had better not put him under, his blood pressure is far too low,” he murmured to Lily. “Let’s see if we can make do with a local.” Lily raised a bottle to the light and filled a syringe. Then the doctor called for a scalpel and forceps, and for several minutes there was complete silence, until he exclaimed, “Ah!” As he turned aside, pinching what looked like a fragment of a coat hanger between the forceps, Quinette saw the front of his smock spattered with a blackish fluid and Ulrika holding a compress to Bala’s side. Manfred frowned when he spotted her, leaning against the door.
“You have a reason for being here?”
“I . . . no—I was just wondering . . . is he going to be all right?”
“You’re not needed here, Miss Hardin.”
She went out, feeling superfluous and embarrassed. She should return to her assigned duties but thought against all reason that if she remained close by, Captain Bala would be okay. Looking up at the stars, more stars than she’d ever seen back home, she prayed to God to deliver Michael’s comrade from whatever danger he was in. Even as she did, she sensed that this petition wouldn’t be granted; so she wasn’t too surprised or saddened when, about a quarter of an hour later, the orderlies marched out with the stretcher between them and the captain on it, the blanket drawn over his face.
“I am sorry for kicking you out,” Manfred said, emerging with Ulrika, Lily, and two other assistants. “I didn’t know you and Miss Hanrahan worked so hard to save that man. The fifth one we lost today.”
“We did a first-rate job, treating the wrong wound,” Lily remarked caustically.
Manfred lit up again, bringing the two fingers holding the cigarette flat against his lips, pulling it out with a quick, nervous movement. “You could have done nothing with the right one.”
“What happened?” Quinette asked.
“A thin piece of shrapnel this long”—he spread a thumb and forefinger about three inches—“pierced his liver, straight through to the inferior vena cava. This is the big artery from the heart to the liver. Not much bleeding on the outside—the piece was like a little cork—but a great deal of internal hemorrhaging. It is miraculous he lasted as long as he did.”
“I’d better find Michael and tell him.”
But at that inconvenient moment, a wave of nausea rolled through her. Hand to her mouth, she moved away and vomited.
Ulrika placed a matronly arm across her shoulders. “Ach, you are not used to this.”
“Then take one and get some rest. My little house, you can sleep there. I don’t think I will be lying down for some hours yet.”
Quinette shook her head. “As long as Lily is—”
“Do not with me play the heroine,” Ulrika chided. “You have done your share. My little house. I will get someone to show you where it is.”
Shining her penlight into the small room, she saw a box of matches on the nightstand and lit the paraffin lamp. Ulrika had asked her not to turn on the electric lights, to save juice in the solar batteries. The bed with its steel headboard looked like hospital surplus, its stern functional lines softened somewhat by the mosquito net that enclosed it. Figuring the invitation did not include use of the bed, Quinette propped her rucksack in a corner, unrolled her air mattress and sleeping bag, and placed them atop one of the floor mats. It was stuffy inside, and she opened the shutters, sat on a chair, and took off her boots and socks, wrinkling her nose at the smell. All of her clothes had a funky reek. Reckoning she did, too, she stripped and hung her clothes on a peg to air them out, then positioned the chair in the middle of the room, between the two windows, and washed her naked body in the night breezes.
She looked around at the floral print curtains on the windows, posters of German pop groups on the stone walls, a portable radio with built-in CD player on the desk, next to a laptop and a stack of computer-game software. She wasn’t ready for sleep, though she’d been awake since dawn. What she felt instead of tiredness was an inner collapse. Everything she and Lily had done for Captain Bala, all for nothing. “Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain. But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.” The