These nights she sings to Glorinelli before she goes to bed. It took them 2 sleepless nights to figure Nelli had been used to falling asleep listening to her mother's humming. The earthquake had taken Nelli's mother to its womb and now, it was left to others to be that voice, the false sense of comfort that Nelli would thrive on until she hinders on her loss someday.
The infant of seven months, with its gooey eyes, wide forehead and stubby curls rests on her bosom as she sings under the clearing in the trees, the moon rays descending as white pillars through the trees.
"Here, you go with Tuti," she speaks to Nelli, as she hands the girl child to her helper, Tuti,"Its time for my rounds, now."
Tuti is not a doctor or a trained nurse, but a local social worker who is now more a friend to her than helper. When Zoya had flown into Haiti as part of the relief work commissioned through 'Doctors without borders', the social workers had become their staff, ingesting themselves into all surgical procedures and assisting them with monitoring activities. If nothing, Tuti helps her with taking a break at times like these, when she has fifty three patients to check on before she retires for the day.
Once on her feet, she leans back and stretches looking up at the indigo hues of the night sky. How deceptive? she thinks, when the serenity of the starlit sky is by no means a reflection of the cries of the bereaved, their irreparable losses or that of their aching.
Wading her way through the dense overgrowth that had only multiplied after the recent storms, she makes her way back to the base camp where the patients are housed. She smells death and pain almost instantly. Its a stench that can live on the skin days after she leaves the camps.
With blood spurting onto her face and having only the time to wipe it off to get to the next patient in wait - the experiences took her far from a society of propriety. Most times, she side plaits her long hair and owns only plaid shirts, khaki shorts and waist coats and brown boots that weather out a storm or drought. Each assignment strips off the lie about comforts that mask itself as essentials in a city living. Now, in-between assignments, she lives as a paid house guest in the attic of an old couple who don't mind sharing their meals with her.
When she'd just started with 'Doctors without borders', it became nearly difficult for her to connect back with a normal life, with its loaded comforts dropping back into her days once she returned to their country headquarters. One summer, she beat herself to death before she could take Liras out of her purse to indulge in an ice cream. But, it was too late before she realized she connected too much with the loss and suffering that disconnected her from everything else. That reckoning in-turn hardened her against the only people she allowed herself to feel anything toward.
Being humane demanded that she also dehumanized in some ways.
Tomorrow when she boards the flight to leave Haiti, she knows she will tune out of Nelli too. That Tuti had lost her husband and will require starting her life all over again. Nothing would matter once she leaves this land of sorrows.
She puts on her stethoscope and listens to the dying heart beat of her 23 year old female patient who has succumbed to the cholera outbreak and might not live past the night.
"Sush! She will be ok," she quiets the patient's mother with a lie, who cries by her daughter's bedside as Zoya walks over to the next bed.
***
After three months its time to return home. She kisses Nelli's forehead and asks Tuti to leave with the child before the helicopter would roar its engines back to life. They are airlifting her and a few other doctors who signed-up to go into the forests and check for survivors, to the nearest international airport from where they will head back to their respective home lands.
"Are you sure Zoya? You want me to adopt Nelli?" Tuti asks even as she takes a step back.
She slides on her dark shades when she doubts there is an iota of moisture in her eyes. "Yes, if you want to that is." She attempts at a show of indifference.
Tuti looks at Nelli with a mild show of disappointment and then eyes Zoya again. "I always thought you wanted Nelli for yourself."
Zoya shrugs and the pilot calls for a clear out of the helipad. Tuti turns around and begins to recede to the trees along with the others for the take off.
Its another minute and this world will disappear. But, it feels almost impossible as her gaze continues to linger at Tuti and Nelli.
"Here..." she yells whisking out the thin gold chain she had been wearing a moment ago into the air, "This is for Nelli..." and she breathes a sigh of relief when Tuti catches it with her free hand.
There is an understanding in their smiles; of the affirmation that she has given to Tuti that all is not what it seems and that perhaps, there is a promise of friendship beyond this day of goodbye.
As the helicopter gains height, she waves to them for a while and keeps them in her view until they vanish as one with the green and destruction that is Haiti.
It is then that a small girl in soiled white dress runs to Tuti with a crushed piece of paper in her hand. Tuti's eyes narrows and she curses at the camp's inefficiency to deliver messages on-time. Unfolding the paper, Tuti reads the message that has been collected for Zoya, "Asad is looking for you. Please advise. - Humaira"
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