by Holly Rayner
My jaw dropped. He was right on the nose. I couldn’t explain to him the way I had crapped out of nursing, or how I hadn’t thought I could ever do it again, or how astonished I was now to learn that after half a year, I could. He didn’t understand how hard it had been. All he gave a damn about was that I was a misused resource. Objectively, he had a point…but that didn’t make it hurt any less.
“I…of course not. That’s not the point.”
Suddenly my chest hurt, and I didn’t feel like wasting any more time trying to explain myself to this unsympathetic man. My mind suddenly flew to my meager belongings upstairs, and the photo of Karla that I kept. Was that all buried in rubble now?
“You need to learn not to assume things about people,” I said. “There’s a difference between what one wants to do and what one is able to do.” My voice was shaky. I drained my mug and turned to walk away. “I have to get back to work.”
He didn’t answer, but I felt his eyes on my back as I hurried back to the main office to help clean up.
Chapter 5
Vincenzo
This was the first crisis I had encountered since arriving in Safirah to use my expertise as a doctor. It took a few hours to restore the aid center to normal functioning after the rocket hit. The remainder of the roof had caved in, littering the top floor with debris and cracking the flooring in places. Plaster and tiles of various rooms had come down on the inhabitants, who needed seeing to, and the mess cleaned up. The main office, with its collapsed wall and several centimeters of debris, was the biggest mess, and the site of the worst injury.
Yvonne would live. She would even walk again, given a few days of bed rest and something to use as a cane. She was still dealing with the emotional aftermath of her ordeal, though, and it remained to be seen whether she would stay. I hoped that she would. We were short-staffed as it was, and one of the most experienced nurses in the place insisted on spending her days greeting locals and pushing paper instead of putting her real talents to work.
I couldn’t imagine why lovely Rose, who was one of the most dedicated people at the center, would refuse to lend her medical skills to the effort. Clearly, she had some intense personal reason that had prevented her up until now. But that was over and done; she was clearly recovered, and even eager to help out when given a chance. So why hadn’t she taken me up on my suggestion and come to work at the clinic?
Instead, she had gotten upset and hurried off. What an odd, intriguing woman. She was passionate, almost to a fault, but also secretive about whatever it was she was suffering. She had mentioned a loss that had driven her here, a violent one—but not what it had been, or how that had led to her refusal to serve as a nurse.
Rose. As I went through the medicine cupboards to prepare for two new emergency patients coming in, she kept wandering into my mind. That deep red-brown hair, those bright, fierce blue eyes, the trim figure she kept hidden under modest dress…everything about her was memorable. I wanted to know more about her, but right now, we still had a few injured refugees to deal with.
Ironically, two families had caravanned into the neighborhood and stopped outside just as the rocket had hit. Chunks from the roof had fallen on them, leaving two of them with broken bones. One had gotten off easily with a fractured wrist. The most urgent patient, a young girl, had a broken leg. She was there with her family, all of whom were understandably upset. I could hear the girl’s whimpers and sobs above the ward’s general noise.
Par for the course. It could have been far, far worse. I wonder how many rocket strikes this building has endured? It must be at least two, now.
I had spent ten years addressing medical emergencies all over the world, from outbreaks to famines to wars, and I had always done so under an assumed name or some other false pretense. It was better that nobody ever know who I really was, or what I had walked away from in search of my true purpose.
I found everything I was looking for and tucked it into my bag, ready to make my rounds. Yvonne had been my day nurse. Now she was sleeping two booths away, unaware that she had lost twenty percent of her blood supply before I had managed to stitch her up.
I had cuts across my hands from helping clear debris. Broken glass, the edges of shattered tires…I hadn’t realized it until changing my gloves between patients. Now my fingertips were brown with mercurochrome under fresh gloves, the old-fashioned disinfectant stinging like a bastard. Paradoxically, it was helping keep me awake.
When Rose had questioned me and my motives, I had tried to reassure her that in a place like this, I would be proving myself soon enough. Now I had, and so had she. Ironic that the opportunity had come so soon. But at least with my hand making the stitches, Yvonne would come through without a scar. At least if she kept her leg immobilized long enough.
Rose, however…had scars. Emotional ones. Behind her anger, her wide, beautiful blue eyes had looked too bright, as if ready to fill with tears. I had read her pain and confusion in her angry, defensive words as well as in her retreat. Now I regretted being quite so hard on her…even though clearly, she was tough enough to handle some prodding.
I just had apparently prodded a deep wound without meaning to. Just as she had done with me, but in my case, I had restrained my anger.
I did not like people questioning my expertise, my truthfulness, my courage, or my honor. They were what made me stand apart from everything that I had left behind. They were the seat of true nobility, and of my pride as a man. Part of it, anyway.
Rose couldn’t know, for she did not know who I was. Nor could I tell her my secret until I knew her considerably better. And she had been within her rights to question me. But as I walked out to the makeshift waiting room, passing piles of fallen tiles that had yet to be removed, I found myself wishing I could tell her everything.
None of the patients on the ward had received further injuries in the panic so far. I checked in on everyone, speaking to them in their native languages. Though it wasn’t the most diverse place I’ve visited, I ended up using four of the languages I had picked up in my travels: Kurdish, French, and two dialects of Arabic. Patients were put at ease when I made the effort, even when I struggled to find the right words. In some cases, they had no English at all, and it simplified things greatly.
“Are you doing all right?” I asked Aya, a grandmother recovering from pneumonia. She nodded, her face crinkling further in a smile. “We’ll be coming around with tea and rations soon.”
“Well, yes, you’ll be able to walk on your leg again, and do work, Mahmoud, but only if you let the bone heal first!” Mahmoud was young, impatient, a local cop’s younger brother, wanting to join the front lines at sixteen. His broken femur had been the price of surviving yesterday’s gunfight, and he was still eager to get back on his feet. “Eat as much as you can, do the exercises we give you, you’ll heal faster. Sleeping helps, too.”
I checked on Yvonne again after finishing the first section. She was, of course, sleeping, having finally passed out after enduring being patched up, cleaned up, and examined. Two units of lactated Ringer’s and one of whole blood had gone into her to replace lost blood and fix a case of dehydration and shock. That was a fair chunk of our supply, but I needed her well and working as soon as I could. I hated to be so pragmatic about it, but just as with Rose, we needed every hand we could get.
My mother’s voice came back to me as I walked out of Yvonne’s bay and moved on to the next. “Vincenzo, my dear, I fear for you in this ugly world. Your heart’s too big. You are too honest.”
My mother had already been bedridden when she had told me this—three weeks before I had left. “Your family is a nest of vipers, my son. I fear you will not survive unless you grow fangs of your own.”
That had been a decade ago. I had still been in my twenties, still fighting with my father over whether I would be allowed to practice medicine instead of adhering to my family duties. When I had discovered that my mother was dying, I had started making arrangements to go. But I had sta
yed by her until the last, unlike everyone else. And once she was in the ground, I had walked away.
I had not grown fangs. I had grown wings and flown from that place, and left my old life behind. In that way, Rose and I were the same. But Rose was not fleeing a gilded cage full of venomous kin. She was running from something else, something so preoccupying that she denied what she was even when lives were at stake.
I need to convince her to join the nursing staff, I realized then. We need her. And I want to know more about her. And not just because of her beauty and mystery. What a daring woman, challenging me when not one of my colleagues would. Her loyalty to people she had barely known for six months was admirable. So was her dedication.
Too bad everything I said seemed to hit her the wrong way. But perhaps that was simply bad luck and the stress of the situation. I’ll try again once things cool down. I can be a bit gentler with her, but I’m duty bound not to take no for an answer. In the end, her principles will keep her from saying no forever.
Perhaps I did have a bit of my father in me: I led well, and when those who would benefit best from following that lead refused to recognize that, it was sometimes frustrating. But again, we are in a crisis. Let her calm down first.
I couldn’t wait too long, though. I understood that Rose had been here a lot longer than I, but ultimately, she was the nurse and I the doctor. I was the one responsible for the medical team, making sure it was as strong and well-equipped as possible.
“The new ones are up front,” one of the remaining nurses—Charlene? Catherine?—said, pointing a narrow white finger. “The girl’s rather frightened. I don’t think she’s broken a limb before.”
“I see.”
I let her lead me to that single screened-off space, from which came the muffled sobbing. As I drew near, the sound pricked at my empathy. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for this family, having traveled here in desperate need of help, only to have the remainder of the roof drop on them because of a rocket that hadn’t even been meant for us.
“Thank you, I’ll take it from here. Please send someone round with more water and fresh bandages.”
The nurse nodded and withdrew, turning to go. Her graying brown braid was half undone and full of plaster bits. The rocket had taken its toll on everyone, but nobody more than Yvonne and the little girl I stepped around the screen to help.
I found her sat on the table, sniffling softly as her mother held one hand and someone I assumed was her grandmother the other. Her hair was full of yellow dust from the crumbled facade outside. She looked up at me with enormous brown eyes and swallowed hard, struggling to stop crying in front of a stranger. I gave her a reassuring smile and turned to her graying, tired-looking father as he stepped up to greet me.
He had a fresh scar across his cheek and walked with a limp, his eyes filled with the quiet frustration of a man who can do nothing further for his own child but ask another’s help.
“My daughter Fatima has broken her thigh bone from part of the building falling. Can you help her?” The local dialect of Arabic was musical and a bit slang-filled for my ears, but I had practiced before my arrival and smiled back confidently.
“I need to examine her, but she is awake and alert, and that is a good sign,” I said. The girl’s skirt was hiked up enough for me to see the break; I saw no blood and no serious deformation. “Fortunately, it seems to be a simple break of her femur. If that is true, I can do what is called a ‘closed reduction.’”
The man nodded enthusiastically, understanding. He led me over to the bed, where the girl looked up at me with her lips trembling just a little.
“Hello there,” I said. “I’m Dr. Marino. I’m going to fix your leg while they prepare a room for your family upstairs.”
“You have room for us?” The girl’s immediate concern was for her family, even through her pain.
I nodded reassuringly and she smiled, relief written across her pale little face.
“Yes. Let’s focus on you now. You’re hurt, and I need to fix it before we worry about anything else.” I looked down at her bruised and swollen leg. “Does it hurt very much?”
She nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks. Her mother cooed and stroked her hair, but she was trembling. Not quite on the edge of a fit, but she was certainly very scared and hurting very badly.
I sat back and reached for my bag. “All right. I will give you an injection which will help the pain. It will also make you sleepy, but don’t worry. You will be needing to get a lot of rest to heal properly.”
The sight of her leg seemed to scare the girl more than anything. I could see the lumps where the broken ends of bone had slipped out of place, and though I had seen far worse on my operating table, its strangeness frightened the family, and especially the child.
“It’s all right,” I said as I pulled out the syringe. “It will only take a little while for you to feel better.” Meanwhile, I would have to find a way to distract her.
I gave her the injection, which only made her whimper and squirm a little. “There,” I told her. “You’re very brave, Fatima.”
I sat back and pulled out my notebook and pen. This town was no place for fancy tablet computers; I had left mine upstairs.
“All right, then. I need to ask you a few questions while we wait for the injection to work.”
She nodded, another tear rolling down her round little cheek.
“First off.” I took up my pencil. “What is your favorite animal?”
The girl blinked and her father chuckled. Her mother smiled—both parents understanding what I was up to.
“I…I like fennecs,” she ventured.
I knew the little creature she was talking about: a golden-brown desert fox, small, cute, and yippy like a tiny dog, but with a cat’s willfulness and cunning. And ears that were each as long as its head.
“Oh?” I said. “What’s a fennec? Could you tell me about it?”
I got her talking, Fatima haltingly describing the creature, and started drawing with my nondominant hand, clumsily. “So it has big ears? Like an elephant’s?” I drew a fox head with floppy ears.
She started giggling despite her pain. “No, not like that. They go up, and they’re pointed.”
I tried again, making them roughly the size of bat wings. “There, that’s perfect!”
More giggling. “No! You don’t draw very well.”
Her relatives were relaxing, smiling—and so was she, distracted from her leg as the drugs slowly overcame the agony. I needed her relaxed and numbed before I could set the bone.
“Oh, yes I do.” I mock-pouted. “I can draw a better fenny than you can!”
She started smiling through her tears. “Fen-nec! You can’t even say it right!”
She giggled as I tore off a few sheets and gave her the notepad and pen, insisting on a contest. Of course, I let her win, clumsily drawing a cartoonish thing that looked like a cross between a rat and a very small donkey. Hers actually wasn’t bad—especially by comparison.
Soon after that, Fatima started drowsing off.
Once she was fully asleep, I gently tested the break with my fingers. No fragments, no complications. I looked around at her family; the father braced himself, and the grandmother looked away.
I set the bone with a dull crunch and Fatima gasped awake, eyes flying open.
“Ow…ow…that was loud… What happened?” She looked around wildly, the shock leaving her shivery and confused.
“It’s all right,” I said. “The bone is set. I’ll clean up your leg and put the cast on, and then you can sleep for a while.” I reached for a sterilizing wipe and started prepping her skin for the cast.
“Oh.” She lay back again, blinking slowly. “I thought someone hit me in the leg.”
“Sorry. I had to put the bones back together. It meant being a little rough.” I gave her an apologetic smile as I finished cleaning her leg. “The hard part is over now. You just have to heal.”
Tired
ness had crept over me by the time I sat back from winding the last of the old-school plaster bandage around her leg.
“That’s it,” I told the family. “She will need rest, broth, milk, clean water. She will not be able to walk on the leg unsupported for four weeks. She will need a crutch for at least four weeks after that. We will supply you one, along with what painkillers we can spare.”
His mother blessed me as the other family members nodded. I touched the sleeping girl’s hair and laid the blanket over her, trying to ignore my exhaustion. I realized just a little too late, as I turned around, that I had been watched by an unexpected audience the entire time.
Rose was standing there in the makeshift doorway, a smile on her face as she looked back at me.
Chapter 6
Rose
I had been running around ever since parting company with Dr. Marino, and I hadn’t even had a chance to check my room for damage yet. Instead, I had spent the last hour and change burning myself out, doing my best to help get the place cleaned up and functioning again. We were all dusty and tired, and the regular daily endless work was now made even more endless by the cleanup from the explosion.
Once our tea guy was walking around again, passing out the afternoon shots of caffeine, I finally accepted a short break. Taking my cup, sipping as I walked, I made my way back over to the clinic to see how Yvonne was doing. I didn’t know what shape she would be in; when I got there, she was fast asleep despite the noise and bustle all around her little cubicle. There was already color back in her cheeks. Our new doctor had done a good job.
I had all kinds of mixed feelings about Dr. Marino now. Besides attraction and irritation, there was also a deep sense of embarrassment. He truly had proven himself—and then he had called my hypocrisy out. Now that I knew I could work as a nurse again, how could I pretend that staying in administration processing papers and greeting people was somehow more important?