Chapter 12
Jack
“Dr. Drake,” Mindy, the nurse on duty, says in a breathless voice when the elevator doors open outside the pediatric ICU. It does nothing for me.
“How is Abdo doing?” I ask as we approach the nurses’ station.
“Last night, he moved himself to the bathroom floor,” she says, thankfully in a more professional voice. “We moved him back to his bed, but he moved to the floor again. We gave up after the fourth time.”
“Is his stomach upset?”
She shakes her head. “He indicated with the cards that it wasn’t.”
When there isn’t a translator, the nurses have picture cards they can point to that help the patient show how they’re feeling.
“Hmmm… Okay. Thank you.”
I turn to Laine. “Come on. Let’s go see how he’s doing.”
We walk into his room, and the bed is empty. In three steps, I’m at the bathroom door, and I find him curled up on the floor with a blanket and sheet.
“Could he be hot?” Laine asks.
I shake my head. “He hasn’t been running a temperature.”
Abdo opens his eyes and looks at me. Panic crosses his face, and I smile.
“It’s okay,” I assure him. “This is my friend Laine.” I gesture to her and then point to him. “And this is my friend Abdo.”
Laine waves. “Good morning, Abdo. I brought you this.”
She holds out a donut I didn’t see her buy in the cafeteria.
He takes it from her hesitantly.
I bend down and offer my hand, and he takes it. His strength is coming back, but he’s not quite there yet. He’ll need some physical therapy to make sure he can walk safely without assistance.
I walk him back to his bed. He climbs in and looks at the donut. I pull the iPad out of the side drawer where the nurses put it at night and turn it on. “What should we watch?” I ask.
“ Paw Patrol ,” he says just above a whisper.
I open up the browser and queue up an episode. “Why is Paw Patrol your favorite?”
He gives me a shrug.
I’m not sure if the shrug means he doesn’t understand me or if he doesn’t want to say.
Abdo finally takes a bite of his donut. His face morphs into surprise and then he smiles. I can’t even imagine how many firsts he’s experiencing.
“I have the number of that family from Sudan that I met,” Laine says. “They have two daughters. Do you think the hospital would allow them to come visit and bring him a homemade meal?”
That’s a brilliant idea. “He’s still in the ICU, so the food might be tricky, but I could try to work something out. And I’m sure he’d like to talk to people without a translator. If you could see if they’d be willing to visit, and I’ll make sure it’s cleared so they can come.”
She nods in agreement, and we sit down on either side of Abdo and watch Paw Patrol . I have a thousand things I should be doing, but I find I’m very happy sitting here with Abdo and Laine.
Three episodes and an hour later, Laine stands. “Abdo, I’m so happy to meet you. Can I come back and maybe bring some friends?”
He looks over at her for a moment and the corners of his mouth turn up slightly. Laine touches his bandaged arm. “You are very brave.”
“Thank you,” he says.
A feather could knock me over. He’s learning. There’s no way he can be fluent, but it’s a start. “I’ll drive you home,” I offer.
Laine shakes her head. “That’s unnecessary. I can walk and…” She glances out the window to take in the weather. “It’s not raining at the moment.”
“Really, I’d like to.”
I can tell she doesn’t trust me, can’t quite figure out what I’m up to. Honestly, I can’t blame her. I’m not sure either. But I’m finding her company pleasant, and I want to spend more time with her today.
“I guess,” she finally says, an odd look on her face.
“Great. Give me just a few minutes.” I do a few final things for Abdo and make notes in his chart. Laine squeezes his hand, and he smiles over at me. What a snake. He’s five years old, and already he’s got it figured out.
When we step out of his room, I direct Laine back to the elevators. “Should we call the family you met with?” I suggest.
“I can try. Only the husband speaks any English.”
“It will be quieter in the car.” We weave through the hospital halls until we get back to the parking lot. “Are they recent immigrants?” I ask as I open the passenger door of my car for her.
“Yes. Let me find the details.” She pulls out a reporter’s notebook and flips through several pages covered with ink and pink highlighter. That’s how she organizes herself as she writes. “Here it is.” She reads a moment. “Yes…they arrived just a few weeks before you came home. But of course, their arrival has been much easier because they’re together and don’t have severe health concerns. Not that any of this is easy.” She shakes her head and looks at her lap. “I can’t even imagine. I hope they’re able to help us with this.”
“It would be great if they’re open to that.”
She nods. “Okay, let’s find out.”
She dials the phone and puts it on speaker. “Hello?” a male voice answers.
“Faheen?”
“That’s me.”
“Faheen, this is Laine Seymour. I’m a journalist. We met at the Harambe Ethiopian restaurant?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“The boy I mentioned to you that evening is getting better every day. But he has no one to visit who can speak to him, and he’s all alone. We think he’s also probably missing some good food from home. Could I pay you to make a small meal for him and ask you and your family to visit? My friend is his doctor. He thinks it would be good for him.”
“Yes. Of course. We will help.”
“That’s great news.” Laine is smiling widely now. “When can you come?”
“We can come today.”
“Okay, I can get you money to cover the cost of the food.”
“We have food.”
She takes a deep breath. “Will you eat with him? He would probably like that.”
“Yes, we do that.”
“Faheen, he was on a playground that someone blew up. He has many burns. But he was a happy boy. He just misses his family.”
“I understand. We go today. You pick us up at fifteen hundred.”
Laine looks over at me, and I nod. “Three o’clock,” I confirm.
“We’ll be there,” she tells him. “You’ll bring Amani and the girls?”
“Yes, and food for everyone.”
“That sounds wonderful. Thank you so much. See you this afternoon.”
“Goodbye.” He disconnects the call.
She looks over at me. “Well, that went well. I hope he understood everything I was asking.”
“He seemed to,” I assure her. “And even if it’s not perfect, it’s going to be great for Abdo.”
“Faheen told me he worked for a company in Khartoum that had him dealing with English-speaking foreigners. They left when things got sticky and the war seemed to be moving closer to Khartoum. They didn’t want to take any chances.”
“They were really smart,” Jack says. “By the time I got out of there, the city had gone to hell in a handbasket.”
“You must have been scared.”
“Definitely concerned, but I wasn’t really worried until I realized I wasn’t going to be able to finish Abdo’s surgery. We were at such a delicate point…” I hate even remembering the rising panic I felt. “I would have stayed behind to continue helping if they hadn’t attacked the hospital. After that happened, it wasn’t safe for anyone.”
“Can I use that in the next story?”
I open my mouth to say yes, but something stops me. Oh yes, it’s my previous experience with her. “I guess. But I’d like to read the story before it’s published.”
She chews on her lip. She does that when she wants to say something but is holding back. “That’s fine. You’ll be able to fact check.”
We’re getting close to her building. “What are you going to do until I come back to pick you up this afternoon?”
“I have some laundry, and I need put a few things together for this next article. I never thought I’d be introducing Faheen and his family to Abdo.”
“It’s not actually that much time. Are you okay if I stick around?”
Her brows furrow. “What are you going to do while I work?”
“I have a few things I can work on.” I don’t know what they are, but I’ll figure it out. I don’t know why, but I want to spend the day with her like we used to. For a terrible moment, I think she’s going to refuse, but then she nods.
“If that’s most convenient for you, I guess that will be fine.”
I park the car in her parking space and follow her up to her apartment. As I remember, it’s a bit of a train wreck when we enter, but it’s her.
She scurries ahead and picks up used tissues and dirty dishes from the coffee table, and she grabs what looks like junk mail and tucks it into the recycling. “Sorry, now that this is my home and my office, the two blend together and things don’t get done.”
“It doesn’t bother me.”
She gives me a skeptical look.
Okay, I couldn’t stand to live like this, but I don’t spend the night here anymore, so my opinion isn’t relevant.
She gets me situated at the kitchen table and goes to start her laundry. I call Elise Banner on her personal cell phone.
“I’m not avoiding you,” she says when she picks up. “I just don’t have any answers. We know his parents are gone, but we’re trying to find relatives. He must have an aunt or uncle who could become his legal guardian.”
I scrub my hand over my face. “Elise, I have someone from Child Welfare making sure we’re not abusing the boy. But don’t let that stop you from paying for his medical care—if not for what has been done, at least for the future.”
“I heard you got a benefactor,” she challenges.
“Between us, I’m the benefactor, but the hospital would feel better if it wasn’t just me.”
“Fine. We can cover it going forward. I’ll get the paperwork done. But what happens when it comes time to release him from the hospital? Are you going to adopt him?”
“Elise, I’m still single.”
“You could settle down,” she singsongs.
“Yeah, that’s not likely. But to answer your question, I don’t know. If you can’t find a relative, we’ll have to figure something out. He won’t be able to just go into a foster home.”
Elise and I catch up a bit after that, and she tells me a few fun stories about her work. I don’t envy her position, but I’m grateful I have her to help me.
After we’re done, I go into the kitchen for some water and find Laine staring at her computer. She looks completely perplexed. “What’s wrong?”
She drops the pen she was chewing onto the table. “Have you given any thought to what’s going to happen to Abdo when he’s released from the hospital?”
“Were you listening to my conversation with Elise Banner?”
She sits up straight. “No.”
I hold up my hand. “Fine. But I was just talking to her about that. I don’t know. He has several surgeries ahead of him, so it’s not an immediate issue. The Foreign Affairs Office is looking for his relatives. They figure he must have an aunt or uncle. Not that I have any interest in sending him back to Sudan until this crisis is over.”
“If they can’t be in Sudan, how are they looking?” Laine asks.
“As people come over the border, they can register the names of family members they’ve been separated from, and if they have any photos, they’re loaded into a network. I’ve registered all of Abdo’s information because I had it with his medical records. So, anyone searching from his family would get a hit on him.”
“But what if no one is searching?”
“That’s all I have for now. I don’t know what to do.”
“You can’t let him go into the system,” she says, panic in her voice.
I shake my head, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her, try to calm her. “That is not my plan.”
The buzzer to the washer sounds, and she steps away, leaving me to my thoughts. I’m not crazy about any of the options currently on the table for Abdo. Hopefully, more will appear before he needs them.