Traffic grinds to a halt. A heavy summer rainstorm combined with rush hour doesn’t make for ideal conditions, and as I stop the car, I lock eyes with each of my parents in turn. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The research papers I’ll be able to publish alone off of this study will make my whole career. And if I can work with Dr. Branch—he’s my colleague at Johns Hopkins—on his paper… Mom, I could save lives.”
She’s softening. I can tell from her expression, and emboldened, I take a deep breath. “I promise I’ll be careful. I’ve started using the stair machine every day trying to get my lungs in shape, and my graduate students…they’re working their butts off designing experiments and thinking up new ways we can possibly save an entire species. They deserve this as much—if not more—than I do.”
For a full minute, no one says a word. Traffic starts crawling slowly, and I return my focus to the road just as my father clears his throat. “You know we love you, Mikayla. We are simply worried. It’s what parents do.”
Mom settles back into the passenger seat. “Your father is right, Mika. We worry because we love you.”
I flash her a quick smile, and the tension in my little Prius evaporates almost immediately. “I know. I love you too. I worked so late last night so I wouldn’t have to go in again all weekend. And I bought all of the ingredients for kibbeh bil sanieh. Tomorrow, we can cook together.”
“You mean tomorrow I will cook and try to stop you from eating all the pine nuts.” Mom huffs out a breath, but her lips curve into a smile.
I laugh, letting work fade into the background for now—and hopefully for the rest of their visit. “You won’t have to. I bought double what we need, so I get to eat as many as I want. Dad can too. And I picked up a box of those chocolate caramels you love. We all get to indulge this weekend.”
They only visit twice a year, and my work has kept me so busy, I couldn’t fly out to see them during Ramadan. While I’m not a practicing Muslim, Mom and Dad are, and I know they were hurt when I couldn’t even make it for a weekend trip during the holiday. For the next few days, I’ll do my best to put work out of my mind and enjoy my time with them. And hopefully, in a couple of weeks, the grant will come through, and so will my dreams of making a difference.
Austin
Standing in the doorway of my empty apartment should stir more of a reaction. I want to feel…something. Anything besides this hollow, restless sensation that’s haunted me for weeks. Since the attack in Islamabad.
We were targets from the moment we stepped foot in Pakistan. For six months, my security team worked their asses off. Until the United States Ambassador showed up for an unannounced visit. We scrambled. Mistakes were made. And when we escorted her back to the Embassy, we were sitting ducks.
I got her and her teenage son out of their burning vehicle and laid down cover fire until two of her escorts got her to a mosque down the street that sheltered them.
But the second blast killed three members of my security detail and left Griff, the only one who survived, with permanent hearing loss and only half his left arm.
“Pritchard. I can’t feel my fingers,” he’d croaked as I’d dragged myself over to him and tried—despite three bullet wounds to my shoulder and back—to keep firing until help arrived. “Shit. I can’t…there’s something wrong with my hearing. It’s so quiet. Fuck. Am I dying? Don’t let me die, man.”
Every night when I try to sleep, I hear him. See him. His arm crushed under the remains of that heavy stone wall. Blood covering the left half of his face. The desperation in his eyes.
Outside of Ryker McCabe—a retired Special Forces detachment commander—and his team, Griff has the best damn instincts of anyone I’ve worked with in more than twenty years, and now…he’ll be lucky to ride a desk, let alone go out in the field again. Nothing will fix his hearing. And while I called in some favors to get him consults with the best prosthetic clinics in the country, it’s not going to give him back his arm.
He saved my fucking life. Shoved me out of the way of