scrolling through emails. She’d read the email from Nico even before her brain had fully processed who the note was from. Crying uncontrollably for the rest of the bus ride, she had almost packed her bags when she got home. Luckily her brain kicked in. So she’d made sure she never accidentally read his emails again. Keeping him out of her mind was the key to her survival.
“I didn’t see the email,” she said sheepishly. “I’m sorry about Aunt Mae, she was a good woman. If we have time, I’d like to go to her grave and leave some flowers.”
“She’s buried near Lucas.”
He might as well have dropped a boulder on her. Since the day she buried him, Anna had not seen her son’s grave. On that horrid day, she’d buried a piece of her soul along with him, a part that she’d never get back. It was the same part that once loved Nico.
“What’s this about Mrs. DeSouza?”
Nico got the hint and led the way. Anna noticed that though the hospital wasn’t quite functional, the inner core was intact. It seemed the entire community was there fixing beds, rolling medical equipment, tending to sick patients. An old man bent low over a cane handed water to a young man who was sitting with a towel over his head. We take care of each other. No one comes to help us, we only rely on each other. Nico had explained this to her when they’d first met; it was what had first made her fall in love with Guam. She had traveled the world and seen a lot of close-knit communities, but never had she witnessed the kind of kinship that existed here.
Nico left her in what would eventually become the ICU. Right now, a generator was powering the few pieces of equipment that weren’t waterlogged. A gap-toothed man sat at the nurses’ station taking apart a defibrillator. Far from a sterile environment, but Anna was used to that now. In Liberia, she’d been lucky if there was a tent available to deal with a patient gushing blood. It was a minor miracle she hadn’t gotten sick.
Mrs. DeSouza had suffered a stroke. Anna vaguely remembered her from community parties. If her memory served, Mrs. DeSouza had never been married, so she fostered little children. Teen pregnancy was common on the island and young mothers often needed child care while they studied for exams or took courses at Guam University. Anna did the best she could for the sick woman.
She moved on to the next patient on a bed, thankful she’d never seen him before. He was in better shape, though he’d obviously had a heart attack. Someone had used a defibrillator but he still had an arrhythmia. She administered some medication and hung an IV bag for a continuous drip. The man would need more invasive testing but he was fine for now.
Nico returned as she finished with her fifth patient. “Mrs. DeSouza won’t make it through the night,” she said without preamble.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he nodded. “Dr. Tucker said there were surgeons on the way.”
Anna shook her head. For once it wasn’t an issue of resources. “She’s too far gone. It’s time to say goodbye.”
Nico nodded. “She has two teenagers she’s been fostering for four years now. They’re really close, I’ll ask someone to go get them.”
“The patients here are good for now. Where do you want me to go next?”
“We have some with burn injuries from fires that broke out.” He grimaced as he said it, and Anna knew why.
She nodded. “Let’s go. They are probably more critical than some of these cases.”
He took her to another unit that was set up like a general hospital ward. Several individual rooms surrounded a nurses’ station, where Nana sat. She stood and came to Anna. “I didn’t get to properly greet you yesterday.” Giving her a hug, she took Anna’s hand and patted it. “Welcome home, my child. I am happy to see you are well.”
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. She had never gotten along with Nana. While Anna understood why some of the extended family took issue with the fact that she was white and not Chamorro, she didn’t understand why Nana disliked her. Nico’s father was white. He had been a marine stationed on Guam. Sometimes Anna wondered whether Nana had been taking out her husband’s betrayal on Anna. Still, like Uncle Bruno, her smile held genuine warmth and her eyes welcomed Anna sincerely.
Nico motioned to the first door, but before he opened it, he paused. “Are you sure?”
“I’m a doctor—I’ve seen pretty horrific things.”
He opened the door to a darkened room. The figure lying on the bed looked barely human; he’d been burned from head to toe. Anna slipped on gloves and a mask. Burn patients were highly susceptible to infection and she was glad that Nico had had the foresight to put the man in a relatively clean, secluded room. The patient was unconscious but breathing on his own, with a weak but steady heartbeat.
She examined his burns and determined that most of them were first degree with some second degree. The total mass of burns was concerning, so she dressed as many as she could, started an IV and gave him medication.
Each room held its own disturbing picture. Anna dealt with it the way she’d learned: one at a time. Compartmentalized. If she allowed herself to think of all the patients at once, she wouldn’t be able to stand.
“How do you do this?” Nico was helping her with bandages. There was only one nurse at the hospital, and she was working on the less critical cases. No one else could stomach being in the rooms with the smells and sight of burnt flesh. They were on their third burn victim, who was also unconscious.
“I take it one patient at a time. I stay in the moment. My heart cried in the last room. I’m going to grieve for this one now because I don’t think she’ll make it.”
“And when you walk out of the room, will you think about this?”
She shook her head. “I expend my emotions when I’m with the patient so when I leave, I have something left to give the next patient. I have to compartmentalize.”
“How do you do that?”
“It’s a learned skill. I’ve been working one disaster after another for the past five years. In Liberia, nearly all my patients died. My mentor there taught me how to be compassionate without losing myself.”
“Is that what you did with me and Lucas? Compartmentalized us?”
Her head snapped up.
“Not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought of Lucas.”
“Then why haven’t you been back?”
Because being here makes me want to bury myself with my son. She wished she could have left Lucas and Nico on Guam, but she carried them with her wherever she went.
She went back to bandaging the wound.
“I blame myself too. I blame myself for letting you do the surgery. Not because it didn’t go well, but because I know you will never let go of the responsibility. I knew that when you made that first cut, that no matter what happened, you would never be the same.”
“You would’ve let him die.”
“Not because I wanted to, but because that was his fate.”
Her hands were trembling too much to continue with bandaging. “It wasn’t his fate. It was this island. If we were in California, he’d be getting ready to go to kindergarten.”
“Sometimes, Anna, you have to accept what befalls you.”
“And sometimes, Nico, you have to take control of your life and leave the man who refuses to do what’s right for his family. You are not responsible for righting every wrong your father did.”
They’d had this conversation before, said the same hurtful words to each other, and yet it seemed they couldn’t stop. She took a deep breath and looked at her watch. Three hundred and seventeen hours before she could leave.
They finished attending to the rest of the patients in silence. She asked for a