and far from well, Dailia gave them all hope. When the fever took her, she plunged like the others into delirium and dehydration, but in Dailia's case the IV feeds and ice compresses actually seemed to work. Her mother, whom Simone knew only as Pagusa, sat stoically by the child's bedside for three full days. She sponged her daughter's forehead with a damp cloth, exchanged her soiled nightdress for a clean T-shirt, whispered relentlessly to a mind that wandered far in hectic dreams. She said little; she spoke almost no English. Her husband and brother had been shot by the Serb militia. Her eldest child, a son, was hiding out in the hills with a band of Albanian guerillas. One daughter had been lost on the road and never recovered. A blind grandmother and little Dailia were all that Ragusa had left. At three o'clock in the morning two days before, when the child's fever at last had peaked and broken, settling back down to double digits — when Simone could tentatively declare that the danger was past and the child would live — Ragusa had stared at her, unbelieving. Then she had thrown herself across Dailia's sleeping form, her shoulders shaking with sobs of terror and relief. She had cried aloud in thanks to a God that was not Simone's, a God that had taken other sons and daughters without hesitation or mercy. Simone touched the woman's shoulder, and she turned to seize the doctor's hand. Ragusa had managed to call her child back from the Valley of Death, but she believed it was Simone who had saved her.
Later, as she crossed the muddy tracks that separated the hospital tent from the rest of the camp, Simone saw the woman waiting shyly by the mess tent door.
“Coffee, Ragusa?” she asked, hoping that these words at least were comprehensible.
“Un peu du cafe?”
Ragusa shook her head. She was clutching something close to her frayed coat.
Simone hesitated, uncertain how to bridge the gulf of language, but then the woman seized her hand and pressed her burden into it.
“For you,” she said haltingly.
“Dailia. My thanks. Is all .. .”
It is all that I have, all that I can give you, who have given me back my life.
Ragusa hurried past her. Simone looked down into her palm. The woman had parted with the last few things she possessed: three tampons, their paper covers torn and grubby. Simone placed them carefully in her white lab coat pocket and watched Ragusa retreat across the rutted mire. She could have laughed aloud, or cried. But all she felt was unworthy.
The flap of the medical tent was swept aside, and the orange glow of a cigarette arced to the dirt like a dead-headed flower. The man she had glimpsed in silhouette a moment ago. He had the decency to stamp his tobacco out, in deference to the ailing children.
“May I help you?” she said in English.
“I don't know,” he answered in the same language, surprising her. “It's the middle of the night. But I thought somebody might be here. Could I borrow a thermometer?”
Simone rose from the dead child's bedside and moved toward him.
“Is someone ill?”
He hesitated. The air of assurance faltered a little. In the half-light thrown by her propane lantern, she saw him for what he was: a man torn from sleep, eyes bleary with worry, but determined not to panic.
“It's Alexis. My oldest girl. She's rather .. . hot.”
“I see. I'd better come.”
Simone delayed only long enough to inform one of the nurses about Drago Pavlovic's death. Then she pulled on a jacket over her white coat and jeans, gathered up her medical kit, and followed the man out into the darkness. People were already stirring all over the camp; she heard the clang of coffeepots, caught the flare of fires, the guttural hawking of an old man's throat. A wave of fatigue so powerful it was akin to vertigo nearly knocked her off her feet.
She was not the only doctor in Pristina — there were at least fourteen volunteers from North America and Western Europe — but the epidemic had strained them to their limits. And today would bring a fresh wave of sick and dying.
“I'm Enver,” he said, holding out his hand. “Enver Gordievic. You're the doctor from Canada.”
“Toronto, yes. Simone Amiot.” He had surprised her again. But she was accustomed enough to camps by this time to know that gossip is every refugee's lifeblood.
She kept her hands in her pockets and smiled at him; the casual gesture of shaking his hand was just one more way of passing sickness.
“Do you know Canada?”
He shook his head.
“I've only been to D.C.”
Not “Washington,” not “the United States” — but “D.C.” Simone decided to assume nothing about Enver Gordievic.
He led her to a shelter built out of scraps of lumber, a windowless box the size of a dolls house. It was canted unsteadily on a cinderblock foundation; but it had a door that swung on rope hinges, and when Simone ducked through the opening and stepped inside, she found the interior fairly warm and dry. He had built bunk beds for the children. There were two of them, both girls.
“Alexis,” he said softly — and then, in a language Simone could not understand, added a few more sentences. His hand smoothed the child's golden hair. She raised her head weakly, then let it fall back on the pillow. Even at a distance of five feet, Simone recognized the glassy eyes and flushed cheeks of fever. She drew a quick breath of rage and frustration, then crossed to the little girl's bedside. “She's burning up! Why didn't you bring her straight to the clinic?”
“Because the kids who walk in there never walk out,” Enver said bluntly.
“She has the mumps?”
“Of course. I can tell just by looking at her. The swelling hasn't come out yet, but it will in a matter of hours. It's the dehydration that concerns me. She needs an IV feed, and quickly.”
“No.” He reached for Simone's arm and steered her firmly toward the hovel's door.
“Thank you very much for your time. Dr. Amiot, but all I needed was the diagnosis. I'll take it from here.”
“Are you nuts?” Simone swung on him furiously, then her eyes widened.
“You're planning to get her out of the camp. I can assure you, Mr.” His last name escaped her. “Enver, that the care your daughter will find elsewhere in Pristina is no better than what we can offer her here. If you move her, she'll die.”
“That may be true. But there aren't a hundred other kids lying in beds next to her, competing for attention, elsewhere in Pristina. I'm taking her to my mother.” He bent down and gathered the little girl up in his arms. His face, when he looked at Simone, was deliberately calm; he was a man who knew what he needed and how to get it.
“Will you do me a favor?” he asked her.
“Please, Enver. Don't move the child.”
“Would you watch Krystle for me? The little one? It'll take me an hour to get to my mother's and back.”
Simone turned away from the two-year-old slumbering in her bunk and pulled open the door.
“I can't. I'm sorry. I've got to find Dr. Marx. Perhaps he can convince you to bring Alexis to the tent”
“Don't waste your time.”
“I don't,” Simone said abruptly. “I use every spare minute to save these lives. Your daughter can't leave. She can't set foot outside this camp. As of midnight we were put under strictest quarantine. Surely you've seen the police patrol? The epidemic cannot be allowed to spread throughout the rest of the city, or the province. Try to leave, and the police will beat you silly. Try harder, and they'll shoot.”
“I've got to go to work in the morning! I've got clients!”
“They'll have to wait.”
“How long?”
“I don't know.” Her fingers spasmed on the doorknob.
“Until this is … over.”
He stood there, his daughter in his arms, and Simone watched as his expression changed. The easy assurance fled. What replaced it was a look she had come to know: hunted, desperate, defiant of the odds.
