Invasive Species by Joseph Wallace

been white, and a faded old baseball cap with what looked like a bullet hole just above the brim.
    Orphans of the bushmeat trade, these babies were. Worth more alive to zoos or medical laboratories than for the meat on their bones. Two of them seemed merely exhausted and terrified, clinging to each other and staring up at the faces in the crowd. They were making little moaning sounds, calls to their family that would never be heard.
    The third had had a rougher time. Its eyes were glassy, its arms and legs quivering. Its stomach was swollen, Sheila saw, most likely from malnutrition. It wouldn’t last long now.
    â€œSheila,” her mom said, more insistently, “I’ve seen more of these than I’d like, these past months. Let’s go.”
    The sound of the baby chimps’ cries followed them almost to the edge of the busy marketplace.
    *   *   *
    â€œOKAY,” SHEILA SAID.
    Dinner over, they were sitting with their coffee on the porch of the compact house Megan and Scott had built here, outside Ujiji. The sun was dipping toward the horizon, and the cool evening breeze was chasing away the afternoon’s huddled storm clouds. It would be another gorgeous starlit evening, perfect for the kind of companionable quiet that Sheila craved.
    But first there was something they needed to take care of.
    It was a ritual. Her parents hadn’t believed in visiting doctors except in emergencies. There had been a few of those over the years, a fracture here, a kidney stone there, that had necessitated the hour-long drive to the nearest hospital, in Kigoma. Since Sheila had become an M.D., the Connellys had waited for her occasional visits for more routine checkups.
    This system had worked fine until Sheila’s father had died of a sudden heart attack two years earlier. Sheila had always wondered if waiting for her visit had cost her father his life.
    Megan, face a blur in the encroaching darkness, said, “Can’t we do this tomorrow morning?”
    Sheila knew that if they waited, some obstacle would come up in the morning, another in the afternoon, and soon enough she’d be back on the ferry and Megan would have escaped her checkup.
    â€œI don’t want to know” was Megan’s mantra.
    â€œNope,” Sheila said. “Now.”
    With a sigh, her mother got to her feet.
    â€œYou’re not going to find anything, you know,” she said.
    Sheila thought,
I hope not.
    *   *   *
    MEGAN’S BLOOD PRESSURE was low, as were her pulse and temperature. None of them outside the normal range, but all lower than usual.
    Sheila sat back and thought about this. Her mother stayed silent.
    They were in the small room, once a study, that Sheila had insisted they turn into an examining room and storage area for medical supplies. Clamps, scalpels, forceps. Splints and bandages. Antibiotics to ward off infection, epinephrine in case of allergic reactions, rabies vaccine, gamma globulin. Pills for fever, for stomach disorders, for Megan’s migraine headaches, for whatever other treatable malady Sheila could think of.
    Nothing to treat a sluggish pulse and heart rate, though. Not until she knew what was causing it.
    â€œDiagnosis, doc?” Megan said lightly.
    Sheila shook her head. “I’m thinking we’ll have to pay a visit to Nyerere.”
    The hospital in Kigoma.
    â€œNo need. I’m fine.”
    Sheila didn’t bother to argue. “Off with your shirt,” she said. “I want to listen to your lungs.”
    With a shrug, Megan unbuttoned her blouse. Slipped it off. Half turned to drape it across the table beside her. Turned back and gave her daughter a bright-eyed look, as if to say, “Can we get this over with?”
    But Sheila barely noticed. She was staring at the exposed skin between the bottom of her mother’s white bra and the top of her blue cotton pants. And trying to breathe.
    Megan’s belly was