He made the incision. The scalpel slit through the skin, subcutaneous tissues, muscle. Blood gushed everywhere. “I need a flashlight,” he yelled.
No response. Blood filled his patient’s abdominal cavity and he didn’t have any suction to clear the view.
Yanking the baby from the woman’s womb, he thrust the meconium-covered child at Jessica. “Tie off the cord.”
Blood poured around the woman’s internal organs. Thrusting gauze against flowing blood, he tried to sew off blood vessels at a desperate rate, but it was too late. There was too much blood.
Within moments, the woman’s pulse faded all together.
By the time Jessica had, surprisingly competently, tied off the umbilical cord and cleaned off the baby, he had to admit defeat. The woman was dead and CPR was pointless when her bleeding couldn’t be controlled. Kaleb let his hands fall from the lifeless woman’s still bleeding abdominal cavity.
His chest tightened, like every time he lost a patient. He’d lost sixty-seven patients through his residency in ICU, almost all impossible cases where death was inevitable. This woman though—like so many he’d seen since arriving in this ####hole—could have lived if she’d had anything approaching actual medical care. Kaleb washed antiseptics up over his arms.
Speaking in Arabic, Jessica wrapped a towel around the newborn baby boy and handed him to his great-grandfather. Tears streamed down the old man’s face as he held the child.
“I’m so sorry,” Kaleb said. Mist formed in his eyes. He reached out and touched the baby’s bedraggled black hair. The infant stuffed his brown thumb in his mouth and started sucking, blissfully unaware that he’d never meet his mother.
The old man shook his head. “It was too late for her. She would be happy to know that at least you saved her son.”
The infant needed a vitamin K shot and a Hep B vaccine. Back in Colorado, he’d lose his license giving a newborn such substandard medical care. “The infant needs to be seen at the hospital.”
The old man shook his thinning beard. “He fat, strong. He live. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing.” Kaleb swallowed as he looked at the motherless baby. Raising his fist, the boy gave a lusty cry. The great-grandfather cradled the child in his bony arms.
Wait, this man was a Mosul native. He would know the information Joe needed about where to call in airstrikes to minimize the civilian death toll. After losing his own granddaughter, surely the man wished to see an end to ISIS rule before more members of his family died.
“Go outside.” Kaleb nodded to Jessica. “I will meet you there.” He couldn’t let a woman who’d joined ISIS overhear this conversation.
Again, Jessica complied without protest. He’d always thought of women who joined ISIS as a bit more likely to aim an AK-47 at your heart than acquiesce. Maybe she had been just a duped teen who did not share ISIS’s blood thirst and who deserved Ava’s tears. She’d been remarkable through the C-section, followed directives as calmly as a trained professional without a single outcry or fainting episode.
Moving closer to the old man, Kaleb lowered his voice and asked his question.
The man’s gray eyes lit with surprise. Soon though, he spilled location after location. A veiled woman came out of the inner recesses of the house and took the baby. Reaching into his medical bag, Kaleb took out the last can of formula in the entire Mosul hospital and handed it to the woman.
Taking a pen, the grandfather eagerly drew a map of the city, outlining where the Americans should target. The flickering kitchen lights illuminated the picture as the grandfather prayed to Allah that this intelligence would free Mosul from the curse of ISIS before his great-grandson finished that last can of formula and starved.
Silently, Kaleb prayed the same, which felt weird and uncomfortable and not like something he’d try again, but that poor baby. “Thank you,” Kaleb said and stuffed the map in his shirt pocket. The front door creaked as he exited onto the dark street.
Jessica waited for him by a broken street lamp, just another shadow in this city full of shadows.
“How did Ava seem?” Kaleb asked as they walked back toward their house. “You were with her for an hour.” How long until he could free her? Joe had to know of a way to get Ava out of this hell-hole.
“She is well.” Jessica’s voice was guarded as she moved up the front walk of their own house. The front light illuminated the green door.
“Has Raja hurt her? Screamed at her? Abused her?” Kaleb imagined Raja’s neck between his hands. Raja and the rest of ISIS were the reason that Muslim granddaughter died tonight. Yes, Muslim, not Christian. ISIS’s deranged atrocities did not discriminate by religion.
Jessica tucked her chin down. Though she met his gaze, a barrier formed in those green pools. “Ava’s husband is good to her.”
“Yeah, locks a child in a jail cell of a house and impregnates a teen, that’s good.”
Jessica twisted the front door handle. The door swung open in silence and she moved out of the way to let him go first.
With a shake of his head, Kaleb motioned her to go in and circled around to the back of the house to make a phone call that Jessica couldn’t overhear.
The local man had given him three locations to call in airstrikes. Jessica’s knowledge of the city had also proved useful tonight in locating Raja’s house. The girl must be smart to have taught herself Arabic so well. Maybe like Ava said, he shouldn’t divorce her.
Then again, Jessica had willingly joined ISIS. What if she was spying on him? Grass blades broke beneath Kaleb’s boots as he walked farther away from the house and dialed Joe’s number. The moon shone on the sparse grass, making the bent-over blades look almost white.
It’s not as if Jessica had served as an ISIS soldier in Al-Khansaa. He could risk staying married to her a few days longer.
CHAPTER 15
Nose pressed to the back window, Jessica watched her husband make a phone call by moonlight. Inside, the house was still, the Yazidi woman and all the children already asleep. Outside, the soft moonlight beckoned, enticing her to stand out there with Kaleb and let the evening breeze blow against her skin and hair like she used to as a teenager in England. Of course, she couldn’t though, because she was a woman.
Shoving the mobile in his back pocket, Kaleb turned and walked toward the house. His footsteps fell on the back stoop.
At a desperate speed, Jessica wrapped the AK-47 she’d stolen from Raja’s house in her abaya and stuffed it behind the brooms in the almost empty pantry. Her heart pounded. Losing a hand was the penalty for theft. If Kaleb discovered the gun, she’d say she’d kept it from her time serving Allah in Al-Khansaa. He wouldn’t know that Umm Sultan had confiscated all her weapons.
The door handle twisted and the door creaked. Kaleb scraped his boots against the mat. He glanced into the lighted kitchen where she stood.
“Coffee?” She turned off the gas burner as the comforting smell rose around her. When she tasted coffee, real coffee without any cardamom spice added, she could imagine for a few moments that she was back in England.
For a moment, Kaleb hesitated at the entrance to the kitchen. “Know what, after a day like today, sure.”
Jessica motioned to the couch in the dining room as she bore two steaming mugs of coffee.
The saggy couch shifted as he dropped his weight on it. She sat on the cushion across from him, free of the suffocating robes now, and extended one coffee mug toward him. The light from the kitchen flickered off his dust-stained shirt.
“You were great tonight. Got that umbilical cord tied off like a pro.” He smiled at her as he took a drink.
Warmth rose through her, and not just because of the coffee heating her insides. Kaleb had saved a baby’s life tonight.
As for the poor woman, Jessica shivered. She’d seen all too much death these last three years. She couldn’t tell Kaleb the truth about Ava’s husband either. He would lose his mind, attack his sister’s husband, be executed, and Ava’s husband
would surely carry through on his threat to divorce Ava. Let alone what ISIS would do to her as the wife of a murderer. Jessica shivered against the afghan covering the couch back.
Kaleb was a good man for caring about his sister so much though. Her father hadn’t even cared about her or her mother, let alone a sister.
“Great coffee,” Kaleb said. “Thanks.” He stifled a yawn with the back of his hand.
With those same hands, he’d saved a baby’s life today, and who knew how many other countless hundreds before that at the hospital these past days. Jessica’s heart stirred within her.
“Strange night, huh?”
Jessica nodded.
“Sorry about that. You shouldn’t have to deal with my crazy life much longer.”
“Are you thinking of divorcing me?” Terror shook through Jessica. Her heart stopped.
Kaleb laughed. “Ava said you’re nice and I mustn’t.” He touched her hand, the brush of his fingers so gentle.
“What did you say?” Body numb, she waited on his answer.
“I said, you don’t even know me. You probably want me to divorce you.” He rested one elbow on the sofa arm as casually as if this conversation didn’t spell life or death for her.
“Of course, I don’t want that.” Jessica rammed against the couch back, terror pounding through her heart.
“Okay,” Kaleb said and took another drink of coffee.
Peace descended through Jessica. Kaleb was kind and good. He would not divorce her. She was safe with him. Quiet echoed through the house, so different than during the daytime when the children were awake.
Leaning back, Kaleb pushed aside the curtain and yanked up the window sash, oblivious that she wasn’t veiled.
A delightful, not quite legal, breeze puffed aside the curtain and blew through the dining room. He leaned his head back on the couch and rested one arm on the couch back, partially encircling her. His eyelids drooped shut, weariness evident throughout his body.
Reaching up, she brushed her fingers over his jaw, feeling each angle of his face. The stubble on his cheeks scratched against her hand. He’d tried to save that girl’s life tonight, despite that ISIS would beat him if they found out he was giving caliphate medical supplies to civilians.
With a sleepy yawn, Kaleb pushed her fingers away without opening his eyes.
A sigh slid through her mouth as tears welled in her eyes.
Half asleep, he reached over and moved his arm around her, making room for her to nestle down in the soft couch for precious hours of sleep. She snuggled next to him, her head on his shoulder.
He’d sacrificed his own well-being to help another person today. That was love, true love. Allah had finally granted her wish for the kind husband and loving father of her children whom she’d desired when she’d married Taban and moved to this place. Together, Kaleb and she would raise a dozen Muslim sons and daughters in a peaceful family.
What about the airstrikes and the mortars and the sadistic evil of ISIS? With a shake of her head, she curled her arms around Kaleb’s neck as his chest rose and fell with sleepy breaths.
She’d not worry about mortars and airstrikes right now. She’d found love, a love that would last a lifetime, and that was worth celebrating.
She stroked her finger down his knuckle. Leaning her head against his shoulder, she looked up into his half-shut eyes. They were the richest brown. “Kaleb.”
“Uh-huh.” He said, voice drowsy.
She leaned back against his arm.
His one strong hand rested on her belly. Even half asleep, he seemed absent-minded, as he often did. He was a doctor intent on saving lives rather than one of the ordinary mujahideen who dreamed of killing and violence.
“You are all I ever wanted.”
He jerked up from the couch, wide awake. His eyes bulged as he stared at her.
Perhaps she’d said too much. She should just soak in this moment. The leader of Al-Khansaa had spoken truly that she should marry again.
“You met me ninety-six hours ago.” Kaleb sat ramrod straight on the couch, body rigid. He didn’t seem angry though. Taban had always been angry.
Laughter trickled through her soul. “No, I meant when I joined Islamic State. Allah surely must have known that he had chosen you for me.”
“Why?” Kaleb’s normally strong voice came out as a squeak. His Adam’s apple moved as he gulped down air.
She brushed her fingers across his jawline. “I will give you a dozen sons and raise a family for you here as I always dreamed of when I joined the cause of Allah.”
“You joined Islamic State to create some Walton family?” Kaleb’s eyeballs looked ready to leave his eye sockets.
She tangled her fingers in Kaleb’s. This time when she became pregnant, her baby would be welcomed with joy the moment she conceived, not hurled into the street with insults. Mum had thrown her out of the house as a pregnant teen. Of course, that had less to do with being pregnant with Taban’s baby, and more to do with her correctly accusing Mum’s new boyfriend of molesting her. “Inshallah, of course.”
“That was a stupid decision.”
She startled. “What do you mean?”
“There’s no healthcare. And you’re in the middle of a war zone.” Kaleb’s voice rose to brain-piercing levels.
Raising her head from his shoulder, she peered at him.
“Why couldn’t you have had a Walton family in England with a nice little pub waiter?” He threw his hands up as he yanked away from her.
Why was he yelling loud enough to wake the house? She shivered.
“Surely you could have found some high school dropout willing to start procreating in his teens closer to home than Islamic State?”
Did anger shine in Kaleb’s eyes? She tucked her head down and pulled away from him. “I’m sorry,” she breathed, voice a whisper.
A groan slid through Kaleb’s teeth. He reached over and touched her back, arm half around her as he laid his other hand over hers. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Her dad had never comforted her, and the only stepdad who had ever offered her sympathy had molested her afterward. Tilting up her chin, she looked into Kaleb’s eyes.
They looked warm and caring with a sort of velvety glow that romance novelists would wax eloquent about. She rested her head against his chest, her hair spilling over both of them as she drank in the solace of his embrace.
Wrapped in his arms, the two of them became one in just as lovely a fashion as the imagery in the passage in the Noble Koran that said, “when one of you hath gone in unto the other, and they have received from you a strict bond of union.”
Of course, how bonding was the marriage union exactly when in the next Koran verse over the man’s having relations with his slave? The Bible spoke of two becoming one in a marriage covenant, but she didn’t much care for the Bible. It was so run-of-the-mill, not gloriously mystery-filled with whispers of promises of an idyllic life surrounded by the wonders of Arabian nights.
At the Bible camp her granny had sent her to every summer, the associate pastor confessed to fornicating with the guitarist. They’d gotten married then, but divorced a few years later. Christianity was all so mundane. Imperfect people making imperfect choices, their lives not so very different from the rest of the secular West.
Islamic State had enticed her with the idea of a religiously-driven people who strived to live more righteously than the world around them. Of course, she’d soon seen the murders, the beheadings, and the acrid smoke of car bombs filling the air as children wailed for food.
With a shake of her head, Jessica banished the thoughts. She had a good man as her husband. That was a gift from Allah.
Tangling her fingers around Kaleb’s, she snuggled in the arms of the man she’d spend a lifetime with. A man who, unlike her dad, and all the stepdads, and so many Western men, would never abandon her.
CHAPTER 16
Ring. Joe’s number. Kaleb paused elbow-deep into a stomach wound th
at, judging by the amount of blood loss, had already ensured this mujahideen holy warrior’s martyrdom. The man’s pulse stopped. The hospital had no blood to transfuse the patient and CPR was beyond useless at this point.
The translator and other ISIS soldiers “supervising” him with AK-47s had left once the blood started spurting everywhere. By rights, he should leave this dead man and start working on other ISIS soldiers.
Ring. Kaleb tore off his rubber gloves and hit Accept Call.
“You’re in luck.” Joe’s voice was animated. “I found a smuggler. Probably the last smuggler in the city. He agreed to get all of you out.”
“Great.” Kaleb dropped the scalpel. Taking a sheet, he spread it over the dead terrorist. The man’s black hair fell over his forehead in death. Did he have a mother back home somewhere who would mourn him? A father perhaps who had told him terrorism was not the way of true Islam and pleaded with him not to follow this path?
“You need to move out now,” Joe said. “We just landed an airstrike near the river. In the confusion, the smuggler can get you out.”
“Good. Where do I take everyone to meet this smuggler?” Kaleb tore off his operating mask. He’d bring the Yazidi woman and the children to the drop point, then go get Ava. What about Jessica? Would she betray them if he brought her too?
“I’ll text you an address and a map.”
“Roger that.” Kaleb clicked End Call. Now to somehow sneak out of this hospital without any of the dozens of armed ISIS soldiers catching him.
Sweat poured down Kaleb’s neck as he burst through his own front door. He’d managed to evade all the ISIS soldiers at the hospital, but they could easily track him here.
“Hurry,” he yelled at all and sundry children running about the place. The five-year-old boy bounced a ball toward him. He caught it in one hand and lobbed it back. The kid smiled, revealing a missing front tooth. The boy was kind of cute, despite the wrecking havoc everywhere he went thing.
Veiled by Choice (Radical Book 3) Page 12