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Since Salma’s grandson has already taken the rescued women to the new, larger facility, my duties tonight are cleanup. I take longer than necessary, scrubbing everything down, including my hands, because I know what waits for me inside that medical tent.
With a purposeful mental shove, I walk back inside and inhale the sharp odor of blood and death. A dull light hangs down from the wooden support rafter over a gurney. Salma is cleaning the exam table of blood. I comfort myself with the fact that the pregnant woman survived, even as I reprimand myself for the fact that her son did not.
I avoid looking where the small body lies atop a metal cart as I ask, “Do you need me to take him somewhere?”
Salma looks up from rinsing her rag in water gone pink with blood. “No, it is being handled, but thank you.” She pauses and takes me in for a full breath. “You saved many lives tonight, but this does not comfort you.”
It does not. “I should’ve kept my eyes on the fight, the action, because if I had, I’d have seen the danger coming.”
“Sandesh, you have dealt with conflict for so long, you can’t even find peace within your own mind. You made the right decision. Believe that.”
Her brown eyes glisten with knowing intelligence, but I can’t let go of the responsibility for how things turned out. “After she was shot, I wanted to fight so badly I almost told you to take the truck and leave.”
Her eyebrows go up. “That would’ve been a problem as I don’t drive.”
I smile. That somehow makes me feel better. “How do you do it, Salma? Work here, witness what happens, knowing you can only save the moment for someone, leaving them alive in a violent and unfair world to save all the succeeding moments for themselves?”
“What would I do differently? I heal. That is my mission. To soothe the ache that too much anger and too many ideas of God’s justice has done to our delicate minds.”
Delicate minds? That seems an oversimplification. Or is it? Is it as simple as not allowing certain beliefs to take root, make patterns in the brain that cause kneejerk reactions? I wipe at my face. God, the whole room smells of blood.
Salma stops from cleaning and meets my gaze. “Tonight, you came face-to-face with where two sides of yourself meet—the soldier and the humanitarian. You naturally had a reaction coming to the crossroads of your identities. Stay and fight as a soldier or run and help without violence as a humanitarian. For me and those other women, you made the right choice.”
What she says makes so much sense that I find myself becoming choked up. She’s right. I made the choice to change, because I believed there were other ways I could help, other ways that didn’t involve a gun.
A swish of the tent flap has me turning for the opening. Another pregnant woman in niqab and black abaya, holding her side, staggers inside, supported by a teenager, maybe thirteen, who looks at me with eyes much too old for a child.
For a moment, I’m frozen.
Until the girl whispers, “Help.”
I rush forward, catching the pregnant woman as she falls. I lift her easily and carry her to a gurney still stained with another woman’s blood.
Salma moves quickly to the woman’s side. “Are you in labor?”
“No,” the girl says, gripping the side of the gurney. “She’s hurt. Her side. She speaks English.”
The woman proves this immediately by saying, “We’re being followed. Please hide the girl. Her name is Amal.”
That voice hits me like an open hand, a sharp sting across the face. “Justice?”
Salma breaks into action, reacting with a speed that indicates she’s been here before. She directs the girl to hide in a steel cabinet.
Amal darts into the cabinet and shuts the door with a metal clang as I stand there with my mouth open.
Justice with her face hidden, wearing blue contacts, injured, and with a daughter. No. Not her daughter. That’s panic trying out logic. “What’s happening?”
“I think I’m being followed,” she says, with a confused tone. “I don’t understand. They were here when we got here.”
What is she talking about? How is she injured? Who’s after her and how do I rip their head off?
Fisting my hands, I tie down the dog of war that wants to break whoever hurt her. I need to use my brain, not panic or anger. “Who would want to hurt a public relations specialist? Why do you appear pregnant?”
Before she can answer, the tent flap is tossed open and two armed men bully there way inside.
“Who is that on the table?” one asks in Arabic.
I slip forward, preparing to disarm him and take down the second.
