by Dan Mayland
Rahim studied his hands and sighed. “It will take place at the Bilal Mosque, after sunset prayers. Freedom Torches,” he said, referring to a local group of protesters, “has planned it.”
“How do you know this?”
Upon observing the look of adulation in his son’s eyes, Rahim raised his eyebrows, then pulled Adel close. “An informer of course,” he whispered.
“You have infiltrated Freedom Torches?” asked Adel, sounding incredulous.
“What, you think your father simply sits behind a desk all day?” said Rahim with pride, giving his son an affectionate squeeze. “Of course I have an informer. So yes, go to the mosque. Use your sister’s phone but protect it! Photograph what you can without endangering yourself. But you must find a reason to leave before the service ends. On this point there can be no compromise. We will not wait long before attacking. You understand?”
“I understand.”
Rahim and Adel smoked their cigarettes in silence. When Rahim ashed his butt on the concrete steps, Adel stood. “I am going to the store. Mother needs mint.”
“Do not be long. She will want to see you studying your maths tonight.”
Rahim had intended to walk back up to the third floor but then thought better of it and tapped out another cigarette.
As he smoked, he massaged his knee and absentmindedly regarded the overgrown garden that extended out from the base of the steps. The widow who owned the first-floor condominium—and with it the garden—barely ventured outside anymore. Her late husband’s garden tools were rusting next to an unsightly white bucket, the lemon tree had not been pruned this year, the lentil beds had not been weeded. Rahim felt sympathy for her plight of course, but he had offered to help her, and she had refused his assistance.
His feeling now was that if she was not going to use the garden, she might as well sell it to him.
Next month he would make her an offer, he resolved. Perhaps his brother could be persuaded to go in with him.
Rahim’s thoughts were interrupted when, just outside the garden, he heard the squeal of car tires, an engine revving, and—seconds later—a crash. Upon limping out to investigate, he observed a red Toyota pickup truck down the street, backing away from a dented garbage bin.
The truck’s tires were smoking as they spun on the pavement.
Rahim drew his pistol. Then he saw a figure next to the garbage bin struggle to pick himself off the street. It was a skinny kid with jet-black hair and an orange T-shirt, and he could barely stand.
“Adel!” called Rahim. “Adel, get back!”
But his son seemed frozen in place. The truck came to a sudden stop then roared forward as the driver threw the engine into gear.
Rahim’s hand jerked up with each shot as he emptied the five rounds still left in the magazine of his Makarov. The back window of the truck shattered.
Adel had always had fast reflexes, and Rahim could tell that his son tried to jump at just the right moment so that he would roll over the car. And indeed, instead of being hit square in the chest, the hood of the pickup truck only hit Adel on the right side of his hip. But it was enough to send him spinning over the hood, arms flailing, head flopping.
He landed in the center of the street, head facing the sky.
As Rahim charged, forgetting the pain in his knee, someone from inside the truck shot at him. Rahim kept his eyes focused on his son. Adel’s mouth was wide open, as though he were struggling to breathe.
The truck skidded to a stop then backed up. One of its wheels rolled over Adel’s legs, the other narrowly missed his head. Then it shot forward.
Rahim tried to grab the tailgate but was too slow. He wailed as he dropped to his knees beside his son, watching the truck disappear. Around him, people were shouting.
For a moment Rahim just looked up at the sky, praying to God, unwilling to face the reality of what had just happened.
And then he heard his son’s voice. It was barely a whisper.
“Baba, I am hurt.”
Rahim turned and saw that the lower half of Adel’s body was horribly twisted. A thin trickle of blood dripped from his mouth. Rahim forced himself not to react to what he saw and instead, simply said, “Yes, you are hurt. But I am here, and I am going to get help, and everything will be all right.”
chapter 5
Sami cut an incision in the Swede’s hip, just above the femur.
As the nurse pulled it open with retractors, he used a scalpel and scissors to cut through the soft tissue beneath the skin.
Upon exposing the top of the femur, he touched the bone with his finger as he eyed the fluoroscope monitor.
“There,” said the nurse.
“Quiet,” said Sami.
When he was sure he had found the right spot—a process made easier because the Swede was thin, what a nightmare it would be to perform this surgery on that fat Damascene!—he inserted a guide wire into the incision and tapped it into precisely the right place on the top of the femur.
“Drill with the 15.5 bit,” he said.
The nurse placed the tool in his hand as he finished speaking.
He drilled open the top of the femur, reamed out the inside of the canal that ran the length of the bone, then hammered an intramedullary nail—an extra-long one, because the Swede was so tall—down the center of the bone. After checking that the nail was positioned correctly, he screwed it into place by cutting and drilling more holes through the Swede’s thigh, leaning into him at times to get a good purchase on the screws. Finally, several hours after starting the operation, he used a ratchet wrench to affix a cap to the hole he had drilled in the top of the Swede’s femur, and then he stitched everything up.
Post-surgery, as he was standing in front of a utility sink, stripping off his leaded surgical gloves, one of the emergency room nurses tracked him down and told him they had yet another patient who required an orthopedic surgeon.
“Then you need to page Dr. Issa,” snapped Sami. He was hungry, had already missed his children’s bedtime routine, and had gone back to brooding about Omar and Aya and that whole mess. He was done.
“Dr. Issa is already here. He needs your help.”
The nurse explained the nature of the new patient’s injuries.
Sami sighed, thinking he would be lucky to be able to leave the hospital by dawn.
“Tell Dr. Issa I will join him shortly.”
chapter 6
Hannah spent the night on a cushionless chair in one of the waiting rooms, shifting in her seat every few minutes, barely sleeping.
By the time she was permitted to see Oskar, it was seven in the morning the next day. She practically ran to his room.
The hospital bed he lay on looked as though it might qualify as an antique, but it had been fitted with clean blue sheets, and his broken right leg had been braced, elevated, and secured in a way that suggested a degree of competency on the part of the hospital staff.
“Oh, Oskar. I’m so glad you’re—”
She put her hand to her throat, unable to finish her sentence.
Gauze covered the puncture wound to his chest. Behind his head a tangle of electric cords was plugged into a wall-mounted receptacle strip. An IV drip led down to his arm, and a pulse-oxygen monitor had been taped to his right index finger—the real-time results of which were being displayed on an old computer that was mounted on a stand to the left of his bed.
His eyelids looked heavy; for a moment, he appeared not to recognize her. Then a lopsided smile appeared.
“Hey,” he said.
Hannah exhaled. “When I saw you down there, outside the window, I thought you were . . . you know.” She swallowed hard and fought back tears. She’d never considered herself to be squeamish, but she couldn’t shake the image of that bone sticking out of his leg.
She dropped the two small, soft suitcases she was
carrying—his and hers—and approached the bed. His big left foot stuck out over the edge, not covered by the sheet. She gave it a squeeze, then moved to the front of the bed and lightly kissed his forehead. A sour collection of chemical odors masked his natural Oskar smell.
He opened his mouth as if he were going to speak then winced in pain. Moments later, his voice raspy and dry, he asked in English, “Where am I?”
“Aleppo University Hospital.”
He glanced around the cramped room, as though seeing it for the first time.
It had been outfitted with two beds, one of which was empty. The only windows were up near the ceiling, and they were covered with an opaque privacy film that made them look dirty. A tiny bathroom with a cracked tile floor opened off the main room.
Oskar sighed.
“I think you’re getting the favored guest treatment,” Hannah said, recalling that some of the other recovery rooms she had passed had been packed with five or six patients and had no privacy curtains. Then she explained what had happened after he’d fallen out the window.
“God, I’m a moron,” he said.
“You didn’t know.”
“You’re okay, though?”
“I’m fine.” Hannah said, and looked at her hands. “You were a good diversion,” she whispered. “They never searched the room or me.”
Oskar attempted a smile then grimaced. “Thank you. For everything. If it wasn’t for you, I might still be on that fence.”
“If it wasn’t for me, you never would have fallen. I should have stayed inside the hotel.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Hannah.”
But she did. And not just because she’d lured him down to the protest. For nearly two years, she and Oskar and a half dozen of their coworkers at the European Development Service had been partnering with the Syrian government to develop a park in downtown Aleppo. If it had been up to Oskar, instead of moving EDS’s Aleppo office to Turkey when the protests in the south of Syria had really taken off, they would have applied for a transfer to somewhere else in the world. He’d stayed because of her. Because she’d been so dead set on keeping the park project in Aleppo on life support.
Glancing at his leg, Oskar asked, “Do you know what they did to it?”
“Repaired the break, I think. But no one’s talking to me. It took me forever just to get someone to figure out what room you were in. It’s as bad as dealing with the permitting office.” She grasped his hand. “I’ve called Greta,” she added, referring to their boss back in Turkey. “And I texted your brother, so your family knows you won’t be flying to Paris tonight. If you can tell me where your flight information is, I can see about getting you a refund.”
“Screw the refund, I’ll just shift the dates.”
“Oskar . . .” Hannah gestured to his leg.
“Did they say when could I fly?”
“No.”
“I only put in for two weeks’ vacation.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Well, I do worry.”
“Even if the protests settle down, you can’t commute from Turkey with a broken leg, and it’s not like we can get another field engineer to step in at this point, which means there is no project.” She hesitated, then added, “Greta officially killed it last night.”
“No,” said Oskar, incredulous.
“She had to. I don’t blame her.”
In fact, the decision made her sick. As a community liaison officer, she’d been the one to spread the news in the neighborhood that a park would be built, that construction workers and surveyors and engineers would be paid, that money would flow to the community and neighboring schools.
People had rearranged their lives and invested money they couldn’t afford to lose, because they’d believed in her.
“I’m sorry, Hannah.”
Oskar sighed—whether out of relief or frustration, Hannah couldn’t tell. Then he winced as he tried to lift his head off the pillow. “Do we know what all this stuff is for?” he asked, gesturing to the equipment next to his bed, and the tubes going into his body.
Hannah examined the IV bag that hung from a stand next to his bed. A sticker on the bag had Oskar’s name on it, and the name of a medicine—cefazolin—that she didn’t recognize; the writing on the bag itself was in Cyrillic instead of Arabic. “I don’t know,” she said. But it occurred to her that, if she really wanted to help him, she should know.
What Oskar needed, she determined, was someone to look out for him. Someone to make sure he was getting the right treatment. To translate the Cyrillic, to figure out what cefazolin was and why it was going into his blood.
You couldn’t just rely on the doctors nowadays, you had to take matters into your own hands.
Hannah picked up Oskar’s satchel and pulled out his laptop.
“I left my computer in Antakya,” she said, referring to the border city in Turkey where they shared an apartment, “so I’ll need to borrow yours. What’s your password?”
chapter 7
Sami arrived back at the hospital at eight, having showered, shaved, and slept for three hours. He entered through the emergency room entrance instead of the main entrance—it was faster that way—and took the stairs to the second floor because the line for the two small staff elevators was too long. Although breakfast in the cafeteria was served from eight to eight thirty, he was too pressed for time to take it. The first patient he checked on was Adel Suleiman, the fifteen-year-old he and Dr. Issa had operated on the night before.
The boy had suffered femoral shaft and intracapsular hip fractures on both legs, a broken tibia on his left leg, a shattered right ilium, six broken ribs, and a concussion. He was still on a ventilator in the intensive care unit and in for what at best would be a long, painful recovery. But Sami confirmed that the boy was alive and likely to stay that way.
From the ICU, he navigated through a labyrinth of hallways in need of a new paint job to the room where the Swede was recovering. Upon knocking and entering without waiting for a response, he saw that the patient, who was sleeping, was accompanied by a woman. Her head was down, and she appeared to be concentrating intently as she tapped away on a laptop.
The Swede’s chart was affixed to a clipboard that hung at the end of the bed. Sami picked it up.
“Oh, hi!” said the woman brightly—too brightly, thought Sami. She stood. “I’m Hannah! Hannah Johnson. Are you the doctor who operated on Oskar?”
“Has he urinated yet?” asked Sami, as he examined the chart. They spoke in Arabic, although it was immediately clear to him that Arabic wasn’t her first language.
“Ah . . . not that I know of.” Hannah pulled back her hand. “Is that a problem?”
Sami picked up the plastic urinal that lay on a shelf underneath the bed and inspected it. Dry.
“It is not unusual for someone in his condition, especially given the effect of the morphine. When he does attempt to urinate or defecate in the toilet, the act of getting up will be painful. As will attempting to sit on the toilet. A nurse must help him. Will you be here often?”
“Yes. Yes—absolutely!”
“Watch how the nurses help him so that if you need to, you can as well.”
Sami pulled up a chair and sat down next to Oskar. Hannah remained standing on the opposite side of the bed.
“He has been given morphine?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Is that going to be addictive? I read, you know, that . . .”
Sami stared at her as she fumbled for the right words. At first, it was a stare of thinly veiled disdain designed to convey that his time and patience were limited, but he also noticed that the woman, however annoying, was also was distractingly attractive—large wide-set eyes with long natural lashes; shiny, straight, black hair tucked behind small ears. Bright teeth, wide lips, pr
ominent forehead. Much shorter than he was, but so was his wife for that matter.
“You have read what?” he demanded.
“That it can sometimes be . . . a problem?”
“We will be tapering him off of it soon and transitioning to oral painkillers,” said Sami, then he turned his attention back to Oskar. Placing one hand underneath Oskar’s thigh and another on his ankle, he gently bent the leg at the knee.
Oskar’s eyes opened wide. He cursed in Swedish.
“Good morning, Mr. Lång,” said Sami loudly, as though speaking to a half-deaf grandparent. “This might hurt a bit.”
Oskar gritted his teeth and cursed again.
“When will he be getting a cast?” asked Hannah.
“Never.”
“Won’t he need one?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, and who are you?” Hannah asked.
“Dr. Hasan.”
“Oh. Why won’t he need a cast?”
“Because I inserted a metal rod through his femur. It holds the bones in place, obviating the need for a cast.”
He released Oskar’s leg.
Oskar unclenched his teeth and exhaled.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Lång?”
Oskar, in between hyperventilating, managed to say with something approximating a polite tone, “In a bit of pain, actually.”
“Unfortunately, that is to be expected. And, in fact, you can expect much more of it. Every day you will work on the flexibility. The nurses will teach you. I have given them instructions. You are experiencing lightheadedness?”
“Some.”
Sami checked the chart again then felt Oskar’s hand. It was on the cold side. “Your hemoglobin count was low this morning. I will order a transfusion. One of the nurses should be by to administer it.” To Hannah, he said, “Make sure he eats and drinks plenty of fluids today. In the meantime, deep breathing and coughing is advisable. It helps prevent pneumonia. In two, three days, maybe we will try walking with crutches.”
Sami stood up, withdrew a pen from the front pocket of his white coat, and noted the need for a transfusion on Oskar’s chart.