Chapter 20
Sarah
I picked up the syringe for the third time.
The vial of long-acting antibiotic sat on the counter where I’d left it, label facing me.
The dosage I needed was written in my own handwriting on the chart clipped to the wall above it.
Ten milligrams per kilogram. I’d drawn this dosage a thousand times.
My hands knew the work, but today, my brain was two hundred kilometers south in a Nairobi hospital.
I drew the plunger back. Stopped. Set the syringe down on the steel tray beside the vial and walked to the recovery pen.
The young eland was standing, which was good.
His laceration was closing well, and he’d been putting weight on the leg since yesterday.
I checked his water. The trough was full.
His feed was half eaten. I picked up the chart hanging from the pen rail and wrote the time and the water level.
Then I stood there with the pen against the paper, unable to remember what came next.
I knew what came next. Temperature, respiration, appetite score. I’d written this sequence every morning since I’d been here.
I hung the chart back on the rail and went to the supply shelf instead.
Counted the gauze packs. Twelve. Counted them again.
Still twelve. Moved two from the back to the front because the older stock should rotate forward.
Then I stood in front of the shelf with my hands at my sides and nothing left to pretend to do.
The satellite phone sat on its charger at the end of the counter. The camp’s one line out. It lived here because the vet facility had the most reliable power, and it stayed plugged in because I kept it plugged in. It hadn’t rung in twenty-four hours.
What we knew: Alyson made it to Nairobi alive. There had been surgery. Past that, nothing. We didn’t know whether she’d made it through the surgery or whether she’d wake up. Information didn’t come back out of a Nairobi hospital to a bush camp quickly.
Donovan’s hand settled between my shoulder blades.
“Sit down,” he said. “Eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I know.”
His thumb moved once against my spine. He’d been here since dawn. When I froze over a task or lost my place in a chart, his hand found the back of my neck. He hadn’t said much. The steadiness was his body beside mine, not a speech.
I went back to the counter. Picked up the syringe. Drew the plunger back, watched the liquid rise in the barrel, and set it down again because the number on the vial blurred and I couldn’t tell if I’d drawn eight or ten.
The satellite phone rang.
I was across the room with it in my hand before the first ring ended.
“Hello?”
“Sarah? It’s Cole. Alyson is alive and stable.”
My free hand found the counter edge and gripped it. Everything I’d been holding for twenty-four hours left my body in a single breath.
I hit the speaker button and set the phone on the counter so Donovan could hear.
“Say that again.”
“Alyson is alive. She came through the first surgery. She’s stable.”
I pressed my hand flat against my sternum. My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
“I know you’ve been waiting,” he said. “I’m sorry. She was in surgery for a long time, and there wasn’t anything to tell you until she came through it. I couldn’t get to a phone until an hour ago.”
“I understand. How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.”
“How is the leg?”
“They rebuilt it. Took a while.” He said it the way someone would mention a scheduling conflict.
I looked at Donovan across the counter. His jaw was tight, and his eyes were locked in on the phone.
“Glad you came out the other side,” Donovan said.
“Appreciate it.”
“What did they say about Alyson’s injuries?” I sat down on the stool beside the counter because my legs wouldn’t hold me for the rest of this.
“The lacerations were deep. Some went through the muscle. She needed transfusions, and the surgery was extensive. They’re not finished—there’s more ahead. But none of the wounds punctured a major artery or any vital organs. She’s stable and breathing on her own.”
“Is she conscious?”
“In and out. They’ve got her on heavy pain management. She knew I was there for about thirty seconds this morning. That’s more than yesterday.”
“How permanent is it all going to be?”
He was quiet for a moment. “It’s bad. The scarring is going to be significant. But she’s here. That’s the part that matters right now.”
I dragged my hand down my face. Donovan hadn’t moved. He stood on the other side of the counter with his arms crossed.
“What happens next?” I asked.
“The hospital reached her family. They’re on their way.”
“From the States?”
“Yeah. Once she can travel, she’s being transferred home. Medevac flight, medical escort, the works. She’s not coming back here, Sarah.”
I’d known that. Somewhere underneath the panic and the waiting, I’d already known Aly wasn’t coming back to Ol Pejeta. But hearing Cole say it out loud solidified it.
“How long until she can fly?”
“Probably next week, at least. They’re not moving her until the surgical team clears it.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me.
“What about you?” I asked. “And don’t steer past it.”
“The leg’s got more hardware in it than the truck, but it’ll hold. Don’t worry about me.”
“Cole,” Donovan interjected.
“I’m on my back in a hospital bed with my leg bolted together and a morphine drip that’s making everything a lot more interesting than it should be. My rotation’s done. I’m grounded.”
I pulled my hand away from my face. “What about Daniel? Is he with Alyson?”
There was a long pause and an audible exhale from the other end of the line.
“He’s gone.”
“What? What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean nobody’s seen him since we touched down. He steered clear of all the chaos on board. When we landed, he got off the plane and he left. The hospital hasn’t seen him. I haven’t seen him. He’s just gone.”
I looked at Donovan. He looked back at me, eyebrows raised, the same confusion on his face that I could feel on mine.
Daniel had disappeared while Alyson was in surgery fighting for her life. He didn’t ask about her. Didn’t stay to see how she was. He just left.
“Okay,” I said, because there was nothing else.
Cole’s breath came through the speaker, heavier now. The call was costing him. He was a patient too after all. He probably needed rest.
“I’ll check on her again when I can. If anything changes, I’ll find a phone.”
“Thank you, Cole. I appreciate your calling.”
“Cole. Rest and do what the doctors tell you, brother. Let me know if there’s anything we can do,” Donovan added.
“Will do. Take care of yourself.” A pause. “Both of you.”
The line went dead, and the quiet rushed in.
I stood from the stool, and my legs buckled. Donovan was beside me before I’d finished crumpling. His hand closed around my arm, and he kept me upright while the rest of me caught up.
“She’s alive,” I said.
“She’s alive.”
I said it again, quieter, testing the weight of it. Then the other parts started arriving.
“But she’s not coming back here.”
Donovan didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. His hand moved from my arm to my back and stayed there.
“All the work we were doing here. The research, the animals she was tracking.” I was talking into his chest because I’d ended up against it without deciding to. “It just stops for her. She doesn’t even get to choose.”
“I know.”
“She’s the one who made this place feel like home.
Before the work did, before the animals did—she’s always been the one constant thing.
” I paused and took a deep breath. “Even when we first met Alyson decided I was her person and I never got a vote.” My forehead found his collarbone.
“I don’t know what this place is without her in it. ”
He didn’t answer that either. He just held on.
“And Daniel.” I pulled back enough to look at him. “He walked off the plane? She’s in a hospital with her face torn open, and the man she’d been with for over a year just disappeared?”
Donovan’s expression didn’t change.
“How do you do that?” My voice came out unsteady. “How do you just leave someone?”
“I don’t know.”
“She would never have done that to him. If it had been Daniel in that hospital, Alyson would have slept on the floor beside his bed. She would have been the first face he saw every single time he opened his eyes. She would have stayed.”
My voice cracked on the last word. Donovan’s hand pressed harder against my back.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me what you need.”
“I don’t know what I need.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand, not realizing I had started crying. “I don’t know what this looks like from here. Alyson’s gone. Daniel’s gone. The fellowship was three people, and now it’s—”
I stopped.
The realization didn’t arrive gently. It landed like a stone in my stomach.
“It’s me,” I said. “I’m the only vet.”
Donovan was quiet.
“There is no one else.” I heard myself say it, and the weight of it settled on my chest. “Every animal on this reserve. Every emergency, every treatment, every decision about what lives and what dies. That’s just me now.”
It wasn’t a complaint. I didn’t have the energy or the inclination to complain. It was the aloneness of it. The scope of what had landed in my lap because a dart didn’t hold and a lion tore my friend apart.
“I know,” he said.
“I’ve always had backup. Even when I was the one making the calls, Alyson was there. She was better than me with the big cats. She was better than me with half the predators on this reserve, and I could hand her things I wasn’t sure about and she’d handle them. I can’t hand anything to anyone now.”
He didn’t fill the silence with reassurance or tell me it would be fine. He stood there with his hand on my back and his eyes on mine. And then he asked the only question that mattered.
“What did it do to you? Hearing all of that.”
The honesty came up before I could shape it into something manageable.
“It broke my heart,” I said. “All of it. Every piece. Alyson’s face. Cole apologizing from a hospital bed. Daniel just vanishing. And underneath all of that, the part I’m ashamed of, the part I don’t want to say out loud—I’m terrified. I’m terrified I’m not enough by myself.”
He pulled me in with both arms and held me until the shaking stopped.
I stayed there longer than I needed to. His arms didn’t loosen. Mine eventually did.
The syringe was still on the counter, half drawn. The eland was still in the pen, waiting.
I crossed to the counter and reached for the vial. Donovan’s hand got there first. He picked it up and held it out to me without a word.
I took it. Drew the dosage. Ten milligrams per kilogram. My hands didn’t shake. I capped the syringe and turned toward the recovery pen.
Donovan followed. He leaned against the pen rail while I crouched beside the eland. I found the injection site and pressed the plunger. The animal flinched once, then settled. I withdrew the needle and dropped it in the sharps container on the rail.
I stayed crouching for a moment. The eland turned his head toward me, ears working.
“You’re doing fine,” I told him.
I stood. Donovan was right where he’d been. He hadn’t left me. He hadn’t checked his watch or his radio or offered to go find something useful to do somewhere else. He was just there, leaning on the rail and watching me work.
I picked up the chart and filled in the remaining lines. Temperature. Respiration. Appetite score. Medication administered, time, dosage. My pen moved through the entries the way it had a thousand times before, and beside me, Donovan stayed.