“Yes, right,” he said, rather than correcting me. “You do like to clean the toilets as soon as I’m finished. Thank you for the reminder.” He turned back to Eriko. “Such a helpful boy. Don’t know what I’d do if he fell off the side of a cliff. Or whatever. Anyway, we should be ready to begin receiving patients at seven tomorrow morning. Hopefully we can prioritize the people who need to get to work.”
As he coordinated the clinic details with the local man, who at this point looked like a deer caught in confused headlights, I got the lay of the land. We were in a fairly large room, maybe twenty by thirty feet. The building was made out of cement blocks, which actually provided a little break from the heat of the day. Large industrial fans that looked like they were several generations older than Eriko blew from two corners of the room, creating some much-needed ventilation. Two windows on either end of the room were covered with thick iron bars for security, and there was a similar metal security door on the front and back of the building. They were currently propped open to keep the air moving. Several locals had already poked their heads in and asked if the clinic was open yet.
“Mañana,” Carter had said with a patient smile. “Regresa mañana, por favor.”
I’d gotten excited at the airport in Caracas for a minute thinking Carter was fluent in Spanish, but when he’d wanted the bus driver to help us undo the ropes so we could get our luggage off the roof and had instead asked the guy for help removing his ropas—which meant clothing—I’d realized while Carter might be able to find us a baño, he was never going to get us through a small-town Venezuelan police corruption scheme if we ran into one.
I’d immediately downloaded an extra translation app on my phone just in case. I spoke passable Spanish—maybe slightly better than passable—but I preferred to keep all language fluency quiet until and unless I desperately needed it. The practice had come in handy more times than I’d expected while stationed in Afghanistan.
“And the bedroom is just here,” Eriko said, gesturing to the other door at the back of the building. I glanced over at the small room, replaying his sentence in my mind until the word “bedroom” turned plural from wishful thinking. “There is a pallet on the floor for your helper.”
I tilted my head at him. Was he trolling me?
Carter’s sparkling eyes suggested Eriko was being sincere. “Excellent! I’m sure Mr. Riggs will appreciate your kindness.”
Eriko looked very pleased. He informed Carter that someone from the community would be stopping by with our dinner and we were welcome to spend the rest of the evening setting up for tomorrow’s clinic.
“We are very grateful you are here. The people of Gelada have to travel very far to see a doctor. Many of them do not have money for the bus. When you come with your supplies and medicines… well, we are truly blessed.”
Carter’s face softened. Suddenly, I could see the doctor behind the snarky duchess. “It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having us.”
As soon as the local man was gone, closing the outer door and making sure Carter locked it from the inside, Carter’s smile disappeared.
“You’re in charge of making sure the med cabinet stays secure. It’s one of the biggest security challenges on a project like—”
I cut him off. “I know. Next.” This wasn’t my first professional mission. I knew better than to show up in a remote town in any foreign country without doing my research and determining the risk factors involved in operation security.
Carter tightened his jaw and nodded. “I need to show you how to give a shot. We need to get as many vaccines in arms as we can, especially for yellow fever. The program sent us with mosquito nets too. Give one out to every person who gets a vaccine and anyone else who wants one. It helps prevent malaria.”
“I know how to give a shot, and I served in Afghanistan which has the third-largest malaria burden in the world,” I told him. “What else?”
Carter moved over to a stack of folding chairs and began unfolding them. “Let’s set these up as a kind of waiting area, then we’ll see what we can do for an exam table and some patient privacy.”
We worked for the next hour and a half cleaning the dirty tables and chairs with a generic Pine-Sol solution and rags made from old clothes. Eriko had left a few boxes of donated supplies from the village, but it looked like we would be on our own for anything even remotely sterile.
There was no way to create a private exam area in the main room, so I suggested moving our supply boxes into the bedroom and converting the storage closet into a makeshift exam room.