Night Must Wait (32 page)

No, Wilton stood at the far end of the tent, vaguely outlined against the dense drab of the tent side. On her own two feet. Wow. Oh, that was a huge improvement. Gilman drew in her breath to warn Wilton she was coming in, then thought better of it and knocked softly on the wooden door frame.

What happened next was fast. Wilton jerked around and Gilman saw the gleam of metal in her bandaged hands. All Gilman heard in her head was Jantor saying "Self-injury…never understood it." Wilton's hands rose, the gun clasped in bandaged fingers.

Gilman flung herself across the room, knocking the revolver out of Wilton's fumbling hands, and thrust Wilton against the desk. The revolver fired. In the strange silence after, Wilton fell across the chair. Even knowing that the gun had gone off from striking the floor, Gilman held her breath, scrambling back to her feet. Running feet and calling voices outside. She saw Wilton pull herself into a sitting position, shaking, as if everything hurt her.

"I'm sorry, Wilton," she said. She babbled.
Slow down, soothe
. "I was afraid, you startled me. Where did you find that? You shouldn't be handling guns. You'll scare the shit out of all of us. In fact I think you already have."

She'd left it in the locked drawer of her desk. Jantor used to mock her for keeping a loaded revolver under lock and key. Said it would be useless when she needed it. But she still had all her keys dangling on a string around her neck, normally hidden between her breasts but now out swinging, clinking against the buttons of her shirt because she'd pulled them out to get into her tent. Wilton moved again, straightening herself, staring in the dim at Gilman while a voice shouted outside.

"Doctor, you all right in there?"

"Okay in here." She drew a long breath. She sidled to the gun, scooped it up, slipped on the safety. "Accident. Dropped the damned gun. Anyone hurt out there?"

"No, dammit, Gilman. Talk about a fool thing to do," Allingham's voice coarse with rage. "For Chrissake…"

"Got enough people shooting at us without you joining in," Sister Catherine said from somewhere outside.

"God will give you peace," Wilton said, clear, perfect. She placed her bandaged hands in her lap.

Gilman puttered about the tent for as long as she could, but she got nothing from Wilton who sat at the desk like a doll, her face slackening back to that idiot look that Gilman found so unbearable.

Checking the drawer, Gilman found the lock hadn't been broken. How could she have been so damned thoughtless to leave it unlocked with a patient alone in the room? Criminal carelessness. She would never be so stupid again. In fact she'd use the holster and belt Jantor gave her, damn his eyes, and make sure the cursed thing stayed as far from Wilton as possible.

She tried to coax another word or act out of Wilton, but Wilton slipped so far away again that she soiled herself sitting there in the chair and Gilman had to clean her before moving her back to the cot. Gilman took the restraining straps to secure her friend, though she struggled with a disconnect between who this was and what she had to do.

Gilman stood for a while in the faint chill after lighting her lantern. Wilton belonged on the ward instead of in this seclusion. She wasn't safe, that was for sure. So hard to make a decision, maybe a side effect of not enough to eat. Gilman had asked Sister Joseph to stay here last night while Gilman was on duty, but she couldn't keep demanding extra service. Pure luck Wilton hadn't snuck the revolver last night. And there were other things than revolvers.

She went to find the orderlies to move Wilton back to the ward. She couldn't see any more ways to fail.

Chapter 68: Gilman

February 1969

Uli Area, Biafra

"Well you know she can't stay here," Gilman said. She fretted about infection in Wilton's hands. Had she really removed all the glass? Metal was easier to find. She sat across the little table from Sister Catherine in their post op room and tried to find answers in the triangle of the nun's face.

"I've got to take her away," Gilman said, answering herself. "We don't have the sodium pentothal to treat her. I've never worked with shell shock before, and hell, Sister, what if I tried the standard procedures and blew it? She's got to get into the hands of a specialist. Once I get Wilton to Lindsey..."

"But I can't understand why you're taking her to Lindsey," Sister Catherine said. "You've always been suspicious of Lindsey. Why turn around and believe in her now? You ought to pack up and head back to the States, Gilman. That's your best chance to get out of here. Find a life there, out in the American West somewhere. There's got to be a place that you'd be welcome. Make a home."

"You telling me you think Biafra's lost?"

"None of the important nations has recognized Biafra. We needed that to win."

"That's not true. Biafra's been recognized by other nations."

"Five," Sister Catherine said. "And who are they? Gabon, Haiti, Zambia, Cote d'Ivorie, Tanzania. No nation that really counts or can give us arms."

"Well, France sold us some."

"Do you honestly think that's worth a damn? France likes our money. We're blockaded, we're starving, Nigeria's outgunned us and the sooner by God's Grace we're allowed to lose, the better it will be for all these poor people. If not, we're all going down like a patient with gangrene. Inch by inch and limb by limb." Tears brimmed over in the blue eyes.

Appalled, angry, Gilman stared. "Well go home already, if that's how you see it," she said and her throat hurt.

"I'm not leaving yet." The nun blotted her eyes with her sleeve. "Excuse me. The matter at hand—this idea of taking Wilton over the border into Nigeria to Lagos or Ibadan makes no sense. You're avoiding the real question. What if Lindsey doesn't want her?"

"Wilton can't stay here at Uli, but she's got to stay in Africa. That much I know. The closer she can stay to the place of her deracinating event the better. She had her breakdown in Umideke. They say in the book what devastates shell shock victims is putting the seal on their guilt by taking them away to a different location for safety , making them both deserted and
deserting
. So we absolutely can't send her to the States. That would symbolize desertion for sure. Lindsey in Lagos is the best we can do. Dammit, Sister, Wilton deserves the chance, however difficult it is to get her there."

Gilman got up and paced across the small room. "Sandy'll want her. Lindsey has to want her. Of course she will. Lindsey and Sandy, they can manage anything. Wilton's always been close to Lindsey..."

"What if it's not shell shock?" Sister Catherine asked.

"I don't know. What are you suggesting?"

The nun shook her head.

"I wrote a note to Tom," Gilman said. "Asked him to come by."

Sister Catherine looked at her, no smile, no agreement.

"Have you told Wilton about going to Lindsey?" Sister Catherine stood up as though she'd decided not to question Gilman's plans any more.

"Couple hours ago. I don't know how much she understands. Some days I think she understands a lot, and then...it's like nothing's getting through."

"Keep her under restraints," Sister Catherine said. "You don't want to regret anything."

Gilman waited for Jantor. She lit her desk lantern and went out under the jacaranda tree leaving the door closed but for a hairline thread. She counted on Jantor coming to answer her note. She needed him, his warm shape and the comfort of his hands and his listening. Needed his help, his connections. Oh that sounded bad.
Now you need him, you're going to ask him back, so he'll be easy to use.

The night held some sounds that Gilman couldn't identify. She leaned under a tree in the warm blackness, straining her senses for a rustle, for a warning, then she heard a thin wavering trill. Perhaps an insect, something not good to eat, that was for sure.

On the horizon she saw the last rich blue fade until the branches of trees melted into the sky. She shuddered. No dark in America had ever been so profound as this. All things die, and most fight it, but here she could almost believe in her own death. In walking into blackness like someone so tired, she knew it was the right path to take and no longer cared.

Her mind crowded with the images of the day, a day too long and slow and full. She forced her thoughts to Jantor and his war. But who was she fooling—it was her war, and Sister Catherine's war, even Allingham's. Sister Catherine talked like they could simply pack up and leave. Allingham sounded like he'd go tomorrow. But none of them did.

Jantor hardly talked about the Congo and the "fucking Kaffirs." But he talked of his Biafrans as if he saw heroes. He'd shot Samuel for some infraction of his authority. How did she reconcile these things? Was it her job to do so? Was it any of her business? If it were, she'd never have kissed him, would she? She didn't even know what Samuel was supposed to have done. How would she respond to Jantor telling her she made a surgical mistake? But what Jantor does is
wrong
. It's all killing. So then, Gilman, walk away.

She breathed fear, they all did, even the priests and nuns. She'd imagined herself in a movie, dressed in surgical whites, her hands healing pain, disease and destruction. But it was filthy work from beginning to end, sour and grimy with panic.

Jantor kills to save us. To save the people here. The people he's paid to save. I'm meeting Jantor for Wilton.

Fucking liar. You want him and this is the easy way. Ask him for something you know he can do. Tell him he's wonderful for doing it, because it's true. He could easily turn his back.

So why do you think he won't?

That was the answer to all questions. She knew he wouldn't refuse her. And sooner or later she had to admit that nothing he did in his profession was hers to judge any more than he judged her. If she had a problem with that, then she belonged in America. Tomorrow. Now.

If she could do anything at all, as Wilton had once made her believe, what would it be? Assassinate Ojukwu? Assassinate Gowon? Have a major outside power enter the fray and rescue Biafra? Cavalry over the hill? Hell, the horses would all keel over from sleeping sickness.

Where was the United States when they really needed help? The champion of freedom. The whole world was watching, oh yes, but it watched a spectacle in which it wouldn't dirty its hands.

Where was Jantor? Could he have been injured and no one told her? He would keep his men from telling her if he were hurt. Exhaustion and shock had made her too vulnerable, and even in the heat of the night, she shivered. Her stomach clenched in on itself.

Then she saw him, even before she heard the grate of his boots in the gravel. That dear profile, the way his shoulders turned. She ran across the yard.

"God, Gilman." He grabbed her shoulders. "I coulda shot you, coming at me like that out of the dark. What the fucking hell is wrong with you?"

"I'm sorry," she said, but her heart beat so fast she was faint with relief. He felt so good against her. Solid, someone to depend on. He guided her back toward the light of the kerosene lantern, whose thin gold outlined her tent door.

"Good thing the curfew cops didn't see your light. What's wrong?"

"It's Wilton. She's come back. Masters brought her. She's lost it. Masters found her in the bombed market near Umuahia, digging for a dead American minister, someone she must have known. I can't treat her here. Most of the time she sits, almost catatonic. She doesn't seem to hear us when we talk to her. Looks like shell shock to me. But I don't dare try treating her." They slipped fast into her tent. She closed the door securely behind them.

"Got something in my boot," he said. "Digging a hole in my toe." He sat on her cot.

"Jantor," she said. "It's not my business what you do out there on the front. I know that much. If I have problems with what you are, they're my problems, not yours. I'm sorry. I know I'm not doing this well, but I'm sorry. You never pretend to be anything different. I'm not just saying this to get you to help Wilton."

She looked at him, half turned away from her. He unlaced his boots and she wondered what he was thinking. Her friends weren't supposed to be his business. Had he ever liked Wilton? Most men didn't like their lover's friends, but he'd seemed different about these things. Maybe because there couldn't be any promise that this would last.

"I figured," he said. "Anyway, as a liar, you suck."

She took a long breath, feeling light headed.

"It's best if I get her to Lagos," she said. "Lindsey'll take care of her, find her a specialist. Lagos is huge. It has everything. Everyone obeys Lindsey. She has connections. Biafra's no place for Wilton, God knows. Every time she hears a plane or jet she gets violent, and I can't bear to keep her tied down all the time."

She studied his profile against the dim light of the lantern and steadied herself. He could say no, but she knew he wouldn't. Didn't know why or how—she simply knew.

"I need to take her myself," Gilman said. "I have to. I can't ship her out like a crate of guns. Can you do anything? Get us tickets or passes or whatever we'd need?"

He reached out a hand to her and she took it. Hard grip, and steady.

"Look," he said, "you're going to need all the help you can get. I'll manage the clearances. We can get you on a plane two maybe three days from now, with luck. Brownie's a good pilot. He'll cut us a deal."

Chapter 69: Gilman

February 1969

In Transit to Lagos, Nigeria

The small passenger plane began its descent through the clouds, a crackling intercom announcing that they'd be landing in Lagos by twenty after. The temperature in Lagos held in the high nineties.

Gilman turned to look at Wilton, sleeping a drugged sleep beside her. Bruising under her eyes and in the hollows of her gaunt face. The arm in a light sling rested on Wilton's laden backpack in her lap. Taped ribs gave an illusion of bulk to clothes that otherwise hung on her. The other hand packed in gauze had a spotting of blood where Gilman had removed splinters of glass and wood. Gilman wanted the chance to change the dressings, but when would she have facilities?