Everyone saw it, the dark blue Toyota Vitz with the bloody back seat. Everyone also noticed how the two men handled the old man; like used diapers, pinky fingers sticking out, noses facing away trying to smell something on their backs. The rumor started immediately the tiny car pulled off the emergency parking, and soon after, everyone knew the story of the man who bled from everywhere.
The collective gasp of the doctors almost sucked all the air out of Mombasa when one of them suggested that the 61 year old man might be ailing from Ebola. The man, who’s bleeding they could not stop, was placed in a shoddy quarantine and handled with two pairs of gloves and two masks, for extra care. Later, when the tests came back, Peter Simiyu, the Coast Director of Medical Services, wiped his brow and breathed a sigh of relief, “We can now celebrate,” he told a nurse as the old man was moved, unconscious, to the general ward, “at least his severe bleeding will not kill us as well.”
First Published on Mengesha’s Colours
