From the Diary of Jane Venada

        I present herein a story that has nothing to do with the holidays, but that I've been wanting to tell for a while now.  As a disclaimer, none of the characters or happenings in this story are based on real people or events.  Please don't think this isn't fiction.  In other words, this is fiction.  Enjoy.

OCT 3
        I wouldn’t call Masaya clean, but I guess it’s better than some places.  Nicaragua has a trash problem that runs deeper than just not cleaning the streets.  I’ve seen mothers instruct their toddlers to throw juice boxes out the windows of moving busses...
        I know I’ll be a good mother someday.  I know how much of a difference good parenting can make in the life of a child…and what bad parenting can lead to…
        I’m glad I came down here though.  The work is on a small scale, but at least the health center is never boring.

OCT 10
  I moved in with a host family in a house across the street from the health center.  In the mornings I sit with my host sister Jessenia drinking coffee and watching people starting to line up outside.  They wait for the doors to open and the medicos to start attending.  We rock in rocking chairs and try to guess what’s wrong with them.
  The health center is staffed by 2 male doctors and a host of female nurses.  One of the doctors, Wilmer, is an alcoholic.  I’ve seen him arrive on his motorcycle and drink a can of beer from his backpack at 8 in the morning.
  The people that come to the health center suffer from a whole range of ailments.  Some come with simple colds, others have lost fingers in power tool incidents, others have dengue fever.  I mainly try to help out with the organizational problems…I’m working on my med school apps now…

OCT 13
        Last week an NGO in the city donated a computer so I’ve taken it upon myself to make a digital database of all of the patient info.  As it is, that info only exists on badly alphabetized index cards in Wilmer’s office.  I keep finding more boxes of index cards among the empty bottles of rum that accumulate in the corners like grime.
        And I think Wilmer is coming on to me…gross…I am not attracted to the smell of stale alcohol.

OCT 16 (7 pm)
  Today after the lunch hour one of the first patients admitted into the building was complaining of a high fever and full body pains.  It could have been anything really, but she was given the standard regimen of painkillers and told to go home.  I was in the back room working on the computer and I saw through the open door as the patient headed for the exit.  Just as she reached the door that leads outside she went into violent convulsions, fell to the floor and passed out.  It scared the piss out of me!
  Doctor Wilmer and I carried the woman (a young mother named Keyling) to one of the 3 examination rooms in the health center and proceeded to do a more thorough check.  When I pulled up her shirt I discovered some kind of bite on the back part of her left shoulder.  It didn’t look like any animal bite I’d ever seen.
  I asked Wilmer what he thought of it, but just then Keyling regained consciousness, groaning and shivering, feverish.  Through fits of pain she told us what happened.  Apparently she had too much pena to tell us before…she had to wait till after she passed out and seized…

  She says she was coming out of the latrine last night and everything was dark, a new moon.  The only light she had came from the screen of her cell phone...enough to cast a pale glow on the ground in front of her.  She heard stuttering footsteps and a strange raspy breath behind, and all of a sudden there was an icy cold and inhumanly strong grip on her shoulder and arm, a man she says, and she turned just in time to see him sink his teeth into her shoulder.
  She screamed and jerked, breaking free of the grip and ran to the house, tripping in the darkness.  She told her husband what had happened and he, having a bit of a temper, grabbed a machete and ran outside.  She watched from the doorway as her husband confronted the man who had bit her, now staggering towards the house.  The husband yelled at the man, asking what was wrong with him, if he knew what he’d done…in response the man lunged, arms outstretched, clearly an attack.
        In self-defense, she says, her husband swung the machete, cutting the man’s hand clean off—leaving nothing but a bloody stump.  The man didn’t even flinch…he just kept trying to attack.  Left with no other option, the husband gave a final two-handed machetazo right to the side of the guy’s head and he crumpled to the ground with a gurgle.
        Keyling and her husband ran inside and locked the doors and windows.  She showed her husband the wound and he washed it out with water.  With all of the noise, she says, her 2-year-old son had woken up and begun to cry, so she put him back to bed and fell asleep herself.
        She was in such a deep sleep that she didn’t wake up at all until 7:30 or 8 this morning.  By that time her husband had left for his job (agronomist for INTA) and she was alone with her son.  She got up and began the morning chores as usual, collecting water, putting on coffee, making breakfast, starting the laundry…  Suddenly, she says, she remembered the dead man outside.  She went out to look and found that her husband had pulled the body under a mango tree in the patio and covered it with 5 or 6 sacos.
        Around mid-morning she began to feel the fever take hold and by lunchtime it became unbearable.  She left her baby with a neighbor and took a taxi here to the health center.

        At this point in her story it was just Keyling and I talking in the exam room.  Doctor Wilmer had left shortly after she described how the machete was planted in the man’s skull, I assume for want of a drink.  I assured the girl, now wrapped up in a blanket, that we would take good care of her even though I knew there was nothing more we could do for fever, pains, and a bite on the shoulder.
       I asked one of the nurses about rabies shots and she told me that even if the girl could pay for them, it would take a couple days for them to arrive in the health center.
       I have her on suero now, IV fluids pumped right into the bloodstream.  She’s been lying in the exam room all afternoon and seems to be getting weaker and weaker and nobody knows what to do.  I think I’m going to stay with her…she’s too weak to move, too weak to go home.

        (8:10 pm)
        About twenty minutes ago Keyling’s husband visited.  He’s a tall guy for a Nica—mustache, baseball cap, early 30s.  He confirmed his wife’s story pretty much as she’d told it and was clearly very worried about her.  Keyling greeted him between fits of coughing, stutters, and shivers, her face covered in a sickly sweat.  She told him to take care of the baby, that she would call him tomorrow.
        I pulled him aside and told him I would take care of her.  He looked again at his bed-ridden wife and lowered his head.  His voice became hushed.  He told me that today at work he’d heard all kinds of rumors of strange attacks like what had happened to his wife happening all over Masaya.  There were other bites…and worse…and the only way to stop the attackers was to kill them.  I didn’t know what to say.  I still don’t…much less what to do…

        (10:40 pm)
        Keyling is not doing well.  She keeps slipping in and out of consciousness, moaning.  She’s sweating buckets.  All I can do is keep a cool compress on her forehead and change the suero bags when they’re empty.  I feel useless.
        I sent a text message to Jessenia, my host sister, telling her I’d be staying the night over here.  She hasn’t responded.
        The health center is 100% creepier at night.  The only light in the whole building is coming from the single pallid fluorescent bulb hanging from the ceiling.
        We’re completely alone.  The last of the nurses took off over an hour and a half ago.  Wilmer’s been gone since 5, surprise surprise.  I think I’m going to try and get some sleep…what else can I do?  Nothing says comfort like a plastic chair.

OCT 17 (4:05 am)
  I think Keyling is dead.
  Her convulsions woke me out of a fitful dream about 20 minutes ago.  I bolted to her side and eased her out of the seizure, holding on to her hands and pushing her dark matted hair out of her gaping eyes.  Through her pain she begged…
  don’t let me die don’t let me die by god don’t let me die I can’t please god don’t…
  I clutched her hands tighter and tried to reassure her, calm her down, but her breathing kept getting shallower and shallower.  I remember the horrible staccato rhythm of it--that’s what struck me…
  Every 4 or 5 lighting quick breaths were subdivided, cleaved, by a desperate swallow.  The amount of breaths between each swallow diminished as the minutes dragged on.
        breathbreath swallow, breathbreath, swallow, breath, swallow, breathbreath, swallow, breath, swallow, swallow, breathbreath swallow…
        It went on like that until the breaths stopped.  She died mid-swallow, her eyes wide, staring right through me.  I checked for a pulse on her wrist and neck and I couldn’t find one.
        I don’t know what to do now.  I want to cry but tears aren’t there.  I’m staring at her lifeless face, her limp hand lying in repose, bent at the wrist with fingers dangling off the edge of the exam room cot.
        I feel so stupid sitting here alone writing in this notebook.  The doctors and nurses always ask me what I’m writing…I always just say I’m taking notes,  I guess I am.

        (5:30 am)
        It’s starting to get light outside now.  I decided to sit with Keyling’s body until the first nurse gets here around 7.  I’m so tired…I won’t sleep.

        (7 am)
        I’m covered in blood.  My hands are shaking and I can barely hold this pen.  Why am I writing this?  I should be thinking about what to do next...
        The last 45 minutes have been the most horrible of my life.  I can’t explain why it happened—I can only describe it.
        Keyling was dead.  Is dead.  I saw her die, watched her breath stop, felt her heart stop pumping.  But I just killed her.  I bashed her face in with a metal stool.  Now she’s dead again.  I am looking at her form sprawled on the exam room floor in a pool of blood.  God help her.  God help me.  I didn’t even know I believed in God…I don’t know what I believe.
        I didn’t think I could fall asleep with a dead body beside me but I must have…I remember dreaming of something…I remember rotting fruit…it was sped up like time lapse photography—an orange, browning, shrinking, its vibrancy fleeting, gray mold running over the rind, then maggots, frantic hoards of flies…
        I felt a sudden grip on my ankle and jerked awake.  There was Keyling, not on the cot, not dead…moving, groaning, crawling.  She yanked me off my chair before I could gain my senses.  I screamed I think, hit the ground butt first and kicked, hitting Keyling square in the nose…her grip weakened and I was able to scramble away into a corner.
        She kept coming at me.  Her husband’s words were echoing in my head, the only way to stop them is to kill them…
        I looked around frantically and spotted the metal stool.  One of the ones doctors use.  Heavy steel legs.  Adrenaline pumping.  Tears welling in my eyes.
        Keyling was dragging herself nearer using only her arms, she seemed to not have use of her legs—they were trailing behind her.  I ran and grabbed the stool.  As Keyling lunged at me again I swung the stool in a kind of uppercut that knocked her backward but didn’t do anything to stop her.
        I hit her again.  This time she was knocked flat on her back, face up.  I took the opportunity to jam the heavy steel legs into her face.  I felt her cheek bones give way…I hit again…this time her jaw went.  Still she was trying to grab me, to bite me, to eat me.  I hit her again and again, crying fully now.  I barely saw what I was doing through the tears.
        Eventually she stopped moving and I threw away the stool, wet with blood.  I looked down.  Keyling is no longer recognizable.  Her skull is a pile of bloody mush, caved in and splattered all over.
        I am numb.
        I hear a noise at the front door of the health center.  I just looked out the window.  There are figures shuffling around in the street.  I can see a couple of them pounding on the front door and yanking at the gate.  Are they sick or are they dead?
        I guess I’ll just stay here in the health center for now and wait for help.  I’m scared.  I’m alone.  I haven’t even felt homesick in Nicaragua until this moment, staring out the window watching those nameless figures roam the streets.  I remember my parents, my hometown, my college, high school.  I can’t shake the feeling that this will be the last time.


        Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!  I swear I"m not always this macabre...it's a zombie story for goodness' sake.  That's right, I've considered goodness' feelings too.