“What do you mean? You were supposed to—you said you were bringing a doctor.”
“Last we heard he was over in Blato, but that was a few days ago now.”
“Well then, he should be here soon, right?”
“Drenka.” The captain sounded almost tender now. “We don’t have time.”
The captain pressed by us and began banging around the kitchen, neck-deep in the cabinets. When he reemerged he was holding a paring knife and salad tongs. “We need to take it out.” Drenka collapsed into a nearby chair, and the captain turned to me. “Can you boil some water?” he said.
—
The scream that came out of Damir was not human—guttural and even more desperate than the cries in the forest. I stood in the doorway of his bedroom looking and trying not to look as Drenka held Damir’s arms down against the bed and the captain bent over Damir’s leg in the candlelight. I clapped my hands over my ears and ran back to the kitchen to boil more water.
The canisters were almost empty. Should I go to the pump, or wait and see if they needed me here? Soon, though, the captain came out into the kitchen. He gestured to the remaining water, and I poured it over his bloody hands in the sink. He wiped his palms on his jeans, and I stood by, staring, waiting for my next order. But the captain just rested his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right, Indy,” he said, though he was looking over my head. “You can stand down. You did good.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and went out into the night.
—
I fell asleep on the floor and woke up cold. Turning sideways, I slipped through the door of Damir’s room, where Drenka was sleeping in a chair pulled close to his bed. She looked older now, skin sallow without the warm tones of her shawl up around her face. I grazed my fingers against her arm and she jerked awake.
“Zagreb,” I said, and she looked confused. “I’m from Zagreb.” The name of my city felt foreign.
Drenka stood haltingly and stumbled as she led me to the couch. “Okay,” she said, covering me with a blanket. “Okay.”
3
News had spread about Damir, and the next day the women of the village came through the house offering help. They brought broth, towels, jam jars of rakija, and war cakes—flat, hard discs made with a quarter of the normal amount of yeast and no sugar. I was sitting in my corner and tried to listen for news of other Safe House casualties, but since I’d spoken Drenka had reduced herself to whispers in my presence, and the other women followed. I assumed they’d be rehashing recent events, planning what to do when the JNA came back, but instead I felt them staring at me sidelong and exchanging crinkled dinar notes.
At sundown Drenka counted the money. She took the last two hard-boiled eggs left from the chickens and packed them along with a heel of bread in a plastic sack, tying the ends of the bag tight. We were leaving. She brought me my old T-shirt, and I put it on, then pulled the sweatshirt Damir had given me back over top.
While Drenka was putting on her shoes, I slipped into Damir’s room. “Thank you,” I said into the darkness. Damir muttered something and moved like he was going to roll over, but they’d strapped his leg down to the bed, and he gave up without much of a fight. “Good night,” I said, and closed his door.
The sky was black and wintry, smudged with smoke from an earlier raid—had it been somewhere else it might even have been pretty. Drenka held my hand, and, gazes fixed downward to calculate each footfall, we crossed through the high grass to the house next door. There was a faded blue car in the driveway, the only car I remember seeing in the village. Drenka rapped a syncopated knock on the front door, and a lantern appeared in the upstairs window. A girl a little older than I pushed open the glass and threw down a set of keys, then quickly swung the shutters closed. Drenka put the car in neutral, and we rolled out of the driveway and into the street. Headlights off, we drove out of the village. The air raid siren let out a farewell whoop as we turned back onto the big road from which I’d come, and I pulled the hood of Damir’s sweatshirt up over my eyes, afraid to see my family’s car, the soldiers, or the ghosts of the forest.