The Foreign Service Journal, January 2007

52 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 7 guided Jane to a space on a wooden bench against the wall. He motioned to her to sit. “We’ll try to find the doc- tor, madam; you can stay here.” Jane stayed. The space on the bench was small. A young woman pressed up against her on one side, and on the other side was an old man with a shriv- eled arm who appeared to be asleep, his head lolling back against the wall, his mouth slightly open and his eyes shut. Jane sat stiffly, trying not to touch her neighbors. As other people sat down, the space between them got smaller and smaller and Jane felt her- self being squished. The old man’s wilted arm lay like a flower against her leg, the woman’s elbow was almost in her lap. The hallway grew hotter and hotter and the air grew thick and smelled of skin and sickness. Jane felt herself growing lighthead- ed and angry. Why was she stuck in this horrible hallway, pressed skin to skin with all these strangers? “God,” she thought. “I’ll wait five more min- utes and then I’m leaving.” Jane sat restlessly, shifting her weight, trying to be comfortable and wishing she could shuck the man’s arm off her leg where it lay, heavy and unmoving. “Forget it,” she muttered. “I’m better off standing.” She stood, and like water poured into a void, all the bodies on the bench slid over to fill the space she’d vacated. Jane pressed her way down the hall, people staring as she passed; she pushed hard, almost frantically. She didn’t bother looking for Moffat; the moment she’d gotten up from the bench, she’d felt a desperate need for a breath of fresh air, to feel sun on her face and space around her. She pressed toward a shaft of light she saw at the end of the hallway. It was a courtyard. A small, square space, rung with hospital walls and doors, but open to the sky. The ground was covered in paving stones that had begun to be taken over by tenacious grasses, the soft green tips of which had pushed up the stone’s cor- ners and made them uneven. In the middle was a stone bench, built in a circle, around a massive tangle of flow- ers, blooming brilliantly in pink and cream and yellow, their blue-black centers staring out at the sky, soaking in the sun. They were the same flow- ers Jane had seen on Moffat’s table. “They’re lovely,” Jane whispered aloud. “African daisies, madam,” a passing voice informed her. Of course, Jane thought. She looked at the flowers for a long time; she leaned over and breathed deeply the smell of their dark green leaves, and their stems. She poked her fingers into the warm dirt, testing the weight of the soil. Just then Moffat appeared. “Madam, they are seeing my wife now. They gave her medicine to make her sleep so they could sew her up. Maybe they will have to take skin from her leg and make a patch. You should go now; we will be here for a long time.” Jane’s husband came home late that night. She had already eaten, showered, and gotten into bed. She was drifting off to sleep when she heard him in the room, undressing quietly so as not to wake her. He slid into the bed next to her. Jane stretched out her legs and nestled close to her husband. He felt cool and clean, and as smooth as a seed. She wondered what he’d done that day, off at work in the embassy. She won- dered if he’d be surprised at what she’d spent the day doing. Tomorrow she’d tell him about it. Tomorrow. And tomorrow she’d look out at her garden again, across that stretch of weeds. She would grow flowers there, native flowers. She would give some to Moffat to take to his wife. She would keep a vase of them on her table. They would be her fresh start. In her garden, their roots would find a hold in the soil, they’d stretch their faces to the sun, and they would grow straight up.