“Oh,” Dawson said. “I’m sorry.”
She lowered her head and closed her eyes for a moment of pain that clearly still haunted her. “I am too. I failed Jason and his wife, and I failed their daughter. I could have made a stronger appeal to my administrator, or called someone at Korle Bu.”
“Would it have made a difference in the end, Doctor?”
“Perhaps not, but the point is that I didn’t try hard enough to save a girl who was the same age I was when Uncle Charles and Auntie Fiona rescued me from ruin. I wonder what that says about me.”
With the last comment, she was almost talking to herself, and Dawson felt uncomfortable, as though he were eavesdropping. He had never witnessed such self-recrimination in a doctor. Like policemen, physicians rarely accepted blame for anything. He wanted to comfort her, or at least empathize, but he was afraid he might sound patronizing.
“Did Jason ever get back in touch with you?” he asked her.
“He didn’t call me, but I reached him by phone once. I told him how sorry I was. All he said was, ‘I hope it never happens to you,’ and he hung up.”
“Meaning, ‘I hope you never lose a loved one like I have?’ ”
She contemplated. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Could he have killed your aunt and uncle?”
Dr. Smith-Aidoo took a breath and released a long, contemplative sigh. “It’s difficult to accuse him while he has suffered the same kind of loss as I have, but…”
“The bitterness that comes with grief can be powerful.”
“Yes. You read my mind.” She shook her head. “But no, I can’t in good conscience accuse him.”
“I understand,” Dawson said. “I was curious how you came to work on the Malgam oil rig. It’s not a typical job for a physician, is it?”
“No, it’s not. After Angela’s death, I left IMS immediately with a bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them again. I was looking around for something completely different to do-a new environment to escape to, where I didn’t have to hear all the talk about Angela and what had happened. Tadi is a small place. People gossip. Uncle Charles understood where I was coming from, and when he heard that a position on the Malgam rig as medic had unexpectedly opened up, he recommended it to me. I was overqualified since they usually use EMTs, but I was willing to take the cut in pay. In fact, I was glad to do it, maybe as a penance for the IMS tragedy. I pestered Malgam, and Uncle Charles added pressure. That’s how I got the job.”
