The resolve that had maintained Reuben calm on the mission's rickety porch evaporated the moment he was out. It was easy to witness suffering in the tightly controlled setting of a clinic; another thing entirely to be amid the setting that created it.
The smell was a physical entity, a warm, heavy blanket that stuck to the back of his nose and mouth. A rich, layered stink: the sweet, cloying stink of garbage dumped directly into the lagoon; the bitter, searing nip of ammonia from urine; the underlying, fundamentally wrong odor of raw, untreated sewage. His senses toughened to it in a few minutes, which was worse than the shock.
Anna pulled him out of the comparative solidity of the mission, onto a lattice of rickety, narrow boardwalks that were streets. The boards were slick with algae a
