Abby didn’t proceed slowly. She ran past the first four huts and entered the fifth. Kate followed. No one was inside. They went to the next hut. Abby looked in. “¡¿ ‘Ee hua ‘noo. Jiaa’ mîηoo lajîn te’ dsa?!”

She entered and knelt beside the bodies of a baby and three children wrapped in burial shrouds, lying on the dirt floor. Next to them were the bodies of a man and a woman on a straw mat. Abby reached out to stroke the head of the baby.

“Don’t touch the bodies!”

Abby looked up at Kate, her eyes pleading for leniency. Slowly she raised herself off the floor and went to the next hut.

Every hut was the same. Mercifully, the children had died first. They were all wrapped in burial shrouds, only their faces showing. Kate watched as Abby, her lean shoulders set in determination, moved ahead through the village. She paused at each doorway, glanced at the faces of the children, and with the force of her will seemed to repel the waves of grief as she moved from one enclosure to the next.

They came to the last hut. Two adults lay dead on the sleeping mat. Four children were wrapped in burial shrouds. Beside the two adults lay a dark-skinned child, unwrapped. Abby ripped off her mask and rushed to the deceased child.

“Abby, no!” Kate cried out.

But it was too late. Abby cradled the child and was clutching and rocking her, sobbing. “¡Miraba! ¡Xii’ mî bi ‘náana, Miraba!”

Her sobbing turned to wailing, then finally to quiet moaning. Back and forth she rocked the child, minute after sorrowful minute.

Kate gave her space. There was no use asking her to put the child down now. After many minutes of standing silently, she stepped to Abby and placed her hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

Abby caressed the girl’s hair. “She was my daughter.”

The revelation raised numerous questions; the girl was clearly a tribal native, not half-Caucasian. But Kate exiled the questions to the back of her mind.

Abby laid the girl down. “Rîgüe’na co’ ca’ee cî,” she said to the child. I’ll be back shortly.

They went outside. Abby walked to a large flat rock at the entrance to the community hut and sat. She started to place her head in her hands, but seeing the plastic gloves, she simply put her head between her knees and wept. Her body shook from the waves of grief.

Kate sat beside her and put her arm around Abby. Comforting patients was never her strong suit, but Abby needed her. “I wish I knew what to say.”

Abby’s body slumped into her, and Kate held her tightly as she sobbed in heaves. Gradually the heaves gave way to quiet crying. Finally Abby dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. “I loved them. All of them.”

Kate felt tears pooling in her own eyes.