”
She followed him across the compound to the prefab building that comprised the centre’s residential complex. He held open the fly-screen door and she stepped into the small room. A simple narrow bed, a bookshelf bearing medical textbooks, a dozen well-read paperback novels and a fat Bible.
She sat on a folding metal chair by the window while Ben poured two small measures of whisky into chipped tumblers.
She took a sip, winced as its fire scoured her throat, and smiled at Ben’s description of it as ‘good whisky’. What she’d give for a glass of Glenfiddich.
He said, “The infection?”
She nodded. “There was nothing we could do, short of flying her to Kampala.” Which, on their budget, was out of the question.
She went on, “I’m worried about Mary. They were close.”
“I’ll look in on her later, talk to her.”
“If you would, Ben.” She sighed. “Christ, I told her not to worry...” She looked up, then said, “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head, smiling tolerantly. He had become accustomed to the frequency of her blaspheming.
A week ago a mother from a nearby village had brought in her malnourished daughter. Her complaint was not malnutrition, but a swollen abdomen. Ben had diagnosed appendicitis and operated, and all seemed well until, a couple of days ago, the five-year-old developed a high fever. Mary, a nurse six months out of medical college in Tewkesbury, had committed the cardinal sin of identifying with the kid.
Sally had long ago learned that lesson.
Ben said, “What’s wrong?”
She looked up. “What makes you think...?”
“I’ve known you for years, Sally Walsh. I know when you have something on your mind.”
She hadn’t wanted to tell him like this; she had wanted to break it to him gently – if that were possible.
“I hope you won’t think any less of me for this, Ben.” She stared into her glass, swirled the toxic amber liquid. “I’ve had enough. I’ve had five years here and I’ve had enough. I’ll be leaving in May.”
She had expected his reaction to be one of disappointment, maybe even anger. Instead he just shook his head, as if in stoic acceptance. This seemed to her even more of a condemnation of her decision.
He said, quietly, “Why?”
She shrugged and avoided his gaze. “I’m burned out. I’m... perhaps I’ve come to understand, at last, that the reality here hasn’t matched my expectations.”
He said, “That is no reason to give in, Sally.”
She looked across at him. He perched on the bed in his stained white uniform, a bony, whittled-down Kenyan in his early fifties, with disappointment burning in his nicotine-brown eyes.
“There comes a time, Ben, when we have to move on. I’ve had five years here. I’m jaded. The place needs someone new, someone with fresh enthusiasm, new ideas.”
“The place needs someone like you, with empathy and experience.”
“Please,” she snapped, “don’t make me feel guilty. I’m going in May and you’ll be getting a replacement fresh from Europe, and after a few weeks it’ll