Nothing about my life in Boston could have prepared me for an attack like this. Father Delahanty grabbed me by the arm, and we ran back through our useless chain-link gates. Everyone who could flee was doing so, and I saw the young men, our self-appointed volunteer militia, along with UN workers, staging a defense.
Sabeena had been racing ahead of me and was now standing at the cart. I ran toward her. And then I felt a sudden weight on my arm, Father Delahanty pulling me down. I knew he had stumbled, and I whipped around to help him to his feet. But he hadn’t simply fallen. He’d been hit. I dropped to the ground beside him.
“William. Father. Hang on. Help is coming. We’ve got you.”
He rolled to his side and coughed up blood. I looked around for help. Colin was leaning across the hood of his Land Rover, firing on the Grays, who were now coming through the gates.
I yelled, “Sabeena! Help me!”
She had her hands full. The girls were with her. Bullets were flying. I wasn’t sure that she had even heard me.
I said to Father Delahanty, “I’m going to help you up. You have to help me get you to your feet. Grip my forearm.”
But he didn’t do it.
He was losing so much blood. He was going into shock.
And then he said in a whisper, “It’s been two weeks since my last confession.”
“You have to get up,” I said. I was frantic.
“I must confess.”
I sat back down beside him and held his hand. I wanted to fall on his chest and cry, but I contained my sobs and tried to keep my voice even.
“Tell me,” I said.
Chapter 18
COLIN SWORE all the way back to the hospital. Victoria sat in the backseat with me, held me while I sobbed. Behind us, in the rear section, was the dead body of my new, late friend, Father William Delahanty.
I knew so little about him, but enough to know how good he was, enough to be able to speak over his grave, enough to be able to tell his parishioners and friends in Chicago how kind he was and how bravely he had died.
If only I could.
I stared out the window at the dust flying up from our tires, turning everything outside the car an opaque ocher-brown.
I was picturing the devastation we had just left at the gates. I didn’t know how many people had just died, but I thought all of our attackers had been shot or had run away. Still, I was sure that this skirmish was not the full force of Zuberi’s army.
The young Gray murderers were scouts or recent recruits, wearing the rebel group’s colors and leaving bodies and the letter Z before the real onslaught began.
We parked outside the hospital. Eyes followed me from the waiting benches to the O.R., but I was single-mindedly looking for Ahmed and Rafi. I found them stoking the fire for boiling water and asked them to take Father Delahanty’s body out of Colin’s car and put him in the O.R. until I could tend to him.
I went back through the O.R., and I got a bottle of water from the shelf over the sink. Half the water was for me. I went out to the cart and poured the other half into Bollocks’s mouth. I patted his shoulder. I talked to him about what a horrible day this had been.
“It’s not over yet, Mr. B.”
Sabeena came outside and stood next to me.
“I can’t find Jemilla.”
“But…she was with you. I saw her in the cart.”
“I turned my back to help a woman into the cart, and she disappeared. I shouted, I looked, but we had to go. And now I can’t find her anywhere.”
“And Aziza?”
“She doesn’t know where Jemilla is.”
Jemilla didn’t come back to the hospital, and I was pulled into so many pieces, I couldn’t look for her. No one could. I worked with Victoria. I assisted Jup. Jimmy assisted me. By the time Colin came back on duty, we had a collection of extracted shells in a quart-sized pickle jar, and patients sleeping against the outer walls of the building, all the way around.
I went to bed knowing that I had to find a beloved child and bury a friend in the morning.
Chapter 19
WHEN I woke up in the heat of my room, I was immediately flooded with dread. Where was Jemilla?
I dressed quickly and jogged to the O.R. Father Delahanty’s body had been wrapped in a sheet marked with a cross and was lying in the back of the donkey cart. More bodies were being carried into the cart, all to be buried in a single, large grave, as there was no other way to do it.
But I would be there for Father Delahanty.
Or so I planned.
Colin came over to the wagon and said, “Brigid. We found Jemilla. She was shot—no. No. She’s alive. But she’s asking for you. She won’t let anyone else examine her.”
“I’m coming. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Colin turned his back to me, but he didn’t leave.
I sat beside the priest who had spoken his last words to me. I prayed, “Dear Lord, please look after this good man, Your servant, whom I came to love so quickly. I promised him I would tell his friends what happened to him. And that he was in Your care when he died. Thank You, God. Amen.”
I wiped my cheeks, and when Colin turned back to me, he helped me down from the cart.