Given New Worlds Page 15

  She wondered if Sean was still here. The man repairing the kitchen had said that they were going to stay, but Dr. Otieno would be unlikely to provide a group of missionaries beds for the night in the hospital. Even if they had managed to repair the leaks in the roof right before a torrential downpour, it was still out of the question.

  Abby debated on how well the roof performed its duties after the men had worked on it. She left the pile of paperwork on her desk and walked to the back of the hospital, towards the door to the orphanage. She was careful to open the door quietly, as the children’s rooms were thin-walled, and they tended to wake at every noise. She stepped through the doorway and towards the kitchen. A small figure darted through the room next to her and it didn’t take Abby more than two seconds to realize who it was.

  Nathan.

  She placed her finger on her mouth to make sure he didn’t say a word while she lifted out her hand. He didn’t take it but stayed close to her heels when she tiptoed to the kitchen. Little light entered through the small window over the counter, but it was enough to see that the kitchen was free from water droplets and the new roof had executed its task perfectly. She felt a smile take hold of her lips. It was an emotion that she hadn’t expected. She had thought that she would have been more likely to endure a bout of uncontrollable sobbing and endless tears this pre-dawn morning, but instead - it was a simple smile. She looked over at Nathan who was standing near the door to the outdoor classroom, then back down the hallway where one of the caregivers was standing with her arms crossed and a reprimanding look on her face. Abby waved towards the woman letting her know that she would take care of Nathan, then watched her walk back to the rooms to settle down into a nap until the children arose.

  Nathan placed his hand on the doorknob and looked up at Abby quizzically, wondering if she was going to pull him away and make him go back to bed. But Abby understood, she knew what it was like to toss, and turn, and ache from the inside with memories that didn’t want to go away. She knew how hard it was to close your eyes when all they wanted to do was stare out and make sure that the nightmares wouldn’t come back.

  Abby reached for the door and turned the knob, then followed Nathan out to the classroom. The concrete floor near the door was still fairly dry and Abby was glad to see that the work the men had done on the roof had included much of the overhang as well. The moon had disappeared beyond clouds, and dark of the early morning had yet to welcome any rays of the sun. Nathan seemed to know exactly where he was going, but Abby felt as though she were blind, almost toppling over picnic tables and chairs, trying to keep up with him, but failing miserably.

  The furniture seemed out of place, as if the winds and the rain had picked them up and sent them skittering across the classroom from one end to the other. She came across an easel that was normally in the play area sitting amongst the lesson tables. As she made her way around, she realized that most of the equipment from the play area had been moved, but the play area was exactly where the boy had run to.

  The moon came out once again, and Abby saw Nathan. He was on his knees, near a group of seven sleeping bags. She watched as he lay down and curled up next to one of the bags. An arm reached out and covered him in protection. A ruined arm, an arm that had once been whole, but now only held questions. Nathan snuggled into the warmth of the sleeping bag and Abby sat on a picnic table.

  She knew Sean was awake, watching her, thinking about her.

  Time passed, and the sky began to lighten with the entrance of dawn. Nathan had shifted and groaned twice during his sleep, and each time, Sean soothed and comforted him into a peaceful slumber as Abby watched. She thought about the reassuring whispers he spoke into the boy’s ear. Those should have been Abby’s whispers, Abby’s comforting caresses, Abby’s protection from the monsters of the night. But they’d been stolen from her by a man in tortoiseshell glasses and gloves, by the media circus that had engulfed her life and strangled her soul, and by whatever, or whoever, had destroyed Sean’s arm.

  When Nathan awoke in the dim morning glow, he made his way back to the kitchen, and Abby helped him into the building, handing him over to the night caregiver, who would ensure that he went through his morning ritual and maybe even give him some breakfast, if there was enough food available today.

  Abby stood there, near the kitchen, watching the little boy walk away. She felt confusion, yet urging. Her mind told her to walk away, to go to her office and finish the paperwork that sat in a pile on her desk. But her heart told her to walk the other way, out into the classroom, into Sean’s comforting arms, where he would whisper into her ear and make the demons go away.

  But the man out there wasn’t the Sean she knew. And she was no longer Abby.

  She sighed and walked towards the hospital, towards her office, and away from her stolen heart.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  ABBY didn’t leave her office. She had hoped to hide out and avoid a lecture from Oyana, but the hospital wasn’t big enough to hide even a mouse.

  “If you had been kidnapped, I would not have paid the ransom. I would have said to them, ‘Keep her. She is only a thoughtless woman who does not care that those who love her will worry.’”

  Abby turned, head hung low and eyes wide with guilt, but her words had stopped yesterday, and she was unable to conjure them into existence. Oyana didn’t have to say more, the reprimand was loud and clear.

  Two hours after Oyana’s lecture, a rustling and the sound of Mama Zawadi filled the hallway. Abby’s spine knotted up. Mama Zawadi never came into the hospital. Maybe she was mad that Abby hadn’t finished the chicken dish she’d prepared yesterday. Maybe she had heard that Abby had decided to go for a stroll at two in the morning in the unsafe streets. Maybe she was upset that Abby had let Nathan out of the building after curfew. Whatever the case, Abby sunk low in her chair and tried to make herself disappear. One lecture a day was quite enough.

  “Miss Jamie, show yourself.”

  It was no use. The small rolling chair was no barrier to the large woman in the doorway. Abby turned around and accepted her fate. “You will come with me now,” she said. No explanation, no pretense of what awaited Abby beyond the doors of the hospital.

  Abby followed her down the hallways, through the kitchen and out the back door into the courtyard of the orphanage where the children played during the day when they weren’t doing their lessons. She watched over the low wall of the play yard and observed Nathan talking. Yesterday he had laughed and today he was talking. To Sean.

  Sean was listening. His face not smiling, but not frowning either. It was the face of the cold, new Sean. He listened as Nathan spoke about the rocks he was laying out in the dirt. Abby wasn’t even sure that Sean could understand Swahili, but it didn’t seem to matter. The boy was speaking, and his only audience was Sean.

  “You need to talk to that man. You need to thank him for this,” Mama Zawadi said quietly, swishing her hand towards the two very different, but very alike males in the play yard.

  Apparently, Mama Zawadi hadn’t been apprised of the fact that Abby’s voice had gone AWOL. She walked back into the kitchen, bright skirt swishing on her wide hips, her words clanging like a gong in Abby’s ears.

  Abby knew that Sean was aware of her presence. His peripheral vision invaded her body like electricity. Part of her wanted to run and once again hide under the paperwork in her office, but her dependence on Mama Zawadi’s wisdom won over. She didn’t open the gate, didn’t open her mouth to talk, only watched. It would have to be enough.

  When Nathan was called in for lunch, Sean sat quietly in the play yard picking up the rocks Nathan had so strategically stacked, while Abby continued to lean on the wall. It was like a game of chicken that no one would win. Until the rain began.

  There was a slow drizzle of thick drops, enough to bring Sean towards the gate and underneath the awning where Abby stood.

  “I know you don’t want to talk to me,” he said.

  ‘I want to. I
do!’, she yearned to scream. ‘I have so many questions to ask you, but I don’t want to know. I have so much that has been lost, but I don’t want to find it.’ Her heart was yelling out sentence after sentence, but her face was only a blank stare.

  “I suppose you’re wondering about the hand,” he said, and lifted his arm in a weak gesture, then let it drop to his side again. “I’m not going to tell you. It’s not something you want to hear.”

  He stepped through the gate and sat slowly at one of the picnic tables. “Just so you know… I wanted to see you after the attack. I tried. But so much had happened.” She watched his shoulders lift, then fall as he took a breath. “At first, they thought I did it.” His head spun around so quickly that Abby felt herself jolt in surprise. His eyes were angry, the heat and grief evident on his face. “They didn’t even ask first. Innocent before proven guilty? It’s bullshit. I was paraded in front of everyone as the man that attacked you.”

  His head dropped into his hands and after a moment, the weakened arm dropped to his lap. “Your dad was so angry. I’d failed you. I’d failed him.”

  She wanted to go to him, to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. But instead, she stood silent, her face of stone only listening with the quiet of a statue.

  “He paid me. Did you know that?”

  Abby flinched. Dad paid him? To leave?

  “The letter that I showed you when I first asked you to date me? It was a fake. The real letter was a contract. He paid me to date you. To protect you. And I failed.”

  A reverse button engaged in Abby’s mind. Her entire world began to replay itself in her head as she fell backwards into memories of their time together. He must be lying. He was hurt. He was angry. It couldn’t be true. Dad had paid him? She thought about the incident at the library. How Dad had been so angry with her, then suddenly had conveniently approved of a relationship with Sean? It was definitely something Dad would do. Sean was a military man, experienced in combat, and Abby remembered Sean’s comment in Tastey Coffee when they’d had their secret meeting. ‘I can keep you safe,’ he’d said.

  But he hadn’t kept her safe, had he?

  She also recalled his words as they’d looked into each other’s eyes at Swan Lake, ‘I have you.’ But he didn’t, not really. He’d left her. He’d left her outside with Lance. Lance in the glasses and the hair and the gloves. Sean had left her with him. Sean hadn’t had her at all.

  “I know that you hate me,” Sean continued. “And I know that you’ll probably never forgive me. But…” He lifted his head back and rested it against the concrete wall behind him - the wall with a painting of Jesus carrying the cross through the streets of Jerusalem. Abby had seen this painting every day for the past six months, but never had it seemed so poignant. Sean was carrying this cross, but it wasn’t his to bear.

  “No,” Abby said quietly. She needed to tell him not to be guilty, that it wasn’t his responsibility. That there was someone greater than him, greater than everyone, that had already taken the cross for him.

  Sean lifted himself off the bench. She heard a slight groan of pain as he shifted to his feet and began to storm away. “Fuck it,” he said under his breath and walked around the corner, out of sight.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  DURING the next week, Abby kept to herself in her office, only occasionally seeing the men that had come to volunteer at the hospital. They’d done amazing things in the small amount of time they’d been there. The roof had been repaired, a new stove was installed in the kitchen, air conditioning ducts had been adjusted to provide optimal temperature control within the surgical rooms, and they were currently attempting to repair the water well that only seemed to work half the time. It was like a hundred little miracles had happened within the past few days. If only Abby could be happy about it.

  Throughout her life in Kenya, she had always managed to rejoice in every circumstance, but that had all ended when Sean showed up in the classroom of the orphanage. Her worlds had collided, and Abby didn’t know how to return them to the precarious position in which they’d been held before he’d come back into her world.

  She hadn’t seen him since the morning he’d tried to apologize. But she didn’t want to see him either, so it was just fine.

  Dr. Otieno and the nurses were walking on eggshells around her. She didn’t talk unless absolutely necessary, she stayed in the office all day, and she had only eaten a few morsels of food - usually forced upon her by Oyana or Mama Zawadi. Then, the day came for the men to leave. Abby found herself staring at her computer for hours, her fingers only moving across the keyboard when somebody was within earshot. She couldn’t concentrate on her work. Hopefully, Dr. Otieno wouldn’t have anything important coming in, because Abby wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. She was shut down.

  Evening arrived, and Abby began walking with Oyana and the women back to the apartment. As she passed the cafe on the corner, she saw a man sitting at one of the plastic tables, his left hand holding a cup of tea, his right hanging by his side.

  Sean.

  Abby stopped in her tracks and Oyana motioned for the other women to go on without them.

  “He’s supposed to be gone,” Abby said.

  Oyana closed her eyes and tipped her head back with lips pursed in thought. She was going to tell Abby something she didn’t want to hear. Abby began to walk away, but Oyana pulled her elbow and spun her around. “He has been here for over a month,” she said.

  Abby was floored. Sean had been here? And she hadn’t known? Why? Why hadn’t he contacted her until the mission group came in at the beginning of the week.

  “You need to talk to him. He is hurting. Only God can ease his pain, but someone needs to explain this to him. You are that person.”

  “No,” Abby said. “He won’t listen to me. I’m the reason…” Abby didn’t know how to put it into words. It wasn’t his fault. He thought it was, but it really wasn’t. “He has so much guilt… and it’s because of me.”

  Oyana squinted her eyes and pointed her finger at Abby. “It sounds like you have guilt too. Both of you together will be quite a pair. Now, go talk to him.” At that, she walked away quickly to catch up with the other women, while Abby sat nervously staring across the street.

  After a few minutes of prayer, and enough breathing to develop a comfortable level of oxygen in her system, Abby dodged traffic and stepped up to the cafe. Sean had his back to her, yet Abby could sense his awareness. She waited for him to say something, but he kept silent, lifting an empty cup to his lips as if the lack of liquid within could somehow provide a modicum of normalcy.

  She walked around the table and faced him.

  “Have a seat,” he said, pushing out the chair across from him with his toe.

  Flashbacks of their first conversation in the library ran through her mind. Things had seemed so complicated back then. Little had she known.

  Sean motioned for the vendor to bring out another cup of tea. He brought two. One for Abby and another for Sean. It appeared as if they knew each other, as if Sean had been coming to this cafe for weeks. But that was impossible, Abby would have seen him. Or would she? Abby had been wrapped up in her own little cosmos for so long, not truly seeing the world around her. It was highly possible that she could have walked past him every day on her way home from work and never saw him.

  “I have nothing to go back to,” he said. His voice was dejected, flat. “Everything is…”

  He didn’t have to say it, Abby understood. She’d felt it so many times. Everything is ruined, empty, dead.

  “Everything is here,” he said in a whisper.

  At first, Abby thought her ears had deceived her, but then he looked up. She saw his eyes. The eyes that had held her so many times, had given her joy, laughter, hope, love. Those eyes were still in there. But they’d been damaged. Just as his hand was now only a portion of what it had once been, the Sean that was behind those dead eyes had been broken as well.

  Abby sat softly in the
chair, words failing to break free from her throat. She placed her hand on the table, not sure if he would take it. He looked at it for a few moments, then turned his head toward the traffic flowing along the street.

  “There’s so much to tell you,” Sean said. “But I don’t know how much you know.”

  She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, indicating how little she knew. The only truth that she had heard was what Veena had told her. The rest was only a wash of lies from the internet.

  “Do you hate me?” Sean asked hoarsely, as if the words were strangling his throat in a choke hold.

  Abby thought about the question. Then she considered the days, and the weeks, and the months that she’d thought about him, and longed for his touch, and begged God for just the sound of his voice, and wondered why he hadn’t contacted her. No, she didn’t hate him.

  Abby shook her head and slid her hand back into her lap, trying not to notice Sean gather his emotions as her voiceless reply sunk into his mind, and into his heart. Perhaps he wanted her to hate him, to rage at him, and to want him dead for what he’d let happen to her. But that wasn’t her place. Her place wasn’t to judge him or accuse him. Only to love. Just like Sean had loved the woman who had abandoned her dying baby, Abby would love Sean through any mistake that he’d made. Unconditionally.