Conspiracy theories were one thing we had an unlimited supply of in the camp.
“She probably found her relatives and left! People are leaving all the time,” Jake said.
“Lisa was my friend. She would have said good-bye,” Astrid maintained. “Dean thinks so, too.”
“What’s important is how you’re feeling,” I said. I was trying to sidestep the whole issue.
“Exactly,” Jake agreed. “You’re feeling crampy, so we gotta go over to the clinic.”
“I’m not going, Jake. I just need to lay down,” Astrid insisted. She dropped down onto her cot.
“If they’re taking pregnant women who were exposed, why haven’t they come for you already?” Jake asked.
“Let it go, Jake,” I said.
“Maybe because two thousand people came on the same day as we did,” Astrid continued. “Maybe they lost my file. Maybe it’s sitting at the bottom of a stack, but I don’t want to call attention to myself.”
“So, you’re not going to see the doctors here?” Jake asked. “Like ever? What, is Dean going to deliver the baby out on the eighteenth hole?”
He was right. I hated him for being right.
“The baby’s not due for another three months,” Astrid said. “We’ll be somewhere else by then.”
Astrid had received a sonogram the first day we arrived. The ultrasound technician had told her that the baby looked really healthy and big for 4 ½ months old. He said the baby’s so developed, he thought that Planned Parenthood was wrong when they told Astrid the date of conception and she was more like 6 and ½ months pregnant.
He said the baby would come in January. We had thought it would be in March.
Jake turned to me. “Dean, tell her. She has to go. I mean, come on. You don’t buy this ‘army taking people away’ nonsense, do you?”
Astrid looked at me, her mouth set in a hard line.
“Well…” I said. “I met Lisa. She seemed really nice. I think it is a little weird she didn’t say good-bye to Astrid. She kept saying she had some maternity clothes she wanted to give her—”
Jake rolled his eyes, scowling in a way that let me know he thought I was whipped.
“And it’s Astrid’s body,” I continued. “I’m not going to put pressure on her to do something she doesn’t want to do.”
“Geraldine, tell me, do you have any actual opinions of your own?” Jake asked.
“Just because I’m sensitive to Astrid’s feelings doesn’t make me a woman, Jake!”
“Go away, the two of you,” Astrid growled. “Sometimes, I think I’d be better off without the both of you!”
“Fine. Catch you later,” Jake said. He walked away.
Astrid shifted on her side, stuffing a pillow under her belly to prop it up.
Seeing the hurt on my face, her steely gaze softened. A little.
“I didn’t really mean that,” she apologized. “I just … I need a nap.”
“Okay,” I said. I turned to leave.
“Hey,” she said. “Number one: Please don’t go away mad, and number two: Would you get me a sandwich at dinner?”
I smiled. She smiled back.
“Okay and you bet,” I said. I bent down and kissed her on the top of her head.
* * *
I had found Alex and Niko strategizing in front of the Clubhouse. I joined in, figuring that the more support I could give to Niko to use diplomatic channels, the better.
At Quilchena, there was a whole office filled with bilingual signage and mild-mannered Canadian social workers who spent the day placing calls and taking calls and scrambling to help us refugees connect with family outside the camp.
I heard a joke here, Q: “How do you get 100 Canadians out of a pool?” A: “Would everyone please exit the swimming pool?”
Funny, because it’s true. I’d never seen one of them lose their temper.
But Niko gave the woman we ended up talking to a run for her money. She was a pasty lady named Helene with short hair that was gray at the temples.
“I thought Josie was dead,” Niko told Helene. “She was O, and she was off in the woods and I hoped that our friend, Mario, would somehow be able to get her into his shelter, but I didn’t really hope.”
Niko laid out the newspaper on Helene’s desk and pointed to Josie’s photograph. “And look, there she is. She’s alive and she’s trapped in one of those concentration camps!”
“Oh, now, whoa there,” Helene said. “concentration camp? That’s just not right.”
“They rounded up all the Type O’s who had been exposed to the compounds and put them in a camp. They’re treating them like criminals! We have O’s here in Quilchena who’ve been exposed and you’re not segregating them, locking them up.”
“Well, that’s true.”
It was true, but it was also true that they had been forced to take some O’s away. People who flew into a rage at the slightest insult, who couldn’t stop getting in fights, who couldn’t handle the crowds, the lines, the waiting.
“Look at my friend Dean, here. He’s O and he was exposed. He’s fine.”
This made me kind of nervous. It wasn’t that I was afraid of them knowing about my past, exactly, but I didn’t want to be singled out, either.
Helene gave me a weak smile and a little nod.
She thought for a moment.
“It is certainly not the policy here in Canada to contain people this way, but listen, I will take your case to the review board and I will personally make a case for a transfer for your friend,” she told Niko.
“Hey! That’s great!” I said. I clapped Niko on the shoulder.
“We just need to fill out some forms, and I’ll also need to get a petition slot,” Helene told us. “There’s a bit of a waiting list for new requests.”
“How long?” Niko asked.
“Probably a week or two,” Helene said.
“And after that?”
“After that?”
“How long would the transfer take?” Niko asked. He was very quiet then, very calm.
“Another week to ten days to process the transfer.”
“Thank you,” Niko said. His voice was cold, almost robotic.