“Right behind you, Nadir,” Colin said. “Lead the way.”
Nadir said, “Dr. Whitehead. Next time we go for a run, I sit in the front seat. Shotgun, right?”
“Okay.”
“You fixed my arm. You remember?”
“I’ve fixed a lot of broken arms,” said Colin.
“Look at it again.”
Nadir pulled up his sleeve to show off a shiny scar. Then he made the scar jump when he flexed his muscle.
“Nice,” said Colin. “I did a pretty good job.”
By the time we had walked through the gates, my heart rate had slowed. Nadir waved good-bye and drifted into a pack of other young men. Colin took my hand, which caused my heart to pick up speed again.
We walked the dirt track toward our compound, acknowledging the waves and hellos from people crouched outside the tukuls at the edge of the track. But I couldn’t think of anything to say to Colin that wouldn’t sound forced or lame.
When we got to the women’s dorm, Colin took both my hands and looked at me as though he was looking into me. I thought maybe he would kiss me again. Maybe he’d come up with an awkward excuse to come inside my toaster oven of a room.
But, no.
He released my hands and said, “See you in the morning, Brigid. Sleep well.”
“You too, Colin.”
I watched the target on his back recede, and when Colin had rounded the corner of the building, I went inside. I washed and prepared for sleep, and I pushed thoughts of Colin Whitehead out of my mind. I prayed.
Thank you, Lord, for giving me another day, for saving Colin and me and all of those brave little boys. Please bless this camp and give us the strength to care for these good people. And please speak a little more plainly. I’m not sure what I’m meant to do.
I had just said amen when there was an urgent knock on my door.
Was it Colin?
I cracked the door. It was a little girl in a thin dress, her hair in braids, a very worried look on her face. Jemilla.
“Honey, I’ve told you. I need to sleep, and I really can’t rest when you are in bed with me.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “The BLM soldiers have pulled up their tents and left, Dr. Brigid. I found this stuck between the links in the fence. I don’t know who to give it to.”
On a sheet of plain paper was written the letter Z. This was the signature of Colonel Dage Zuberi, the leader of the Grays, the man who had directed massacres across sub-Saharan Africa and the one who was behind the recent slaughter of our BLM soldiers.
The note was stark and unambiguous. We were marked for death. I opened the door wider, grabbed Jemilla by the arm, pulled her into my room, and shut the door.
Chapter 13
IN THE morning, Jemilla was standing by the door frame, and Sabeena was shaking me awake. There was an expression on her face that I’d never seen before.
It was horror.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“They killed him,” she said. “They shot Nadir and hung him over the barbed wire.”
“No,” I said.
Sabeena handed me a bit of paper, telling me that it was in the chain-link fence under Nadir’s body. On the paper was the zigzag mark of the devil himself, Colonel Zuberi.
What was it that we were supposed to do?
How could eighty thousand people move out of what Zuberi considered his territory? There was no place to run or hide. Would he really shoot us all?
I told Jemilla, “Stay here.”
“I’ve seen this before,” she told me. “I’ve seen worse.”
Sabeena, Jemilla, and I walked to the gates, and there, horribly, the boy who had been so happy last night had been thrown across the top of the wall. His eyes were open, but he was gone.
“Please,” I said to a few of the taller boys. “Get him down. Right now.”
Nadir had no family, and so Sabeena, Berna, and I washed and wrapped his body for burial in the spot we used as a rough cemetery, not far from the hospital.
I was raging at the brutal death of this sweet, funny boy. I silently raged at God as I handled Nadir’s body with my shaking hands. I think a kind God, a loving God, would forgive me for being furious. Why had this boy been killed? Had Nadir been too brave? Taken too much of a risk? Or was his death as senseless as it would have been if he had died of starvation or disease?
Later, as we were dressing in our surgical gowns, I spoke to Berna, a clever and kind and tremendously competent nurse who was twenty years older than me.
“My God, Berna. How can you endure this day after day?”
“What choice do I have, Brigid? You will leave, and I will stay. These are my people. This is my home.”
Inside the dining hall, outside of my hearing, calls went back and forth to Cleveland, and discussions were held. I did my job, but I was jumpy. I pulled a chest line out of a young man without inverting his bed. Sabeena heard the air sucking and, thank God, sealed the wound with Vaseline before harm was done.
Colin was back in the O.R. by then. He saw what I had done. I expected him to shout at me, to call me an imbecile.