Exodus - Leon Uris [254]
“No. He is in very bad pain. I want you to go back to Yad El with the children this morning.”
“But, Kitty ...”
“Don’t argue. Tell Dr. Lieberman I have to stay here until I can get things under control.”
“We are supposed to leave Palestine the day after tomorrow.”
Kitty shook her head. “Cancel our flight. We can make new travel arrangements later. I have to stay here until they can get someone else up here to take care of him properly. I don’t know how long it’s going to be.”
Karen embraced Kitty and turned to leave.
“Karen. Get to Safed, will you, and tell Bruce Sutherland where I am. Ask him if he will come to Haifa to meet me. Tell him to stay at the largest hotel. I’ll find it, whatever it is. Have him bring some clothes for me.”
By noon the hundreds of celebrants began drifting away from Daliyat el Karmil. The Druses left for their mountaintop villages and the Jews went back to the kibbutz and to Haifa. Mussa took the truckload of children back toward Gan Dafna.
When they were all gone, the Druses relaxed the heavy guard around Ari. The English-speaking Druse stood by in the next room.
Kitty Fremont was alone with him in this strange place. In this first moment of quiet the full impact of these events hit her. She stood over his bed and looked at him.
“God Almighty,” she whispered. “What have I done?” All the months of fighting him, all the carefully built-up resistance, collapsed in that mad second that had sent her rushing to his side. At this moment she feared this power that Ari held over her.
Late in the evening the messenger arrived with medicines from Yagur kibbutz. He had been working his way through the mountains and hiding for long periods of time. British patrols were everywhere looking for the wounded from the Acre jail raid.
Kitty quickly administered a liter of plasma to Ari and filled him with penicillin as insurance against the infection that she feared must be inevitable under the circumstances of the operation. She redressed the open wound and injected morphine to ease the murderous pain.
For the next two days and nights Kitty kept Ari under morphine sedation to block off the pain. She watched his progress from minute to minute. The incision was beginning to bind together. There appeared to be no great crisis. Ari was awake only for brief moments, during which he took some nourishment, but when he was awake he was too torpid to realize what was taking place around him. The Druse villagers marveled at Kitty’s nursing efficiency and stamina. The women were particularly pleased with the way she snapped out orders to the men.
By the time Kitty knew Ari was safe, that time was the only requirement, she had become uncertain and filled with anxiety: the question of leaving Gan Dafna was in her mind again.
She pondered again her right to leave the children of Gan Dafna who needed her. Where was the line between professionalism and humanity? And what of Karen? Was Karen coming to America only out of fear of losing Kitty?
Of the thoughts that weighed on Kitty the worst was a factor she could no longer rationalize. Once before she had been drawn into this strange group of people against her will: on Cyprus she had resolved not to work for them—and then she saw Karen. Now, it appeared to be a repetition: on the eve of her departure she was pulled back to Ari. Was this a coincidence or was her fate being shaped by a higher power? As much as her basic common sense resisted the fantastic idea, it kept haunting Kitty. She feared the power of Palestine.
Ari made swift progress under Kitty’s ministrations. He was a remarkable man, Kitty reflected. The pain that he had borne could have killed an ordinary human being. By the end of the fourth day she had reduced the morphine sharply. She had also discontinued the use of penicillin, certain that the wound was healing and would not become infected.
Ari awoke on the fifth morning hungry, eager to shave and clean up, and in a cheerful frame of mind. As Ari