“He’s hemorrhaging again,” Gordon said. He tossed the gauze to the floor, grabbed a fresh handful, and pushed it deeper into the wound. “Let his legs down.”

Kairubu promptly complied.

“Hold this!” Gordon said, grabbing Kairubu’s hand and placing it against the gauze. Gordon took a syringe, drew it full of medicine, and injected it into the boy’s arm. He held the boy steady waiting for the medicine to take effect. He could see the blood again oozing up through the gauze.

What’s happened to your magic? he asked himself. What’s become of your science to make people live? To repair what men have done?

Gordon knew, in a land where it was more economical to use machetes for killing than bullets, it was easy to loose faith. Surrounded by the daily carnage of humanity’s brutality against itself, and despite the World’s efforts to stop it, it seemed he and the other Red Cross volunteers were all destined to fail.

The boy’s eyes remained fixed on the old medicine man.

Gordon glanced over at the old man.

“Is he kin?” he asked Kairubu.

“No.”

“He’s upsetting the boy,” Gordon said.

“The boy would want him here.”

“Why?”

“He is special.”

“Is he kin?”

“I said no.”

“Then, he must leave.”

“But Mr. Ben, you don’t understand. It is a good thing he is here. It is African tradition.”

“You’re not convincing me, Kairubu.”

“He will ensure the boy’s safe passage to the spirit world.”

“What?”

Passage? Gordon thought. What passage? “Wait a minute… you aren’t saying…?” Gordon stopped, turned to Kairubu, and said firmly, “Unless he’s the boy’s grandfather or something, he must leave.”

“I tell you Mr. Ben. It is a good thing. The boy would want him here.”

“Sorry Kairubu, this boy isn’t going to die, not today, not on my table. Tell the old man he must leave.”

“But Mr. Ben…”

“Get him out of here please, now!”

Kairubu’s white eyes flashed from his jet-black skin. He reluctantly motioned to the soldier at the doorway and said in Swahili, “Chukua mzee nje. Toke!” The soldier took the old man by his long, slender arm, and escorted him to the exit.