Chapter 11
By mid-morning, the clinic had turned into a furnace.
The windows bled sunlight across the hallways, slicing through smoke and dust, illuminating the chaos that had settled like a living thing.
Every bed was full. Every chair had become a makeshift cot.
The air smelled of iron, sharp with antiseptic that did nothing to hide the sourness.
Mary Anne moved through it all with the flat precision of muscle memory.
Sweat ran down her back beneath her jacket, and her hands were raw from washing without soap.
The taps still sputtered weakly, but she rationed every drop, saving it for wounds that wouldn’t wait.
Without the machines, the silence in the ward was wrong.
“Hang that higher,” she said.
One of the nurses, Carla, nodded and lifted the IV bag by its tubing, tying it to a coat hanger bent into a hook. The hanger dangled from a curtain rod above the patient’s bed, swinging slightly with every movement.
“Gravity will have to do,” Mary Anne muttered. “Make sure the line’s not kinked.”
“It’s holding for now.”
“Good. Move to the next one. Don’t stop checking the flow.”
Across the room, another nurse, a younger woman named Leah, was tearing strips from a sheet, binding a man’s arm that had been split open by shattered glass. The man groaned, clutching the edge of the bed.
“Pressure,” Mary Anne said, crossing to her. “Keep it tight. You stop the bleeding first. Always the bleeding.”
Leah nodded. “I know, I just… He’s losing too much.”
“Then move faster.” The words came out sharper than she had meant.
Leah blinked hard, swallowed, and did as she was told.
Mary Anne turned away. She couldn’t afford gentleness.
The air inside the ward shimmered with heat.
Someone had tried opening the windows, but the breeze carried only the smell of smoke and dust from the fires still smoldering on the outskirts of town.
From the maternity wing came a thin, rising wail, one of the newborns again.
The cry cut through everything, pure and raw. Mary Anne’s shoulders stiffened.
“Amy, check that baby’s temperature. If it’s too high, use damp cloths. No more than one at a time… We can’t waste water.”
Amy hurried off. Mary Anne bent over the next patient, a man in his sixties with deep burns across his chest. The skin was blistered, mottled red and white. She worked by instinct, tearing away melted fabric, cleaning what she could.
Carla handed her a strip of gauze. “We’re running out of morphine.”
“How many ampules are left?”
“Four.”
Mary Anne didn’t look up. “Keep two for surgical cases. Split the rest among the burn victims. Just enough to take the edge off.”
Carla hesitated. “The ones we can’t…”
“Later.”
The nurse swallowed and moved on. A noise came from the hallway—a clatter of metal, followed by a sharp cry. Two volunteers had come in, dragging a cart loaded with buckets. Muddy water sloshed over the sides.
“From the well,” one called. “The pump’s still working, but it’s slow.”
“Set it by the wall,” Mary Anne said. “We’ll filter it through a cloth before use.”
The boy nodded. “There’s a line forming already. People bringing jars, bottles…whatever they’ve got.”
“Good. Tell them to fill containers and bring half here. We’ll ration by need.”
He hesitated. “You want guards? People are starting to argue.”
“Not yet. Just keep order as best you can.”
He ran off again. Mary Anne dipped her hands into the water, feeling grit against her skin. It smelled faintly metallic but drinkable. She poured some into a basin and began rinsing blood from her arms.
Behind her, Carla whispered to Leah. “The boy with asthma, did you?—”
Mary Anne didn’t want to hear it, but she already knew. She turned before Leah could answer. “Where?”
Leah’s eyes flicked toward the end of the hall.
Mary Anne walked there without a word. The air in the corridor hung thick.
When she stepped inside, the light from the window fell across the boy’s still face.
He couldn’t have been more than ten. His chest was pale and still, his inhaler on the floor beside the bed.
Leah followed her in. “The propellant didn’t fire. I tried the spacer, but nothing.”
Mary Anne crouched, picked up the inhaler, and pressed the canister. It hissed once, weakly, then went silent. She turned it over in her palm. Empty, or dead. It didn’t matter.
“We could’ve saved him. If… if the meds…”
Mary Anne sighed. “Go help Carla. There are still people breathing.”
Leah shook her head. “I can’t just leave him.”
“Go.”
The word came out firm. Leah hesitated, then turned and fled.
When the door shut, Mary Anne stood there a moment longer, staring at the small body on the bed.
She felt the weight of every breath around her, the living and the dying.
Her own chest felt tight. She reached for the window latch and forced it open. Hot air poured in, thick with smoke.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Then she closed the window again and moved on.
The day bled forward in fragments. A lantern exploded in one of the side rooms when someone tried to refill it while it was still burning.
Two patients came out screaming, their arms aflame.
Mary Anne and Carla threw blankets over them, smothering the fire.
The smell lingered for hours. By noon, the floors were slick with water and sweat.
Volunteers hauled buckets back and forth from the well, each trip slower than the last. The younger ones fainted in the heat.
Mary Anne’s voice had gone raw from giving orders. Her own mouth felt like sandpaper. She stole a sip from a tin cup and forced herself to stop after one swallow.
Carla slumped against the wall beside her. “We can’t keep up,” she said. “They just keep coming.”
Mary Anne didn’t answer. In the main ward, a woman clutched her husband’s hand as he gasped for breath.
His ribs showed with every inhale. She met Mary Anne’s eyes.
Mary Anne kneeled beside the bed. The man’s pulse fluttered weakly.
His skin had gone blue at the lips. She checked his airway, but there was nothing to be done.
She looked back at the woman. “I’m sorry.”
The woman’s face twisted. “You’re supposed to help him.”
“I can’t,” Mary Anne said softly.
The woman screamed. The sound carried down the corridor, cutting through every other noise until it faded into ragged sobs.
Carla turned away, eyes shining. Leah pressed a towel to her mouth, shoulders shaking.
Mary Anne stayed kneeling beside the bed until the woman’s cries softened to silence.
Then she stood, wiped her hands on her jacket, and moved on.
There was no room for breaking. By midafternoon, the sunlight through the windows had turned white and merciless.
The smell of blood had sunk into everything.
Flies buzzed against the glass. Someone brought word from the square that tempers were breaking.
A fight at the well. A man struck another over a bucket of water.
Mary Anne sent two orderlies with bandages and instructions.
The rhythm became survival itself. Move, assess, bandage, move again. She’d stopped thinking in terms of hours. Her mind ran on instinct about who could be saved, who couldn’t. When Carla approached her again, voice barely holding, Mary Anne already knew what she would say.
“We’re out of morphine.”
Mary Anne’s hands paused over a bandage. “Completely?”
“One vial left. I’ve been stretching doses, but?—”
“Save it.”
“For whom?” Carla’s eyes glistened. “You keep saying later, but later never comes.”
Mary Anne looked down at the man before her, with third-degree burns, his skin charred and his breathing shallow. His eyes fluttered, then opened just enough to meet hers. She kneeled beside him. “Name?”
He didn’t answer.
Mary Anne looked at Carla. “Draw half a dose.”
Carla hesitated. “That won’t?—”
“Do it.”
When the syringe was ready, Mary Anne took it herself, her hand steady. She injected it slowly into the IV line. The man’s muscles loosened. His breathing eased. His face relaxed into an almost peaceful expression.
“You think he’ll make it?”
“Start dividing patients,” she said quietly. “Those who can walk, those who can’t, and the ones who…”
Carla’s throat worked. “You mean…”
“Just do it.”
The nurses moved in silence after that. They cleared space in the hallway and set blankets on the floor for the worst cases.
Mary Anne forced herself not to look too long at any one face.
By late afternoon, her hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
She wrapped them in a damp cloth, trying to still the shaking.
Outside, the sunlight dimmed under the weight of drifting smoke.
Dawn appeared at the doorway. “Town’s quieted some. Fires are dying, but people are scared. They keep asking how long it’ll last.”
Mary Anne looked at her. “Tell them to rest while they can.”
Dawn nodded once, understanding. She left without another word.
As dusk fell, the light through the windows turned amber.
The ward glowed in that dying color, all washed in gold that felt too soft for the world it touched.
Mary Anne leaned against the wall, watching Leah tuck a blanket around a sleeping child.
Carla sat on the floor beside an empty bed, head in her hands.
The sounds had quieted, no more screams, just the soft shuffle of feet.
Mary Anne’s own breathing grew shallow, exhaustion burning through her chest. She looked toward the window.
The sun’s last edge sank behind the ridge, leaving the sky the color of bruised glass.
The smell of blood and sweat hung heavy in the air.
Outside, the town’s noise faded into distant murmurs.
For the first time all day, she stopped moving.
Her reflection stared back from the dark window.
Hope felt thin, but work was the only thing keeping her from falling apart.