As the medical team approached the orphanage, the doors banged open and children in ragged clothing surged forward, waving their hands, jostling each other in excitement. They knew the Americans brought candy to hand out to the children. Behind them, Vietnamese nuns, dressed in black habits, wearing conical straw hats, looked on wearily.
The nurses were swarmed by a group of young girls, all reaching out, wanting to touch them. Beside Frankie, Barb dropped to her knees, let the children touch her hair as she handed out suckers. Then she lined the kids up for vaccinations.
For the next four hours, the nurses administered vaccines and gave out vitamins, tended to rat bites and treated malaria. Jamie stitched up wounds and even pulled a few rotten teeth.
They were packing up to go when a petite, pretty young Vietnamese nun came forward. She walked up to Frankie, looking hesitant. “Uh … madame?” she said in French-accented English.
“Yes?” Frankie said, wiping the sweat from her brow, resettling the bag of her medical supplies over her shoulder.
“You could please follow me?”
Frankie followed the nun into the cool interior of the orphanage. Each room had been turned into a dormitory, with straw mats on the floor for sleeping. One room held a dozen or more cribs, where babies slept and cried. It broke Frankie’s heart to think of how many orphans were being made by this war. Who would care for these children and babies when it ended?
At last, they turned a corner and stepped into an oblong room. Burned-down candles sat on windowsills and along the floor—so, no electricity.
There was only one child in here, a toddler, a girl, on a mat with her knees tucked up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her bent legs. She seemed to be making herself as small as physically possible. Frankie looked questioningly at the nun.
“A heat in her forehead,” the nun said, touching her own forehead to communicate clearly.
Frankie knelt on the hard stone floor beside the mat. Up close, she could see that the girl was a little older than she’d thought, but her body had been pared down by malnutrition.
“She will not eat,” the nun said.
“Hey, little one,” Frankie said, stroking the girl’s messy black hair.
The girl didn’t move or respond, just gazed at Frankie through sad brown eyes. Her snarled hair obscured an ugly burn that puckered the skin along her jaw.
“What’s your name?” Frankie asked, touching the child’s forehead, studying the burn, which didn’t look to be infected.
Fever, but not a bad one.
“We do not know her name,” the nun said quietly, kneeling down to stroke the girl’s back. “Her village was bombed. She was found by one of your medics, hiding in a ditch.” She paused. “In her dead mother’s arms.”
Frankie felt a heaviness in her heart, a sorrow that she knew would stay with her. There was no defense against a thing like this. No matter how hard a shell she’d built up to protect herself, some pains couldn’t be forgotten. This girl would be one of them, one of the faces she would see in her sleep. Or on the nights she couldn’t sleep.
“We are calling her Mai. We do not know if she understands us. Some … of them … are too broken…”
Frankie wanted to take the child in her arms and tell her that it would be all right, but would it be all right for a girl like this?
Frankie dug in her bag for some baby aspirin and antibiotics. “These should control her fever. And I’ll give you an ointment for her burn. It will help with scarring.”
Then Frankie reached back into her medical bag and pulled out a cherry sucker, which she offered to the girl.
The girl just stared at it.
Frankie unwrapped the sucker, licked it and smiled, then offered it again.
The girl reached out slowly, took hold of the slim white stick. Staring at Frankie, she brought the sucker to her mouth, licked it.
And licked it again.
And again.
Frankie waited for a smile that never appeared. She wished she were surprised, but she understood this child’s trauma all too well. More and more villages were being burned or bombed. More Vietnamese were dying, leaving their children alone in the world. The tragedy of it all was overwhelming.
She started to get to her feet.
The girl reached out, touched her ankle.
Frankie sat back down.
Tears glistened in the girl’s eyes.
Frankie took the child in her arms, rocked her gently, hummed “Puff the Magic Dragon,” until the girl fell asleep. Frankie stared down at the wounded child in her arms, this girl who was too small for her age and scarred for life and probably all alone in the world, and her heart ached for Mai and the children like her, devastated by this war. She stroked the girl’s hot forehead and kept singing, holding back tears one breath at a time.