Jemilla was lying on top of the bedding in one of the iron-frame beds in the O.R. She pulled her shirt away and showed me the bullet wound in her right arm, just above the elbow.
“Oh, darling,” I said. “This really hurts, doesn’t it?”
“I wrapped a piece of cloth around it tightly until the wound stopped bleeding,” she said.
I grinned at her. “That was exactly the right thing to do.”
I examined the wound. The bullet had gone through the back of her skinny biceps and had exited in the front. I asked her, “Where were you? Why didn’t you come to me or anyone here?”
“I passed out,” she said, shrugging. “How bad is it?”
“I’m going to look at this with an X-ray. But I think that shot missed the bone. That’s pretty amazing.”
“I can still shoot with my right hand?”
“Hold out your arm. Make a fist.”
She did it.
“You’re good,” I said.
“Okay,” Jemilla said. “I’d like to go to sleep now.”
I cleaned and closed the wound, and when I was finished, I asked Colin to carry Jemilla to my room.
After we’d tucked Jemilla into my bed, Colin said, “I need to talk to you, Brigid. And I don’t want you to fight me. Please. Just do what I say.”
“What, Colin? What are you talking about?”
“You must go home. There’s nowhere to hide. This hospital, this camp, is going to be overrun by Zuberi, and you know it.”
I switched my eyes to the girl in my bed, but Colin kept speaking. “It’s inevitable, Brigid. This place, what we’re doing here. It’s turned into a bloody suicide mission. You have to get out. And better a few days early than one minute too late.”
I took in a ragged breath and tried to absorb what he was telling me.
I asked him, “And you?”
“I’m going back to England as soon as I can arrange it. I’ve made calls. I’ll make calls for you.”
The breath went out of me. I looked down at the dirt floor of my room, feeling bereft. My heart was broken in more ways than I knew a heart could break.
Colin reached out and gripped my shoulders. I looked up, of course, and he pulled me close. And he kissed me. I kissed him, too. I never wanted the kiss to end, but for those few moments, I felt that nothing else was real.
And then the kiss did end. Colin dropped his arms and said to me, “I’ve tried so desperately hard to just be your friend, Brigid. I just couldn’t bear to care about you and to lose you.
“Please do what I say, dear. Please go home.”
Chapter 20
I WAS having a very vivid dream.
In it, Father Delahanty was alive. He was seated inside the confessional, and I was on the other side of the screen. I couldn’t see his face, but it was definitely him, and he was earnestly explaining something, possibly arguing with me, but whatever he was saying, it was important.
And then his words were flushed out of my head by someone shaking my shoulder.
“Brigid,” said Sabeena. “They found the BLM soldiers.” I had been sleeping in the buff. I grabbed the sheet up around me and said, “What? Where?”
“There was a massacre about fifty miles north of here. There may be survivors.”
I blinked at her, open mouthed.
“Snap out of it, Doctor,” she said. She tousled my hair. “We have to go.”
“We’re leaving?”
“Correct. Please clothe yourself and hurry to the O.R.”
She put a bottle of water and an energy bar on the stump of wood next to my bed and fled.
A massacre? Please, God, let that be a gross exaggeration. I talked to myself as I dressed, swore like mad until I found my left shoe. Then I pocketed the energy bar, grabbed my kit, and headed out.
Sabeena was waiting for me on a bench outside the operating room. She had her kit, and a canteen was strapped across her chest. I ducked into the O.R., filled a canteen, and snatched up the mini X-ray machine. After that, we climbed aboard the donkey cart, and Sabeena took the helm.
Sabeena had well-developed intuition and was right more often than anyone I knew. She had been known to anticipate incoming wounded before trucks, carts, or helicopters arrived, and—more than I could do—predict whether a patient was going to survive or die. She was superb at reading moods, too.
Now she said, “I had a very bad feeling when those soldiers left the settlement. Sometimes I hate to be right.”
Our cart rolled out down the dirt track that passed between our compound and the tukuls. We passed families clustered around cooking fires and children playing in the dirt, and by the time we reached the gates, the whacka-whacka din of a descending helicopter made me cover my ears.
Colin was already there, waiting for the chopper to land. He and Bailey got out of the Land Rover, followed by Jimmy and Vander. Colin walked toward me, scowling as he said, “Brigid, Sabeena, no. You can’t come with us. Don’t even think of arguing with me.”
Sabeena jumped down from our cart, pulled her satchel after her, and said, “I don’t work for you, Dr. Whitehead. I go where I’m needed. And if you don’t like it, you can go to hell.”