Angels of a Lower Flight by Susie Scott Krabacher

Author:Susie Scott Krabacher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster,
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

BACK IN THE HOTEL lobby I was not welcome. Apparently I looked like an unsavory sort. I said I had a room and told them my name. The desk clerk looked wary. I explained I had just come from Cité Soleil. With that, the clerk motioned for the guard.

“Just call my room!” I said. “It’s 202!” I didn’t have ID on me or a key. I prayed Gary had not gone to breakfast. Within moments he appeared in his bathrobe, coming down the staircase. “Thank God!” I mumbled.

“Whoa!” Gary looked at me, then at the desk clerk. “Unfortunately…yes, um…” He rubbed his chin and made a show of examining me closer. “She’s with me.”

I shoved Gary aside and walked up the stairs.

“You stink!” Gary said when we got to the room. “I mean really bad…and what did you do to your face?”

“Something bit me, all over.” I looked in the mirror. “Holy Moses!”

I drank all the water in the room and stayed in the shower for half an hour. I ate until my stomach hurt, murmuring new prayers of gratefulness for food.

Gary had tracked down Maude Silverice. She had a clinic and an orphanage, but worked mainly from an office at her clinic. That afternoon we went to see her to inquire about the unfinished building in Cité Soleil. We were asked to wait in an airless reception area. The heat made me itch.

“Stop that!” Gary slapped at my hand. “You’re going to make it worse!”

“I can’t help it. We’ve been sitting here an hour! Maybe she doesn’t remember you.”

Gary closed his eyes and slouched deeper into his metal chair. “Just be patient,” he said. “This is Haiti, remember.”

“Well, I’m going to see what’s goin’ on,” I said. “This is ridiculous.” I was tired and cranky and hot. I walked through an open door. There didn’t appear to be any patients at this clinic. Curious, I continued up the stairs to the second level, where there were more rooms with empty hospital beds. I walked down a corridor and found a door marked “Lab.” I knocked and entered without waiting. I man in a white laboratory coat was eating a large lunch.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” I said. He looked at me with a full mouth. “I’m looking for Maude Silverice.”

He swallowed and stood up. “Madam Silverice is down the stairs. She is in the office.” He pointed me to a door at the bottom of the stairs. I opened her door and was delighted by a blast of cool air. A heavy-hipped woman with an ample bosom and ebony skin sat eating a pastry. She wore a perfectly starched, pink, long-sleeved blouse and was flipping through a French magazine.

“Madam Silverice?” I asked, not wanting to leave the air-conditioned room.

“Who are you?” she answered. Her brow furrowed.

“I’m Susie, Susie Krabacher,” I said excitedly. “I’m with Gary Bruyere.” I waited in vain for a look of recognition. “You know…he came from Colorado and volunteered at your orphanage for a month a while ago.” Still nothing.

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