SEVEN

Dr. Kate Neuman had reached the point where she could not take it anymore. She left the children’s ward, passed the isolation ward where her eight hepatitis B cases were recovering, stopped outside the unnamed, dying infant’s room just long enough to peer through the window and slam her fist into the doorframe, and then she strode quickly toward the doctors’ lounge.

The halls of Bucharest’s District One Hospital reminded Kate of an old Massachusetts binding factory she had worked in one summer while saving money to put herself through Harvard; the hallways here had the same grimy green paint, the same cracked and filthy linoleum tile floor, the same lousy fluorescent lighting that left long stretches of darkness between the pools of sick light, and the same kind of men wandering the hall with their stubbled faces and swaggering gait and smug, sexist, sidelong glances.

Kate Neuman had had enough. It had been six weeks since she had come to Romania for a “brief advisory tour”; it had been forty-eight hours since she had slept and almost twenty-four since she had taken a shower; it had been countless days since she had been outside in the sunlight; it had been only minutes since she had seen her last baby die, and Kate Neuman had had enough.

She swept through the door to the doctors’ lounge and stood breathing hard, surveying the startled faces looking up at her from the sprung couch and long table. The doctors were mostly men, sallow-faced, many with soiled surgical fatigues and scraggly mustaches. They looked sleepy, but Kate knew that it was not from long hours in the wards; most of these physicians put in banker’s hours and lost sleep only in what passed for nightlife in post-revolution Bucharest. Kate caught a glimpse of blue jeans far down the couch and for a second she felt a surge of relief that her Romanian friend and translator Lucian was back, but the man leaned forward, she saw that it was not Lucian but only the American priest whom the children called “Father Mike,” and Kate’s anger flowed back over her like a black tide.

She noticed the hospital administrator, Mr. Popescu, standing by the hot water dispenser and she rounded on him. “We lost another infant this afternoon. Another baby dead. Dead for no reason, Mr. Popescu.”

The chubby administrator blinked at her and stirred his tea. Kate knew that he understood her.

“Don’t you want to know why she died?” Kate asked the little man.

Two of the pediatricians began moving toward the door, but Kate stepped into the doorway and held one hand up like a traffic cop. “Everybody should hear this,” she said softly. Her gaze had not left Mr. Popescu. “Doesn’t anyone want to know why we lost another child today?”

The administrator licked his lips. “Doctor Neuman … you are … perhaps … very tired, yes?”

Kate fixed him in her gaze. “We lost the little girl in Ward Nine,” she said, her voice as flat as her gaze. “She died because someone was careless in setting up an IV … a goddamn simple everyday fucking IV … and the fat nurse with the garlic breath injected a bubble straight into the child’s heart.”

“Îmi pare foarte ru,” muttered Mr. Popescu, “nu am înţeles.”

“The hell you don’t understand,” snapped Kate, feeling her anger mold itself into something sharp and finely edged. “You understand perfectly well.” She turned to look at the dozen or so medics standing and sitting and staring at her. “You all understand. The words are easy to understand … malpractice … professional carelessness … slovenliness. That’s the third child we’ve lost this month to sheer bullshit incompetence.” She looked directly at the closest pediatricians. “Where were you?”

The taller man turned to his companion, smirked, and said something in whispered Romanian. The words tiganesc and corcitura were clearly audible.

Kate took a step toward him, resisting the impulse to punch him right above his bushy mustache. “I know the child was a Gypsy halfbreed, you miserable piece of shit.” She took another step toward him and, despite the fact that she was five inches shorter and seventy pounds lighter than the Romanian, the pediatrician backed against the wall.

“I also know that you’ve been selling the babies that survive to the dipshit Americans wandering around here,” she said to the pediatrician, raising a finger as if she were going to stab it through his chest. At the last second she turned away from him as if repelled by his smell. “And I know the business dealings the rest of you have, too,” Kate said, her voice so weary and filled with disgust that she hardly recognized it as her own. “The least you could do is save more of them…”

The two pediatricians by the door went through it in some haste. The other doctors at the table and on the couch abandoned their tea and left the room. Mr. Popescu came closer and made as if to touch her arm, then thought better of it. “You are very tired, Mrs. Neuman…”

“Doctor Neuman,” said Kate, not raising her gaze. “And if there isn’t better supervision in the wards, Popescu, if one more child dies for no reason, I swear to Christ that I’ll turn in a report to UNICEF and Adoption Option and Save the Children and all the other organizations that are feathering your nest … a report so strong that you’ll never see another American cent and your greedy friends downtown will send you to whatever passes for a gulag in Romania these days.”

Mr. Popescu had turned red and then pale and then red again as he backed away, slid backwards along the side of the table toward the door, set his teacup behind him, missed the table with it, hissed something in Romanian, and stalked out the door.

Kate Neuman waited a moment, her eyes still lowered, and then went over, lifted his cup off the floor, wiped it with a rag from the counter, and set it back in its niche above the hot water dispenser. She closed her eyes, feeling the fatigue move beneath her like long, slow waves under a small ship.

“Your tour here almost over then?” asked an American voice.

Kate snapped upright. The bearded priest was still seated on the couch, his blue jeans, gray sweatshirt, and Reeboks looking incongruous and a bit absurd. Kate formed a snappish reply and then let it slide away. “Yes,” she said. “Another week and I’m gone no matter what.”

The priest nodded, finished his tea, and set the chipped mug away. “I’ve been watching you,” he said softly.

Kate glared at him. She’d never liked religious people very much and celibate clerics grated on her more than most. Priests seemed like a useless anachronism to her—witch doctors who had exchanged their fright masks for Roman collars, dispensers of false care, carrion crows hovering around the sick and dying.

Kate realized how tired she was. “I haven’t been watching you,” she said softly. “But I have noticed you with the new children and working in the wards. The children like you.”

The priest nodded. “And you save their lives.” He went over to the window and shoved back thick drapes. Rich evening sunlight flooded the room, possibly for the first time in decades.

Kate blinked and rubbed her eyes.

“It’s time to call it a day, Doctor Neuman,” said the priest. “I’d like to walk with you.”

“There’s no need…” began Kate, trying to feel anger again at the man’s presumption, but mustering nothing. She felt her emotions grinding like a dead battery. “All right,” she said.

He walked with her out of the hospital and into the Bucharest evening.