Million Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatton

Author:Heather McElhatton [McElhatton, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-200689-9
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

82

From section 80

Port-de-Paix is a small, dry, dusty town on the northeastern edge of Haiti. It’s a trading post for smuggled goods from Miami, but you don’t get to see any smuggled goods, because you and Aidan are put right to work in the bean fields. At least Dumas and Sexy Star kept you together. You couldn’t make it through this alone. Aidan says eventually your families will find you. Someone back home has to be smart enough to figure out what happened, right? Or at least smart enough to hire someone who’s smart enough?

You spend long, backbreaking days in the fields, sweat stinging your eyes, and cuts and scratches crosshatching your arms and legs. You dream of feather pillows and food. Sizzling steaks and whole coconut cakes. Ice seems like a faraway fantasy, a myth. Everything around you is hot on hot on hot. No relief, even in the shade.

Then one night you get the shivers. Aidan heaps blankets on you and rubs your forehead until you finally fall asleep. Then you’re on fire with fever and Aidan wipes your arms and legs down with a washcloth soaked in tap water. By dawn your fever breaks and you descend once again into violent shivering. What the hell is wrong with you?

Plasmodium falciparum takes seven days to develop after you’re first infected. In your case it was a mosquito that bit you while you were working in the field. You even killed the little bastard, squashed him dead, smearing your own blood on your exposed ankle, but the damage was already done, as it so often is.

You have malaria.

The sweating/sleeping/shivering cycle goes on for three more days. You have nightmares and delirium. They roll over you all night long. A little stuffed bear like the one you had when you were little says you’re too late and tells you to look closely at your family’s faces, which loom up covered with oozing larvae and sticky sap. Something’s chasing you! You’re trapped and they won’t let you out until you solve Haiti’s economic crisis. What’s the answer? the little bear asks. You don’t know. You don’t know! He leans close and whispers: The answer is trees. Then he explodes into raw meat.

You wake up to Aidan blotting your forehead with a washcloth. Dumas and Sexy Star let him stay with you and don’t make him go work the fields. That’s nice. You should tell them about the trees, but you feel too weak to talk. That’s because the parasites are attacking your red blood cells and changing their structure. The cells become sticky and start clumping together, restricting blood flow to your kidney and spleen. You drift into a coma, which is just like waking up refreshed, after rain has come.

You see a bright white light, which you’re drawn up into. It’s a glorious, renewing light, completely revitalizing. There’s a stern-faced nurse waiting for you at the other end. She’s tapping her pen against her metal clipboard.

“Name?” she asks.

You give her your name.

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