Chapter 15 #2
I reach the triage floor—screams, moans, and curses rise like a miasma of agony.
The floors are slick with blood, which the few, exhausted, overworked orderlies work frantically to sop up.
I scan the scene, my brain clicking into work mode, and I begin snapping orders to Duwana, who passes them on to the others.
And then I recall nothing else as I am swept up in the chaos of lifesaving.
My eyes burn, feeling as if they are filled with gritty, hot sand. My feet ache and throb. My stomach gnarls and rumbles, empty. My hands hurt—both from so many hours of constant use and from the dryness that comes from wearing rubber gloves for so long.
The fighting is right outside. I still cannot help occasionally ducking when a particularly close explosion rocks the ground under my feet; more than once, a drop tile has shaken loose and fallen on my head. But better a drop tile than an HE shell, I suppose.
I cannot recall when this began. Two days?
Three? I have passed beyond exhaustion and into a trance-like state.
I have treated more patients than I can count.
Enemy soldiers, friendly ones, women, children, old people.
Gunshots, machete wounds, shrapnel, missing limbs, evisceration, crush wounds from collapsed buildings.
The fighting does not cease, night and day.
Where do all the bullets come from? Surely they must run out at some point?
It is an errant thought as I try to remember what I was doing.
Oh, right. New gloves. Only the box is empty; there are no more.
Duwana, ever nearby, shoves a handful of clean gloves at me. I put on a pair and stuff the rest in my scrub pockets.
A fresh wave of patients arrives. These are newly wounded, still in shock, thrashing, spurting, gushing, seeping, weeping.
The trance-state takes over and my hands do their work.
“—Well? Dr. Creswell?" Duwana? Yes, Duwana. That is her name. "…Must rest. You cannot continue."
I look at her and see not her but the previous patient. A woman who looked much like her. She had a hole in her gut so large a cantaloupe could have fit in the space. All I could do was ease her suffering, and even that not much, for even the years-old morphine is nearly gone and must be rationed.
It is quieter, now; I do not know why.
Someone screams nearby, and I move toward the sound. A young man—a boy, really, not old enough to shave every day. I scan him—oh. No. He will not survive. I hold his hand as he cries, fades…stills forever.
Duwana pulls me away, then. "Come. You must come, Cadence."
"No…no. I can't."
More hands. They pull, they push. What is happening? I see familiar faces—nurses. Doctors. Orderlies. My companions here, these last six months. Some faces are wet with tears. What is happening? Have I died?
Duwana is beside me, arm around my waist, guiding me down a hallway to an exit. This is a service corridor near the receiving dock. Why are we here? What is going on?
We reach the exit. Bodies cluster around me. Hands reach for me. Squeeze my arms, my shoulders.
Prayers are whispered in Arabic:
Go with God—go with God—go with God.
I see the faces of my protectors: Deng, Malong, and Gorte—three local men who have treated me like a sister, an aunt.
They have brought me food, fresh clothing, and tea.
The few times I have left the hospital, they accompany me, protect me, translate for me, see that I do not forget a headscarf in public or otherwise run afoul of local customs through ignorance.
They escorted me here from the airport, and when the time comes, they will escort me back.
I see my small suitcase full of my few personal possessions near the exit.
"Duwana?" I ask. "What is happening?"
Duwana frames my face in her strong, gentle hands. Her fingers are so black against my pale skin, a juxtaposition I find lovely. "You must go now, my sister."
I shake my head. "No. No. I cannot. I—I can't. How can I leave, Duwana?"
"You must, Cadence." She is weeping. "You must. It is time. There is a lull in the fighting. You must go. You have done more than anyone could ask. Allah brought you here, and now Allah calls you home."
"No!" I protest. "Duwana, I—"
Fatima—another nurse to whom I have drawn quite close—squeezes my hand. She is short, stout, quick-tempered, and prefers a plain black hijab. She has a deft, quick touch with IV insertions. "You must go."
Go with god, sister.
"You can do nothing more, here," Duwana says. "Soon this hospital will be overrun. The enemy will come and you cannot be here when that happens. You must go now, Cadence. Please."
My protectors form a wall behind me. I try to push past them, to return to the triage floor.
Duwana's grip is fierce. She shakes me. "CADENCE!" She raises her voice to an angry snap for the first time since I met her. "It is time for you to go. You cannot save us all."
"I can try!" I shout. "I won't leave you!”
"I will not see you die!" She shouts back. "You must go. You must. Please. For me, if not for you and if not for your Riley, who waits for you so patiently."
Riley's face fills my mind. His pale blue eyes, his black hair. You've done all you can, baby girl, I hear him say. Time to come home. You dyin' in Sudan ain't the mission.
I sag, the fight going out of me. "Duwana…"
She sees my capitulation and guides me to the exit.
A small, filthy white pickup truck is idling a few feet from the door, a driver with a scarf around his mouth and nose behind the wheel.
Two armed men crouch in the truck bed, eyes scanning, scanning.
My protectors climb in with them, and Duwana tosses my suitcase in after them.
Fatima hustles me to the passenger side and into the seat.
Someone shouts—a distant explosion sends vibrations through the ground.
Fatima unwinds the hijab from her own head, despite the presence of men, and puts it on me. "Keep your face hidden. Say nothing."
Another nurse drapes a bloodstained flat sheet over Fatima's head to preserve her honor even as she preserves mine.
Duwana reaches in through the open window and squeezes my hand. "May Allah carry you home, my sister."
I cannot see through the haze of tears. "Du—Duwana, wait, I—"
She presses a kiss to the back of my hand. "Go. Go." She says something to the driver in Juba Arabic, and the driver guns the throttle.
She clings to my hand until momentum tears us apart. I twist in the seat and watch, weeping, as the best friend I have ever had vanishes as we turn a corner.
"Down," the driver snaps at me in heavily accented English. "Down. Hide your face."
I wrap the hijab around my nose and mouth and tuck it so it stays in place, turning my face down and away.
It is a rough, jolting, too-fast drive through the city, then, and I do not dare look out the window. I hear shouts, screams. Weeping and wailing. Gunshots. Once, I hear a scream cut short in a wet thunk. Every few minutes the driver reminds me to hide my face, to keep down.
The truck slows and I feel the driver go tense. "Do not move. Do not speak. Head down."
I hear chatter in a local dialect—Dinka, I think. I do not know for sure. A pidgin of Dinka, English, and Juba Arabic, more likely.
A single gunshot cracks from the truck bed, jolting a scream out of me, and then there is shouting—I cannot stop my eyes from lifting, watching, seeing.
Men with covered faces dart this way and that, AK-47s pointing and firing at the men in the bed behind me, who fire back.
A grunt, and a body topples out of the truck, but the attackers are all down.
I look back, and Gorte is bleeding from a wound to his shoulder.
Gorte had a wife who died a year ago; he was silent and huge and imposing; he once gave me the shirt off his own back when my scrub top was too sodden in blood to wear.
"I have to help Gorte!” I say.
The driver ignores me, gunning the engine and driving over the enemy—thud-thud. He grabs the back of my head and shoves me down into the footwell; I am bent double, painfully.
Gunfire—loud, hot, and close—accompanies the tinkle of shells.
Then abrupt silence except for the roar of the engine and the crackle of dirt and rocks against the underside of the vehicle and the skid of tires as they weave this way and that.
I huddle in the footwell, fighting panic, for long minutes. Slowly, I hear the buzz of propellers, which grows steadily louder until it is right outside.
The door opens and a hand reaches in—I take it, and allow myself to be helped out to my feet on shaky, aching legs.
Someone tosses my suitcase into the waiting aircraft, and someone else pushes my purse at me, presses my passport into my hand.
Go with god, sister.
I'm buckled into a seat in a narrow metal tube, which is hot and dusty and smells of oil and fuel and cigarettes.
And then my stomach is in my feet as we lurch skyward.
At one point, we bank over the ruins of a small village and all I can see is patches of blood-stained sand and stacks of corpses.
I remember nothing else after that.
"…Captain speaking...altitude of thirty thousand feet…"
"…She's been just sitting there for four hours, staring at nothing. Won’t respond."
"Ma'am? Can you hear me?" A Black male face hovers in my line of sight. "Is there anyone we can call?"
I blink, once. "Call?" My voice hurts to use—it is rusty, hoarse.
"Do you have any family expecting you?"
"Family.”
"Ma'am? Ma’am?" His hands shake me gently. "Ma'am, please. We wanna help you get home."
"Home?" My head a maelstrom of images. Emotions are a boiling cauldron. Thoughts are like leaves in a tornado.
"You got a boyfriend, maybe?"
"Riley." It emerges from my mouth unbidden. "Riley Crowe. Three Rivers." It's all I can manage. "Riley Crowe. Three Rivers…Riley Crowe, Three Rivers.” I feel myself rocking, arms wrapped around my middle. "Riley Crowe, Three Rivers. Riley Crowe, Three Rivers. Riley Crowe, Three Rivers."
“…See what comes up on Google…oh, yeah, here we go." A woman's voice, quiet and Jamaican-accented. "Riley Crowe, Crowe Demolitions in Three Rivers, which is…way the hell up north. I got a phone number. I’ll see if he answers…"