Page 15 of A New Year Baby

CHAPTER 9

JACK, SIERRA LEONE

There’s not much that can scare a man after he’s dealt with Ebola.

But staring down the barrel of an AK-47 held by a teenage boy, this comes pretty close.

I wrestle against the zip ties which are digging into my wrists and keeping my hands tightly fastened together behind my back. Three of my colleagues are sitting on the floor around me, similarly restrained, and groaning in pain from being beaten.

We were providing medical care to an extremely remote rural area, where children have been dying of malaria and cholera. They couldn’t afford transportation to the hospitals to get medical assistance, so we came to them.

Bad idea.

We were captured by some kind of heavily armed gang.

I’m not sure if it’s a militarized political faction, or just a random group of thugs. Does it matter who they are, if we all end up killed here tonight?

“Search dem for any-ting of value,” the leader is commanding, using some of the broken English called Krio. “Get de cell phone, wallet, money, jewelry, watch. Strip them down and take it all. Takeevery-ting!”

There is nothing we can do as our clothes are ripped from our bodies, and all our belongings are taken. My pants are unbuckled and removed, and the pockets are emptied. We are left sitting here defenseless in our underwear. One of my buddies, Joshua, has a nipple piercing—just a little gold barbell. The thugs find it when they remove his shirt, and a big guy greedily tears it from his chest, making him scream with pain.

I wince.

I try to remain calm.

At the very least, I put a clean pair of underwear on today. My mother would be proud. You never know when you’re going to get hit by a bus, or kidnapped by random African bandits. It’s very important to always wear clean underwear. Maybe it has even slightly improved my chances of survival. But after getting knocked down and stripped by that big guy, I definitely feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.

I try to remain positive.

The biggest killer of humans is not other humans—despite our best efforts. It’s mosquitoes. That’s the real danger that I came here to treat. That’s the war I’m fighting. Forty percent of all hospitalizations in Sierra Leone are due to malaria. But out here in the boonies, children under five don’t stand much of a chance. They aren’t even hospitalized. If we can’t get to them in time—well, the outcomes are often severe. I’ve seen so much death since I joined Médecins Sans Frontières.

A bunch of clumsy, asshole robbers shouldn’t frighten me. But they do.

The guns pointed at me and my friends still make me sweat, and my heart pounds madly in my chest. A single squeeze of that trigger, and it’s all over. It’s not fair. We were trying to help. And now we might die just for the sake of a vehicle, some pharmaceuticals and equipment. Our cell phones, cash, and a nipple piercing.

But being shot is not the worst way to go. Not when you’ve seen how Ebola kills. Bullets seem a little bit predictable, a little easy. We can patch up bullet holes in each other’s bodies. There’s a decent chance of survival. But we faced an infectious illness that had a near 90% fatality rate—where one wrong move could mean the end. A slow, miserable, excruciating end. We lost friends to carelessness and mistakes. You learn to move very slowly and cautiously. Fear becomes a friend.

I know the men with me are strong. They wouldn’t be here otherwise. They are not just doctors, they are warriors. You need to be tough as nails to travel to the darkest armpits of Sierra Leone and watch children die on a daily basis. For reasons that don’t even exist where we come from. We’ve been through so much together, and I am hopeful that we will survive this. Luck has been on our side, so far. But they seem pretty shaken up.

It’s not every day we have this many guns pointed at us. I try to think of what I can do to boost their morale and ease the tension.

“Hey, Josh?” I whisper. “Buddy?”

“Yeah?” he says, groaning as blood runs down his chest from where they tore his nipple.

“It’s not so bad, bud. We’ll stitch you right up. At least they didn’t find yourotherpiercing.”

He grunts in pain. “F off, Frost. I know you’ve been peeking at it every time I take a piss.”

“No,” I say quietly. “Your mother told me last night.”

The other two men have to restrain their laughter. Their shoulders shake with muffled chuckles.

I can’t help but grin.

I just made a bunch of guys laugh instead of worrying about getting pumped full of bullets. That’s a pretty good day. Could be a better day if we weren’t in this situation, but hey, we all knew what we were signing up for. We didn’t come to Africa because it was easy.

And if we do get pumped full of bullets, at least we had a little laugh first.

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